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 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER 
 
 BX 6333 .M365 C6 
 Maclaren, Alexander, 182b- 
 
 1910. . 
 
 The conquering Christ 
 
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 ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D. 
 
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JAN 12 1959 
 
 THE CONQUERING CHRIST 
 
 a:;d 
 
 OTHER SERMONS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 
 31, WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
 
 1891 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTHD BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
 
 world ! " — ^JOHN i. 29. 
 "And I beheld, and, lo, . . . a Lamb as it hal been slain." — 
 
 Rev. v. 6 ... ... ... ... ... ... i 
 
 SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 
 
 "And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto 
 
 Him, They have no wine." — John ii. 3. 
 " Therefore his sisters sent unto Jesus, saying, Lord, behold, he 
 
 whom Thou lovest is sick." — John xi. 3 ... ... 19 
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 '' Being moved with compassion. He stretched forth His hand.'' — 
 M.\RK i. 41 
 
 GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
 "Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be 
 gathered to thy grave in peace." — 2 Chron. xxxiv. 28. 
 
 "The archers shot at King Josiah ; and the king said unto his 
 servants, Have me away ; for I am sore wounded. . . . And 
 they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died." — 2 Chron. 
 XXXV. 23, 24 ... ... ... ... ... 51 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME 
 
 FLESH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare 
 Thy name unto My brethren, in the midst of the Church will 
 I sing praise to Thee. And again, I will put My trust in 
 Him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath 
 given Me." — Heb. ii. 11-13 ... ... .. ... 67 
 
 ARMED RECREANTS. 
 
 '' The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, 
 
 turned back in the day of battle."— Ps. Ixxviii. 9 ... 83 
 
 "AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
 " These all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, 
 received not the promise, God having provided some better 
 thing concerning us, that they without us should net be made 
 perfect." — Heb. xi. 39, 40 (R.V.) ... ... ... 93 
 
 THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. 
 
 "Aland of unwalled villages . . . them that are at rest, that 
 dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having 
 neither bars nor gates." — EZEK. xxxviii. 11. 
 
 "Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls, . . . For 
 I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, 
 and will be the glory in the midst of her." — Zech. ii. 4, 5 ... 109 
 
 HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 
 
 " From whom the whole body, by joints and bands having nourish- 
 ment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the 
 increase of God." — Col. ii. 19 ... ... ... 121 
 
 WISE HASTE. 
 
 " See that ye hasten the matter." — 2 Chrox. xxiv. 5. ... 137 
 
CONTENTS. vii 
 
 PHASES OF FAITH. 
 
 TAGE 
 
 "Many believed on Him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which 
 
 believed on Him . . ." — ^JoHN viii. 30, 31 ... ... 147 
 
 TENT AND ALTAR. 
 
 " Abrani pitched his tent, . . . and there he builded an altar." 
 
 — Gen. xii. 8 ... ... ... ... ... 161 
 
 THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 
 
 " That ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to 
 forgive sins, (then saith He to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, 
 take up thy bed, and go unto thine house." — Matt. i.\. 6 ... 173 
 
 CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 
 *' Verily, verily, I say unto you." — John i. 51 ... ... iiSg 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 B — 2 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
 world ! " — ^JOHN i. 29. 
 
 "And I beheld, andj lo, . . . a Lamb as it had been slain." — 
 Rev. v. 6. 
 
 One of the disciples of the Baptist who heard his proclama- 
 tion of the Lamb of God was John, afterwards the apostle 
 and writer of the Apocalypse. Long years had passed 
 since that hour. The Baptist slept in a bloody grave. 
 The young fisherman had learned to know Jesus with a 
 larger knowledge, and to love Him with a love more than 
 life. He had found in Jesus depths which he had little 
 dreamed of, on that day by the fords of Jordan ; and now, 
 in his rocky Patmos, with the waves dashing round him, 
 in a scene so unlike the earlier one, and himself most 
 changed of all, the heavens were opened, and the vision 
 of his Lord granted to him again. Is it not beautiful and 
 significant that the words in which he tells of what he saw 
 through the door opened in heaven^ read like an echo of 
 those spoken so long ago, and never to be forgotten? — 
 " Behold the Lamb ! " " And I beheld, and, lo, . . . a 
 Lamb !" The word for lamb is, indeed, different, and in the 
 difference lies a pathetic and lovely lesson ; for that em- 
 ployed to describe the heavenly state of the exalted Christ 
 
4 THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 is humbler than that used by the Baptist, being a diniinutiv^e 
 form, which we might represent hy lambkin. But the whole 
 ring of the sentence is like that of the original proclama- 
 tion in the Gospel. If we further notice that the fourth 
 Gospel alone has preserved this testimony of the forerunner, 
 and that John alone of New Testament writers uses this name 
 for Christ, and that it occurs in the Apocalypse some 
 twenty-five times, we see how deeply his first teacher's words 
 had sunk into his heart, and how constantly, as years 
 advanced and his experience widened, he had found them 
 assuming new meaning. Happy is it for us if life but 
 reveals to us the fulness which lies in our earliest glimpses 
 of Christ, if our old age can repeat the creed of youth 
 with deepened significance, and if we can hope that heaven 
 itself will but give us a clearer vision of the same Christ, 
 in the same character as we had dimly seen Him amid the 
 confusions and sorrows of earth ! 
 
 The purpose of this sermon is to gather into one view 
 the Apocalyptic uses of this name for Jesus Christ, and thus 
 to try to bring out the remarkable fulness and variety of 
 the representation of what Christ is to men, thence deducible. 
 We may arrange the whole roughly in four classes, and 
 consider the teaching of the Apocalypse as to the slain 
 Lamb, the enthroned Lamb, the Shepherd-Lamb, and the 
 Warrior-Lamb. 
 
 L We have first the representation given in the words 
 of our second text — the slain Lamb, the Sin-bearer for the 
 world. 
 
 If we recur for a moment to the testimony of the fore- 
 runner, and try to throw ourselves back to his standpoint, 
 and to ask the meaning on his lips of that remarkable 
 saying, we shall better understand the vision in Patmgs, 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 5 
 
 The aspect in which Jesus appeared to the last of the Old 
 Testament prophets was necessarily moulded by Old Testa- 
 ment facts, and if we seek what these may have been, we 
 shall not go far wrong if we point to a triple source for 
 that testimony of his, in the Lamb of history, the Lamb 
 of ritual, and the Lamb of prophecy. 
 
 As for the first of these three, recall the pathetic question 
 and answer which passed between Abraham and his son as 
 they travelled to the mountain of sacrifice. " Where is the 
 lamb for the burnt offering?" said the unconscious son, 
 bearing the wood for the pile. " My son," said the father — 
 and how hard it must have been to have steadied his voice 
 to say it, and to look the confidence which he did not 
 feel ! — " God Himself will provide the lamb." The despair- 
 ing father was " wiser than he knew," and the event shamed 
 the little faith which he had in his own words. Surely that 
 utterance, floating down from the sacred past, helped to 
 shape the Baptist's speech, and the remembrance of it 
 suggests the interpretation of the " Lamb of God," as being 
 the Sacrifice appointed and provided by God Himself. 
 
 Further, a second source, confluent with the former, is 
 the Lamb of ritual, whether the daily sacrifice or the Paschal 
 lamb. In this connection it is to be noted that John in his 
 Gospel lays stress on the fact that, by reason of the remark- 
 able rapidity with which death followed our Lord's cruci- 
 fixion. His sacred body escaped the cruel indignity practised 
 on the two robbers to hasten their end. He sees therein 
 the fulfilment of the prescription concerning the Paschal 
 sacrifice, " a bone of it shall not be broken," and thus by 
 that one passing allusion identifies Jesus with the Passover 
 — an identification which is also distinctly asserted by our 
 Lord in His institution of the Last Supper. 
 
6 THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 Further, we must take into account also, and perhaps 
 chiefly, the I^amb of prophecy — the great picture of the meek 
 and suffering Servant of the Lord in the second part of 
 Isaiah. " He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a 
 sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His 
 mouth." But not meekness only was predicated of this 
 Sufferer, but also that in some mysterious fashion He should 
 " bear our griefs and carry our sorrows," and that the Lord 
 should " make to meet on Him the iniquity of us all." The 
 coincidence of representation is too striking to be fortuitous ; 
 and the interpretation of the words of the Baptist, which 
 takes no account of the words of the prophet, may be ad- 
 mired for its courage, but scarcely for its clear-sightedness. 
 
 If we give due weight to these three sources — history, 
 ritual, and prophecy — we shall be shut up to the conclusion 
 that the title given by the Baptist to Jesus is a name of 
 function rather than of character. It is a transparently 
 inadequate explanation to make the name a mere expression 
 of meekness or of innocence. True, these qualities must 
 and do attach to the Sacrifice which is to avail for men, but 
 it is not these qualities, but the fact of sacrifice, which is 
 insisted upon in the title. That is made certain as having 
 been the Baptist's meaning by his own following words, 
 which place the point of comparison between Jesus and 
 " the lamb " in His sin-bearing rather than in His disposi- 
 tion. And how strong and emphatic the description of His 
 mighty work is ! He " taketh away " by taking on Himself. 
 The burden is not "sins," but "sin;" as if all the black 
 deeds were gathered into one huge mass, enough to crush 
 any shoulders but His on whom it is laid. The universality 
 of His work of bearing, and bearing away sin, is put in the 
 strongest form by the addition — " of the world." 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 7 
 
 So far the Baptist carries us. John had heard and 
 dimly understood his words. But much had happened 
 since then to open their depths to his gaze. He had stood 
 by the cross, had seen his risen Lord, had received His 
 guiding Spirit, had learned through long years his own and 
 the world's need, had pondered and prayed and preached 
 and lived, and so had come to know how "the blood of Jesus 
 Christ cleanseth from all sin." Therefore, with whatever 
 sacrifice of congruity of metaphor, the vision which he sees 
 when heaven opens is "a Lamb as it had been slain." 
 Whatever may be said about other points of comparison as 
 being present in the Baptist's use of the emblem, the 
 sacrificial import of the vision in Revelation is settled by 
 that one expression. "As it had been slain" leaves no 
 doubt that Christ's death, and nothing else, is in the seer's 
 mind ; and that to that fact he would lead us as the centre- 
 point of all else which we can know about Him, and as the 
 foundation of all that He has further to reveal of His glory 
 and power. 
 
 That symbolical representation is a vivid and pic- 
 turesque way of saying that, in heaven as on earth, Christ's 
 sacrifice is efficacious and necessary. Much besides may 
 be contained in the symbol, but this is plainly its lesson, 
 that there is no heaven nor any cleansing but through the 
 blood of the slain Lamb. For earth and heaven, to the last 
 moment of time and all through the dateless cycles of 
 eternity, Christ's sacrifice is men's need, and is present 
 before the throne as the medium of all blessings to sinners 
 here who struggle to be saints, and to saints there who were 
 sinners. Purity, peace, life, and all other Divine gifts, are 
 ours and theirs, because the " Lamb as it had been slain " is 
 before the throne. " This Man, when He had offered one 
 
8 THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of the 
 throne of God." 
 
 This is the aspect of Christ with which we must begin, 
 if we would know Him in the full greatness of His gifts 
 and sweep of His work. Unless we do, we shall have but 
 an unworthy conception of His wondrous love and an 
 inadequate estimate of His all-healing power. The Chris- 
 tianity which strikes out the sacrifice on the cross from its 
 idea of Jesus has not fathomed the depths of His mercy 
 nor of our need. The wounds of humanity are not to be 
 stanched by one who is but a meek and pure pattern man, 
 however stimulating and lovable such a figure may be, but 
 need for their binding up a wounded hand. A Christ 
 without a cross is an impotent Christ. He can neither 
 bless nor sway. It used to be believed that adamant was 
 soluble only by the blood of a kid. The adamantine heart 
 is melted by nothing else than by the sacrifice of that 
 unblemished and spotless Lamb. Take away that figure 
 from the vision of the future, and the vision itself melts 
 into mist, and instead of the solid certainties of a real and 
 accessible home of all blessedness and perfection, there 
 remains but a great Perhaps, shimmering uncertainly in the 
 vapour, and in our hearts the aching doubt of its reality 
 and of our power to reach it, if real it be. 
 
 II. A second group of passages presents the enthroned 
 Lamb. 
 
 The vision from which our second text comes shows 
 the Lamb between the throne and the ring of worshippers, 
 and in other places of the Apocalypse we read of " the Lamb 
 in the midst of the throne," and, still more remarkably, of 
 " the throne of God and of the Lamb," as if joint possessors 
 of the one seat of majesty. These are but symbolical ways 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 9 
 
 of proclaiming the truth that the cross leads to the crown, 
 that the dominion of Jesus is founded upon His suffering 
 and death, that the many crowns which He wears are His 
 by right of His having worn the crown of thorns. That 
 Divine Word, which became flesh for our sakes, returned to 
 the glory which had been its home before the world was ; 
 but it bore a new companion with it — even the humanity 
 which it assumed, and which died for our salvation. Man- 
 hood is exalted to the sovereign place in the universe. 
 The slain Lamb is the enthroned Lamb. This vision brings 
 clearly into view the activity of Jesus in His heavenly state, 
 as well as His sovereign exaltation. For the ground plan 
 of the universe is contained in it. In the centre rises the 
 throne. Round it afar off are gathered the living creatures, 
 the representatives of the fulness of creatural life ; and the 
 elders, the representatives of redeemed humanity ; and 
 between these and the throne stands the slain Lamb, 
 through whom all communications between the throne 
 and the worshippers pass. By Him all blessings flow out, 
 and by Him all praise rises up. " By Him all things 
 consist." By Him the creatures receive their meat accord- 
 ing to their hunger and capacity. By Him redeemed man- 
 hood receives all its graces and hopes. He is the Channel 
 of all good, and bestows all fulness on an else empty world. 
 He is the Medium by which thanksgiving, devotion, aspira- 
 tion, hope, dare to clasp the else^inaccessible seat of God. 
 
 Nor is this the only thought enforced by the vision, for 
 its subsequent part tells how this throned Lamb took into 
 His hand the book with seven seals, and as He broke them 
 one by one, set loose as it were the mighty forces which 
 were to mould the world's destiny. Jesus Christ is the Lord 
 of history. The hand that was pierced on the cross holds 
 
lO THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 the helm. The voice which cried, "It is finished!" says 
 to His servants, who ride upon the mysterious horses of the 
 vision, " Go ! " and they go on their errand of woe or glad- 
 ness. He is the King of nations. Do we not see that, in 
 spite of all the talk about Christ having done His part and 
 Christianity being worn out, the principles and powers that 
 spring from His cross are more and more becoming the 
 guides of the " civilized " world ? Much of the evidence of 
 His rule is plain to all who are not blinded by antagonism 
 and prejudice, and the fact of His rule should be the un- 
 alterable conviction of every Christian soul, for its own 
 peace amid noisy rebellion. But we need purged eyes to 
 see that great sight which John saw in Patmos. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance for the vigour of Christian 
 life to keep clear and vivid that present activity of our 
 Lord. We have not only to look back to His cross, but 
 upwards to His throne. We have not only to rejoice that 
 He was wounded for a world's transgressions, and to adore 
 Him who was slain for us, but to think of Him as at the 
 right hand of God, ready to help and royal to defend all 
 who love Him. The nobleness, peacefulness, and strength 
 of our lives largely depend upon our having that vision of 
 the enthroned Jesus ever before us. It will give substance 
 and nearness to the else shadowy and remote thoughts of 
 heaven, if we feel that He is actually there in the manhood 
 which is ours, and actually wielding the energies of omni- 
 potence on behalf of our feebleness and for effecting the 
 mighty purposes of His death. The distant land is more 
 real and less distant when one dear vision fills it, and our 
 Brother is known to be there. We shall have more vivid 
 conceptions of Him, when our thoughts are not only directed 
 to Him as to an historical figure in the past centuries, but 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. II 
 
 embrace Him as at this moment working for the comple- 
 tion of that great work, which, though in one aspect it was 
 " finished " when He bowed His head and died, in another 
 will not be completed till the voice from heaven proclaims, 
 " It is done. The kingdoms of this world are become the 
 kingdom of our God and of His Christ." 
 
 It is difficult to keep that vision clear before our eyes, 
 amid our low cares and sense-bound thinkings. But how 
 small and poor the noise of Ephesus and the storms of 
 persecution would seem to John, when the heavens opened 
 and showed him the throned Christ ! There is no reason 
 why that sight should not bless us as really as it blessed 
 him. He saw " the things that are," and they are to-day 
 and for ever. It was no transient splendour which he saw, 
 nor was he befooled by the phantasms of his own imagina- 
 tion. To him was granted but the Apocalypse or the 
 unveiling of what was always there, behind the curtain. 
 For us, too, it will be drawn back, if we will. It is but a 
 thin separating veil, which will soon be rent asunder, and 
 may at any time be drawn aside, for faithful eyes to gaze 
 lovingly on the glories which it partially hides. How small 
 cares, and sorrows, and joys, and aims of this life would 
 look if we really saw, with the inward eye whose revela- 
 tions are more trustworthy than those of sense, the en- 
 throned Lamb, the Mediator of the fulness of God, and 
 the Arbiter of the fates of men ! If we would purge our 
 vision from earthly stain, we too should have it granted 
 to us to see this great sight, and to walk all the day in the 
 light of the countenance of the present and exalted Christ. 
 
 III. Another group of passages gives the figure of the 
 Shepherd-Lamb. 
 
 In that tender description of the perfected flock that 
 
12 THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 came out of great tribulation, which has solaced so many- 
 sad hearts with a glimpse of the blessedness of their dear 
 ones gone, we read that *' the Lamb which is in the midst 
 of the throne shall shepherd them, and shall guide them 
 unto fountains of waters of life ; " and in another vision we 
 hear of the redeemed as "following the Lamb whitherso- 
 ever He goeth." Of course the colouring of this representa- 
 tion, like all the symbolism of the Apocalypse, is derived 
 from the Old Testament, and carries us back to many a 
 sweet ancient word of psalmist and prophet. Especially is 
 there an allusion in the former of these passages to the 
 words of Isa. xlix. lo, and it is noteworthy that the same 
 office which the earlier words ascribed to God is here 
 unhesitatingly attributed in even higher form to the Lamb. 
 
 There is a striking anomaly, and at first sight incon- 
 gruity, in that daring symbol, that the Lamb is the Shepherd. 
 But the reality underlying the symbol is that Jesus Christ, 
 by His death, becomes the Guide, Protector, and Nourisher 
 of men. We may perhaps venture still further to draw 
 from the incongruity of the symbol the great truth that the 
 Leader of men is one in nature with the men whom He 
 leads. The Shepherd is Himself a Lamb, and is our Leader 
 just because He shares our nature. But that is not in the 
 intention of the seer, and can only be taken as a permissible 
 pLiy of allusion on our parts. 
 
 We are on firmer ground when we see in this sweet 
 metaphor the thought that the Christ who died and reigns 
 is the eternal Pattern for us, whether on earth or in the 
 calm perfection of Mount Zion. Here we have to go after 
 the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls, who has left us 
 an example that we should tread in His steps. Here we 
 follow afar off, lingering, straying, and all unfit to tread in 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. I3 
 
 His footprints. There " they shall follow the Lamb whither- 
 soever He goeth," with complete imitation, and steps not 
 unequal to His. But for both states, to follow Him is 
 blessedness and to be like Him is perfection. Nor shall 
 that future be without advance. There will be growing 
 approximation to Him, a more perfect conformity to His 
 likeness, a fuller appropriation of His life, and an ever- 
 increasing nearness to Him which shall fill eternity . with 
 freshness, and make its joys and service ever new. 
 
 The symbol suggests that the slain and enthroned Lamb 
 is, by both characteristics, the Source of security and the 
 Author of nourishment. True, there will be no outward 
 dangers to guard against ; but the reason why " they shall 
 hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the 
 sun strike upon them, nor any heat," is, " for the Lamb 
 which is in the midst of the throne shall be their Shepherd," 
 and therefore are they safe from evil, and replenished with 
 all good. He is the eternal Source of satisfaction for heaven 
 as for earth, and is Himself the Fountain of living waters 
 to which He leads the flock. Heaven is Christ, and Christ 
 is Heaven. The future state of the redeemed is stable 
 blessedness and full delight, not because of physical changes 
 or added glories, but because Christ is theirs, and the full 
 issues of His cross and reign are reaped by them in their 
 following the Shepherd-Lamb, and sharing with Him His 
 glories. 
 
 The relation of the flock to the shepherd in the good 
 pastures of the mountains of Israel above is in some respects 
 the opposite of that experienced here, and in others the 
 completion of it. There v/e shall have no valley of the 
 shadow of death, no ravenous beasts to prowl round the fold 
 and pounce upon the wanderers from the flock, no dark 
 
14 THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 gorges, no stony ways, no thirsty deserts, no straying in the 
 wilderness and tearing the fleeces among thorns, no losing 
 sight of the Shepherd, and panting with panic fears. There 
 the Shepherd needs no weapons— neither rod to smite nor 
 sling to defend. If we give ourselves to His gentle guid- 
 ance here, where all these terrors and hindrances are, He 
 will bring us thither where they are not ; and if, with 
 stumbling steps, we try to follow Him as we best can in this 
 rough road, He will seek us when we wander, and restore us 
 when we faint, and bring us to the one fold, where we shall 
 be near Him, and at rest for evermore. But there is a grim 
 verse in one of the psalms which tells us of another shepherd 
 whose flock consists of those self-destroying souls, who will 
 not take the Lamb for their Sacrifice, King, and Guide. 
 Of these we read, " Death shall be their shepherd," and the 
 fold to which they are driven is the shambles. The choice 
 is before us. Shall we be of the flock of the good Shepherd, 
 or of that which is marked for the slaughter ? 
 
 IV. The final group of passages to which we direct 
 attention represents Jesus as the Warrior-Lamb. 
 
 " These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb 
 shall overcome them ; for He is Lord of lords, and King of 
 kings." So is the conflict between the vassal kings of the 
 beast and the conquering Christ described in one vision of 
 this book, while in that portraying the final conflict, though 
 the name with which we are here concerned is not employed, 
 the same title is given to the victor, which in the passage 
 just quoted is ascribed to the Lamb. " He hath on His 
 vesture and on His thigh a name written. King of kings, 
 and Lord of lords." 
 
 The very strangeness and incongruity of the combination 
 of the ideas of the Lamb and of warfare is part of the 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 1 5 
 
 felicity of the symbol. For so is the thought set forth that 
 Christ conquers by gentleness, and that the instrument by 
 which He subdues is the great manifestation of His love in 
 His sacrifice. But, further, the paradox of the Warrior-Lamb 
 hints at the terrible possibilities of destructive wrath which 
 lie as dormant in that gentle Christ. The same double 
 aspect of His character and energy is set forth in the 
 striking juxtaposition in the context of our second text : 
 " Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah . . . and I beheld, 
 and, lo, a Lamb." Nothing is so terrible as the wrath of 
 gentle love and patience. No wonder that the rebels against 
 the long-suffering, meek Christ, when they see Him coming 
 in the clouds of heaven, call despairingly on rocks and hills 
 to crush them, if thereby they may be hid from the " wrath 
 of the Lamb." Divine love is not incapable of anger. The 
 Lamb of God is the Lion of Judah. Let us not trifle with 
 His power to smite and rend. The Lion of the tribe of 
 Judah is the Lamb of God. Let us trust and take refuge 
 in His power to heal and save. 
 
 But this vision of the conquering gentleness, which over- 
 comes by sacrifice, derives still further significance when 
 contrasted with its antagonist. The Lamb and the Beast 
 are the two powers arrayed against each other. Now, it is 
 profitless to ask whether there has been or will be a personal 
 manifestation of the tendencies which are embodied in that 
 image. It is more to the purpose to inquire. What makes 
 the beast a beast, whoever or wherever he may be ? And the 
 answer is not far to seek. What did God mean manhood 
 to be ? Is not union with Him, in love, desire, and obedi- 
 ence, the ideal for man ; and does not the humanity which 
 is separated from him and self-centred, sink to the animal 
 •level, and become like, and therein beneath, the beasts that 
 
l6 THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 
 
 know not the Divine hand that feeds them, and can have 
 no other object than themselves in their dumb and narrow 
 lives ? The God-centred man is truly a man ; the self- 
 centred man is somewhat less than a man. Where these 
 self-regarding impulses are supreme the animalizing process 
 is complete, and "the beast" is the perfection of that im- 
 perfection — the embodiment, as it were, of self separated 
 from God. Against that sinful selfhood Jesus fights now, 
 and He will help us, if we will, in our daily struggle with the 
 beast in our own natures. If we will open our hearts to 
 the cleansing of His sacrifice, the authoiity of His reign, 
 the guidance of His Shepherd's care, He will fill them with 
 power which shall make us victorious over all in ourselves 
 that draws us away from God, and " the lion and the 
 dragon " that are in us we " shall trample underfoot." 
 
 The Warrior-Lamb is the Hope of each soul struggling 
 with its own evil and seeking to help its fellows. He is the 
 Hope for the world. They who understand the meaning of 
 His sacrifice, enthronement, gracious guidance, and protec- 
 tion, cannot but be confident that He will cast out evil, and 
 that the fruit of the travail of His soul shall be rich and 
 ample and eternal enough to satisfy even the universal love 
 of His heart, and to correspond to even the might of His 
 sacrifice and the unspeakable price with which He has 
 redeemed the world. 
 
 For ourselves, all depends on our beginning with the 
 vision of the slain Lamb. The call comes to each of us, 
 " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the 
 world ! " Our sins are in that gigantic mass beneath which 
 He sank fainting, but which He has borne away. Have we 
 laid our hands, like the offerers of old, on the head of the 
 sacrifice and thus associated ourselves with Him by faith ? 
 
THE CONQUERING CHRIST. 1 7 
 
 Have we ever truly cried, " O Lamb of God, that taketh 
 away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us " ? If we 
 truly and habitually live obeying the merciful call to 
 behold Him, then in life He will be for us Sacrifice, King, 
 Shepherd, Champion. If we look to Him through the mists 
 and clouds of time, His face will beam upon us and make 
 the darkness light about us. When He leads us through 
 the valley of the shadow of death and the swellings of 
 Jordan, He will be with us ; and when we open our eyes 
 again, after the brief darkness, and wipe the cold waters 
 from our faces, our first sight in heaven will be the Lamb in 
 the midst of the throne, and He will lead us among the 
 good pastures of the sunlit hills, where no foes nor fears will 
 disturb, nor sin and sorrow vex any more for ever. 
 
 c — 2 
 
SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN 
 REQUEST. 
 
SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN 
 REQUEST. 
 
 " And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, 
 They have no wine." — ^John ii. 3. 
 
 " Therefore his sisters sent unto Jesus, saying, Lord, behold, he 
 whom Thou lovest is sick." — ^John xi. 3. 
 
 There can be no greater contrast than that presented by 
 these two scenes. In the one we have the homely merriment 
 of a rustic wedding, in the other the despair of two desolate 
 women's hearts. The mother of Jesus and the sisters of 
 Lazarus stand at opposite poles of feeling. But from the 
 station of each a straight line can be drawn to where Jesus 
 is. Sorrow and joy have an equally open road to Him, and 
 find equal sympathy there. The gravity of the respective 
 needs in these two incidents is singularly different. The 
 one is a trifle, the other a crushing weight. But, great or 
 small, transient or lifelong, as cares or wants may be, they 
 are best met and conquered and supplied when told to our 
 Lord. Not less noticeable is the identity in manner of the 
 two sayings. The mother of our Lord simply says, "They 
 have no wine," and adds no more. The sisters send only 
 the message, " He whom Thou lovest is sick," and proffer 
 no request. That manner of addressing Christ, alike in 
 sorrow and joy, in trivial and in great necessity, with the 
 
22 SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 
 
 simple statement of what presses on life or heart, and the 
 suppression of all prescription to Him of what He is to do, 
 may suggest some not useless considerations as to the tone 
 and manner which should mark our intercourse with Jesus. 
 
 I. Our intercourse with Him should be characterized by 
 frank familiarity of communication, such as befits love and 
 friendship. 
 
 It was a natural impulse which brought both these 
 utterances to Jesus. His mother was troubled when the 
 scanty store of her friends at Cana began to give out, and, 
 as she saw the wine-skins becoming more and more flaccid, 
 a spirit in her feet carried her to her Son, perhaps before 
 she well knew what she did, or wished Him to do. The 
 two sad hearts at Bethany, as they saw the black wing of 
 the angel of death hovering over their home, turned spon- 
 taneously to Jesus, and, though they did not know what He 
 could do if He came, still felt that the sorrow would be 
 more easily borne if they knew that He knew it. Now, that 
 same instinctive prompting to tell dear ones all our thoughts 
 and wishes is an unfailing character of real love. It makes 
 the blessedness of many a happy pair of hearts, to whom 
 knowing and being known are equal delight and simple 
 necessity. The depth and purity of our human love may 
 be roughly, but with tolerable accuracy, measured by the 
 strength of that impulse. Where reserve is possible, love is 
 shallow or coarse. The impulse affects all that interests or 
 concerns a pair of friends. Not even dark secrets of shame 
 escape, for true love seeks to share these too, and they are 
 less of a barrier when told than when hidden. The magnitude 
 of the thing is of no importance. We do not ask whether 
 it is large enough to trouble those whom we love with it. 
 A child runs to its mother with a broken toy, or the scratch 
 
SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 23 
 
 of a pin on its finger, or an untied shoe. Love has no care 
 for great or small. Concealment of little is concealment 
 also of much, and the confidence which tells trifles is per- 
 haps greater than that which tells important things; and what 
 love prizes is the confidence, more than the knowledge given. 
 
 The love which binds human hearts to one another is 
 not different in kind from that which knits men to Jesus. 
 Love is love, to whomsoever it is directed and whatever 
 may be the differences of its accompaniments. What our 
 love does in us when it is fixed on one another, that it 
 should do when it is fixed in humble faith on Jesus Christ. 
 Many of its signs and effects will necessarily be different, 
 but in the one case, as in the other, perfect frankness of 
 communication and delight in yielding to the impulse of 
 laying bare every corner of our hearts, whatever inner base- 
 ness may lurk there, will assuredly attend real love. We 
 may live in the light of an ever-gladdening consciousness of 
 Christ's love and sympathy, and if we walked in that light 
 as we may, and therefore should, we should no more be able 
 to carry secret cares hidden beneath our cloaks to gnaw at 
 our hearts, than loving husband or wife can hide troubles or 
 thoughts from wife or husband loved. 
 
 Now, that is a very sharp test of Christian character, 
 and makes short work of much complacent profession. If 
 we really love Christ and feel to Him as to a friend, and 
 if we heartily believe that we can speak to Him and be 
 heard, we shall not need any one to tell us that it is our 
 duty to pray to Him. "Access with confidence" will come 
 spontaneously, as a relief to overcharged hearts and the 
 blessing of solitary ones — and, after all companionship, 
 who is not soHtary ? The impossibiUty of imparting 
 our whole selves to any makes our hearts often ache, and if 
 
24 SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 
 
 we feel to Christ as we should, we shall thankfully still the 
 aching by uttermost frankness of self-revelation to Him. 
 We should instinctively feel that whatever irritates or affects 
 us, be it slight as a mosquito's puncture or grave as a whip- 
 adder's sting, must be told to Him. He who only invokes 
 Christ's sympathy and help when there comes a "knot" in 
 his fortunes which he thinks " worthy " of such a hand to 
 unravel, will seldom invoke Him, and will not usually do it 
 to much purpose. Trifles are the bulk of life, and unless 
 our communion with our Lord extends to trifles, it will be 
 poor and partial indeed. We may well ask ourselves, then, 
 whether such instinctive impulse, prior to all reflection as to 
 duty or advantage, sends us to Jesus Christ, to make Him 
 our confidant and unload our hearts to Him, in that frank 
 outpouring which is the native tongue of love. Do we 
 find ourselves telling Him of our annoyances, calamities, 
 little wants and the like, almost before we know it ? There 
 are heights and depths of Christian communion beyond 
 such self-regarding speech, but these sanctities and sub- 
 limities will seldom be reached except we first have acquired 
 the habit of telling Him all that interests and harasses us 
 in daily life. The mountain summits of a continent do not 
 usually rise at the water's edge, but from high uplands. 
 How different our lives would be if we brought them all in 
 their veriest trifles into touch with Jesus— noble, calm, 
 joyous in the midst of sorrow, and with a certain breath of 
 heaven rustling through them and freshening them ! " Pour 
 out your hearts before Him," as a man might invert some 
 golden vase, and empty its contents to the last drop trickling 
 from the lip. The heart thus emptied in frank confidence 
 will be filled with peace, and be conscious of an all-sufticing 
 presence. 
 
SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 25 
 
 II. These two sayings may further suggest the trustful 
 and submissive suppression of desire which should accom- 
 pany this frank confidence. 
 
 " They have no wine." Did that mean, " Give them 
 some"? It can scarcely be supposed that, at that early 
 stage, the virgin expected her Son to work a miracle, even 
 though she kept all the unforgetable events of the Nativity 
 in her heart. " He whom Thou lovest is sick." Did that 
 mean, " Come and heal him " ? Some faint hope of that sort 
 may have been in the sisters' hearts, as may be inferred 
 from their half-reproachful greeting of Jesus when He came, 
 but it was probably of the vaguest character. If there were 
 such wishes in either case, the suppression of them indicates 
 the speakers' absolute trust in Christ's superior wisdom and 
 perfect sympathy, which makes their utterance of their 
 wishes superfluous and presumptuous. But probably in 
 neither case was there a definite expectation, and if there 
 were anything in their minds beyond the impulse of which 
 we have spoken, they apparently trustfully left the decision of 
 what He should do in His own hands. 
 
 Let us tell Christ our needs and stop there. Surely we 
 are well enough acquainted with His loving purpose to be 
 certain that for Him to know is to pity, and to pity is to 
 stretch out a full and strong hand of supply and help. We 
 say that we believe in His Divine nature. If we do, we 
 must believe that His knowledge needs no informing by us to 
 move His sympathy. Why, then, should we tell Him our 
 needs, if He knows them already ? We have already partly 
 answered that question by pointing to the instinct of love ; 
 but, further, we must remember that our communication of 
 our wants is preliminary to His supply of them, not because 
 it informs Him, but because it prepares us. He does not 
 
26 SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 
 
 need to be told, but we need to tell Him. That being so, 
 it is the part of faith to spread our needs before Jesus, and 
 to do no more. All need makes appeal to Him, and many 
 forms of it are supplied from His loving hand, without 
 other prayer than the dumb, unconscious one of the neces- 
 sity's existence. " He heareth the ravens when they cry ; 
 He openeth His hand, and satisfieth the desire of every 
 living thing." When on earth, many miracles were wrought 
 without either faith or petition. " He healed them that had 
 need of healing," for no other reason than because they had 
 need, and the silent pleading of their misery entered into 
 His heart. That rock needed no stroke of a rod, nor even 
 a word, to make its waters gush forth. The presence of 
 the thirsty was enough. 
 
 But for higher gifts there must needs be the confidence 
 already spoken of, and where that exists there need not 
 and should not be the prescribing of a course to Jesus. To 
 do that is consonant neither with faith nor with reverence. 
 Humble submission to Christ's better wisdom breathed 
 through His mother's words and the sisters' message. True 
 prayer is not pestering the Throne with passionate entreaties 
 that a certain method of deliverance, which seems best to 
 us, should be forthwith effected, but is a calm utterance 
 of need, and a patient, submissive expectance of fitting help, 
 of which we dare not define the manner or the time. They 
 are wisest, most trustful and reverent, who do not seek to 
 impose their notions and wills on the clearer wisdom and 
 deeper love to which they betake themselves, but are 
 satisfied with leaving all to His arbitrament. True prayer 
 is the bending of our own wills to the Divine, not the 
 urging of ours on it. When Hezekiah received the insolent 
 letter from the invader, he took it and " spread it before the 
 
SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 2/ 
 
 Lord," asking God to read it, and leaving all else to Him 
 to determine ; as if he had said, " Behold, Lord, this boasting 
 page. I bring it to Thee, and now it is Thine affair more 
 than mine." The burden which we roll on God lies lightly 
 on our shoulders ; and if we do roll it thither, we need not 
 trouble ourselves with the question of how He will deal 
 with it. 
 
 The less we seek to prescribe to God, the truer and 
 more blessed will be our intercourse with Him. It is 
 enough to tell Him that the wine fails, or that Lazarus is ill. 
 Leave Him a free hand to do as He will, in supplying 
 deficiencies and healing diseases. A confident assurance 
 of the fact that needs will be met, a blank sheet in our 
 expectation as to how they will be, and a sharpened atten- 
 tion, alert to mark the direction which His help may take, 
 should ever accompany our speech to Christ. The highest 
 prayer is, " Not my will, but Thine, be done," and the best 
 answer is, " The peace of God shall keep your hearts and 
 minds in Christ Jesus." The cares which are imparted to 
 the beloved lose their poison, the tasks shared with them 
 are lightened, and all joys become more joyful, and all 
 objects of interest more poignantly stimulating when shared. 
 The law of earthly love applies to the highest, in so far that 
 to tell Jesus of burdens shifts them from us to Him, and 
 disturbances are less disturbing when our disquiet has been 
 breathed into His calm heart. Mary shook off responsibility 
 for the empty wine-skins when she told Jesus of them, and 
 we bring a stronger arm than ours to deal with difficulties 
 when we in like manner speak of them to our Lord. The 
 sisters at Bethany felt less lonely and crushed when they 
 thought that Jesus knew,, though they did not venture to 
 send requests to Him. So from these two instances, the 
 
28 SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 
 
 one of a most trivial need, the other of a most tragic, we 
 may learn the one lesson — tell your need, and then be 
 silent, and let Him settle how it is to be met. Only be on 
 the watch for what He may do, and be sure that He will do 
 something, and that the right thing. 
 
 HI. These two incidents give two ways of taking 
 Christ's delays. 
 
 Our Lord's treatment of the two appeals is substantially 
 the same. The answer to Mary sounds more repellent in 
 English than in Greek, inasmuch as " woman " has in it 
 a tinge of roughness not conveyed by the original. The 
 question simply suggests independent action and not alien- 
 ation ; but the request was certainly put aside, and its 
 repetition forbidden. In the remaining clause, " Mine 
 hour is not yet come," a promise, like a sweet kernel, is 
 hidden in the words ; for " not yet " warrants and seems to 
 be meant to create expectance that the hour will strike soon, 
 and be heard by His ear. Precisely similar is Christ's 
 action in the other case. " When Jesus heard that he was 
 sick, He abode still two days in the same place where He 
 was." There again he delayed till His "hour" had come. 
 That expression, so frequent on our Lord's lips, implies 
 that each act of His was regulated by the conviction, clear 
 to Himself, that the time for it, appointed by the Father, 
 had arrived. Whether it were the hour " when the Son of 
 man should be glorified" by the supreme sacrifice of the 
 cross, or the hour when the peasant wedding should have 
 replenished stores. His ear heard it strike, without the 
 possibility of mistake ; and till it was heard, nothing — not 
 even a mother's wistful look, or the sad hearts at Bethany — 
 could induce Him to act. In proportion as we approach 
 the same perfection of filial obedience, we shall be blessed 
 
SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 29 
 
 with the same certainty of perception, and may hear, even 
 amid the vulgar, loud noises of life, the solemn tones 
 announcing the hour for great service or "small duty. Well 
 for those who have so silenced the ringing in their own 
 ears that they hear beyond mistake God's chimes, and 
 hearing, obey ! 
 
 The time between Christ's refusal to act on His 
 mother's hint and His acting on it was probably brief ; but 
 much may happen in short space, and requisite conditions 
 may have been quickly supplied. God's clock does not go; 
 at the same rate as ours, but " a thousand years " may some- 
 times be crowded into " one " of His days, and one of His 
 days be lengthened to a slow thousand of our years. Two 
 days seemed an eternity to the sisters, and no doubt 
 bewilderingly long to some of the attendant disciples ; but, 
 longer or shorter, the delays teach us the truth that Christ's 
 time is determined by considerations which we are little 
 able to appreciate. " The Lord is not slack concerning 
 His promises, as men count slackness." The same connec- 
 tion of ideas is presented also in that remarkable incident 
 which this evangelist alone records, when our Lord's 
 brethren scoffingly suggested to Him to go up to the feast, 
 and received the same answer as did Mary, "My time is 
 not yet come." It came in a few hours, and probably was 
 marked to Christ's consciousness by an inward impulse 
 rather than by any change in circumstances. Thus, an 
 action which looked like mere vacillation, and has often 
 been felt as a difficulty, becomes, when rightly understood, 
 a striking witness to the continual communion with the 
 guiding will of the Father, and regulation of all His life 
 thereby, which Jesus enjoyed and practised. But, in 
 regard to His answers to our requests, as in regard to His 
 
30 SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 
 
 answers to those in our texts, though the considerations 
 which determine His hour are beyond our sight, the great 
 governing principle of which they were products is clear. 
 Whatever holds back His hand, it is not lack of sympathy 
 with our sorrow, disregard of our confidence, nor unwilling- 
 ness nor inability to respond to our cry. The consideration 
 of what is best for us and others who may be helped by 
 our experience is sovereign with Him. All delay is the 
 result of His love, and meant for highest good, not only to 
 the individual most concerned, but to others also. " I am 
 glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye 
 may believe." 
 
 The similarity which we have traced in the two super- 
 ficially so different instances does not extend to the manner 
 in which the two delays were received by the persons in- 
 terested. These are contrasted rather than parallel, and 
 while the one is an example, the other is a warning. Mary's 
 meek faith, though there had been so little hitherto to feed 
 it, drew hope from the seeming rebuff. Apparently she 
 clung to the glimmer of hope in that " not yet," else her 
 charge to the servants has nothing in the narrative to 
 account for it. It was but a slight foothold, but it was 
 enough for her. A heart truly in harmony with Christ will 
 ever hear in His most discouraging words the undertones 
 of promise. " Not yet " may darken to-day, but it ensures 
 a bright to-morrow. " If winter comes, can spring be far 
 behind ? " The very sorrow is a veiled prophet, and the 
 night of weeping leads in the morning of joy. That was a 
 noble and wise faith which bore away from Christ's " not 
 yet," not fear, doubt, disappointment, nor the sense of 
 repulse, but a hope certain as to the fact of His help, and 
 quietly ignorant of the time and way, *' Whatsoever He 
 
SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 3 1 
 
 saith unto you, do it," was a triumph of faith, penetrating 
 the surface denial, and sucking the sweet drop stored in 
 the depths of the flower. The six waterpots full of wine 
 vindicated the confidence which translated "not yet" into 
 *' in good time." So will it be with us, if we leave Him to 
 settle when "right early" is. We shall "wonder at the 
 beauteous hours, the slow result of winter showers," and see 
 at last what we believed while He tarried, that delay is a 
 form of love, and His hour the right hour. 
 
 The two sisters at Bethany seem to have had natural 
 regrets during the four days between their message and 
 Christ's coming. Apparently, indeed, their brother was 
 already dead when their messenger reached our Lord. But, 
 if we may judge from the salutation with which each met 
 Him, " If Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," 
 they had often wearily looked at one another in their lonely 
 misery and said the same thing. How we may recognize 
 ourselves in them ! That same weakening and useless regret 
 that something did not happen which, if it had happened, 
 would have changed everything, tortures us all in our sorrows. 
 The sisters did not so much complain as regret. They did 
 not think that Jesus should or might have come, they only 
 thought — How blessed if He had come, or never gone ! 
 They had to learn the purpose of His delay and of their 
 sorrow, and when in a few minutes they did learn it, how 
 ashamed of their " if" they must have been ! The delay to 
 heal was in order to prepare a mightier blessing, and the 
 sharp sorrow was allowed in order that its wounds might be 
 filled with fragrant balm, which only a wounded heart could 
 receive. It was more to give back to empty hands the 
 blessing that had been torn from them than to have kept 
 it there. Jesus did not come to heal the brother who was 
 
32 SPOKEN NEED, UNSPOKEN REQUEST. 
 
 sick, because He would come to restore to the sisters' 
 embrace the brother that " was dead and is aUve again, was 
 lost" in the dark grave, "and found again" in the gladsome 
 light of life. 
 
 So it ever is with the experience of those who wait His 
 time, nor let their faith droop, nor doubt that His absence 
 and their sorrows are the fruits of His love and the prepara- 
 tion for larger blessings and deeper joy. So He vindicates 
 His delays. So He answers the confidence which tells Him 
 all its needs and troubles, and leaves Him to determine 
 how and when to work. So He rewards the faithful and 
 submissive prayer, of which the inmost spirit is, " Not my 
 will, but Thine ; not my time, but Thine ! ' 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF 
 
 JESUS. 
 
 D — 2 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART 
 OF JESUS. 
 
 " Being moved with compassion, He stretched forth His hand." — 
 Mark i. 41. 
 
 The Gospels seldom speak of what Jesus felt. They are 
 for the most part content to let His words and deeds 
 speak for themselves, as they have indeed spoken, leaving 
 an impression, marvellous in its clearness, depth, and uni- 
 versalit)', when compared with the four tiny booklets which 
 have made it. 
 
 But this evangelist somewhat more frequently than the 
 others lifts a corner of the veil, and gives a momentary 
 glimpse into the holy of holies in the heart of Jesus. If 
 the old idea that Peter was the source of this Gospel is true, 
 we have a natural explanation of its minute details, and can 
 picture the apostle, whose quickness of observation was 
 accelerated and sharpened by passionate love, watching 
 with keen eye, and remembering in a faithful memory, 
 every look and gesture and fleeting expression of counte- 
 nance which told of the heart's emotions. The image of 
 Christ enshrined in the hearts of men owes much of its 
 sweetness to the small traits contributed by this evangelist 
 to the common stock. We purpose, then, in this sermon, to 
 
36 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 deal with Mark's glimpses of the heart of Jesus, of which 
 the words taken as our text are the earliest. 
 
 It may be well at the outset to enumerate them. There 
 is first the compassion noted in the text. Next we have 
 (ch. iii. 5) anger blended with grief at the hardening of 
 His opponents' hearts. Further, we find two instances 
 in ch. vi. : one (ver. 6), wonder at unbelief; and a,nother 
 (ver. 34), compassion for the helplessness of the untaught 
 multitude. There are also two instances in ch. x., in 
 which are recorded our Lord's displeasure with the disciples' 
 keeping children from His embrace, and the outgoing of 
 His love to the young ruler. Then there is a solemn and 
 pathetic pair in ch. xiv. : one, the evangelist's description 
 of Jesus as " sore amazed and very heavy ; " and the other, 
 His own plaintive word to the three drowsy disciples : " My 
 soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." If we study 
 the picture resulting from the combination of all these, we 
 may gain some deepened impressions of the glory and 
 sweetness of that pure manhood, which may knit our 
 thankful hearts in closer affection and service to Him. 
 
 I. We note then, first, the Christ who pities all sorrow. 
 
 The two instances in which compassion is attributed to 
 our Lord by Mark may be taken as covering the whole 
 ground of human misery. The former is that in our text, 
 which represents the pity that welled forth at the sight of 
 physical suffering. The other (ch. vi. 34) is that in which 
 the emotion sprang up at the sight of the weary multitude 
 who had followed Him for His teaching, as His penetrating 
 gaze looked beneath their bodily weariness to their spiritual 
 want of guidance from prophet, priest, or ruler. Thus, 
 physical evil and spiritual darkness and weariness smote 
 on His heart. Once besides in this Gospel we find Christ's 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 37 
 
 compassion mentioned, but by Himself, not by the evan- 
 gelist (ch. viii. 6), when He assigns it as His motive for 
 consulting the disciples as to how the crowds are to be fed. 
 Luke, who only once speaks of our Lord's compassion, does 
 so in connection with a specially sad story, that of the poor 
 woman whom Jesus and His disciples met as they toiled 
 up the hill to Nain, weeping behind the bier of the sole 
 light of her widowed home, her only son. No wonder that 
 such grief and such loneliness touched the springs of pity 
 in His solitary heart. Matthew, too, tells of our Lord's 
 compassion in the parallel passage to our text, and in other 
 places. 
 
 These two cases teach us the impartial width of our 
 Lord's compassion. He was open to appeals to His pity 
 made by sickness, hunger, and the other ills that flesh is 
 heir to, and He was not less quickly and deeply touched by 
 compassion for ignorance, spiritual and intellectual want 
 of guidance, and the weariness and unrest which these 
 caused. Such capacity of feeling with equal strength the 
 appeal of the two great forms of man's misery is rare, and 
 more frequently we find that the men who are quick to pity 
 the hungry and the sick have little sympathy for the 
 ignorant and them that are out of the way, while, on the 
 other hand, the compassion of religious men is often apt 
 to be somewhat indifferent to material wants, and to leave 
 dealing with them to others. So it comes to pass that there 
 are two sets of philanthropists in the world, who do not 
 look at each oilier with altogether friendly eyes, the one of 
 whom cares for men's bodies, and thinks it rather waste 
 to spend pity and effort on their " souls," and the other of 
 whom is so much concerned about their souls that it gives 
 little help to attempts to improve material conditions. 
 
38 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 The Church has often laid itself open to the world's taunt 
 of neglecting the lower needs, which are more clamorous 
 than the higher ; but there are many tokens that a clearer 
 understanding of the width of Christian compassion and duty 
 is beginning to prevail. Possibly the warning against the 
 impending possibility of harmful exaggeration in a new 
 direction may not be unnecessary. The new impulses to 
 recognizing the mission of Christianity in regard to social 
 questions are sure to carry some light weights too far. As 
 Luther says somewhere, in his rough strong way, " Human 
 nature is like a drunken peasant. If he is put up on one 
 side of his horse, he is sure to fall over on the other." It 
 will be a dark day for the progress of the Christian Church 
 if good men suffer themselves to be drawn aside from its 
 primary work, the preaching of the gospel and the dealing 
 with the deepest sources of human misery in human sin, to 
 throwing their chief energy into the needful but secondary 
 work of dealing with the fruits of spiritual evil in physical 
 distress. It is true that Jesus pitied the hungry and fed 
 them, and therein He has taught us how wide our sympathies 
 and efforts should be, but it is also true that He rebuked the 
 crowds who came after Him only for loaves, and pressed 
 upon them as His true and proper gift the flesh and blood 
 which are the sources and supports of a better life. 
 
 Christ's sympathy was incalculably deeper and more 
 poignant than ours can ever be. For His eye was clearer 
 than ours, and saw deeper. To Him the single sufferer 
 represented crowds. The one black drop brought to His 
 mind all the sullen ocean of blackness, which rolls its 
 heavy tides round the whole world. We see but the wave 
 or two that break nearest us, and all the other multitudinous 
 billows escape our knowledge. We mass men in the race, 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 39 
 
 and, generalizing, lose the impression of individuals. We 
 have a vague notion that there is a great deal of sorrow 
 in the world, but we do not receive the impact of it all on 
 our own hearts as Jesus Christ did. He saw as a God 
 what he pitied as a Man. His compassion was not only 
 the pity of a Divine nature which, if it be love, must needs 
 be pity too, but it was the fellow-feeling of one of ourselves, 
 which knew a kindred pang, and was fed by a Divine clear- 
 ness and sweep of perception that summoned up before 
 Him on the occasion of one bier all the mourners and the 
 dead, and saw in every sorrow but the nearest member 
 of a linked procession girdhng the world. Nor did the 
 underlying Divine knowledge alone deepen His sympathy. 
 The purity of His manhood increased it. In Him were no 
 spots insensitive by reason of selfishness, as there are in all 
 others — true witches' marks, which can be pricked without 
 feeling. A soul entirely delivered from selfish regards would 
 be like an infant's hand for sensitiveness, whereas our palms 
 are indurated in the cuticle by selfishness, and our fingers 
 have lost the fineness of touch which would secure sympathy 
 with others' sorrows. With Jesus it was as if the very 
 nerves of His own frame had been prolonged into that of 
 others, so close was His union with them, by the wonderful 
 completeness of his self-oblivion. Thus in truest fashion 
 His sympathy answered to the meaning of the word, which 
 so far transcends the ordinary manifestations of it in our 
 hearts, being a real suffering together with those whom He 
 pitied. Our selfishness puts an armour of brass over our 
 hearts, through which the sharp point of others' woes 
 scarcely reaches us, except as a dull blow that does not 
 pierce deeply enough to bring the blood ; but Jesus came 
 among men with His naked breast exposed to all the slings 
 
40 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 and arrows that were showered on all, and He was sore 
 wounded by them all. His pity was His life. He was a 
 Man of sorrows because He bare our griefs and carried our 
 sorrows, and the burden was laid upon His shoulders by the 
 perfectness of His pity which made them all His own, long 
 before He fainted beneath the cross on the short journey 
 from the judgment-hall to Calvary. Christ's pity was 
 essential to His service of men. "Looking up to heaven, 
 He sighed, and said, Ephphatha." The sigh had to come 
 before the word of power could come. He was not only 
 impelled to put forth His miraculous power by the cries of 
 the sufferers or of their intercessors, but sometimes by the 
 quick spontaneous outgoing of His own pity. Before men 
 called He answered, for His own heart anticipated their 
 desires. His pity was no luxurious idle emotion, but the 
 impulse to action. The like should be true of all Christians. 
 No help can be rightly rendered unless it come from a 
 sympathetic heart. Much Christian work is spoiled and 
 made worse than useless by being done in hard, supercilious 
 fashion. Benefits need to be wrapped in softest down of 
 sympathy, or they will cut the hand that receives them. A 
 man may be knocked down by a charitable gift flung at his 
 head like a stone. For all forms of Christian service the 
 law is valid — without sympathy no good will be done. 
 Nor is the converse less needful to remember — that with- 
 out practical issues no sympathy is worth anything. Not 
 merely is it useless to benefit the sufferers, but it harms the 
 person cherishing it. Every emotion which is allowed to 
 rise and pass without its appropriate action tends to harden 
 the heart. If mercy is twice blessed, lazy compassion is 
 twice cursed. 
 
 Christ's sympathy clings to Him still, and is a per- 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 4I 
 
 manent attribute of His perpetual and exalted manhood. 
 He bears our griefs on His heart now, and bends over 
 us each with as true a knowledge of our trouble, and as 
 complete a partaking of it, as when on earth He wept by 
 the grave of Lazarus, or felt the loneliness of that sonless 
 widow. If our griefs be small and affecting mainly our 
 material fortunes, we may take heart to believe that since 
 they are great enough to trouble us they are not too small 
 to move His sympathy, when we remember that He Him- 
 self declared that He "had compassion on the multitude" 
 because ihey were hungry. 
 
 n. We note the Christ who feels anger, grief, and 
 wonder because of men's evil. 
 
 We find one instance in ch. iii. 5, in which He " looked 
 on them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their 
 heart." The word rendered "grieved " is a compound term 
 expressing the coexistence of some other feeling with the 
 anger. Again we find (ch. x. 14) that our Lord was 
 " moved with indignation " (R.V.). In the first case, the 
 cause of the anger was the obstinate and increasing 
 obduracy of the Pharisees, who had no eyes for anything 
 but a breach of ceremonial law, into which they hoped He 
 would be led. All the beauty of His character, all the 
 power of His words, the mystery of His miraculous working, 
 the joy of the cured man, were nothing to them. That the 
 cure was a miracle brought no conviction to their minds, 
 which could only grasp the fact that the miracle was a 
 breach of rabbinical law. In the second case, the disciples, 
 as it were, dammed up the flow of His tenderness and 
 interfered with access to His mercy. So the evils which 
 especially drew forth His anger were not the gross flagrant 
 transgressions of notorious evil livers, but the sins of formal 
 
42 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 religionists to whom sacrifice was more than mercy, and of 
 disciples who had imperfectly apprehended the continual flow 
 and width of His love. Surely the lesson is needed at all 
 times and in all Churches. Nothing more effectually blinds 
 to the highest vision of Jesus Christ than a pedantic over- 
 estimate of the mere externals of religion. How many of 
 us would not listen to a prophet or to Christ Himself, if He 
 neglected or brushed aside our jealously guarded ceremonials 
 and proprieties of worship ! On the other hand, how often 
 Christian Churches and individuals have, like the disciples, 
 put hindrances in the way of the " little ones " coming to 
 Him ! How often have misplaced regard for the honour of 
 the Master, and other even less reputable motives, forbidden 
 humble souls to draw near for His embracing arm and the 
 benediction of His lips ! A sharper accent marks Christ's 
 rebuke to His disciples, who cluster round Him like a body- 
 guard to keep off the profane, lest they should by their 
 continual coming weary Him, than that which remonstrated 
 with far more coarse guilt. 
 
 But that anger was not all which these sins excited 
 in His heart. Through the thunder-cloud looked the sun, 
 and across the heavy drops was flung the rainbow. Grief 
 blended with Christ's anger. Both emotions must be in 
 that perfect manhood, which is at once the realization of 
 the human ideal and the revelation of the Divine reality. 
 Their union saves us from the misconception of His anger. 
 There can be no heat of passion in it, for it burns side 
 by side with a great fountain of sorrowing pity which would 
 quench any such blaze of wrath. His anger is a noble 
 Divine aversion from evil. Unless Jesus is but half a man 
 and maimed of an essential element in healthy and whole- 
 souled humanity, there must be in Him a true recognition 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 43 
 
 of the badness of bad things and an indignant recoil from 
 these. Nor is such aversion less inseparable from lofty 
 conceptions of the Divine nature than from true ones of 
 the human. Nor is there any malevolence in Christ's 
 anger. It is but a low kind of anger which includes the 
 desire for evil on its objects. The highest kind necessarily 
 includes the opposite desire, as every parent and child 
 knows. Evil-doers are to be blamed but pitied too, and 
 however rigorously retribution may be awarded to them, 
 compassion is not to be withheld. Jesus saw the essential 
 character of sin as none else can do, and He knew its issue. 
 Therefore He *' grieved " and " was angry," in a blended 
 stream of emotion wherein the darker current neighboured 
 without weakening the other, which in turn accompanied 
 and softened without diluting its sister-flow. 
 
 That union of anger and grief saves us from exaggeration 
 of His pity, as if He could not condemn or punish. His 
 compassion does not contradict, nor put in the background, 
 the certainty of His righteous judgment. The two are 
 perfectly harmonious. The tears that fell for Jerusalem 
 did not hinder Him from pronouncing her doom, nor did 
 the judicial act of sentencing arrest the tears. Many modern 
 representations of the gentle Christ need correction, for 
 what they call gentleness is nothing nobler than weakness. 
 Let us not forget that the Lamb of God is the Lion of 
 Judah, and that even the Lamb "has seven horns." All 
 ruth and pity are in Him, but in Him, too, are righteous 
 anger and fiery indignation. The revelations of an earlier 
 time are not cancelled. God in Christ is still " a consuming 
 fire," but in Him we learn that side by side with that fire, 
 or perhaps we may even say, as a necessary element in it, 
 burns lambent the white flame of infinite tenderness and 
 
44 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 pity. In their deepest roots wrath and pity are one, even 
 as the heat which blisters and the Hght which gladdens have 
 the same source. 
 
 But there is another glimpse given us by Mark of the 
 manner in which men's evils affected Jesus, in that remark- 
 able expression that He "marvelled at their unbelief" 
 (ch. vi. 6). We are apt to wonder that Christ could 
 wonder, seeing that He knew what was in man. But His 
 manhood was under distinct limitations in regard to know- 
 ledge, and the fact that He shared that feeling too is 
 precious, as attesting how truly He emptied Himself of 
 His glory when He assumed the fashion of a man. In 
 another place we read that He also wondered with happier 
 wonder at the ripe faith of a heathen. Here He marvels 
 at the dogged unbelief of " His own." If unbelief evoked 
 Christ's astonishment, how unreasonable and contrary to 
 all probability it must be! It may have an "excuse," or 
 rather those guilty of it may "make excuses" for it; but 
 these are only got up for show, and are not its real reason, 
 which is found in that perfection of unreason which prefers 
 death to life. The mystery of the world is sin. If we 
 could explain it, we should know all things. It can give 
 no rational account of itself. Try to put the reasons for it 
 into plain words, and their blank irrationality is manifest. 
 What reason can there be why men should be blind to 
 facts which stare them in the face, and should deliberately 
 choose ruin, and turn away from their highest good, and, 
 admitting the most tremendous truths, should straightway 
 proceed to huddle them out of sight lest they should in- 
 fluence conduct ? All sin is flagrant unreason, and nothing 
 is more marvellous than that the beauty and sweetness 
 of Jesus should be resisted, and His offered gifts refused. 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 45 
 
 His meek heart had been well schooled in the possibilities 
 of men's unkindness and contempt ; but, even in its calm, 
 a moment of wonder rose when once again He was forced 
 to feel that He called in vain, and in vain loved. Thus 
 His whole soul was disturbed by contact with sin. It left 
 Him grieved and hurt, wounded and saddened. The 
 compulsory association of some pure heart with criminals 
 and profligates, as in some prison where an innocent man 
 is shut up with criminals, and " vexed " in soul with their 
 "filthy conversation," is but a faint shadow of what Christ 
 bore all His life long. He was " a Man of sorrows, and 
 acquainted with grief," because He " dwelt among them 
 that are set on fire," and all this sorrow, pity, and wonder 
 He bore because He loved the men who thus tortured Him, 
 even as He loves us who can still grieve Him, and may 
 still find balm in His compassion. 
 
 HI. We note, further, the Christ yearning in love towards 
 very imperfect desires after good. 
 
 Mark tells us that Jesus " looking upon " the young 
 ruler " loved him." There was much about the youth to 
 draw out love. He was ingenuous, earnest in his desire to 
 do right, had restrained his passions in his hot early man- 
 hood, and aspired with some genuine lifting of desire after 
 the world to come. But there were flaws in his character 
 which Jesus manifestly read from the beginning of the 
 conversation. He had but a superficial notion of goodness, 
 and a false conception of the requisites for inheriting 
 eternal life. To him "good" was a thing to "do," and 
 " eternal life " was wholly future, and was payment for acts 
 done here, not because he loved them, but because he wanted 
 their wages. He had so little apprehension of the sweep 
 of the Divine Law, that he was certain that his obedience 
 
46 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 had been comprehensive of all its precepts and unbroken 
 through his life. And when the final test was put he failed, 
 and thereby proved that there was something in him deeper 
 than the desire for goodness or for eternal life. Yet, for all 
 the flaws, Jesus loved him, and would fain have drawn wholly 
 to Himself a character with so many buds of promise in it. 
 
 The great heart of Jesus Christ has room in it for all 
 evil-doers, and bends with pitying sorrow over debased 
 wills that cleave to earth, and paralyzed spirits that have 
 no touch of aspiration after things lovely and of good 
 report. His love rests with peculiar tenderness on those 
 who have yielded themselves wholly to Him and are 
 walking in the light with Him. But there is a third class, 
 touched with yearning after something higher than they 
 possess, and yet not brought to the point of following Jesus 
 with clear resolve and entire surrender ; and on these, too, 
 His love falls. A harsh word, like a hasty blow struck at 
 a feeble fire, may put out a spark which care would have 
 fostered ; but Jesus does not " quench the dimly burning 
 wick," nor frown away imperfect seekers after a better life. 
 What would become of any of us, if He was not patient 
 with partial knowledge and superficial conceptions of good ? 
 It befits His followers to cherish the beginnings and faint 
 dawnings of such in others, as their Lord did, and as they 
 themselves need that He should do with them. For the 
 most advanced and perfect saint on earth is nearer the 
 most incomplete beginner who has but turned his face 
 to the far-off light, than he is to the light to which both 
 are looking and neither have attained. Degrees of imper- 
 fection should not despise one another. One arc of a circle 
 may be swept through more degrees of circumference than 
 another, but it is only an unfinished arc after all. 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 47 
 
 Christ's love for imperfect goodness is shown in His clear 
 laying down of the stringent conditions with which it must 
 comply in order to be complete. It was precisely because 
 Jesus, looking on His youthful and eager questioner, "loved 
 him," that " He said unto him, One thing thou lackest," and 
 demanded of him the surrender of all that he had, and the 
 following of Him. Frankness is the truest kindness. What 
 such characters as the ruler's most need is to see clearly that 
 aspirations and outward acts are not enough, and that it is 
 no slight matter to be "good," but one demanding the 
 entire suppression of self and the use of all possessions as 
 auxiUary thereto. He had been playing with wishes and 
 surface virtues long enough. If he were in earnest, he 
 would welcome the call which showed him the depths. If 
 he were not in earnest, the kindest thing to do for him was 
 to make him conscious that he was not. Therefore our 
 Lord did not hesitate to put the condition of discipleship in 
 the form that would most sharply test the depth and sove- 
 reignty of the "will to be perfect." The thin veneer of 
 noble aspiration fell away, and the solid basis of worldly and 
 self-regarding worldUness stood confessed. So much the 
 better for the man ; for now that he knew what to do, and 
 that his wealth was the hindrance to his doing it, there was 
 some possibility that present refusal might lead to searchings 
 of heart, and that at a future time he might be ready to 
 accept as a joy what he now shrank from as too great a 
 sacrifice. We may be sure that the love which laid down the 
 conditions did not turn away from him when he recoiled 
 from them, nor cease to follow the young heart which had 
 been touched with real though imperfect longings, though 
 its owner ceased for the moment to follow Jesus. Still He 
 looks with love on such hearts, and still His best gift to 
 
48 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 them is the clear call to full surrender, in which alone they 
 will find the satisfaction of their desires, and be the objects 
 of His yet tenderer love. 
 
 IV. We note, finally, Christ bowed down under the 
 burden of the world's sin. 
 
 We turn lastly to Mark's account of Gethsemane, con- 
 cerning which the less we say the less shall we err. " Put 
 off thy shoes from off thy feet." Cold analysis is out of 
 place, but a reverent word or two may be permitted. We 
 get a glimpse of Jesus beneath the olives by the quivering 
 moonlight, as one may see by a lightning-flash through the 
 darkness of storm a labouring ship out on a wild sea. 
 Mark employs two words to indicate Christ's emotions at 
 that dread hour. "Greatly amazed" is perhaps scarcely 
 strong enough to modern ears to represent the mental 
 condition intended, since astonishmetit has encroached 
 on bewilderment, which is the true idea of " amazed." 
 " Appalled " or " stupefied " would probably convey the 
 meaning more clearly. The other expression is better given 
 by the Revised Version as " sore troubled " than by the 
 Authorized Version's " very heavy." To these two pathetic 
 words we have to add our Lord's own unique acknowledg- 
 ment of weakness and appeal for sympathy, " My soul 
 is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," in which the 
 word rendered "exceeding sorrowful" suggests the image 
 of sorrows as ringing Him round in an unbroken circle. 
 That strong expression, " unto death," must not be weak- 
 ened into a mere superlative, but taken in its literal force 
 as implying that the grief was all but fatal. One turn more 
 of the rack and actual death would have ensued. Well 
 may such a state be called, as it is by Luke, " agony." 
 
 Now we may reverently ask what it was which thus 
 
GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 49 
 
 appalled and all but crushed Him, and we shall answer the 
 question most unworthily and inadequately if we suppose 
 that it was merely the apprehension of approaching death. 
 Such an explanation dishonours Him, putting Him lower in 
 fortitude than many of His servants, who have drawn their 
 calmness in the prospect and actual suffering of martyrdom 
 from Him; and it is transparently insufficient. A far 
 heavier weight than that pressed Him down, even the burden 
 of the sins of the whole world, which then met on Him, not 
 only because, in His perfect sympathy and self-oblivion, He 
 identified Himself with sinful men, but also because, in a 
 manner which we cannot explain but must accept, if we 
 would do justice to Scripture teaching, " the Lord made to 
 meet on Him the iniquity of us all." Unless the element 
 of vicarious suffering entered into that mysterious agony, it 
 will be very hard to account for it in any manner which will 
 save the character of Jesus from disadvantageous compari- 
 sons with that of many a saint, hero, and sage. Socrates 
 with his hemlock-cup, and not a few other dying men, are far 
 nobler persons than this shuddering Suppliant beneath the 
 trembling olives, unless His agony was caused by something 
 much deeper than the natural recoil of the living from death. 
 The world for nearly nineteen centuries has bowed in reve- 
 rence before that pathetic picture of Christ in Gethsemane. 
 Why ? Be it reverently said, that unless the picture shows us 
 "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," 
 it shows us a very weak man, unmanned by what thousands 
 have faced far better than He did. 
 
 Such are the glimpses which this evangelist affords of that 
 infinite heart. It is full to-day of all the tenderness and 
 pitying love which filled it in that past. It bled and ached 
 for us while it beat on earth, and it still wells over with 
 
 E — 2 
 
50 GLIMPSES OF THE HEART OF JESUS. 
 
 fellow-feeling for the sorrows, and pitying disapproval of 
 the sins, of each of us. Some shade of sadness perhaps 
 flits across even the joy of the Lord, when His brethren, 
 whom He loved to the death, turn from His love, and it 
 may still be possible for us to grieve Him. Be that as it 
 may. He loves and pities all. Each may say, " He loves me, 
 and I have a place in that heart." Let us turn our eyes to 
 behold and our hearts to love that sum of all beauty and 
 infinite mine of all human and Divine perfection made 
 known to us in the heart of Jesus. The glimpses which we 
 have into it here are blessedness. To know it fully is 
 heaven. 
 
GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
 " Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered 
 to thy grave in peace." — 2 Chron. xxxiv. 28. 
 
 " The archers shot at King Josiah ; and the king said unto his 
 servants. Have me away ; for I am sore wounded. . . . And they 
 brought him to Jerusalem, and he died." — 2 Chron. xxxv. 23, 24. 
 
 In these two passages we have a prophecy and its fulfilment. 
 The event seems strangely unlike the prediction, *' I will 
 gather thee to thy fathers in peace." Is that fulfilled by the 
 keen arrow, and the blood dropping from the king's heart on 
 the floor of the chariot, and the premature death ? Even so. 
 Josiah, the King of Judah, to whom these words were spoken, 
 and in whose death they were so strangely accomplished, had 
 been smitten by the sudden discovery of the departure of 
 himself and his nation from the precepts of the book of the 
 Law, which had been found during the restoration of the 
 neglected temple. It is not my purpose to enter at all on 
 the questions of present interest connected with that dis- 
 covery. Whatever that book was, and whether, as is 
 thought by many now, those who hid knew where to find, 
 the effect produced on the king was horror and penitence. 
 He bade his advisers "inquire of the Lord" for him 
 and his diminished people " concerning the words of this 
 book " — apparently whether there was possibility of avert- 
 ing its threatenings. Remarkably, the godly counsellors 
 
54 GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
 turned at once to a woman, the wife of an inferior officer, 
 who seems to have been principally known as his father's 
 son, and from Huldah the prophetess they received the 
 answer of which our first text is part. The judgments on the 
 nation were declared irreversible, but the penitence of the 
 king opened a way for his individual safety. Threatening 
 and pardon were both revealed in the answer. Because 
 Josiah's heart was tender, and he had humbled himself 
 before God, therefore the mitigation announced in the 
 former of our texts should be extended to him. Then, some 
 twelve or fourteen years after, came the bloody death in 
 battle, which seems to give the lie to the prophetess's 
 assurance. It is worth while to lay the two side by side 
 and gather the lessons of the juxtaposition. 
 
 I. We may first notice how these two passages of Scrip- 
 ture disclose the true Worker at the centre of things. 
 
 " /will gather thee," says God, speaking through Huldah. 
 We turn the page, and where do we see His hand in the 
 story of vulgar motives and godless strife ? Josiah's death 
 came about as " naturally " as possible, as the sequel of 
 conflicts with which he had nothing directly to do. The 
 chronic strife between Egypt and the kingdoms to the 
 north of Judah had broken out again. This time the reign- 
 ing Pharaoh was on his march against the strong Carche- 
 mish, which has recently, after so many millenniums of 
 eclipse, become more than a name to us. He had no 
 quarrel with Josiah, who seems to have pushed himself into 
 the strife quite unnecessarily, with wrong-headed haste and 
 obstinacy, in spite of the dignified and kindly remonstrances 
 of the King of Egypt. The latter asserts his Divine com- 
 mission, which he does not trace to any Egyptian deity, 
 but to " God," and which he warns Josiah, as a worshipper 
 
GATHERED IN PEACE. 5,5^ 
 
 of God, from opposing to his own ruin. The Chronicler 
 endorses Pharaoh's claim, and declares his words to have 
 been " from the mouth of God." So God sought to stay 
 Josiah from the rashness which was to be his ruin, even 
 though that ruin was determined, and determined to be 
 effected by that act. Men are the authors of their own fall, 
 and if they rush to their deaths, it is by their own obstinacy, 
 in spite of Divine warnings. God can speak through a 
 heathen king's lips, and good counsel has ever its source 
 in Him, whatever be its channel. But if Josiah will be 
 obstinate, and mix himself up in a quarrel which is not his, 
 God works out His purposes through even the obstinacy of 
 one man and the ambitions of another. Then came the 
 fatal skirmish on that plain of Megiddo, which has run witli 
 blood so often from the days of Deborah and Barak down 
 to almost our own, and perhaps has not yet heard for the 
 last time " the noise of the captains and the shouting," nor 
 seen Kishon sending a reddened current to the sea. The 
 poor precaution of a disguise availed nothing for the hapless 
 king. The archer's bow drawn at a venture sent an 
 unaimed arrow, which a Divine hand directed, into his side. 
 Lifted into a spare chariot, he lived over the jolting and 
 agony of a swift flight to Jerusalem, and there died — one 
 of the best of the kings of Judah, mourned by a nation's 
 tears, and having thrown away his life out of pure wilfulness. 
 And all this play of commonplace motives — Pharaoh's 
 pugnacity, Josiah's obstinacy, the forgotten politics of two 
 empires, the chance arrow of an unconscious archer — is the 
 fulfilment of that word, "/will gather thee to thy fathers." 
 Is not this a penetrating glance beneath the whirhng 
 surface ? Sometimes one sees on a swift river a tiny 
 whirlpool, opening a pit an inch or two deep into the tawny 
 
yS GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
 raging flood. So here is, as it were, an eddy in the stream, 
 that goes down to the very bottom and shows us the bed. 
 We look through the cross-play of human purposes and acts, 
 which are in themselves cognizant of nothing more than 
 themselves, and discern what is really at work, determining 
 their flow, and dashing one against the other or blending 
 them in smooth flow. 
 
 Now, we say that we believe this and regard it as such 
 a commonplace, that it is scarcely worth my while to repeat 
 it, or yours to listen to it. But do we carry that steady eye 
 which looks through all the play of so-called causes, and 
 discerns God's hand in them all? Is it a living, ever-present 
 conviction with us, influencing all our lives and thoughts? 
 If we really believed it — and we do not really believe anything 
 that is not present with us, shaping our habitual thinking — 
 how difterent everything else would look ! It is easy for us 
 to set metaphysical puzzles. Any quantity of such may be 
 picked up anywhere. But the old thought, which is here 
 illustrated anew, has practical and devotional uses so 
 manifold and valuable that we cannot aflbrd to dismiss it as 
 a commonplace. Commonplaces have to be reiterated till 
 they are incorporated with the web of our thoughts, far 
 more thoroughly than this one has yet become in the case 
 of any of us. Not till we habitually see a present God 
 working everywhere, and all things become transparent to 
 His light, shining through them to our eyes, can we afford 
 to put aside this truth as threadbare. If it ruled in us as it 
 should do, how it would nourish faith and stimulate effort ; 
 how it would strengthen resignation and unreluctant 
 submission ; how it would deliver from vain and weakening 
 regrets ; how it would keep us from being angry with anything, 
 or fretted with carking cares which gnaw at the very seat of 
 
GATHERED IN PEACE. 57 
 
 life ! If we saw God working everywhere and always, we 
 should not be jaded with futile effort, nor disappointed or 
 despairing, nor should we live among the tombs of a dead 
 and buried past, and be blind to the worth of the living 
 present. If we heard God speaking through all voices and 
 sounds, whether of tempest and thunder, or of harpers 
 harping with their harps, and saw His mighty hand moving 
 all that moves, and His will dominant in all, fear would be 
 far from us, and sorrow would wear a benignant cheer, and 
 in our hearts would dwell the great peace, which is the 
 dower of him who says, " It is the Lord; let Him do what 
 seemeth Him good." Let us pray and strive for the clear and 
 constant vision which looks through the things seen, which 
 are but recipients and transmitters of power, to the energy 
 which they receive and transmit. " I will gather thee to 
 thy fathers," though the instruments be thine own obstinacy, 
 the conPiict of heathen powers, and the arrow of an ignorant 
 bowman, who aimed at nothing, and never knew that he 
 had killed a king and executed a Divine sentence. 
 
 II. There is, further, in these words a glimpse, though 
 it be but dim, into the regions beyond the grave. 
 
 The two expressions in the former of these texts are by 
 no means synonymous. " I will gather thee to thy fathers" 
 is one thing; "Thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in 
 peace " is quite another. The former phrase seldom occurs 
 in the Old Testament, and never is found in the New. It 
 appears principally in the Pentateuch, and in the closely 
 related Book of Judges, and in these is found in a slightly 
 different form, namely, "gathered to thy people" instead of 
 " to thy fathers." It is used in that shape in reference to 
 the deaths of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Aaron, and 
 Moses. The generation contemporary with Joshua are 
 
58 GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
 spoken of as being "gathered to their fathers," and the 
 same expression is employed in our text and in the parallel 
 in 2 Kings, The variation of " people " and " fathers " 
 is natural. The former phrase is applied to the fathers 
 themselves, beyond whom the vision of their descendants 
 did not travel backwards, whereas the latter is fitting when 
 applied to later generations, to whom union with the 
 venerable ancestors of the nation was honour. Now, this 
 " gathering to thy people " or " thy fathers " is distinctly 
 separated from both death and burial. The account of the 
 last days of Abraham (Gen. xxv. 8) is a fair specimen of all 
 the narratives in which this expression occurs, and in it 
 three stages are clearly distinguished: "Abraham gave up the 
 ghost, and died . . . and was gathered to his people. And 
 Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him." The lonely tomb 
 on Mount Hor did not hinder Aaron's being gathered to his 
 people, nor did the mysterious burial on Nebo shut out 
 Moses from their society. That conception of accession to 
 the great company somewhere is no mere euphemism for 
 death, and still less refers to what may afterwards befall the 
 body of the dead man. If, then, we are led, in all honesty 
 of interpretation, to exclude both death and burial from the 
 meaning of the phrase, what remains but to regard it as a faint 
 gleam of insight into the condition, after death and burial, of 
 the true self, which passes through death undying, and is not 
 laid to moulder with the disused garment of flesh ? The 
 Cuneiform inscriptions have taught us how developed the 
 doctrine of a future life was in Abraham's native country, 
 and there is nothing improbable now in ascribing some 
 share in that knowledge to Israel, however faint the traces 
 of it in Scripture. To see in this remarkable phrase the 
 conception of a future social life is not to read later ideas 
 
GATHERED IN PEACE. 59 
 
 into a vague expression, which we make unnecessarily 
 definite, but not to see that thought in it seems rather to 
 evacuate it of its true significance. There is no doubt a 
 danger, against which we are abundantly warned, of commit- 
 ting the anachronism of reading the results of later Reve- 
 lations into the earlier records ; but there is also a danger, 
 which is less often insisted upon, of reading out of the earlier 
 Revelations what is really in them, and of thus exaggerating 
 the ignorance of early ages. 
 
 Surely this sweet and pathetic expression did spring 
 from, and did suggest, some conceptions of a hfe beyond 
 life, in which those who have lived solitary here should be 
 knit together in a great company. In the earlier form the 
 phrase held forth the hope that, after death, the desert 
 wanderers should join the community to which they be- 
 longed, and from which they had been parted in life. In 
 its later form, as in our text, it gave the hope that the 
 descendants of the ancestors who had become august 
 and sacred by lapse of time should be set with these 
 venerated heroes and patriarchs of the nation, and that 
 there should be, somehow and somewhere, as it were a 
 great family home with many mansions, where the kindred 
 of the fathers should dwell. The principle of the anticipated 
 association seems to have been purely that of natural kinship. 
 The children of Abraham were to be gathered round him, 
 a happy clan in that dim world. Beyond these two ideas 
 of society and repose, the hope expressed in this phrase 
 apparently did not soar. 
 
 But we may use the earlier and inadequate phrase as 
 the vehicle of our deeper conceptions and higher hopes. 
 We too have to look forward to a state where, " in solemn 
 troops and sweet societies," souls that have toiled weary 
 
6o GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
 and lonely through the changeful desert of this life, shall 
 find at last rest and companionship, and shall " sit down 
 with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdo-n " of the 
 great Father of all. The earlier hope is translated into a 
 loftier, for we know that the principle of association in that 
 solemn, blessed state, where perfect society is realized by 
 hearts isolated in life, is not that of natural but of spiritual 
 affinity, and that there the same law of like to like, which 
 binds happy souls to their Lord and to one another, shall 
 knit other spirits alien from these into a dark confraternity 
 of repulsion and yet of contiguity. 
 
 Here and now men are grouped by other uniting forces, 
 but hereafter spiritual character shall determine company 
 and sphere, and each shall find himself surrounded by 
 the environment of persons and circumstance for which he 
 has fitted himself. "What maketh heaven, that maketh 
 hell." That is manifoldly true, and this is one sphere in 
 which it holds. " Being let go, they went unto their own 
 company." When set free from the disturbing influences of 
 life here, men will arrange themselves according to character. 
 The stones on the eternal shore will lie in order, as on 
 some beaches we see the heavier blocks laid in long rows 
 and the lighter ranged together, and then the sand. The 
 tide has sorted them. Life classifies and aggregates men, 
 and yonder they are with their likes. So Judas " went to 
 his own place," wherever that may have been. He passed 
 into the sphere fitted for him, and there found others. A 
 solemn law of spiritual affinity as determining the future 
 associations of each lies hid in the old words, "I will gather 
 thee to thy fathers," and still more clearly in the other 
 form of the saying, " He was gathered to his people." 
 
 The former expression suggests, too, the hope of per- 
 
GATHERED IN PEACE. 6 1 
 
 sonal communion with the venerable names whose spiritual 
 children we smaller men are proud to call ourselves. A 
 community implies communication, and a gathering to- 
 gether of spirits which forbade intercourse would be no 
 gathering ; for spirits are not together by juxtaposition, but 
 by intercourse and affinity. It would be easy to let fancy 
 run wild in pictures of that intercourse, and to summon up 
 a long list of glorious names ; but the fact itself is more 
 than all our ignorant amplifications of it, and the vividness 
 of expectation does not increase with the increase of imagi- 
 native details, which smother rather than enforce the truth. 
 It is enough to believe that those who are united to the 
 same Lord shall form a real unity, which necessarily in- 
 cludes communication. The future is set forth as a city. 
 Are the citizens not to exchange thought and feeling by 
 some better means than words, our imperfect medium here ? 
 They shall dwell in deep peace, encompassed by congenial 
 natures, and delivered from the lifelong torture of grating 
 against harsh contraries of their truest selves. While they are 
 in the midst of their own people, in that they are surrounded 
 with those like them, they shall be gathered to their fathers, 
 in that they will be capable of association with those who 
 excel them in strength, and are before them in spiritual 
 stature. The whole blissfiU company shall partake of a 
 common progress, yet retaining the individuality of its 
 separate parts and the unity of the whole, like some cloud 
 saturated with sunshine, and slowly drifting nearer the sun. 
 The loftiest will be the helpful companions of the lowliest. 
 The unity of life in each will forbid the diverse degrees 
 of life from becoming barriers. In that blessed society will 
 be both impulse and rest. The same law will work in 
 darker fashion in souls that are void of that Christ-derived 
 
62 GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
 life ; but there likeness will bring no repose, and the com- 
 munity of alienation from God will ensure no community 
 of friendship among the alienated. It is conceivable that 
 such aggregation may be worse than solitude or than hostile 
 neighbourhood; for companions in evil here are not friends, 
 and yonder the same result may follow in an intenser 
 degree. There may be a kingdom, but a kingdom of 
 anarchy. There may be similarity in the fundamental 
 relation to God, along with fierce antagonism and repulsion 
 otherwise. One awe-struck glance is all permitted us, and 
 it shows us how this principle of association according to 
 character in a future world, may be as a fountain doing 
 what James said that no fountain could do, sending forth 
 both sweet waters and bitter. 
 
 The word rendered " gather" is often employed for the 
 action of the reaper or of him who collects fruits. May we 
 not blend some such aUusion with its use here ? It is God 
 who says, " I will gather thee," and there is tenderness and 
 care in the word. That last parting from the familiar things 
 of earth is no violent dragging away, but the act of the 
 great Husbandman, who plucks the ripe fruit because it is 
 precious to Him. Sentiment talks of Death as the reaper, 
 but the antique simplicity of our text goes far deeper than 
 that representation. Not Death, but God, is the Reaper. 
 Death is only His sickle. It is He who gathers in His 
 sheaves and stores them in His great storehouse. 
 
 III. Finally, we may see here a discovery of the true 
 sphere of peace. 
 
 Was Huldah one of the juggling prophetesses who 
 palter with a double sense, keeping a promise in some 
 fashion and yet breaking it? So it might seem to one 
 looking at the poor young king in his chariot, faint with loss 
 
GATHERED IN PEACE. 63 
 
 of blood and fleeing from the fatal field. Was this being 
 " gathered to his fathers in peace " ? If the prophecy was 
 fulfilled thus, what would non-fulfilment be? The fact 
 looks like a flat contradiction of the promise, and so 
 prosaic commentators have puzzled themselves as to how 
 to reconcile the two. But surely there is no mystery in 
 the matter, and the reconcilement of the apparent contra- 
 diction is easy, as is so often the case, if we understand the 
 meaning of the words employed. For what does God's 
 Spirit mean by " peace " ? Surely something deeper and 
 more inward and inwrought with the substance of the soul 
 than the mere absence of outward strife and battle. The 
 peace which was promised to Josiah was maintained whether 
 or no Pharaoh-Necho's soldiers stormed across Palestine, 
 and the arrows flew thick on the plain of Jezreel. 
 
 Such a promise so fulfilled is meant to teach us the 
 great truth for life and for death, that true peace does not 
 depend on the absence of tumult, but on the presence of 
 God. It is an attribute of the soul, not of circumstances, 
 and is often more fully possessed in conflict than in calm. 
 They who look for it in any conjunction of outward good, 
 search for it in the wrong place. If it live not in the heart 
 of the seeker, he seeks it in vain, and it lives only in the 
 heart where God abides. The foot of Christ is the only 
 charm to still the heaving billows, and round Him, as He 
 moves in the greatness of His strength across the wild ocean, 
 is an atmosphere of calm. If we pass into it, the wildest 
 storm will pot ruffle a fluttering garment or lift a light hair. 
 We may carry our own weather with us through all storms, 
 and dwell in the peace of God, as in a fortress, though 
 enemies rage around. " In the world ye shall have tribula- 
 tion, but in Me ye shall have peace." The outward life in 
 
64 GATHERED IN PEACE. 
 
 the world must be disturbed, harassed, beset in a hundred 
 ways by strifes and annoyances ; but the true life which is 
 rooted in Jesus Christ, by faith, and love, and desire, and 
 obedience, may all the while be the seat of holy calm, as 
 some still oratory in the centre of a beleaguered castle. To 
 be *• in Christ " is to be " in peace." 
 
 In like manner, the fulfilment of this prophecy in the 
 death of Josiah referred not to the outward fashion of his 
 dying, but to the composure and resignation of spirit, not 
 haply without some foregleams of a great assemblage of 
 saints to welcome his coming, with which he passed hence. 
 As for the outward fact, the fierce current of the fight, the 
 shout of battle, the agony and flight, were very unlike what 
 the recipient of the promise may have expected ; but may 
 not his death have been as peaceful there as if in the 
 seclusion of his palace, amid careful tending? Not the 
 curtained chamber, the loving hands to smooth the pillow, 
 or any of the other alleviations of the last conflict, make it 
 death " in peace." That is secured only by the same thing 
 as secures the like blessing for hfe— even the presence of 
 God in Christ, realized by faith. Many of us may have 
 seen the horrible frescoes in a church in Rome, where all 
 varieties of cruel martyrdoms are grossly pictured. " These 
 all died in faith," and if they did, they died in peace, though 
 nameless tortures wrung their poor frames. Virgins whose 
 blood reddened the sands of the amphitheatre, confessors 
 wrapped in pitch and set flaming in Caesar's garden, martyrs 
 stretched on the rack or burned at the stake, died, according 
 to the estimate of sense, in agony and tumult which it would 
 be foolish to call peace ; but according to the estimate of 
 God, which is the ultimate truth and reality of things, their 
 deaths were but as the peaceful harvesting of the shock of 
 
GATHERED IN PEACE. 6$ 
 
 corn fully ripe. The first Christian martyr, crushed by the 
 heavy stones flung by fanatic hands, and kneeling outside 
 the city wall in a pool of his own blood, died so peacefully 
 that the only word to describe his gentle departure is, " he 
 fell asleep," like a tired child on its mother's lap. 
 
 So this King of Israel, smitten between the joints of his 
 armour by the keen Egyptian arrow, was by battle brought 
 to his grave in peace. So we, whatever be the circum- 
 stances attending our passage from this death which we call 
 life into the life which men call death, may meet them and 
 pass through them with quiet hearts, and have peace as well 
 as hope in our death. 
 
 Let us understand the deep meaning of the great 
 promise of peace, which this story obliges us to recognize, 
 and we shall see in the apparent contradiction its real fulfil- 
 ment, and gain a lesson very profitable for life and for 
 death. If, living, we live unto the Lord, and dying, die 
 unto Him, and so, living and dying, are the Lord's, then, 
 living or dying, we shall keep and be kept in His last gift 
 of perfect peace, which shall not be broken by any of the 
 tumults of life or the terrors and tempests of death. 
 
SOME REASONS WHY THE 
 WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
SOME REASONS WHY THE 
 WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
 " He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare 
 Thy name unto My brethren, in the midst of the Church will I sing 
 praise to Thee. And again, I will put My trust in Him. And again. 
 Behold I and the children which God hath given Me." — Heb. ii. I1-13. 
 
 " Ashamed to call them brethren " — why should He be ? 
 It is no condescension to acknowledge the fact of brother- 
 hood with humanity, any more than it is humiliation to be 
 born. But there was a Man who emptied and humbled 
 Himself by being " found in fashion as a man," and for 
 whom it was infinite condescension to call us His brethren. 
 We can say of a prince that he is not ashamed to call his 
 subjects friends, and to sit down to eat with them, but it 
 would be absurd to say so of one of the subjects in reference 
 to his fellows. The full, lofty truth of the first chapter of 
 this Epistle underlies that word " ashamed," which is mean- 
 ingless unless Jesus was the " effulgence of the Father's 
 glory, and the very image of His substance." Only on that 
 understanding are His birth and enrolment of Himself 
 among us men the transcendent instances of His loving 
 self-abasement. 
 
 The writer quotes three Old Testament passages which 
 
70 SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
 he regards as prophetic of our Lord's identifying of Him- 
 self with humanity. 
 
 It is no part of my present purpose to inquire into the 
 principles on which the writer asserts the Messianic refer- 
 ence of the passages quoted. I desire rather to point out 
 that these three cited sayings deal with three different 
 aspects of our Lord's manhood, and of the purpose of His 
 incarnation, and that, therefore, they unitedly give, if not a 
 complete, yet a comprehensive answer to the question. Why 
 did God become Man? The first of them shows us our 
 Lord assuming manhood in order to declare God to men ; 
 the second gives the purpose of His incarnation as being 
 the providing of a Pattern of the devout life for men ; and 
 the third presents it as being the bringing of men into the 
 relationship of sons. 
 
 I. Jesus is Man that He may declare God to men. 
 
 The first quotation in our text is taken from that psalm 
 whence our Lord drew the awful words which pierced the 
 darkness and broke the silence as He hung on the cross, 
 " My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? " The 
 psalm springing directly from the heart of one sorely 
 afflicted (whether David or another, and whether the sufferer 
 be the ideal of the nation or no, matter nothing for the 
 purpose of the writer of the Epistle), and referring in the 
 consciousness of the psalmist to his own feelings in the midst 
 of his sorrows, has yet been so moulded into language a 
 world too wide for the psalmist's case, and corresponding 
 in a number of minute details — such as the parting of the 
 vesture by lot, the piercing of the hands and feet, and the 
 mockery of the passers-by — with the facts of the crucifixion, 
 that we cannot fail to perceive the figure of the Man of 
 sorrows, the Prince of all the afflicted, shimmering through 
 
SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 7 1 
 
 the words of the single sufferer who pours out his plaint in 
 the psalm, whether he himself was conscious or no that 
 his words portrayed anything more than his own misery. 
 Every true mourner's cries fit the lips of every other, and 
 every lesser sorrow may be regarded as a miniature of the 
 greatest, which is Christ's. But in these laments of the 
 psalmist we shall miss their deepest pathos unless we recog- 
 nize something more than this mere general correspond- 
 ence of grief with grief, heart answering to heart, deep 
 answering to deep across the ages, because all hearts are 
 alike, and hear in them the tones of prophecy speaking 
 through the possibly unconscious psalmist. The words 
 quoted in our text are those in which he grasps in faith the 
 certainty of deliverance, and vows that, delivered, he will 
 magnify his delivering God among his brethren. Sorrow 
 had driven him to supplication. Supplication and sorrow 
 had brought deliverance. The experience of all three had 
 fitted him to speak with fuller assurance and insight of the 
 Name of God, and thankfulness for all had put a new song 
 into the lips that had groaned and prayed. Therefore his 
 thankfulness must needs pass into proclamation to all around 
 of what God would do, and in the estimate of faith had 
 already done, for his soul, even while sorrow pressed on him. 
 
 And is not this true of Jesus and of His earthly life ? 
 Was He not made perfect by suffering, not indeed in regard 
 of His own moral nature, but in reference to His fitness to 
 be the Author of eternal salvation to us? His fullest 
 declaration of the Father's name was only possible after and 
 by reason of His sufferings and ascended glory, as He Him- 
 self has taught us when He prayed, and said, " I have 
 declared Thy name, and will declare it." 
 
 What, then, is this office of declaring the name of the 
 
72 SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
 Father? That name is not the mere syllables by which 
 men address God, but is the manifested character, as always 
 in Scripture. Therefore the declaration of it must be by 
 acts more than by words. And so the highest revelation of 
 God must be by a human life, A personal God can only 
 be revealed by a person. He can only be shown to men 
 by a life. Words, however beautiful, tender, true, and self- 
 evidencing, will not suffice. They represent men's think- 
 ings, but they can never certify God's fact. They may 
 suggest hopes, fears, perad ventures ; but unless we have a 
 living person, whose deeds on the plain level of history are 
 the manifestation of God, our thoughts of Him will neither 
 be solid with certainty nor sweet with healing and comfort. 
 Our highest conceptions of God must be moulded after the 
 analogy of the only spiritual existence of which we have 
 experience, namely, the human, and the anthropomorphism, 
 against which we are often solemnly warned, is a necessity 
 of thought, and in its purest forms is the most worthy idea 
 of the infinite God. It may be gross or refined, but it is 
 inevitable. Man was made in the image of God^ and that 
 fact guarantees the truth of the conceptions of God which 
 think of His infinite perfection as the reality of which our 
 limited and stained manhood is yet the image, distorted 
 and diminished though it be. The analogy is such, that 
 the brightness of the Father's glory can be mirrored and 
 manifested in a human life. The life of Jesus is the making 
 visible for men of the glory of the invisible God. 
 
 The human life that reveals God must be more than 
 human. It is not enough for us to think of Jesus as 
 revealing God in the manner in which saints have done. 
 Only when we believe in His Divinity does His humanity 
 assume for us revealing power. 
 
SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 73 
 
 What is the substance of His declaration of God ? The 
 " attributes," as they are called, of supreme Being, such as 
 omniscience, omnipotence, and other majestic appendages 
 of Divinity, which are the opposites of the characteristics of 
 finite humanity, are but superficial, not of the essence of the 
 Name. They are but the fringe of the light ; the central 
 brightness is a milder light than blazes in these. High 
 above these forms of power, tower the moral attributes of 
 purity and righteousness. But when w^e have passed 
 through the outer court of the former and the holy place 
 of the latter, there is yet a veil to be lifted, and within it 
 there is a mercy-seat, and above it the still presence of the 
 Glory, filling the shrine with uncoruscating rays of lambent 
 light. God is Power. That has been the belief and the 
 dread of the world from of old. God is Righteousness. 
 That has been the faith of purer souls, and the half-stifled 
 witness of conscience. God is Love. That is the new 
 message which Christ has brought by something better than 
 saying so, even by living that gentle life of pity, and dying 
 that death of sacrifice, and telling us, for the interpretation 
 of both, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." 
 God has wisdom, power, eternal Being, and so on; but God 
 is Love. These other mighty things are but the " attri- 
 butes " of the love which is Himself. 
 
 All other means of knowing God are imperfect. Nature 
 gives but ambiguous responses, and while " the earth is full 
 of the goodness of the Lord," it is no less true that much 
 in it seems to speak of either malignant or thwarted bene- 
 ficient power, and might well be the support of dualism or 
 of atheism. Nature needs to be interpreted in the light of 
 Christ's revelation of God before it yields clear evidence 
 of the love of God. History and our own intuitions do 
 
74 SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
 little to supply the deficiency. These, and all other sources 
 apart from Christ, are like the fragmentary inscriptions in 
 some ruined temple, from which may be pieced together, by 
 much pains and at much risk of error, some more or less 
 incomplete and illegible records of the gods once enshrined 
 there. But the whole name is in Jesus Christ given for 
 reading by the least learned, in whom all the syllables 
 which were uttered at sundry times and divers manners, 
 and of which the broken echoes have been reverberating 
 confusedly in men's ears, are gathered into one majestic 
 full-toned Name. All other sources of knowledge of God 
 fail in certainty. They yield only assertions which may or 
 may not be true. At the best, we are relegated to perad- 
 ventures and guesses and theories if we turn away from 
 Jesus Christ. Men said that there was land away across 
 the Atlantic for centuries before Columbus went and brought 
 back its products. He discovers who proves. Christ has 
 not merely spoken to us beautiful and sacred things about 
 God, as saint, philosopher, or poet might do, but He has 
 shown us God ; and henceforward, to those who receive 
 Him, the Unknown Root of all being is not a hypothesis, 
 a great Perhaps, a dread or a hope, as the case may be, 
 but the most certain of all facts, of Whom and of whose love 
 we may be surer than we can be of aught besides but our 
 own being. 
 
 If Jesus Christ has not declared God's name to His 
 brethren, we have no knowledge of that name. It is 
 becoming more and more plain with every day that the 
 tendencies of thought now are bringing us full front with 
 this alternative — either Jesus Christ or none. Either He 
 has shown us God, and in His light we see light, or we are 
 left to grope in the dark. Either God is manifested in 
 
SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 75 
 
 Him, or there is no manifestation at all. Unless *' the only- 
 begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, hath 
 declared Him," no man hath seen God at any time. 
 Deism or Theism will not sustain itself against the corro- 
 sion of the acid of the modern spirit. Men may reject 
 Christ's revelation of God, and still say, " We think, " We 
 hope," or " We fear " ; but they cannot say, " We know," 
 unless they accept His " Verily, verily, I say unto you." 
 Either He has shown us God, or God is a mere sound 
 which tells little and assures of less. The educated mind 
 of England is confronted with this choice — either God 
 manifest in the flesh; or a God who is at the best "a 
 stream of tendency not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
 ness ; " or a great unknown somewhat, of whom, or rather 
 of which, we know only that it cannot be known. From 
 all these cheerless and nebulous thoughts we turn to 
 Jesus, and as we hear Him saying, " I will declare Thy 
 name unto My brethren," we see the sun again instead 
 of the doleful grey that veiled our sky, and regain a God 
 who loves and pities ; a God of whom we can be certain ; 
 a God who has an ear, a heart, and a hand ; a God whom 
 in Christ, and in Christ alone, we can know, and whom to 
 know is life eternal. 
 
 II. Jesus is Man that He may show to men the life of 
 devout trust. 
 
 " And again, I will put My trust in Him." This quota- 
 tion is from Isa. viii. The prophet, like the sufferer in the 
 former passage, speaks his own devout dependence on 
 God, apparently with no consciousness of any prophetic 
 reference in his words. Our writer sees in Isaiah a fore- 
 shadowing of Jesus. The whole prophetic order was a 
 prophecy of f/ie Prophet. This prophet, exalted as he 
 
7^ SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
 was to declare the will of God, at a crisis of the nation's 
 history, standing before his generation in the fulness of 
 inspiration, feels himself not absolved from the necessity 
 of devout dependence on God. That sense of dependence 
 and exercise of faith are part of the prophetic ideal. He 
 who declares God's name to his brethren must share with 
 his brethren the emotions of personal religion, which may 
 all be summed up in that one of trust or faith. 
 
 This, too, is true of Jesus. He is one of us, and His 
 brotherhood is shown in that He too lived the life which 
 He lived in the flesh by faith in God. He is not only 
 the Object, but also the Pattern, of faith. Many orthodox 
 believers in the Divinity of our Lord are too much afraid 
 of giving due weight to that aspect of His manhood. 
 There is much confusion in many minds, in which there 
 is no proper belief either in Christ's true manhood or in 
 His proper Divinity, but only in a strange amalgam of 
 both, in which each element neutralizes to some extent 
 the characteristics of the other. Hence men who do see 
 clearly the real humanity of Jesus and nothing more, will 
 shatter such perplexed belief. 
 
 Perfect manhood is dependent manhood. A reasonable 
 creature who does not live by faith is a monster arrogating 
 the prerogative of God, and therein assuming the likeness 
 of the devil. Christ's perfect manhood did not release Him 
 from, but bound Him to, the exercise of faith. Nor did 
 His true Deity make faith impossible to His manhood. 
 Christ's perfect manhood perfected His faith, and in some 
 aspects modified it. His trust had no relation to the 
 consciousness of sin, and no element either of repentance 
 or of longing for pardon. But it had relation to the 
 consciousness of need, and was in Him, as in us, the 
 
SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. T'J 
 
 condition of continual derivation of life and power from 
 the Father. Himself has said, " I live through the Father," 
 and the indwelling Divinity of the Son did not make 
 superfluous the influx of the Father's life into His manhood 
 by the channel of faith. His faith was unlike ours, in that 
 it was steady. Our hands tremble with the very pulses of 
 our blood, as we hold the telescope which shows us the 
 things not seen. His hand knew no tremor or perturbation 
 from throbbing flesh, and no mist dimmed His vision. Our 
 faith is often interrupted, and is like an intermittent spring. 
 His was a perennial flow. 
 
 Christ's perfect faith brought forth perfect fruits in His 
 life, issuing, as it did, in obedience which was perfect in purity 
 of motive, in gladness of submission, and in completeness of 
 the resulting deeds as well as in its continuity, through 
 His life. " I do always the things that please Him," was 
 His own summing up of His activity. Was that arrogant 
 and ignorant self-satisfaction, or the true utterance of a 
 manhood which, in its absolute non-participation in the 
 universal consciousness of defect and transgression, stands 
 unique, and demands the supposition of something more 
 than manhood in Him ? That perfect faith further issued 
 in unbroken communion. Like two metal plates of which 
 the surfaces are so true that when brought together they 
 adhere, the Father and the Son were inseparably united, in 
 the trustful and obedient consciousness of Jesus. 
 
 Thus our Lord not only comes among us to show us 
 God, but also to show us the true glory and strength of 
 man, and to let us see how Divine a thing our nature may 
 be made when it is knit to the Divine by faith. He 
 teaches us the possibilities of faith, both in itself and in its 
 ennobling effect on life. Out of His example we may take 
 
yS SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
 both shame and encouragement — shame when we measure 
 our poor, purbUnd, feeble, and interrupted faith against His, 
 and encouragement when we raise our hopes to the height 
 of the revelation in it of what ours may become. The 
 staff that He leaned on He has bequeathed to us, who still 
 travel the rough road where His footprints are yet visible. 
 The shield which He bore, unpierced and undinted by all 
 the fiery darts that struck it, He has left for us to brace on 
 our arms. The Captain and Perfecter of faith was once in 
 the arena where we wrestle and fight. He conquered 
 because He ever said, " I will put My trust in Him ; " and we 
 too shall be victors, if we look away from all besides, and 
 up to Him where He now sits enthroned, the object and 
 the pattern of our trust. " This is the victory that over- 
 cometh the world, even our faith." 
 
 HI. Jesus is Man that He may bring men into the family 
 of sons of God. 
 
 " Behold I and the children which God hath given Me." 
 These words are taken from the immediate context of the 
 last quotation. In their original application, the prophet 
 speaks of himself and of his family, and of the little group 
 of disciples who had been drawn to him, as being associated 
 with him as God's witnesses — the salt of the nation, which 
 but for them would perish in its rottenness. The writer of 
 the Epistle sees in that Israel within Israel a shadow of the 
 New Testament Church, and in the prophet's humility, 
 which united these little ones, who had received natural 
 life or spiritual impulse from him, with himself in his 
 prophetic office, some hint of the greater condescension of 
 Christ, who in like manner bestows life on those who trust 
 Him, and lifts them to a wondrous participation in His Son- 
 ship to God and in His work for men. We can scarcely 
 
SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 79 
 
 say that this quotation stands on the same level as the first 
 of the passages quoted. It gives an illustration rather than 
 an actual type or prophecy, and is analogy rather than 
 purposed foreshadowing. The change from " brethren," as 
 in the first quotation, to " children " is to be noticed. 
 Isaiah was parent, and " the children " were partly his family 
 and partly his followers. Christians receive spiritual life 
 from Christ, but God is the Father and Christ is the elder 
 Brother. "Children" does not refer to relationship in the 
 same sphere as " brethren " does. The latter means 
 kindred by a common manhood; the former, kindred by 
 possession of the same spiritual life. While Christ is Source 
 of spiritual life for us. He Himself lives through the Father ; 
 and since the paradox that the Father hath given Him to 
 have life in Himself is true, the more common representa- 
 tion of brotherhood with Him and this of sonship are 
 equally in accordance with the facts. We have, then, 
 presented in this final clause, the effect of the Incarnation as 
 being power to us to become sons of God. The three clauses 
 of our text give a regular progress of idea. Christ becomes 
 Man to show us God. In His humanity He lives, like us, 
 by faith. The result of his identifying Himself with us as 
 our Brother is that we are identified with Him as children 
 of God. The former clauses dealt with Christ's becoming like 
 us, this with our becoming like Him. 
 
 Our Lord, then, becomes Man that through Him men 
 may receive a new life which is His own. That impartation 
 of a new Divine life is the deepest truth and the richest 
 gift of the gospel. Do not be satisfied with any less 
 conception of what God gives us in the unspeakable gift 
 of His Son than this, that He therein gives to all who 
 accept Jesus in faith a spark of His own life, which will 
 
80 SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
 transform our deadness into quick and joyous sensibility 
 and activity worthy of its source. But for that gift of life 
 more than incarnation is needed. Jesus Christ can only 
 impart His life on condition of His death. The alabaster 
 box must be broken, though so precious, and though the 
 light of the pure spirit within shone lustrous and softened 
 through it, in order that the house may be filled with the 
 odour of the ointment. By His death He puts Death to 
 death, and takes away the hindrances to the bestowal of the 
 true life. 
 
 Again, He becomes Man that men may, by the com- 
 munication of His life, become sons of God. Since He is 
 the Son, those who receive life from Him enter thereby into 
 the relationship of sons. They are God's children, being 
 Christ's brethren. They are brought into a new unity, and 
 being members of one family are one by a sacreder oneness 
 than the possession of a common humanity. The brother- 
 hood of men will only become a reality to which men's 
 institutions and sentiments will correspond, when it rests on 
 the fatherhood^ of God, realized through faith in that elder 
 Brother, who grudges nothing to the prodigal sons, but 
 Himself has come to seek them and bring them back. 
 
 Further, Jesus is Man that men may become sharers in 
 His prerogatives and offices. As Isaiah gathered his children 
 and scholars into a family, and gave them to partake in his 
 prophetic office, and to be " for signs and wonders," so 
 Christ gathers us into marvellous oneness with Himself. 
 He becomes like us in our lowliness and flesh of sin, that 
 we may become like Him in His glory and perfection. The 
 identification of Jesus and His disciples is represented in 
 Scripture with extraordinary boldness, as being like the 
 ineffable union of the Father with the Son ; as being faintly 
 
SOME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 8 1 
 
 shadowed by the vital relation of head and body ; as being 
 
 closer and more inward than the union of husband and wife, 
 
 who are but "one flesh," while "he that is joined to the 
 
 Lord is one spirit." Accordingly, the same names are 
 
 applied to them and to Him. Is He the Light of the world ? 
 
 So are they. Is He the Anointed? So are they. The 
 
 Christian Church is the prolongation of the life of Christ on 
 
 earth, and while the great sacrifice]which He has made once 
 
 for all on the cross cannot be repeated, copied, or paralleled, 
 
 and needs no repetition, there are aspects even of His 
 
 sufferings in which His servants have to fill up their measure 
 
 for the sake of the brethren. The union is as of the graft 
 
 into the tree, with the difference that here it is not the good 
 
 graft which is inserted in the wild stock, but the wild slip 
 
 which is introduced into the good tree and partakes both of 
 
 its root and fatness. 
 
 Further, Christ is Man that He may present His family 
 
 at last to God. If we love and trust Him, He will hold us 
 
 in His strong and tender grasp, and never part from us till 
 
 He presents us at last faultless and joyful before the presence 
 
 of His and our Father — 
 
 " No wanderer lost, 
 A family in heaven." 
 
 The sum of the whole matter is this. There is but one 
 way of knowing God. All else is darkness and uncertainty, 
 shifting as cloud-rack, and unsubstantial as it. God has 
 spoken to us in the Son. If we see Christ, we see God. 
 There is but one noble, peaceful, worthy life for man — a hfe 
 of faith in Him, who is at once the Object and the Example 
 of our faith, and believing in whom we believe in the Father 
 also. There is but one fountain of life opened in this grave- 
 yard of a world, of whose waters whosoever drinks shall 
 
 G — 2 
 
82 SOiME REASONS WHY THE WORD BECAME FLESH. 
 
 " have in him a fountain of water springing up into ever- 
 lasting life." There is but one way of becoming sons of 
 God. Christ our Brother is the Revealer of God, the Pattern 
 of devotion, the Source and Upholder of life. Listen to Him 
 declaring the name of the Father. Put your trust in Him, 
 for you trust in God when you have faith in Christ. 
 Open your heart that His life may flow into your death. 
 Then His strong hand will hold you up, and at last He will 
 acknowledge you for His in the presence of the Father and 
 of the holy angels, and will point to you, saved, glorified, 
 and like Himself, with the triumphant words, "Behold I 
 and the children whom God hath given Me." 
 
ARMED RECREANTS. 
 
ARMED RECREANTS. 
 
 " The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned 
 back in the day of battle." — Ps. Ixxviii. 9, 
 
 The great tribe of Ephraim was the principal constituent 
 in the kingdom of Israel, and so important that the whole 
 kingdom is frequently in Scripture called by the name of 
 the tribe. Whether that be so here or no is difficult to 
 determine, because the historical reference of our text is 
 uncertain. It evidently points to some old, forgotten 
 battle, of which we know nothing. But the psalm, as a 
 whole, comes from the southern kingdom of Judah, and 
 culminates in the triumphant celebration of God's rejection 
 of the northern portion of the nation in favour of Judah, 
 in which He set His tabernacle. The dereliction of duty 
 expressed in my text seems to be suggested as one cause 
 of the withdrawal of the Divine favour. What was that 
 dereliction of duty ? It is difficult to settle whether " turned 
 back in the day of battle " means a cowardly flight from the 
 field, being beaten, or a slothful and selfish refusal to go 
 into the field and fight. Either idea would explain the 
 language. But the emphasis which is put upon the thorough 
 equipment of the soldiers, seems rather to favour the idea 
 that what is meant by " turning back in the day of battle " 
 
86 ARMED RECREANTS. 
 
 is that these men, thus equipped with weapons for the fight, 
 refused the fight for which they were equipped. And so, 
 I think, we have in the words lessons that we may well lay 
 to heart. 
 
 I. Note, then, first, the fact. 
 
 Now, the assertion here, when applied to us, is just 
 this — that every Christian, by virtue of his Christianity, is 
 sufiiciently armed for the great conflict. We all have the 
 gift of that Divine Spirit, who *' will teach our hands to 
 war and our fingers to fight." Jesus Christ imparts Himself 
 to every soul that trusts Him ; and " this is the victory that 
 overcometh the world, even our faith." Then, in addition 
 to the universal sufficient equipment which belongs to every 
 Christian soul, there are also included the variety of gifts. 
 In a great army such as Eastern despots used to gather, 
 before military science had reached its present diaboHcal 
 perfection, there were men armed in all sorts of fashions ; 
 the foremost ranks with spears and swords and bows, 
 perhaps, the hindmost with clubs and sticks ; but all with 
 something in their hands with which they could strike a 
 brave stroke for their king. And so all we Christian people, 
 in the variety of our gifts, have sufficient weapons for the 
 warfare, and sufficient tools for the tasks allotted to us. 
 There are " diversities of administrations, but it is the 
 same Lord ; " and there are differences of gifts, but it 
 is He that ministers to each and to all. 
 
 Then this is the fact that we, who, by virtue of our 
 being Christian people, are sufficiently armed for offensive 
 and defensive warfare and for victory, do yet to a terrible 
 extent shirk the fight, let opportunities slip away unused, 
 like so much water through slack hands, neglect to stir up 
 the gift that is in us, and "being armed, and carrying 
 
ARMED RECREANTS. 8/ 
 
 bows," look at the serried ranks in front of us, and slink 
 away out of the field, leaving who will to bear the brunt. 
 
 There are two phases of the warfare to which every 
 Christian soul is summoned : the one is the fight with our 
 own evil, which is not to be subdued merely by peaceful 
 culture, but needs stern antagonism ; and the other is the 
 effort to spread the name of Jesus Christ, which is to be 
 done not merely by the missionary work of proclamation, 
 but also by warring against the evils that infest and hag-ride 
 the world. These two branches of the one conflict are set 
 before all Christian men ; and all of us, more or less, have 
 to take to ourselves the indictments of this text of ours, 
 and to confess that, with our opportunities and equipments, 
 our gifts and capacities and possessions, we have turned 
 away in the day of battle. 
 
 Brother ! who is there amongst us that has worked and 
 fought up to the edge of his capacity ? There is no more 
 wasteful instrument, they tell us, than a steam-engine ; so 
 little motive power comes out for so much heat applied, and 
 such a quantity is lost. So it is with us. All the warmth 
 that radiates from Jesus Christ is poured into the icy 
 deadness of the reservoirs of our hearts, and the effect is 
 only to raise the temperature such a very little, and to get 
 two or three feeble strokes of the piston. We hang our 
 weapons on the wall, as they do in baronial mansions, for 
 ornament, instead of taking them down for use. None 
 of us can plead "not guilty" to the charge of neglected 
 opportunities and unused powers, and talents hid in a 
 napkin, and there are some of us to whom this charge of 
 my text comes with a very special weight of accusation 
 and condemnation. What a dead mass of idle people 
 there are in every Christian congregation and Church ! I 
 
88 ARMED RECREANTS. 
 
 do not mean merely those who do not take any part in 
 the organized activities of the community to which they 
 belong — that is for their conscience; but I mean that, 
 professing themselves Christian men and women, and living 
 in some feeble fashion as such, they yet do nothing with 
 the forces entrusted to them, and have hardly any growth 
 in godliness for themselves, and have seldom lifted a finger 
 to do anything for Christ among men. 
 
 Ah ! there are more non-effective soldiers in the roll- 
 call of Christ's army than in that of any volunteer corps 
 that was ever heard of; and at the musters there are a 
 dreadful number "absent without leave," whose names 
 might just as well be struck off the muster-roll altogether. 
 
 Another suggestion may be made here. The men that 
 are best armed are very often the first to run away. It is 
 by no means the fact that the rich man, for instance, is the 
 large giver. It is by no means the fact that the relatively 
 largely endowed man, with the greatest educational advan- 
 tages or intellectual power, is the vigorous worker in the 
 Church. It is generally the other way. The men that have 
 the bows — which was the mightest instrument of warfare 
 with Israel in those rude old days — are not the fighting- 
 men. 
 
 These are generally the poor people in the back ranks, 
 who have only sticks and knives, and make the best of 
 their poor weapons, because they are more loyal to the 
 King and Captain. Oh ! you rich men, if there are any 
 of you here ; you clever people ; you well-educated folk ; 
 you men and women with leisure; recognize that the 
 endowment that distinguishes you from others is God's way 
 of saying to you, " Go into My vineyard!" and let us al 
 try that the charge of my text shall be less applicable to us. 
 
ARMED RECREANTS. 89 
 
 II. Note, next, the black, deep guilt of this negative 
 crime. 
 
 We are all quite ready to admit, and forward to plead, 
 that inability absolves from duty. Do we ever remember, 
 or do we remember as quickly when tasks present them- 
 selves, the converse, that ability prescribes duty? You 
 cannot take the benefit of the excuse on the one hand 
 unless you are ready to accept the obligation on the other. 
 Power settles duty. "Can" and "ought" cover precisely 
 the same ground to an inch, both in regard of manner and 
 of measure. Ability settles the duty, and obligation is only 
 another way of saying capacity. So, then, brethren, we 
 come to this, that the negative refusal, so to speak, to go 
 into the fight is positive treason. For what lies in it? 
 What does a man who simply does not visit the imprisoned 
 Christ, or bring consolation to His comfortless servants, 
 or simply hides his talent in a napkin, and does not use 
 it, — what does he do in his not doing? He betrays his 
 Master, is disloyal to his King, is hurtful to himself and 
 cruel to his fellows. And what I wish to urge upon you 
 is this, that the negative fault that is charged in my text 
 is a positive crime, of as deep and dark a dye as any 
 Christian man can commit ; and more dangerous, because 
 more subtle, and less apparently perilous than many an act 
 which looks a great deal worse. Negligence is enough to 
 damn a man. In order to go down to the nethermost 
 depths, you do not need to do anything ; you have simply 
 7iot to do something, and down you will go by gravitation. 
 Although there may be nothing else to condemn a man at 
 Christ's tribunal, do not forget that the worst condemnation 
 that ever He spoke was directed in parable to a man who 
 had no positive faults at all, or at least none that are named. 
 
90 ARMED RECREANTS. 
 
 and none that come into condemnation. He could appa- 
 rently say and with perfect truth, as the Pharisee in the 
 parable said, "I am not as other men are, extortioners, 
 unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." He was a 
 member of the Church ; he filled his place ; nobody could 
 say a word against him. Jesus Christ had nothing to say 
 against him. All that was wrong with him was — what? 
 That he took his talent^ wrapped it up in a cloth, and 
 hid it away somewhere. I wonder if there are any pro- 
 fessing Christians here, blameless before the eyes of the 
 world, blameless even before the tribunal of their own 
 callous consciences, who live decent^ respectable, orderly, 
 law-abiding lives, up to the standard of Christian morality 
 in a great many respects ; only — only, " having bows, they 
 turn back in the day of battle." 
 
 in. Now let me say a word about the reasons for this 
 cruel, cowardly, and criminal dereliction of duty. 
 
 One of them is a want of honest study of ourselves in 
 reference to our duty. Did you ever spend a quiet half- 
 hour in thinking over what is really in your power, in order 
 to ascertain what you are bound to do ? Or do you take 
 your forms of Christian service for others, and of Christian 
 culture for yourselves, at haphazard, or by mere slavish 
 imitation of other people? I believe that there are few 
 parts of Christian culture more neglected by the average 
 Christian people of this generation than the old-fashioned 
 habit of self-examination ; not in order to find out reasons 
 for confidence — God forbid ! — nor in order to find out 
 reasons for diffidence either, but in order to find out paths 
 of work, and to try and ascertain, by an examination of 
 their own capacities, what are their duties. I believe that 
 if you would do that habitually, prayerfully, in the sight of 
 
ARMED RECREANTS. 9 1 
 
 God, your whole lives would be revolutionized, and your 
 "profiting would appear unto all men." 
 
 There are a great many of us who are never so modest 
 as when we are asked to work for Christ. It is then that 
 we find out, and are ready to say, " Oh, I cannot do this, 
 that, or the other thing." The discovery generally coincides 
 with the appeal of apparent duty. So it is rather suspicious, 
 is it not? 
 
 There is another very widely operative cause, namely, 
 absorbing attention to and interest in selfish and transi- 
 tory needs. Suppose these men of Ephraim had said, 
 " Bows ? Oh yes ! we've got bows. We use them principally 
 to shoot wild goats for our food. That is the employment 
 of them that we find most profitable." 
 
 That is what many of us do with our capacities. The 
 men are armed, and they are so busy, as sportsmen say, 
 " shooting for the pot," that they have no time for the fight. 
 A Christian who gives as much of his life's blood and his 
 heart's energy as most of us do to the mere provision of 
 external good has very little leisure to spare, and less 
 freshness of spirit to consecrate to Jesus Christ. And 
 although I know that the honest pursuit of daily bread is a 
 first duty for heads of families, and is part of the " seek- 
 ing of the kingdom of God and His righteousness," yet no 
 man who has to preach the gospel in a great commercial 
 centre can help seeing that to a far more than is needful 
 extent, in multitudes of cases, the cares of this world fill 
 men's souls, and leave no leisure for higher things. The 
 bows were not given you only to shoot rabbits with for 
 your own meals and your children's. They were given you 
 to fight the good fight of faith with them. 
 
 The foundation of all is, that if we loved Jesus Christ 
 
92 ARMED RECREANTS. 
 
 better, and were brought more closely into the fellowship of 
 His love, and more under the dominion of the quickening, 
 protective, and hallowing influences that flow from Him, 
 we should not be able to help casting ourselves into the 
 conflict which He has commanded, and in which He leads. 
 Oh ! brethren, if our faith were deeper, our love warmer, 
 our devotion more ardent, our consecration more complete, 
 our lives would be more befitting the lives of the soldiers 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 If these things be the causes of the criminal derelic- 
 tion of duty, the cures lie in the opposites of them. Espe- 
 cially we should seek to get and to keep nearer to Him for 
 whom, if we fight at all, we shall fight; and by whom, if we 
 conquer, we shall be victorious. 
 
 You remember the old story of the Scottish knight, with 
 the king's heart in a golden casket, who, beset by crowds of 
 dusky, turbaned believers, slung the precious casket into 
 the serried ranks of the enemy, and with the shout, " Lead 
 on, brave heart ; I follow thee ! " cast himself into the thickest 
 of the fight, and lost his life that he might save it. And 
 so, if we have Christ before us, we shall count no path too 
 perilous that leads us to Him, but rather, hearing Him say, 
 " If any man serve Me, let him follow Me," we shall walk 
 in His footsteps, and fight the good fight, sustained by His 
 example. And then, at the end, perhaps even we, all 
 unworthy as we are, stained and imperfect as our poor 
 service has been, may have the rapture of hearing from 
 His lips the generous sentence which He once spoke in 
 reference to an utterly useless gift, " She hath done what 
 she could." 
 
"AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
"AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
 " These all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, 
 received not the promise, God having provided some better thing con- 
 cerning us, that they without us should not be made perfect." — Heb. 
 xi. 39,40 (R.V.). 
 
 In their original application these words refer to the heroes 
 of the faith whom the grand roll-call of this chapter has 
 been enumerating. The whole company of Old Testament 
 believers is included in " these all; "the whole company 
 of New Testament believers in " us." The promise, the 
 fulfilment of which they did not receive, was that of the 
 Messiah and His salvation. They stretched out empty 
 hands to greet it from afar, as sailors the dimly descried 
 land, and possessed not that for which they longed, because 
 God, looking onward through the ages, had mercifully willed 
 that later generations should share in the blessing. The 
 "better thing" foreseen, as given to us New Testament 
 Christians, is the work of Christ, done at a point of time, 
 but sending its influences backwards and forwards to bless 
 all generations. The "perfecting" which it was not fitting 
 that they should reach without us, is that final complete- 
 ness in which all Christ's servants shall be united, and 
 of which, since Christ has come, the saints of the older 
 
96 "AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
 period have already received the earnest, as is manifest 
 from their being subsequently spoken of as spirits " made 
 perfect," and of which we too receive an earnest in another 
 fashion, in the gift of the sanctifying Spirit. 
 
 Such being the original bearing of these words, we may 
 venture to apply the principles contained in them in a 
 somewhat different direction, as setting forth truths as to 
 the relation of successive generations in the Church, all 
 of whom have received that " better thing," which, given 
 once for all in full completeness, is yet apprehended 
 gradually by both individuals and the community, and 
 blesses each generation of believing souls with new gifts 
 of knowledge and power, till all are united in the ultimate 
 perfection of the heavens. Our connection with the past, 
 our task in the present, our anticipations in the future, are 
 all taught in these great words. 
 
 I. We note, first, the bond uniting us with past genera- 
 tions. 
 
 " These all " had witness borne to them through their 
 faith. That faith was their common characteristic, supply- 
 ing a principle ofunity which counterwrought the differences 
 of era and circumstance, and made one company of persons 
 so unlike as Abel and Rahab, Enoch and Jephthah. If we 
 throw ourselves back to the condition of things at the date 
 of this Epistle, this chapter appears even more remarkable 
 than we usually consider it. The question then agitating 
 men's minds was. Is not this new faith in Christ Jesus the 
 destruction of Judaism ? and the writer of this Epistle 
 answers the question by the broad assertion that Christi- 
 anity is the real Judaism, and that the true line of succession 
 runs through the Church, and not through the synagogue. 
 Fancy a stiff Pharisee's face at hearing a Christian teacher 
 
"AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 97 
 
 claim Abraham, Jacob, and, most audaciously of all, 
 Moses for his side ! But why did he do so ? Because the 
 foundation of their lives was faith. Their faith was the 
 same. Their creeds were different, if not in essence, yet in 
 comprehensiveness. Their faith was the same exercise of 
 spirit as ours. Nay, the identity goes further still; for 
 though faith in this Epistle be generally meant chiefly in its 
 Old Testament sense of trust in God, and therefore in a 
 future which is the subject of Divine promises, rather than 
 in its New Testament specific sense of trust in Jesus, yet, 
 since Jesus is the Revealer of God, its objects are substan- 
 tially the same in both epochs of revelation. The secret of 
 the religious life of the ancient believers is laid bare in one 
 sentence concerning the father of them all : " Abraham 
 believed God, and He counted it to him for righteousness." 
 The object of their faith was God, as He spake at sundry 
 times and in divers manners. The object of the Christian 
 faith is God speaking in a Son, to listen to whom is to 
 hear God, to see whom is to see the Father, and who is, 
 as this Epistle elaborately proves, Priest and Temple and 
 Sacrifice. The writer will not allow any difference, except 
 that of development, between the call of prophet and 
 psalmist, " Trust ye in the Lord for ever," and the preaching 
 of apostles, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." There 
 has never been but one way to heaven, and faith has 
 always been one, however different in completeness its 
 creed. 
 
 It is but applying the same principle in a slightly 
 different direction to say that all in Christian ages who have 
 the same Spirit of faith are one. All who lay hold of the 
 same Christ with the same confidence are knit together. 
 But it must be the same Christ, the Divine-human Christ, 
 
 H — 2 
 
98 "AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
 the world's Redeemer ; and the faith must be so far the same 
 that it leans the whole weight of man's weakness on that 
 incarnate Strength, and hangs all his hopes on that one 
 Lord. If these things be the same, then no other differences, 
 however great, can break the real unity, though, alas ! they 
 have often been permitted to break the consciousness of it. 
 No matter in what age they lived, or what were their rela- 
 tions to one another, all holders of that faith, or rather all 
 who are held by it, are one. Jewish converts with chips 
 of the shell of Judaism still sticking to them, Egyptian 
 hermits, African bishops, Donatist and orthodox, Latin 
 monks, Lutheran professors, English Churchmen and Non- 
 conformists, half-civilized converts in missionary stations— 
 they all have the King's broad arrow on them. Faith is 
 deepest, and they who are one in it are fundamentally one, 
 however superficially separate. So, when we look back, 
 there should be more than apathetic or curious glances,, and 
 more than the interest of the historian or controversialist. 
 There should be the generous glow of kindred, and we 
 should feel as we would by the graves of our ancestors. We 
 should be aware of the tingle of the electric chain which 
 binds in one all who hold by the one Lord ; and however 
 some narrow theories may part brethren from us, we should 
 hold fast by the resolve that in heart at any rate we will 
 not be'parted from them, but in our sympathies strive to be 
 true to the animating conviction that faith in Jesus Christ, 
 the Saviour of the world, makes all its possessors one. 
 II. We note the better things foreseen for us. 
 There is no such advance within the limits of Chris- 
 tianity as separated it from the earlier revelation. The 
 further " light " which each age has a right to expect is to 
 " break forth from the Word " already given. " The Christ 
 
"AN INCREASING PURPOSE. 99 
 
 that is to be" is the Christ that was and is — "the same 
 yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." 
 
 He is " for ever," as being complete. As for truth, all 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Him, and may 
 be drawn from the deepening understanding of the principles 
 embodied in His life and death, in His resurrection and 
 reign. All theology, morality, sociology, lie in Him as gold 
 in ore, or diamonds in a matrix. As for powers, all that 
 can be needed or done for the regeneration of the world and 
 of single souls has been done and supplied in the work of 
 Christ. What remains is but the application of the power 
 which has been lodged in humanity. But while objective 
 revelation is complete, and God's treasuries contain no 
 "better thing" than the unspeakable gift once bestowed 
 and ever possessed, there is meant to be advancement in 
 understanding of the truth and in appropriation of the 
 power. Jesus is inexhaustible. No one man can absorb 
 Him all ; no one age can. A thousand mirrors set round 
 that central light will each receive its beam at its own angle, 
 and flash it back in its own fashion. So true progress will 
 consist in a fuller understanding and firmer grasp of Him 
 as Son of God and Redeemer of the world, and in a more 
 complete reception of His Spirit, manifested in more Christ- 
 like characters and more Christ-pleasing service. It does 
 not mean casting away the old, but finding new force in the 
 old commandment and new depth of meaning in the old 
 revelation. In this alphabet, alpha is omega, and both 
 Alpha and Omega are Christ. Each generation, then, has 
 to receive an incomplete work from its predecessors, and to 
 hand on an incomplete work, made a little less incomplete 
 by its faithful diligence, to its successors. The great 
 cathedral took centuries to rear, and each generation had 
 
100 "AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
 but to raise its walls a yard or two, and a man might be 
 glad if it were granted him to add some fair carving to a 
 single shaft, or to lay but a single stone. 
 
 But within these limits there is room for large advance, 
 and in periods of swift change like ours, it is hard to 
 estimate gains and losses as between the new and the old. 
 Temperament and age will affect our sympathies and make 
 our appreciation partial, and it is a piece of very pressing 
 Christian duty for each of us to see that we do not let the 
 " personal equation " so influence us as to make us either 
 the sanguine and exclusive eulogists of the new, or the 
 pessimistic and obstinate partisans of the old. We may not 
 be better than our fathers, but we have some better thing 
 than they had, for which we have to thank God. We have 
 gained inasmuch as theology has become more Christ- 
 centred. The Gospels are more to the Church of to-day 
 than they ever were before. There is less of mere doctrine, 
 and more of Jesus Clirist. His present activity as Lord of 
 the universe and King of men is increasingly set forth, and 
 the good news of God is being disembarrassed of misty 
 metaphysics which were once thought to be theology. The 
 interminable controversy between the bare conception of an 
 omnipotent will, and the equally crude one of a free human 
 will, has ceased to interest. The love of God stands where 
 for many generations the will of God was set — in the centre. 
 The progressive character of revelation has become an 
 article of belief, and has made the Bible a new book, 
 throbbing with life on all its pages. Christianity has become 
 more sympathetic, and begins to recognize its duty as to 
 social questions. The missionary task of the Church has 
 been accepted by all Churches which have any Hfe in them, 
 and of late years we have seen wonderful increase of 
 
"AN INCREASING PURPOSE." lOI 
 
 personal service by all sorts of Christian people. Nor 
 should we overlook, in our summing up of the good in this 
 our day, the sharpened interest in religious questions, so 
 characteristic of it, even though that interest is often hostile 
 to the claims of Christ. We should share the confidence of 
 the brave apostle, who counted " many adversaries " as the 
 sign of ''a great door and effectual," and a reason for 
 protracting his stay in so hopeful a field. 
 
 But every better may become a worse. If former 
 generations grasped too exclusively the conception of the 
 sovereign Divine will, they were made strong men thereby. 
 If their religion was too largely dogmatic theology, they 
 thereby won intense convictions, and a familiarity with pro- 
 found and ennobling thoughts, which saved life from trivi- 
 ality, and devotion from degenerating into mere emotion. 
 If their morality was somewhat rigid and stern, it kept them 
 grave and pure. If they were too much secluded from the 
 currents of literature, art, and science, their souls were 
 focussed on one thing, and the concentrated light burned. 
 Their narrowness meant depth, and if a stream is to be 
 wholesome, which it can only be by movement, depth is 
 better than a breadth which too often is possible only 
 through shallowness. 
 
 They had the defects of their quaUties. So have we. 
 There is danger that definite doctrinal belief and teaching 
 shall be diminished to the vanishing point, partly from the 
 infection of the unreasonable revolt against "theology," 
 and partly from the influence of evangelistic fervour, which 
 asks for " the simple gospel." There is danger of so pre- 
 senting the love of God as to neutralize His righteousness 
 and His wrath, thereby losing the mighty power for per- 
 suading men which lies in knowing the terror of the Lord. 
 
102 "AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
 There is danger of obscuring the characteristic of the gospel 
 as good news of redemption, and of the pulpit's becoming 
 a professor's desk or a social reformer's platform. We have 
 said that all social and ethical truth is involved in and to be 
 deduced from the facts of Christ's nature and mission, but 
 the first aspect of these facts is their power to bring forgive- 
 ness and peace to guilty consciences. Our wisdom and our 
 success will be to keep to the Divine order, and ever make 
 the first and prominent characteristic of the gospel, which 
 we believe and hold forth, its power to deliver the single 
 soul from its burden of sin, through faith in the sacrifice of 
 Jesus Christ, and then to set forth its power to furnish the 
 bases of all individual and social action, in the ethics that 
 are enwrapped in its glad tidings that " God so loved the 
 world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
 believeth in Him should not perish." We hear much now of 
 applied Christianity and of the social mission of the gospel. 
 Let us not forget that there must be individual Christianity 
 before there can be social, and that it must be possessed 
 before it can be applied, and that the personal faith of sinful 
 men in Jesus Christ's work as their personal Saviour is the 
 beginning of all. 
 
 There are dangers, too, arising from changed con- 
 .ditions of life. Wealth has brought secularity in its train. 
 Education has introduced famiHarity with un-Christian and 
 anti-Christian works of genius and learning. Public and 
 political life has opened a more attractive arena for those 
 who in other days would have found their work in more 
 distinctively religious service. The whirl of modern life in 
 which religious people are caught up has diminished habits 
 of quiet meditation and devotion. Even the awakened 
 sense of responsibihty for the neglected, and the consequent 
 
"AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 103 
 
 abundance of work and of workers, bring snares. On the 
 whole, it may well be questioned whether the modern types 
 of religion have not lost much that it would have been gain 
 to keep, and gained something that it would have been 
 better to have lost. Is not personal religion at a low ebb ? 
 Have we not lost much of the depth and unworldliness of 
 ancient piety ? Where are the ancient intense reahzation of 
 unseen realities, the ardour of communion, the continual 
 sense of a Divine presence, the atmosphere of separation 
 surrounding the Christian heart ? The change from old 
 days is not all progress. We need the exhortation, un- 
 welcome as it is in the ears of an epoch which is so proud 
 of its gains in mechanical arts and physical sciences that it 
 has made contempt of the past into an article of its creed, 
 " Remember the days of old, consider the years of many 
 generations : ask thy father, and he will show thee ; thine 
 elders, and they will tell thee." 
 
 Let us beware lest we let go the precious with the vile, 
 and, while we fancy ourselves far ahead of the " simple and 
 narrow " rehgion of the past, should really be casting away 
 the very essence of revealed Christianity, and with it the 
 depth and fervour of personal godliness, in grasping at the 
 impossible phantom of a religion in harmony with that kind 
 of " modern thought " which will not tolerate the super- 
 natural, nor bow before the Christ who is the Son of God 
 and the Redeemer of the world. If these two fundamental 
 truths are falteringly held, we shall soon have to cry, " Where 
 be all His miracles which our fathers told us of ? " But if to 
 the good things which past ages discovered in these, we add 
 the better things which God, by the march of events and the 
 evolution of new powers in the old gospel to deal with new 
 problems of this eager day so full of possibilities and 
 
104 "AN INCREASING TURPOSE." 
 
 promise even in its antagonisms, is bestowing on the 
 Churches, if they are wise and large-hearted enough to 
 welcome and accept them, then the former days will not be 
 better than these ; but this age too shall be able to reproduce 
 and transcend the triumphs of the past, and shall acknow- 
 ledge with thankful wonder, " As we have heard, so have 
 we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our 
 God." 
 
 III. The yet better things in reserve for our successors. 
 
 Naturally the progress is not to stop with us, but will 
 go on as long as there is a Church on earth. We, too, 
 have but partial Hght, and have partially appropriated the 
 gifts and discharged the duties given and enjoined in 
 the pardy understood gospel. How much has yet to be 
 done before all the truth as it is in Jesus is drawn out into 
 the consciousness of Christians and incorporated in their 
 lives ! How much more before it passes from the Church 
 to the world, and transforms it into a Church ! No doubt 
 future generations will look back on our insensibility to the 
 flagrant contradictions of the social ethics of Christianity, 
 which they will, no doubt, discern in our lives, with the 
 same kind of half-pitying, half-amused condemnation with 
 which we look back on "ages of faith," which were ages 
 of cruelty, ignorance, and persecution, or with which we 
 discover that the devout author of the great treatise on the 
 *' Freedom of the Will " was a devout slaveholder. Slavery 
 is now recognized as unchristian. War is beginning to be 
 so. What venerable institution which the Churches have 
 canonized will the keener insight of our successors expel 
 from the place of honour? The Church of the future 
 will have broken down all sects. Religion will one day 
 be harmonized with "science." Christian principles will 
 
"AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 105 
 
 be applied to social and national life with revolutionary 
 effects. Many of the evils are already like ringed trees 
 in Australian forests, forbidden at all events to expand, 
 and sure in time to die. There will be a fuller baptism 
 of the Spirit on the happier Church that is to be, resulting 
 in more consecrated lives, in more missionary and evange- 
 listic effort, and in a finer harmony of nature and a more 
 symmetrical and majestic development of capacities in the 
 individual and the community. Much destructive work 
 will have to be done before that consummation is reached. 
 Does any man suppose that the existing embodiments of 
 Christianity, the churches of this day, are meant to be 
 permanent ? 
 
 Let us not fear. There is a trembling for the ark of 
 God, which is the fitting issue of the trembler's conscious- 
 ness of his own unfaithful service. But the ark is safe, 
 whatever may become of the cart that bears it, or the oxen 
 that draw it. Out of the wild sea of tossing contraries of 
 opinion will rise a shape of fairer beauty than hitherto has 
 blessed the earth, like the moon swimming up serene and 
 large from some unquiet ocean. Not one grain of the true 
 wheat shall fall to the ground, though a million Satans had 
 the Churches to sift. There is an exaggerated conservatism 
 which does not love the old so much as it hates the new, 
 and which understands neither. The men who stoned 
 Stephen for the sake of Moses would have stoned Moses for 
 the sake of Abraham. The things that can be shaken will 
 be removed, that the things which cannot be shaken may 
 remain; as some great building, round whose sides have 
 clustered paltry sheds that hid its fair proportions with 
 their obtrusive meanness, stands out the fairer when they 
 are swept away. The central truth of the Divinity and 
 
I06 "AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
 sacrifice of the Christ of God is the imperishable core of 
 the Christian faith. These and the related necessarily 
 involved truths being preserved, everything is preserved ; 
 for these truths, wielded by the Spirit dwelling in the 
 Church, have power to weave their own vestures, and 
 will in every age mould the forms of Christian thought 
 and Ufe into such shapes as may best correspond to the 
 wants of each age, and most completely subserve the 
 increasing purpose which runs through all the ages, and 
 which each age is honoured by helping forward towards 
 realization. 
 
 IV. Our text necessarily includes the idea of the final 
 perfecting in which all are united. 
 
 The saints of the old and the believers of the new 
 covenant are not to be perfected apart. A blessed future 
 union is shadowed in the words, as it is required by the 
 whole scope of the considerations suggested to us by 
 them. 
 
 There is to be a perfect union of all in the common 
 joy of possession of the common gift. On the march 
 the pilgrims were widely separated, but in the camp their 
 tents will be near each other. All who follow the one 
 Shepherd shall be one flock. We can say nothing of the 
 manner of that wondrous future union, which baffles our 
 grasp when we think of the multitudes of whom the flock 
 is composed. But just as Dante saw Paradise under the 
 symbol of a great rose, whose many petals were yet one 
 flower, and just as astronomers tell us that the giant nebulae, 
 consisting of infinite numbers of suns, are yet each one 
 whole, though we cannot imagine what forces bind together 
 across such bewildering spaces, so all who in solitude here, 
 and amid misconceptions and diversities, have yet loved 
 
"AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 107 
 
 the one Lord and followed the one Shepherd, shall couch 
 round Him above, and in some mysterious but most 
 .blessed manner know that they "live together" and all 
 " together with Him," as the bond of their unity^ and 
 perhaps the medium of their intercourse. There will be 
 a united perfecting in the common possession of the whole 
 Christ. Even then star will differ from star, and we may 
 venture to believe that each will share his special refraction 
 of the central light with others, and the beams of the 
 variously coloured stars lovingly blend in perfect whiteness. 
 " Neither said any among them that any of the things 
 which he possessed was his own, but they had all things 
 common." 
 
 There will be united perfection in enjoying the results 
 of the long unfolding through the ages of the fulness of 
 Christ. Here one generation originates and another com- 
 pletes. It is given to few to see the triumph of the cause 
 for which they have fought, or the successful working of the 
 plans which they have inaugurated. "One soweth, and 
 another reapeth," is the law for earth. But the time comes 
 when all the workers shall share in the gladness of the 
 finished work ; when all who, separated by long ages, and 
 thick walls of mutual misconception and divergence in prac- 
 tice and opinion, have yet been unknowingly toiling towards 
 the same end, shall clasp inseparable hands in the great 
 result which contains all their work. Division of labour is 
 multiplication of joy and reward. The sower cannot go 
 into the waving harvest and pick out the ears which have 
 sprung from the seed which he sowed. The reaper cannot 
 go up to the stack and identify the sheaves that fell before 
 his sickle. The brook cannot recover its drops from the 
 mighty river or the all-enclosing ocean. But the one great 
 
I08 "AN INCREASING PURPOSE." 
 
 result shall gladden all who have ever helped to bring it, 
 and the sower who went forth in sadness shall come back, 
 bearing "the sheaves" that are his, though another reaped 
 them. 
 
 So, then, friends, let us set ourselves to our small tasks, 
 happy if we can push forward by the least space the boundary 
 of Christ's kingdom, or absorb and reflect a sparkle of His 
 light. Let us be reverent of those who have gone before, 
 and thankful for that which they have handed down to us. 
 Let us pass it on, mended and increased by our toil, to those 
 who shall catch up our dropped torches and complete our 
 unfinished work. And, above all, let us take as the end of 
 these thoughts that stirring exhortation to which our text 
 leads up : " Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about 
 with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every 
 weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let 
 us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking 
 unto Jesus," in whom every age finds its Leader, and all the 
 generations of His saints shall at last find their common 
 heaven of perfection. 
 
THE DEFENCE OF THE 
 DEFENCELESS. 
 
THE DEFENCE OF THE 
 DEFENCELESS. 
 
 "A land of unwalled villages . . . them that are at rest, that 
 dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither 
 bars nor gates." — EzEK. xxxviii. ii. 
 
 " Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls. . . . For I, 
 saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will 
 be the glory in the midst of her." — Zech. ii. 4, 5. 
 
 I HAVE taken these two passages together because the 
 language in the latter is evidently the echo of that in 
 the former. In both, we have the description of a com- 
 munity dwelling in a fashion very unusual, and very risky in 
 old times, namely, in the open country, without any walls, 
 bars, or gates to their cities. 
 
 But in the former passage these dwellers in the open are 
 represented as becoming, by reason of their defenceless and 
 fancied security, the prey of a cruel conqueror, who comes 
 to " take them for a spoil ; " whereas in the latter text, people 
 living in precisely the same fashion, without walls, bars, 
 or bolts, are represented as being in absolute security — 
 "because I, saith the Lord, will be a wall of fire round 
 about them, and a glory in the midst of them." That is 
 to say, there are two kinds of carelessness in the world, 
 two kinds of security and supposed safety; the one foolish 
 
112 THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. 
 
 and fatal, the other devout and good. We may be dwelling 
 like fools in unwalled cities, when all the land around us is 
 laid waste by enemies; or we may be dwelling like wise 
 men in unwalled cities, because there is a flaming barrier 
 between us and evil, through which nothing that harms can 
 ever come. 
 
 And these two conditions, to the eye of sense, will look 
 very much the same ; but, to an eye that sees deeper, will 
 be as different as heaven is from hell. We have brought 
 out, then, by the juxtaposition of these two passages, with 
 their identities and differences, the vivid contrast between 
 these two ways of life, and the tragic unlikeness of their 
 respective ends. 
 
 I. The first text presents an instance of a defenceless 
 security which is blind presumption. 
 
 In old times the first condition of dwelling safely was to 
 find either a site which was inaccessible, or to surround the 
 city mih. a wall which was impregnable. 
 
 All old cities are usually perched upon hill-tops, or 
 are surrounded by walls, which, in these " piping times 
 of peace," are generally being turned into boulevards and 
 gardens. Cities that trusted to anything except strong 
 natural or artificial fortifications, sooner or later became the 
 prey of the enemy. So the phrases of these texts, which are 
 found in Ezekiel, and caught up by Zechariah, appear once 
 or twice besides in Scripture, describing the condition of 
 exceptional communities — in one case far away in the 
 desert, and in another, hidden in an almost inacessible 
 corner between the spurs of the Lebanon, where the men 
 of Dan, as it is said, dwelt quiet and secure, far from any 
 men, and having no business with any. 
 
 Such defencelessness was unwise, augured rashness, and 
 
THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. II3 
 
 was likely to lead to disaster. Is the temper of security in 
 which so many of us live less absurd or dangerous ? 
 
 An extraordinary access of foolhardiness seems to 
 dominate the lives of the mass of men, which leads them to 
 neglect the plainest facts, and run risks that can only be 
 called tremendous. Every life has possible and certain 
 dangers, against which it is surely the part of common sense 
 to provide. A wise man will look ahead, and make sure, 
 before they come, that he has some protection against them. 
 Death will come ; changes and losses will come. The 
 strongest props will be taken away, the closest embrace 
 unclasped ; hearts will be torn apart, and the one which 
 bleeds to death be happier than its companion which 
 feebly throbs and keenly aches alone. Strength will decay, 
 disappointments will fret, and failures depress the powers. 
 Sickness, solitude, pecuniary losses, abortive schemes, 
 prodigal sons, and a thousand other ills, are either certain 
 or possible. These are the heavy-armed battalions of the 
 foe; and besides them, there are swarms of more lightly 
 accoutred skirmishers — like gnats from a bog — sure to 
 harass, and making up in numbers what they want in weight. 
 
 And, for the most part, calamities come suddenly. 
 Sometimes, indeed, there is the slow gathering of the livid 
 thunderclouds, and an awful brooding pause before the crash. 
 But generally evils come with little warning, however long 
 they stay. How many lives we have all known shattered 
 for all their remaining years by a bolt from the blue ! One 
 sudden blow, the unheralded work of a moment, puts an 
 apparent eternity between the moment before it and that 
 after it. No day dawns on earth without rising on some, 
 happy, careless, and secure, on whom it sets, desolate, ruined, 
 crushed ; and no man knows^ when he wakes in the morning, 
 
 I — 2 
 
114 TFIE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. 
 
 but that he may be rising to meet the blackest day of his 
 life ; unless, indeed, he may have already drunk the bitterest 
 draught that Fortune can compound, and so have a kind 
 of sad immunity, as having outlived the worst, and bought 
 security by the loss of his dearest treasure. We are like the 
 inhabitants of a winding glen, the curves of which hide the 
 enemy till he bursts, with fire and sword, on the undefended 
 huts. We know not what may be just ready to rush on us 
 at the next turning. 
 
 Seeing, then, that so many evils must come, and so many 
 may come, and that both the certain and the uncertain are 
 likely to break on us without warning, how unaccountable 
 and incredible, if it were not so universal, is the habit of 
 living quite comfortably without any defence against these ! 
 There is nothing stranger in all the strange vagaries and 
 irrationalities of men, than their way of blinding themselves 
 to unwelcome certainties and probabilities. Most men are 
 impatient of serious reflection on the realities of their 
 position, and the indisposition is fostered by the continual 
 demands of the moment, and the necessity for prompt 
 attention to them. We possess, and are foolish enough 
 to exercise, that strange power of ignoring disagreeable 
 things, however certain. It is difficult, too, to realize in 
 thought a condition unlike the present, or to make vivid 
 and operative on conduct the picture of one's self when 
 deprived of some familiar and long-enjoyed good. "To- 
 morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant," is 
 the natural language of unreflecting levity. It is not only the 
 " sluggard" who might profitably go to school to an ant-hill. 
 The improvident man, who will not believe that winter is 
 coming, while the land is yellow with autumn sheaves, may 
 well " consider her ways," and, like her, " gather food in 
 
THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. II5 
 
 harvest" for the certainly dark and cold days that are at 
 hand. Many of us are like the peasants who build their 
 houses and plant their vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius, 
 and live light-heartedly, ignoring the possible future, though 
 in the day the thin column of ominous smoke whitens a thin 
 strip of ominous blue sky, and in the night the dull red of 
 the lava tinges the sides of the cone. Some day there must 
 be, and any day there may be, an outburst, and grey ashes 
 will cover the vines, and earthquake crack the walls of the 
 houses, and ruin and haply death fall upon the careless 
 tenants. They run all risks, and manage somehow to 
 banish thoughts of the risks which they run. So do 
 thousands of us in regard to far graver perils, far more 
 certain to assail us and more disastrous in their destructive- 
 ness. Whole battalions of them threaten us all. We may 
 make " conditions of peace " with them, if by prudent fore- 
 sight and appropriate precautions we "send an embasage " 
 while they are at a distance ; for evils foreseen and prepared 
 for are robbed of much of their power to hurt, in losing 
 their power to surprise. We may even make them our 
 friends if we take them aright, which we are much more 
 likely to do if we have anticipated their coming and 
 rehearsed them beforehand. Come they will, and if they 
 find us unprepared, their blow will be stunning and may be 
 fatal. 
 
 Nor is it only the usual refusal to contemplate these 
 lowering certainties and possibilities beforehand which 
 leaves us defenceless. Another phase of favourite folly is 
 the conceit of our power to cope with the enemy when he 
 comes. " Unwalled villages" are tokens of an overweening 
 confidence in the strong arms of the villagers, which will be 
 rudely shattered some day. How can a man front his 
 
Il6 THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. 
 
 probable and certain future, and keep his sanity, if he have 
 not God for his Defence ? One is tempted to say that he 
 can only do it because he has not sense enough to go mad. 
 If we had clearly before us the reality, in its true colour, 
 form, magnitude, pressure, and duration, who of us could 
 venture to say, " Alone I can meet it and endure " ? But, 
 partly because we ignore the unwelcome, partly because our 
 power of forecast is mercifully limited, lest future bitterness 
 should poison present sweetness, partly because that too 
 feeble realization of impending disaster enables us to cheat 
 ourselves into believing that we can cope with it when it 
 falls, we go on, comfortably .enough, in our " unwalled 
 villages," without bars or bolts, and seldom think of the 
 sudden foe who may burst into the quiet seclusion of the 
 unguarded valley. Like the people of Dan, to whom one 
 of our texts refers, we may dwell " quiet and secure," in 
 the proper meaning of that word — without care — though, 
 alas ! to be without care is not to be without peril, and to 
 be "secure" is a very different thing from being "safe." 
 The original reads in our first text, '' them that are at rest, 
 that dwell securely," or confidently, and thereby expresses 
 not the reality of the villagers' condition, but the foolhardy 
 illusions of their imaginations, which were so soon to be 
 shattered by the invader bursting in " to take the spoil and 
 to take the prey." 
 
 So, sooner or later, comes the crash, as the context of 
 our first text tells us. The destroyer is attracted by the 
 defencelessness of the self-confident villagers, and they fall 
 an easy prey. The less the preparation and defence, the 
 more bitter the defeat and destruction. Surely, then, it is 
 madness to carry on full sail till a typhoon strikes the ship. 
 It is no time then to be hauling down sails and battening 
 
THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. II7 
 
 down hatches. If we do not prepare for the storm, and 
 prefer not to look at the sinking barometer, we shall 
 probably founder while we are trying to do what could have 
 been easily done before. When the enemy is blowing his 
 trumpets for the assault just outside the village, it is too late 
 to begin drawing plans of fortifications, or hurrying with 
 spades and barrows to fling up earthworks. It is no doubt 
 well not to be *' over-exquisite to cast the fashion of 
 uncertain evils," but not to look certain ones in the face, nor 
 have any notion beforehand of what we propose to do when 
 they come, as come they will, is simple insanity, and would 
 be recognized as such, if the bulk of men did not keep each 
 other in countenance in committing it. This is no world 
 for unwalled villages. Flesh is too sensitive and swords too 
 sharp to allow of wisely dwelling in such. The "quiet" of 
 the men who do so will be terribly disturbed. Their defence- 
 less security is blind presumption. 
 
 II. Our second text brings out, in strong contrast to the 
 former, a security which is externally like it, but really 
 opposed to it, namely, the security of quiet faith. 
 
 The two states of mind are apparently identical, just as 
 the ideal Jerusalem of Zechariah's vision looked exactly like 
 these other unwalled towns. The prophecy was not fulfilled 
 in the real, rebuilt Jerusalem ; but the prophet's eye saw the 
 ideal city, extending beyond the rocky peninsula, to which 
 the real one was confined, and stretching far on every side, 
 like some of the great cities which the exiles had learned to 
 know, containing wide pastures and much cattle, and looking 
 like an assemblage of villages, each among its fields and 
 groves. But the ideal Jerusalem is to have no walls as 
 Babylon had, and to be safer without than Babylon was 
 with these. One thing made the difference between the 
 
Il8 THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. 
 
 unwalled Jerusalem, in which dwelling is safe, and the 
 unwalled villages which seemed like it, and dwelling in 
 which is ruinous. The reason why Jerusalem has no walls 
 is, "For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire 
 round about, and I will be the glory in the midst of her." 
 A fiery bulwark around, a flaming glory within, belong to 
 her, and make other walls ludicrous superfluities. The 
 presence of Jehovah is at once defence and illumination. 
 That flaming fire is everywhere at once, around and 
 within. At one and the same time it burns threateningly 
 between the city and her foes, and shines lambently, a light 
 in every dwelling; "and the city hath no need of the sun, 
 neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God 
 did lighten it." Therefore it is safe to have no other walls. 
 
 Take the truth conveyed in this grand vision, laying 
 aside metaphor, and it is this : The very same temper which 
 without God is insanity, with God is simple duty, high 
 privilege, and the supremest wisdom. " Take no thought 
 for the morrow." He that has not God to take thought for 
 him, and puts that exhortation in practice, will wreck his 
 life. " I would have you without carefulness." A man 
 that has no " carefulness " for himself, and yet has not cast 
 all his anxiety upon God, who takes an interest in him and 
 undertakes for him, will soon have cause to repent his 
 recklessness. " To-morrow shall be as this day, and much 
 more abundant." The drunkard says that in the original 
 use of the phrase. The saint says it too. The former is 
 wrong and foolish for saying it ; the other says it, and is as 
 sure that it is so as that there is a God in heaven. 
 
 So the very same temper of careless security, which in a 
 godless man wrecks and ruins both heart and life, in a 
 Christian man is highest joy and clearest wisdom. For the 
 
THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. II9 
 
 all-important difference between the two is that round one 
 of them there is, and round the other there is not, the 
 strong defence of an Almighty protection ; and in the heart 
 of the man that thus has cast himself upon God, and not 
 in the other, there burns, beneficent and illuminating, the 
 unflickering flame of a Divine glory. 
 
 " A wall of fire round about us." Yes ! but if it is to 
 be outside us, to defend, it must first be within us, to 
 enlighten and make us glad. And if thus guarded by, and 
 thus filled with, the Divine light, which is at once purity 
 and gladness and knowledge, we cast all our care upon 
 Him, it is not folly to say, " I need no bulwarks, no towers 
 along the steep. The Lord is my Defence, because the 
 Holy One of Israel is my King." 
 
 Of course we are not to suppose that such words as 
 those of my second text forbid the use of common sense, 
 diligence, and eff"ort in providing for the inevitable future, 
 in so far as these can help to provide for it. Zechariah 
 prophesied that the Jerusalem which he saw should have no 
 walls. But Zechariah was one of the men who helped to 
 build the walls of the real Jerusalem, whose restoration was 
 largely owing to him. In like manner, we are not forbidden, 
 by the requirements of Christian resignation and faith in 
 God, to forsake any precautions which common prudence — 
 which, in fact, is His voice — suggests to us to take. But we 
 are forbidden to fancy that these are our defences and 
 security. Use them, and yet look beyond them to Him 
 who alone can give the blessing. 
 
 Now, all that I have been saying may be gathered into 
 two words. How foolish it is to front life and what it may 
 bring, and death and what it must bring, without God for 
 our Defence ! And how yet more foolish, if that be possible, 
 
I20 THE DEFENCE OF THE DEFENCELESS. 
 
 it is for those who have God for their Defence to be 
 troubled and careful about many things, or anything ! " We 
 have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls 
 and bulwarks." Let us keep behind them, and trust in no 
 arm of flesh, but in the unseen defence of the ever-present 
 God ; and let us seek first to have Him for a glory in the 
 midst of us, and then surely He will be a wall of fire round 
 about us. 
 
HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND 
 
 GROWS. 
 
HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND 
 
 GROWS. 
 
 " From whom the whole body, by joints and bands having nourish- 
 ment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of 
 God." — Col. ii. 19. 
 
 It may assist us to grasp more clearly the fulness of thought 
 in these words if we disentangle the main idea from the 
 subsidiary clauses gathered round it. That main thought 
 is that from Christ, the Head, the whole body increases. 
 Three things are contained therein — the source of the life, 
 the derived growth, the oneness of the body and the partici- 
 pation of all its parts in that growth. But this main thought 
 is enriched and arabesqued, as it were, in Paul's eager, 
 impetuous fashion, with pregnant additions. He seldom 
 draws a plain straight line, but surrounds it with many a 
 curve and involution, like the light, flower-like decorations 
 which encrust the firm framework of the upper spire of 
 Antwerp Cathedral. They hide but do not weaken the 
 direct upward spring of the rigid metal. His thoughts come 
 fast and press on one another, and the result seems, to 
 careless readers, confusion, when it is but the prodigality 
 of a fertile soil quickened by the warmth of Christ's love 
 into productiveness, which is richness, not riot. 
 
124 HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 
 
 The subsidiary clause describes more fully the twofold 
 manner of the growth of the body, and the office in relation 
 to that growth, of the subordinate parts. The body is a 
 whole, made up of parts differing, and therefore adapted 
 and harmonious. These have each their function in trans- 
 mitting the life. That life manifests itself in the double 
 effect of assimilating nourishment and effecting compaction. 
 There are, then, large truths involved in this representation, 
 as to the source of vitality, the various and harmonious 
 action of all the parts, the consequent growth of the whole, 
 and the individual union to Christ, which is the condition 
 of all individual and corporate increase which is healthy 
 and according to God. 
 
 I. We have to consider the Source of all the hfe of 
 the body. 
 
 According to the context, Christ is the Head, and, as 
 Paul puts it without being very careful about physiological 
 accuracy, therefore the source from which all parts of the 
 body partake of a common life. There are three symbols 
 chiefly employed to represent the union of Christ with His 
 Church, one of them being that used by Christ Himself, 
 and the others principally by Paul. One knows not which 
 presents that real and mysterious bond in the most striking 
 fashion. These are the emblems of the vine, the body, and 
 the marriage bond — the first drawn from the noblest example 
 of plant life as conceived by the old world ; the second, 
 from the noblest type of animal existence ; and the 
 third, from the deepest and closest union of human spirits. 
 The first expresses the calm, effortless, uninterrupted 
 process by which the sap rises in the branches and broadens 
 in the leaves, and loads the boughs with purple clusters. 
 The repetition of similar parts is the characteristic of vege- 
 
HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 12$ 
 
 table growth. The second brings into view more of the 
 notion of exercise and office on the part of the limbs of the 
 body, which do not grow without effort, and maybe diseased 
 and disabled. Variety of parts co-operating in one growing 
 whole is the characteristic of animal increase. The third 
 lifts our thoughts into the region of love and voluntary 
 choice, and reminds us of the original distinctness of the 
 persons who become one, because they love and therefore 
 wish to be one. When we look up into some great tree, 
 which to our northern eyes is a nobler type of vegetable 
 growth than a vine, and mark the clouds of foliage, and 
 measure how far it is from the firm bole and the deep roots 
 to the tiny leaflet at the topmost tip of the furthest branch, 
 we gain a wonderful image of the unity of life which per- 
 meates the Church. But still more expressive of the deep 
 mystery which is involved in the thought of the oneness of 
 Christ and His people is that other symbol of the body and 
 its head. The mystery is part of the felicity of the figure. 
 Who can explain the connection of soul and body, the 
 process by which the thrill of a nerve becomes emotion, and 
 the throb of a bit of grey matter in the skull a thought ? 
 Who can tell us what life is ? Verbal definitions are plenti- 
 ful enough, but they help little to the comprehension of the 
 thing. That commonest of facts, which makes dead matter 
 glow and move under spiritual stress, is still inexplicable 
 after anatomist's scalpels and pyschologist's abstractions 
 have done their best to lay bare its secret. Of man in his 
 complex nature we may reverently say, as we say of God, 
 in whose image he is made in regard to part of his being, 
 "clouds and darkness are round about him." We may 
 expect no less thick darkness to rest upon that mysterious 
 and blessed union which inakes the dust and ashes of sinful 
 
126 HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 
 
 humanity into a living body, glowing and moulded by the 
 spirit of life which was in Christ. We can get no deeper 
 down nor further back than His own claim, *' I am the 
 Life." 
 
 But that union, though mysterious, is most real. It is 
 not merely that Jesus Christ gives to those who trust and 
 obey Him certain gifts as from without, which gifts may be 
 possessed and retained in the absence of the Giver, but 
 that He is in His people individually and collectively, and 
 by His indwelling imparts life within. What keeps a body 
 from becoming a carcase ? The life. What keeps a Church 
 from becoming an offence and a stench? Christ, who is 
 the Head to the body. His Church, and more than the head 
 is to the physical body, since He is not only the sovereign 
 Member but the all-pervading Life, whose seat is not in this 
 gland or that part of the brain, bat everywhere, filling all, 
 and quickening each part of the mighty whole with the 
 capacity for reception and the power of action proper 
 to it. 
 
 n. Note the various and harmonious action of all the 
 parts. 
 
 We need not inquire particularly as to the physiological 
 doctrines underlying the metaphor of the text, or seek for 
 the precise equivalents in the social organization of the 
 Church for the "joints and bands" referred to. It is 
 enough for our purpose to note the twofold office which 
 these discharge. They receive from the Head and com- 
 municate to the body the double gifts of nutrition and 
 unity. They originate nothing, but all which they impart 
 they first derive from Him. However it may be in the 
 physical body, in the spiritual analogue which is the 
 community of Christian souls, each member has both the 
 
HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 1 2/ 
 
 direct communication of life and its gifts from the Head, 
 even Christ, and the indirect participation by means of 
 gifts received through the brotherly mediation of others. 
 He who has no personal access to the fountain of life, nor 
 ever draws at first hand from it, will profit little by anything 
 that men can say or do for him ; but, on the other hand, he 
 who does not value and use the gifts bestowed at first on 
 his brethren that they may filter to others, will be apt to 
 have a disproportioned development of the life, and often 
 to mistake his own imaginations for Christ's voice, and his 
 own inclinations for Christ's command. Exaggerated in- 
 dividualism on the one side, and dependence on the reports 
 of Christ's mind and will brought by others on the other, 
 are equally far from the type of character which corresponds 
 to the two facts in question, namely, that the life which 
 the Head imparts to His Church is imparted both by direct 
 contact of the individual soul with its Lord, and through 
 the medium of other members of the body. The direct 
 communication between Jesus and the soul does not make 
 the help of brethren superfluous. The agency of human 
 teachers and guides or of the collective body, docs not 
 supersede the need for the direct contact of each soul with 
 Christ. "Joints and bands" minister nutriment and 
 compaction, but only on condition that they are fed from 
 the true bread of life, partaken of by that faith which is the 
 personal contact of the single soul with the sole Redeemer, 
 and are knit to all who hold the Head, because they realize 
 their own union to Him by their own grasp. The linked 
 chain clasp hands and thus transmit the thrill from Him, but 
 each unit in the chain grasps the Lord's hand with his own, 
 or no tingle of influence will reach him through his fellows. 
 From Jesus comes all nourishment of the Divine life. 
 
128 HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 
 
 even when we think that we instruct or stimulate each 
 other. He is the Fountain of wisdom and good, and what- 
 ever may be the vessels which bring the water to our lips, 
 they are filled by Him and with Him. Just as the bread 
 which we earn by the sweat of our own brows, or receive by 
 the hospitality of others, comes in truth from a Divine hand 
 opened to supply the wants of every living thing, so, but in 
 still more wonderful all-pervasiveness of influence, does 
 Jesus feed all souls with the Bread which is Himself. 
 
 From Jesus comes the oneness of the body. Many 
 attempts have been made to secure that unity in other ways, 
 and to knit other bonds than His own all-present and com- 
 pacting life; but these are vain, substituting mechanical 
 and formal for real oneness. Agreement in opinions as 
 expressed by creeds, uniformity of polity as crystaUized in 
 organizations or forms of worship, and the like, are but poor 
 travesties of the one true principle of unity. The oneness 
 of the branches of the vine, in which the same life manifests 
 itself in wood and leaf and cluster, is not more unlike the 
 artificial oneness of a bundle of faggots held together by a 
 piece of string, than is the true oneness of the true Church 
 of Christ to that of these artificial agglomerations. The 
 one derived life is the only real bond of unity. In the old 
 covenant, the seven-branched candlestick represented the 
 formal unity of Israel, which was one by reason of mere 
 natural descent from one ancestor, and the rigid stiffness of 
 the symbol may be taken as expressive of the mechanical 
 and external nature of the bond which held the tribes 
 together. But the golden candlestick lies deep in the sea, 
 and in the new covenant order its place is taken by the 
 seven which the seer beheld, which are one in their seven- 
 foldness because the ascended Lord walks in the midst of 
 
HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 1 29 
 
 them. This is a better unity than that of old. The nearer, 
 then, we draw to Jesus Christ, the nearer we shall be to 
 one another. The radii of a circle are closer together the 
 closer they are to the centre, and if we who stand round 
 Jesus Christ travel each on our own direct line of progress 
 towards Him, we shall find ourselves in closer neigh- 
 bourhood with separated brethren journeying to the one 
 point to which widely removed and even opposite paths 
 converge. Life, and life alone, resists the chemical and 
 other forces which tend to disintegrate the physical body. 
 Death means resolving that into its elements. Union to 
 Jesus Christ is the bond and the power of true unity. 
 
 Since these issues of the Divine life are ministered by 
 the members, even while all derived from the Head, we 
 may lay to heart the manifold uses of fellowship and 
 the need which each has of others. The true value of 
 Church union is much obscured to-day, not only by the 
 many other forms of association which fill so large a place 
 in modern life, but also by the opposite and mutually pro- 
 ducing exaggerations of theories in which the Church is 
 everything and the individual nothing, and of those in 
 which individualism is so asserted that there is scant justice 
 done to the idea of the community. It is hard to keep the 
 true path between these extremes. But if we give due 
 weight to the two short clauses of this text, " from whom " 
 on the one hand, and *' by joints and bands " on the other, 
 we shall at least have the materials for a duly proportioned 
 estimate of the two modes of thought, which are com- 
 plementary and harmonious, though often pitted against 
 each other. 
 
 It is not good for man to be alone, and the religious 
 life which is developed in solitary reliance on the individual 
 
 K — 2 
 
I30 HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 
 
 perception of truth in Christ and reception of grace from 
 Him will usually be deformed by exaggeration of individual 
 peculiarities, and disproportioned prominence given to 
 fragments of truth. It is not good for man to be so lost 
 in the community as to distrust his own judgment, enlight- 
 ened by the Spirit of Christ, unless he has its sentences 
 endorsed by the body, or to depend only on other men 
 and on rites for spiritual supplies. ''From Christ" rele- 
 gates the soul in the last resort to Jesus as the Source of 
 all its life and nourishment; "by joints and bands" bids it 
 thankfully use brotherly mediation. 
 
 Since the laws of nourishment and growth are thus 
 stated, each member of the whole body has its work. In 
 these offices there is the greatest variety, just as there are 
 many organs with different functions in the physical body. 
 The same life is light in the eye, strength in the arm, colour 
 in the cheek, music on the tongue, swiftness in the foot. 
 " So also is Christ." The higher we rise in the scale of 
 being, the more the organs are differentiated, and each 
 confined to its special function. The lowest form of life is 
 but a sac, which can be turned inside out without harm, 
 and has no division of labour to separate portions of the 
 vmspecialized whole. So in society, the more it is developed, 
 the more are its members confined to ever narrower ranges 
 of work. In primitive communities, each man does all the 
 simple offices which any man does. The measure of 
 "civilization" is the limitation of function. So in the 
 Church, the effect of Christianity is to develop individual 
 character, and also to knit men more closely together. 
 The whole octave is needed. Diversity is the condition of 
 harmony. 
 
 Do we not, then, fail in tolerance ? We are all apt to 
 
HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. I3I 
 
 . require that all voices shall sing our part, forgetting that 
 the whole score must be sounded in order to represent the 
 great master's purpose. We fail in welcoming different 
 modes of work, different reproductions of the perfect life, 
 different reflections and refractions of the light. We fail in 
 courage to be ourselves, to see for ourselves and to act 
 accordingly, one after this manner and one after that. 
 White light is produced by the blending of all rays of dif- 
 ferent hue. It needs the combination of all types of excel- 
 lence and of all partial glimpses of truth to set forth the 
 fulness of that Christ who filleth all in all, and is more 
 than all. "iVll these worketh that one and the selfsp-iie 
 Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will." Let 
 us, then, take heed that we are good stewards of the mani- 
 fold grace of God, honouring its variety of operations in the 
 Christians most unlike ourselves, and cultivating the special 
 form of its gifts entrusted to us, neither trying to make 
 others like ourselves nor ourselves like others. 
 
 III. Note the consequent increase of the whole. 
 
 " The increase of God " is a solemn expression, which 
 may either refer to the increase of the Divine life in the 
 members of the body, or to the increase of the body from 
 without. Probably both ideas were in the apostle's mind. 
 He would have us discriminate between other sorts of 
 growth and that only wholesome kind, of which God is the 
 Authorj-which is imparted from Christ to those who, as the 
 previous verse describes, " hold the Head." 
 
 The increase of life in the Church, then, both as a 
 community and in its separate elements, depends on the 
 harmonious activity of all the parts. Not only does each 
 organ contribute to health and growth, but the condition 
 of its own health and growth is its activity. The disused 
 
132 now A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 
 
 member atrophies. The used faculty is strengthened. " To 
 him that hath shall be given." If a man in Christ desires 
 His own religious character to be deepened, let him 
 exercise the religion he has, and by it control his life. 
 Let it underlie his actions, and let him translate all his 
 creed into conduct, and set all his devout emotions to drive 
 the wheels of daily duty. Faith exercised will become more 
 clear and long-sighted, like the sailor's keen eyes, and will 
 see the land that is very far off, where others are aware of 
 nothing but cloud. The true way to increase any Christ-like 
 trait of character is to give it full scope in life. 
 
 The collective growth in the Divine life is also dependent 
 on the activity of all, and sadly hampered when some are 
 idle. A very insignificant member of the physical frame 
 can become of immense importance by failing to do its 
 work, and there are many professing Christians who are 
 able by the same method to stop much progress. The 
 dead weight of carelessness and non-participation in 
 Christian life and service which every Church has to carry 
 terribly retards its progress. A tiny clot of blood blocking 
 a thread-hke artery can kill a man. The inert masses of 
 nominal Christians have arrested the march of every out- 
 burst of quickened religious life, as we hear of armies of 
 caterpillars stopping trains. So much heat has to be 
 expended in converting ice into water, that there is little 
 left for making the water boil and give ste&m. We have 
 all more power to help than we often believe, and far more 
 to hinder than we think. 
 
 In like manner the increase of the Church from without 
 depends on its vitality within, and on the concurrent activity 
 of all its members. The great Lord of the household has 
 left " to every man his work," and no one can neglect his 
 
now A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 1 33 
 
 own task without damaging the well-being of the household. 
 Great gifts designate for great work, as it is called by 
 vulgar opinion ; but great or small are adjectives which have 
 no place in God's judgment of our service. The smallest 
 part of a machine is as needful as the largest for the 
 working of the machine. Ignorant spectators admire the 
 huge cranks and polished columns of steel which serve as 
 pistons; but take away a screw or two half an inch lung 
 and unseen, and crank and piston are motionless. The 
 feeble members, says Paul, are necessary. Great and 
 small, weak and strong, are man's adjectives, often wrongly 
 applied and always foreign to the Divine criterion of work, 
 which is not its magnitude, but its motive and its aim. 
 
 But the increase of the body from without depends not 
 only on the action of all its parts, but on their health and 
 vitality. Work for Christ is warranted and efficacious only 
 when it is a consequence of life in Christ. There must 
 first be life, and then the acts of life. And this sequence is 
 needful to be kept steadily in view in these busy days, 
 when so many voices urge to activity. It has come to be 
 the fashion to engage in some kind of Christian service, and, 
 amid all this bustle, there is danger that the inward com- 
 munion, without which all the outward service lacks its 
 consecration and its power, may be starved. The gal- 
 vanized twitchings of a corpse simulate life's movements in 
 a ghastly parody ; and much of the whipped-up activity of 
 Christian people, to which so many voices urge now, is 
 little better than these. 
 
 There is an increase which is not " the increase of 
 God." The vulgar worldly estimate of success invades the 
 Church, and popular preaching, crowds to listen, wealth, 
 social status, fine buildings, large contributions, vigorous 
 
134 HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GkOWS. 
 
 organizations and the like, which shopkeepers would count 
 prosperity in their business, are too often complacently 
 pointed to as signs of a healthy Church, But all these can 
 be attained without one tingle of the Divine life passing 
 through the carcase. Such increase, without the deepening 
 and spread of the quick vitality drawn from Jesus Christ, is 
 not healthy growth, but a diseased wen, which must be 
 excised before soundness returns, or a dropsical swelling 
 which must be reduced. The autumn meadows are full of 
 puff-balls which look white and solid, but have nothing 
 inside but an acrid powder. The difference between these 
 and the ripening fruit in the orchard, is the difference 
 between the increase with which too many Christian com- 
 munities are pleased, and that which is worthy of being 
 called "the increase of God." It is not hard to build 
 quickly and high, if we are content to take our mortar from 
 the slime-pits, and to make bricks a substitute for stones. 
 But, sooner or later, the lightning will fall on the tower, and 
 the speech of its builders be confounded, and their con- 
 federation scattered. The true building can only rise when 
 each stone is built on the one Foundation, and all are 
 held together by no outward bond, but by the Ufe that 
 pulsates through all the courses of the temple that rises 
 through the ages for an habitation of God. 
 
 IV. Note the personal hold of Jesus Christ which is the 
 condition of all life and growth. 
 
 Nourishment, unity, growth, all come from Him, and 
 are realized by us if we fulfil the plain condition stated in 
 the context, and are " holding the Head." In the vine the 
 sap rises naturally without effort on the part of tendril or 
 leaf, and the life circulates through the body by the automatic 
 and unconscious action of the organs. But these metaphors 
 
HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 1 35 
 
 fail in describing the requisites for the reception of life from 
 Jesus, and we have to make them out with the other symbol 
 of the bride and bridegroom, in which the union of persons 
 is ennobled, because it requires voluntary choice and con- 
 scious cleaving of the one to the other, in an effort which 
 itself is blessedness, and is the condition of tasting the 
 fullest sweetness of the purest joy of earth, which in its 
 purity mirrors the heaven bending above loving hearts. 
 
 What, then, is the effort which we should put forth in 
 order to secure the flow of Christ's life through ourselves 
 and our Churches? The apostle uses a vigorous word, 
 the force of which may be felt by reference to other 
 instances of its employment. It is used to describe the 
 action of the women after the Resurrection, when they 
 clasped Christ's feet with the grasp of love that had passed 
 in one astounding leap from the depth of misery to the 
 height of rapture. It is used to describe the tight clasp 
 with which the lame men held Peter and John, afraid that, 
 if he let go, he would fall. So it implies a firm, almost 
 desperate clutch, in which Love and Need, like two hands, 
 clasp Him and will not let Him go. Such tenacious grip 
 implies the adhesive energy of the whole nature — the mind 
 laying hold upon truth, the heart clinging to love, the 
 will submitting to authority. It will not be attained and 
 continued without effort. The fingers slacken unless their 
 grasp is continually renewed, and the appeals of sense and 
 of the necessary tasks concerned with the material present, 
 through they may be so answered and done as to bring us 
 nearer to our Lord, may also part us from Him. They 
 will certainly separate us from Him unless we have sacred 
 times in our lives when we shut out the world and renew 
 our hold of Him. The will has much to do with the firm- 
 
136 HOW A CHURCH LIVES AND GROWS. 
 
 ness of a Christian's liold of Christ. If we honestly and 
 earnestly resolve that, God helping us, we will not let the 
 world and the flesh loosen our grasp of Him, we shall 
 have a new criterion for the world's good and evil, a new 
 test for its treasures, a new insight into what is our true 
 felicity. That firm grasp is the indispensable condition of 
 drawing hfe from Him, and the measure of our adherence 
 to Jesus Christ is the measure of our vitality. 
 
 So all the manifold duties of the Christian Hfe come at 
 last to be summed up in this one, of keeping close to Jesus. 
 When Barnabas was sent down to see into the strange new 
 phenomenon of Gentiles who had received Christ, what did 
 he exhort these new converts, just rescued from heathenism, 
 and weak and ignorant, to do ? He did not bid them seek 
 to acquire fuller theological knowledge, or to secure an 
 orderly ministry of ordained men, or to organize them- 
 selves in proper fashion. All these things, if necessary, 
 would come, if what he did enjoin were done. " He ex- 
 horted them all that with purpose of heart they should 
 cleave unto the Lord." Do that, and all else will follow. 
 Hold fast by Him, Hke the limpet to the rock. He Him- 
 self has summed all our duty and pointed the path of safety 
 in His parting invitation, which offers all blessedness, and 
 enjoins a duty which love will find a sweet necessity and 
 purest joy : " Abide in Me, and I 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." 
 
WISE HASTE. 
 
WISE HASTE. 
 
 " See that ye hasten the matter."— 2 Chron. xxiv. 5. 
 
 The young King Joash, under the tutelage of the high 
 priest Jehoiada, made up his mind to attempt a Jewish 
 reformation. The first step was building, or at all events 
 repairing, the neglected and ruinous temple. The king 
 summoned the proper ecclesiastical authorities, by whose 
 default it had come into such a condition, and instructed 
 them immediately to take steps to gather in the necessary 
 contributions. He does not seem to have been quite sure 
 of his men— or, rather, he was tolerably sure of them ; for he 
 thought it necessary to stir them with this somewhat curt 
 and stringent exhortation : " See that you do not let the 
 grass grow under your feet ; but hasten the matter," namely, 
 the raising of funds. And w^e are told, notwithstanding, 
 " the Levites hastened it not." Church authorities do not 
 often much like laymen's interference with their prerogatives, 
 and are accustomed to take matters a great deal more easily 
 than the more impetuous outsiders, who are enthusiastic, 
 and seek to quicken official and professional indifference. 
 However, we need not say anything more about Joash and 
 his lazy Levites, but take these words as a very imperative 
 and earnest exhortation to ourselves. "See that ye hasten 
 the matter," whatever it be that God has entrusted to you. 
 
140 WISE HASTE. 
 
 I. There are two kinds of haste, the right and the 
 wrong. 
 
 Haste which comes from imperfectly appropriated con- 
 victions is wrong. The seed that sprung up quickly did so 
 because it had no depth of earth, and since it had not, it 
 could have no length of rcot, and because it had no length 
 of root it had nothing to sustain it in the scorching heat 
 and the sunshine, and it withered avfRy. There are many 
 earnest people who are in such a hurry to begin Christian 
 work — in these days of exhortation to good people to be 
 doing something for God — and who make it their occupation 
 so completely, that they have no time to look after the roots 
 of their Christian life, and consequently they bear no fruit 
 worth harvesting. The haste which seeks to abbreviate the 
 preparatory processes of meditation and communion with 
 God, and appropriation of His grace, is unblest haste. And, 
 in regard to its apparent results in matters of Christian 
 effort, the cynical saying in the Book of Proverbs will come 
 true, " An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the begin- 
 ning ; but the end thereof shall not be blessed." 
 
 There is another kind of haste, which is a counterfeit of 
 the true. Hurry pretends to be haste, but it is "half-sister 
 to delay." The quickness which vamps up superficial 
 work is not the conduct enjoined on us in the words of our 
 text. Time spent in digging deep foundations is not lost, 
 though there is nothing above ground to show for it after 
 many days' work. It looks rapid work to run up walls a 
 brick and a half thick, and with scarcely any depth of 
 foundation, but they will fall even more quickly than they 
 were built if a gale blow. 
 
 Another kind of spurious haste we are sometimes tempted 
 to fall into, namely, the haste which is sure to tire the 
 
WISE HASTE. 141 
 
 worker because he began too fast. In a long foot-race the 
 competitor who is " leading " at the first " lap " is very 
 seldom the winner. It is better to begin at such a pace as 
 we can keep up, than at such as takes away all our breath 
 before we have covered half the course. Look at the work- 
 men who have for ten hours a day to use trowel or 
 hammer. We think that we could do it twice as fast, and 
 quite as thoroughly. So perhaps we could for a few 
 minutes, but when the task has to be kept up all day long, 
 and six days a week, the amateur will find out how much 
 homely wisdom there is in the old proverb, ''The more 
 haste the less speed." Something that is " slow to begin, 
 and never ending," is the kind of haste to be recommended. 
 It is easy to light a fire with straw and brown paper, and it 
 will burn up cheerily and brightly long before coals begin 
 to smoke ; but which fire will last the longer? "See that 
 ye hasten the matter " by all means ; but see, too, that you 
 do not cut short the private, meditative, contemplative side 
 of your Christian life ; and see that you do not put in 
 superficial work ; and see that you calculate your strength 
 and your persistence wisely, and begin at the same rate as 
 that at which you mean to end. For when the apostle 
 said, " Ye did run well ; what did hinder you ? " it would 
 have been a true answer if some of the Galatians had replied, 
 " We ran so well at first that that hindered us from keeping 
 up the pace." 
 
 II. Consider some of the fields in which the enjoined 
 hastening of the matter is to be put in practice. 
 
 If I were now preaching to a congregation that was 
 not so largely composed of professedly Christian people, 
 of course the first thing that I should say would be, " See 
 that you hasten the matter of your own personal acceptance 
 
142 WISE HASTE. 
 
 of Jesus Christ as your Saviour." For that is the foundation 
 of all, and "now is the accepted time." There may be 
 some one to whom these words may come, some young 
 man or woman, or perhaps some older person, who has 
 been thinking and hesitating, and all but actually leaning 
 his or her whole trust upon Christ, and who yet has delayed 
 it. "See that _)'^ hasten the matter." 
 
 But, then, seeing that the most of you are, at all events, 
 nominal Christians, our exhortation is mainly to be directed 
 to the subsequent steps of the Christian life. 
 
 For instance, see that nothing comes between us and 
 the immediate abandonment of anything and everything that 
 we know or suspect to be wrong. There are things which 
 cannot be done quickly, and there are some other things 
 which can scarcely be done except quickly, and I doubt 
 whether any man ever plucked up strongly rooted sin or 
 fault unless he did it suddenly, and out and out, and by 
 one supreme effort of will, which loosened the fangs of the 
 roots. You cannot draw decayed teeth gradually. There 
 must be a wrench. Of another of the Jewish religious 
 reformations it is said, "The thing was done suddenly," 
 and therefore it was thoroughly done, and so " all the people 
 rejoiced." When the serpent came out of the heat, " and 
 fastened upon Paul's hand," suppose he had said to 
 himself, " Now, this thing must be done gradually. We 
 must get rid of this evil by degrees ; it will not do to hurry 
 the process too much." You cannot take a serpent off a 
 man's arm at the rate of a coil a day, but must shake it into 
 the fire as quickly as possible, with one vigorous motion 
 at once. The beginning of all true conquest of our evil is 
 an instantaneous resolve to cast it from us, followed by 
 immediate, persistent, and unresting action. I know it 
 
WISE HASTE. 143 
 
 will be a lifelong work. The embankments meant to bring 
 the erratic course of the river into bounds and to keep in 
 the floods may be swept away and have to be rebuilt. 
 They will certainly want constant watching and frequent 
 strengthening. But the longer and more difficult the work, 
 the more reason for the ringing summons, " See that ye 
 hasten the matter ; " since, if a thing is wrong, it cannot be 
 given up too soon, and delay only gives the evil more 
 power. 
 
 In like manner, whenever we know a thing to be duty, 
 do not let us delay a second in the performance of it. One 
 of the old psalms says, " I made haste, and delayed not, 
 but made haste to keep Thy commandments." That is the 
 language of all true obedience. When I was a boy, in the 
 days when parental discipline was rather more of a reality 
 than it is now, my father used to say, " My boy, not 
 obedience only, but prompt obedience." Most of us, no 
 doubt, have found out by this time that when a disagreeable 
 duty has to be performed it is best to get it over at once. 
 The more nauseous the draught, the more need there is to 
 gulp it down quickly. No unwelcome tasks become any the 
 less unwelcome by putting them off till to-morrow. It is 
 only when they are behind us and done, that we begin to 
 find that there is a sweetness to be tasted afterwards, and 
 that the remembrance of unwelcome duties unhesitatingly 
 done is welcome and pleasant. Accomplished, they are full 
 of blessing, and there is a smile on their faces as they leave 
 us. Undone, they stand threatening and disturbing our 
 tranquillity, and hindering our communion with God. If 
 there be lying before you, my brother, any bit of work from 
 which you shrink, go straight up to it and do it at once. 
 The only way to get rid of it is to do it. In the quaint 
 
144 WISE HASTE. 
 
 dialect of the early Quakers, '-'to be clear of my burden" 
 meant — to fulfil some hard task which God was felt to have 
 enjoined ; and there is no other escape from the pressure 
 of disagreeable duties than this, "See that ye hasten the 
 matter." 
 
 I might apply this exhortation of our text in another 
 direction, upon which, however, I do not need to dwell. 
 The original application of the saying was to one form of 
 what has too much monopolized the title of " work for God," 
 namely, efforts directed specially to the diffusion of religion. 
 If men dawdled at their business in the way in which they 
 dawdle at doing their Christian work, they would all be in 
 the bankruptcy court before the year was out. And unless 
 we form a vigorous determination that we shall be like our 
 Master, " unhasting " in the false sense of the word, " but 
 unresting," and promptly filling every moment — and how 
 elastic the moments are ! — with the service which the moment 
 requires, we shall pass out of life with very little done. 
 "See that ye hasten the matter." 
 
 III. Let me for a moment, before I close, suggest one 
 or two of the plain reasons why such haste as I have been 
 trying to describe is absolutely necessary for us. 
 
 There is so much to do, so much in perfecting our own 
 Christian character and in winning the world for our King. 
 "There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed." 
 How little we have accomplished in all these years ! How 
 little liker our Master we are than we were five, ten, twenty 
 years ago ! How little victory we have won over our be- 
 setting weaknesses ! How few of the habits that we long ago 
 knew to be deleterious we have got rid of! So much waits 
 and craves to be done. If we are slothful, the devil and 
 his angels are not. Why does the fire-engine go through 
 
WISE HASTE. 145 
 
 crowded streets at such a pace ? Because the fire is burning 
 at such a pace. Therefore they have to whip the horses 
 into a gallop, and everything has to get out of the way. 
 *'See that ye hasten the matter/' for the other side hastens 
 its matters with a vengeance — so much remains to be done, 
 and the evil is growing so fast ; every moment's delay adds 
 so enormously to its power, and the issues at stake are so 
 tremendous, and the Christian life which is slothful and 
 does the work of the Lord negligently is so vapid, un- 
 interesting, and wearisome to the liver, as compared with 
 one crowded to the very margin with work, and that has 
 no time for unwholesome brooding and melancholy retro- 
 spection, because it feels that so much is crying out to be 
 done. 
 
 I need not remind you of the example of Jesus Christ 
 and His toilsome life. At the beginning of that Gospel 
 which is practically the Gospel of the Servant, the words 
 seem to hurry one after another, telling the swift succession 
 of toils and services in which He engaged, and how, like 
 beneficent flame, He leaped from one cold, dark misery to 
 another, bringing to each swift radiance and unwonted fire 
 of joy. Observe those " immediatelys " and "forthwiths" 
 and " straight ways " that crowd the first pages of Mark's 
 Gospel. And let us take the lesson taught us by Him 
 who Himself recognized that, even in His great work, there 
 was need for diligence, and who Himself has told us that 
 He shared with us one of the motives for hastening the 
 matter which we might have thought could not belong to 
 Him, when He said, " I must work the works of Him that 
 sent Me while it is called day : the night cometh, when no 
 man can work." The night for Thee, blessed Lord ! Is 
 there any time for Thee, O Thou Omnipotent Christ, when 
 
 L — 2 
 
146 WISE HASTE. 
 
 Thou canst not work? Yes, a time when, the conditions 
 and limitations and associations of earth having ceased, it 
 was no longer possible for Him to manifest the human 
 sympathy which He delighted to give, nor to alleviate by 
 the touch of His hand the ills that He was willing to bear. 
 Even that thought, that so little time is left us to do so 
 great a work, Jesus Christ shared with us, and we ought to 
 seek to share it with Him. 
 
 There is an old curse in the Book against "the men 
 that did the work of the Lord negligently," under the lash 
 of which a great many Christian people to-day will come. 
 And thete is an old description in one of the prophets of 
 " the doers of evil," which may well be held up as a rebuke 
 and an exhortation to us in our poor attempts at doing 
 good. We are told that they did it " with both hands 
 earnestly." Some of us are contented to do good with one 
 hand slackly, and some of us will not touch the burden 
 ''with the tip of one of our fingers." Shame, that in a 
 universe in which unresting motion is the law of its being, 
 and over which reigns a Father who worketh hitherto, and a 
 I-ord who works with His servants, and in which the powers 
 of evil are ever active^ the laggards should be those who 
 profess to have been bought with an inestimable price, and 
 to be bound by the strongest and tenderest motives to a 
 service which they discharge so ill ! Be not slothful, but 
 work while it is called day, and "see that ye hasten the 
 matter." 
 
PHASES OF FAITH. 
 
PHASES OF FAITH. 
 
 "Many believed on Him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which 
 believed on Him . . ." — ^John viii. 30, 31. 
 
 The Revised Version accurately represents the original 
 by varying the expression in these two clauses, retaining 
 " believed on Him " in the former, and substituting the 
 simple " believed Him " in the latter. The variation in two 
 contiguous clauses can scarcely be accidental in so careful 
 a writer as the Apostle John. And the reason and meaning 
 of it are obvious enough on the face of the narrative. His 
 purpose is to distinguish between more and less perfect 
 acceptance of Jesus Christ. The more perfect is the 
 former, " they believed on Him ; " the less perfect is the 
 latter, the simple acceptance of His word on His claim of 
 Messiahship, which is stigmatized as shallow, and proved 
 to be transient by the context. 
 
 They were " Jews " which believed, and they continued 
 to be so whilst they were beheving. Now, the word " Jew " 
 in this Gospel always connotes antagonism to Jesus Christ ; 
 and as for these persons, how slight and unreliable their 
 adhesion to the Lord is, comes out in the course of the 
 next few verses ; and by the end of the chapter they are 
 taking up stones to stone Him. 
 
150 PHASES OF FAITH. 
 
 So John would show us that there is a kind of accept- 
 ance which may be real, and may be the basis of something 
 much better hereafter, but which, if it does not grow, rots 
 and disappears; and he would draw a broad line of dis- 
 tinction between that and the other mental act, far deeper, 
 more wholesome, more lasting, and vital, which he desig- 
 nates as ''believing on Him." I take these words, then, 
 for consideration, not so much to make them the basis of my 
 observations, as because they afford me a starting-point for the 
 consideration of the various phases of the act of believing ; 
 its blessings and its nature, and its relation to its objects, 
 which are expressed in the New Testament by the various 
 connections and constructions of this word. 
 
 Now, the facts with which I wish to deal may be very 
 briefly stated. There are three ways in which the New 
 Testam.ent represents the act of believing, and its relation 
 to its Object, Christ. These three are, first, the simple one 
 which appears in the text as " believed Him." Then there 
 is a second, which appears in two forms, slightly different, 
 but which, for our purpose, may be treated as substantially 
 the same — "believing on Him." And then there is a 
 third, which, literally and accurately translated, is, " believing 
 unto" or "into Him." That phrase is John's favourite 
 one, and rather unfortunately, though perhaps necessarily, 
 it has been generally rendered by our translators by the less 
 forcible " believing in," which gives the idea of repose, but 
 does not give the idea of motion towards. These three, 
 then, I think, do set forth, if we will ponder them, very 
 large lessons as to the essence of this act of beHeving, as 
 to the Object upon which it fastens, and as to the blessings 
 which flow from it, which it will be worth our while to 
 consider now. I may cast the whole into the shape 
 
PHASES OF FAITH. 151 
 
 of three exhortations — beUeve Him, believ6 on Him, 
 behove unto Him. 
 
 I. First, then, beheve Christ. 
 
 We accept a man's words when we trust the man. 
 Even if behef, or faith, is represented in the New Testa- 
 ment, as it very rarely is, as having for its object the words 
 of revelation, behind that acceptance of the words lies 
 confidence in the person speaking. And the beginning 
 of all true Christian faith has in it, not merely the intel- 
 lectual acceptance of certain propositions as true, but a 
 confidence in the veracity of Him by whom they are made 
 known to us — even Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 I do not need to insist upon that at any length here 
 — it would take me away from my present purpose ; but 
 what I do wish to emphasize is, that from the very starting- 
 point, the smallest germ of the most rudimentary and 
 imperfect faith which knits a soul to Jesus Christ has 
 Him for its Object, and is thus distinguished from the 
 mere acceptance of truths which, on other grounds than 
 the authority of the speaker, may legitimately commend 
 themselves to a man. 
 
 Then believe Him. Now, that breaks up into two 
 thoughts, which are all that I intend to deduce from it now, 
 although many more might be suggested. The one is 
 this, that the least and the lowest that Jesus Christ asks 
 from us is the entire and unhesitating acceptance of His 
 utterances as final, conclusive, and absolutely true. What- 
 ever more Jesus Christ may be. He is, by His life and words, 
 the Communicator of Divine and certain truth. He is a 
 Teacher, though He is a great deal more. And whatever 
 more Christian faith may be — and it is a great deal more — 
 it requires, at least, the frank and full recognition of the 
 
152 PHASES OF FAITH. 
 
 authority of every word that comes from His Hps. A 
 Christianity without a creed is a dream. Bones without 
 flesh are very dry, no doubt ; but what about flesh without 
 bones ? An inert, shapeless mass. You will never have a 
 vigorous and true Christian life if it is to be moulded accord- 
 ing to the fantastic dream of these latter days, which tells us 
 that we may take Jesus as the Guide of our conduct and 
 need not mind about what He says to us. " Believe Me " is 
 His requirement. The words of His mouth, and the revela- 
 tions which He has made in the sweetness of His life, and 
 in all the graciousness of His dealings, are the very un- 
 veiling to man of absolute and final and certain truth. 
 
 But, then, on the other hand, let us remember that, 
 while all this is most clear and distinct in the teaching of 
 Scripture, it carries us but a very short way. We find, in 
 the instance from which we take our starting-point in this 
 sermon, the broad distinction drawn, and practically 
 illustrated in the conduct of the persons concerned, 
 between the simple acceptance of what Christ says, and 
 a true faith that clings to Him for evermore. And the 
 same kind of disparagement of the lower process of 
 merely accepting His word is found more than once in 
 connection with the same phrases. We find, for instance, 
 the two which are connected in our texts used in a previous 
 conversation between our Lord and His antagonists. When 
 He says to them, " This is the work of God, that ye believe 
 on Him whom He hath sent," they reply, dragging down 
 His claim to a lower level, " What sign showest Thou, that 
 we may see, and believe Thee ? " He demanded belief on 
 Himself; they answer, "We are ready to believe you, on 
 condition that we see something that may make the render- 
 ing of our belief a logical necessity for us." 
 
PHASES OF FAITH, 153 
 
 Let us lay to heart the rudimentary and incomplete 
 character of a faith which simply accepts the teaching of 
 Jesus Christ, and does no more. The notion that orthodoxy 
 is Christianity, that a man who does not contradict the 
 teaching of the New Testament is thereby a Christian, 
 is a very old and very perilous and very widespread one. 
 There are plenty of us who have no better claim to be 
 called Christians than this, that we never denied any- 
 thing that Jesus Christ said, though we are not sufficiently 
 interested in it, I was going to say, even to deny it. 
 This rudimentary faith, which contents itself with the 
 acceptance of the truth revealed, hardens into mere formal- 
 ism, or liquefies into mere careless indifference as to the 
 very truth that it professes to believe. There is nothing 
 more impotent than creeds which lie dormant in our 
 brains, and have no influence upon our lives. I wonder 
 how many readers of this sermon, who fancy themselves 
 good Christians, do with their creed as the Japanese used 
 to do with their emperor — keep him in a palace behind 
 bamboo screens, and never let him do anything, whilst all 
 the reality of power was possessed by another man, who 
 did not profess to be a king at all. Do you think you are 
 Christians because you would sign thirty-nine or three 
 hundred and ninety articles of Christianity, if they were 
 offered to you, while there is not one of them that influences 
 either your thinking or your conduct ? Do not let us have 
 these " sluggish kings," with a mayor of the palace to do 
 the real government, but set on the throne of your hearts 
 the principles of your religion, and see to it that all your 
 convictions be translated into practice, and all your prac- 
 tice be informed by your convictions. 
 
 This belief in a set of dogmas, on the authority of Jesus 
 
154 PHASES OF FAITH. 
 
 Christ, about which dogmas we do not care a rush, and 
 which make no difference upon our Uves, is the faith that 
 James has so many hard things to say about ; and he 
 ventures upon a parallel that I should not like to venture 
 on unless I were made bold by his example : " Thou be- 
 lievest, O vain man; thou doest well : the devils also believe, 
 and" — better than you, in that their belief does something 
 for them they — " believe, and tremble." But what shall we 
 say about a man who professes himself a disciple, and 
 neither trembles, nor thrills, nor hopes, nor dreads, nor 
 desires, nor does any single thing because of his creed ? 
 Believe Jesus, but do not stop there. 
 
 II. Believe on Christ. 
 
 Now, as I have remarked already, and as many of you 
 know, there is a slightly different, twofold form of this 
 phrase in Scripture. I need not trouble you with the 
 minute distinction between the one and the other. Both 
 forms coincide in the important point on which I wish to 
 touch. That representation of believing on Christ carries 
 us away at once from the mere act of acceptance of His 
 word on His authority to the far more manifestly voluntary, 
 moral, and personal act of reliance upon Him. The meta- 
 phor is expanded in various ways in Scripture, and instead 
 of offering any thoughts of my own about it, I would simply 
 ask attention to three of the forms in which it is set forth 
 in the Old and in the New Testaments. 
 
 The first of them, and the one which we may regard as 
 governing the others, is that in the book of the Prophet 
 Isaiah, " Behold, I lay in Zion a Stone, a sure Foundation ; " 
 and, as the Apostle Peter comments, " He that believeth on 
 Him shall not be confounded." There the figure presented 
 is the superposition of the building upon its Foundation, the 
 
PHASES OF FAITH. 155 
 
 rest of the soul, and the rearing of ^the life on the basis of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 How much that metaphor says to us about Him, as 
 the Foundation, in all the aspects in which we can apply 
 that term ! He is the Basis of our hope, the Guarantee 
 of our security, the Foundation-stone of our beliefs, the very 
 Ground on which our whole life reposes, the Source of our 
 tranquillity, the Pledge of our peace. All that I think, feel, 
 desire, wish, and do, ought to be rested upon that dear Lord, 
 and builded there by simple faith. By patient persist- 
 ence of effort rearing up the fabric of my life firmly upon 
 Him, and grafting every stone of it — if I might so use the 
 metaphor — into the bedding-stone, which is Christ, I shall 
 be strong, peaceful, and pure. 
 
 The storm comes, the waters rise, the winds howl, the 
 hail and the rain "sweep away the refuge of lies," and the 
 dwellers in these frail and foundationless houses are hurry- 
 ing in wild confusion from one peak to another, before the 
 steadily rising tide. But he that builds on that Foundation 
 "shall not make haste," as Isaiah has it; shall not need to 
 hurry to shift his quarters before the flood overtake him ; 
 shall look out serene upon all the hurtling fury of the 
 wild storm, and the rise of the sullen waters. So, reliance 
 on Christ, and the honest making of Him the Basis, not of 
 our hopes only, but of our thinkings and of our doings, and 
 of our whole being, is the secret of security, and the pledge 
 of peace. 
 
 Then there is another form of the same phrase, " believ- 
 ing on," in which is suggested not so much the figure of 
 building upon a foundation, as of some feeble man resting 
 upon a strong stay, or clinging to an outstretched and 
 mighty arm. The same metaphor is implied in the word 
 
156 PHASES OF FAITH. 
 
 "reliance." We lean upon Christ when, forsaking all other 
 props, and realizing His sufficiency and sweetness, we rest 
 the whole weight of our weariness and all the impotence of 
 our weakness upon His strong and unwearied arm, and so 
 are saved. All other stays are like that one to which the 
 prophet compares the King of Egypt — the papyrus reed in 
 the Nile stream, on which, if a man leans, it will break into 
 splinters which will go into his flesh, and make a poisoned 
 wound. But if we lean on Christ, we lean on a brazen wall 
 and an iron pillar, and anything is possible sooner than that 
 that stay shall give. 
 
 There is still another form of the metaphor, in which 
 neither building upon a foundation, nor leaning upon a 
 support which is thought of as below what rests upon it, is 
 suggested, but rather the hanging upon something firm and 
 secure which is above what hangs from it. The same 
 picture is suggested by our word " dependence." " As a nail 
 fastened in a sure place," said one of the prophets, " on 
 Him shall hang all the glory of His Father's house." 
 
 *' Hangs my helpless soul on Thee," 
 
 The rope lowered over the clifls supports the adventurous 
 bird-nester in safety above the murmuring sea. They 
 who clasp Christ's hand outstretched from above, may 
 swing over the deepest, most vacuous abyss, and fear 
 no fall. 
 
 So, brother, build on Christ, rely on Him, depend on 
 Him, and it shall not be in vain. But if you will not build 
 on the sure Foundation, do not wonder if the rotten one gives 
 way. If you will not lean on the strong Stay, complain not 
 when the weak one crumbles to dust beneath your weight. 
 And if you choose to swing over the profound depth at the 
 
PHASES OF FAITH. 15/ 
 
 end of a piece of pack-thread, instead of holding on by an 
 adamantine chain wrapped round God's throne, you must 
 be prepared for its breaking and your being smashed to 
 pieces below. 
 
 III. The last exhortation that comes out of this com- 
 parative study of these phrases is — Believe into Christ. 
 
 That is a very pregnant and remarkable expression, and 
 it can scarcely, as you see, be rendered into our language 
 without a certain harshness ; but still it is worth while to face 
 the harshness for the sake of getting the double signification 
 that is involved in it. For when we speak of " believing 
 iinto or into Him," we suggest two things, both of which, 
 apparently, were in the minds of the writers of the New 
 Testament. One is motion towards, and the other is repose 
 in, that dear Lord. 
 
 So, then, true Christian faith is the flight of the soul 
 towards Christ. Therein is one of the special blessednesses 
 of the Christian life, that it has for its object and aim 
 absolutely infinite and unattainable completeness and glory, 
 so that unwearied freshness, inexhaustible buoyancy, end- 
 less progress, are the dower of every spirit that truly trusts 
 in Christ. All other aims and objects are limited, transient, 
 and will be left behind. Every other landmark will sink 
 beneath the horizon, where so many of our landmarks have 
 sunk already, and where they will all disappear when the 
 last moment comes. But we may have, and if we are 
 Christian people we shall have, borne before us, sufficiently 
 certain of being reached to make our efforts hopeful and 
 confident, sufficiently certain of never being reached to 
 make our efforts blessed with endless aspirations, the great 
 light and love of that dear Lord, to yearn after whom is 
 better than to possess all besides, and following hard after 
 
158 PHASES OF FAITH. 
 
 whom, even in the very motion there is rest, and in the 
 search there is finding. Religion is the flight of the soul, 
 the aspiration of the whole man after the unattainable Attain- 
 able — "that I may know Him, and be found in Him." 
 
 Oh, how such thoughts ought to shame us who call 
 ourselves Christians ! Growth, progress, getting nearer to 
 Christ, yearning ever with a great desire after Him ! — do not 
 the words seem irony when applied to most of us ? Think 
 of the average type of sluggish contentment with present 
 attainments that marks Christian people ; tortoises in their 
 crawling rather than eagles in their flight. 
 
 And let us take our portion of shame, and remember 
 that the faith which believes Him, and that which believes 
 on Him, both need to be crowned and perfected by that 
 which believes towards Him ; of which the motto is, 
 "Forgetting the things that are behind, I reach forward to 
 the things that are before." 
 
 But there is another side to this last phase of faith. 
 That true believing towards or unto Christ is the rest of 
 the soul in Him. By faith that deep and most real union 
 of the believing soul with Jesus Christ is effected which 
 may be fitly described as our entrance into and abode in 
 Him. The believer is as if incorporated into Him in whom 
 he believes. Indeed, the apostle ventures to use a more 
 startling expression than incorporation when he says that 
 "he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit." If by faith 
 we press towards, by faith we shall be in Christ. Faith is 
 at once motion and rest, search and finding, desire and 
 fruition. The felicity of this last form of speech is its 
 expression of both these ideas, which are united in fact as 
 in word. A rare construction of the verb to believe, with 
 the simple preposition ///, coincides with this part of the 
 
PHASES OF FAITH. 159 
 
 meaning oi believing unto or into, and need not be separately 
 considered. 
 
 With this understanding of its meaning, we see how 
 natural is John's preference for this construction. For 
 surely, if he has anything to tell us, it is that the true 
 Christian life is a life enclosed, as it were, in Jesus Christ. 
 Nor need I remind you how Paul, though he starts from a 
 different point of view, yet coincides with John in this 
 teaching. For, to him, to be " in Christ " is the sum of all 
 blessedness, righteousness, peace, and power. As in an 
 atmosphere, we may dwell in Him. He may be the strong 
 Habitation to which we may continually resort. One of the 
 Old Testament words for trusting means taking refuge, 
 and such a thought is naturally suggested by this New 
 Testament form of expression. " I flee unto Thee to hide 
 me." In that Fortress we dwell secure. 
 
 To be in Jesus, wedded to Him by the conjunction 
 of will and desire, wedded to Him in the oneness of a 
 believing spirit and in the obedience of a Ufe, to be thus 
 in Christ is the crown and climax of faith, and the con- 
 dition of all perfection. To be in Christ is life ; to be out 
 of Him is death. In Him we have redemption ; in Him we 
 have wisdom, truth, peace, righteousness, hope, confidence. 
 To be in Him is to be in heaven. We enter by faith. 
 Faith is not the acceptance merely of His Word, but is the 
 reliance of the soul on Him, the flight of the soul towards 
 Him, the dwelling of the soul in Him. " Come, My people, 
 into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee . . . until 
 the indignation be overpast." 
 
TENT AND ALTAR. 
 
 M — 2 
 
TENT AND ALTAR. 
 
 " Abram pitched his tent, . . . and there he builded an altar.'' — 
 Gen. xii. 8. 
 
 Entering the land of Canaan from the north, as an 
 emigrant from Harran would do, Abram and his company 
 passed southwards, through the possessions of a civilized 
 and settled race, till they reached the fertile country round 
 Shechem, and there, in a place the luxuriant beauty of 
 which would excite the wanderer's desire to call it his, as 
 much as the tokens on every side of an established order 
 would shake his confidence in his power to win it, the 
 Divine promise was renewed. God chooses the right scenes 
 and times for His appearances, and the very fact that Abram 
 again received the promise of the land at the " terebinth of 
 Moreh" implies that he then specially needed it. The 
 reason for the gracious repetition is told us : " And the 
 Canaanite was then in the land." Abram was brought into 
 contact with the fierce strength which had to be met and 
 crushed before the land could be his, and no doubt he 
 quailed at the prospect. Therefore "the Lord appeared 
 unto Abram, and said. Unto thy seed will I give the land." 
 The reiterated assurance and the distant date assigned for 
 its fulfilment would strengthen his faith and lessen his fears. 
 Therefore with lightened heart, absolved from conflict with 
 
164 TENT AND ALTAR. 
 
 the Canaanites by the terms of the promise designating 
 future generations as the conquerors, he reared an altar 
 beside the sacred tree, to " Jehovah who appeared unto 
 him." Quickened faith thankfully commemorates God's 
 tender fostering of tremulous faith. 
 
 But Shechem was not to be his goal. In this first 
 journey Abram seems to intend a survey of the whole 
 territory, and therefore he passed on still southwards towards 
 what was afterwards to be called Bethel, and to bear a name 
 sacred and dear in all centuries and countries. On the 
 stony hillside to the east of Bethel, a stern contrast to the 
 smiling fertility of Shechem, he stayed for a time, a tem- 
 porary encampment there being probably less likely to be 
 disputed than in the better place, and there once more he 
 pitched his tent, and once more built an altar — whether for 
 sacrifice, or like that at his previous station, simply as a 
 memorial and declaration of his faith, does not appear. 
 It is sufficient for our purpose to note the combination of 
 these two acts, by which Abram inaugurated his first halt- 
 ing-place for any lengthened stay, and as it were took 
 possession of the land for himself and for Jehovah. The 
 combination may suggest some useful lessons. 
 
 I. All life should blend the earthly and the heavenly. 
 As soon as the tent is pitched, and the necessities of 
 bodily life in some measure satisfied, the next thing is the 
 altar of God. 
 
 Religion is meant to run through the whole of common 
 life, not to be crowded and clotted in corners, leaving the 
 rest of our days empty and unblessed by it. It is all very 
 well to pray and praise and preach on Sundays; what 
 about Saturday and Monday? It is all very well to call 
 ourselves Christians, and to profess to belong to some 
 
TENT AND ALTAR. 165 
 
 ecclesiastical body or other ; what about the daily life ? Is 
 my prayer only a matter of fixed times and perhaps formal 
 words, or are all my days devotion ? Abram twined these 
 two aspects of life in most intimate union, not only in this 
 instance but habitually ; and therein is an example for us, 
 who are so far in advance of him as regards the objects 
 of our religion. He did not know nearly as much about 
 God as we do ; he was not as favoured with teaching of 
 the lofty and spiritual side of religion as we are. His faith 
 was very imperfect as far as its contents are concerned, 
 but it had a penetrative and diffusive power in it ; perhaps 
 to some extent owing to its less transcendent and lofty 
 character, which may well shame us, who, with a fuller 
 knowledge, and the material for a loftier and more all- 
 pervasive faith, manage to make such ghastly separation 
 between the two halves of the devout life, and keep the 
 heavenly and its principles so widely apart from the earthly 
 and its practices. There is no sanity, nor sweetness, 
 nor nobleness in earthly life, unless through and through, 
 as light is flashed into some dull, dense, watery cloud, it be 
 shot and interpenetrated with the light of the mighty and 
 ennobling principles that flow from the gospel ; and no 
 religion is worth being called so, nor has it any pith of 
 reality in it, unless it has force to press into the most close- 
 grained solids and most minute trifles, and into them to 
 infuse its hallowing and ennobling spirit, working like lifting 
 leaven on lumpish dough. By the side of every tent in 
 which we dwell we should raise an altar to God. 
 
 To-day, millenniums after this man lived, and amongst 
 people who do not share either his faith or ours, namely, 
 the Mohammedan populations of the East, the name for 
 Abraham is "the Friend" — the Fiiend of God, that is. 
 
1 66 TENT AND ALTAR. 
 
 The expression is borrowed from Scripture. Whatever 
 besides that name may express, this at all events is 
 distinctly set forth by it, that the salient characteristics of 
 the patriarch's life was close and habitual intimacy with 
 God. That communion did not interfere with the whole- 
 hearted discharge of common duties, the simple enjoyment 
 of common blessings, or the heroic readiness to rise to 
 difficult heights of uncommon sacrifice or effort. Like all 
 the Old Testament ''saints," he came " eating and drink- 
 ing," marrying and giving in marriage, buying and selling 
 and getting gain, and practising in all a wholesome religion 
 which sought for no solitary, supercilious, or selfish sepa- 
 rateness, but 
 
 "Travelled on life's common way 
 In cheerful godliness," 
 
 filling all occupations and circumstances with a new spirit, 
 and so finding in things of smallest worth materials for a 
 sacrifice more costly than much fine gold. The fact that 
 he and all these Old Testament " saints " were " men of 
 affairs," and not recluses, and that their religion did not 
 impel them to a new mode of life, but to a new way of 
 doing the old things, may well teach us how close the 
 blending of our religious and our common life should be. 
 
 But not only do Abraham and the men of faith, who 
 lived by faith before it had a historical Christ to grasp, read 
 us this lesson. The worshippers of less pure gods do so 
 too. It is not often that one finds a Christian as little 
 ashamed of practising his religion and presenting his 
 worship before unsympathizing onlookers as Turks or 
 idolaters are. True, the very fact that to them religion is 
 so much a matter of external observance makes it easier for 
 them to practise the external observances in any circum- 
 
TENT AND ALTAR. 167 
 
 stances. But, making all allowance for that, I venture to 
 say that there is not a false faith on the face of the earth 
 which does not preach a lesson and administer a rebuke to 
 us Christian people in regard of this one matter, the way in 
 which religion and life — a very poor religion, no doubt, and 
 a very imperfect life — touch each other at all points ; and 
 because they thus touch, are really one. 
 
 Does our better religion so interpenetrate our lives? 
 Have we this same experience of making every act worship, 
 and of carrying the motives and strengths drawn from our 
 gospel into every corner of our daily life. Go back in 
 thought over to-day. Can you lay your finger upon a single 
 act that you have done to-day which would have been done 
 differently if you had not believed that Jesus Christ loved 
 you ? Can you lay your finger upon any inclination that 
 you have abstained from gratifying because you knew that 
 loyalty to Him forbade your yielding ? I hope the answer is 
 not in the negative universally; but oh, how faint, how 
 few, scattered through our lives like points, or as stars 
 thinly sown in the vacant regions of the sky, are the 
 moments and the acts in which we have lived like Christians, 
 and carried our religion into our shops and commerce, and 
 our studies and our daily duties ! 
 
 Let us take the pattern from Abram, who " pitched his 
 tent, and builded an altar." 
 
 H. Another lesson may be suggested. The family should 
 be a Church. 
 
 In the old patriarchal times, before priesthood had 
 attained to any development, the head of the family or 
 clan, the patriarch, was priest. Abram built the altar, and 
 Abram offered the sacrifice. In the New Testament we 
 find a number — relatively a large number, and absolutely 
 
l68 TENT AND ALTAR. 
 
 a considerable number, of households — all the members of 
 which were Christians. We read, too, of more than one 
 instance in the house of some Christian, which expression 
 must at least include the idea of domestic worship and 
 household religion, whether other Christians than those of 
 the family belonged to that " Church " or no. In days not 
 beyond the memories — the thankful memories — of some of 
 us, it was understood that a Christian household was one in 
 which the father and mother taught their children. It was 
 considered, too, that it meant a household in which there 
 was family worship. 
 
 Now although I do not know, and therefore will not 
 take upon me to affirm, I do shrewdly suspect and therefore 
 venture to ask, whether these things are so now as generally 
 as they once were. I wonder how many households in our 
 class of Christian society there are, in which father and 
 mother think that they have done their duty to their 
 children when they have sent them to the Sunday school, 
 while they are idle at home ; and I wonder how many there 
 are who never open their lips in their houses, as leading 
 the devotions of their family. Suffer the word of exhorta- 
 tion. I believe that one reason why some aspects of 
 religious life are dark and unpromising at this time is the 
 decay of family religion as expressed in family worship and 
 family instruction in the households of professing Christians. 
 " Abram pitched his tent, and builded an altar." 
 
 III. Further, let me ask you to note here the illustra- 
 tion of another thought. God should get our best. 
 
 A black camel's-hair tent, with a couple of sticks at either 
 end of it to hold up the roof, and a peg or two in the 
 ground to fasten the ropes to, was neither expensive nor 
 difficult to set up. Ten minutes would do that. That was 
 
TENT AND ALTAR. 169 
 
 quite enough for Abram. But he gathered the great stones 
 of the place together, and built the altar. As for the tent, it 
 is sufficient that it be pitched anywhere, with little expendi- 
 ture of time and trouble. It is to come down to-morrow, 
 and while it stands its purpose is only the shelter of myself. 
 But as for the altar, with toil and strain of muscle, and many 
 a deep breath and drop of sweat from the brow, roll the 
 great stones together, and lay them true, without trace of 
 tool on them, but majestic in simplicity, to witness to the 
 massive solidity of the faith which reared them, and the 
 unadorned, uncontaminated purity of the revelation of the 
 God for whose worship they were laid. 
 
 " Lo ! I dwell within cedar, and the ark of the Lord 
 dwells within curtains," said David. Whose fault was that, 
 David ? Did you not build the house of cedar before you 
 thought about a house for God ? We do the opposite of 
 what Abram did. Most of us build our own houses, and, 
 if there are any stones left over, are good enough to spare 
 them for building some altar to God. We give Him the 
 superfluities. We allow Him the second place, thinking 
 about self first ; and so losing all the blessings of thorough 
 consecration and noble surrender, and of yielding up what 
 is highest to Him who is the Highest. Give God the best 
 — that is the minimum of duty ; for unless we do, we give 
 Him nothing. 
 
 " Give all thou canst ! 
 High Heaven rejects the lore 
 Of nicely calculated less or more." 
 
 Do not think that anything of your own is worthy of as 
 sedulous care, as generous bestowment, as intense effort, as 
 thorough devotion, as is the service of the Lord. I do not 
 mean in material things only, because the true wealth of a 
 
I/O TENT AND ALTAR. 
 
 man is not the abundance of the things that he possesses, 
 and that best which we are to give to God is not merely 
 the best portion of the things that belong to us, but the 
 best devotion of our hearts — their best affections ; the 
 strongest resolve of obedient wills, the intensest desire of 
 aspiring spirits, the fullest consecration of surrendered lives, 
 the firmest confidence of reliant, and therefore loving and 
 obedient hearts. Give God the superiorities of your nature, 
 whatever you keep for yourselves ; and try so to blend the 
 motive of devotion to Him with all action of heart and mind, 
 as that there shall be nothing retained from Him to whom 
 the best is consciously given. 
 
 IV. Lastly, this incident may suggest to us how build- 
 ing for God lasts, while building for ourselves perishes. 
 
 The tent has disappeared ; the altar remains. I dare say 
 these stones half-way between Bethel and Ai are there still, 
 standing where and as Abram piled them, though hard to 
 find, and impossible to identify amid the rocks and ruins 
 that strew the face of the land around. What has become 
 of his tent? It was pitched for a little while. In his 
 nomad life it was struck soon, and no trace remained but a 
 little heap of rubbish, and a circle of charred ashes where 
 the fire had glinted cheerily for a day or two. All was 
 gone but the altar. In the great cities of antiquity which 
 the spade is now laying bare for us, what has become of 
 the houses which the people built for themselves ? Gone — 
 where the snow and the rain of the years when they were 
 built have gone. It is the temples that are left, in the 
 marsh which is now where Ephesus once was; in the 
 desolation which is now where Babylon once was ; beneath 
 the mounds which are now where Heliopolis once was. The 
 houses of the people are gone ; the temples of the gods 
 
TENT AND ALTAR. 171 
 
 remain. Which things are an allegory. *' He thatsoweth to 
 the flesh shall of the flesh reap," and of selfish lives there 
 will be nothing left but a foul flavour and a bad memory. 
 "The world passe th away, and the fashion thereof: he that 
 doeth the will of God shall abide for ever." It was 
 Abraham's religion that made him dwell in tents. He 
 came from a settled civilization, where there were cities, 
 as we can see in the narratives. He came into a settled 
 civilization, where there was city life, and plenty of stone 
 houses if he had chosen to go into them. " He dwelt in 
 tabernacles ; for he looked for the city which hath the 
 foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God." If we in 
 like manner have come to fix and anchor our lives on the 
 only permanent, and to feel ourselves parts of that great 
 order which lives beyond the grave and above the stars, 
 we shall be penetrated with a sense of the transiency of all 
 things here below, and so be well contented to pitch but a 
 moving tent for ourselves, if we can, by God's grace, lay 
 were it even one stone in the temple which, through all 
 the ages, is rising, on the one Foundation, unto Him. 
 
THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 
 
THE FORGIVING SON OF 
 
 MAN. 
 
 *' That ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to 
 forgive sins, (then saith He to the sick of tlie palsy,) Arise, take up thy 
 bed, and go unto thine house." — Matt. ix. 6. 
 
 The great example of our Lord's teaching, which we call 
 the Sermon on the Mount, is followed in this and the pre- 
 ceding chapter by a similar collection of His works. These 
 are arranged by the evangelist with some care in three 
 groups, each consisting of three miracles, and separated 
 from each other by other matter. The miracle to which 
 our text refers is the last member of the second triad, of 
 which the others are the stilling of the tempest and the 
 casting out of demons from the two men in the country of 
 the Gadarenes. 
 
 One can discern a certain likeness in these three inci- 
 dents. In all of them our Lord appears as the Peace- 
 bringer. But the spheres in which He works are different 
 in each. The calm which was breathed over the stormy 
 lake was peace, but of a lower kind than that which filled 
 the souls of the demoniacs when the power that agitated 
 them and made discord within had been cast out. Even 
 that peace was lower in kind than that which brought 
 repose by assurance of pardon to this poor paralytic. For- 
 giveness is a loftier blessing than even the casting out 
 
176 THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 
 
 of demons. The manifestation of power and love rises 
 steadily to a climax. 
 
 The text subordinates the mere miracle to the authori- 
 tative assurance of pardon, and thus teaches us that the 
 most important part of the incident is not the healing of 
 disease, but the accompanying forgiveness of sins. Here we 
 have noteworthy instruction given by our Lord Himself as 
 to the relation between His miracles and that perpetual 
 work of His, which He is doing through the ages and to- 
 day, and will do for us, if we will let Him. It towers high 
 above the miracle, and the miracle is honoured by being its 
 attestation. We deal, then, with this narrative as suggesting 
 great principles over and above the miraculous fact. 
 
 I. Man's deepest need is forgiveness. 
 
 How strangely irrelevant and wide of the mark seems 
 Christ's response to the eager zeal of the bearers and the 
 pleading silence of the sufferer ! " Son," — or as the original 
 might more accurately and tenderly be rendered, "Child," — 
 "be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." That 
 sounded far away from their want. It was far away from 
 their wish ; but it was the direct answer to the man's true 
 need. Possibly in this case the disease was the result of 
 early profligacy — 
 
 "A sin of flesh avenged in kind." 
 
 Probably, too, the paralytic felt, whatever his four kindly 
 neighbours may have done, that what he needed most was 
 pardon ; for Christ casts not His pearls before eyes that 
 cannot see their lustre, nor offers His gift of pardon to 
 hearts unwounded by the consciousness of sin. The long 
 hours of compelled inactivity may have been not unvisited 
 by remorseful memories, and the conscience may have 
 
THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN, I// 
 
 Stirred in proportion as the limbs stiffened. Be that as it 
 may, it is to be observed that our Lord points to the 
 miracle as a proof of His power to pardon, given not to 
 the palsied man, but to the cavillers standing by, as if 
 the former needed no proof, but had grasped the assurance 
 while it was yet unverified. Thus both Christ's declaration 
 and the swift acceptance of it seem to imply that in that 
 motionless form stretched on its pallet an inward tempest 
 of penitence and longing raged, which could only be stilled 
 by something far deeper than any bodily healing. 
 
 At all events, the plain lesson from Christ's treatment of 
 the case is that our deepest need is pardon. Is not our 
 relation to God the most important and deep-reaching 
 relation that we sustain ? If that be right, will not every- 
 thing else come right ? As long as that is wrong, will not 
 everything be wrong? And is it not true that, whatever 
 may be our surface diversities, we all have this in common, 
 that we are sinners ? King and clown, philosopher and 
 fool, cultured and ignorant, are alike in this, that " all have 
 sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Royal robes 
 and fustian jackets cover the same human heart, which in 
 all is gone astray, and in all writhes more or less con- 
 sciously under the same unrest, the consequence and token 
 of separation from God. 
 
 Hence is seen the wisdom of Christ and the adaptation 
 of His gospel to all men, in that it does not trifle with 
 symptoms, but goes direct to the deep-lying and often latent 
 disease. It is waste time and energy to dally with surface 
 and consequential evils. The only way of making the fruit 
 good is to make the tree good, and then it will bring forth 
 according to its kind. Cooling draughts and water-beds are 
 alleviations for the sick, but the cure must be something 
 
 N — 2 
 
178 THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 
 
 more potent. The fontal source of sorrow is sin, for even 
 to the most superficial observation, the greater part of every 
 man's misery comes either from his own wrong-doing or 
 from that of others; and, for the rest of it, the judgment of 
 faith which accepts the declaration of God regards it as 
 needed because of sin, in order to discipline and purify. 
 
 The first thing to do in order to stanch men's wounds 
 and redress their misery is to make them pure, and the 
 first thing to do in order to make them pure is to assure 
 them of God's forgiveness for their past impurity. So the 
 sarcasms which are often launched at religious men for 
 " taking tracts to people when they want bread," and the 
 like, are excessively shallow, and simply indicate that the 
 critic has but superficially diagnosed the disease, and is 
 therefore woefully wrong about the needed medicine. God 
 forbid that we should say a word that even seemed to 
 depreciate the value of other forms of philanthropic effort, 
 or to be lacking in sympathy and admiration for the 
 enthusiasm that fills and guides many self-sacrificing and 
 earnest workers amid the squalor and vice of our complex 
 and half-barbarous " civilization." It is the plain duty of 
 Christian people heartily to rejoice in and to help all such 
 work, and to recognize it as good and blessed, being as 
 it is a direct consequence of the Christian view of the 
 solidarity of humanity and of the stewardship of possession. 
 But we must go a great deal deeper than aesthetic, or 
 intellectual, or political, or economic reforms can reach 
 before we touch the real reason why men are miserable. 
 The black well-head must be stanched, or it is useless trying 
 to drain the bog and make its quaking morass solid, fertile 
 soil. We shall effectually and certainly cure the misery 
 only when we begin where the misery begins, and where 
 
THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 179 
 
 Christ began, and deal first with sin. The true "saviour of 
 society " is he who can go to his paralyzed and wretched 
 brother, and, as a minister declaring God's heart, can say 
 to him, " Be of good cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee." 
 Then the palsy will go out of the shrunken limbs, and a 
 new energy will come into thera, and the sufferer will rise, 
 take up his bed, and walk. 
 
 II. Forgiveness is exclusively a Divine act. 
 
 We read that there were sitting by, with jealous and 
 therefore blind eyes, a company of learned men, religious 
 formalists of the first water, gathered, as one of the ether 
 evangelists tells us, out of every corner of the land, as a 
 kind of ecclesiastical inquisition, or board of triers, to report 
 on this young Galilaean Teacher, whom His disciples un- 
 authorizedly called Rabbi. They were unmoved by the 
 dewy pity in Christ's gaze as by the nascent hope beginning 
 to swim up into the paralytic's dim eyes. But they had a 
 keen scent for heresy, and so they fastened with sure 
 instinct on the one questionable point, " This man speaketh 
 blasphemies. Who can forgive sins but God only?" 
 Formalists, whose religion is mainly a bundle of red tape 
 tied round men's limbs to keep them from getting at things 
 that they would like, are blind as bats to the radiant beauty 
 of lofty goodness, and insensible as rocks to the wants of 
 sad humanity. 
 
 But still these scribes and doctors were perfectly right 
 in the principle which they conceived Jesus to be outraging. 
 Forgiveness is an exclusively Divine act. Of course it is 
 so. Sin is the perversion of our relation to God, The 
 word " sin " implies God, and is meaningless unless the deed 
 be thought of in reference to Him. The same act may be 
 regarded as being sin, or crime, or vice. As sin, it has to 
 
l8o THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 
 
 do with God; as crime, it has to do v/ith pubhc law and 
 with other men ; as vice, it has to do with the standard of 
 morahty, and may affect myself alone. The representatives 
 of national law can pardon crime. The impersonal tribunal 
 of morals is silent as to the forgiveness of vice. God alone 
 has to do with vice or crime considered as sin, and He 
 alone against whom only we have sinned can pardon our 
 transgression. 
 
 God only can forgive sins, because the essential in 
 forgiveness is not the remission of external penalty, but the 
 unrestrained flow of love from the offended heart of Him 
 who has been sinned against. When you fathers and 
 mothers forgive your children, does the pardon consist 
 simply in sparing the rod ? Does it not much rather consist 
 in this, that your love is neither deflected nor embittered 
 any more, by reason of your child's wrong-doing, but pours 
 on the little rebel, as before the fault ? So God's forgiveness 
 is at bottom, " Child, there is nothing in My heart to thee 
 but pure and perfect love." Our sins fill the sky with mists, 
 through which the sun itself cannot but look a red ball of 
 lurid fire. But it shines on the upper side of the mists all 
 the same and all the time, and thins them away and scatters 
 them utterly, and shines forth in its own brightness on the 
 rejoicing heart. Pardon is God's love, unchecked and 
 unembittered, granted to the wrong-doer. That is a Divine 
 act exclusively. The carping doctors were quite right ; 
 "no man can forgive sins but God only." 
 
 Such forgiveness may coexist with the retention of some 
 penalties for the forgiven sin. " Thou wast a God that 
 forgavest them, and Thou tookest vengeance on their inven- 
 tions." When sins are crimes they are generally punished. 
 The penalties of sins considered as vices or breaches of the 
 
THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. l8l 
 
 standard of morality are always left. For the evil thing 
 done has entered into the complex whole of the doer's past, 
 and its "natural issues" are not averted, though their 
 character is modified, when they are borne in consciousness 
 of God's forgiveness. Then they become merciful chastise- 
 ment, and therefore tokens of the Father's love. The true 
 penalty of evil, considered as sin, is wholly abolished for 
 the man whom God forgives, for that penalty is separation 
 from God, which is the only real death, and he who is 
 pardoned and knows that he is, knows also that he is joined 
 to God by the pouring on him, unworthy, of that infinitely 
 placable and patient love. Pardon is love rising above 
 the black dam which we have piled up between us and 
 God, and flooding our hearts with its glad waters. 
 
 We might add here, though it be somewhat apart from 
 our direct purpose, that the forgiveness of sin is a possibility, 
 in spite of modern declarations that it is not. Many confi- 
 dent voices say so now, and when we venture to ask, with 
 the humility which becomes a mere believer in Christianity 
 when addressing our modern wise men, why forgiveness is 
 impossible, we are referred to the iron links of necessary 
 connection between a man's present and his past, and 
 assured that in such a universe as we live in, neither God 
 nor man can prevent the seed sown from springing, and the 
 sower from reaping what he has sown. But we may take 
 heart to answer that we, too, believe that " whatsoever a 
 man soweth that shall he also reap," and then may ask what 
 that has to do with the Scripture doctrine of forgiveness, 
 which leaves that solemn law quite untampered with, in so 
 far as the iron links which the objectors contemplate are 
 concerned, and proclaims this as the very heart of God's 
 pardon, that the sinful man, who forsokes his sin and trusts 
 
1 82 THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 
 
 in Christ's sacrifice, will be treated as if his sin were non- 
 existent, in so far as it could interfere with the flow of the 
 full tide of God's love. 
 
 But we need a definite conveyance of this Divine 
 forgiveness to ourselves. If we have ever been down into 
 the cellars of our own hearts and seen the ugly things that 
 creep and sting there, a vague trust in a vague mercy from 
 a half-hidden God will not be enough for us. The mere 
 peradventure that God is merciful is too shadowy to grasp, 
 and too flimsy for a troubled conscience to lean on. No- 
 thing short of the King's own pardon, sealed with His own 
 seal, is valid ; and unless we can come into actual contact 
 with God, and hear, somehow, with infallible certitude from . 
 His own lips His assurance of forgiveness, we shall not have 
 enough for our souls' needs. 
 
 in. Christ claims and exercises this Divine prerogative 
 of forgiveness. 
 
 The fact that Jesus answered the muttered thought of 
 these critics might have convinced them that He exercised 
 other Divine prerogatives, and read men's hearts with a 
 clearer eye than ours. He must be rightly addressed as 
 " Lord" of whom it can be said, " There is not a word in 
 my tongue, but, lo. Thou knowest it altogether." If He 
 possess the Divine faculty of reading hearts. He is entitled 
 to exercise the Divine power of forgiving what He discerns 
 there. 
 
 But mark His answer to the objectors. He admits their 
 premises completely. They said, " No man can forgive sins, 
 but God only." Now, if Jesus were only a man like the rest 
 of us, standing in the same relation to God as other saints, 
 prophets, and teachers, and having nothing more to do with 
 God's forgiveness than simply to say to a troubled heart, as 
 
THE FORGIVING SOf^ OF MAN. 183 
 
 any of us might do, " Brother, cheer up ; I tell you that God 
 forgives you and all who seek His pardon ; " if His words to 
 the paralytic were, in His intention, only ministerial and 
 declaratory ; — then He was bound, by all the obligations of 
 a religious Teacher, to turn to the objectors and tell them 
 that they misapprehended His meaning. Why did He not 
 say to them in effect, "I speak blasphemies ! No, I do not 
 mean that. I know that God alone forgives, and I am only 
 telling our poor brother here, as you might also do, that He 
 does. The blasphemy exists only in your misunderstanding 
 of My meaning " ? But Christ's answer is not in the least 
 like this, though every sane and devout teacher of religion 
 would certainly have answered so. In effect He says, " You 
 are quite right. No man can forgive sins, but God only. I 
 forgive sins. Then whom think ye that I, the Son of man, 
 am ? I claim to forgive sins. It is easy to make such a 
 claim, easier than to claim power to raise this sick man 
 from his bed, because you can see whether his rising follows 
 the word, whereas the other claim cannot be visibly sub- 
 stantiated. Both sentences are equally easy to say, both 
 things equally impossible for a man to do ; only the doing 
 of the one is visible, and of the other is not. I will do the 
 visible impossibility, and then you can judge whether I have 
 the right which I allege to do the invisible one." 
 
 Clearly there is in this answer of Jesus a distinct claim 
 to forgive sins as God does. The objection which He 
 meets and the manner of meeting it alike forbid us to take 
 " power to forgive sins " in this context in any but the highest 
 Divine sense. Now, this claim seems to bring us face to 
 face with a very distinct alternative, which I venture to 
 urge on your consideration. To offer the choice of being 
 impaled on one or other horn of a dilemma is not the best 
 
1 84 THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 
 
 way of convincing hesitating minds of the truth ; but still it is 
 fair, and to some may be cogent, to say that a very weighty 
 " either ... or " is here forced on us. Either the Pharisees 
 were right, and Jesus Christ, the meek, the humble, the 
 religious Sage, the Pattern of all self-abnegation, the sweet 
 reasonableness of whose teaching eighteen centuries have 
 not exhausted nor obeyed, was an audacious blasphemer, or 
 He was God manifest in the flesh. The whole incident 
 compels us, in all honest interpretation, to take His words to 
 the sick man as the Pharisees took them, as being the claim 
 to exercise an exclusively Divine prerogative. He assumed 
 power to blot out a man's transgressions, and vindicated the 
 assumption, not on the ground that He was but declaring or 
 bringing the Divine forgiveness, but on the ground that He 
 could do what no mere man could. If Jesus Christ said 
 and did anything like what this narrative ascribes to Him — 
 and if we know anything at all about Him, we know that He 
 did so — there is no hypothesis as to Him which can save 
 His character for the reverence of mankhid, but that which 
 sees in Him the Word made flesh, the world's Judge, from 
 whom the world may receive, and from whom alone it can 
 certainly receive, Divine forgiveness. 
 
 IV. Jesus Christ brings visible witnesses of His invisible 
 power to forgive sins. 
 
 Of course the miracle of healing the paralytic was such 
 evidence in very complete and special form, inasmuch as it 
 and the forgiveness which it was wrought to attest were 
 equally Divine acts, beyond the reach of man's power. We 
 may note, too, that our Lord here teaches us the relative 
 importance of these two, subordinating the miraculous heal- 
 ing to the higher work of giving pardon. But we may 
 permissibly extend the principle, and point to the subsi- 
 
THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 1 85 
 
 diary external effects of Christianity in the material and 
 visible sphere of things as attestations of its inward power, 
 which only he who feels his burden of sin falUng from his 
 shoulders at the cross knows as a matter of experience. 
 The manifest effects of the Christian faith on individuals, 
 and of the less complete Christian faith which is diffused 
 through society, do stand as strong proofs of the reality of 
 Christ's claim to exercise the power to forgive. The visible 
 results of every earnest effort to carry the gospel to men, 
 and the effects produced in the lives of the recipients, do 
 create an immense presumption in favour of the reality of 
 the power which the gospel proclaims that Jesus exercises. 
 We may admit the extravagance, the coarseness, the narrow- 
 ness, which too often deform such efforts, and dwarf the 
 spiritual stature of their converts ; but when the bitterest 
 criticism has blown away much as froth, is there not left in 
 the cup a great deal which looks and tastes very like the 
 new wine of the kingdom ? Passions tamed, hopes hallowed, 
 new and noble direction given to aspirations, self subdued, 
 the charities of life springing like flowers where were briers 
 and thorns or waste barrenness, homes made Bethels, 
 houses of God, that were pandemoniums, — these and the 
 like are the witnesses that Jesus Christ advanced no rash 
 claims, nor raised hopes which He could not fulfil, when He 
 said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." Wherever Christ's forgiving 
 power enters a heart, life is beautified, purified, and ennobled, 
 and secondary material benefits follows in its train. We 
 have a right to claim the difference between so-called 
 Christian and non-Christian lands as attestations of the 
 reality of Christ's saving work. It is a valid answer to much 
 of the doubt of to-day ; — If you wish to see His credentials, 
 look around. His own answer to John's messengers still 
 
1 86 THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 
 
 remains applicable : " Go and tell John the things that ye 
 see and hear." There are miracles, palpable and visible, 
 still wrought by Jesus Christ, more convincing than were 
 those to which the forerunner was directed when his faith 
 faltered. It is still true that " His name, through faith in 
 His name, makes men whole," and that in presence of 
 unbelievers, who may test the cure. Still the dead are 
 raised, deaf ears are opened, dormant faculties are quickened, 
 and, in a thousand channels, the quick spirit of life flows 
 from Jesus, and " everything lives whithersoever that river 
 Cometh." Let any system of belief or of no-belief do the 
 like if it can. This rod has budded, at all events. Let 
 the modern successors of Jannes and Jambres, who have 
 found out that Christianity is a " creed outworn," and Jesus 
 an exhausted Source of power, do the same with their 
 enchantments. 
 
 These thoughts yield two very plain lessons. One is 
 addressed to professing followers of Jesus Christ. You 
 say that you have received in the depths of your spirit the 
 touch of His forgiving hand, blotting out your sins. No- 
 body can tell whether you have or not_ but by observing 
 your life. Does it look as if your profession were true ? 
 The world takes its notions of Christianity a great deal 
 more from you, its professors, than it does from preachers 
 or apologists. You are the books of evidences which most 
 men read. See to it that your lives worthily represent the 
 redeeming power of your Lord, and that men, looking at 
 your beautiful, holy, and gentle life, may be constrained to 
 say, " There must be something in the religion that 
 makes him such a man." 
 
 The other lesson is for us all. Since we are all alike 
 in that forgiveness is our deepest need, let us seek to have 
 
THE FORGIVING SON OF MAN. 1 8/ 
 
 that prime and fundamental necessity supplied first of all; and 
 since Jesus Christ assures us that He exercises the Divine 
 prerogative of forgiveness, and gives us materials for veri- 
 fying His claim by the visible results of His power, let us 
 all go to Him for the pardon which we need most of all 
 our needs, and which He and only He can give us. Do 
 not waste your time in trying to purify the stream of your 
 lives, miles down from its source ; but let Him heal it, and 
 make the bitter waters sweet at the Fountain-head. Do not 
 fancy, friend, that your palsy or your fever, your paralysis 
 of will towards good, or the diseased ardour with which you 
 follow evil and the consequent restless misery, can be 
 healed anywhere besides. Go to Christ, the forgiving 
 Christ, and let Him lay His hand upon you, and from His 
 own sweet and infallible lips listen to the blessed words that 
 shall work like a charm in all your nature, " Son, be of good 
 cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee ; " " Daughter, thy faith hath 
 made thee whole ; depart in peace." Then shall the eyes of 
 the blind be opened, then shall the lame man leap as an 
 hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing. Then limitations, 
 sorrows, and the diseases of the spirit shall pass away, and 
 forgiveness will bear fruit in joy and power, in holiness, 
 health, and peace. 
 
CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 
 
CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 
 
 "Verily, verily, I say unto you."— John i. 51. 
 
 We owe the preservation of this remarkable form of 
 asseveration to this evangelist. In the other Gospels the 
 single " Verily " habitually appears, but the double never ; 
 while in John's Gospel the double occurs some twenty-five 
 times, and the single not at all. Most of us are, no 
 doubt, aware that the word rendered "Verily" is the simple 
 " Amen," which properly means " firm " or "steadfast." It 
 is used sometimes to confirm an assertion which follows 
 it, and sometimes to sum up a prayer which precedes it. 
 In the former case its force is, "Thus it certainly 
 is ; " in the latter it may be paraphrased, "So may it be." 
 Its reduplication gives emphasis, and may be regarded 
 as a superlative, "Most certainly." This doubled form 
 of the phrase is used by Christ only. It becomes no other 
 lips. It may be useful to ponder its significance, and to 
 bring together the various declarations which our Lord 
 heralds by this solemn attestation. We may learn from the 
 study lessons of three kinds — as to the authority of the 
 Teacher, the certainty and importance of His teaching, 
 and as to the duty of the scholars. 
 
 1. First, then, we note what that doubled "Verily" claims 
 for the Teacher. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable and distinctive in our 
 
192 CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 
 
 /Lord's words than their air of authority, combined with the 
 /most perfect gentleness, meekness, and humiUty. He lays 
 down His bare word before us, as if saying, " Accept this 
 because I say it," and for no other reason. Such a tone is 
 unique, at least among sane teachers. There have been 
 fanatics and self-deceived enthusiasts in abundance, who 
 have clashed down their unsupported assertions before men, 
 and insisted on their reception; but they have been over- 
 whelmed by universal scorn, or by still more galling laughter. 
 One Teacher alone has succeeded in persuading men that 
 He had a right to speak thus, and been taken at His own 
 valuation. The phenomenon is absolutely unique. 
 \ Contrast the authoritative ring of this doubled "Verily, 
 verily," with the prophets' standing formula, " Thus saith the 
 Lord." The loftiest of the inspired men who dwelt nearest 
 the throne of the Ineffable, and were in fullest possession 
 of the secret of the Lord, never ventured to obtrude or 
 even to show their own personality, but hid themselves 
 behind the word of which they were but the vehi^cles. 
 Christ never uses their manner of speech, and seeks not, as 
 they did, to secure acceptance for His utterances by tracing 
 them to the Lord ; but while He declares that He speaks 
 that which He heard of the Father, He separates His manner 
 of hearing from that of ordinary inspiration as much as He 
 does His manner of communicating the thing heard from 
 that of other organs of the Divine Word. " Thus saith the 
 Lord" was the seal impressed on the prophetic word; "I 
 say unto you " is the characteristic of Christ's. Thus He 
 stands above the prophets, by whom at sundry times and 
 in divers manners God spake unto men, being not only, as 
 they were, messengers, but Himself the Message. 
 
 Contrast His authoritative teaching with that sort which 
 
CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY," 193 
 
 was in vogue in Palestine at the time. We are told that to 
 understand Jesus we must study the rabbinical teaching 
 of His day, in which we shall find the germs of His. That 
 teaching is well worthy of study by competent persons, and 
 affords much interesting material for the elucidation of the 
 Gospels; but the verdict of the generation which heard both 
 it and Jesus is nearer the truth than the modern idea that 
 He Avas only a Rabbi of a better sort. The difference 
 between Him and the doctors of the Law, not the likeness, 
 was what struck the people who were familiar with both. 
 " They were astonished at His doctrine : for He taught them 
 as having authority, and not as the scribes." However 
 little they apprehended the substance of His teaching, they 
 felt the difference in its manner from that to which they 
 were accustomed ; and the difference lay precisely here, in 
 the tone of authority with which He spoke. The rabbis 
 and scribes founded their decisions on tradition, as any one 
 who reads a page of the Talmud will see. Rabbi This 
 says so-and-so ; Rabbi That says thus. Rabbi A, in the 
 name of Rabbi B, said this ; and so on to weariness. They 
 passed from one to another some stale drops of water drawn 
 long ago by other hands. Jesus Christ stood forth among 
 these retailers of other men's wisdom, from which any 
 freshness that it ever had possessed had evaporated, as a 
 fresh Fountain of certitude and truth, and " cried, saying, If 
 any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink." In His 
 own Being are hidden the springs of wisdom and knowledge. 
 His word is sovereign, and He has learned from no man. 
 The contrast of His manner of teaching with that of the 
 doctors His contemporaries is more important, and leads to 
 truer conceptions of His nature and work than any fortuitous 
 and isolated resemblances in specific sayings, which may be 
 
 — 2 
 
194 CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 
 
 discovered, thougli these were more numerous and striking 
 than they have yet been shown to be. 
 
 Contrast Christ's "Verily, verily," with the tone suitable 
 to all thinkers who have learned the truths which they 
 preach, and have come to apprehend them through medi- 
 tation or study. It becomes them to argue. Christ asserts. 
 The thinker shows the path by which he has cut his way 
 through the tangled underwoods of error into the open 
 where he sees the sky. Christ never speaks as if any 
 previous ignorance or doubt had been His experience. 
 He never traces His illumination to others. He never 
 takes the place of a learner, either in the moment of speak- 
 ing or in any previous time. He seldom or never supports 
 His utterances by reasons, even although many of them 
 are by no means self-evident or axiomatic. The virtues 
 of all other servants and missionaries of truth, humility, 
 self-oblivion, calm allegation of grounds for statements, 
 acknowledgment of having grown by degrees to the appre- 
 hension of truth, are entirely absent in Jesus Christ. He 
 clashes down His bare word before us, if we may so say, 
 and bids us take it, simply and solely because it is His. 
 As one of our old divines has it, " Man is problematical ; 
 Christ is dogmatical." And yet the world has recognized 
 in this Teacher, who does the very things that would ruin 
 any other teacher's reputation and influence, as the true 
 " Master of those who know," and exalts Him as the 
 Pattern and realized Ideal of what the guide of men should 
 be. Strange that such an anomalous Master should have 
 won such disciples ! Stranger still that so many of them 
 should so little understand the Master whom they profess 
 to accept, as to be blind to the meaning of that anomaly 
 in His method ! 
 
CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 195 
 
 For if we once recognize this peculiarity in Cririst's 
 teachings, we should not stop till we have dealt fairly with 
 the question, What right had Jesus to speak thus ? Why 
 should I take from His lips, on the authority of His bare 
 word, what He chooses to say to me ? By what title does 
 He assume the place of a Teacher who has done all that is 
 required of Him when He asserts? Surely there is but 
 one answer possible to such questions. It cannot be too 
 strongly stated or too often reiterated that the authority 
 which He claims is unwarrantable usurpation unless He is 
 "the Word of God." Unless we are prepared to accept 
 Jesus as standing in an altogether different relation to the 
 truth which He utters from that in which other men stand 
 to those truths which they have attained to perceive, we 
 cannot vindicate His method of teaching from the charge 
 of arrogance, nor His character from a serious and well- 
 nigh filial flaw. But if it be the fact that He not merely 
 r.pprehended, but was, the Truth, then we can understand 
 His self-assertion, inasmuch as the self-manifestation of 
 His personality is the fullest declaration and vindication 
 of the Truth, which He is. Then, bowing before Him in 
 whom the fulness of the wisdom of God did bodily dwell, 
 and receiving Him as the Word who is the self-revelation 
 of God and the Light of men, we learn the deep significance 
 of His method. Only on the ground of His Divine 
 authority is He vindicated from the charge of arrogant 
 presumption, when instead of argument He gives Himself, 
 and does not deign to commend Hii deepest and most 
 mysterious utterances by any other reason for our accept- 
 ance of them than this, " Verily, verily, I say unto you." 
 
 H. Let me point out what this formula implies as to the 
 certitude and iniDcrtance of Christ's lessons. 
 
196 ceirist's "verilv, verily." 
 
 '^ " Verily, verily," is substantially equivalent to " Most 
 
 ' certainly," and by its attachment to certain sayings of our 
 Lord's, these are placed as in His estimation beyond cavil 
 or hesitation. Other teachers have to say, " Peradventure," 
 or " This I deem to be true ;" but Jesus asserts, with unfal- 
 tering confidence, the irrefragable certitude and immovable 
 stability of His utterances, and lays them down for the 
 foundation of all pur thinkings on the subjects which they 
 
 - touch. 
 
 i In such a day as this, when all things seem to be cast 
 into the cauldron again, and the firmest institutions and 
 beliefs are melting away in the heat, the world needs, more 
 perhaps than ever it did, to listen to that Voice, so cahn 
 and quiet, which yet rises clear above the hubbub of men, 
 proclaiming their doubts or questionings, and speaks to us 
 the ultimate and eternal truths on which mind, heart, and 
 spirit can build, and, building, be at rest. Much is dark, 
 much in organized institutions and written creeds is doubt- 
 ful and perishable ; but here at least is a central core of 
 solid rock, which no pressure can cause to crumble nor any 
 force shift : " Behold, I loy in Zion for a foundation a Stone, 
 a tried Corner-Stone, a sure Foundation." 
 
 Think of the difference between the freshness and 
 adaptation to the wants of this day, of the words of Jesus 
 Christ, and the film of old-fashioned remoteness which has 
 crept over all sayings of all the wise men of the past, except 
 Hin.self, and tell us what is the secret of the immortal 
 youth and close-fittingness of this Man's words. How hap- 
 pens it that to-day, amidst a world so different outwardly 
 and inwardly from the simple life amid the Galilean hills, 
 where these words were first spoken, they come as close to 
 us, and in many respects even closer than they did to those 
 
Christ's "verily, verily." 197 
 
 who heard them first? How happens it, except because 
 they are so limpidly free from all admixture of the soil that 
 there is nothing in them to decay, and hence all ages may 
 drink and find them sparkling and fresh? Christ's words 
 have no marks of human limitations, and therefore no fate 
 of transitoriness, but are to every generation the basis of 
 certitude. That sure foundation abides, like the massive 
 blocks still to be seen in their places in the walls of 
 Jerusalem, on which a hundred generatiors have looked 
 as they passed into oblivion, and which still remain sharp- 
 cut and solid as on the long-forgotten day when they were 
 first laid. Christ's " Verily, verily," guarantees the absolute 
 certainty of the truths which it heralds. 
 
 Further, this formula declares the importance of His 
 teachings which are introduced by it. It calls special 
 attention to these, and is, as it were, an underscoring of 
 them, or printing them in italics. As I have already 
 remarked, these truths are often by no means self-evident. 
 On the contrary, the utterances to which Jesus attaches 
 the double " Verily " are usually those which deal with most 
 recondite and profound teachings. 
 
 A rough classification of the instances of the occurrence 
 of the phrase, however imperfect it must necessarily be 
 within our limits, may serve in some measure to bring out 
 the importance of the truths commended to us by it. First, 
 then, it points attention to teachings concerning Himself. 
 With it He calls us to believe, on His authority, in His pre- 
 existence : " Before Abraham was, I am." With it He 
 asserts His unity of being and identity of action with the 
 Father: "The Son can do nothing of Himself; but what- 
 soever things the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son 
 likewise." He assumes the office of medium of all com- 
 
 o 3—2 
 
198 CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 
 
 munication between earth and heaven: "Ye shall see the 
 heavens open, and the angels of God ascending and 
 descending upon the Son of man." He claims to be the 
 means by which men enter the fold of God : " I am the 
 Door of the sheep." He asserts that He is the infaUible 
 Teacher, speaking from personal experience of unseen 
 things : " We speak that we do know, and testify that 
 we have seen." He presents Himself as the God-given 
 Source and Sustenance of true life : " My Father giveth you 
 the true bread from heaven." He promises the certain 
 acceptance of all prayer truly offered in His name : " What- 
 soever ye shall ask of the Father in My name. He will do 
 it." Finally, He proclaims that He must die 'in order to 
 accomplish His life-giving purpose and mission: "Except 
 a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
 alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." So His 
 Divine nature, pre-existence, absolute union of being and 
 identity of action with the Father, His position and office 
 as the Channel of all God's approach to us and of ours to 
 Him, His infallible reading off to us of the things which 
 He has seen and heard in the depths of eternity and the 
 glories of the throne, and the solemn necessity for His 
 death of shame, are all commended to us, not by argument, 
 but simply by His " Verily, verily, I say unto you." These 
 are not self-evident truths, but, recondite and mysterious as 
 some of them are, Jesus brings nothing to support them 
 but His own word. " Because He could swear by no 
 greater, He sware by Himself." 
 
 A second set of His sayings thus prefaced refers to us 
 and our relations to Him. Thus He reveals the condition 
 of spiritual life as being union with Him by faith : " Except 
 ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye 
 
CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 199 
 
 have no life in you ; " " He that heareth My word, and 
 believeth in Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life ;" " If 
 a man keep My sayings, he shall never see death." He 
 asserts with the same strong confirmation the necessity of 
 a new nature being communicated ere men can either see or 
 enter the kingdom of God : " Except a man be born again, 
 he cannot see the kingdom of God ; " and again, " Except a 
 man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter 
 into the kingdom." With the same strong confirmation 
 He presents Himself as the Pattern of lowly love and self- 
 abasing service to all His followers : *' The servant is not 
 greater than his lord." He lovingly identifies Himself with 
 us, and hints at a transcendent unity of being with Him : 
 " He that receiveth whomsoever I send, receiveth Me." 
 He even holds out the promise, that as He, in His 
 mysterious oneness with the Father, did the same Divine 
 works, so His servants, by virtue of their corresponding 
 union with Him, shall exercise activities like His : " The 
 works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than 
 these shall He do," 
 
 There remain one or two other instances of the use of 
 the double "Verily," which belong to less profound matters. 
 It is sometimes employed in Christ's predictions, both of a 
 near and of a remote future, which could only be made by 
 supernatural knowledge, and must obviously be accepted 
 on His bare word. ** One of you shall betray Me ; " "Ye 
 shall weep and lament, . . . but your sorrow shall be 
 turned into joy ; " " The cock shall not crow till thou hast 
 denied Me thrice ; " " When thou wast young, thou girdedst 
 thyself, . . . but when thou art old, another shall gird 
 .thee." 
 
 Still further, He employs the expression once or twice 
 
200 CHRIST s "verily, verily." 
 
 when, with Divine penetration of insight and certitude of 
 stroke, He lays bare to men their hidden foulness of nature, 
 as when He says, " Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the 
 miracle, but because ye did eat of the loaves ; " or again, 
 " He that doeth sin is the servant of sin." 
 
 So, in all the sayings to which this double " Verily " is 
 attached, we can discern more or less clearly the appeal to 
 His Divine authority as Revealer ; and the most of them are 
 truths which would never have dawned on men's minds 
 except He had uttered them, but, being uttered, become 
 the pillars of our faith and the core of the gospel. 
 i-- HI. Lastly, we have to consider what this form of 
 
 confirmation implies as to the scholars. 
 
 ; It implies that those to whom it was addressed had dull 
 
 ( ears, whose languid attention needed to be stimulated, or 
 
 /' that the words were too great to. be easily believed, or too 
 
 unwelcome to be swifdy accepted. So it is a solemn warn- 
 
 ' ing against prejudice, apathy, and sloth ; an exhortation to 
 
 earnest attention and sharp-eared listening ; an appeal to 
 
 us to permit no indifference to come between us and His 
 
 Word, nor to stop our ears with the clay of earthliness and 
 
 sin against His gentle but authoritative voice. 
 
 Plainly, the course of our thoughts thus far leads to the 
 conclusion that, since Christ is a Teacher thus authoritative, 
 and His words are thus certain and important, our attitude 
 as His scholars should be that of absolute submission. 
 That which it is degradation to give to a man, it is sin to 
 withhold from Christ. When men speak to us, we have the 
 right and the obligation to say, "How do you know ? Why 
 should I believe you ? " We have the right to question and 
 to disagree. When Christ speaks, the only fit reply is, 
 "Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth." Much is uncertain. 
 
CHRIST'S "VERILY, VERILY." 20I 
 
 On this voice we may abiolutely rely. None other is 
 authoritative. Let us, then, silence all other voices, and let 
 Him speak. Come to Christ for yourself, and for yourself 
 hearken to, and take from Him at first-hand what He has 
 to say to you. Thinkers, speculators, books, reviews, 
 currents of opinion, the Zeitgeist, and the like, are poor 
 substitutes for the supreme authority of the one Teacher, 
 the Teacher of all truth, the Teacher for all generations. 
 U Do not take your conceptions of Him and His words at 
 |] second-hand. Do not let your own wishes, or sentiments, 
 or thinkings shape your creed. Listen to Jesus Christ, and 
 what He says do you take into your inmost heart, and on it 
 build all your beliefs. 
 
 The absolute certitude of His message has for its corre-^ 
 sponding altitude our unwavering steadfastness. It seems' 
 to be thought a mark of " advanced Christianity " that we 
 should not be sure as to any of its doctrines, but hold them 
 all provisionally — as if such an attitude were possible. 
 Provisional belief is practical unbelief. I do not wish any 
 man to say, '' I am sure," when he is not. Premature cer- 
 tainty ends in too late doubt. But whilst there will always 
 be for us, in our beliefs, based on Christ's self-revelation, a 
 circumference or horizon of darkness, there would be no 
 circumference unless there were a centre, and no conscious- 
 ness of the dark rim unless the centre were light. There 
 will always be much about which we shall be wisest to say, 
 " The Lord hath not showed it unto me." But that should 
 not hinder us from firmly grasping the grand certainties, 
 which we can without presumption affirm, and cannot 
 without presumption deny, since Jesus has sealed them 
 with His own attesting word. Let us not falter in adding 
 our voices to the chorus of believers who take up the old 
 
202 CHRIST S "VERILY, VERILY. 
 
 triumphant words, "We know that the Son of God is 
 come, and hath given us an understanding that we may 
 know Him that is true." When Jesus speaks His "Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you," let us add our " Amen" of accept- 
 ance to His " Verily " of assurance. Let us respond to His 
 faithfulness with our faith, and build rock on the rock, and, 
 turning to that gentle and infallible Teacher, the incarnate 
 Truth, as our refuge from the jangle of controversies and 
 the strife of tongues, let us humbly and resolvedly say to 
 Him, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
 , of eternal life." 
 
 I 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Spring Holiday in Italy. 1863. Palmer and Howe. 
 
 Sermons preached in Manchester. First Series, printed 
 December, 1863 (Crown 8vo) ; Second Series, 1865 
 (Fcap. 8vo) ; Third Series, 1869. Reprinted 187 1, 1874, 
 1875, 1877, 1879, i88r, 1883, 1887. Macmillan and Co. 
 
 Week-day Evening Addresses. 1877. Macmillan and Co. 
 
 Secret of Power, and other Sermons. 1882. Macmillan 
 and Co. 
 
 Life of David as rfflected in his Psalms. 1880. Hodder 
 and Stoughton. 
 
 Colossians and Philemon {Expositor's Bible). 1887, 
 1888. Hodder and Stoughton. 
 
 A Year's Ministry. 1884. Christian Commonwealth Co. 
 
 Christ in the Heart. 1886. Christian Commonwealth Co. 
 
 The Unchanging Christ. 1889. Alexander and Shep- 
 heard. 
 
 The Holy of Holies. 1890. Alexander and Shepheard. 
 
 The God of the Amen. 1891. Alexander and Shepheard. 
 
 JVotes on International Sunday School lessons. American 
 Sunday School Times, 1887-91. 
 
 LONDON : TRINTED BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING <:K0SS. 
 
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