IlieCit? 
 
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 1910 *] 
 
THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 An Introduction to the Old Testament. 
 
 The author of " Old Testament Criticism 
 and the Christian Church" intends this 
 book for the use of students and working 
 ministers who desire to keep abreast of 
 Biblical studies, and yet are too busy to 
 use an elaborate and complicated text- 
 book. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.75 
 
 The Prayers of the Bible. The author of 
 "An Introduction to the Old Testament " 
 here discusses all the prayers of the Bible, 
 and arranges those suitable for use in 
 private devotion and in public service. 
 Crown 8vo, 1.75 
 
 "Mr. McFadyen has here given the study of prayer the hest 
 aid it has received in a long time."— Record of Christian Work. 
 
 " Seldom does a volume appear so engaging and useful for 
 every child of God."— New York Observer. 
 
THE CITY WITH 
 FOUNDATIONS 
 
 FEB 3 1910 
 
 <£//>,,-,,, mru 
 JOHN EDGAR M'FADYEN 
 
 M.A. (Glas.), B.A. (Oxon.) 
 
 Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis in Knox College, Toronto} 
 
 Author of " Old Testament Criticism and the Christian Church" " Introduction 
 
 to the Old Testament^' " The Prayers of the Bible," etc. 
 
 He looked for the city which hath the foundations, 
 whose builder and maker is God. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 
 
 3 & 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET 
 1909 
 
TO 
 MY OLD COLLEGE FRIEND 
 
 REV. JAMES LAW, M.A. 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 FOUR HAPPY STUDENT YEARS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The words of the Bible are inexhaustible in their fresh- 
 ness and power; and this volume, like its predecessors, 
 The Divine Pursuit and In the Hour of Sile?ice, is an attempt 
 to capture something of their aroma. The chapters are not 
 elaborate expositions, but simple meditations, resting usually 
 upon a close study of the original meaning of some great 
 Bible word or scene, and exhibiting some aspect of its per- 
 manent message. Those ancient words still speak, as no 
 other words speak, to the men of to-day, and so, we believe, 
 they will continue to speak to men for ever. 
 
 These chapters have already appeared in one or other of 
 the following magazines : The Interior, The Congregationalist, 
 The Sunday School Times, The Biblical World, The Methodist 
 Quarterly Review, The Record of Christian Work, The 
 Presbyterian. For their courteous permission to reproduce 
 them, my thanks are most heartily tendered to the editors. 
 
 John E. M'Fayden. 
 
 Silver Bay, 
 
 Lake George, N. Y. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dwelling in Tents i 
 
 II 
 
 One Needful Thing n 
 
 III 
 
 The Stars Also 21 
 
 IV 
 
 The Saviour and the Maniac . . 31 
 
 V 
 The Tower of Faith 41 
 
 VI 
 
 For such a Time as this 51 
 
 ix 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Passing of Opportunity . . . .61 
 
 VIII 
 The Valley of Death 71 
 
 IX 
 
 Defenders of the Faith 85 
 
 X 
 
 One Having Authority . . . * -95 
 
 XI 
 
 The Lord upon His Throne .... 105 
 
 XII 
 
 Predestined 115 
 
 XIII 
 
 Spears and Pruning-hooks 125 
 
 XIV 
 A Lesson in Contrasts 137 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 XV 
 
 PAGK 
 
 The Consolations of Nature .... 145 
 
 XVI 
 
 Courage, Child 155 
 
 XVII 
 
 The Law that cannot be Broken . . . 163 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Christ's Care for the Fragments . . .171 
 
 XIX 
 
 Justification by Words 181 
 
 XX 
 
 Continually with Thee . . . . .191 
 
 XXI 
 
 By the Waters of Rest 199 
 
 XXII 
 The Failure of Success ..... 209 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 XXIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bidding Good-bye to God 219 
 
 XXIV 
 A Desert Place 225 
 
 XXV 
 In the Midst of the Street .... 235 
 
 XXVI 
 The River and the Dead Sea .... 245 
 
DWELLING IN TENTS 
 
DWELLING IN TENTS 
 
 "Dwelling in Tents, he looked for the City" 
 
 The earliest ancestors of our faith were nomads, 
 and the imprint of their wandering life has been 
 left indelibly upon the Christian religion. We 
 call ourselves pilgrims and strangers. We say that 
 on the solid earth we are but sojourners, and that 
 only for a little while. We learned these words 
 from the ancient men of the desert. Every day the 
 men who dwelt in tents were impressed with the 
 mutability of human things. The tent could be 
 pitched here or there or anywhere; and in all the 
 shiftings of the desert life there was little sense of 
 permanence or home. 
 
 In this ancestry of our religion we see the wise 
 providence of God. For if religion gives us any- 
 thing, it must give us the sense of something fixed 
 amid the uncertainties, something stable amid the 
 instabilities of life; and before we can appreciate 
 the city that standeth fast, whose foundations are 
 in the holy mountains, we must have the insecurity 
 of all things earthly borne in upon our soul. Now 
 
 the life of the early Hebrews was fitted to impress 
 b 2 3 
 
4 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 them with just this sense of ceaseless change amid 
 the unchanging monotony of the desert; and this 
 sense of the uncertainties and shiftableness of 
 human life has been stamped for ever into the 
 language of our religion by the wandering fathers 
 of our faith. 
 
 Both the city and the tent have their contribution 
 to make to religion — the city with its suggestion 
 of social activities and obligations, the tent with its 
 suggestion of frailty and change. The one is a 
 prophecy of the heavenly Jerusalem where men 
 dwell together as brethren in unity; the other is the 
 fragile symbol of our earthly life, which oftentimes 
 seems to have no foundation anywhere, but shifts 
 its place with the changing days, and finally van- 
 ishes away. City and tent alike have had their 
 place in the shaping and colouring of religious 
 thought, and the service of the tent is not likely to 
 be forgotten, for its image is ever before us. Here 
 to-day and gone to-morrow; that is the message 
 of the tent. Nothing to do but pull up the tent- 
 pins, and the home has vanished as at the touch 
 of a wizard's wand. There is no home in all the 
 desert; all the desert is a home. There is no home 
 but God. 
 
 Such were the thoughts that may often have risen 
 in nomad hearts. Such, at any rate, is the thought 
 which the writer of the brave epistle to the Hebrews 
 sees in the heart of Abraham, as he wanders about 
 
DWELLING IN TENTS 5 
 
 from spot to spot in the land that was not his own. 
 It was indeed his own in the divine purpose, but it 
 was not yet his by possession ; battles must be 
 fought and blood spilt, ere his descendants can call 
 the land their own. So he wandered up and down 
 with a sense of the pathos of things at the heart of 
 him. 
 
 He had left his dear distant eastern home for this 
 western land where he was for ever to be but a 
 pilgrim and stranger. But in the heart of the 
 wanderer was the solace of a better home to come — ■ 
 in the city which has the foundations. "By faith 
 he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in 
 a land not his own, dwelling in tents . . . for he 
 looked for the city which hath the foundations, 
 whose builder and maker is God." There are some 
 who suppose that he saw in vision some great, 
 noble city like the Jerusalem of David or Solomon, 
 and that some such royal capital was to be the 
 issue and the compensation of the relatively meagre 
 life of the tent, to which his own days were doomed. 
 But the thought in so great a passage must be 
 larger than that. The city which will comfort the 
 heart that is worn with the changes and disappoint- 
 ments of the tent is not a city made with hands, 
 but the city whose designer and fashioner is God. 
 
 Dwelling in tents and looking for the city — does 
 not that describe the life of the profounder souls 
 of every age? And into every life, however unre- 
 
6 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 fleeting, there come times when the awful uncer- 
 tainties which beset us behind and before, and 
 which on the smoother planes of life are so easily 
 and so conveniently forgotten, assume an almost 
 ghastly reality. Two trains collide in the dead of 
 night; and beautiful homes are dissolved for ever. 
 Death makes inroads, numerous and surprising and 
 cruel, upon our friendships. Within a few weeks, 
 friend after friend goes away to the silent land ; till 
 we feel that the very ground is trembling beneath 
 our feet. We are so appalled by our impotence to 
 keep with us those whom we love, and by their 
 impotence to remain with us, so vexed by the might 
 of powers which we can neither control nor per- 
 suade, that we yearn in our anguish for a city with 
 foundations. Our poor tents have no depth of 
 earth. The tent is as unstable as the sand on 
 which it is pitched; even on the hillside it is ex- 
 posed to every wind that blows. We need a sight 
 of the city whose foundation is the Rock of Ages. 
 
 It is a daring and beautiful thought that the 
 patriarch should look for a city. The author of 
 this epistle, like Isaiah and every true prophet, is 
 very bold ; for the cities with which he was familiar 
 were anything but divine. What was Jerusalem ? 
 The holy city in name, but not in deed or truth. 
 It was the city that had slain the prophets and 
 crucified the greatest Prophet of all. Of Rome he 
 must have known at least by hearsay. And what 
 
DWELLING IN TENTS 7 
 
 was Rome ? To its unspeakable corruption there 
 is a melancholy unanimity of testimony; we know 
 it from Juvenal, from Paul, from poets and his- 
 torians only too many. And what was Athens, 
 mother of arts and eloquence ? Her educated men 
 received the earnest message of the greatest 
 preacher of that age, or perhaps of any age, with 
 mingled curiosity and scorn. Alexandria, Ephesus, 
 everywhere it was the same. One would hardly 
 have been surprised to find the author of the epistle 
 rejecting the city as a godless thing, and finding 
 his ideal in the ancient, simple life of the tent. But 
 it is not so. The home of his heart is the city — 
 the city of God. 
 
 The city and the tent offer many points of con- 
 trast; as, for example, between the life of the one 
 and the loneliness of the other. But the particular 
 contrast in the writer's mind at this point is that 
 between the permanence of the one and the imper- 
 manence of the other. The city has foundations, 
 the tent has none. The writers of the Bible were 
 haunted by the insecurities of life; they knew them- 
 selves to be but pilgrims and strangers, and their 
 life to be but as a vapour that appeareth for a little 
 time and then vanisheth away. But they lifted up 
 their hearts in the thought of the security of the 
 city of God. 
 
 With much emphasis and beauty John dwells 
 upon the fact that that city has twelve foundations. 
 
8 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 It was for foundations that they longed, and they 
 found them in the city whose builder and maker is 
 God. Every earthly friendship is sundered some 
 day. Sooner or later every fabric raised by earthly 
 hands will totter. But — 
 
 " They stand, those halls of Zion, 
 All jubilant with song." 
 
 The thought here is a mystic one. It was by 
 faith that Abraham saw the city, and the city which 
 he saw was in the world beyond. That is the vision 
 which can make any man feel secure amid the 
 insecurities. In that he can take refuge when the 
 earth seems to reel, and a sense of homelessness 
 gathers about his heart. His citizenship is in 
 heaven, and nothing can rob him of the portion 
 that is laid up for him in the new Jerusalem, the 
 city of the living God that stands fast for ever. 
 
 But elsewhere we are reminded — and do we not 
 need the reminder ?— that the holy city is in our 
 world, as well as in the world beyond, that it is a 
 city built upon both sides of death, and that it 
 "comes down from God out of heaven." "Behold," 
 says the apostle who saw it and described it, almost 
 in the words of older oracles — "behold, the tent of 
 God is with men, and He shall have His tent with 
 them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Him- 
 self shall be with them, and be their God." No 
 wonder he says, Behold. For what a vision is 
 this 1 We seem to be back in the age of tents 
 
DWELLING IN TENTS 9 
 
 again. But when God pitches His tent where men 
 pitch theirs, the very desert shall rejoice and 
 blossom, and men will call it home. 
 
 The clustering tents of that great multitude which 
 no man can number, with the tent of God in the 
 midst, what will it be but in very truth a city of 
 God ? And is not the vision in part already fact ? 
 God has come down and dwelt among us, and men 
 have beheld His glory, and some are this day reflect- 
 ing that glory and being transformed into the same 
 image. The city of God is coming down from 
 heaven. It is with us. Every day its walls are 
 rising — in service faithfully rendered, in the will of 
 God willingly done. The city of God is both a 
 vision and a fact, a hope and a present reality. It 
 has been the dream and the consolation of all who 
 have felt the evanescence of mortal things. 
 
 But it is more than a dream. To take part in 
 the building of that city is the duty and joy of 
 every one who believes in it. The heroes of 
 Hebrew history, whose faith is immortalized in the 
 brilliant summary of this eleventh chapter, played 
 their part well. We shall play ours by working 
 in the inspiration of their example. Compassed 
 about by that great cloud of witnesses, let us too 
 run with patience the race that is set before us. 
 Then even here we shall have a foretaste of citizen- 
 ship in that city which hath the foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God. 
 
ONE NEEDFUL THING 
 
ONE NEEDFUL THING 
 
 "One thing is needful" 
 
 It is pleasant to find Jesus anywhere, but most 
 of all in the house of His friends; and there is no 
 more gracious scene in all the gospels than that in 
 which our Lord, doubtless footsore and hungry, 
 was welcomed by Martha to her hospitable home. 
 For it is Martha who welcomes Him ; in all that 
 pertains to the household Mary plays a humbler 
 role. Through all this scene her voice is not once 
 heard. She is not so much Mary as Martha's 
 sister; and the first and only glimpse we have of 
 her is sitting at the feet of Jesus, and listening to 
 His word. She had taken her place there deliber- 
 ately, as the words imply. She knew what she was 
 doing. She had chosen the good part, as her 
 Master said. Martha thought she was selfish and 
 indolent ; but Mary sat down at the feet of the Lord 
 whom she loved, sure that He at least would not 
 misunderstand her. She knew that the words of 
 Jesus were very precious, and she could not be sure 
 that He would ever be back again. 
 
 13 
 
14 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 Martha loved Jesus too, but she showed her love 
 in another way. She was bent, like a good house- 
 wife, on doing her utmost for the great Guest, 
 whose real greatness she only half understood. She 
 wished to entertain Him worthily, and to her that 
 meant elaborately; she forgot how simple His tastes 
 were, and how that His meat and drink were to do 
 the will of His Father in heaven. So she was "dis- 
 tracted " — to use the evangelist's expressive word — 
 "pulled about," with much serving; and with a 
 blunt impulsiveness which reminds us of Peter, she 
 went to the spot where Jesus and Mary were — in 
 another room, perhaps, for she complains that Mary 
 had left her — and, carried away by her feelings, she 
 addressed the Master in irritable and almost im- 
 pertinent words : " Is it nothing to Thee that my 
 sister has left me to do all the serving alone ? " 
 Surely she must have known Jesus very well, to 
 speak to Him thus boldly. He was doubtless a 
 familiar figure in that home — so familiar that the 
 mistress had lost her awe of Him, if ever she had 
 any, and could address Him even in imperious 
 tones. "Tell my sister," she impetuously says, "to 
 lend me a hand." 
 
 What will the Master say ? for this is a great 
 moment, which will put His resources to the test. 
 The situation is one of extreme delicacy. Both 
 the women love Him. Both are honouring Him, 
 though in widely different ways. He will be just 
 
ONE NEEDFUL THING 15 
 
 to both, to Martha no less than to Mary. He looks 
 upon the heart. He knows the affection that beats 
 beneath the sharp, rude words; and He will deal 
 with her very tenderly. But, in spite of her affec- 
 tion, she lacks one thing yet. A loving soul has 
 gone astray, and Jesus must bring her gently back. 
 "Martha, Martha." It is not for nothing that Jesus 
 names her twice. The deep and earnest emotion 
 that breathes through the twice-repeated name 
 shows how much the incident had moved Him, and 
 how important is the word He is now about to utter. 
 "Thou art anxious." He touched the spot with 
 unerring instinct. 
 
 "He struck His ringer on the place, 
 And said: 'Thou ailest here.'" 
 
 Martha's soul was not calm. There was inner 
 and outer unrest. The bustling about the house 
 was but the counterpart of a certain unsteadiness 
 within. "Thou art anxious and troubled about 
 many things." Jesus must have been touched by 
 Martha's eager activity about the many things; for 
 were they not all in His honour? All the same, 
 it was a mistake, due to a misundertanding of the 
 nature of Jesus, and of the real needs of men. Hos- 
 pitality, in its kindly, stumbling way, was trying to 
 express itself in the "many things," under the idea 
 that the sincerity of the welcome could best be 
 measured by the number of the dishes on the table. 
 But it is not so. The many things are not needful. 
 
16 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 "Only a few things," says Jesus, "are necessary" — 
 and then, after a pause — "or rather only one." 
 
 Was ever transition from the material to the 
 spiritual sphere more delicately mediated than by 
 this great word of Jesus ? One moment we are at 
 Martha's table; the next, we are in the spiritual 
 world. A less elaborate dinner would do, Jesus 
 seems to say ; only a few things are needful at the 
 table, and a few in life; or rather in life there is 
 only one thing that is really needful. With one 
 swift, sure stroke He smote down into the eternal 
 significance of this pathetic little scene; and in 
 words that are a marvel of kindliness as well as of 
 solemnity, He brought home to a soul distracted 
 by the "many things" the need of unifying and 
 simplifying her life. Many things we may have, 
 but one thing we must have, if life is to be life. 
 Many things are useful, many are important; but 
 one is necessary, absolutely necessary. Mary had 
 chosen it; and we are almost given to understand — 
 though Jesus gently refrains from saying so — that 
 Martha had not. While Martha was preparing one 
 meal, Mary was enjoying another; for the "por- 
 tion " of which Jesus speaks is the word used else- 
 where for the share of a meal. Two banquets were 
 preparing in that house ; and Mary was already 
 sitting at the table of her Lord in the helEvenly 
 world, partaking, at His gracious hand, of that 
 bread of which he who takes shall never hunger 
 
ONE NEEDFUL THING 17 
 
 again. This portion could never be taken away 
 from her. 
 
 One's sympathies run out to Martha. It is easy, 
 we say, to honour the Lord by sitting at His feet; 
 it is a harder thing by far to honour Him by active 
 service. And yet in many points we must come to 
 feel that Martha was mistaken. She does not well 
 understand either Mary or Jesus. Her appreciation 
 of Jesus is genuine but not profound; and she does 
 not speak to Him with the deference which is His 
 due. She may have been almost hurt by His assur- 
 ance that Mary had chosen the good part ; she 
 thought in her heart that Mary had chosen the bad, 
 or, at any rate, the selfish part. There was only 
 one way, she thought, of honouring her Lord at 
 that moment, and she herself had chosen it. 
 
 Now there is no direct rebuke in the words of 
 Jesus; He who promised an inheritance in His 
 Father's kingdom to those who fed the hungry 
 could not have been angry with the woman who 
 welcomed Him with so unmistakable a hospitality. 
 The only rebuke — and it is graciously indirect — 
 touches her censoriousness in seeming to imply 
 that Mary had not done well. But Martha has to 
 learn that she does not herself exhaust the possi- 
 bilities of service, and that there may be forms of 
 service which she despises — forms, too, perhaps, 
 superior to her own. The more we look at this 
 very human hostess, with her restlessness, her 
 c 
 
18 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 anxiety, her impulsiveness, her irritability, her in- 
 tolerance, the more we sympathize with the kindly 
 remonstrance that lies beneath the searching words 
 of Jesus. But it must not be forgotten that He 
 does not directly condemn Martha. His whole 
 bearing to her is one of inexpressible tenderness. 
 He must lead her to see that there is a place, and 
 a high one, for such as Mary ; but He does not deny 
 that she, too, has her place. The contrast between 
 Martha and Mary is a contrast within the kingdom 
 itself. Real enough it is, but not like that tragic 
 contrast between those within and those without. 
 Martha and Mary are sisters, and their virtues are 
 sister virtues — Martha, the symbol of strenuous 
 energy; Mary, the pattern of sweet contemplation. 
 In the kingdom of God there is a place for both ; 
 for the unwearied activities of Protestantism, and 
 for that gracious and unobtrusive devotion which 
 has so often marked Catholicism. After all, it is 
 not so much the "many things" that are at fault, 
 for all things are God's; it is the being "anxious 
 and troubled " about them. 
 
 Martha is anxious. Mary is not anxious. She 
 is calm. She can rest. The practical person may 
 have little use for Mary. She may seem to him to 
 be a simpleton or a sluggard. Yet the contempla- 
 tive Mary was more practical than her practical 
 sister after all. She knew how to seize the golden 
 opportunity which came to her with the visit of 
 
ONE NEEDFUL THING 19 
 
 Jesus; and she had the wisdom to gather, in this 
 quiet hour, strength for the lonely days to come, 
 when the Master would sup with them no more. 
 
 One thing is needful. What is that? It is very 
 characteristic of Jesus that He does not say. To 
 the interpretation of His great words we must go 
 forth with our minds, our imaginations, and our 
 hearts. He does not always tell us plainly what we 
 should so much wish to know. He does not tell us, 
 but He shows us. One thing is needful. Look at 
 Mary, and you will see it. There it is ! or rather, 
 there she is ! for Mary is that thing incarnate. 
 Sitting at the Master's feet, and hanging wistfully 
 upon His every word, she is an immortal illustra- 
 tion of the truth which Jesus would bring home to 
 the restless Martha, and to all those eager, strenuous 
 spirits of which Martha is the type. 
 
 In one of its phases, the one thing needful is the 
 power to sit down. To some, every hour is lost 
 which is not crowded with action. Meals must be 
 prepared, and business transacted; if there is no 
 well-spread table to show, no achievement to record, 
 the time has been spent in vain. God can only be 
 served by busy hands and nimble feet. But aspira- 
 tion is as necessary as action, and is the condition 
 of the noblest action. True, we test our souls in the 
 hour of labour and conflict; but we win them in the 
 quiet hour, communing with our own hearts, or 
 with those who are wiser than we; and the wisest 
 C a 
 
20 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 of all is Jesus. Many a man has been ruined 
 because he could not do this, because he did not 
 know how to be happy within the four walls of his 
 room. 
 
 In another of its aspects, the one thing needful 
 is to hear the words of Jesus; for it was to hear 
 those words that Mary exposed herself to the mis- 
 understanding of her sister, by sitting at the 
 Master's feet. Many words are wise and fruitful, 
 but there are none like His. None see so deep into 
 life, or so far across death ; and the soul that does 
 not steady itself on His words is likely enough to 
 be anxious and troubled about many things. But 
 to sit down in a quiet hour when the mood comes 
 upon us — for this mood is the visit of Jesus— to 
 read and ponder His words till we learn from them 
 that peace which passeth all understanding, and 
 which will keep us from being anxious and troubled 
 any more : that is the one thing needful. 
 
THE STARS ALSO 
 
THE STARS ALSO 
 
 "He made the stars also" 
 
 The writer of the great prose poem with which 
 the Bible opens, after sketching, in majestically 
 simple outlines, the creation of the world with its 
 wonder of green, then turns our eyes to the heavens, 
 with the great lights which God set there to 
 light the world. "God made the two great lights," 
 he tells us ; "the greater light to rule the day and the 
 lesser light to rule the night" ; and then he adds, 
 almost as if by an afterthought, " He made the stars 
 also." 
 
 Many a soul is thankful that He did not forget the 
 stars. It is easy to believe that the greater lights 
 were hung in the firmament by the fingers of God; 
 but it is a solace to remember that He made the 
 stars also. The splendid sun and the gentle moon — 
 they are not more truly His than the stars, which 
 are so many that they cannot be counted for multi- 
 tude. It is, perhaps, not too much to see in this 
 allusion to the stars a touch of that tender regard 
 which the Bible shows everywhere for the small and 
 
 «3 
 
24 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 the weak things, and the things which seem to be of 
 no account. In the lordly sun which rules the day, 
 rejoicing like a hero as he runs across the sky, and 
 in the gracious moon which gently rules the night, 
 the Bible does not forget the little twinkling stars; 
 for they too are God's. " He made the stars also." 
 
 Whatever may be true of other parts of the 
 universe, for our world at least there is but one 
 sun and one moon ; but there is a multitude of 
 stars. And this is as true of the earth as of the 
 heavens. The very brilliant men are always and 
 necessarily few; and if it be our lot ever to have 
 stood near such, and to have marvelled at the 
 brightness of their shining, — a brightness which 
 we know can never be ours,— we may have been 
 tempted to regret or even despise the feeble 
 flicker of our own light. The light that is in us 
 may not indeed be altogether darkness, but it is 
 to theirs as starlight unto sunlight ; and we may 
 have wondered whether it would not be but 
 common wisdom to cover it up altogether. 
 
 This mood is not an unhealthy one, at least not 
 wholly so. It is sure to come at times upon the 
 man who measures himself, with a spirit purged of 
 jealousy, against his more brilliant and able 
 brethren. The man of balanced judgment who 
 sees truly and steadily, will often enough have to 
 confess the relative futility of the finest of his own 
 achievements. But when such a mood steals over 
 
THE STARS ALSO 25 
 
 him, it is well for him to remember that God made 
 the stars also. Such light as he has is a gift of 
 God, set in the firmament of some heaven to shine 
 as brightly as it may. It is no disgrace to the star 
 that it does not shine as the noonday sun. The 
 star must be content to shine as a star. Every 
 man is not called to illuminate a world. If we 
 cannot be brilliant men, we can at least be our- 
 selves; and it is our duty to exercise any gift that 
 is in us, without impairing it by foolish and fruit- 
 less comparisons of our work with that of our 
 more highly favoured brethren ; for more will be 
 required of him to whom more is given. 
 
 There cannot be too much humility ; but that 
 which humbles the man ought at the same time 
 to inspire and exalt him. His service, measured 
 against the exacting demands of his own higher 
 nature, against the high laws of God, or even 
 against the service of some of his more gifted 
 fellow-men, may well seem so poor as to be hardly 
 worth while. But when it becomes the clear con- 
 viction of his soul that God made him, — not only 
 made the men who in the various spheres of human 
 activity are as burning and shining lights, but 
 made him also, — he puts bravely away from him 
 the paralyzing sense of his own insignificance, and 
 proceeds with a happy heart to do with his might 
 what his hands find to do. 
 
 Even in the name of the Christian gospel, a pro- 
 
26 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 test must be lifted up against the self-depreciation 
 which cripples a man's power of serving the world. 
 Those who believe that they are sons of God and 
 joint-heirs with Christ, and who count themselves, in 
 some real sense, to be fellow-workers with God and 
 brethren with Jesus Christ, are bound in honour 
 to act up to the dignity of the name with which they 
 are named. On the conscience of every one who 
 believes that he has been bought with a price, ought 
 to lie the solemn obligation to assert in some vital 
 way that individuality which has been blessed and 
 redeemed. 
 
 Sometimes, too, it does us good to remember that 
 we are not infallible judges of the ultimate worth 
 either of our own work or of any other man's. We 
 think the stars are tiny because they are so far 
 away; we count them insignificant because they do 
 not shed much light upon our world. But if we 
 could traverse the millions of miles that separate 
 us from them, and see them as they are, we should 
 find how foolishly inadequate had been our notion 
 of their size and brilliance, of the work they do and 
 the place they fill in the economy of the universe. 
 And may it not be so too with the seemingly feeble 
 lights of humanity ? Nay, what are even the most 
 brilliant lights when seen in the burning light of 
 God ? Men do not differ so much as we think. All 
 are under one condemnation, and all are destined 
 to a common oblivion. 
 
THE STARS ALSO 27 
 
 "We pass; the path that each man trod 
 Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds : 
 What fame is left for human deeds 
 In endless age? It rests with God." 
 
 No man is altogether destitute of light; for the 
 true light, we are told, lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world. The light that is in most of 
 us is indeed only starlight ; but what then ? The 
 moon and the stars were set in the firmament to rule 
 by night. The language here is that of an ancient 
 world that had once looked upon the stars as divine 
 beings which did, in very truth, rule over the night ; 
 and though that view was not shared by the writer 
 of Genesis any more than by ourselves, it is not 
 without its element of truth. There must be order 
 in the firmament, and the dark night has to be 
 ruled. It is when the night is about us that the 
 stars are welcome. It is then that we need them, 
 and it is only then that they can help us. There 
 was more than humour in the quaint remark of an 
 earnest Christian worker, that the stars were more 
 important than the sun ; for the sun shone, he said, 
 when it was light, but the stars shone in the dark, 
 when they were needed. 
 
 The night about us is always dark enough, and 
 any glimmer of a star is sure to be a welcome sight 
 to somebody. Too often is the situation in church 
 and city and state like that of the ship described by 
 Luke, when "neither sun nor stars shone upon us 
 for many days, and no small tempest lay on us, and 
 
28 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 all hope that we should be saved was now taken 
 away." We have never more light than we need. 
 Wherever our lot may be cast, there is darkness 
 enough of mind and heart in the sphere about us, 
 which any light that is in us was divinely intended 
 to dispel. It was Jesus who said, "Let your light 
 shine." That is all that a light can be expected to 
 do. The greater lights can do no more; the lesser 
 lights should do no less. 
 
 Are we then shining ones? If indeed the true 
 light lighteth every man, there must be at least 
 some glimmer within me, even me, of that divine 
 light whose unspeakable glory no man can ap- 
 proach unto. There must be in me some little 
 gleam, unless, indeed — and this is sadly possible — 
 I have deliberately quenched it. Am I allowing 
 such light as I have to shine, or am I contributing 
 nothing to illumine the thick darkness of that world 
 which I touch most closely ? It is not given to all, 
 or even to many, to move large numbers of their 
 fellow-men by persuasive pen or by eloquent 
 tongue; nor is it given to many to penetrate the 
 hidden things of nature, or seriously to affect the 
 course of history. But none the less, the call of 
 Jesus is to all, "Let your light shine." Be it 
 brilliant or feeble, its duty is to shine. 
 
 Do you know of any whose minds are dwelling 
 in the darkness of ignorance, strangers to the 
 uplifting thoughts that are imprisoned by the score 
 irt the books upon your bookshelves — thoughts lying 
 
THE STARS ALSO 29 
 
 there like sleeping giants, ready to go out and do 
 battle for the deluded and the ignorant the moment 
 they are wakened and set free ? The gift or the 
 loan of such a book would be to the mind that is 
 darkened by ignorance as the rising of the morn- 
 ing star. It may not seem much to us, but it may 
 be everything to him. Hamerton has truly said 
 that "it is with our intellectual as with our material 
 wealth ; we do not realize how precious some 
 fragments of it might be to our poorer neighbours." 
 Even if we have no books to lend, nor any ideas 
 to impart, there are other and even better ways in 
 which we may be as a light shining in a dark 
 place. About us there are hearts that are gloomy or 
 sullen or sad, hearts that are losing faith in God 
 because they see so few gleams of the divine in 
 those who call themselves His children. That 
 darkness can sometimes be dispelled by the quiet 
 light of a simple goodness that shines steadily 
 from day to day. It is not the light of genius, 
 but the nobler light of goodness. It is unaffected 
 and unobtrusive, but it is as a benediction of God to 
 all upon whom it falls. The gentle faces of some 
 whom we know have weaned the murmurer from 
 his murmuring; they have brought their own sweet 
 peace to hearts that were rebellious. They have 
 made us believe in the beauty of goodness. And 
 they shall shine at the right hand of God, when 
 the stars are forgotten. 
 
THE SAVIOUR AND THE MANIAC 
 
THE SAVIOUR AND THE MANIAC 
 
 "He besought Jesus that he might be with Him" 
 
 Of all the encounters of Jesus with men, surely 
 none is more striking than His meeting with the 
 maniac whose home was among the tombs. Jesus 
 had just left the boat, and stepped upon the shore, 
 when from out one of the caves that served for a 
 burying-place among the limestone hills there 
 rushed towards Him a creature that seemed not so 
 much like a human being as like an evil spirit incar- 
 nate. Perhaps the unhappy man had been watch- 
 ing the boat coming across the lake ; and with the 
 swift bounds of a maniac, he made straight for 
 the Master as He disembarked. It was always so 
 with Jesus. No sooner did He touch the land than 
 He was met by human want and misery. 
 
 How very touching is the contrast between these 
 two men — the Saviour and the maniac; immortal 
 symbol of the world, wild and gloomy, hopeless 
 and homeless, rushing on to offer its instinctive 
 and unconscious homage to the Jesus whom it 
 needs. There stands the Master, with His quiet, 
 fearless bearing, with His sorrowful face and His 
 d 33 
 
34 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 beautiful eyes; and there, at His feet, is the demo- 
 niac, wild and fierce and naked, with the strength 
 of a demon in his right arm and the awful light of 
 madness in his eye. Not only all the day, but all 
 the night, when other men were sleeping, the 
 lonely hills where he made his home would ring 
 with his unearthly cries, and he would gash himself 
 with stones until the blood would spurt. So power- 
 ful was he that he could burst the heavy chains with 
 which he had been bound, and so terrible was he 
 that the bravest were afraid to pass that way. 
 
 No one would pass but Jesus. He was not afraid. 
 Such were the ways He loved to pass. He loved to 
 set the fallen upon their feet, to restore again the 
 ruins of human nature ; and to heal this wild misery 
 which rushed towards Him from the hills, and then 
 threw itself impulsively at His feet, was just to do 
 the work which His Father had given Him to do. 
 A brave heart might well have quailed before such 
 an onset, and fled perhaps in terror; but Jesus 
 stood and, looking upon him, loved him. We 
 listen with bated breath to hear what He will say 
 to this poor, unhappy and dangerous man. Jesus 
 is always simple, serenely and sublimely simple. 
 He does not begin by preaching any gospel, He 
 simply asks the man his name. And we may well 
 believe that the maniac's manner would be instantly 
 transformed. Here was a voice which sounded as 
 perhaps no human voice before or since has sounded 
 
THE SAVIOUR AND THE MANIAC 35 
 
 — the quiet, gentle, affectionate tone must have 
 gone home with healing to the recesses of that shat- 
 tered mind ; and here were the words of One who 
 spoke to him as a man speaks to his friend. Other 
 men had repeatedly come to bind him with their 
 cruel chains; who could this be who came with no 
 chain, but who bound him all the more firmly by 
 the gentle bonds of love ? 
 
 Is it any wonder that in the quiet, authoritative 
 presence of Jesus, the maniac is transformed? He, 
 who before was naked, now is clothed. He, who 
 before rushed with wild frenzy about the desolate 
 hills, now sits quietly at the feet of Jesus. He, who 
 before was possessed by devils, is now possessed 
 by the spirit of Jesus. 
 
 And such were some of us. Before Jesus laid 
 His gentle hand upon us and spoke to us the simple 
 words that reached our hearts, we too, like the 
 demoniac, were not only useless, but dangerous, a 
 menace to those who met us and passed by our 
 way. Our haunts were among the tombs and not 
 far from the swine. But there came a day when we 
 left the tombs and met Jesus, or rather were met 
 by Him, upon the shore. And then it was all so 
 different. We saw life with other eyes. We wan- 
 dered no more wildly upon the hills, among the 
 tombs and near the swine; but we sat down, with 
 rapture in our hearts, at the feet of Jesus, and we 
 would have wished to remain there for evermore. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 But Jesus will not have that. There is a time to 
 sit, with the demoniac, at the Master's feet, and 
 there is a time to rise and go. The story of the 
 Gerasene is almost more touching at the end than 
 at the beginning. For we are told that as Jesus 
 was going into the boat again, the man whose mind 
 He had restored, began to entreat Him for permis- 
 sion to remain with Him. Nothing seemed more 
 reasonable. What a disciple this man would have 
 made ! Every fresh exercise of self-control, every 
 sane word he uttered, would be an irresistible re- 
 minder of the debt he owed to Jesus; and what more 
 natural than that he should wish to be for ever 
 beside the great Benefactor who had transformed 
 his life? 
 
 Yet Jesus refused. As he earnestly besought 
 Jesus to be allowed to remain by Him, "Jesus suf- 
 ered him not, but said, ' Go.' " Why was he so 
 anxious to remain, and why was Jesus so insistent 
 that he should go? Some ancient writers suppose 
 that the man was afraid that in the absence of Jesus 
 the demons might return. The horrible memory 
 of his madness may have haunted his mind, and he 
 was afraid to leave Jesus. He knew that Jesus was 
 stronger than the demons who had tormented him ; 
 and he would have been prepared to walk through 
 any valley, however long and dark and peopled 
 with evil spirits, if only there was One continually 
 near him to whom he could say, "Thou art with 
 
THE SAVIOUR AND THE MANIAC 37 
 
 me : Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me." 
 For a moment, his heart may have sunk, as Jesus 
 uttered His first stern word, "Go." 
 
 Why did Jesus refuse the man's request? Partly 
 for the world's sake and partly for the man's own. 
 "Go," said Jesus, "to thy house, to thine own 
 people, and tell them all that the Lord, in pity, hath 
 done for thee." The saved man has to be, in his 
 turn, a saviour, or at least a preacher. Anything 
 that he knows about Jesus, those who are dear to 
 him should know too. "Go to thine own people 
 and tell them." Upon the man who has been re- 
 deemed, who has passed from insanity to soundness 
 of mind, from lonely misery to fulness of joy, lies 
 the obligation to tell the story to those whom he 
 can influence, first to those of his own household, 
 and then to those beyond it ; for if a man has been 
 healed by the shores of the sea of Galilee, then 
 Decapolis has a right to know about it too. Life 
 upon the mountains and among the tombs is no 
 more possible for such an one : he must go with 
 his message among the men who need it. The new 
 power which Jesus has brought into his life is not 
 only for himself, but for them. Inspiration has to 
 be translated into action, knowledge and power 
 into service. The work for which he was redeemed 
 will not be done if he sits at Jesus' feet. So, for 
 the world's sake, Jesus says, "Go." 
 
 But no less for the man's sake. He has to learn 
 
38 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 that the power which redeemed him can keep him, 
 whether the bodily presence of Jesus is near him 
 or not. Perhaps, like many men, he was anxiously 
 dependent upon a visible support to his faith ; and 
 the gracious Jesus, who loved him better than he 
 knew, deliberately sent him away, that he might 
 learn the true meaning of spiritual religion. "Go 
 and tell what the Lord hath done." The Lord was 
 the Lord of all the earth, and everywhere He might 
 be found. When Jesus entered into His boat, and 
 was lost to sight across the lake, the power which 
 He represented did not vanish with Him ; and Jesus 
 wished to bring home to this redeemed but anxious 
 soul, that the divine resources were always at the 
 disposal of the man who trusted them — alike upon 
 the sea and land, upon the valleys and the hills, in 
 the crowded city and on the waste and desolate 
 place where no man is. God and His power and 
 His love are everywhere. 
 
 Thus it is in the loving wisdom of God that we 
 are sometimes called by circumstances to leave the 
 friends who have been the support of our religious 
 life. He wishes us to stand upon our own feet and 
 to rise to our full spiritual stature. When we 
 beseech Him to allow us to remain, He sometimes 
 sends us away in order that we may be our best and 
 bravest. Religion has been made real to us by some 
 brave, strong man, or by some sweet, pure woman ; 
 and we are too prone to identify it with them. 
 
THE SAVIOUR AND THE MANIAC 39 
 
 Near them we can believe in God; far from them 
 we are afraid of ourselves. Life would be easier 
 with them beside us : that is why God sends us 
 away. An easy religion is not worth while. We 
 must learn that when we part from those whom we 
 love, or they from us, we do not part from God. 
 They step into the boat, and with breaking hearts 
 we watch them move across the lake and pass out 
 of our sight for ever; but have we not the solace 
 of that unseen Companion who said, " Lo 1 I am 
 with you alway " ? 
 
THE TOWER OF FAITH 
 
THE TOWER OF FAITH 
 
 "Though it tarry, wait for it" 
 
 The sceptic and the prophet, widely as they 
 differ, are alike at least in this, that they both 
 honestly face facts. They are both seers; only the 
 one sees more, the other less. The sceptic sees the 
 facts at his feet; the prophet, while not blind to 
 these, also sets his eyes on the far-away. The 
 sceptic sees the confusions, and is perplexed, per- 
 haps provoked into sarcasm ; the prophet sees the 
 order behind and beyond, and is comforted by it. 
 He knows of the mountain behind the mist. The 
 mist, which the sceptic sees, is a fact — as much of 
 a fact, while it is there, as the mountain. But it is 
 not the fact. The wind dissipates it; but no wind 
 can dissipate the mountains. 
 
 Neither sceptic nor prophet would willingly 
 "make his judgment blind." The prophet would 
 be no prophet were he to purchase his serenity by 
 closing his eyes to the anomalies and the tragedies 
 which, from time immemorial, have confirmed the 
 sceptic in his scepticism, and staggered the faith even 
 of good men. He must gaze, sorrowfully indeed, 
 
 43 
 
44 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 yet unflinchingly, upon it all. He may see through 
 it. He may see beyond it. But he has first of all 
 to see it, or he can be of little service to the man 
 whom it perplexes. This honest recognition of 
 fact the sceptic and the prophet share in common ; 
 and so it happens that the man who begins as a 
 sceptic may end as a prophet. He earnestly looks 
 at the things which have made men resentful and 
 rebellious; and the more earnestly he looks, the 
 more surely will he learn to see not those things 
 only, but the dawning of that larger purpose to 
 which these things and all things contribute. 
 
 Even the greatest prophets were sometimes per- 
 plexed, and they spoke to God in words of passion- 
 ate remonstrance. It was so with Habakkuk. The 
 times in which he lived were out of joint. He 
 looked for order, and behold ! confusion. Success 
 seemed to be on the side of the battalions. Chal- 
 dean armies, strong and terrible, were scouring 
 Western Asia, and sweeping irresistibly into their 
 net the weaker peoples that stood in their way. 
 Judah is impotent. She, too, is caught and held 
 fast, grateful if the life is not crushed out of her. 
 As a political and religious force, she is likely to 
 be extinguished, and Habakkuk's heart is sore. 
 Almost in despair, he appeals to Israel's "holy and 
 everlasting God," and asks what means such an 
 impious triumph. Is it, after all, might and not 
 right, that is at the heart of things ? 
 
THE TOWER OF FAITH 45 
 
 What does the prophet do? In the tumult of 
 his soul, he resolves to climb his tower. 
 
 "On my watch I will take my stand 
 And I will set me on my tower, 
 And I will spy out to see what He will say to me, 
 And what answer He will make to my complaint." 
 
 Down among the noise and confusion, he can see 
 nothing, hear nothing — nothing at least that 
 steadies and inspires him. He must reach a van- 
 tage point, from which he can see ; he must climb 
 his tower. For the seer must be above the crowd 
 and the confusion. He must be, like his God, 
 "high and lifted up." Only then can he see the 
 meaning and perspective of the battle below, and 
 watch its seeming confusions contribute to a larger 
 order. So he takes his stand, he sets himself. The 
 words imply deliberate purpose, such as that of the 
 soldier who plants his foot firmly in the day of 
 battle. It was not possible for him to keep his feet 
 in the field below. The crowd was seething and 
 shouting, lamenting and blaspheming; and he, 
 with it, was being swayed hither and thither. 
 Below, all is flux; but on his tower he can stand. 
 There is the vision and the peace. 
 
 It is in no sceptical mood that the prophet climbs 
 his tower. Watch him as he mounts with those 
 sorrowful eyes of his kindling with another light; 
 for he is quite sure that his God will have something 
 to show him or tell him. "I will spy out to see 
 
46 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 what He will say," for say something He will. He 
 will not leave His prophet to the gloomy doubts 
 of his own heart. So up he goes with confidence — 
 away, for the time, from the men whom he would 
 help below. There will always be a certain loneli- 
 ness about the true prophet. He must indeed be 
 a man among men, one who is touched to anger, 
 as Habakkuk was, by the oppression he sees around 
 him, one who can read the signs of the times, and 
 who is sensitive to every change on the social and 
 political horizon ; yet he must also know what it is 
 to "sit above it all; alone with the stars." There 
 must be in his life a certain detachableness. He 
 will not see much if he is for ever rubbing shoulders 
 with the crowd. He must sometimes be above 
 them. He must be able to see what they cannot 
 see, and he will not see much without a tower. 
 
 No man ever climbs and listens long and patiently 
 in vain. "I will spy out to see what He will say 
 . . . and Jehovah answered me and said, . . ." 
 There is a vision for the man who will climb, and 
 an answer for the man who knows how to wait and 
 prepare himself for it. As the prophet went up, 
 Jehovah came down. It is His delight to come 
 down to show something to the man who will 
 climb. But the man has to put himself where he 
 can see and hear. He must give God a chance. 
 He must rise above the crowd, and all the more, if 
 it is his ambition to be of any use to them. Every 
 
THE TOWER OF FAITH 47 
 
 word heard by such a man, every vision seen from 
 such a tower, is of permanent value. It is a mes- 
 sage not only for the prophet, but also for those to 
 whom he ministers. Therefore it has to be written 
 — as Jehovah tells His prophet — written so large 
 and plain that no one can misread or ignore it. The 
 true prophet is not afraid to challenge the world 
 with his message. He is ready to publish it in the 
 market-place or proclaim it on the housetops. He 
 will engrave it on tablets, as Habakkuk did, or give 
 it the like permanence of the printed page, if need 
 be; for he is neither ashamed nor afraid. Such a 
 message deserves permanent record ; for, being in- 
 tended to create and steady faith, it concerns every- 
 body. It is at once a consolation and a challenge; 
 a consolation to those who endure in spite of ap- 
 pearances, a challenge to an unbelieving world. 
 The ultimate issue is both clear and certain to a 
 true seer. He is neither afraid to trust it nor to 
 proclaim it. 
 
 That issue is clear, but it may be far away ; and 
 this is the burden of the prophet's message : "The 
 vision is speeding on to the end ; and if it tarry, wait 
 for it." It is a word of patience as well as of faith. 
 "In your patience ye shall win your souls." Once 
 the prophet had not only hoped, but believed, that 
 the great work for which he was looking would be 
 wrought "in your days," that is, in the days of his 
 own contemporaries. Some swift and marvellous 
 
48 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 interposition of God would come, he trusted, within 
 that generation, to confound the unbelievers and 
 confirm the faithful. But now his impatience has 
 been rebuked by the vision from the tower. It has 
 taught him that eternity is very long, and that 
 history is not so simple a thing as he had once 
 thought. Its forces are infinitely complex, and the 
 sharpest eyes cannot see all that will happen "in 
 our day." The just shall live; the right will 
 triumph; and that is all we know. Nay, the just 
 does live, and the right does already triumph in 
 every such honest and steadfast soul as Habakkuk. 
 When out of his perplexity he ascends his tower, 
 with the quiet confidence in his heart that God will 
 speak some word to him, the victory is already his. 
 In the world he is above the world. 
 
 That may indeed be a solitary triumph. But 
 every generation sees it shared by more and more ; 
 and it is only a question of time — or, shall we rather 
 say, of eternity? — till it will be shared by a great 
 multitude which no man can number. For that 
 is Habakkuk's vision : the just shall live. It is 
 right and not might that wins, and can alone win, 
 in a world created and upheld by a God who is "holy 
 from everlasting." How it will come and when it 
 will come we do not know. Habakkuk did not 
 know. No man knows. No man needs to know. 
 But that it will come is certain. It is coming every 
 day, most often silently and without observation, 
 
THE TOWER OF FAITH 49 
 
 but very, very surely. If we see no trace of the 
 workings of God in a month, we may see it in a 
 year; if not in a year, we may see it in a century. 
 For all the ages are God's. It was this confidence 
 — amid much that was so bafriingly uncertain — in 
 the essential and ultimate triumph of good, that 
 sustained the prophet's soul. 
 
 "The vision is yet for the appointed time, 
 It is speeding on to the end, and it will not deceive. 
 If it tarry, wait for it, 
 For it is sure to come, it will not be behind." 
 
 From the tower Habakkuk sees how the purposes of 
 God stretch from the seeming confusion at his feet 
 away into a far country. His righteousness is like 
 the everlasting mountains, whose outlines can be 
 seen a great way off. The vision is for the ap- 
 pointed time, and that time is not yet. It is in the 
 coming days. It may be slow, but it is sure. God 
 has fixed a time for it, and it will not be late. In 
 the prophet's words, "It will not come up after- 
 wards" It knows its time, and if without haste, 
 yet also without rest, it is moving on to the end. 
 Every century, every year, brings it a little nearer. 
 But do not lose faith or patience, if it does not come 
 "in your day." The times are in the hand of God. 
 "Wait for it, for it is sure to come, it will not lag 
 behind." Upon his tower, the prophet has learnt 
 something of that patience which is born of seeing 
 things in the light of the eternal purpose. He 
 
50 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 began his career with impatience. He quarrelled 
 with the ways of God. He asked, How long? and 
 why? But that word passes when he climbs his 
 watch-tower and looks out with grateful awe upon 
 that mysterious but beneficent purpose which runs 
 through all the ages. 
 
 Do men not fret themselves to-day just as Habak- 
 kuk did, and with perhaps less than his excuse? 
 The Chaldeans are vexing us; and we hope and 
 pray that God will hasten His work and bring some 
 notable thing to pass in our day. There are some 
 who are even ready to proclaim the day when it 
 will come, and the form which it will take. There 
 are others who, in their pathetic impatience, would 
 precipitate some other aspect of the divine purpose 
 — the coming of Christ, it may be, or the end of the 
 world. Now all these things are in the hand of 
 God. Our part is not to dogmatize or prophesy; 
 it is to trust that wisdom which we confess to be 
 infinitely above our own, and, in that trust, to work 
 earnestly and wait patiently. God is from ever- 
 lasting to everlasting. His purpose is not exhausted 
 within the span of our little lives. It will be after 
 us, as it was before us. It has eternity for its ac- 
 complishment, and if it tarry, wait for it, for it is 
 sure to come, it will not be behind. It may indeed 
 lag behind our hopes, and even behind our prayers; 
 but the omnipotent wisdom of God will see that it 
 is in time. We are fretful, because we are creatures 
 of a day; God is patient, because He is eternal. 
 
FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS 
 
FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS 
 
 "Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom 
 for such a time as this ? " 
 
 Brilliance and heroism are not always united, 
 but they are in the romantic figure of Esther. Her 
 story glows with all the colour and passion of the 
 East ; it reads more like romance than history. Yet 
 the brilliance of the colouring must not blind us to 
 the skill and truth with which the figures of the 
 book are drawn ; and of them all, none is so drawn 
 to the life as the lovely heroine herself. 
 
 By seeming accident she had been lifted from 
 obscurity to the throne ; and there, amid the security 
 and splendour of the court, she learns one day that 
 the life of her people is in deadly peril, and she 
 alone can save them. Mordecai sought to lay it 
 upon her conscience that she must go to the king 
 and make supplication to him for the forfeited lives 
 of her kinsmen. But then, as so often, duty was 
 dangerous, and Esther shrank from the perilous 
 task. " Every one knows," she says, "that the man 
 or woman who comes before the king unbidden 
 shall be put to death, unless the king hold out the 
 
 S3 
 
54 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 golden sceptre." The effort to help her people by 
 appearing before the king might end in destroying 
 both herself and them ; and, at first, the beautiful 
 queen would not take the risk. Then Mordecai, 
 not to be baffled, appealed to the heroic in her. 
 Her unique position gave her a unique opportunity ; 
 let her rise to it bravely. "Who knows whether 
 thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time 
 as this ? " 
 
 These words instantly lit the whole career of 
 Esther with a new and solemn meaning. It was, 
 then, not for nothing that she was queen, and it 
 was not an accident that had set her upon the 
 throne. This was the crisis to which, throughout 
 the brilliant, happy years, she had all unconsciously 
 been borne ; and now she was to prove to the world 
 whether she was a queen in name only or also in 
 deed and truth. The honour of queen she had en- 
 joyed; the higher honour of the heroine she had 
 yet to achieve. The appeal of Mordecai flashed a 
 light upon her destiny. In a moment she saw the 
 drift of the past, the meaning of the present, the 
 vastness of the opportunity; and she swiftly made 
 up her mind. "I will go," she said. "Let all the 
 Jews fast for me; and, though it is against the law, 
 I will appear before the king; and if I perish, I 
 perish." 
 
 How different life might have been, if only, in 
 its critical moments, we had had some true friend 
 
FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS 55 
 
 to whisper into our ears, "Who knows whether 
 thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as 
 this ? " or, failing this, if we could have spoken the 
 words to our own hearts. There are some of us 
 whose earlier years have been an uninterrupted 
 accumulation of happy and useful experience. The 
 years have been gliding smoothly along. Little 
 by little we have been adding to our resources — of 
 knowledge or money, accomplishment or influence. 
 We are happy in the consciousness of power, and, 
 for long, nothing occurs to open our eyes to its 
 obligations. And then one day we are brought face 
 to face with a crisis. A worthy cause needs us, and 
 we know we can help it. If we refuse, the cause 
 may not indeed be lost, but it will certainly suffer — 
 at least to the extent to which we could have helped 
 it. We know this, but we are afraid. We fear the 
 frown of the king or the people, we fear to imperil 
 our comfort or happiness, and we will not take the 
 risk. We love, like Esther, the seat of power; and 
 we are too foolish to see that power is useless until 
 it is used, too cowardly to take our life in our hands 
 and face the king. But, oh ! the thrill of satisfac- 
 tion when the call finds us willing, as well as ready ; 
 when in a moment the whole meaning of our past 
 rushes upon us, and with high hearts we go on to 
 meet the crisis for which through the patient years 
 Providence has been preparing us. 
 
 "Thou art come to the kingdom for such a time 
 
56 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 as this." It is to those who are kings among men — 
 those who are head and shoulders above the people, 
 those whose gifts or resources make them con- 
 spicuous among their fellows — that this reminder 
 comes especially home. It may be, for example, 
 that a great cause is in danger. Its advocates and 
 its opponents are pretty evenly balanced. But there 
 is one strong man, who, if he would speak, could 
 turn the fortunes of the day; for men believe in his 
 sincerity and disinterestedness, as well as in his 
 knowledge and insight, and the humbler supporters 
 of the cause are waiting, in hope, to hear what he 
 will say. His gifts, his influence, his experience, 
 not only qualify but entitle him to speak a great 
 word. But he sits in silence, or makes a speech of 
 unworthy compromise. He lets the golden oppor- 
 tunity pass; and it may be that a great injustice is 
 done, or the cause of truth and progress retarded 
 for years, for want of the word which he could well 
 have spoken. 
 
 There are doubtless many reasons for silence. 
 Sometimes it is due to real and all but unconquer- 
 able diffidence, sometimes to cynicism, but some- 
 times also assuredly to cowardice. The man may 
 suppose that plain, uncompromising speech might 
 alienate his friends, imperil his influence, or injure 
 his reputation. In any case, the day on which a 
 strong and influential man fails, for such a reason, 
 to lift up his voice for the truth, is one of the tragic 
 
FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS 57 
 
 days of his life. In the providence of God, that was 
 the crisis for which he had come to his kingdom, 
 and he should have bravely met it. 
 
 Or perhaps a good cause is languishing for lack 
 of money. Hospitals have to be built, homes for 
 consumptives, refuges for the unfortunate. Educa- 
 tional institutions have to be endowed and chairs 
 founded for research into the mysteries above, 
 around, and beneath us. The Church desires to 
 take the healing words of Jesus Christ to the thou- 
 sands of people who stand without her pale, to the 
 remote parts of the land where the people are un- 
 visited by her ministers, and to the distant isles of 
 the sea. All this needs money. And where is the 
 money to come from ? Who shall say that there is 
 not a hundred times more than enough ? Many 
 wealthy men have done very nobly, as numerous 
 philanthropic, educational, and religious institutions 
 have good reason to know. But why should any 
 such institution languish for one moment in a 
 society so wealthy as ours? There are men who 
 could build a hospital, or found a chair, or support 
 a foreign missionary all his days, without having 
 to deprive themselves of any of the luxuries, to say 
 nothing of the necessities of their existence. Why 
 then are these things not done on a far more 
 generous and extensive scale? Is it not because 
 wealth does not always rise to a sense of its obliga- 
 tion ? A man on a throne must show himself 
 
58 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 kingly; but when calls come from such needy and 
 noble institutions, the men who have the money 
 sometimes forget that they have come to their king- 
 dom for just such a time as this. 
 
 But perhaps there is no sphere which affords so 
 strong or subtle a temptation to forget the obliga- 
 tion of high privilege as that of education. It is not 
 common to find a man's intellectual resources or a 
 woman's accomplishments in art or music accom- 
 panied by a high sense of responsibility. It has 
 happened, for example, that after a brilliant uni- 
 versity course, which gave every assurance of a 
 happy and influential career at home, the call has 
 come to a man to spend his gifts upon some distant, 
 needy field in India or China in the service of educa- 
 tion or religion. The natural man may at first 
 resent the call. Every unconsecrated instinct rises 
 up in regret, and perhaps rebellion. In such a 
 mood, the words of Mordecai come like a voice from 
 heaven. Has not the cultured man come to his 
 kingdom for just such a time as this? It is the 
 barren fields and the forlorn causes that need the 
 strongest men. The real kingdom has to be 
 achieved through service. The other is but the 
 semblance of power, this is its substance; and a 
 day of undreamt-of gladness, as well as usefulness, 
 dawns when the man gratefully welcomes this crisis 
 as one of God's best gifts to him. Now he has his 
 chance to be a king indeed. 
 
FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS 59 
 
 But we must not put away this warning with the 
 thought that it is not for us. We are not indeed 
 kings or queens. We have no kingdom or throne. 
 We have no commanding gifts of influence or 
 money or culture. No ! But, after all, gifts 
 are relative. There are great kingdoms and little 
 kingdoms, and the one are as real as the other. 
 I have not come into another man's kingdom. 
 I have only come into my own. But it is my 
 own ; and for my use of it and for my conduct in 
 it, I am altogether responsible. I have not much 
 influence, or money, or culture, but I have some ; 
 and with that I am bound, as much as the great 
 leaders of men are bound, to face without flinching 
 whatever crisis comes to me. Above all, if my gifts 
 are few, I have at least my personality. That is 
 mine, inalienably mine — a kingdom in which my 
 authority is supreme and unchallengeable. When 
 duty looks at me with her stern but pleading eyes, 
 let me never forget that I am come to my kingdom 
 for such a time as this. There is no one in the 
 universe who has just the opportunity which I 
 have, no one else whose situation is just the same as 
 mine. No one else can be brave for me. If I let 
 this opportunity slip, it is gone for ever. My 
 negligence may bring disaster or defeat upon some 
 worthy cause. My cowardice may involve my own 
 life in irreparable ruin. 
 
 Nor must we let ourselves believe that our lives 
 
60 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 move among situations so hopelessly commonplace 
 that there is in them no opportunity for the 
 heroic. Never was there a greater mistake. The 
 crisis is sure to come, though it may come in 
 so humble a guise that we may fail to recognize it 
 till it is gone. It may be simply the recording of a 
 vote where important issues are at stake, it may be 
 the speaking of a kind word to some heart in doubt 
 or sorrow, it may be the rebuking of a blasphemous 
 or filthy story. In the face of opportunities like 
 these, whatever gifts of influence or character we 
 have must be bravely used. Who knows whether 
 thou art not come to thy kingdom for such a time 
 as this? 
 
 Often, too, we shall find that the peril, when we 
 face it, is not so deadly as it seemed. "And it was 
 so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing 
 in the court, that she obtained favour in his sight ; 
 and the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre 
 that was in his hand." Virtue is indeed its own best 
 reward, but it is also not seldom crowned with the 
 reward of success. Even if we fail we shall win 
 our own souls ; but as a rule, we shall not fail. Like 
 Esther, we may save both ourselves and others. It 
 is our imagination of the peril that unmans us; the 
 resolution to face it brings the requisite strength, 
 and often, too, the victory. We quail at the 
 thought of the king upon his throne; but lo ! when 
 with brave, though beating hearts, we appear before 
 him, he holds out to us the golden sceptre. 
 
THE PASSING OF OPPORTUNITY 
 
THE PASSING OF OPPORTUNITY 
 
 " Me ye have not always * 
 
 Jesus is a continual surprise. You could never 
 guess, if you did not know, how He will reply to a 
 disputant, or what He will do in a dilemma. He 
 always does the original thing, says the unexpected 
 thing. His deeds and words are a source of aston- 
 ishment even to the disciples who know and love 
 Him best. Those whom they rebuke, He wel- 
 comes ; and on those with whom they are indignant, 
 He bestows the loftiest and most deliberate com- 
 mendation. Verily His ways are not as their ways, 
 and perhaps still less as our ways. 
 
 No one could be long with Jesus without learning 
 that He loved the poor ; and it is hardly surprising 
 that when a woman, in the wealth of her devotion, 
 broke a box of very precious ointment and poured 
 it over the head of her Lord, the disciples were 
 indignant and harsh. They counted her act one of 
 foolish extravagance and condemned it in words 
 which we might almost imagine were the Master's 
 own. "What is the good of such waste?" they 
 say; "for this ointment might have been sold and 
 
 63 
 
64 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 given to the poor." It would not have been hard 
 to believe that these were words of Jesus' own — 
 words of mild rebuke to the eager woman who had 
 forgotten how dear the poor were to Jesus. But 
 no ! The surprise is here as everywhere. What 
 Jesus said was very different : " Leave her alone ; 
 it is a beautiful work that she has wrought upon Me. 
 For ye have the poor with you all the time, but Me 
 ye have not always." Jesus has not forgotten His 
 love for the poor, nor has He forgotten how much 
 might be done with the money ; but the poor might 
 be helped at any time, while if He was to be thus 
 honoured, it must be now or never. There is a time 
 to sell the precious ointment, and a time to break 
 the box and pour its treasure over the head of Jesus ; 
 and happy is he who knows these times and 
 seasons. 
 
 Jesus is here enunciating, in His own inimitable 
 way, the great truth of the relative value of oppor- 
 tunities. The good is not the best; and His words 
 suggest that the man who would do homage to the 
 best must be daring enough to rise above the 
 temptation to be merely good, or to govern his life 
 by the standards even of a noble convention. Jesus 
 came not to be ministered unto, yet He was glad, 
 very glad, when such spontaneous ministrations 
 came. Though meek and lowly, He unhesitatingly 
 accepted the costliest service, and counted Himself 
 worthy of the noblest that men could offer. He 
 
THE PASSING OF OPPORTUNITY 65 
 
 loved the poor, but to Him life had other than 
 economic aspects; and amid the cruelty, suspicion 
 and misunderstanding that clouded the last of His 
 earthly days, He welcomed with peculiar joy the 
 daring generosity of this woman's heart. 
 
 The great words in which Jesus justified the 
 breaking of the alabaster box in His own behalf, 
 embody a principle which should run through all 
 wise life. The words were these: "The poor ye 
 have always with you ; but Me ye have not always." 
 The principle is this — that opportunities differ in 
 value and importance, and that wisdom consists in 
 reading their value aright and in selecting the one 
 which will not be always with us. Certain things 
 may be done at any time ; certain other things must 
 be done now or never. Certain privileges may be 
 enjoyed at any time; certain others, now or never. 
 Every life is confronted at many points with this 
 strange contrast — between the ordinary opportuni- 
 ties which come with every day, and some great 
 opportunity which, if not grasped at once, may 
 vanish for ever. The poor and Jesus ! There is 
 the living contrast which is symbolical of so much 
 in our life. The presence of the poor we can depend 
 on ; the pathetic commonplace is ever about us; but 
 unique opportunities are not always with us. They 
 are rare. Sometimes they come to us but once ; and 
 though we should wait for a century, they would 
 never come again. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 It is very like Jesus that the opportunity which 
 He here commends the woman for using is an 
 opportunity for doing good. In breaking the box 
 of ointment she was taking this unique opportunity 
 of honouring Jesus. But the principle is as true 
 when its application is widened to opportunities for 
 receiving good. For here, too, some opportunities 
 are relatively commonplace; others, like Jesus, are 
 unique. Some are always with us, others come but 
 once or seldom. 
 
 Every life, however humble, has unique oppor- 
 tunities of its own. The Sabbath day — do we use 
 it for the better things ? The holiday — do we let it 
 bring us nearer the God of the mountains and the 
 sea ? The rare opportunities of travel — what do we 
 do with them ? Are we of those who would rather 
 read a newspaper than watch a brilliant sunset ? 
 Common days and common sights will come again ; 
 but to him that hath ears to hear, every unique 
 opportunity rings out the reminder, "The poor ye 
 have always with you, but Me ye have not always." 
 And if we cannot distinguish between opportunities, 
 we have yet much to learn from Jesus. 
 
 In its primary reference, this word of Jesus re- 
 ferred not to getting, but to doing good ; and here, 
 as there, opportunities differ. It is not always easy, 
 of course, to judge the real significance of an oppor- 
 tunity. A whole career has often been determined 
 by a choice which at the moment seemed trivial. 
 
THE PASSING OF OPPORTUNITY 67 
 
 At the same time, there are opportunities whose 
 greatness no sane man would dispute; and it would 
 be well for those whose life is before them to learn 
 to understand and value how much is theirs and 
 how soon and how surely it will pass away. It is 
 too late to break the alabaster box when Jesus is in 
 His grave. 
 
 Perhaps there are few who realize the transiency 
 of the home. As each day runs its commonplace 
 round, the unspeakable privilege of living in the 
 most intimate communion with those whom of all 
 the world we love the most, is apt to be forgotten. 
 There may indeed be kindliness enough ; but how 
 much more tender and affectionate it might be if 
 we remembered how frail are the bonds that unite 
 us, and how soon some of them will be broken. 
 
 It is proper and necessary that friendships be 
 formed outside of the family circle; for the home 
 does not exhaust the great world, and only in the 
 duties and friendships of the larger life beyond it 
 can our nature be even approximately completed. 
 Nor can we forget that sometimes friends may be 
 even 
 
 "more than my brothers are to me." 
 
 Still, the home includes the most intimate and 
 sacred of all relationships ; and there is something 
 almost awe-inspiring in the swiftness with which 
 they can be sundered. In a year or two, a month 
 
 or two, sometimes, — indeed, in a moment, its 
 
 F a 
 
68 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 seeming permanence dissolves, and the happy circle 
 becomes but a memory — a vision seen through 
 blinding tears. A man may find friends — though 
 perhaps not many — anywhere and at any time; but 
 the dear faces of the home are not with us always. 
 The claims of business, profession or pleasure, may 
 take the son to a far country; and when he comes 
 back, his mother is in her grave. And then how 
 he wishes he had worked a good work upon her 
 when she was with him ! Yes ! now he would 
 break his costliest alabaster box a thousand times 
 over for her gentle sake. But she is sleeping her 
 dreamless sleep, and the dear lips are cold. 
 
 "Me ye have not always with you." Oh, why 
 do we take so long to learn a lesson so simple ? 
 Sooner or later, every home crumbles away ; but as 
 we gather round the table we never think of this. 
 It is well that such a thought should not haunt us 
 for ever, but surely it should visit us sometimes. 
 The brother is rough to the sister, the son is rude 
 to the father, the husband is a little unmindful of 
 the wife; and all the time they love each other. 
 " What fools these mortals be ! " Why should they 
 forget that they have not each other for ever, or 
 that life is too short for strife ? Marriage or busi- 
 ness will separate them soon enough, or death will 
 come with its more awful separation. And then 
 those who are left will yearn, in bitter sincerity, for 
 "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a 
 
THE PASSING OF OPPORTUNITY 69 
 
 voice that is still." But while the hand that will 
 vanish is still with us, shall we not do something 
 to lighten the burden of its toil ? And while the 
 voice still speaks that will one day be silent, shall 
 we not listen to it with an almost tremulous sense 
 of the privilege that is ours ? Common friends we 
 shall find again ; but the well-beloved of our homes 
 we shall not have always with us. While we have 
 them, then, let us love them and cherish them and 
 work a good work upon them, before the night 
 cometh when we can work for them no more. 
 
THE VALLEY OF DEATH 
 
THE VALLEY OF DEATH 
 
 " They stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army " 
 
 There is perhaps no passage in all the Bible which, 
 for weird imaginative power, surpasses Ezekiel's 
 Vision of Dry Bones. By means that are as simple 
 as simple can be, he transports us into a veritable 
 valley of death, and the gloom and the horror of it 
 enter our souls. We shall let the prophet himself 
 lead us into the valley, and tell us what he saw, 
 and how he felt, and what the vision did for him. 
 This is the story in his own words, with something 
 of their muffled music : 
 
 Jehovah touched me with His mighty hand, 
 And bore me in the spirit to a valley, 
 And in the midst thereof He set me down, 
 And it was full of bones ; and round and round 
 Among the bones He led me. And, behold ! 
 Thickly they lay upon the valley's face, 
 Exceeding many and exceeding dry. 
 Then thus He spake to me : " O child of man ! 
 Can these bones live?" "O Lord," I said, "Thou knowest." 
 "Lift up thy voice," He said, "and prophesy 
 Upon these bones, and in these words address them : 
 'Ye dry bones, listen to Jehovah's word.' 
 Thus saith Jehovah to these bones, ' Behold 1 
 
 73 
 
74 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 I will breathe into you the breath of life, 
 Sinews and flesh will I bring up on you, 
 And I will cover you with skin, and put 
 The breath of life in you : then ye shall know 
 That I am God the Lord Omnipotent.'" 
 Straightway I prophesied as I was bidden, 
 And, as I prophesied, behold ! a shaking ! 
 Each several bone drew near unto his fellow. 
 And, as I gazed, behold ! there came upon them 
 Sinews and flesh and skin to cover them. 
 But still within them was no breath of life. 
 "Lift up thy voice," He said, "and prophesy. 
 Speak to the wind, thou child of man, and say, 
 ' Thus saith the Lord Omnipotent : O wind ! 
 Come hither from all quarters of the heavens, 
 And breathe upon these slain that they may live.'" 
 So then I prophesied as He had bade me, 
 And into them there came the breath of life ; 
 As living men, they stood upon their feet — 
 A mighty host and great exceedingly, 
 
 In an ecstatic mood, the prophet is borne upon 
 the wings of his sombre imagination to a valley 
 filled with human bones — weird, gruesome, chaotic; 
 for they are not even skeletons, but an indis- 
 criminate mass of bones. No prospect could have 
 been more forlorn or unpromising. There they 
 lie, sad emblem of a hopeless, lifeless people — 
 the living dead. 
 
 Round and round the valley the prophet is led by 
 his mysterious guide, the only living man in the 
 grim silent valley. And everywhere are bones — 
 the face of the valley is thick with them, so many 
 that the soil beneath them does not peer through : 
 
THE VALLEY OF DEATH 75 
 
 bones exceeding many and exceeding dry. Dry — 
 for it is long, long, since the warm sap of life was 
 about them ; and they are so shrivelled and wizened 
 that nothing but a miracle can ever bring the life 
 about them again. "Behold!" says the prophet 
 sadly, casting his despondent glance upon them, 
 as he moves about the valley. "Behold them — 
 exceeding many and exceeding dry." 
 
 The awful silence is broken by a divine voice : 
 is it the voice of the prophet's own questioning 
 heart ? " Man ! can these bones live ?" What 
 shall the poor prophet say ? He cannot say Yes, 
 and he cannot say No. He cannot say Yes; for 
 the true prophet is sane. He does not deceive 
 himself; he measures the factors with which he 
 has to deal, and he will not make the mistake of 
 under-estimating his problem. He knows that 
 there is little prospect for dry bones. But neither 
 can he say No; for with God all things are 
 possible. Is anything too hard for the Lord? 
 The wizened bones may — yes, by the omnipotent 
 grace of God, they may — yet become men of 
 flesh and blood. The prophet therefore answers 
 with reverent humility: "O Lord Jehovah, thou 
 knowest." 
 
 Then, to our surprise, instead of Jehovah Him- 
 self addressing the bones and rousing them to 
 unity and life by His word of thunder, He turns to 
 the prophet, and bids him pronounce the magic 
 
76 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 word. "Prophesy thou over the bones." The 
 divine and resuscitating word is to be spoken by 
 God's human servant. "Dry Bones" — they are 
 thus addressed as if that were their name — 
 "listen": among those dead ones there are still, 
 it would seem, slumbering possibilities — "listen 
 to the word of Jehovah," the word, that is, that 
 falls from the lips of His prophet. 
 
 Then the word rings out across the valley with 
 weird and solemn echoes: "Thus saith the Lord 
 Jehovah to these bones, ' Behold ! ' " — for what is 
 about to happen is marvellous — " ' Behold ! I will 
 put breath into you, and ye shall live.' " Jehovah, 
 who breathed into the nostrils of the first man the 
 breath of life, is able and ready to work His ancient 
 wonder upon less promising subjects and on a more 
 splendid scale. Breath is the greatest thing, the 
 necessary thing, to a living man — mentioned here 
 first, and as God's own gift; till they get their 
 breath, they will be of no use. But it is imparted 
 last. First, the dry and wizened bones must be 
 clothed with flesh and sinews, and then, when they 
 look like human beings, they will be ready for 
 breath. And finally, when they stand upon their 
 feet, an exceeding great army, the breath of life in 
 their nostrils and the light of life in their eyes, 
 then they will know "that I am Jehovah." For 
 those hopeless men, of whom the sapless bones are 
 the emblem, do not yet rightly know what manner 
 
THE VALLEY OF DEATH 77 
 
 of God is theirs, and how by His mighty power He 
 can revive them again. 
 
 So the prophet, believing in God, and in the 
 resurrection of the dead, prophesied as he was 
 bidden, astonished to hear the sound of his own 
 voice re-echoing across the dismal valley, and 
 awaiting the result with curious expectancy. And 
 soon it came. There was a shaking. The mighty 
 word produces a movement among the bones. The 
 prophet's word is Jehovah's word, and they have 
 to listen. Then follows one of the weirdest scenes 
 in literature. The bones that are isolated and 
 scattered, without cohesion, move silently, mysteri- 
 ously, toward each other, each into its proper place, 
 bone fitting bone, so that now we have at least the 
 semblance of men. The scattered bones have at 
 least become skeletons. And then, with the same 
 silence and the same mystery,as the prophet looks, 
 the bones begin to be clothed with flesh and sinews 
 and skin, and the skeletons begin at least to look 
 like men. But, alas ! they are still as dead as ever, 
 for "breath in them was none." And, lying on 
 their backs there, speechless and blind and dead, 
 they are almost more terrible than when we first 
 saw them as the bones that bleached the plain. 
 Step by step they have advanced from being an 
 incoherent mass of bones to assume the comely 
 shape of men. But the greatest step of all has yet 
 to be taken, the step without which all that is yet 
 
78 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 done amounts to nothing ; and that requires a 
 special effort and another prophetic appeal. 
 
 So again " He said to me, ' Prophesy ' " ; and as 
 it is breath that is needed, breath must be sum- 
 moned. To the Hebrew, wind, breath, and spirit 
 were the same. So the prophet, who had spoken 
 with power to the bones, now speaks to the wind — 
 the wind which must obey its Lord, the wind which 
 blows throughout His universe — and summons it 
 to come and blow upon these dead, these slain, that 
 they may live. Again therefore, in faith, the pro- 
 phet prophesies as he is bid, and the wind obeys 
 as the bones had done. The spirit came. Its re- 
 freshing breezes blew across the lifeless valley, and 
 each dead man got his share of it ; and, as they felt 
 the pulse of the new life run through them, they 
 rose from the ground on which they had lain pros- 
 trate, and stood upon their feet, silent and orderly, 
 "an army great exceedingly, exceedingly." And 
 this host that has risen from the dead is almost as 
 terrible as was the grim valley with its multitude of 
 bones — terrible now, not with death, but with life 
 and power. Standing now upon their feet, shoulder 
 to shoulder, in marching order, these men are ready 
 to march to their own dear land in the west, and 
 to deal mighty blows in the battles of the Lord. 
 
 We are not left to guess the meaning of the 
 vision, though that would be simple enough : the 
 prophet has himself explained it for us. The bones 
 
THE VALLEY OF DEATH 79 
 
 are the nation, "the whole house of Israel"; it is 
 the living men who are dead. Their life is bound 
 up inseparably with the life of the nation. When 
 she lives, they live in her; and when she dies, they 
 are as good as dead. The exile had extinguished 
 the national life, and the exiles, counting them- 
 selves as men already dead and in their graves, 
 deplore their fate in these words: "Our bones are 
 dried, our hope is lost, we are undone." But when 
 the prophet proclaims, in faith and courage, his 
 resuscitating word, the hopeless become hopeful, 
 and the dead arise. "I have said it, and I will do it, 
 saith Jehovah." 
 
 Much as this vision suggests to any man who has 
 the eyes to see it, it suggests most of all to the 
 preacher, who is the modern representative of the 
 prophet; for him it is full of delicate hints as to 
 the source of his power, the origin of his message, 
 the indispensableness of his service to the com- 
 munity. 
 
 For one thing, the preacher needs imagination. 
 It is his to utter the thing that he has seen : 
 he cannot utter it well, strictly speaking he cannot 
 utter it at all, until he has seen it. He cannot show 
 what he has not seen. Ezekiel's description of the 
 valley of death lays its weird spell upon our hearts, 
 because he had looked upon the valley with his 
 own eyes. He had stood within it, sorrowful and 
 terrified; he had heard the shaking, he had watched 
 
80 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 with awe the creeping of the bones together, and 
 their marvellous investiture with flesh and sinew : 
 his heart had bounded as he saw the army silently 
 rise to its feet. He makes us feel it all, because he 
 felt it ; he describes the valley well, because he had 
 been there. So the preacher must bring to the text 
 he expounds or the scene he describes not only 
 mind, but imagination. He must learn to use his 
 eyes. He cannot guide another into the valley 
 which he has not seen himself. 
 
 Mark also how the preacher's message comes to 
 him by brooding over the experience of his people. 
 The vision which Ezekiel saw in the spirit was 
 borne in upon him as he reflected upon the hopeless 
 words of his broken-hearted people. "Behold," 
 they say, "our bones are dried, our hope is lost, we 
 are undone." These words of theirs ring in his 
 ears, they pierce him to the heart, they haunt his 
 mind, they sink deep into his imagination. He 
 turns them "round about and round about" till at 
 last, when the ecstatic mood comes over him, he is 
 ushered by them into a silent valley full of the 
 bones of dead men. The true preacher, like the 
 prophet, is one who moves among the people, and 
 knows what they are saying : one whose ears are 
 sensitive to every murmur of the religious and in- 
 tellectual life of the time, of the social and political 
 life, the individual and national life, and who can 
 relate his ministry to that. 
 
THE VALLEY OF DEATH 81 
 
 The preacher, further, must be a man both of 
 sanity and of faith. Of sanity : for, when he looks 
 at the dead men before him, whom it is his duty 
 and his privilege to rouse into life, he will recognize 
 that the task is a terrible one, — he will not deceive 
 h'mself about that. A young man may be tempted 
 to suppose that, before the'enthusiasm and eloquence 
 of his sermons, the strongholds of sin and indiffer- 
 ence will fall, as the walls of Jericho fell at the 
 blast of Joshua's trumpets. But the experienced 
 preacher knows very well that these strongholds are 
 not so easily overthrown. He knows that the best 
 he may do may elicit but little or no response. 
 When he asks himself if these dead men to whom 
 he minivers can live, he will not say that it is 
 impossible, but he knows that it will be infinitely 
 hard. No power but that of God Himself can effect 
 a resurrection from the dead. 
 
 But, on the other hand, it is his duty to believe 
 in, and, believing in, to work for, this national 
 resurrection. The men before him may be dead, 
 but they are men : they have in them the capacity 
 to be an exceeding great army. If he be a true 
 prophet of God, with any vision in his soul, and 
 any love for men, he will hope and believe all 
 things of them. It doth not yet appear what they 
 shall be. With the eyes of faith he will see, as he 
 preaches, the grim silent valley stir with life. He 
 will preach in the faith that the dead can be raised. 
 
82 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 He will hear the rush of life, where before was the 
 silence of death. He will see the dead men before 
 him — if not all of them, yet some — stand up upon 
 their feet, ready to take their place, like good 
 soldiers of Jesus Christ, in the great army of the 
 Lord, to fight the eternal battle against the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil. He must preach and work 
 with this faith in the possibility of individual 
 recovery, of national resurrection. Otherwise, his 
 calling is a mockery, and his appeals are vain. 
 When the divine voice says to him, " Prophesy over 
 these dry bones, and say unto them, ' Listen,' " he 
 instantly and hopefully obeys. 
 
 The prophet's voice, ringing triumphantly 
 through the valley of the dead, reminds us of the 
 power of the preacher in the national life. The dead 
 men can indeed live again : but, under God, the 
 transformation is effected by the prophet. The 
 voice which calls those bones together and lifts 
 those dead men to their feet is a human voice — it 
 is none other than the voice of the preacher. It is 
 he, with his message, who puts hope into the hope- 
 less and life into the dead. How often the words 
 "breath" and "prophesy" occur in this passage! 
 What the dead men lack, as they lie there on the 
 plain upon their backs, looking so like living men 
 — what they lack is breath, that is, inspiration ; and 
 this comes to them through the word of the prophet 
 or the preacher. He may have to speak, like 
 Ezekiel, twice, or he may have to speak a hundred 
 
THE VALLEY OF DEATH 83 
 
 times; but it is when he prophesies as he is com- 
 manded that there is at length a shaking among 
 the bones. It is then that they stand upon their 
 feet, an exceeding great army. 
 
 It would be almost impossible to exaggerate the 
 importance of the true preacher in the national life. 
 He is the man with the breath of another life within 
 him, with the light of another life in his eyes. 
 Whoever else is alive in this valley of death, he at 
 any rate must be alive. He must possess the word 
 of power. He must remind the people of the things 
 they are forgetting. When by the rivers of Baby- 
 lon they sit down disconsolate and weep, he must 
 put them again in mind of Jerusalem. When they 
 are allowing the business of Babylon — the pursuit 
 of wealth or pleasure or honour — to dry up their 
 affection for God and for the things of their deeper 
 life, then it is for the prophet to stand forth, and 
 speak his trumpet word across the valley, and 
 recall his people, his Church, or his nation, to the 
 things they have forsaken or forgotten. 
 
 If the preacher prophesies, like Ezekiel, as he is 
 commanded, preaches with fervour and imagination 
 and affection the gospel he is commissioned to 
 preach, there will assuredly be a shaking among 
 the bones, and one here and another there will leap 
 to his feet to fight for the Lord. More than upon 
 any one else does the revival of national life depend 
 upon the preacher. It is he, under God, who 
 
 speaks the word that raises a people from the dead. 
 o a 
 
DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH 
 
DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH 
 
 "He followeth not with us" 
 
 A strangely pathetic interest attaches So a great 
 disciple when we find him making a great mistake. 
 For even loyal disciples are not infallible. Some- 
 times they seriously misrepresent the mind of Jesus, 
 and have to be brought back to wisdom by the stern 
 way of rebuke. Such a rebuke was once adminis- 
 tered to John the beloved. And it was very neces- 
 sary, for he had been betrayed by his zeal into a 
 great error. He had misread the large charity of 
 Jesus. He had taken it upon him to rebuke one 
 who had been doing beneficent work in the name of 
 Jesus; and Jesus had been constrained to rebuke 
 him in the memorable words, " Forbid him not." 
 
 The attitude of John is remarkable ; more remark- 
 able still is the reason for that attitude. "Master, 
 we saw one casting out devils in Thy name; and 
 we forbade him, because he followeth not with us." 
 One would have supposed that John might well 
 have felt sure of this man, for he had given two in- 
 dubitable proofs of being on the side of Jesus. He 
 was casting out devils — and was not that part of the 
 
 87 
 
88 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 very work which Jesus had commissioned His dis- 
 ciples to do? And he was doing this in Jesus' 
 name, proving thereby that he was a believer in the 
 power of that name and a disciple at heart; for, as 
 Jesus said, no man could do a mighty work in His 
 name and thereafter lightly revile Him. But John, 
 with sublime indifference to these conclusive marks 
 of discipleship, condemns and forbids him for no 
 better reason than that "he followeth not with us." 
 We would say it was amazing if we did not know 
 that it was the way of the human heart always. It 
 is indeed the commonplace of Church history. We 
 forbade him, because he followeth not with us. 
 
 Apparently, then, it is possible for those who love 
 Jesus dearly to misunderstand Him seriously, and 
 to hamper the work of others who are serving Him 
 with as much zeal as themselves and with more 
 intelligence; for we cannot help feeling that the 
 unknown man who owes his place in history to 
 John's foolish rebuke, had an instinctive penetration 
 into the essential conditions of discipleship far 
 superior to John's own. For John's measure of dis- 
 cipleship was, at any rate for the moment, a purely 
 external one — he followeth not with us — whereas 
 this man felt that the true disciple is one who does 
 the work of the Master, and that whether he follows 
 "with us " or not is a matter of the most utter indif- 
 ference. Of course there were reasons at that time 
 why John should have so completely, though mis- 
 
DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH 89 
 
 takenly, identified the cause of his Master with that 
 of His little disciple band; all the same, there is 
 struck here the first note of that well-intentioned 
 arrogance which has seldom been wanting in the 
 history of the Church. It has too often seemed to 
 the powers that be that because some one " followeth 
 not with us," does not share their opinions or 
 endorse their methods, he is necessarily wrong, and 
 must therefore be denounced, censured, or excom- 
 municated, as the temper of the age suggests; 
 whereas all the time it may be he that is right and 
 they that are wrong. He may be, by his actions or 
 words, interpreting the spirit of his Master far more 
 profoundly than they; and they may need the 
 solemn rebuke, "Forbid him not." 
 
 In this spirit which is ever ready to rebuke uncon- 
 ventional service, there is something not altogether 
 to be despised, for it is animated by jealousy for the 
 honour of the Lord. Nevertheless, it is one of the 
 most hateful sins of which a disciple of Christ can 
 be guilty. For in insisting upon external standards, 
 it displays a lack of insight into the real conditions 
 of service; in rebuking a man who is doing the 
 work of Jesus in the name of Jesus it displays an 
 utter lack of charity as well as of intelligence ; and 
 in hampering the work of a sincere, devoted and 
 intelligent servant, it is injuring the work of Christ 
 Himself, and retarding the progress of the world. 
 
 What is the condition of discipleship ? Surely 
 
90 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 it is not following "with us." For who are we? 
 Poor, stupid, loveless mortals, who at the best 
 "know in part and prophesy in part," and at the 
 worst are but caricatures of the ideals to which we 
 aspire. Surely it is not adhesion to us but to Christ 
 that is the true test of discipleship. Does the man 
 about whose loyalty we are in doubt, and whose 
 work we are thirsting, like John, to interrupt — does 
 he "follow with Christ"? If he does, that ought 
 to settle the matter for us. But how shall we know 
 whether he follows with Christ? In the last resort 
 we cannot know, for only the Lord can look upon 
 the heart. But so far as we may know at all, we 
 have no other basis for judgment than that indicated 
 by Jesus Himself when He said, "By their fruits ye 
 shall know them." What a man does is the best 
 available index to what he is ; and if the business of 
 his life is casting out devils — and the modern world 
 is almost as full of devils as the ancient ever was — 
 then we may well take his loyalty for granted. Or 
 if we must suspect it, let us suspect along with it 
 our own intelligence; let us suspect our interpreta- 
 tion of the mind and heart of Christ. For if Christ 
 was misunderstood and misrepresented even by the 
 man who lay upon His bosom, it will be no great 
 wonder if we misunderstand Him too. 
 
 It is unspeakably pathetic that such a reason 
 should have been so often offered throughout the 
 history of the Church for thwarting the unconven- 
 
DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH 91 
 
 tional service of some fellow-disciple — "he followeth 
 not with us." Is he any the worse for that? For 
 again, let us ask, who are we ? Necessarily but a 
 fraction of the great Church of Christ, and no more 
 infallible than any other fraction. For it puts a con- 
 siderable strain upon our credulity to suppose that 
 any group of mortal men has a monopoly of divine 
 truth. Therefore our standards of judgment are 
 necessarily limited, and may even be false, as 
 John's were. The truculent and peremptory pro- 
 hibition by which we think to do Christ honour, 
 may be answered by Him with a rebuke. And 
 when we shut out of our fellowship a man who is 
 doing gracious and helpful work in the name of 
 Jesus, the loss is rather ours than his. It is he and 
 not we who represents the true Church ; and no 
 excommunication of ours can really deprive him of 
 that "cheerful liberty of heart" which belongs to 
 the brave and sincere. But he is vexed, though 
 scarcely surprised, to find that so many who have 
 ranged themselves under the banner of Christ have 
 forgotten that where the spirit of the Lord is, there 
 is liberty. 
 
 The Church, as President Rush Rhees once said, 
 has often shown herself strangely "inhospitable to 
 unfamiliar truth." Too often has her motto been, 
 "We forbade him." Christ was brought to His 
 Cross by the chief priests, the scribes and the 
 elders; that is, by the officials of the Church of His 
 
92 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 own time. His truth was too revolutionary and 
 unpalatable, and they "forbade" Him by nailing 
 Him to a tree. That was the Jewish Church ; here 
 — in the story we are considering — is the Christian 
 Church in embryo, forbidding one who cast out 
 devils in Christ's name. It was the Church that 
 compelled Galileo to deny what to-day every school- 
 boy knows to be true; and more than once within 
 the last three centuries the Church has deliberately 
 condemned an attitude which the advance of thought 
 has later compelled her to tolerate, if not to accept. 
 There is a bloody trail across the ages — trail of the 
 innocent blood of those who were slain by the self- 
 constituted defenders of the faith. The persecutors 
 were by no means always bad men. They were 
 often only conventional men, of scrupulous but un- 
 enlightened conscientiousness, who could not appre- 
 ciate a nobler and more daring type of service than 
 their own ; and their weapons were the faggot, and 
 the thumbscrew, and the rack, and the boot, and a 
 thousand other unimaginably fiendish things forged 
 in the furnaces of hell. 
 
 The weapons of persecution have changed, but 
 the spirit is ever the same — the spirit which in other 
 days would have kindled the faggot, but which dare 
 not do so to-day because of the brave stand for 
 liberty and truth made by the men whom it mur- 
 dered. " We forbade him ; " and Jesus said : " For- 
 bid him not." The spirit of Jesus is slowly work- 
 
DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH 93 
 
 ing, and there are signs that the day is perhaps not 
 so very far distant when men who are casting out 
 devils in His name will be free to do their work 
 serenely, none either daring or desiring to make 
 them afraid. Then the true Church union will be 
 consummated; for then men will be more eager to 
 welcome than to forbid, more ready to accentuate 
 the glorious hopes they share in common than the 
 relatively trivial speculations which divide them. 
 They will care more for the person of Christ than 
 for a particular view of His person, and more for 
 truth than for a specific formulation of it. So long 
 as we refuse to welcome other disciples of Christ — 
 be they men or churches — simply because they "fol- 
 low not with us," we shall have to remain in an 
 isolation that is anything but splendid — the poorer 
 for the lack of the resources and stimulus which 
 they might bring us. When we recognize the rela- 
 tive unimportance of the things which separate us, 
 and what Reville has called "the inanity of all 
 these discussions in matters which exceed the 
 capacity of our intelligence," then will be seen the 
 folly of saying, "We forbade him, because he fol- 
 loweth not with us ; " and such a whisper will not be 
 heard in all the land. 
 
 The devils are legion ; and all who are striving 
 to cast them out are the friends of Jesus. Where- 
 ever there is a man doing what in him lies, in the 
 spirit of Jesus, to check political corruption or 
 
94 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 municipal incompetence, gambling or drunkenness, 
 prurient literature or degrading amusements, false 
 or inadequate conceptions of the Bible or religion, 
 disintegrating views of private duty or social moral- 
 ity, there is a man — whether his methods be uncon- 
 ventional or not, whether he "follows with us" or 
 not — who deserves a royal welcome from all who 
 count themselves the friends of Jesus. "Forbid 
 him not," says Jesus. We may indeed, in an un- 
 considered enthusiasm for the cause we love, defy 
 this solemn word of Jesus; and if we please, we 
 may rebuke or persecute the man whose chief crime 
 is that he "followeth not with us." But let us not 
 forget that "inasmuch as ye did it unto him, ye did 
 it unto Me." 
 
ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 
 
 " He taught them as one having authority " 
 
 Jesus was a teacher, and His teaching astonished 
 those whom He taught. In the literal sense, it was 
 extra-ordinary; that is, it did not find its place 
 within the ordinary. It belonged to another order 
 altogether. There were then, as there are to-day, 
 two ways of teaching — the way of Jesus, and the 
 way of the scribes. The way of Jesus astonished 
 everybody; the way of the scribes astonished 
 nobody, except, perhaps, Jesus — for must He not 
 many a time have listened with sad, if not angry, 
 wonder to their lifeless exposition of the living 
 oracles of His God? 
 
 Between Him and the teachers of His time there 
 was a great gulf fixed — in method, in influence, in 
 everything. Almost the only thing that, as 
 teachers, they had in common, was that they used 
 the same text-book, and that only threw into the 
 more glaring light the contrast between the fresh- 
 ness, the freedom, the power, the originality, of the 
 one, and the literalism, the conventionality, the 
 barrenness, of the other. The stupidest person in 
 
 H 97 
 
98 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 the synagogues could not fail to see the difference. 
 Jesus spoke as one having authority; they spoke 
 as men who had none. His words carried convic- 
 tion ; their words carried none. His speech smote 
 the heart and conscience; theirs got no farther than 
 the head, and produced little effect even there. You 
 could not listen to Jesus without being interested, 
 arrested. You might be provoked, but you could 
 not be indifferent. You could not leave the syna- 
 gogue the same man as you entered ; you would be 
 another — worse, if not better. 
 
 There is an infinite pathos in this simple contrast 
 between the teaching of Jesus and that of the 
 scribes. His words had the ring of authority, and 
 the people instinctively felt that that was not how 
 their scribes spoke. The professional teachers 
 lacked that note of authority without which all 
 teaching is a mockery, not to say a crime. For is 
 it not a crime to attempt to command the heart and 
 conscience of another by the presentation of a truth 
 which does not command and inspire our own ? 
 With Jesus, teaching was a matter of life and death ; 
 with the scribes it was a matter of profession. They 
 looked upon the surface of the Old Testament, 
 Christ looked into its heart. And is it any wonder 
 that the people were astonished? As some one 
 has said, Jesus spoke with authority, they spoke 
 by authority. They quoted their rabbis; Jesus 
 quoted nobody, because the evidence of the truth 
 
ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 99 
 
 was in His heart, and the zeal for it consumed 
 Him. 
 
 The hungry souls know very well whether they 
 are being fed or not. Their teachers may array 
 themselves in professional robes, they may give 
 themselves professional airs, they may learnedly 
 discuss religious difficulties, and show themselves 
 conversant with the history of opinion, but to the 
 soul that is starving for a word from God these 
 things are nothing but a cruel delusion. The real 
 question is, Can the teacher speak with authority ? 
 Do his words pierce and burn ? Do they find me ? 
 The scribes were those whose words should have 
 been able to do that, for it was their business to 
 meditate on God's law day and night. Yet the 
 people are startled when they hear a voice speaking 
 with authority, for their own scribes, they felt, had 
 none. The surprise of the audience at the fresh and 
 authoritative message of Jesus is a painful comment 
 on the inefficiency of the conventional teaching, and 
 a sad reminder of the dangers of professionalism. 
 The greatest Teacher does not belong to the ranks 
 of the professionals at all. He takes His lonely 
 place over against them, and has to wage with them 
 a ceaseless warfare, which only ends when they 
 bring Him to His Cross — for that was His earthly 
 reward for teaching with authority. The common 
 people heard Him gladly, but the professional 
 teachers gnashed their teeth, and vowed that they 
 H 2 
 
100 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 would have none of this man or His teaching. They 
 could not bear one who swept aside their traditions, 
 ignored their appeals to the learned rabbis, and 
 supported His truth on nothing but His imperious 
 "I say unto you." 
 
 The great teacher is always rare. When he 
 comes, we recognize him, not only as one who 
 speaks with authority, but as one who is not as the 
 scribes; that is, not as those other teachers whose 
 special training and manifold opportunities should 
 have enabled them to edify and astonish the people 
 more than he. Clearly, there is more than learning 
 and professional training needed to make a man a 
 great preacher or teacher. What, then, is the secret 
 of authoritative speech ? 
 
 The thing most needful, and almost the one thing 
 needful, is that the speaker should believe what he 
 is saying. This seems an elementary demand; in 
 reality it is the greatest of all demands. There are 
 a hundred men who can speak, for one who really 
 believes, and the only speech which strikes home 
 and leaves its mark upon another soul is the speech 
 of profound and passionate conviction. Man is 
 more than mind, and belief is more than a thing 
 intellectual. The teacher who covets earnestly the 
 power of speaking with authority must believe his 
 truth, not only with the understanding, but with the 
 heart. He utters it, not as a proposition he can 
 prove, but as a truth that has set his heart on fire. 
 
ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 101 
 
 The impression he makes lies deeper than his 
 words ; it is the magnetism of the man — the inherent, 
 transparent power of his message, and not the logic 
 of his words — that carries conviction. The truth 
 glows in his face, shines from his eyes. It does not 
 so much belong to him as he belongs to it. It is 
 not he that speaks, but a spirit that is speaking in 
 him. He is not his own ; he is urged on by an irre- 
 sistible impulse to tell the thing he knows and lives 
 by. He has mastered the truth, but the truth has 
 also mastered him. He is the ambassador of the 
 highest, and that is why he is lord, and why he can 
 speak as one having authority. 
 
 To speak as one having authority, you must 
 really have it, otherwise you are not wonderful, but 
 ridiculous. And to have the authority, you must 
 qualify yourself by the severest discipline of mind 
 and heart. You cannot hope to speak with author- 
 ity unless you meditate day and night. No man 
 has the right to commend to other men his undi- 
 gested thoughts. But besides knowing the truth, 
 we must feel absolutely sure of it. We must be 
 fully persuaded in our own minds. Half convic- 
 tions will not do. We cannot effectively transfer 
 to another mind a truth that does not possess and 
 govern our own. Nothing but soul can reach soul. 
 Our belief must be a faith, an enthusiasm, a pas- 
 sion, and it must be uttered without regard to conse- 
 quences. The speaker must think of nothing but 
 
102 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 his truth, and of the souls he knows his truth can 
 bless. If he thinks of what he himself has to gain 
 or lose by proclaiming it, his authority vanishes, as 
 it deserves to vanish, for it is the single eye that 
 God loves. Many of the greatest masters of authori- 
 tative speech perished on the rack or among the 
 flames. The greatest Master of all was lifted upon 
 a cross. Yet they were persuaded that God was for 
 them. They had the divine consciousness of being 
 His ambassadors; and they could speak their brave 
 and lonely word, knowing that the future would 
 justify them. 
 
 And the words of such men, though they be 
 despised and rejected, never fail to astonish. Pro- 
 phets are never so numerous that the people get 
 accustomed to them. Scribes enough there always 
 are, but there is only one Jesus. And His true dis- 
 ciples are known by the possession of that fearless 
 and original spirit that was in Him. "When they 
 beheld the boldness of Peter and John," we read, 
 "they marvelled, and they took knowledge of them 
 that they had been with Jesus." There is no mis- 
 taking the men who have been with Jesus, and who 
 have caught His note of authority. Queen Eliza- 
 beth's ambassador said of John Knox's preaching, 
 "The voice of him stirred me more than five hun- 
 dred trumpets." Such a man may be welcomed, 
 or he may be rejected, but he cannot be mistaken. 
 Anywhere he is head and shoulders above the 
 
ONE HAVING AUTHORITY 103 
 
 people. He believes the truth with his soul, he 
 utters it with tongue of fire, and he would die 
 for it. 
 
 And the truth which he believes and passionately 
 utters must be truth by which a man can live. 
 It is one thing to believe that two and two make 
 four; it is another thing to believe that Jesus Christ 
 rose from the dead. The latter belief will change 
 my world for me, and the world of any other man 
 whom I can persuade to accept it. But there is 
 much so-called religious teaching that does not deal 
 with the deepest things. It may tell us of the 
 flowers and trees of Palestine, of the scenery upon 
 which Christ daily looked from His Galilean home, 
 of the manners and customs of those to whom He 
 ministered, of the literary structure of the sacred 
 books which He read. It is well to know these 
 things; the more of them we know the better. But 
 that is not religious teaching, and if the teacher does 
 no more than that for us, he does nothing. It is 
 not enough to tell us the pattern of the hem of 
 Christ's garment. He must touch it, and he must 
 speak to us with the glad enthusiasm of one who 
 has been healed by the touch. He must wake in 
 jour hearts the dreams, the imaginations, the visions, 
 the faiths, which throb and glow in the hearts of 
 the men who wrote the Bible. Let him, by all 
 means, do all he can to bring back that bygone 
 world, and restore to us its ancient life ; but let him 
 
104 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 not forget the most living thing of all — the souls 
 of the men whose words he studies, and the mighty 
 messages that came to them from their God. 
 
 Nobody will speak with any permanent authority 
 who does not deal with the highest things; his 
 words must be aimed at the conscience and the 
 heart. It was not by remarks on Palestinian topo- 
 graphy or archaeology that Paul made Felix tremble ; 
 it was by burning words about a judgment to come. 
 Every public address of Jesus, His sermon on the 
 hill, His parables in the synagogues, is a direct 
 appeal to the moral and religious nature. There is 
 no irrelevancy, no trifling, in the epistles of Paul. 
 There all is deadly earnest. The truth which will 
 tell is truth about the vital things — truth which will 
 reach the heart of the hearer because it rises out of 
 the depths of the speaker's deepest experience. 
 Every man, in his measure, must be able to chal- 
 lenge his audience with an "I say unto you." He 
 must appeal to them with a truth which he has 
 tested, and which he knows can make men glad and 
 strong and free. 
 
THE LORD UPON HIS THRONE 
 
THE LORD UPON HIS THRONE 
 
 "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne" 
 
 Assuredly one of the greatest scenes in the Bible 
 or out of it is the inaugural vision of the prophet 
 Isaiah. In words that are few and altogether 
 simple, it leads us into mysterious presences, and he 
 would be dull indeed whose soul caught nothing 
 of the solemn grandeur of it all. Indeed, so grand 
 is it that we are tempted to put it away from us as 
 an experience altogether unique — a vision which 
 Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw, but not such as we 
 ourselves might see. A closer study of it, however, 
 will serve to disabuse our minds of this idea; for, 
 though the form of the vision was determined by 
 Isaiah's experience, and the account of it is stamped 
 with the dignity of his royal soul, in all that is 
 essential that vision may be appropriated by any 
 man to-day, who brings to the consideration of his 
 life-work the same self-knowledge, sincerity, and 
 devotion. 
 
 Isaiah was a young man — hardly over twenty- 
 five, if indeed as old. He had lived through half 
 
 of the brilliant reign of Uzziah, when both Judah 
 
 107 
 
108 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 and Israel had enjoyed a prosperity greater than 
 either had seen since the time of David. But eyes 
 so clear as his must have seen below this brilliant 
 surface. The moral corruption of Israel had already 
 been exposed — sternly by Amos, and with a more 
 passionate tenderness by Hosea. Judah, we may 
 be sure, was not much better. Isaiah knew that his 
 home was "among a people of unclean lips." He 
 may have known the work of those two prophets; 
 in any case he could read the ominous signs of 
 Judah for himself. With the sincerity of youth, he 
 pondered over them ; and, with the eagerness of 
 youth, he resolved to dedicate his life to his country 
 and his God. 
 
 The inaugural vision shows what a power religion 
 must already have had over this man. It is told in 
 terms of the temple worship. It was from the 
 temple court that he saw the vision ; and the song of 
 the seraphim was doubtless suggested to him by the 
 songs he had frequently heard in the temple. It 
 was no accident that the vision of Jehovah came to 
 him in the temple. Often, perhaps, he had wist- 
 fully looked for Him there, watching as they that 
 watch for the morning. Had the heart of this 
 young man not already been at home with thoughts 
 of God, we may be sure that he would never have 
 seen Him upon His throne "in the year that 
 king Uzziah died." 
 
 The vision of Isaiah was a vision of God — of 
 
THE LORD UPON HIS THRONE 109 
 
 God upon His throne. "In the year of the death 
 of the king Uzziah, I saw the Lord sitting upon a 
 throne, high and lifted up " above the chances and 
 changes of earthly things. Earthly kings might 
 pass away, their thrones might totter and fall ; but 
 that soul must be steady that, through all the con- 
 fusions, sees and believes in the heavenly King, 
 who is immortal, and the heavenly throne, which 
 no storm can shake, but which standeth fast for 
 ever. For the God whom Isaiah saw was a God of 
 indescribable glory. The prophet, though he is a 
 supreme master of the literary art, saw things which 
 it was not possible for him to utter. He describes 
 for us the seraphim in a few mysterious but sug- 
 gestive words. But the Lord whom he saw is too 
 great for description, too glorious even to look 
 upon. The eyes of the prophet are cast down in 
 humility. He will not lift them up to the glorious 
 face; he sees nothing of Him but the majestic 
 sweep of His radiant garments. And the great 
 Lord is surrounded by beings who praise and serve 
 Him — praise Him out of lips that are not unclean, 
 and serve Him not only in the temple but in any 
 part of the universe where their service is needed; 
 for, with those nimble wings, they are ready, like 
 Isaiah after his consecration, to fly wherever their 
 Lord sends them. The song they sing is a song of 
 the eternal world. One choir lifts up its voice with 
 its 
 
110 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 "Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts ;" 
 and the other responds — 
 
 "The whole earth is full of His glory." 
 
 We pray that His name may be hallowed and that 
 His kingdom may come; but the eyes of those mys- 
 terious servants round about the throne see beyond 
 all the sins and confusions of history, beyond the 
 wicked kingdom and the dying king, to that eternal 
 world where His name is already hallowed and His 
 kingdom already come. 
 
 That, then, is the vision which steadied Isaiah on 
 the threshold of his career, and sent him forth with 
 fearless and quiet heart to face the obstinacy and 
 the opposition of men — the vision of the Lord upon 
 His throne, surrounded by an atmosphere of praise 
 and service, and reigning in a world which is full of 
 His glory. 
 
 But when a weak and sinful man looks upon so 
 glorious a God, his first impulse is to start back in 
 confusion, or to throw himself upon his face. 
 "Woe is me, for I am undone." "Who am I that 
 I should go ? " The weakness, and above all, the 
 sin of the man, prostrates him. 
 
 "Then every evil word I had spoken once, 
 And every evil thought I had thought of old, 
 And every evil deed I ever did, 
 Awoke and cried, 'This quest is not for thee.'" 
 
 Before the blazing glory man can only hide his 
 face, thankful if it does not consume him. The joy 
 
THE LORD UPON HIS THRONE 111 
 
 of service is preceded by a holy terror in all pro- 
 founder souls, who know their own sinfulness, and 
 who, with that knowledge, have looked upon the 
 holy King, whose glory fills the whole earth. It is 
 strange, and yet it is not strange, that the great 
 prophets shrank at first in terror from their task. A 
 too great readiness to plunge into the awful work 
 is a sure sign of a shallow soul — of a soul that has 
 not measured its own weakness, the greatness of its 
 task, or the majesty of its God. 
 
 But the feeling of prostration, though the first, is 
 not the last. With their wings the shining minis- 
 ters of God were ready to fly to any soul that needed 
 help; and who more needy than the prostrate pro- 
 phet, who has it in him to do great things, but who 
 is overwhelmed by the consciousness of his own 
 sin ? So one of the seraphim flew, and with a glow- 
 ing stone from off the altar touched the impure lips 
 — those lips by which the preacher expresses his 
 heart, and which must needs be clean — and said, 
 "Thy sin is passed away." In other words, the 
 prophet feels that the God whose glory has blinded 
 and prostrated him, is also the Lord of hosts, who is 
 prepared to equip him ; and the first essential in his 
 equipment is his forgiveness. When he is forgiven, 
 when his lips are pure — then, and not till then, can 
 he go forth to preach with power and confidence. 
 
 It is after he is forgiven that he hears the call. 
 " He touched my lips and then I heard the voice of 
 
112 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 the Lord." Man must be consecrated before he can 
 hear the divine voice. It is the pure in heart who 
 hear God. Now that he is a purged and redeemed 
 soul, this man, with his splendid powers of intellect, 
 heart, and literary gift, is ready like the seraphim 
 to go wherever he is sent; and with his unstopped 
 ears, he heard the voice of the glorious Lord who sat 
 upon His throne saying in solemn and majestic 
 tones, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for 
 us ? " It is like the cry of a world in need uttered 
 by lips divine, a cry which rings evermore in the 
 ears of all truly consecrated souls. The fellowship 
 which his pure spirit now enjoys with God is im- 
 pelled to express itself in the service of his brethren 
 — those people with the unclean lips, among whom 
 he had his home. Briefly, reverently, as becomes 
 the servant of the most High, he made answer in 
 two Hebrew words, which summed up the absolute- 
 ness of his consecration : "Behold me, send me." 
 Mark that he is not specifically called of God. 
 He calls himself; at least he ofTers himself. There 
 are some who delude themselves with the hope that 
 Almighty God will take and thrust them into some 
 field of service, and that He will speak in their ear 
 some audible word which will set their doubts at 
 rest. But is that His way of dealing with men? 
 He did not deal so with Isaiah. He did not say, 
 "Isaiah, come hither; I summon thee." The cry 
 is a general cry, thrown out, as it were, across the 
 
THE LORD LTON HIS THRONE 113 
 
 world — "Who will go? " and it is for the man who 
 has seen the vision and felt the impulse to service 
 rise in his heart, to say for himself, "Behold me, 
 send me." The world is very needy. It is crying 
 with a thousand voices. In the homeland and in 
 heathen lands across the sea, all down the centuries, 
 all through our little lives, the divine cry is ringing, 
 "Who will go for us? " God respects us too much 
 to compel us. He will not force us to go. But 
 where the need is so great, and the cry is so plain, 
 let no man wait for any clearer call ; let him respond 
 at once in the simple, surrendering words of this 
 great prophet, "Behold me, send me." 
 
 One who has seen the vision of God upon His 
 throne, and who has spoken these words of ready 
 service, goes forward with high hopes to his great 
 task. He is borne out to the stormy sea of service 
 upon the high tides of enthusiasm. If he be a 
 young man, he expects, as a rule, that the vision he 
 has to declare will be so compelling that men will 
 feel constrained to yield themselves up to the power 
 and the glory of it as he himself has yielded. But 
 he has not travelled far till he is disillusioned. In 
 very stern words, Isaiah is warned in his vision, at 
 the very outset of his ministry, of what is certain 
 to happen. Some hearts will of course be won ; the 
 vision and the word will compel them as they com- 
 pelled him. But there are many that will reject the 
 best and the bravest that we can do. It is no easy 
 
114 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 matter to convince and convert a people of unclean 
 lips — a people who are enjoying, as Judah then did, 
 and as we are doing to-day, the dangerous fruits of 
 a long material prosperity. The prophet saw that 
 calamity would have to come; the land would have 
 to be left a desolation before its proud and careless 
 people could be brought to their senses. Till then, 
 the more he preached, and the more familiar they 
 grew with his message, the blinder would their eyes 
 become, the "fatter " and the harder their hearts. 
 
 But, through sorrow and disappointment, the true 
 man of God, like this great prophet of old, will 
 continue to do his work with high hopes. His eyes 
 have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, and that 
 vision he will carry in his heart till his earthly work 
 is done. The consummation may be far away, but 
 he knows that it is sure. Above all the disillusions 
 of experience, and the complexities of history, the 
 Lord sits for ever upon His throne, high and lifted 
 up; and one day the whole earth will be so unmis- 
 takably full of His glory that all flesh shall see it 
 together. 
 
PREDESTINED 
 
 I 2 
 
PREDESTINED 
 
 "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee" 
 
 It is a great thing for a man to believe that he 
 is where God means him to be ; but it is a greater 
 thing for him to believe that, in order to put him 
 where he is, God has been shaping all his past, and 
 that He was even thinking of him and planning for 
 him before he was born. Such was the feeling with 
 which Jeremiah entered upon his great career, and 
 it is this that explains his life-long fidelity to his 
 mission, continually assailed as he was by warrings 
 without and fears within. It was not only the sense 
 that God was with him, but that, even before his 
 birth, he had been in the mind of God. A great 
 work had to be done in the world, and there was no 
 one to do it : a great word had to be spoken, and 
 there was no one to speak it. And so God had, as 
 it were, to create a special man : He needed a 
 Jeremiah, and He made him. For his father He 
 chose a priest. He set him in a family in which, 
 from his birth, he would be in touch with the finer 
 traditions of Israel. He gave him a home in the 
 country, yet near enough the capital to become 
 
 117 
 
118 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 acquainted with its complex life. He led him gently 
 along his early days and brought him to one solemn 
 moment in which, despite much misgiving, he felt 
 sure that he himself was the man divinely destined 
 to proclaim the truth to his careless countrymen. 
 
 What a conviction this for a young man to reach, 
 that he is the man called by destiny to the sublimest 
 task to which any human being can be called — the 
 task of uplifting the moral life of his generation ! 
 And what a moment it must have been, when this 
 conviction was borne in upon him ! How did he 
 reach it? Doubtless there was something mysteri- 
 ous about the experience in which the conviction 
 came to him. He saw a Hand, and the Hand 
 seemed to touch his mouth. It was a mighty 
 Hand. He felt its power upon his lips. It was the 
 Hand of his God, whose form he does not describe 
 any more than does Isaiah, but doubtless to him, in 
 the moment, it was very real. 
 
 We must remember, however, that such a vision 
 comes only to the man who is worthy of it, and, in 
 a measure, prepared for it. Jeremiah, like Isaiah 
 at his call, was a young man — he cannot have been 
 over twenty-five, if as much ; but so thoughtful and 
 tender-hearted a man must have often brooded over 
 the sins and the follies of his people. To such a 
 people somebody must speak for God; and there 
 gathers within him half unconsciously the feeling 
 that his is the voice that must be lifted up — that he 
 
PREDESTINED 119 
 
 is the man ; till, in one sublime moment, the whole 
 wonderful meaning of his career — his birth, his 
 youth, his special and peculiar experiences — is 
 flashed upon him. He sees that God had been 
 thinking of him, caring for him, preparing for 
 him, before he was born. Clearly, if the past and 
 present have any meaning at all, he is God's 
 marked man. No human life is hidden from God. 
 
 My frame was not hidden from Thee, 
 
 When I was made in secret, 
 
 And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 
 
 But this is peculiarly true of men who have a 
 mighty work to do; and there is no thought which 
 a man can take with him into his life-work that can 
 steady and strengthen him like that. Paul had it 
 too — he felt that God had separated him from his 
 mother's womb ; and though he never speaks of it 
 again, any more than does Jeremiah, it must have 
 been one of the most powerful influences in his 
 career. 
 
 The sense that our past has been deliberately 
 shaped by divine fingers, that God has not only 
 put us where we are, but made us what we are — 
 securing for us privileges and opportunities of birth 
 and education, putting us through special experi- 
 ences and disciplines, bringing us within the circle 
 of certain friendships and affections, not only watch- 
 ing but moulding the events of our lives, and 
 bringing us, to our astonishment, face to face with 
 
120 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 a situation in which we are compelled to acknow- 
 ledge that He is confronting us Himself : that is the 
 greatest moment of our lives, when all this comes 
 home to us. It fills us with awe; we are sure that 
 we are in a mysterious Presence, and that the grasp 
 of a divine Hand is upon us. It is indeed a great 
 and awful moment; for then it is possible for us 
 to make the great refusal, "I will not go, I cannot 
 speak; for I am but a child." 
 
 Is it not strange that it is just when Jeremiah 
 is most completely overwhelmed by the feeling that 
 he is predestined by God for a great work, that he 
 feels most acutely his own incapacity ? His past 
 career and his present consciousness unite in telling 
 him that he has been set apart from common men 
 and common work to be a unique man, and to do 
 a special work; but this feeling, instead of exalting 
 him, depresses him. He has not the steady soul of 
 an Isaiah, whose eyes had seen the King. He is 
 too conscious of his own weakness and of the power 
 of the opposition to say, "Here am I, send me." 
 "O Lord Jehovah," he says, "I do not know how 
 to speak." He thinks of the frowning faces that 
 will listen to his unwelcome message ; thinks, per- 
 haps, of the cruel voices that will clamour for his 
 blood. He thinks, above all, of his own youth and 
 inexperience. How shall he plead for God before 
 men so much older than himself — masters of all the 
 arts of worldly wisdom ? His heart sinks as he 
 
PREDESTINED 121 
 
 looks at it all, as he thinks of exchanging his quiet 
 present for a future full of menace, disappointment 
 and defeat. 
 
 It is often the greatest who hesitate. To shrink 
 is at least to show that we have measured the mag- 
 nitude of the task and the slenderness of our own 
 resources. But the man who has heard the voice must 
 obey it, unless he is prepared to see his future filled 
 with desolation and remorse. There is a humility 
 which is perhaps even more disastrous than pride. 
 The proud man injures himself; the man who, in 
 mistaken humility, makes the great refusal, injures 
 the world by depriving it of the service he is fitted 
 to render. Think for a moment of the incompar- 
 able loss to the world had Jeremiah finally yielded 
 to the voice that spoke within him. His sense of 
 weakness was, after all, a high qualification ; it gave 
 him sympathy with men, and it threw him back 
 upon God. In some important directions Jere- 
 miah's contribution to the religion of Israel is pro- 
 founder than that of any other Hebrew, and there 
 is no Old Testament character, who is such a mar- 
 vellous prototype of Jesus. And all this would 
 have been lost to the world, had he listened to the 
 voice that pled so plausibly for keeping aloof from 
 the public life of his time. 
 
 Besides, in his humility, Jeremiah greatly under- 
 estimated the wonderful powers with which God 
 had equipped him for his task. Sincerely enough 
 
122 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 he said, "I cannot speak." But, in point of fact, 
 there was no man in all Israel, and few men in all 
 history, who could speak like Jeremiah. He is one 
 of the great poets of the world, as many a touching 
 elegy very clearly proves; and, even as a public 
 speaker, he must have been a very striking figure, 
 and produced the most profound impression. 
 
 The brave resolution to help his age which rises 
 in Jeremiah's heart is crippled in two ways — by his 
 inexperience and by his fear. He is afraid as he 
 thinks of their faces — those hard, unsympathetic, 
 cruel faces. The reassurance, "Be not afraid," 
 gives us a glimpse into the prophet's timidity. He, 
 the tenderest of Israel's prophets, with a heart as 
 simple as a child's and as tender as a woman's, will 
 have to face an opposition stern and unscrupulous, 
 a persecution cunning and relentless. Every new 
 audience he faces would be another appeal to his 
 native timidity ; but every such crisis would bring 
 him a fresh reassurance of the divine presence, a 
 clear echo of the voice that he had heard on the day 
 of his call, "Be not afraid, for I am with thee." 
 
 The whole career of Jeremiah is a proof that this 
 divine promise had been kept. In his own strength 
 he could never have faced the fearful odds that were 
 arrayed against him. Look at him as he calmly 
 stands before a howling mob that demands his 
 execution. At such a moment he is, indeed, in his 
 own words, firm as a brazen wall against the whole 
 
PREDESTINED 123 
 
 land — kings and priests and people. Why is he, 
 the timid and the tender prophet, so calm amid 
 these cruel shouts ? Is it not because his God is 
 with him, as He promised to be? With Jeremiah, 
 as with Paul, power was made perfect in weakness. 
 Each of these great men had to contend with serious 
 natural disadvantages : their intrepid careers are 
 proof abundant that the power which they displayed 
 was not their own, but that their work was done in 
 the strength of Him whom they served. Of them- 
 selves they were weak ; but the grace of Another 
 was sufficient for them, and the power of Another 
 rested upon them. 
 
 Those who have been led to feel in some solemn 
 hour that the hand of God has shaped their past 
 and that the voice of God is calling them, may go 
 forward with quiet and fearless hearts to the work 
 that is theirs to do, strong in the assurance that 
 the God who called them will also sustain them. 
 In no conflict or crisis will they ever be alone, but 
 evermore they will be beset behind and before by 
 the most high God. 
 
SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS 
 
SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS 
 
 "They shall beat their spears into pruning-hooks " 
 
 Spears and pruning-hooks — what have they to do 
 with each other ? The one suggests cruelty ; the 
 other peace. The one calls up visions of bloody 
 battlefields strewn with the corpses of men ; the 
 other, of hills with terraced slopes of vines. The 
 soldier and the vine-dresser, the vintage of the 
 grape and the awful vintage of blood — do these 
 things not lie at opposite poles of the world ? 
 Perhaps; and yet they lie very close to each other 
 too. The spear which slays the man is not so very 
 unlike the instrument which prunes the vine; and 
 it shall come to pass in the latter days, says a 
 great prophet, that the one shall be turned into the 
 other. 
 
 It is a great vision this that the prophet sees — of 
 
 a world transformed by religion and common sense. 
 
 The nations which are now ready to fly at each 
 
 other's throats, will one day, he sees, be willing 
 
 to take their cases to Zion for arbitration; as we 
 
 should say to-day, they will submit them to Jesus, 
 
 to have them decided by the principles of justice 
 
 127 
 
128 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 and humanity, which are identified with Him more 
 than with any other force in the world. And then, 
 so reasonable and satisfactory will the decision be, 
 that they will fling away their weapons of war, for 
 which they have now no more use, and men will be 
 brothers the world over. 
 
 Yet, that is not exactly what the prophet sees. 
 The nations do not fling away their weapons, nor 
 do they destroy them; they transform them — by 
 beating them into pruning-hooks. For every 
 weapon of war there will be a use, even in the 
 era of peace. The swords will not be shivered, 
 they will be turned into ploughshares; the 
 spears will not be snapped, they will be fashioned 
 into pruning-hooks. The instruments which deso- 
 lated the world, and filled it with blood and 
 horror, are not to disappear; they are to be 
 turned into instruments which will make it fair 
 and fruitful — a very house of God and gate of 
 heaven. It is not enough that men learn war no 
 more, they must go on to learn the higher arts of 
 peace. The ideal life or society does not consist 
 in negations; it deals with its material in a con- 
 structive and transforming spirit. It delights to 
 see the pruning-hook in the spear, and it hastens 
 to transform the one into the other. 
 
 "Their spears into pruning-hooks." Here is an 
 immortal rebuke to the spirit of waste. There may 
 indeed be some things which it would be well to 
 
SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS 129 
 
 banish from the face of the earth ; but there are not 
 many. Most things are capable of transformation, 
 and were meant in the new era to be transformed, 
 not destroyed. The danger lies not so much in 
 the instrument as in the use to which it is put. The 
 world is full of material which is morally neutral ; 
 whether we forge of it a spear or a pruning-hook 
 will depend upon the kind of men we are. If we are 
 men of war and strife, with no love for our fellows 
 in our hearts, men who prefer the battlefield to the 
 smiling countryside, then we shall forge of it a 
 spear, with which we shall do cruel and deadly 
 work that will bring us the hatred and the curses 
 of the men whom we smite. But if we have in our 
 hearts the desire to be at peace with all men, and 
 to learn war no more, then we shall turn the raw 
 material of life into instruments of blessing. 
 Better a thousand times that the sword and the 
 spear had never been fashioned at all : better that 
 the metal which went to the making of them had 
 at once been turned into ploughshares and pruning- 
 hooks. But now that the deadly weapons have 
 been forged, they are not to be destroyed, but 
 transformed. 
 
 A great and far-reaching principle this ! Nothing 
 need be lost; all things may be transformed. The 
 powers and energies which were dedicated to the 
 cause of evil, if only they be touched and conse- 
 crated by a new sense of the meaning of life, will 
 
130 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 be equally mighty when thrown upon the side of 
 God and good. Paul, the tireless persecutor of the 
 Christians, becomes the great missionary to the 
 Gentiles. 
 
 Instruments the most unpromising can be re- 
 deemed. The thing which most of all needs to be 
 destroyed is the blind spirit of destruction, and one 
 of the gifts that most earnestly needs to be coveted 
 is that of seeing the possibilities for good that lie 
 in instruments and agencies of evil. There is little, 
 if anything, that was meant to be "cast as rubbish 
 to the void." The rubbish has but to be reclaimed 
 and transformed, and it will find its place in the 
 new and better world. 
 
 One of life's greatest tasks is just to turn the 
 spear into the pruning-hook. Everywhere, round 
 about us and within us, are forces that threaten to 
 destroy us. It is not always wise, or even possible, 
 for us to destroy them. But we have to transform 
 them, and compel the deadly things to bless us. 
 The passions and the appetites which too often 
 plunge life into confusion, and sometimes into 
 ruin, cannot be exterminated; in some form, wilder 
 or more subdued, we shall carry them with us to 
 our graves. They cannot be destroyed, for by them, 
 in a measure, the world continues. But as we love 
 our lives, we shall have to take very good care 
 that we do not allow them to destrov us. It is a 
 sad day when we deliberately beat the pruning-hook 
 
SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS 131 
 
 into a spear. How hateful a thing, for example, 
 is passion ! but how beautiful is love ! They may 
 seem to the cynic not to lie far apart; but like the 
 spear and the pruning-hook, they belong to differ- 
 ent worlds. The one carries waste and desolation 
 in its train, and wraps the life in a horror of great 
 darkness; the other floods it with gladness and 
 peace. 
 
 All our gifts and capacities are as so many 
 weapons which may be deadly or beneficent ac- 
 cording as we let them. What a cruel instrument 
 the spoken or the written word has often been — 
 sharper than any two-edged sword. It has been 
 used to stab reputations, and it has torn many a 
 sensitive heart. It has been used to distort the 
 truth, and to poison the imagination. When we 
 think of all the gratuitous sorrow that has been 
 caused by flippant or caustic reviews, by cold 
 and cynical estimates of men and things, it is 
 hard to see how men could expect to further the 
 cause of truth or good-will by such an exercise 
 of their powers. It is easy for an able man to 
 coin a stinging epigram or to write a clever para- 
 graph which will leave a wound upon the soul of 
 his victim that will not be healed after many days. 
 Yes, it is easy; but in a world where there is so 
 much nobler work to do, is it worth while ? If the 
 pen that was charged with malice and satire will 
 learn to trace words that will help and encourage, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 the cause of truth will not suffer, and we shall be 
 a little nearer the golden days of which we dream. 
 Undoubtedly one of the most powerful weapons 
 in the world for good or evil is education. Often, 
 indeed, the claim is made for it that it is a good 
 thing in itself; but it is in reality a neutral instru- 
 ment which may be employed by the man who 
 possesses it either for the blessing or the bane of 
 society. The man with the ample knowledge and 
 the trained mind has it in his power to do more 
 mischief, should he be so inclined, than one whose 
 resources and training are more limited. His in- 
 struments are more numerous, and they have a 
 finer edge ; if he be selfish and unscrupulous, he can 
 use them to deadlier purpose. They will be in his 
 hands spears and not pruning-hooks. It is therefore 
 of the very first importance that, from the begin- 
 ning, a moral and religious atmosphere be thrown 
 about the education of a child. Knowledge alone 
 will never make him a good man or a benefactor of 
 society. He must have not only his mind but his 
 affections cultivated, and his heart set upon what- 
 soever things are honourable and of good report; 
 so that when the time comes for him to step into 
 his share of the world's work, he will use any power 
 that he has won in the years of preparation, for the 
 good of the society in which his lot is cast. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that there lies upon those 
 who have the high task of training the young — > 
 
SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS 133 
 
 whether in home or school, in church or college— 
 a very solemn responsibility. They must see to it 
 that the weapons they are daily helping to forge, 
 will turn out in the end not spears but pruning- 
 hooks. The process of education ought to be 
 tempered at every stage by influences of morality 
 and religion. It has to be sorrowfully confessed 
 that this has often been forgotten in schemes of 
 practical education, though there is happily a 
 change for the better to-day. As an element in 
 education, morality has frequently been ignored 
 and sometimes even been flouted. Some of the 
 foreign literature which scholarly young men are 
 expected to study at the universities, does not 
 always exactly make for a high morality; and we 
 do not strictly enough control the novels which our 
 young people too easily secure from circulating 
 libraries and devour with avidity at an age when 
 their minds and imaginations are susceptible to 
 impressions of every kind. We must most zealously 
 guard against all educational influences which tend 
 to 
 
 " Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of the 
 
 sewer, 
 Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue 
 
 pure ; 
 Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism, — 
 Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too, into the 
 
 abysm." 
 
 The nemesis of such an education is sure. The 
 
134 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 mind which is filled with knowledge but emptied of 
 moral interests, the imagination which is corrupted 
 in its youth by the vision of things degrading, is 
 an abiding menace to the individual's inner peace 
 and also to the welfare of society. The weapon 
 must be shaped into a pruning-hook and not into 
 a spear; the world has already seen enough of 
 confusion and death. 
 
 It is easier to make of the metal a pruning- 
 hook at once than to make the pruning-hook out 
 of a spear. But if the spear has already been made, 
 the transformation only comes after it has been 
 beaten with many blows. They shall "beat" their 
 spears into pruning-hooks ; if the wrong instrument 
 has been made to begin with, then the process of 
 transformation will require hard work. But men 
 whose views of the world have been transformed, 
 will not be long in setting to the task of trans- 
 forming their old weapons into instruments of 
 blessing. The new man will be ready and glad to 
 take his part in ushering in the new world. The 
 warriors whom the prophet saw in imagination go 
 to Zion to have their causes settled there by arbitra- 
 tion, have determined to practise the art of war no 
 more; and it does one's heart good to watch the 
 energy with which, when they come back, they 
 deal their lusty blows upon the cruel swords and 
 spears. The love of peace is now in their hearts; 
 they see visions of ploughed fields and gracious 
 
SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS 135 
 
 hillsides, and they beat their spears into pruning- 
 hooks for the new world to be. 
 
 And all this, says the prophet, is to take place in 
 the latter days. Why not to-day ? If only we 
 learn to care more for the pruning-hook than the 
 spear; if only we prefer peace to strife, and so 
 shape our life as to promote good will among men ; 
 if only we refuse to destroy our material, but with 
 a sharp eye for its possibilities, hold ourselves ever 
 ready to transform it ; then the consummation which 
 the prophet projected into the latter days, may 
 indeed be very near. 
 
A LESSON IN CONTRASTS 
 
A LESSON IN CONTRASTS 
 
 " While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold 
 and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not 
 cease " 
 
 There is much consolation in the ancient assur- 
 ance that "while the earth remaineth, seed-time and 
 harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, 
 and day and night, shall not cease." These words 
 suggest that the order established in nature by God 
 is fixed and constant, and that men may rely on it 
 for ever. But the words suggest more than that. 
 They suggest that this order which is as reliable as 
 God Himself is yet an order which is full of con- 
 trasts : in it there is a place for summer and winter 
 both, for cold atxl heat, for day and night. It is 
 not a perpetual summer or an unbroken day that 
 God has established, but a summer followed by 
 winter, a day succeeded by night. In the divine 
 order there is no monotony, there is variety and 
 contrast ; and while the earth remaineth, these 
 contrasts shall never cease. 
 
 Such is the way of God in nature, and such, too, 
 is His way in human life. We might wish it other- 
 
 i39 
 
140 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 wise : most of us — the young at least — would think 
 life to be so much richer and fairer, if it were one 
 long unbroken summer and a cloudless day. But 
 it is not so. No life is so. In human life, as in 
 nature, the winter comes as surely as the summer, 
 and the night is as certain as the day. While the 
 earth remaineth, winter and cold and night shall not 
 cease. 
 
 To recognize calmly the inevitableness of these 
 contrasts and the certainty of their recurrence, is 
 more than half the art of life. The man who quietly 
 faces this great fact will be prepared for any kind 
 of experience that may come to him, and will know 
 how to carry himself within it. He will never allow 
 himself to be either unduly exalted or immoderately 
 depressed. In his prosperity he will remember the 
 evil day, and in his adversity he will not lose heart. 
 When he stands, he will remember that he may 
 fall : when he falls, he will not be utterly cast down. 
 In summer he will remember that the winter is 
 coming : in the gloom of winter he will comfort his 
 heart with the thought of the warmth and light of 
 the summers that were and that yet will be. 
 
 This is to see life steadily and see it whole. 
 We cannot see it steadily unless we see it whole. 
 All experience is blended of bitter and sweet. The 
 gladdest life is not all joy, nor is the saddest all 
 sorrow. "All our joy is touched with pain" — 
 shadows fall on brightest hours, and thorns remain. 
 
A LESSON IN CONTRASTS 141 
 
 And it is just as true that all our pain may be 
 soothed by the hope of joy to be ; for if summer is 
 followed by winter, no less surely does "every 
 winter change to spring." 
 
 "Time, so complain'd of, 
 Who to no one man 
 Shows partiality, 
 Brings round to all men 
 Some undimm'd hours." 
 
 If is right to throw ourselves into our happy ex- 
 periences, if they be honourable, with heart and 
 soul : but even our happiest moods cannot but be 
 touched with solemnity, when we think how pre- 
 carious it all is, and how surely the situation will be 
 one day transformed. 
 
 So also, when the black night falls about us, we 
 do well to remember that no night, however long, 
 can last for ever. The night will pass and the 
 morning will come. While the earth remaineth, 
 men may depend upon the day no less than upon 
 the night. To one who has learned to look upon 
 life as a succession of contrasts, no great surprise 
 can come. He knows that change is inevitable, and 
 he is always inwardly prepared for it. He sees 
 beyond the immediate experience to that with which 
 it will one day be contrasted ; and, alike in joy and 
 sorrow, he preserves the steady heart and the quiet 
 mind — for he knows that neither can last for ever. 
 The changes that are sure to come he does not fear 
 
142 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 to see ; for, in silent communion with his own heart, 
 he has already faced them all. 
 
 The most certain thing about every life, how- 
 ever bright or dark the immediate outlook may be, 
 is that its experience will be checkered. It will be 
 neither all bright nor all dark. There will be shadow 
 as well as light, light as well as shadow. When we 
 look the facts in the face, do we not see how surely 
 the dearest joys of our life will one day — if not for 
 us, then for those whom we love — be changed into 
 sorrow ? Every birth means a death, every friend- 
 ship means a parting. Where two are dear to each 
 other, nothing is more certain than that some day 
 one will be taken and the other left. As the bride- 
 groom stands with his bride before the altar, and 
 the future seems so fair, the words "Till death us 
 do part " fall upon the heart as a solemn and almost 
 chilling reminder of the infinite pathos that is 
 woven through all our earthly happiness. 
 
 This is not a gospel of pessimism, nor a message 
 which affronts the Christian consciousness. It is but 
 the simple recognition of an indubitable fact, which 
 is not incompatible with a deep and silent joy that, 
 in His own mysterious way, God doeth all things 
 well. It is but a reading of life which springs 
 from what has been called the "spirit which insists 
 on hearing the other side." The summer comes, 
 and after that the winter. 
 
 But the truth of life's contrasts is double-edged. 
 
A LESSON IN CONTRASTS 143 
 
 As it touches our joy with solemnity, so it should 
 temper our sorrow with consolation and hope. 
 There are terrible hours in most lives, when we 
 stand before an open grave, and the heart knoweth 
 its own bitterness and desolation. Life can never 
 be the same again, when those with whom we have 
 taken sweet counsel together are lost to our earthly 
 eyes. And yet God has so mercifully ordained our 
 human nature that, even throughout the lonely 
 years, life can be not only endured, but earnestly, 
 gratefully, and even gladly lived. Those who have 
 gone before are transfigured by the kindly touch of 
 death : as the years go by, we can think of them 
 #more quietly as at home with God. And other 
 blessings enter into our lives, in the shape of new 
 friendships and tasks, which bring us, not indeed 
 the joy we buried in the grave — that is impossible — 
 but other joys; so, though weeping may endure 
 for a night, at length joy cometh in the morning. 
 The wise man is he who prepares himself for life's 
 contrasts, for it must needs be that contrasts come. 
 Summer and winter, cold and heat, day and night, 
 joy and sorrow, shall not cease. 
 
 And this will be true, while the earth remaineth. 
 In that other world, which can only be reached 
 through the portals of death, we have reason to 
 believe it will be otherwise. There His servants 
 will serve Him, but not, we believe, amid experi- 
 ences of alternating joy and sorrow. They shall 
 
144 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 go on from strength to strength, and do their happy 
 work in the full light of eternal day. The words 
 of holy scripture and the instincts of our hearts 
 alike assure us that there shall be no night there. 
 But, while we are here, we must take life as we 
 find it, with its strange but inevitable contrasts — 
 not too much exalted by its joys nor too much cast 
 down by its sorrows. Let us not forget that every 
 day must end in night; but, when the night has 
 fallen, let us be patient and hopeful, as they that 
 watch for the morning. 
 
 "Heaven overarches you and me, 
 
 And all earth's gardens and her graves. 
 Look up with me, until we see 
 The day break and the shadows flee." 
 
THE CONSOLATIONS OF NATURE 
 
THE CONSOLATIONS OF NATURE 
 
 "He causes it to rain on a land where no man is" 
 
 Would any one seriously think of sending a 
 broken-hearted man to nature for consolation ? Her 
 great Titanic processes go on, grandly indifferent 
 to human misery. She speaks indeed with a 
 majestic voice; but it is for an accent more personal 
 and human that we yearn, when our hearts are 
 sore. She cannot speak to us the word we need, 
 or at least we have not ears to hear. 
 
 Is it not, then, all the more strange that a book 
 which is among the greatest, and perhaps the very 
 greatest in the world, should deliberately send its 
 sorely tried hero to nature for the healing of his 
 sorrow ? Job had mysteriously suffered. For no 
 reason that he knew, he had been stripped of almost 
 all that he loved, and left with nothing that he 
 could call his own but a loathsome and incurable 
 disease which made life intolerable and death 
 welcome. 
 
 His friends come to comfort him. They offer 
 him the best that men can offer, into whose own 
 soul the iron has not yet entered— conventional con- 
 
 L 2 147 
 
148 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 solation and good advice. Naturally, to their per- 
 plexed and desperate friend, their words are but 
 platitudes, cruel and irrelevant, which in his honest 
 indignation he contemptuously rejects. But besides 
 these earthly friends, with their well-meant but 
 superficial explanations of his misery, he has a 
 Friend in the heavens who, he feels sure, will under- 
 stand and vindicate him ; and to Him he appeals. 
 But with Job the tragedy is, as it so often is, that 
 the unseen Friend remains unseen, and he is left 
 alone in the universe with a sense of indescribable 
 desolation. Then he solemnly and elaborately pro- 
 tests his innocence, and makes his last supreme 
 appeal to the Almighty. If only He would appear, 
 then in the proud consciousness of his integrity, 
 
 " I would declare unto Him the number of my steps; 
 As a prince would I approach Him." 
 
 This time his prayer is heard. The Almighty 
 answers him out of the whirlwind. But what an 
 answer ! Not a syllable about Job or his sorrow, 
 not a word that acknowledges his integrity or com- 
 mends his patience, not a ray of light upon the 
 particular grief that is breaking his indignant heart, 
 not a solitary allusion to the problems of the moral 
 world that have been discussed with such vehe- 
 mence by him and his friends, not a hint of another 
 world in which the wrongs of this will be righted 
 and its sorrows comforted for evermore. Instead 
 of the consolation and the vindication with which 
 fie had dreamed his heavenly Friend would soothe 
 
THE CONSOLATIONS OF NATURE 149 
 
 his wounded heart, there is hurled out of the whirl- 
 wind a volley of ironical questions which have 
 nothing to do with him or his grief, nor even with 
 human life at all, but which gather around the 
 mysterious processes of nature — the steadiness of 
 the earth, the movement of the sea, the invisible 
 sources of the snow, the rain, the hail. 
 
 " Gird up now thy loins like a man ; 
 For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 
 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? 
 Declare, if thou hast understanding." 
 
 It seems cruel of the great Friend thus to over- 
 whelm the broken-hearted man who had appealed 
 to Him so confidently. What does it all mean ? 
 
 For one thing, it means that, in perplexity or 
 sorrow, it is good for us to get away from ourselves 
 — "to forget ourselves," as one has said, "in the 
 glorious creation of which we form a part." Job 
 desperately appeals to God for a revelation of Him- 
 self and for light upon his misery; and, for answer, 
 God passes before him the splendid panorama of 
 creation — of earth, and sky, and sea, with the wild 
 and happy things that are therein. To a broken 
 heart, such an answer may seem a very mockery ; 
 but it is God's own answer, and it means, at the 
 least, that so long as we have eyes for nothing but 
 our problems, the problems will remain. If we do 
 not solve them, we can at least forget them, by 
 looking away to the wonders of the immeasurable 
 universe. 
 
150 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 The first feeling that comes upon us as we look, 
 is a sense of overwhelming mystery. Job has no 
 answer to give to any of the questions that fall upon 
 his terrified ears. He does not know where the light 
 dwells. He does not know where God keeps His 
 treasures of snow and hail. He does not really 
 know anything of the wonderful world about him. 
 Nor do we. We have watched the great processes, 
 and given them names, and spoken of cause and 
 effect, of the conservation of force, and the trans- 
 formation of energy ; but, in the last resort, we are 
 as ignorant as Job. "Behold, we know not any- 
 thing." We are not in the secret counsels of the 
 Almighty any more than he. 
 
 The world is a mystery which we have to accept 
 without being able to explain ; and this was doubt- 
 less one of the lessons which the panorama of nature 
 was designed to bring home to the desolate soul of 
 Job. Mystery, mystery, on the right hand and on 
 the left ! If he could not answer the simplest ques- 
 tions that could be asked about the familiar pheno- 
 mena of the natural world, how could he hope to 
 understand the infinitely more intricate problems 
 that gather about the moral world and human life ? 
 Our problem, frightful as it is when looked at by 
 itself, shrivels almost into insignificance, when seen 
 against that background of infinite mystery. Ours 
 is but a little bit of the mystery in which the whole 
 universe is enwrapped, and before which it is 
 wisdom to bow in silence. 
 
THE CONSOLATIONS OF NATURE 151 
 
 This were, however, after all, but a melancholy 
 consolation — resignation rather than consolation ; 
 and the glorious vision of nature can do more for 
 the sorrowful heart than that. The majestic speech 
 of the Almighty, which suggests that the universe 
 is a mystery, suggests also that it is an orderly 
 mystery. Behind it is Mind. Its phenomena do 
 not happen in any order, they happen in a par- 
 ticular order; their sequence can be depended upon. 
 Its God is a God of order, not of confusion. 
 Through the centuries this order has run inexorably 
 on — seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, cold 
 and heat, day and night — and this will continue 
 while the earth remaineth. 
 
 In spite of the mystery that baffles and besets us 
 behind and before, the world of which we form a 
 part is a world in which things are in their places. 
 The sea and the land have each their bounds 
 assigned them. 
 
 "Who shut up the sea with doors, 
 And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, 
 And here shall thy proud waves be stayed?" 
 
 The sea is not allowed to overwhelm and devas- 
 tate the land. In the physical world things are 
 where they should be, and will it not also be so in 
 the world of human life ? Sorrow has its place, 
 like the sea, but no more than the sea will it be 
 allowed to work wreck and ruin. "Thus far shalt 
 thou come, but no further." 
 
 The world we live in is therefore a world whose 
 
152 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 order we have a right to trust. It is full of mean- 
 ing and purpose. And as we watch the unfailing 
 regularity with which its great processes go on ; as 
 we think of the Mind by which they are directed, 
 and the unweary everlasting arms upon which they 
 are sustained, we too shall find something of that 
 quiet order, which pervades the universe, enter and 
 take possession of our own souls, as we begin to 
 trust that infinite Mind and to lean with all our 
 weight upon those mighty arms. 
 
 But in the mystery by which we are surrounded 
 there is more than order; there is love. The system 
 of things is not cruel or indifferent; it is an order 
 at the heart of which is love. Surely this thought 
 was never expressed with more tenderness or beauty 
 than in the lines — 
 
 "He causes it to rain on a land where no man is; 
 On the wilderness, wherein there is no man ; 
 To satisfy the waste and desolate ground, 
 And to cause the tender grass to spring forth." 
 
 The God who lavishes His love even upon the 
 desolate and waste ground, will surely not forget 
 His men and women with their waste and desolated 
 hearts. The great poet who gave us this immortal 
 book does not actually say so, indeed he deliber- 
 ately avoids saying so — for in these speeches he 
 persistently keeps our eyes turned away from 
 human life and its problems — but that is what he 
 means. If God cares for the wilderness, will He 
 not also care for the man ? If He pours His love 
 
THE CONSOLATIONS OF NATURE 153 
 
 even upon the place where no man is, He can surely 
 be trusted to remember the places where the men 
 are. It is the Old Testament anticipation of the 
 words of Jesus : " If God so clothe the grass of the 
 field, shall He not much more clothe you?" As 
 has been well said, the solution offered here is one 
 "which does not solve the perplexity, but buries it 
 under the tide of a fuller life and joy in God." 
 
 Even this ancient poet, who very keenly felt the 
 mystery that lies about the world and human life, 
 yet learned from nature that it was not an unillu- 
 minated mystery — that it was lit up by the love 
 of God. He saw that love shining in the most 
 unlikely places, and he had faith to believe that it 
 shines always and everywhere, whether men have 
 eyes to see it or not. We do not always see it 
 plainly; but we see Jesus, we know Him and what 
 He is; and the Mind that is behind the universe is 
 the same mind that was in Him. Could we trust 
 Him ? Surely. Then no less surely may we trust 
 It. The mystery of life is not indeed thereby 
 abolished, but it is illuminated. It can be faced 
 with quietness and confidence ; for behind it is that 
 Love which 
 
 " Causes it to rain upon the wilderness where no man is, 
 To satisfy the waste and desolate ground." 
 
COURAGE, CHILD 
 
COURAGE, CHILD 
 
 "Jesus said to the paralytic, 'Courage, child'" 
 
 Of all the words of grace that proceeded out of 
 the mouth of Jesus, few are more precious than 
 those which He spoke to the man that was sick of 
 the palsy. There the unhappy man lay, stretched 
 upon his couch, sick at heart, and weak in body, 
 a burden alike to himself and to his friends, unable 
 to move unless they chose to move him. For him 
 the future could be but one long stretch of misery. 
 There was only one hope : if Jesus could but see 
 him and touch him — the wonderful Jesus, who had 
 already shown such strange love for sick folk and 
 such mysterious power over the diseases that vexed 
 them — perhaps he might yet be made well again. 
 It may be that the man himself had no hope ; but 
 his friends hoped for him, and earnest friendship 
 availeth much. They were in deadly earnest : and, 
 though under the circumstances a meeting with 
 Jesus was hard to secure — for the place was crowded 
 to the door and He was preaching — they yet con- 
 trived, with an ingenuity sharpened by affection, 
 to bring their helpless friend right into the presence 
 of Jesus. 
 
 '57 
 
158 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 What a contrast between the serene and simple 
 majesty of the great Speaker and the helpless 
 misery of the man before Him. If his physical 
 trouble was due to his sin — and that seems to be 
 implied by the story — how abashed he must have 
 felt before the pure gaze of Jesus, as those eyes 
 looked into the depths of his soul. What will Jesus 
 say ? It is a great moment, as these two men 
 silently confront each other, the living embodiment 
 of Helplessness and Power. The eyes of all are 
 riveted on Jesus — the people with curious expect- 
 ancy, the four friends with beating hearts and des- 
 perate hopes, the scribes with a scowl upon their 
 faces and hate in their hearts. 
 
 What will Jesus say ? He was deeply cheered 
 by the faith the friends had shown, and He would 
 not let such faith go away disappointed. So, turn- 
 ing to the helpless man upon the couch, He said, 
 "Courage, child." He said more, but He began 
 by saying that. And we can imagine how these 
 two simple words, each in its own way, began to 
 touch the springs of life and hope in the wasted 
 body before Him. The man, if a great sinner, 
 may have been accustomed to words of reproach, 
 or to that cold and shallow consolation which stings 
 more keenly than reproach ; and now he is told to 
 take heart again. Here is One who speaks to him 
 as if He believed in the possibility of his physical 
 and spiritual recovery, One who appeals to his 
 
COURAGE, CHILD 159 
 
 slumbering hope and heroism. And so tender 
 an appeal, too! He calls him "child." Many a 
 year had passed since he had been anybody's 
 "child "; and the tenderness of the speaker, no less 
 than His first great, authoritative word, goes to the 
 heart of the unhappy man. His inner world is 
 transformed; a new life courses through his veins, 
 and it will not be long till he will be upon his feet, 
 and going upon his way rejoicing. In the presence 
 of this mysterious One, who speaks to him hope- 
 fully, who bids him be brave, who assures him of 
 the forgiveness of sins, and who calls him Child, 
 old things are passed away, and a new day has 
 dawned. 
 
 Doubtless this was one of the favourite words of 
 Jesus. When the woman who had been ill twelve 
 years fell trembling at His feet, after touching the 
 hem of His garment, He reassured her with the 
 words, "Courage, daughter." When the disciples, 
 after a tempestuous night, were terrified by what 
 seemed like a spectral figure moving towards them 
 over the waves, their fears were met by a familiar 
 voice, "Courage, it is I : do not be afraid." And, 
 when by their Master's death, those same disciples 
 were to be launched upon a still more stormy sea, 
 His parting message to them was the same : 
 "Courage : as for Me, I have conquered the world." 
 And this was the message with which He still con- 
 tinued to brace and visit men, after He had risen 
 
160 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 from the dead. When His servant Paul was in 
 danger of being torn to pieces by a fanatical mob, 
 from whose hands he was only rescued by the 
 forcible intervention of Roman soldiers, "the fol- 
 lowing night the Lord stood by him, and said, 
 Courage " ; and the intrepid career of Paul is the 
 proof that His Master's call to courage kept for 
 ever ringing in his heart. He knew well that the 
 fierce activities and persecutions of his missionary 
 life were killing him, and once and again, on sea 
 and on the land, he had been face to face with 
 death. "Nevertheless," he says, "we are cour- 
 ageous at all times; yes, we are courageous, I say " 
 — twice over — "and well pleased to leave our home 
 in the body, and to go away to be at home with the 
 Lord." Death had no terror for this man, he faced 
 it with good courage; for it but took him into the 
 nearer presence of his Lord. 
 
 These experiences, sickness and sorrow, anxiety 
 and death, lie before us all; and in them how can 
 we be better cheered and heartened than just by the 
 kindly word of Jesus, "Courage, child." In our 
 gospels, as we now have them, the words were first 
 spoken to a weak man and to a sick woman. Such 
 we have always with us; and to the world's weak 
 and sick folk those are the words of Jesus for ever. 
 "Courage," He said to those who were tossed upon 
 the sea; and still He says "Courage" to all who are 
 tossed, to all who are sailing through a black and 
 
COURAGE, CHILD 161 
 
 stormy night, made more awful by the presence of 
 spectres. The spectre which strikes a chill into our 
 hearts is but Himself disguised by the mists. "It 
 is I," He says; and the moment we are sure of this, 
 we may well take heart again. "Courage, it is I, 
 do not be afraid." 
 
 Yes, we are discouraged by a hundred things — 
 by the agony of a prolonged sickness, by the 
 brutality of competition, by the sense of our own 
 failure, by the sudden uprush of the storm into our 
 quiet life, by the desolation of bereavement, by the 
 fear of death. In hours like these we need some 
 one who will call us "Child," and put heart in us 
 again. And who can do this like Jesus? He who 
 so gently bids us be brave has Himself been in the 
 thickest of the fight. All of weakness and sorrow 
 that life has to yield, He has Himself been through, 
 and more. Hunger, disappointment, temptation, 
 misunderstanding, treachery, death — He knows it 
 all : for us He faced it all, and came back vic- 
 torious. "I have overcome the world." It is One 
 who has Himself conquered the world who bids us 
 take courage, and who has such a right to bid us 
 as He? It is His word, far more than any other 
 word that ever fell from human lips, that puts us in 
 good heart again. It is through fellowship with 
 Him that His courage passes into us, and the 
 victory that was His will be ours. 
 
 Courage, then, for God is good. Courage, for 
 
 M 
 
162 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 Jesus is with us on the sick bed, and with us in the 
 storm. Courage, for He overcame, and we shall 
 overcome in Him. 
 
 He was brave as He was gentle, and gentle as 
 He was brave. He is touched for evermore with a 
 feeling of our infirmities ; and while He appeals to 
 our latent heroism, He yet deals with us as little 
 children. Many a gracious word of His rises to 
 our hearts as we think of Him ; but with especial 
 gratitude do we remember Him for this brave and 
 gentle word. And in every hour of pain or fear or 
 desolation may we have grace given us to hear that 
 dear voice saying to our troubled hearts, " Courage, 
 child." 
 
THE LAW THAT CANNOT 
 BE BROKEN 
 
 M 2 
 
THE LAW THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN 
 
 "Teach me Thy law" 
 
 The splendid gains of civilization have been 
 accompanied by tragic and pathetic losses. To- 
 day life is interesting as it never has been before. 
 By the railway, the steamboat, the telegraph, the 
 newspaper, the whole world is welded into a com- 
 mon brotherhood; and the man in New York is 
 not content unless he knows something of what 
 the men in Tokio are doing. Assuredly modern 
 life is interesting — but it is not quiet. It interests 
 the mind, but it does not rest the spirit. Perhaps 
 there never has been so much noise in the world 
 as there is to-day; certainly the stress and strain of 
 life were never before spread over so wide an area. 
 The result is that many — and these not the weakest 
 and the worst, but often the strongest and the best 
 — are fainting beneath their burdens. 
 
 There are some who, humanly speaking, cannot 
 help themselves. There are others whose physical 
 ruin is, in large measure, their own fault. If they 
 can fairly be called victims at all, they are the vic- 
 tims of their own good nature or stupidity. The 
 malady known as nervous prostration is appallingly 
 
 165 
 
166 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 common. It attacks the strong, robust, and eager 
 man, as well as the nervous and susceptible woman ; 
 but no one who has watched the unhappy victims 
 of its assaults can deny that it attacks many who 
 ought to have been impervious to its attacks, had 
 they used the common sense which God has given 
 them, or availed themselves of the opportunities 
 for rest, refreshment, and recreation, which in many 
 cases were scattered plentifully enough about their 
 lives. It almost looks as if the unhappy sufferers 
 had deliberately aimed to place themselves in the 
 position in which they now are, and had cultivated 
 nervous prostration as if it had been a fine art. 
 
 Of course the statement has only to be put thus 
 baldly for the absurdity of it to be self-evident. The 
 disease is a ghastly one. In its power to dull the 
 intellect, to paralyze the moral energies, to cripple 
 the spiritual power, to darken the outlook upon life 
 and God, to envelop the spirit with gloom, and to 
 inspire the sufferer with morbid and suicidal 
 thoughts, it is an affliction from which the bravest 
 might well shrink back in terror. But, at the same 
 time, many a man, and perhaps still more, many a 
 woman, lives as if he or she were positively court- 
 ing its oncoming. They do — sometimes, indeed, 
 thoughtlessly, but often enough deliberately, and 
 with their eyes fully open to all the horrible possi- 
 bilities — the very things which are bound, in the 
 long run, to reduce them to physical wrecks. 
 
THE LAW THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN 167 
 
 For a man has not lived to much purpose if he 
 has not learned that all life is governed by laws, 
 and that his health and usefulness depend upon 
 obedience to those laws. It matters not what the 
 reason for the disobedience may be ; often the sin 
 may seem venial enough. But disobedience must 
 be punished, and the wages of sin is prostration, 
 and often death. Many men burden themselves with 
 unnecessary duties. Imagining themselves to be 
 indispensable to a certain piece of work, they wil- 
 fully refuse to avail themselves of the useful help 
 which could easily be had, and work on single- 
 handed or with inadequate assistance until their 
 own power of work is ruined. Then they learn, 
 what they ought to have known all the time, that 
 they were not indispensable. Women yield to the 
 exacting demands of a too frivolous society, think- 
 ing that they can only refuse those demands on the 
 penalty of social extinction ; and then the nervous 
 affections creep insidiously on, till the woman is a 
 wreck, and the social extinction which she dreaded, 
 and to avoid which she sacrificed everything, 
 becomes a fact. 
 
 But perhaps the saddest thing of all is that so 
 many men allow themselves to be misled by their 
 own good nature. It may be that a man can do 
 three or four things well. He is a good preacher, 
 a good platform speaker, a good writer. Were he 
 only any one of these, he would have his hands full 
 
168 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 enough, but, as it is, he is assailed on three different 
 sides. The assailants, representing, as they do, 
 different interests, do not know how cruel they are ; 
 all they know is that they are asking a capable man 
 to do what they know he can do. It is a situation 
 like this that tests a man's real wisdom and insight. 
 In a weak moment, and for want of the power to 
 say "No," he may accept engagements which he 
 can only fulfil through the ultimate ruin of his own 
 physical, and perhaps mental, strength ; and one 
 may be pardoned for doubting whether, under ordi- 
 nary circumstances, and unless there be some great 
 claim to be greatly met, God demands such a sacri- 
 fice as that. 
 
 Even in the interests of the work itself the man 
 must learn to say "No," because he does that work 
 a gross injustice — the greatest injustice he as an 
 individual can do it — by putting himself deliber- 
 ately in the position of being ultimately unable to 
 do it. The loss of a good worker is the most serious 
 loss which a great cause can sustain, and that loss 
 is inevitable if the worker commits the folly of work- 
 ing beyond his strength. And it is precisely the 
 best workers who are most exposed to this tempta- 
 tion, for it is upon them, very naturally, that the 
 world lays Its heaviest and most numerous demands. 
 
 But the laws of health are the laws of God. The 
 sooner we learn that if a man has the hardihood 
 to defy the laws of God, it is he who suffers, and 
 
THE LAW THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN 169 
 
 not they, the better it will be for us all. We pray- 
 glibly for a revelation from God, and here is one 
 of the plainest and most undeniable revelations that 
 man can ever hope to receive. Yet every month 
 Christian men defy it repeatedly and deliberately. 
 How can we hope to be happy if we defy the great 
 and beneficent laws of God? Is it fair that we 
 should be happy? The way of transgressors is 
 hard, and the man or woman who needlessly over- 
 works is a transgressor, and just as sure of punish- 
 ment as any other transgressor. It is easier to run 
 down than to run up. It is months, and often 
 years, before the victim of nervous prostration 
 recovers that elasticity and buoyancy of spirit which 
 constitutes more than half the happiness of life. It 
 is a fearful thing to fall into the arms of these 
 mighty laws of God. Every Sabbath day is a 
 reminder of the folly, indeed of the crime, of over- 
 work. The man who refuses to avail himself of his 
 proper rest and recreation is indeed a bold man ; 
 he is defying the established order of the world, 
 violating the constitution of his own being, and 
 dashing himself against the laws of God. But in 
 such a collision we may be very sure that it is he, 
 and not they t that will be broken in pieces. 
 
CHRIST'S CARE FOR THE 
 FRAGMENTS 
 
CHRIST'S CARE FOR THE FRAGMENTS 
 
 "Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost" 
 
 Like all great things, the gospel of Jesus is too 
 large to imprison within the walls of a definition ; 
 but if it is to be defined at all, it could not be defined 
 more simply or justly than as "care for the frag- 
 ments." Everywhere throughout His ministry, 
 everywhere throughout the Gospels, shines His in- 
 terest in the broken things of life. They interested 
 Him, because they vexed Him ; and they vexed 
 Him because they were missing their high destiny. 
 Fragments are failures, and it was the mission and 
 the delight of the Divine Artist to gather them 
 together and bind them into a complete and beau- 
 tiful whole. 
 
 And so it would not be unjust to find the motto 
 of the life of Jesus in the words He addressed to 
 His disciples after the feeding of the five thousand 
 — "Gather up the fragments that remain, that 
 nothing be lost." These words, slight as they 
 seem, and humble as was the sphere to which they 
 were first applied, are as a window through which 
 we may look into the gracious soul of Jesus. They 
 
 i73 
 
174 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 are not random words; they are words that rose 
 from the very bottom of His heart, revealing the 
 depths of its tenderness and the impulse of His 
 entire ministry. Spoken first of fragments of 
 bread, they are symbolic of His consuming and 
 undying interest in fragments of every kind — of 
 time, of manhood, of every broken thing. 
 
 Very wonderful is this whole scene, and most 
 wonderful of all is Jesus. The vast, hungry crowd 
 is gathered in a spot, not far from the lakeside, 
 where there was much grass. Jesus faces the 
 crowd, and here, as everywhere, He is the Master. 
 Gracious as He is, He is every inch a King. He 
 speaks as one having authority, and at once the 
 movement and confusion of the crowd change to 
 order and beauty. They recline in companies upon 
 the green grass, and, with a true eye for the pictur- 
 esque, Mark — or his informant — compares them, 
 as they lay, with the brilliant colours of their dresses 
 showing up against the grass, to flower beds. It 
 is a happy picture; a touching one, too, when we 
 think of the sore and troubled hearts that beat 
 beneath many a coloured robe. It is a blessed 
 thing to see the poetry as well as the pathos of such 
 a crowd. 
 
 But all was not over when the feast was done. 
 The greatest thing was yet to come, and Jesus was 
 yet to utter one of His most memorable words. 
 There were broken pieces left, enough to satisfy 
 
CHRISTS CARE FOR THE FRAGMENTS 175 
 
 other hungry men, and these must not be carelessly 
 wasted. There were possibilities in the fragments 
 which none saw but Jesus. The crowd had ap- 
 peased its hunger and thought of nothing more, 
 and it would seem that the disciples thought no 
 more of the fragments than did the crowd. Nobody 
 saw their value but Jesus; so, "when the people 
 were satisfied, Jesus said to His disciples, ' Gather 
 up the fragments — the broken pieces — that remain, 
 that nothing be lost.' " One might have been 
 tempted to marvel at what seems the almost too 
 rigid economy of Jesus. Why so much interest in 
 fragments of bread? How could they ever serve 
 again ? But the marvel dies away the moment we 
 consider the reason, for though Jesus is always 
 authoritative, He is always reasonable. "Gather 
 up the fragments," He says, "in order that not a 
 thing may perish." The word here is the same as 
 that used of the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost 
 son. 
 
 The world is full of fragments, and that must not 
 be, says Jesus; let them be gathered up. All about 
 us men and things are perishing, and that must 
 not be, says Jesus; let nothing perish. He is the 
 true Son of the God of whom it is said that He doth 
 not wish that any should perish. 
 
 "That not a thing should perish" — it was of 
 fragments of bread that Jesus spoke those earnest 
 words; but they illumine not that incident alone, 
 
176 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 but the whole of His ministry from the baptism to 
 the cross, and He wrote them literally on the pages 
 of history with His heart's blood. Nothing vexed 
 Him so much as to see things perishing ; it was for 
 their sake He came. "The Son of Man," He said, 
 speaking of Himself, "came to seek and to save 
 that which was lost " — and the word is the same as 
 that here used for the fragments of bread. To Him 
 the fragments were the most interesting things in 
 all the world; and His command to His disciples 
 was then, and is now, that they too should care for 
 the fragments. 
 
 This care for the fragments has a hundred appli- 
 cations in the life of Jesus. The fragments of time 
 to Him were very precious, and He did not wish 
 that any should perish. The day was long enough 
 —for were there not twelve hours in it ? — but it was 
 not too long, and there were not too many of them 
 in which to do His Father's business. Therefore 
 He gathered up its every fragment and filled it full 
 of work or rest or prayer; for He never forgot that 
 the night was coming when men work no more. 
 
 Beautiful, too, is the interest of Jesus in the 
 ancient fragments of revelation. He knew that His 
 Father had spoken to men in the olden time; and 
 He treasured those fragments of psalm and wisdom 
 and prophecy and gathered them together upon 
 Himself. He came not to destroy those relics of 
 the past, but to fulfil, to complete, to illumine their 
 
CHRISTS CARE FOR THE FRAGMENTS 177 
 
 fragmentary suggestions, that nothing might be 
 lost. 
 
 But dearest of all to Jesus were the broken lives 
 of men ; and here, if anywhere, was the passion of 
 His heart that nothing might be lost. The world 
 was full of such fragments; but Jesus was the first 
 to see how very precious they were, and how much 
 could be done with them. The womanhood that 
 had been shattered by sin He restored to conscience 
 and honour by the purity of His mighty love, so 
 that the sinner who had been but too well known 
 in the city was touched to tears by the sight of Him, 
 and in a penitent burst of pure and grateful devo- 
 tion, fervently kissed His feet. Thus, by the magic 
 of Christ's love, was many a fragment of fallen 
 nature gathered up and tenderly put together again. 
 Love and insight went together — love for the frag- 
 ments, insight into their possibilities. His ministry 
 was a continual gathering and restitution of the 
 broken pieces. "Jehovah doth build up Jerusalem; 
 He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel." It 
 is a Christlike thing to care for the fragments. 
 Every life that is broken — whether by poverty or 
 disease, by folly or ignorance, by sin or sorrow, by 
 crime or misfortune — is another call to arise and do 
 as did the Master, who loved the fragments and 
 gave His life that they might be made whole. 
 
 This great word of Jesus is as applicable to the 
 little things of life as to the great. Fragments of 
 
178 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 time, of strength and of knowledge are squandered 
 and lost just as surely as fragments of character, 
 and all for want of taking to heart the Master's 
 simple word. The motto of our life should be the 
 motto of His, "That not a thing be lost." If 
 any useful thing that belongs to us perish, we are 
 so much the poorer, so much the worse equipped 
 for the work which is given to us to do. 
 
 How then shall we save the fragments from 
 perishing ? " Gather them up," says Jesus ; or more 
 literally and appropriately, "Gather them together" 
 ■ — for the Greek word means precisely that. The 
 fragments are impotent, so long as they are apart ; 
 but bring them together, and see what wonders they 
 will work. One broken piece of bread will do little 
 to satisfy a hungry man, but twenty such pieces 
 would go a long way. 
 
 So it is with all our scattered and fragmentary 
 resources. Every man is meeting every day with 
 facts and statements of which it would be worth his 
 while to have a permanent and accessible record. 
 But we trust to our memories — those unhappy sieve- 
 like memories — and the precious facts filter through 
 and disappear. Or if, in a sudden access of wis- 
 dom, we record them, we do so without system ; 
 the records are loose, scattered or misplaced, and 
 when they are wanted, they cannot be found, simply 
 because they were not gathered together. Our 
 resources are in many cases extensive enough, but 
 
CHRIST'S CARE FOR THE FRAGMENTS 179 
 
 they are too often useless in the hour of necessity, 
 because they are not concentrated. The records are 
 here and there and everywhere, and thus their 
 cumulative effect is lost. They are practically im- 
 potent, because they are fragmentary. Would it 
 not then be common prudence in these matters, as 
 in all matters, to listen to the words of Jesus to His 
 disciples, "Gather together the fragments, that 
 nothing perish" ? 
 
 And then there is the surprise of the accumulated 
 fragments. For we read that when the disciples 
 had gathered as the Master had bidden them, they 
 took up twelve baskets full. To those who gather 
 the fragments there may be but seven baskets, or 
 there may be twelve; but one thing is certain, that 
 there will be more, far more, than ever they had 
 dared to expect. The possibilities of the fragments 
 are infinite, and a glad surprise awaits the man who 
 has the wisdom to gather them together. He is 
 richer than he knows. It may be but the odd 
 moments of a day ; but thirty minutes saved a day 
 would yield over seven days in the year, and in 
 seven continuous days a man who knows his own 
 mind may do or learn much. Insight into the value 
 of the fragments and will to gather them together — 
 this is largely the art of life, and, in its widest 
 application, constitutes the gospel of Jesus. The 
 man who will gather his sheaves together will 
 doubtless come again with joy. 
 
 N 2 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY WORDS 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY WORDS 
 
 "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy 
 words thou shalt be condemned" 
 
 Many a battle royal has been fought over the 
 doctrines of justification by faith and justification 
 by works, but perhaps we have heard less than we 
 ought about justification by words. It is not an 
 apostle, but the Master Himself, who urges the too 
 much neglected truth that men are justified by their 
 words. 
 
 This great utterance of Jesus was called forth by 
 the malevolent criticism of the Pharisees. He had 
 just performed a great healing miracle which had 
 astonished the assembled crowds, and convinced 
 them that He was the Messiah. The spiteful Phari- 
 sees have another explanation. He casts out 
 demons, they said, by the prince of the demons. 
 They do not and dare not deny the fact, but they 
 explain it by asserting that He is in league with 
 the powers of evil. And nothing could have 
 troubled Jesus more than this, that men should look 
 upon His beautiful and gracious deed and deliber- 
 ately pronounce it the work of the Devil. Men who 
 
 183 
 
184 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 could do that were not only lost to all sense of 
 honour, but were devoid of moral sensibilities. 
 Their world was turned upside down. They were 
 the sworn foes of beneficence. They called good 
 evil, and evil good. No words, therefore, were too 
 severe to characterize their moral brutality, and our 
 consciences instinctively acknowledge the justice of 
 this great utterance of Jesus, "By thy words thou 
 shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be 
 condemned." 
 
 We are not, indeed, accustomed to think of the 
 judgment day in terms of this standard. It is a 
 standard so simple and obvious that in practical 
 life we easily ignore it. And yet what could be 
 more natural or just than that our destiny should 
 be decided by the kind of words that we have 
 spoken ? For, as are the words, so is the man. It 
 is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth 
 speaks. The malice or passion that rings in the 
 words lay first in the heart. The words are inevit- 
 ably a specimen of the man. They are the creation 
 of his inmost spirit, and the quality of that unseen 
 spirit may be more than approximately measured 
 by the audible words in which it habitually utters 
 itself. 
 
 If this be so, then is not speech a much more 
 solemn thing than we commonly suppose it to be ? 
 Think of the myriads of words that are uttered 
 every day, and in the light of them think of the 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY WORDS 185 
 
 solemn and almost appalling declaration of Jesus 
 that for every ineffectual word that men speak they 
 will have to give an account in the day of judg- 
 ment ! In one sense, every word is effectual, doubly 
 effectual ; for, on the one hand, it reveals the spirit 
 of the speaker, and, on the other, by helping to con- 
 firm the character which it expresses, it goes to fix 
 the speaker's destiny. In the light of the judg- 
 ment, every word is thus tragically effectual ; it is 
 helping to set us on the right hand or on the left. 
 But when the day is done, and the silence has come, 
 and we quietly think of the words that are dead, 
 how many of them were, in any high or noble sense, 
 effectual ? How many of them would have justified 
 us in the judgment? Most were trivial, and many 
 were thoughtless, and some were stupid, and per- 
 haps a ft w were false and cruel — and was it not a 
 very, very few which were effectual ? Do you 
 remember one ? 
 
 It is a great thing, this human speech of ours — a 
 terrible thing ! Some, who know the awful powers 
 and dangers that lie hidden in the heart of a word, 
 have thought it the highest wisdom to keep the lips 
 sealed. "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden." 
 There are few nations without a proverb which 
 expresses the superiority of silence to speech. Like 
 most words which tersely embody the wisdom of 
 humanity upon its average levels, this proverb is 
 only partly true ; it partly needs to be supplemented 
 
186 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 by a more courageous word. There are indeed 
 times when silence is the highest wisdom ; there are 
 other times when silence is a crime ! It is a crime 
 to say, in a moment of passion, the thing that 
 wounds; but it is no less a crime to leave unsaid 
 the thing that might have helped or soothed or 
 cheered. A monastic order which enjoins perpetual 
 silence will doubtless avoid some of the sins which 
 beset their more loquacious fellow-mortals, but they 
 will also lose numberless opportunities of doing 
 good. Knives may cut our hands, but we do not 
 therefore bury them; we learn how to use them. 
 Nor does any man do well who deliberately sur- 
 renders the divine gift of speech because it often 
 proves a perilous weapon, and sometimes a deadly 
 one. Rather should we learn how to control it, and 
 to turn the words which we all too glibly utter, into 
 weapons for fighting the battles of the Lord. 
 Words are the weapons of our service, which only 
 the fewest know well how to wield. They are in- 
 struments through which we may, almost every 
 hour of every day, be giving effect to the will of 
 God; and to every thoughtful man the power of 
 speech brings solemn obligations. When we have 
 been betrayed by our too-ready tongues into some 
 indiscretion which we may for long regret, we begin 
 to understand the monk who wrote, "Oftentimes I 
 could wish that I had held my peace when I had 
 spoken, and that I had not been in company. 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY WORDS 187 
 
 Why do we so willingly speak and talk with one 
 another, when notwithstanding we seldom cease our 
 converse before we have hurt our conscience ? " But 
 the wise man is not always the silent man ; he is 
 the man who uses words for God. 
 
 There is much that is pathetic in the history of 
 human speech. Case-endings, which were originally 
 full of significance, lose their freshness and force, 
 and often vanish altogether, their place being taken, 
 perhaps, by some prepositional phrase, whose 
 clumsiness would have astonished the ancient men. 
 And what has happened to the inflections has too 
 often happened to the words themselves. They 
 have steadily but surely been emptied of their great 
 original content. An "awful place" used to mean 
 a place which could touch the spirit to awe — such 
 a place as the rugged hillside where the lonely Jacob 
 saw the angels of God ascending and descending. 
 It would mean something very different to-day. 
 Great words have so often passed through careless 
 and insincere lips that they no longer mean what 
 they once meant. "Awfully" has, in much collo- 
 quial speech, usurped the place of "very." We 
 use superlatives where sincerer men would use posi- 
 tives ; for this is, in part, a question of individual 
 and social sincerity. As strong and noble words 
 gradually lost their meaning ; they had to be rein- 
 forced by other words, and these again by other 
 words, till the old simplicity and strength became 
 
188 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 little more than a philological tradition. To say 
 that a thing is good, or that we like it well, ought 
 to be one of the highest expressions of appreciation ; 
 but that is hardly the market value of those great 
 words to-day. The careless application of these 
 and many similar words has deprived them of their 
 primal strength and flavour; and part of the 
 Christian problem to-day is just to learn to use the 
 strong common words of our English speech with 
 that noble sincerity which can dispense with super- 
 latives and exaggerations. 
 
 In the last resort, this is a question of character. 
 A man necessarily speaks as he is. It is himself 
 that he utters. His words are his spirit rendered 
 audible. They show what manner of man he is ; 
 they justify or condemn him. A good man will 
 therefore be careful of all his words, but he must 
 especially beware how he uses the great words of 
 the Christian faith. He must be jealously on his 
 guard lest his use of them deplete them of their 
 divine content. There are some words whose 
 original nobility is gone, perhaps beyond all hope 
 of recovery; but there are others which every man 
 should count it a privilege to keep bright and 
 clean. We shall not lightly, for example, call 
 every one a Christian whose name is written upon 
 the books of the visible Church. We shall reserve 
 that word for those who love Christ, not in word 
 only, but in deed and truth. The right and con- 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY WORDS 189 
 
 scientious use of words will strengthen the sincerity 
 of our own soul, and will constitute our tiny contri- 
 bution to the maintenance of at least one lofty ideal 
 among the men and women about us. We shall, 
 even in the common converse of our life, strive to 
 realize both the dignity and the responsibility of 
 human speech ; and we shall use it cheerfully 
 indeed, but humbly and carefully, as men who will 
 one day have to give an account. 
 
CONTINUALLY WITH THEE 
 
CONTINUALLY WITH THEE 
 
 " Nevertheless I am continually with Thee " 
 
 Religion is the link that binds man to God, and 
 the religious man is the man who is always sure of 
 God. He is the man who, wherever he may be, and 
 whatever he may be called upon to do or to bear, 
 can say with a high heart, "Nevertheless I am con- 
 tinually with Thee." He is the man who counts 
 God the great reality, and who knows himself to be 
 the friend of God. 
 
 Now if God be indeed the great reality — if He 
 be the creator and sustainer of all the worlds, if 
 He be high and lifted up above all the chances and 
 changes of mortality, and if He loves men — surely 
 that man must be happy and secure, whose soul 
 is stayed on such a God ! For if he can believe 
 and has reason to believe that such a Presence can 
 and does come into his life — that his God is not 
 merely in the heavens above or on the earth be- 
 neath, the high and holy One who inhabiteth 
 eternity, but that He is very nigh him — is it not 
 clear that this belief must transfigure his life, and 
 touch it to the finest and the best that it can be? 
 o 193 
 
194 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 For by his side there is a Friend — not a force, but 
 a Friend, strong and wise and tender; not simply 
 a force that makes for righteousness, but a living 
 God whose love will not let him go, whose light 
 follows all his way, and by whose law he must 
 live. 
 
 To such a man life will indeed be a solemn and 
 mysterious thing. He will feel himself to be 
 standing on the shores of infinity and eternity; 
 but the mystery is one which he will not fear, for 
 it is the mystery of love. "As for me, I am con- 
 tinually with Thee. Thou dost hold me by the 
 right hand. Thou wilt lead me across the journey 
 of life, and guide me by Thy counsel; and after- 
 ward — when the journey is done — Thou wilt re- 
 ceive me to glory." To lose this faith is to let the 
 light go out of life. One who had lost it for a time 
 has told us that, with this negation of God, the 
 universe to him had lost its soul of loveliness; 
 and "although," he said, "from henceforth the 
 precept to ' work while it is day ' will doubtless 
 but gain an intensified force from the! terribly 
 intensified meaning of the words that 'the night 
 cometh, when no man can work,' yet when at times 
 I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling 
 contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed 
 which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of 
 existence as now I find it — at such times I shall 
 ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang 
 of which my nature is susceptible." These 
 
CONTINUALLY WITH THEE 195 
 
 pathetic words of George Romanes are proof 
 enough of the desolating blight that the loss of 
 the sense of God can cast over the human spirit. 
 
 The transforming power of religion is seen even 
 in the religious man's attitude to nature. Probably 
 most good men do not allow themselves to be 
 sufficiently impressed by the sacramental aspect of 
 nature. They call in the help of God to support 
 them when the shadows come, but too often they 
 forget to contemplate the glory and the love which 
 shine through all the works which He has made — 
 the sea and the earth and the "splendid breadth of 
 the open sky." There is much in nature that seems 
 hard and cruel : in some of her moods, she seems 
 like a very monster, "red in tooth and claw." But 
 to the man who has learned to look out on the world 
 with the eyes of Jesus, it is one of the many man- 
 sions of the Father's beautiful house. He sees the 
 Father wherever he turns his eyes. It is He who 
 causes the sun to shine upon the just and upon 
 the unjust, and who sends the seed-time and 
 harvest, the summer and winter, the cold and heat, 
 the day and night. To such a man it is never very 
 far to God ; for the earth is the Lord's and the 
 fulness thereof, and on any spot of it the religious 
 man may find Him. He lifts up his eyes to the 
 stars and he sees in them "the wide and shining 
 house of God." He feels at home in the Universe; 
 for the Universe is his Father's house, and he is 
 his Father's son. He 
 o 2 
 
196 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 "can be calm and free from care 
 On any shore, since God is there." 
 
 He is not alone, never alone, for the Father is 
 with him, and the abiding presence of the Father 
 is able to transfigure for him the whole world. 
 Wherever I am, in the loneliness of a strange land, 
 or among the silences of the night, "nevertheless I 
 am continually with Thee." 
 
 And if this faith in God is able to transfigure the 
 world for me, to reveal it to me as the Father's 
 house, and light it up with the Father's love, still 
 more is it able to transfigure my life. What an 
 infinite difference it makes to the inner life of a 
 man, as soon as he believes with all his soul that 
 God is ! If God is, then He has to be reckoned 
 with. He knows my downsitting and mine uprising. 
 There is not a word on my tongue or a thought in 
 my heart, but, behold ! He knows it altogether. 
 And if He knows, what a power this should be to 
 purify the heart and to touch the motives and pur- 
 poses of life to sincerity ! "Search me and try me," 
 said one to God. There are few who would care, 
 few who would dare, thus boldly to challenge Al- 
 mighty God — few who could fling their lives open 
 to the scrutiny of those searching eyes, and none 
 who could do it with any success at all, but one 
 who all the time was saying to his heart, "never- 
 theless I am still with Thee." 
 
 Besides securing this inner sincerity, the sense 
 of the presence of God is fitted to impart peace and 
 
CONTINUALLY WITH THEE 197 
 
 steadfastness to the life ; for the God who is ever- 
 more present is a God who cares — not a force, but 
 a Father. When the clouds begin to sweep across 
 our sky, it is not enough to believe that God is. 
 If the heart would be at peace, we must believe also 
 that He is Love, and that the rushing of the storm 
 is but the mighty voice of that love. 
 
 Now this peace amid the blows and buffets of 
 fortune, this power to sleep quietly in the boat 
 when the storm is raging, belongs truly to no one 
 but the man whose faith is stayed on God. The 
 man who has no faith is tossed about by every 
 wind; he is vexed by fears and misgivings. He 
 looks into the impenetrable future, and, as he 
 stands on the verge of the unknown, he trembles, 
 if he thinks at all. He does not know what the 
 days will bring, but he knows very well that they 
 are sure to bring pain and sorrow and surprise and 
 death. He knows that he will one day have to 
 leave those whom he loves — he will leave them, or 
 they will leave him, and go away to the silent land. 
 His heart is disquieted by anxiety and fear — fear of 
 the coming days, fear of the coming night, when 
 he shall work no more. 
 
 But how will those doubts and fears be met by 
 the man who believes in God ? When they smite 
 him, they will not be able to hurl him to the 
 ground, for, in the profoundly personal language 
 of the Bible, he knows that the Lord will hold him 
 up. He says to his heart, " Nevertheless I am con^ 
 
198 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 tinually with thee, nevertheless Thou art continu- 
 ally with me." He is content with God, and he 
 knows that, in some mysterious way, his God is 
 working all things together for his good. In the 
 same night in which he is betrayed, he is able to 
 give thanks, because he knows his life is always in 
 the hands of his Father. "Peace I leave with you," 
 said Jesus, — with you who believe in God, and who 
 believe also in Me. And this was no vain word. 
 He who spoke of this peace knew well whereof He 
 spoke. When face to face with cunning and un- 
 scrupulous controversialists, when confronted with 
 all the majesty of imperial Rome, when cruel men 
 were taunting Him in His dying agony, He was 
 always quiet and sure of Himself, because He was 
 sure of the Father. 
 
 The only truly steadfast character is that which is 
 rooted in God. It is one thing for a man to steel 
 himself against the assaults of what he calls fate : 
 a very different thing it is to accept the discipline 
 that comes with the belief that it works out a 
 gracious purpose. Then whatever be the experi- 
 ence through which he may have to pass, he will 
 believe that it is good for him to be there, that that 
 place is to him a veritable house of God and a gate 
 of heaven A 
 
BY THE WATERS OF REST 
 
BY THE WATERS OF REST 
 
 "The Lord is my Shepherd" 
 
 The twenty-third Psalm is a song which will 
 live while the world lasts; for though it came from 
 an Oriental heart and is expressed in terms of 
 Oriental experience, it deals with the deep things 
 of life with a simplicity so noble that it touches 
 the heart of every generation. 
 
 The singer of this sweet song is one who has 
 travelled far on life's way, and his path has not 
 always been bright or smooth. He knows that there 
 are sunny nooks and corners, that life is not all a 
 wilderness, but that there are bright patches of 
 green where for a brief noontide hour one may lie 
 down and be happy. He knows that its thirst is 
 not such as cannot be slaked, for a gracious Provid- 
 ence has caused the waters to bubble up and run 
 through it, and that by the banks of its restful 
 waters a man may quench that thirst and rest his 
 weariness awhile. But he knows, too, that life is 
 not all pastures of greenness and waters of rest; 
 for has he not had to tread many a dark way, and 
 
 walk through ravines where the sun never shone, 
 
 201 
 
202 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 and in whose gloomy recesses there lurked dangers 
 from robbers and beasts? Life has been a 
 checkered experience, but throughout it all one 
 thing has been very real to him : he has always 
 been sure of God. In his own eyes, he is nothing 
 but a poor, silly sheep, hungering for the green 
 and beautiful pastures, thirsting for the refreshing 
 waters, and prone to walk upon devious paths of 
 his own ; but as the sheep was guided and defended 
 by the human shepherd, so was he guided and de- 
 fended by that Shepherd Divine, whose care was 
 unceasing, and whose mighty love would be with 
 him, as he felt, "throughout the length of days." 
 He "brings the soul back," brings it home, leads 
 it from its crooked paths, and sets it upon his own 
 "straight paths" — paths which lead straight to the 
 peace of the fold ; and to all this He is pledged by 
 His own name. The sheep can count upon the 
 Shepherd. He must be true to them, for He must 
 be true to Himself. He does it all "for His own 
 name's sake." 
 
 And again, men need more than food and water. 
 In the strange pilgrimage that we call life there 
 are dark spots where lurk beasts and men, danger 
 and death. So what we need is One who is not 
 only kind, but strong; and this the psalmist found 
 in the gracious God who was the Shepherd of his 
 life. "Yes," he says, "though I go through the 
 valley of the deep dark shadow, even there I am 
 
BY THE WATERS OF REST 203 
 
 safe, and I walk through it with a fearless heart. 
 I fear no evil ; for Thou art with me." Mark how 
 the Hebrew word for "thou" lifts itself sharply 
 out of the sentence, and note the strong sense of 
 God — that great Shepherd-God who loves and 
 defends His silly sheep. "Thou art with me" — 
 the shepherd with the sheep. How very sure 
 this singer must have felt of God, and of His 
 power to defend him ! For look ! in those kind 
 hands of His he sees the rod and the staff — the 
 rod on which He leans and with which He 
 brings the sheep to Himself, and the staff with 
 the hard wood and the great sturdy knots for 
 beating off and braining, if need be, the wild 
 beasts. Here is a shepherd who can not only 
 love but defend, and whose defence brings to the 
 poor psalmist's weak life a sense of splendid 
 consolation; "for they" — as he points with pride 
 to the rod and staff — "it is they that comfort me." 
 But, after all, the psalmist is more than a silly 
 sheep. In his touchingly simple words, " Them 
 art with me," he has hinted that he is a friend of 
 God; and in the second division of the psalm we 
 see him pursued by the enemy and the avenger of 
 blood, finding refuge and peace, hospitality and 
 safety, within the tent of his shepherd host. Once 
 inside the tent, he is temporarily safe. The 
 enemies may glare at him with their fierce and 
 cruel eyes, but the law of the desert will not let 
 
204 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 them touch him. And he not only finds shelter, 
 but hospitality; for this wondrous host takes pity 
 upon the panting man who has sought the shelter 
 of his tent. He anoints his head with oil, before 
 him he spreads his table of good things, and he 
 gives him with liberal hands, for his cup runneth 
 over. "Come unto me," He seems to say, "and 
 sup with me — thou with me and I with thee." 
 What a meal ! where the Lord sets the table with 
 His own hands, and the poor hunted man feels 
 himself safe and happy, while the enemy stands at 
 the tent-door and dare not lay a finger upon him ! 
 
 A hunted man? Yes; he is hunted, and we are 
 all hunted, by the goodness of God. Note the 
 strong, fierce word pursue — the very word used 
 of the pursuit of the enemy in battle. It is as if 
 God's love were so eager to find the man that it 
 was determined to run him down. Look ! there 
 they are, two blessed and gentle figures, love 
 and pity, angels twain, on the heels of every 
 man, running and resolved to find him. And 
 when they find him, and bring him into the quiet 
 tent, as the guest of God, is it any wonder that 
 he longs to dwell there "throughout the length of 
 days " ? 
 
 It is very beautiful to think that this psalm is 
 not a prayer. The psalmist is too sure of God 
 to pray for these things. He speaks of things 
 whereof he knows, he tells of things that 
 
BY THE WATERS OF REST 205 
 
 he has seen. He has himself lain down by the 
 green grass, and quieted his heart by the waters of 
 rest, and he knew that it was his Shepherd-God 
 who had brought him there. He had walked 
 through dark valleys with a fearless heart, be- 
 cause he knew that the Shepherd was strong and 
 could beat off any foe that might come upon him 
 in the dark. So he does not pray: "O Lord, be 
 Thou my Shepherd, and let me never want : by 
 the green pastures do Thou lead me, and guide 
 me to the waters of rest, and bring my soul back 
 and cause me to walk in paths that are straight for 
 Thy name's sake. Yea, and when I walk through 
 the valley of the deep shadow, may I fear no 
 evil : be Thou Thyself with me, and may Thy rod 
 and Thy staff be my comfort. Do Thou spread a 
 table before me in the presence of my foes, and 
 may my cup run over. And let Thy pity and 
 Thy love follow hard after me all the days of my 
 life, and may I dwell in the house of the Lord for 
 ever." That would be a beautiful prayer; but the 
 psalmist does not thus pray, for he knows that 
 Jehovah is all this to him, and more : and he 
 sings over the sweet song to his own heart, for he 
 is very sure of his Shepherd-God. 
 
 How much more, too, this psalm means to us 
 than it could mean to the psalmist ! For since 
 Jesus came, we have seen the good Shepherd be- 
 come bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and 
 
206 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 take His place beside us, to watch and guide and 
 feed His silly sheep. It is said that in Greek in- 
 scriptions discovered in the East, one sometimes 
 finds an Old Testament text, with the name of 
 Christ substituted for that of Jehovah or the Lord. 
 And surely this Christian instinct needs no 
 apology. So let us put the name of Jesus into this 
 dear old psalm, and see how His presence fills 
 it with vividness and power. "Jesus is my 
 Shepherd : I shalsl want for nothing. By the 
 green pastures Jesus feeds me day by day, and to 
 the waters of rest He guides me. Jesus brings 
 back my soul, back from death and self to life 
 and God. He leads me by paths that are straight 
 for His own name's sake, because His nature 
 and His name are love, and to this He is pledged. 
 Yes, and when I walk through the valley of the 
 deep shadow — valley of humiliation or sorrow or 
 death — I fear no evil, for Jesus is with me : with 
 His kindly crook and His strong staff He is a 
 comfort to me. It is Jesus who spreads His table 
 before me in the presence of my enemies — the sins 
 and the sorrows that make life so hard and sweep 
 it so fiercely; and it is Jesus who fills my cup to 
 overflowing. Yes, and this Jesus who is my 
 Shepherd and my host will never forsake me, for 
 His love and His pity will pursue me all the days 
 of my life, and in His father's house, where the 
 beautiful mansions are, I will dwell for ever." 
 
BY THE WATERS OF REST 207 
 
 " The King of love my Shepherd is, 
 
 Whose goodness faileth never; 
 I nothing lack if I am his, 
 
 And he is mine, for ever. 
 And so through all the length of days 
 
 Thy goodness faileth never ; 
 Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise 
 
 Within thy house for ever!" 
 
 "Throughout the length of days:" what a 
 wonderful phrase ! Is it the length of days in 
 this earthly life of ours? Perhaps originally it 
 meant no more than this; but surely it is more. 
 For to one who knows God to be the Shepherd of 
 his life, the valley of the deep shadow will only 
 lead from the green pastures and the quiet waters 
 of earth to the pastures more green and the waters 
 more quiet of heaven. For this Jesus of ours has 
 Himself been through the valley of the deepest 
 shadow, and He came out on the other side, and 
 said: "Peace be unto you!" Shall we not then 
 take heart, as we yield ourselves to the guidance of 
 our Shepherd, who is good and wise and strong, 
 to whom belong the pastures on this side of death 
 and the pastures on that? And so throughout 
 the length of days we shall praise Him — all our 
 days in the world that now is, and then in the 
 world everlasting. 
 
THE FAILURE OF SUCCESS 
 
THE FAILURE OF SUCCESS 
 
 " I pray thee, have me excused " 
 
 The tragedy of suffering is often terrible, but it 
 is as nothing to the tragedy of success. Not indeed 
 that all success is tragic, but perhaps it would be 
 true to say that all success is at least dangerous, 
 and most of it tragic. It is always a menace to 
 the higher life, and often its destruction. And so 
 the quest for it is one of the most pathetic things 
 in the world; it is as if a man were to strive, by 
 every means and with what speed he may, to com- 
 pass his own ruin. 
 
 This is a hard saying ; but it was One who knew 
 the awful possibilities of human life and destiny 
 who said that a man was nothing profited if he 
 gained the world at the cost of his soul. Now it is 
 easy for us to lift ourselves lightly over the terrors 
 of such a warning by refusing to face with candour 
 and to consider with patience all that is implied in 
 the word "soul." This simple word has a certain 
 theological and somewhat unfamiliar flavour to the 
 eager men and women who hurry along our busy 
 streets. They would not indeed deny that they 
 have souls, but neither would they profess to know 
 
 P 2 211 
 
212 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 much about them. The state of the soul — they 
 believe in their hearts — has no immediate bearing 
 upon the business in hand. When they have more 
 leisure, or when they find themselves drawing too 
 dangerously near the borders of another world, it 
 will be time enough to consider the demands of the 
 soul ; and by the mysterious exercise of religion, it 
 will be saved, no doubt, in the end. 
 
 But what if for "soul " we substitute the simpler 
 word "life"? What will it profit a man if he gain 
 the whole world and lose his life ? It is impossible 
 for the dullest or the busiest to evade the stern sim- 
 plicity of this question. We all have a life. We 
 know what it is to love it; and unless in the throes 
 of madness or despair, we would not lose it for all 
 the world. Thus the statement of Jesus is true, 
 and every one would meet it with unhesitating 
 assent, even if we read into the word "life" the 
 lowest meaning of which that word is capable. 
 Clearly no one is profited if he gain the world and 
 lose his life; for if he lost his life, he would lose 
 the world too, and then he would be poor indeed, 
 with nothing to identify him in all the universe. 
 
 But Jesus means something more awful even than 
 that. Life is that spiritual power in man which 
 gives to existence its supreme worth, and without 
 which a man is no better than his dog or his horse. 
 To lose this spiritual capacity is to lose everything; 
 and even could he gain the whole world, that would 
 
THE FAILURE OF SUCCESS 213 
 
 be but poor compensation for the loss of all that 
 gives him his right to call himself a man. Of 
 course there are multitudes for whom such a pros- 
 pect has no terrors ; but it would be well for all such 
 to ask themselves whether there may not come a 
 time when they would look back with sorrow upon 
 their empty lives. And how will they care to face 
 death, and, after that, the judgment ? 
 
 Nothing tests a man so surely as his definition of 
 success. He loves best that in which he is most 
 anxious to succeed; and it is a pathetic testimony 
 to the externalism of our standards that the men 
 most commonly called successful are those whose 
 wealth or worldly position has dazzled the eyes of 
 the multitude. But is it not very plain, upon reflec- 
 tion, that the only successful man is the man who 
 has most triumphantly done the real business of his 
 life? And here we are face to face with the ques- 
 tion which is ultimate for all of us : What is the 
 real business of life? Is it not just to make the 
 most and the best of ourselves, and the most 
 through the best ? In a letter to a friend, Carlyle 
 happily defined success as "growing to your full 
 spiritual stature under God's sky." 
 
 Yet life is to-day so departmental, and its activi- 
 ties are so subdivided, that hardly any one dreams 
 of aspiring to this spiritual stature, or of endeavour- 
 ing to develop his nature on all its sides ; and those 
 who dream do little more than dream. The neces- 
 
214 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 sity of providing for ourselves and for those whom 
 we love, develops our nature along certain restricted 
 lines, and with this we soon learn to content our- 
 selves; while all the time, other and often nobler 
 powers within us are slumbering or dying. And 
 though we walk about the world with bright and 
 happy faces and all seems well with us, it may be 
 very far from well. The spirit within may be 
 shrunken and withered — a piteous and ghastly sight 
 for those who have the eyes to see. 
 
 Under modern conditions, success, as commonly 
 understood, lies in doing one thing well ; and it is 
 sadly true that most men contrive to do one thing 
 well by neglecting things of at least as much im- 
 portance as those which they consider. The atti- 
 tude of ordinary men to the highest things has been 
 immortalized by Jesus in His parable of the supper. 
 It was a great supper this — worthy of so generous 
 a host — and guests of all sorts were invited. But as 
 soon as the table was spread and they had nothing 
 to do but come, they all began to excuse themselves. 
 One had to see to his cattle, another to his fields, 
 another to his home; and so they allowed business 
 and pleasure to shut them out of the banqueting- 
 hall. They cared more for the oxen and the land 
 than for the great King who had graciously asked 
 them to come in to Him and sup with Him; and 
 their terrible, but reasonable, doom was that they 
 should never taste of His supper. If they should 
 
THE FAILURE OF SUCCESS 215 
 
 come, they would find the doors shut, and they 
 would be left in the darkness with the weeping and 
 the wailing. 
 
 The great supper is spread to-day for all who will 
 come and partake of it. The Lord openeth His 
 hand and is willing to satisfy the desires of every 
 living thing; but for the highest things of all there 
 is but little desire. The cattle and the land, the 
 office and the home, the buying and the selling, the 
 planning and the scheming, are more to us than 
 fellowship at the same table with the great and the 
 good and the Lord of all. We cheat ourselves of 
 our birthright, and the paltry success we may win 
 in our profession is bought with a great and terrible 
 price. "Born a man and died a grocer" — some 
 such epigram would be but too truthful a summary 
 of many a life-story; born to a splendid heritage, 
 born with powers of large possibilities, whose 
 proper cultivation would have brought to their pos- 
 sessor knowledge and influence and joy — and died 
 with most of those powers strangled by the mur- 
 derous routine of professional life. 
 
 Doubtless every man's profession is a divine 
 school of discipline. It is by doing its duties that 
 he develops his capacities and attains to any power 
 that is ever his. But to most men it proves a prison 
 as well as a school. They can see little of the great 
 and beautiful world beyond the cruel bars of their 
 window, and they seldom travel beyond the court- 
 
216 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 yard. In allowing our work to develop us, we 
 ought not to allow it unduly to restrict us ; for all 
 things are ours. The music and the art and the 
 literature and the beauty of the world are all for 
 us. Could any folly be more tragic than to stand 
 in the presence of all these things, and say, "I pray 
 thee, have me excused " ? Most men go to their 
 graves without ever having known how much was 
 theirs, how large and glorious the world is, or how 
 rich and happy their life might have been. In their 
 exclusive attention to their business, profession or 
 home, they commit a slow intellectual or spiritual 
 suicide ; and this is one of the ways in which a man 
 may gain the world and lose his soul. 
 
 The famous words of Darwin should be taken to 
 heart by those who feel that they are giving their 
 exclusive affection to the work of their lives, how- 
 ever important and honourable that may be. "Up 
 to the age of thirty," he says, "or beyond it, poetry 
 of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, 
 Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, gave 
 me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took 
 intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the 
 historical plays. . . . Pictures gave me consider- 
 able, and music very great, delight. But now for 
 many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. 
 I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found 
 it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have 
 also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. • . . 
 
THE FAILURE OF SUCCESS 217 
 
 I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not 
 cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly 
 did. . . . My mind seems to have become a kind of 
 machine for grinding general laws out of large col- 
 lections of facts. ... If I had to live my life again, 
 I would have made a rule to read some poetry and 
 listen to some music at least once every week; for 
 perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would 
 thus have been kept active through use. The loss 
 of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may pos- 
 sibly be injurious to the intellect and more probably 
 to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional 
 part of our nature." 
 
 Over certain minds the claims of trade and com- 
 merce exercise a powerful and sometimes a deadly 
 fascination ; but this touching confession makes it 
 plain that it is just as possible for those engaged 
 more directly in the things of the mind and spirit 
 to limit the fulness of their manhood and to deaden 
 themselves to interests that might have been a 
 source both of power and pleasure. The preacher 
 who has no mind for anything but his sermon, no 
 interest in any form of literature which he cannot 
 bring before his people in the form of exposition or 
 exhortation, has committed a crime against him- 
 self, if not also against them ; for he has closed his 
 eyes to some of the avenues along which God sends 
 truth to men. Literature is larger than the sermon, 
 and truth is not confined to commentaries. The 
 
218 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 whole earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; 
 and He has given it all, and not merely a fraction 
 of it, to the sons of men and to the preachers of 
 His word. The preacher, like other men, is asked 
 to the great supper; and he is tempted, like other 
 men, for professional reasons, to plead, "I pray 
 thee, have me excused." But here, as often else- 
 where, it is true that he who excuses, accuses 
 himself. 
 
BIDDING GOOD-BYE TO GOD 
 
BIDDING GOOD-BYE TO GOD 
 
 "Go thy way for this time" 
 
 What would you think of a man who had plainly- 
 heard the voice of God — heard it so plainly that it 
 made him tremble — and who yet had the awful 
 courage to reply, " Go away for the present. When 
 I have a convenient season, I will send for thee " ? 
 We hold our breath at the very thought of such 
 stupid, lordly defiance of Almighty God; and then 
 we breathe more freely again as we bethink our- 
 selves that such a thing could not be. It could not 
 be? Nay, but it has been. There was a man who 
 rolled those very words off his thoughtless tongue, 
 and there are other men — have we not ourselves 
 been among them ? — who have cherished such 
 thoughts in our hearts, and sighed for God to go 
 away, though the blasphemous words may never 
 actually have crossed our lips. 
 
 Felix was the man — the cruel, the powerful, the 
 
 gorgeous Felix. Beside him is a prisoner speaking 
 
 to him with deadly earnestness of a judgment to 
 
 come. The voice is Paul's, but the words are 
 
 God's, and they smite with terror into his seared 
 
 221 
 
222 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 Roman conscience. Paul is right, God is right, 
 and Felix can stand it no longer. "Go away," he 
 says, in a sudden access of terror. "Go away for 
 the present. When I have a convenient season, I 
 will send for thee." It is to Paul that he is speak- 
 ing, but what are those awful words but a tragic 
 farewell to God, — the God who was pleading with 
 him through the mighty presence of Paul ? 
 
 What a prayer! "O God! go away." It is a 
 fearful thing to bid good-bye to God, but oh ! the 
 presumption, the pathetic, the unspeakable pre- 
 sumption, of expecting that the God to whom we 
 have haughtily said good-bye will come back at 
 our summons, and alter His plans to suit our 
 convenient season ! 
 
 We do not indeed suppose that we ourselves 
 could ever be so haughtily disobedient to the 
 heavenly voice. If only we could be sure that a 
 voice was God's, we would obey it swiftly and 
 gladly ; but the pain of life is that its silences are 
 so long, and so seldom broken by a voice which 
 we can with confidence welcome as divine. But 
 is that voice so very rare ? or is it not rather that 
 we have not schooled ourselves to understand the 
 language in which it speaks ? For it sometimes 
 speaks as a rising terror in the heart. So it was 
 with Felix. His conscience was alarmed by the 
 vision of a judgment to come, and in that terror 
 God was speaking to him. That is one of God's 
 
BIDDING GOOD-BYE TO GOD 223 
 
 ways of speaking to men. When the still small 
 voice would be lost upon us, He will sometimes 
 let us hear the distant roll of His judgment thunder. 
 Then let us not pray in our terror, "O God! go 
 Thy way for the present." Rather, let us make our 
 peace with the God of the storm, lest His light- 
 nings consume us. 
 
 But His voice is not always terrible; it can be 
 gentle too. Sometimes it is borne to us upon the 
 breath of holy impulses or simple affections. But 
 whether that voice thrills us with terror or with 
 sacred resolve, it is for us unhesitatingly to obey 
 its promptings. God is with us in such a moment, 
 laying His kindly hand upon our stubborn life. 
 How do we know that He will ever be with us 
 again ? 
 
 Procrastination is the secret of failure. A noble 
 thought, a holy resolution, visits us. It stands 
 knocking at the door. But it will disturb our com- 
 fort if we suffer it to enter and possess our life, 
 and that will not do. So we give it a courteous 
 dismissal. "Go thy way for the present. When 
 I have a convenient season, I will send for thee." 
 And before that season comes, we may have 
 reached some place where there is no repentance, 
 though we seek it carefully with tears. 
 
 Warnings enough there come to every man. 
 Every time we are appalled, like Felix, at the 
 thought of the judgment to come; every terror 
 
224 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 that shakes our conscience; every funeral proces- 
 sion that passes up the busy streets, with its silent 
 mockery of their crowded haste; every experience 
 that awes and humbles us, — is another voice of the 
 God who loves us too dearly to leave us alone. The 
 man who says to such a voice, "Go thy way for 
 the present," is either a coward or a fool, — a 
 coward if he cannot bear to look at those stern facts 
 with which he will one day have to make his bed, 
 and a fool if he supposes that the God whom he is 
 deliberately rejecting will come in mercy when he 
 summons Him. "When I have a more convenient 
 season I will send for Thee." Yes, but will He 
 come? He will come indeed, be sure of that; but, 
 when He comes, He will demand the uttermost 
 farthingt 
 
A DESERT PLACE 
 
A DESERT PLACE 
 
 "Come apart into a desert place" 
 
 Few sentences in the New Testament are more 
 pathetic than this: "There were many coming 
 and going, and the apostles of Jesus had no leisure 
 so much as to eat." Jesus had sent them away to 
 do their beneficent work upon the bodies and the 
 minds of men. They had done it; and now they 
 had come back and gathered about Him to tell 
 Him of all that had befallen them. Jesus listened 
 with an interest mingled with joy and pity. He 
 knew that for the happy prosecution of the work of 
 life men need not only enthusiasm but strength. 
 And so when their tale is told, He simply says, 
 "Come by yourselves apart into a desert place, and 
 take a little rest." And in words of simple pathos, 
 the evangelist adds, " For crowds were coming and 
 going, and they had not even a chance to eat." 
 So, at the Master's bidding, they entered a boat 
 and went away to a desert place apart. 
 
 This is indeed very touching; but the sequel is 
 more touching still. For the kind wish of Jesus 
 was defeated by the importunity of the crowd ; and 
 
 Q 2 227 
 
228 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 when they crossed to their desert place where they 
 had hoped to be by themselves apart, they found 
 the place crowded with a waiting throng that had 
 hurried round the lake on foot. The work had to 
 be begun again, and the repose seemed further off 
 than ever. In the attitude of Jesus to this new and 
 unexpected obligation, we get a glimpse into the 
 depths of His great heart. An ordinary man would 
 have resented the appearance of a crowd which so 
 effectively dispelled all hope of repose and deprived 
 Him and His of the rest they so sorely needed. 
 But not so Jesus. "When He landed and saw the 
 great crowds, He had pity upon them and began 
 to teach them many things." Those who had come 
 to Him in such a way He could in no wise cast out. 
 The seeming annoyance He accepted as a divine 
 opportunity, and tired and disappointed as He and 
 His disciples were, He gladly and uncomplainingly 
 began again the great work which His Father had 
 given Him to do. 
 
 It is worth pondering that Jesus deliberately 
 sought for Himself and His disciples to escape 
 from the crowd. It is also worth pondering that 
 that escape proved impossible. In such a world as 
 ours we are sometimes compelled by circumstances, 
 or by regard for some high moral law, or for the 
 sake of a needy brother, to act against our better 
 knowledge. We know very well that we must 
 spare ourselves, or our strength — and to that ex- 
 
A DESERT PLACE 229 
 
 tent, our efficiency — will be impaired. Yet the 
 circumstances of our life so arrange themselves 
 that to spare ourselves is impossible ; and so long 
 as we have strength to stand upon our feet, we 
 must go on with our work. These exacting de- 
 mands, which seem at times so cruel, have no doubt 
 their high compensations both here and hereafter; 
 but while we must learn the stern obligation of 
 service from the willingness of Jesus to do what He 
 could for the crowd at the very time that He so 
 yearned to be alone with His disciples, we have 
 also to learn from His desire that they should go 
 apart — and perhaps many of us need this lesson 
 still more — how indispensable is rest and loneli- 
 ness to all continued and effective work. 
 
 It is not without interest that the words for 
 "come" and "rest" which Jesus used in His invit- 
 ation to the disciples, are the same as those in which 
 He gave to all that laboured and were heavy laden 
 that other invitation which has rung as an evangel 
 throughout the centuries: "Come unto me and I 
 will give you rest." Perhaps here, too, in the 
 suggestion that they go to a desert place, there is 
 a similar undertone. Not merely in the desert 
 place will the inspiration be; for Jesus is to be 
 there too. Nor is it only through going apart by 
 themselves that they will renew their strength ; for 
 they are to go apart with Him. But all the same, 
 the passage sounds an immortal warning to men 
 
230 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 who are consumed by zeal for the work to which 
 they are giving their lives. The strongest and the 
 most zealous need to go apart into a desert place 
 and rest awhile. They need it for their own sake; 
 they need it for their work's sake. Much of the 
 work has to be done "in the midst of the street"; 
 and we can only possess our souls there in patience 
 and peace if we have rested for awhile apart in the 
 desert place. 
 
 "They had no leisure so much as to eat." There 
 lies the real pathos of the situation — and the peril, 
 too. If a man has no leisure to eat; if he is com- 
 pelled, as business and professional men often are, 
 to dine irregularly, nature, which is just,will make 
 him pay the penalty. Sooner or later his strength 
 and elasticity will be impaired; the man and his 
 work will suffer. In the deeper sense, too, this 
 holds. For that eating by which we sustain the 
 physical nature is a symbol of the assimilative 
 effort by which we sustain the higher nature of 
 mind or spirit ; and if we have no leisure to partake 
 of this food, to enrich our minds with new ideas 
 and refresh our spirits at the well-springs of devo- 
 tion, then in the long run our work cannot fail to be 
 languid and poor. There is no alternative. We 
 cannot give what we do not have. We cannot feed 
 others by starving ourselves. The teacher, the 
 preacher, the physician, the writer, all who would 
 helpfully touch the lives of others, must know 
 
A DESERT PLACE 231 
 
 something of the desert place. If they are always 
 with the crowd, they will slowly, but surely, lose 
 their power of helping it. 
 
 It was to satisfy two needs that Jesus urged upon 
 His disciples this escape from the crowd — the need 
 of aloofness and the need of rest. First, "Come 
 by yourselves apart." The disciples had no doubt 
 enjoyed some measure of success in their mission, 
 and they may have been a little elated by their 
 temporary popularity. At any rate, it was now time 
 for them to go apart by themselves, away from the 
 disturbing illusions of the crowd, to a desert place 
 where they could view themselves and their work 
 in truer perspective. A crowd is a terrible thing 
 and a good man may well fear it. He will fear its 
 false standards of success. He will fear lest he 
 come to measure his worth by the size of his crowd. 
 He will fear lest he come to care more for their 
 applause than to tell them the truth. Yes, the 
 crowd is a menace to a man's true estimate of him- 
 self ; and as he loves his soul, he will once in a 
 while leave it all for the desert place where there 
 is little to turn his head or distort his vision of the 
 eternal things. "For my part," said Stevenson, 
 " I should try to secure some part of every day for 
 meditation, above all, in the early morning and the 
 open air." Apart from men, and, above all, in the 
 healthful presence of the primeval things, the sky, 
 the mountains, the sea, we can look ourselves more 
 
232 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 honestly in the face, lift up our hearts to God, and 
 give our panting lives a chance. 
 
 Again, besides going apart, Jesus bade His dis- 
 ciples take a little rest. The crowd has to be feared 
 for its power to lower our ideals, but also for its 
 power to exhaust our strength and impair our real 
 efficiency. This is the terrible penalty of popular- 
 ity, that it deprives its victim of the opportunity of 
 sustaining his power upon its highest levels. Day 
 by day his life is remorselessly eaten into. His mes- 
 sage becomes first familiar and then commonplace, 
 because the crowd will not let him do his best. 
 There is something pathetic as well as inspiring 
 about the numberless meetings which some 
 churches contrive to organize. They are in one 
 sense a sign of vitality; dead men do not hold 
 meetings. But they are also perhaps a sign of 
 that restlessness which finds its satisfaction any- 
 where but in the desert place. It is often just the 
 way in which good people take their dissipation. 
 
 And besides fostering in them a somewhat rest- 
 less and superficial type of spiritual life, it imposes 
 a burden almost too heavy to be borne upon the 
 unfortunate men who, several times a week, are 
 called upon to address such gatherings. It is no 
 doubt possible to speak many times a month for 
 many years together with real power and efficiency. 
 The thing has been done, though one may ques- 
 tion whether it has been done often. But in any 
 
A DESERT PLACE 233 
 
 case it can only be done well by leaving the crowd 
 and resting awhile. To the highest form of work 
 rest is an absolute necessity. No man who knows 
 anything of the conditions of his noblest work or 
 the limits of human endurance could doubt for one 
 moment that the blessed Sabbath day is a divine 
 institution. Its recurrence is a perpetual reminder 
 of the need of going apart and resting awhile. The 
 strength that is not renewed will soon become 
 weakness. 
 
 When Pere Didon had been banished to Corsica, 
 Pasteur wrote to him : "You will come back with 
 your soul still loftier, your thought more firm, 
 more disengaged from earthly things." Most of 
 the world's best work has been done by men who 
 prepared for it in some desert place. Jesus began 
 His own ministry with a season in the wilderness, 
 and often afterwards he sought the loneliness of the 
 mountain side. Paul had his Arabia, and John 
 Bunyan his prison. The street has its place in the 
 religious life, but so also has the desert. He will 
 work best for the crowd who has rested in the 
 wilderness. And not less needful than when first 
 it was spoken is this healing word of Jesus to the 
 crowded and distracted lives of men to-day : "Come 
 by yourselves apart into a desert place and rest 
 yourselves awhile." 
 
IN THE MIDST OF THE STREET 
 
IN THE MIDST OF THE STREET 
 
 What would you expect to find in the midst of 
 the street ? The din of endless traffic, and the 
 hurrying of eager feet. This at any rate; but there 
 is more. On the great streets of great cities a 
 thousand interests and passions concentrate them- 
 selves. There the rich and the poor meet and pass, 
 and in their meeting one of the great problems 
 of the modern world passes before us incarnate. 
 There the tragedies and comedies of life jostle each 
 other unsuspectingly. Innocence walks by the side 
 of guilt. The deadliest sins masquerade before 
 our faces, sometimes with stealthy tread, sometimes 
 brazen and unashamed. Ambition, hypocrisy, 
 poverty, cunning, vice, and much else that is 
 unlovely and degrading, might be seen any day 
 in the midst of the street by one who could read 
 beneath the lines upon the faces. 
 
 But is that all ? If that were indeed all, civiliza- 
 tion would be a tragic thing, and history had better 
 speedily close in some grand catastrophe. If that 
 were all, then Christ has come in vain, and religion 
 has drained its lifeblood for nothing. No, there is 
 more in the midst of the street than that. The man 
 
 237 
 
238 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 who has not yet learned the fatal art of cynicism 
 will find there much to confirm his faith in the 
 potential nobleness of human nature. If he can 
 read aright the faces that pass before him, he would 
 see many a simple heroism, many a pain and 
 sorrow bravely borne, many a sacrifice readily 
 made with no hope of compensation. It is very 
 possible to misread the significance of the endless 
 panorama in the midst of the street. It is very 
 certain that if we do not look upon it with generous 
 eyes, we shall not see one half of its meaning and 
 beauty. 
 
 But was there ever half so beautiful a street as 
 that seen by the aged eyes of the seer of Patmos? 
 In a loving description of the new Jerusalem, the 
 city that descended from God out of heaven, he 
 noticed that in the midst of the street there was a 
 river, and on either side of the river there were 
 trees — trees of life. A tree in the street ! And what 
 a tree ! Ever young and fair, bearing fruit all the 
 year round, and dressed in leaves which were able 
 to heal the sick and torn nations of the world as 
 soon as they entered this street of the city of God 
 and plucked thereof. Beautiful street of a beautiful 
 city ! If only our unbelieving eyes could catch a 
 sight of such a street with the magic, beneficent 
 tree in the midst of it, how eagerly we too would 
 run to pluck its leaves and heal our distracted 
 hearts I 
 
IN THE MIDST OF THE STREET 239 
 
 But what is it that keeps us back ? Why do we 
 hot see the city? And why do we not eat of the 
 fruit of this tree of life? Is it because they are 
 so far away ? Perhaps they are not so far as we 
 think. For this city, remember, is not in the 
 heavens; it is a city that came down out of heaven 
 upon the earth. Call it, if you like, a dream city; 
 but it is a dream of this world, and not of the skies. 
 For, note, there are nations to be healed. The 
 work of the world is not yet done. Its nations are 
 sick; the mind and the heart are not sound; they 
 need healing. And they find it on the leaves of 
 the tree in the street of the city of God. So it 
 would seem as if the vision that sustained the aged 
 heart of this true seer was that of some heavenly 
 city in this world. True, there lies upon this city 
 a wondrous light, such as never was on sea or 
 land ; and no city that has ever been built by 
 human hands can compare with it for the nobility 
 of its inhabitants. But it seems, after all, to be a 
 city set up upon the earth, inhabited not by spirits 
 but by living men, with the living God among 
 them. 
 
 So, while this is a dream, it is not all a dream ; it 
 can be made the most practical of all realities. For, 
 surrounded as most of us are by the stubborn and 
 often ungracious facts of city life, by its fierce 
 competitions and its unremitting strain, it is well 
 to remember that the tree of life is in the midst of 
 
240 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 the street. Often we are tempted to think it is any- 
 where but there. A tree of life in a street which 
 rings with the noise of business and commercial 
 rivalries seems almost a mockery. Often we would 
 fain fly from it all to some lodge in the wilderness 
 or in the forest or on the sea-shore. Early man 
 imagined the tree of life in a garden— the glorious 
 garden of Paradise; but it is a deeper thought, as 
 it is a later one, that this tree is in the midst of the 
 street, where the men are. 
 
 Wherever men are gathered together, there is 
 some not altogether ignoble life. For the exist- 
 ence of cities, when you come to think of it, is a 
 recognition, however unconscious, of the brother- 
 hood of men and of their need of one another. 
 Every one who is honestly working is doing some- 
 thing for that great organism which we call 
 society; each, in doing his own work, is serving 
 the others — it may be unwittingly — and blessing 
 the whole. Where two or three are gathered 
 together in the name of Jesus, there He is in the 
 midst of them, to bless them ; and where hundreds 
 and thousands are gathered together in the inter- 
 ests of a common civilization, we may well believe 
 that Jesus is not far away, though there is not a 
 little on which He could only look with eyes of 
 sorrow. And we may well believe that there is a 
 tree of life somewhere in the midst. 
 
 The inspiration of the street ! Such a phrase 
 
IN THE MIDST OF THE STREET 241 
 
 seems almost an absurdity. The poets have, with 
 few exceptions, ignored the street, and sought their 
 inspiration amid the quiet and gracious scenes of 
 nature, or in the quaint, simple life of the country. 
 It has been left to religion and social philosophy 
 to discover the tree of life in the midst of the street. 
 The religion inaugurated by Jesus is very much 
 more than the saving of the individual soul ; it is 
 the salvation of each for the service of all. Is it 
 not plain, then, that the concentration of the city 
 offers the grandest opportunity ? There it is as 
 easy to reach and move a hundred as elsewhere to 
 touch one. There life is most complicated and 
 interesting. There the problems are fiercest and 
 the need sorest. There opportunities are most 
 numerous and most easily secured. There thorough 
 work finds its most comprehensive response and 
 its most manifold reward. Already, despite much 
 open and secret corruption, there exists within 
 every city much good and true life, organized and 
 unorganized; it is for those who believe in the city 
 of God to deepen and strengthen this life, to con- 
 centrate its scattered forces, and to plant it in the 
 hearts and in the institutions where it does not yet 
 exist. 
 
 The obligations of religion to the street and to 
 all that ramified social life which the street implies, 
 are very great. Jesus loved the street. There were 
 indeed times when He had to bid His disciples go 
 
242 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 apart into a desert place and rest awhile ; but it was 
 that they might enter on their work again with 
 strength renewed. He left the wilderness in which 
 He sojourned for a while after the call to His 
 ministry, to work among the busy haunts of men 
 in the cities on the shore of the lake of Galilee. 
 The city, its needs and its redemption, were ever 
 in His thoughts. He would fain have gathered her 
 people together as a hen gathers her brood under 
 her wings. He did not shirk the responsibilities 
 of the unlovely street. To him it was not unlovely ; 
 it was the field on which he believed that, in the 
 far-off day, there would be a golden harvest. 
 
 The tree of life was in the midst of the street, 
 and its leaves were for the healing of the nations. 
 That vision, seen so long ago, is yet strangely 
 modern and peculiarly full of meaning for the men 
 of to-day. It is the vision of the opportunity and 
 the responsibility of social life. There is already 
 life in the midst of the street; but there is earnest 
 need of more and better life. For the redemption 
 of the street is yet a long way off. The streets of 
 our world are like those in the parable — full of 
 poor and maimed, blind and lame; and the Master 
 is saying to us, as the master in the parable said to 
 his servants, "Go out quickly into the streets, and 
 bring them in hither." 
 
 Nor does the obligation cease when those in the 
 streets of our own cities have been brought in. It 
 
IN THE MIDST OF THE STREET 243 
 
 stretches out to the regions beyond ; for the leaves 
 of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 
 Christianity is a social force; but the society on 
 which it is designed to operate is the whole world. 
 It will be content with nothing less than a redeemed 
 world. But it does its work through redeemed 
 personalities; and it lies with each of those who 
 believe in God and have been quickened by Jesus 
 to play some deliberate part in the slow transforma- 
 tion of the world till it becomes the kingdom of our 
 God and of His Christ; and then there will be no 
 curse any more. 
 
 R S 
 
THE RIVER AND THE DEAD SEA 
 
THE RIVER AND THE DEAD SEA 
 
 " Everything shall live, whithersoever the river cometh " 
 
 It has long been the fashion to regard Ezekiel 
 
 as a legalist, with little of the old prophetic fire 
 
 and imagination. But the man who drew for us 
 
 the immortal pictures of the valley of dry bones 
 
 and of the river of life that proceeded from the 
 
 temple of God, must rank as one of the poets and 
 
 prophets of the world. The earlier parts of his 
 
 description of the river, where his Divine guide 
 
 comes forth with a line in his hand, and four 
 
 times measures the depth of its waters, after a 
 
 thousand cubits of its progress eastward, may seem 
 
 somewhat mathematical and unimaginative. But 
 
 when he brings us out upon the Dead Sea, and we 
 
 watch the fishing-boats that move along its western 
 
 shores; when he shows us the trees, whose leaves 
 
 and fruit are deathless, that fringe the wonderful 
 
 river on both its banks; then we feel that we are 
 
 in the hands of a great poet, who looked with eyes 
 
 of love and hope upon the world, and who saw 
 
 deep into the heart of things. 
 
 The whole passage indeed exhibits the pro- 
 247 
 
248 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 phetic imagination in one of its most daring and 
 splendid flights. Ezekiel and his people are still 
 in the land of exile — they are doomed to remain 
 there for at least over thirty years, and, so far as 
 human eye could see, for ever. But, so sure is the 
 prophet that Jehovah will bring His people back 
 to their own land, that he actually draws up a 
 minute and elaborate programme for the re-organ- 
 ization of the Church on their return. Even in 
 the Bible, with its hope invincible flashing from 
 every page, there is nothing more sublime than 
 this — that, by the waters of Babylon, where the 
 national hopes seemed to be for ever extinguished, 
 and there was nothing left for the exiles but to 
 hang up their harps upon the willow trees and 
 weep, as they thought of their beloved Jerusalem, 
 which they were never likely to see again — there 
 is nothing more sublime than this, that a prophet 
 could not only see beyond the immediate sorrow, 
 in some vague way, to a brighter day, but that he 
 saw it all so clearly and confidently that he pre- 
 pares and minutely plans for it. 
 
 Now of this new national life, the temple is to 
 be the very centre and core. Like our Lord, he 
 has a large imagination of the Church and her 
 destiny; the gates of Hades should not prevail 
 against her. This explains the elaborate attention 
 which the affairs of the temple receive through a 
 succession of chapters which to us, who are afar 
 
THE RIVER AND THE DEAD SEA 249 
 
 off, may seem dreary enough. But, dreary as 
 they may seem to us of another age and country, 
 they glow with the enthusiasm of the man who 
 penned them ; the plans for the temple were drawn 
 by an eager and loving hand. In this great de- 
 scription of the river of life, however, he carries us 
 to ground upon which he can stir our own interest 
 more readily. His pictures may seem to us, in 
 part, mechanical and fantastic, if not grotesque; 
 but it is not difficult for a sympathetic imagination 
 to appreciate the thing Ezekiel would be at, or to 
 share his hopeful and eager wonder at the possi- 
 bilities of the future time, when the Church shall 
 have secured her true place in the land and in the 
 hearts of the people. 
 
 We must first, however, beware of putting too 
 spiritual an interpretation upon the imagery of 
 Ezekiel. In large measure, he literally means 
 what he says. To us, such a river, with such a 
 course, flowing from the temple eastward across 
 the Judaean hills and falling into the Dead Sea, 
 may well appear a physiographical absurdity. 
 But that the prophet means himself to be taken 
 seriously is plain from his circumstantial picture 
 of the fishermen casting their nets upon the waters 
 between Engedi on the west and Eneglaim on the 
 north. He means that, when the world is re- 
 deemed, there will be no place in it for a desert 
 and a Dead Sea. These things, too, shall share in 
 
250 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 the redemption ; the desert shall rejoice and 
 blossom as the rose, and the Dead Sea shall be- 
 come alive again. The earth, as well as the men 
 upon it, shall be transfigured ; and it is primarily 
 this physical transfiguration that Ezekiel has in 
 view, when he describes the effect of the river of 
 life. 
 
 At the same time, it would not be untrue to the 
 spirit of Ezekiel's message, to find in it truths 
 directly applicable to our modern needs and situa- 
 tion. The waters of the river are said to proceed 
 from the sanctuary; does that not suggest that the 
 Church should be a river of life, and that from her, 
 influences should stream which would bless and 
 beautify and fertilize the world ? 
 
 Very near every Church is the desert and the 
 Dead Sea— the rough, jagged hills on which no- 
 thing grows and over which men stumble, and the 
 sea in whose waters no fish swims, and on whose 
 surface no ship floats. Round about the Church 
 is a dreary desolation ; what is she doing to im- 
 part to it life and beauty ? The life that is in her 
 should flow out of her to the regions beyond, 
 especially to the places where the need is sorest. 
 The stream that Ezekiel saw, as soon as it left the 
 temple, made straight for the east, for the Dead 
 Sea — for that was the region of death, the region 
 that most needed life and blessing. 
 
 The true Church will go to the waste places, 
 
THE RIVER AND THE DEAD SEA 251 
 
 where she is most sorely needed. And, as she goes 
 in the direction ordained for her by the needs of 
 the world about her, she will gather strength. The 
 water may not be deep or strong for the first 
 thousand cubits; but the farther the stream of her 
 influence advances, the deeper and stronger will it 
 become. Beauty will spring up wherever she goes; 
 her banks will be shaded with lovely trees; what 
 once was desolation she will turn into a Paradise, 
 and her influence will quicken the lifeless into 
 life. 
 
 The water from Ezekiel's temple flowed east; and 
 the stream of our Church's activity will also flow 
 east — east to India and China, where heathenism 
 has left its blight and desolation, and human needs 
 are very sore ; east to the slums of our cities, where 
 life is sordid and the battle is hard. But to the 
 west no less than to the east ; for the west, too, has 
 its gorgeous desolations, and there the Church 
 must be prepared to cut a channel for her streams. 
 She will go, if we may adopt the happy mistrans- 
 lation of the Greek version, to " Galilee and 
 Arabia " — to Galilee in the north and Arabia in the 
 south, to the uttermost ends of the earth. Where 
 the dreary and the thirsty places are, there must 
 she be, with the water of life. 
 
 The background of this vision is a sick and hun- 
 gry world. This is incidentally suggested by the 
 very last words of the description, where the fruit 
 
252 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 of the beautiful trees upon its banks is to be for 
 food, and their leaves for healing. Food for the 
 famished and healing for the sick souls of men ! 
 These things the Church must be able to provide, 
 or she is no Church. The trees, with their whole- 
 some fruit and health-giving leaves, are nourished 
 by the waters of the river, and the river has its 
 source in the house of God — the whole being finely 
 symbolic of the vital and healing influences that 
 ought to stream forth from the Church upon 
 society. Too often the life of the Church is en- 
 closed within the four walls of the outer court, 
 and not the eastern gate alone, but all the gates 
 are closed, so that those without cannot pass 
 within and those within will not pass without. 
 No stream of life has gone forth from it to bless 
 the surrounding world. The waste places have re- 
 mained waste, even those that were only a thou- 
 sand cubits from the door; and the Dead Sea, 
 only a few miles off, has remained dead. In that 
 case must we not say that the Church herself is 
 dead ? If the water will not run, if the stream will 
 not flow, it is stagnant. Some churches either do 
 not move at all, or move away from the districts 
 where the people with their problems are crowded 
 together, out to the sunny, pleasant places where 
 there is comfort and room. If the Church is alive, 
 she must move; but if she understands her duty, 
 she will move towards the Dead Sea. 
 
THE RIVER AND THE DEAD SEA 253 
 
 Very suggestive of the true function of the 
 Church is the frequency of the word life through- 
 out this passage. "Everything shall live, whither- 
 soever the river cometh." As on the Dead Sea, 
 where once reigned silence, are now boats and fish 
 and nets and fishermen, when its waters are touched 
 by the waters of the river, so life will spring up 
 wherever a Church is true to her high mission. 
 Everything shall live whithersoever the river of 
 her life cometh. If this is not literally true, it is 
 ideally true. She has food and healing to offer all 
 who are willing to be fed and healed by her. She 
 can express her life in an infinite variety of ways, 
 for not once, but twelve times a year, do her trees 
 yield their fruit; and she has an inexhaustible 
 power of adapting herself to the various needs of 
 men. 
 
 The prophet, or preacher, is a messenger of life. 
 He stands in the silent valley of bones and speaks 
 the word which brings the dead to life again. 
 And the Church must also be a messenger of life. 
 With living preachers and a living Church, the 
 world's redemption would not be very far off. 
 The preacher by his word of power, would, by the 
 blessing of God, compel the sleeping Church to 
 stand upon its feet — an exceeding great army ; 
 and this living army would go out, to the north 
 and the south, to the east and the west, to Galilee 
 and Arabia, to the dreary hills of Judaea and the 
 
254 THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS 
 
 silent waters of the lifeless sea, to the highways 
 and the byways, to the waste, the lifeless, the un- 
 promising places, carrying healing and blessing 
 and life wherever they went. Then the world 
 would be transfigured, and this old earth of ours 
 would be a very Paradise of God. 
 
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