LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Presented by 
 
 BV 4811 .M25 1897 
 
 Maclaren, Alexander, 1826- i 
 
 1910. I 
 
 Music for the soul I 
 

MUSIC FOR THE SOUL 
 
I9?3 
 
 MUSIC FOR THE 
 
 DAILY READINGS FOR A YEAR FROM 
 THE WRITINGS OF THE 
 
 REV. ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D. 
 
 SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY THE REV. GEO. COATES 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 A. C ARMSTRONG AND SON 
 
 51, EAST TENTH STREET 
 1897 
 
Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
 Astor Place, New York 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 npHE cultivation of the spiritual side of the devotional life is 
 -■■ the purpose for which this book has been compiled. No 
 words can possibly describe the absolute necessity of cultivating 
 a higher tone in the spiritual life of the Christians of this age ; 
 and it may be asserted, without fear of contradiction, that 
 Dr. Alexander Maclaren's writings supply ample food for devotion 
 and meditation. Ever>' sentence he utters is full to overflowing 
 of spiritual power and unction. He is master of the art of how 
 to touch the human soul by the simple, God-appointed method 
 of preaching the Gospel in all the majesty and glory of an ex- 
 perimental force. He believes, therefore he speaks ; and such 
 speaking cannot fail to reach the heart. God has used this great 
 preacher in the spiritual up-building of multitudes of Christians 
 the world over, and in the salvation of many who, through the 
 influence of his burning words, have been brought from "dark- 
 ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.'' 
 
 Every Christian should have his Day-book of Devotional 
 Reading, not to be used instead of the Word of God, but along 
 with it. Contact with souls whose experience of God's grace and 
 mercy has revealed ripened acquaintance with Him who is the 
 Life and the Light of men is manifestly helpful to all believers 
 in a common Saviour. Since Thomas ^ Kempis, Bogatzky, 
 Dr. J. R. Miller, and others have given to us their wonderful 
 devotional meditations, the " Daily Devotional Book " has been 
 a recognised companion of the devout life. Let the Bible, the 
 living Word of the living Christ, be our first and chief book, 
 but by its side, and as a helper to its proper devotional study, let 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 the Christian gather some taper-lights from the men and women 
 whose spiritual inspiration is assured, and whose hearts and lips 
 have been touched with a live-coal from off God's altar. " Let 
 the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom." 
 
 The preparation of the volume has been a help and inspiration 
 to the compiler. The subject headings and the Scripture 
 passages have been selected with great care, and are suggestive, 
 as far as it was possible, of the thoughts contained in the 
 quotations from Dr. Maclaren. It will be seen that most, if not 
 all, of the Scriptural quotations are from the Revised Version. 
 Full textual and subject indices will be found at the end. 
 
 I desire to acknowledge my obligation to Dr. Maclaren for 
 his ready and gracious acquiescence in the preparation and 
 publication of this work ; also to Messrs. Macmillan and Co., 
 the " Christian Commonwealth Publishing Co., Limited," and 
 Messrs. Alexander and Shepheard for permission to make extracts 
 from the published volumes of Dr. Maclaren's sermons. 
 
 I send the book forth in the earnest hope and with the prayer 
 that the " Daily Readings " may be a means of spiritual quickening 
 and stimulus to all who are seeking for a fuller baptism of the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 G. COATES. 
 October^ 1897. 
 
DAILY READINGS FOR A YEAR 
 
IN REMEMBRANCE OF CHRIST. 
 This do in remembrance of Me. — i COR. xi. 24, 
 
 January 1. " ^° ^^^ '^"^ *^^ "^"^^ °^ ^^^ ^^^ Jesus.'* Do this in remem- 
 brance of Christ, or, as Paul expresses it, ** discerning the Lord's 
 body," not only because you are in danger of forgetting^ but do this because 
 you remember. Do this, not only in order that your reminiscences may be 
 strengthened, but do it because they are strong. Seeing the Lord's body, 
 discerning His presence, loving that which you discern — do this ! And, in 
 like manner, " Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of 
 the Lord Jesus." Do all, that is to say, for the sake of the character, as 
 revealed to you, of Him whom you love ; do it all, giving thanks unto God 
 and the Father by Him. And then, in the parallel passage, *' Whatsoever 
 ye do, do it heartily," — that is one principle ; and next, as the foundation of 
 all real heartiness, do it *' as to the Lord." This is the foundation, and the 
 limitation as well ; for it is only when we do it " heartily, as to the Lord," 
 that earnestness is kept from degenerating into absorption, and that a man, 
 whilst working with all his might, and " diligent in business," shall also be 
 '* fervent in spirit." The motive is the same : in the Communion it is the 
 remembrance of the Lord ; in the ordinary life it is "in the name of the 
 Lord Jesus." Is that sacred motive one which is kept for select occasions, 
 and for what we call special acts of worship ? It is to be feared that the 
 most of Christian people do with that Divine reason for work, " the love of 
 Christ constraineth me," as the old Franks (to use a strange illustration) 
 used to do with their long-haired kings — they keep them in the palace at 
 all ordinary times, give them no power over the government of the kingdom, 
 only now and then bring them out to grace a procession, and then take 
 them back again into their reverential impotence. That is very like what 
 Christian people do, to a very large extent, with that which ought to be the 
 rule of all their life and the motive of all their work. We sit down to the 
 communion, and we do it " in the name of the Lord Jesus " ; we commemo- 
 rate Him there. When we come to pray, we speak to Him and in His 
 Name. Our high tides of devotion do not come so often as the tides of the 
 sea ; and then for the rest of our time there is the long stretch of foul, oozy, 
 barren beach when the waters are out, and all is desolation and deadness. 
 That is not what a Christian man ought to be. There is no action of life 
 which is too great to bow to the influence of "This do in remembrance of 
 Me " ; and there is no action of life which is too small to be magnified, 
 glorified, turned into a solemn sacrament, by the operation of the same 
 motive. 
 
THE PRESENT THE PROPHECY OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 Stretching forward to tht things which are before, I press on towards the 
 goal. — -Phil. iii. 13, 14. 
 
 January 2. CHILDHOOD is the prophecy of maturity. " The child is father 
 of the man" ; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way, 
 the very imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the 
 existence of another state where all that is here in the germ shall be fully 
 matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the perfection which 
 alone wdll correspond to the power that works in us. Think of the 
 ordinary Christian character. The germ is there, and more than the germ. 
 As one looks at the crudity, the inconsistencies, the failings, the feebleness 
 of the Christian life of others, or of one's self, and then thinks that such a 
 poor, imperfect exhibition is all that so Divine a principle has been able 
 to achieve in this world, one feels that there must be a region and a time 
 where we shall be all which the transforming power of God's Spirit can 
 make us. True, the very inconsistencies of Christians are as strong a 
 reason for believing in the perfect life of heaven as their purities and 
 virtues. We have a right to say mighty principles are at work after 
 Christian souls — the power of the Cross, the power of love essaying to 
 obedience, the power of an indwelling Spirit ; and is this all that these 
 great forces are going to effect on human character? Surely a seed so 
 precious and Divine is somewhere and some time to bring forth 
 something better than these few poor half-developed flowers, something 
 with more lustrous petals and richer fragrance. The plant is clearly an 
 exotic here ; does not its obviously struggling growth here tell of warmer 
 suns and richer soil where it will be at home ? 
 
 There is a great deal in every man, and most of all in Christian men and 
 women, which does not fit this present. All other creatures correspond 
 in their capacities to the place where they are set down ; and the world 
 in which the plant or the animal lives, the world of their surroundings, 
 stimulates to activity all their powers. But that is not so with a man. 
 "Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests." They fit exactly and 
 correspond to their "environment." But a man ! — there is an enormous 
 amount of waste faculty about him if he is only going to live in this world. 
 There is a great deal in every nature, and most of all in a Christian nature, 
 which is like the packages that emigrants take with them, marked '* Not 
 wanted on the voyage." These go down into the hold, and they are only 
 of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son of God, I have got 
 much in me that is '* not wanted on the voyage" ; and the more I grow into 
 His likeness, the more I am thrown out of harmony with the things round 
 about me in proportion as I am brought into harmony with the things 
 beyond. 
 
 ** Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
 height, nor depth, nor any other creature," shall be able to break that tie 
 and banish the child from the conscious grasp of a Father's hand. Dear 
 brother and sister, can you say, ** Now am I a child of God " ? 
 
 Then you may patiently and peacefully firont that dim future. 
 
TO-DAY. 
 To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts. — Heb. iii. 15. 
 
 I SAY nothing about other reasons for pronapt action, such as 
 
 anuary . ^^^^ every moment makes it harder for a man to turn to Jesus 
 Christ as his Saviour. The dreadful power of habit weaves chains about 
 him, thin at first as a spider's web, solid at last as an iron fetter. Associations 
 that entangle, connections that impede, grow with terrible rapidity. And if 
 it is hard for you to turn to your Lord now, it will never be easier, and will 
 certainly be harder. 
 
 And, dear friend, ** to-day " — ^how long is it going to last ? Of course, 
 I know that all the deepest reasons for your being a Christian remain 
 unaffected if you were going to live in the world for ever. And, of course, 
 I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is as good to live by as it is to die 
 by. But, notwithstanding, common sense says that if our time here is so 
 uncertain as we know it to be, there is no time to put off. You and I have 
 to die, whether we find a convenient season for it or not. And perhaps 
 we have to die before we find Felix's "convenient season" to send for 
 Paul or Paul's Master. So, in the narrowest sense of the word, " To-day 
 , . . harden not your hearts," 
 
 But I dare say some of you, and especially some of you young people, 
 may be kept from accepting Jesus Christ as your Saviour, and serving 
 Him, by a vague disinclination and dread to make so great a change. I 
 beseech you, do not give a feather's weight to such considerations. If a 
 change is right, the sooner it is made the better. The shrinking all passes 
 when it is made, just as a bather recovers himself when once his head has 
 been plunged beneath the water. 
 
 And some of you may be kept back because you know that there are 
 sins that you will have to unveil if you become Christians. Well, do not 
 let that keep you back either. Confession is healing and good and sweet 
 to the soul, if it is needful for repentance. Sins that men have a right 
 to know hurt as long as they are hid, and cease to hurt when they are 
 acknowledged, like the fox beneath the Spartan boy's robe, that gnawed 
 when it was covered up, and stopped biting when it was revealed. 
 
 So, dear friend, you hear Christ speaking to you in His Word, in His 
 servants, in the depths of your hearts. He speaks to you of a dying 
 Saviour, of His infinite love, of His perfect sacrifice, of a complete salva- 
 tion, a cleansed heart, a blessed life, a calm death, an open heaven for 
 each, if we will take them '* See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh." 
 
 3 
 
OUR RELATION TO OUR LORD. 
 
 To us there is but one God, the Father^ of whom are all thingSf and we 
 in Him. — I Cor. viii. 6. 
 
 J - Every act of our life sets forth some aspect of our Lord and 
 
 *" ' of our relation to Him, from the moment when we open our 
 
 eyes in the morning, — as those do who, having slept the sleep of sin, awake 
 to righteousness, all through the busy day, when our work may speak to 
 us of His that worketh continually, and our rest may prophesy to us of 
 the "rest that remaineth for the people of God"; and our journeyings 
 may tell of the journey of the soul of God, and our home may testify of 
 the home which is above the skies, — up to the hour when night falls, and 
 sleep, the image of Death, speaks to us of the last solemn moment, when 
 we shall close the eyes of our body on earth, to open those of our soul on 
 the realities of eternity; when we shall no more "see through a glass 
 darkly, but face to face." All things, and all acts, and this whole 
 wonderful universe, proclaim to us the Lord our P'ather, Christ our love, 
 Christ our hope, our portion, and our joy ! Oh, if you would know the 
 meaning of the world, read Christ in it ! If you would see the beauty of 
 earth, take it for a prophet of something higher than itself ! If you would 
 pierce beneath the surface and know the sanctities that are all about us, 
 remember that when He took bread and wine for a memorial of Him, He 
 did not profane thereby, but consecrated thereby, all that He left out, and 
 asserted the same power and the same prerogative, in lower degree, but 
 as really and truly, for everything which the loving eye should look upon, 
 for everything which the believing heart should apprehend ! All is sacred. 
 The world is the temple of God. Everywhere there are symbols and 
 memorials of the living God. 
 
 Is it not something to have a principle which, whilst leaving events in all 
 their power to tell upon us, yet prevents anything from degenerating into 
 triviality, and prevents anything from pressing upon us with an over- 
 whelming weight ? Would it not be grand if we could so go through life 
 as that all should be not one dead level, but one high plateau, as it were, 
 on the mountain-top there, because all rested upon " Whatsoever ye do, in 
 word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus " ? Ah ! it is possible 
 — not to our weak faith, perhaps ; but the weakness of the faith is not 
 inevitable. It is possible, though we be surrounded by many things that 
 make it very hard. It is possible, and therefore it is duty. It is possible, 
 and therefore the opposite is not merely a neglect, but is positive sin. 
 Oh, to have my life equable like that, with one high, diffusive influence 
 through it all, with one simple consecration placed upon it, that one motive, 
 "The love of Christ constraineth us" ! Why, it is like one of those 
 applications of power you have often seen, when a huge hammer is lifted 
 up, and comes down with a crash that breaks the granite in pieces, or may 
 be allowed to fall so gently and so true that it touches, without cracking, 
 a tiny nut beneath it. The one principle, mighty and crashing when it is 
 wanted ; and yet coming down with gentle, accurately-proportioned force on 
 all life. Or, to take a higher illustration : it is like that mighty power that 
 holds a planet in its orbit, in the wild weltering wastes of solitary space ; 
 and yet binds down the sand-grain and dust-mote to its place. Or, 
 higher and truer still, the love of Christ that constraineth us makes us 
 cquaVjle, calm, consistent, in shadowy but real copy of the everlasting 
 tranquillity of our Father in heaven. 
 
THE HEAVY COST OF THE WORLD. 
 
 What shall it profit a ntattf if he gain the whole worlds and lose his own 
 soul ? — Mark viii. 36. 
 
 You get nothing for nothing in the world's market. It is a 
 
 annary . -^^^ price that you have to pay before these mercenaries will 
 come to fight on your side. Here is a man that "succeeds in life," as we 
 call it. What does it cost him ? Well, it has cost him the suppression, 
 the atrophy by disuse of many capacities in his soul which were far higher 
 and nobler than those that have l3een exercised in his success ; it has cost 
 him all his days ; it has possibly cost him the dying out of generous sym- 
 pathies and the stimulating of unwholesome selfishness. Ah ! he has 
 bought his prosperity very dear. If people would estimate what they pay 
 for gold, in an immense majority of cases, in treasure that cannot be 
 weighed and stamped, they would find it to be about the dearest thing 
 in God's universe ; and that there are few men who make worse bargains 
 than the men who give themselves for worldly success, even when they 
 receive what they give themselves for. 
 
 Some of you know how much what you call enjoyment has cost you. 
 Some have bought pleasure at the price of innocence, of moral dignity, 
 of stained memories, of polluted imaginations, of an incapacity to rise 
 above the flesh ; and some have bought it at the price of health. The 
 world has a way of getting more than it gives. 
 
 At the best, if you are not Christian men and women, whether )^ou are 
 men of business, votaries of pleasure, seekers after culture and refinement, 
 or anything else, you have given Heaven to get earth. Is that a good 
 bargain ? Is it much wiser than that of a horde of naked savages that sell a 
 great tract of fair country, with gold-bearing reefs in it, for a bottle of rum 
 and a yard or two of calico ? What is the difference ? You have been fooled 
 out of the inheritance which God meant for you ; and you have got for it 
 transient satisfaction, and partial as it is transient. If you are not Christian 
 people, you have to buy this world's wealth and goods at the price of God 
 and of your own souls. And I ask you if that is an investment which 
 recommends itself to your common sense. Oh, my brother ! "what shall 
 it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself?" Answer 
 the question. 
 
 Only he that is " a man in Christ " has come " to the measure of the 
 stature of a perfect man." There, and there alone, do we get the power 
 which will make us full-grown. There alone does the soul get hold of that 
 good soil in which, grov/ing, it becomes as a rounded, perfect tree, with 
 leaves and fruits in their season. All other men are half-men, quarter-men, 
 fragments of men, parts of humanity exaggerated, and contorted, and dis- 
 torted from the reconciling whole which the Christian ought to be, and in 
 proportion to his Christianity is on the road to be, and one day will 
 assuredly and actually be, a "complete man, wanting nothing" ; nothing 
 maimed, nothing broken, the realisation of the ideal of humanity, the 
 renewed copy " of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven." 
 
 5 
 
ALL CHRISTIAN LIVING A SHOWING FORTH OF 
 CHRIST'S DEATH. 
 
 Bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also 
 of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. — 2 CoR. iv. 10. 
 
 This showing forth of Christ's death is the truest explanation 
 ' and definition that we can give of the process by which a 
 Christian soul grows up into the likeness of its Lord. The death of the 
 Lord Jesus, as a death for us, and the ground of our hope, is to be shown 
 forth in our daily walk, as a death working in us, and the ground of our 
 conduct. There is not only the atoning and sacrificial aspect in Christ's 
 death on the Cross, but there is this likewise, that it stands as the example 
 of the way by which we are, in our measure and place, to *' mortify our 
 members which are upon the earth," because "we are dead with Him, 
 and our life is hid with Christ in God." Here, then, we say, "That 
 death was for me, and I trust it " : in our common life we are to say, 
 *'That death is working in ?ne, and I am becoming conformable unto the 
 image of His death, that I may know Him, and the power of His resur- 
 rection, and so attain to the resurrection of the dead." And as sacred as 
 is the one form of memorial, so sacred is the other ; and closer than the 
 outward sign which expresses the outward fact upon which we hope, is the 
 inward reality by which alone the outward fact becomes the basis of our 
 hope and the reason for our confidence. No man manifests the death of 
 Christ by any outward act of communion or worship who is not feeling it 
 daily in his own soul ; and no man has any right to say, " I am trusting in 
 that death as a sacrifice and salvation," who does not feel and show that he 
 is builded on Christ, and that that death is in him a power to change him 
 into its own likeness. It is in vain for us to say that we are relying on 
 Christ, unless Christ be in us, slaying the old man and quickening the new. 
 The one test of true faith is the inward possession of the Lord's Spirit ; and 
 between the sacrifice on the Cross and me the sinful man, there is no real 
 union effected, nor any imputation and transference of merits, unless with 
 it, proof of it, and consequence of it, — and proof of it because consequence 
 of it, — there be likewise "Oc^o. Jlciving-over from the Cross to me of the life 
 that was in Him, and of the death that He died. You do " show forth the 
 Lord's death till He come " not only, nor chiefly, when you take the bread 
 and the wine in remembrance of Him, but when, in daily contact with sin, 
 in dnily practice of that bitter and yet most sweet lesson of self-denial and 
 sacrifice, you " crucify the old man with his affections and lusts," and 
 " rise again into newness of life." The fact is better than the symbol — the 
 inward communion more true than the outward participation. Just in 
 proportion as His flesh and His blood are better and more vivifying than 
 the bread and wine which feeds the body, in the same proportion is the 
 manifestation of His death in life a nobler thing than the manifestation ol 
 His death at any table. 
 
 6 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE. 
 
 // / have the gift of prophecy, and know all tnysteries and all know* 
 ledgey . . . but have not love, I am nothing. — i CoR. xiii. 2. 
 
 January 7. ^ MAN may know al! about Christ and His love without one 
 spark of love in his heart. There are thousands of people 
 who, as far as their heads are concerned, know quite as much of Jesus 
 Christ and His love as any of us do, and could talk about it and argue 
 about it, and draw inferences from it, and have got the whole sj'stem of 
 evangelical Christianity at their fingers' ends. Ay ! It is at their fingers' 
 ends ; it never gets any nearer them than that. 
 
 There is a knowledge with which love has nothing to do, and it is a 
 knowledge that with many people is all-sufficient. "Knowledge puffeth 
 up," says the Apostle, into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency 
 that will one day be pricked and disappear — nothing ; but "charity, love, 
 buildeth up " a steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds 
 of knowledge : the mere rattle of notions in a man's dry brain, like the 
 seeds of a withered poppy-head — very many, very dry, very hard — that will 
 make a noise when you shake it ; and there is another kind of knowledge, 
 which goes deep down into the heart, and is the only knowledge worth 
 calling by the name, and that knowledge is the child of love. Love, 
 says Paul, is the paient of all knowledge. We know, really know, any 
 emotions of any sort whatever only by experience. You may talk for ever 
 about feelings, and you teach nothing about them to those who have not 
 experienced them. The poets of the world have been singing about love 
 ever since the world began. But no heart has learned what love is from 
 even the sweetest and deepest songs. Who that is not a father can be 
 taught paternal love by words, or can come to a perception of it by an effort 
 of mind ? And so wiih all other emotions. Only the lips that have drunk 
 the cup of sweetness or of bitterness can tell how sweet or how bitter it is ; 
 and even when they, made wise by experience, speak out their deepest 
 hearts, the listeners are but little the wiser unless they too have been 
 initiated in the same school. Experience is our only teacher in matters of 
 feeling and emotion, as in the lower regions of taste and appetite. A man 
 must be hungry to know what hunger is ; he must taste honey or worm- 
 wood in order to know the taste of honey or wormwood ; and in like manner 
 he cannot know sorrow but by feeling its ache, and must love if he would 
 know love. Experience is our only teacher, and her school-fees are heavy. 
 Just as a blind man can never be made to understand the glories of sunrise 
 or the light upon the far-off mountains ; just as a deaf man may read books 
 about acoustics, but they will not give him a notion of what it is to hear 
 Beethoven ; — so we must have love to Christ before we know what love to 
 Christ is, and we must consciously experience the love of Christ ere we 
 know what the love of Christ is ; and we must have love to Christ in order 
 to have a deep and living possession of the love <?/" Christ, though reciprocally 
 it is also true that we must have the love of Christ known and felt by oui 
 answering hearts, if we are ever to love Him back again. 
 
 ♦' He must be loved, ere that to you 
 He will seem worthy of your love." 
 
THE SANCTITY OF LOVE. 
 
 That ye , , . may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what ts the 
 breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, 
 which passeth knowledge. — Eph. iii. i8, 19. 
 
 _ - Before vt^e cr^n love an unseen person and believe in his 
 
 January 8. , . ^ . 
 
 love, we must know about him by the ordinary means by 
 
 which we learn about ail persons outside the circle of our sight. So, before 
 the love which is thus the parent of deep, true knowledge, there must be 
 the knowledge by study and credence of the record concerning Christ, 
 which supplies the facts on which alone love can be cherished. The under- 
 standing has its part to play in leading the heart to love, and then the 
 heart becomes the true teacher. He that loveth, knoweth God, for God 
 is love. He that, because Christ dwells in his heart, is rooted and 
 grounded in love, will be strengthened to know the love in which he is 
 rooted. The Christ within us will know the love of Christ. We must 
 first "taste," and then we shall "see" that the Lord is good, as the 
 Psalmist puts it with deep truth. First the appropriation and feeding 
 upon God, then the clear perception by the mind of the sweetness in the 
 taste. First the enjoyment, then the reflection of the enjoyment. First 
 the love, and then the self-consciousness of the love of Christ possesses and 
 the love to Christ is experienced, which is knowledge. There is another 
 condition laid down in these words, ' ' That ye may be able to comprehend 
 with all saints.^' That is to say, our knowledge of the love of Jesus 
 Christ depends largely on our sanctity. If we are pure, we shall know. 
 If we were wholly devoted to Him, we should wholly know His love to us ; 
 and in the measure in which we are pure and holy, we shall know it. 
 That heart of ours is like some reflecting telescope ; the least breath of 
 earth upon the mirror will cause all the starry sublimities that it should 
 shadow forth to fade and become dim. The slightest moisture in the 
 atmosphere, though it be quite imperceptible where we stand, will yet be 
 dense enough to shut our the fair, shining, snowy summits that girdle the 
 horizon there, and to leave nothing visible but the lowliness and common- 
 placeness of the prosaic plain. 
 
 If you want to know the love of Christ, that love must purify your 
 souls. But then you must keep your souls pure, assured of this, that only 
 the single eye is full of light, and that they who are not "saints" grope 
 in the dark even at mid-day, and whilst drenched by the sunsliine of His 
 love, are unconscious of it altogether. And so we get that miserable and 
 mysterious tragedy that men and women walk through life, as many ol 
 you are doing, in the very blaze and focus of Christ's love, and never behold 
 it, nor know anything aliout it. 
 
 s 
 
THE INDWELLING CHRIST. 
 That Christ may dwellin your hearts by faith. — Eph. iii. 17. 
 
 There must be an indwelling Christ in order to have an 
 
 anuary . experience, deep and stable, of His love. Then we shall 
 know the love which we thus experience. But how comes that indwelling ? 
 That is the question for us. The knowledge of His love is blessedness, 
 is peace, is love, is everything. That knowledge arises from our fellowship 
 with, and our possession of, the love of God which is in Jesus Christ. 
 How does that fellowship with, and possession of, the love of God in Jesus 
 Christ come ? That is the all-important question. What is the beginning 
 of everything ? "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." There 
 is the gate through which you and I may come, and by which we must 
 come if we are to come at all into the possession and perception of Christ's 
 great love. Here is the path of knowledge. First of all, there must be 
 the knowledge which is the mere work of the understanding, bringing to 
 us the facts of Christ's life and death for us. This we have to take with 
 the hand of our simple understanding. And then you must turn these truths 
 from mere notions into life. It is not enough to know the love that God 
 has to us in that lower sense of the word "knowledge." Many of you 
 know that who never got any blessing out of it all your days, and never 
 will, unless you change. Besides the "knowing,"' there must be the 
 "believing" of the love. You must translate the notion into a living fact 
 in your experience. You must pass from the simple work of understanding 
 the Gospel to the higher act of faith. You must not be contented with 
 knowing, you must trust. 
 
 And if you have done that, all the rest will follow ; and the little, narrow, 
 low doorway of humble, self-distrusting faith, through which a man creeps 
 on his knees, leaving outside all his sin and his burden, opens out into the 
 temple palace — a large place in which Christ's love is imparted to us all. 
 
 When the sunbeams fall upon a mirror, it flashes in the light, because 
 they do not enter its cold surface. It is a mirror, because it does not drink 
 them up, but flings them back. The contrary is the case with the sentient 
 mirrors of our spirits. In them the light must first sink in before it can ray 
 out. They must be filled with the glory before the glory can stream forth. 
 They are not so much like a reflecting surface as like a bar of iron which 
 needs to be heated right down to its obstinate black core before its outer 
 skin glow with the whiteness of a heat that is too hot to sparkle. The 
 sunshine must fall on us, not as it does on some lonely hill-side, lighting up 
 the grey stones with a passing gleam that changes nothing, and fades away, 
 leaving the solitude to its sadness ; but as it does on some cloud cradled 
 near its setting, which it drenches and saturates with fire till its cold heart 
 burns, and all its wreaths of vapour are brightness palpable, glorified by the 
 light which lives amidst its mists. So must we have the glory sinlc into us 
 before it can be reflected from us. 
 
WHO IS YOUR KING? 
 
 Choose you this day whom you will serve. — Josh. xxiv. 15. 
 
 _ .Q You should deliberately decide whether or not Jesus Christ 
 
 ' is to be your Saviour and your King. 
 Deliberately decide ! God has given us that awful gift of choice, and 
 thereby has laid upon us a tremendous weight of responsibility which 
 separates us from all the less endowed, and sometimes, because less en- 
 dowed, more happy creatures round us. And what do men do with it for 
 the most part ? I wonder how many of us have drifted into our "opinions," 
 as we are pleased to call them, by quite another process than that of an 
 intelligent weighing of the force of evidence. I wonder how m.any of us 
 have, what we say, with unconscious self-condemnation, fallen into ways 
 and habits of action which we never consciously resolved should be our 
 masters. I believe, for my part, that the most of the life of the bulk of 
 men is lived without any adequate exercise of their own deliberate volition 
 and determination. Sadly, too, many of us seem to think that Nansen's 
 way of getting to the North Pole is the best way of getting through the 
 world — to put ourselves into a current and let it carry us. We drift. We 
 do not decide, or, if we do, we let deliberate choice be coerced by inclina- 
 tion, and let wishes put their claws into the scale, and drag it down. Or 
 we allow our environment to settle a large part of our beliefs and of our 
 practices. It must settle a great deal of both for all of us ; and none of us 
 can get rid of the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. But we are 
 meant to be hammers, and not anvils ; to mould circumstances, not to be 
 battered and moulded by them ; to exercise a deliberate choice, and not to 
 be like dead fish in the river, who are carried by the stream — or like 
 derelicts in the Atlantic, that go floating about for years, and never reach 
 any port at all, but are caught by the currents, and are slaves of every 
 wind that l)lows. 
 
 Yoath is the time for hope. The world lies all before us, fair and 
 untried. The past is too brief to occupy us long, and its farthest point too 
 near to be clothed in the airy purple which draws the eye and stirs the 
 heart. We are conscious of increasing powers which crave for occupation. 
 It seems impossible but that success and joy shall be ours. So we live for 
 a little wh le in a golden haze ; we look down from our peak upon the 
 virgin forests of a new world that roll away to the shining waters in the 
 west ; and then we plunge into their mazes to hew out a path for ourselves, 
 to slay the wild beasts, and to find and conquer rich lands. But soon we 
 discover what hard work the march is, and what monsters lurk in the leafy 
 coverts, and diseases hover among the marshes, and how short a distance 
 ahead we can see, and how far off it is to the treasure-cities we dreamed of; 
 and if at last we gain some cleared spot whence we can look forward, our 
 weary eyes are searching at most for a place of rest, and all our hopes have 
 dwindled to hopes of safety and repose. If you have God for your " en- 
 during substance," you can face all varieties of condition, and be calm, 
 saying, 
 
 "Give wh.nt Thou canst, without Thee I am poor, 
 And with Thee rich ; take whut Thou wilt away." 
 
 The amulet that charms away disquiet lies here. 
 
 10 
 
HIDDEN FROM THE WISE AND PRUDENT. 
 
 / thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hidi 
 these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto 
 babes. — Matt. xi. 25, 26. 
 
 There is no royal road into the sweetness and the depth of 
 January 11. (^j^j-jsfs love for the wise or the prudent. The understanding 
 is no more the organ for apprehending the love of Christ than is the ear 
 the organ for perceiving light, or the heart the organ for learning mathe- 
 matics. Blessed be God ! the highest gifts are not bestowed upon the 
 clever people, on the men of genius and the gifted ones, on the cultivated 
 and the refined, — but they are open for all men ; and when we say that love 
 is the parent of knowledge, and that the condition of knowing the depths of 
 Christ's heart is simple love, which is the child of faith, we are only saying 
 in other words what the Master embodied in His thanksgiving prayer, 
 •' I thank Thee, Father ! Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast 
 hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto 
 babes." 
 
 And that is so, not because Christianity, being a foolish system, can 
 only address itself to fools ; not because Christianity, contradicting wisdom, 
 cannot expect to be received by the wise and the cultured, — but because a 
 man's brains have as little to do with his acceptance of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ as a man's eyes have to do with his capacity of hearing a voice. 
 Therefore, seeing that the wise and prudent, and the cultured, and the 
 clever, and the men of genius are always the minority of the race, let us 
 vulgar folk, that are neither wise, nor clever, nor cultured, nor geniuses, 
 be thankful that that has nothing to do with our power of knowing and 
 possessing the best wisdom and the highest treasures ; but that upon this 
 path the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err, and all narrow fore- 
 heads and limited understandings, and poor, simple, uneducated people, 
 as well as philosophers and geniuses, have to learn of their hearts and 
 not of their heads, and, by a sense of need and a humble trust and a daily 
 experience, have to appropriate and suck out the blessings that lie in the 
 love of Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name ! The end of all aristocracies 
 of culture and superciliousness of intellect lies in that great truth, that we 
 possess the deepest knowledge and the highest wisdom when we love and 
 by our love. 
 
 There is no true wisdom .vhich does not rest calmly upon a basis of 
 truthfulness of heart, and is not guarded and nurtured by righteousness and 
 purity of life. Man is one — one and indissoluble. The intellect and the 
 conscience are but two names for diverse parts of the one human being, 
 or rather they are but two names for diverse workings of one immortal soul. 
 And though it be possible that a man may be enriched with all earthly 
 knowledge, whilst his heart is the dwelling-place of all corruption ; and 
 that, on the other hand, a man may be pure and upright in heart, whilst 
 his head is very poorly furnished and his understanding very weak — 3^et 
 these exceptional cases do not touch the great central truth, *' The fear of 
 the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy is 
 understanding." 
 
 XI 
 
THE MANIFESTED LOVE OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 It is Jiigh as heaven; what canst ihou do? Deeper than Shcol ; what 
 canst thou know ? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and 
 broader than the sea. — Job xi. 8 9. 
 
 - ,„ We have no measure by which we can translate into the terms 
 
 ' of our experience, and so bring within the grasp of our minds, 
 what was the depth of the step which Christ took at the impulse of His 
 love, from the Throne to the Cross. We know not what He forewent ; 
 we know not, nor ever shall know, what depths of darkness and soul- 
 agony He passed through at the bidding of His all-enduring love to us. 
 Nor do we know the consequences of that great work of emptying Himself 
 of His glory. We have no means by which we can estimate the darkness 
 and the depth of the misery from which we have been delivered, nor the 
 height and the radiance of the glory to which we are to be lifted. And 
 until we can tell and measure by our compasses both of these two extremes 
 of possible human fate, till we have gone down into the deepest abyss of a 
 bottomless pit of growing alienation and misery, and up above the highest 
 reach of all unending progress into light and glory and God-likeness, we 
 have not stretched our compasses wide enough to touch the two poles of 
 this great sphere — the infinite love of Jesus Christ. So we bow before it: 
 we know if we possess it with a knowledge more sure and certain, more 
 deep and valid, than our knowledge of all but ourselves ; but yet it is 
 beyond our grasp, and towers above us inaccessible in the altitude of its 
 glory, and keeps beneath us in the profundity of its condescension. 
 
 And, in like manner, this known love passes knowledge, inasmuch as 
 with all our experience of it, our experience is but a little of it. We are 
 like the settlers on some great island continent — as, for instance, on the 
 Australian continent, for many years after its first discovery — a thin fringe 
 of population round the seaboard, here and there, and all the great reach 
 within, the bosom of the land, untraversed and unknown. So, after all 
 experience of the love of Jesus Christ, we have but skimmed the surface, 
 but touched the edges, but received, filtered as it were, a drop of what, if it 
 should come upon us in fulness of flood, like a Niagara of love, would 
 overwhelm our spirits. So we have within our reach not only the sorrow 
 of limited affections which bring gladness into life when they come, and 
 darkness over it when they depart ; we have not only human love which, 
 if I may so say, is always lifting its finger to its lips in the act of bidding 
 us adieu ; — but love which will abide with us for ever. Men die ; Christ 
 lives. We can exhaust men ; we cannot exhaust Christ. We can follow 
 ether objects of pursuit, all of which have limitation to their power of 
 satisfying, and fall upon the jaded sense sooner or later, or sooner or 
 later are wrenched away from the aching heart. But here is a love into 
 which we can penetrate very deep and fear no exhaustion ; a sea, if I may 
 so say, into which we can cast ourselves, nor dread that like some rash 
 diver flinging himself into shallow water where he thought there was 
 depth, we may be bruised and wounded, but we may find in Christ the 
 endless love that an immortal heart requires. 
 
 13 
 
SECRET DISCIPLESHIP. 
 
 And after this Joseph of Ariniathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, 
 for fear of the Jeivs, asked of Pilate that he might take away the body oj 
 Jesus ; . . . and there came also Nicodemus, he who at the ^rst came to 
 Jesus by night. — John xix. 38, 39, 
 
 _ j„ While Christ lived, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemns had 
 
 ^ ' been unfaithful to their convictions ; but His death, which 
 terrified and paralysed and scattered His avowed disciples, seems to have 
 shamed and stung them into courage. They came now, when they must 
 have known that it was too late to lavish honour and tears on the corpse 
 of the Master whom they had been too cowardly to acknowledge whilst 
 acknowledgment might yet have availed. How keen an arrow of self- 
 condemnation must have pierced their hearts as they moved in their offices 
 of love, which they thought He could never know, round His dead corpse ! 
 
 They were both members of the Sanhedrim : the same motives, no doubt, 
 had withheld each of them from confessing Christ ; the same impulses 
 united them in this too late confession of discipleship. Nicodemus had had 
 the conviction, at the beginning of Christ's ministry, that he was at least a 
 miraculously attested and God-sent teacher. But the fear which made him 
 steal to Jesus by night — the unenviable distinction which the Evangelist 
 pitilessly reiterates at each mention of him — arrested his growth, and kept 
 him dumb when silence was treason. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea is described by two of the Evangelists as " a 
 disciple " ; by the other two as a devout Israelite, like Simeon and Anna, 
 " waiting for the Kingdom of God." Luke informs us that he had not 
 concurred in the condemnation of Jesus, but leads us to believe that his 
 dissent had been merely silent. Perhaps he was more fully convinced than 
 Nicodemus, and at the same time even more timid in avowing his convic- 
 tions. These two contrite cowards, as the}' tr}' to atone for their unfaith- 
 fulness to their living Master by their ministrations to Him dead, are true 
 examples of secret disciples. They were restrained from the avowal of the 
 Messiahship of Jesus by fear. There is nothing in the organisation of 
 society at this day to make any man afraid of avowing the ordinary kind 
 of Christianity which satisfies the most of us ; rather it js the proper thing 
 with most of us middle-class people to say that in some sense or other we 
 are Christians. But when it comes to a real avowal, a real carrying out of 
 a true discipleship, there are as many and as formidable, though very 
 different, impediments in the way to-day from those which blocked 
 the path of these two cowards. In all regions of life it is hard to work 
 out into practice any moral conviction whatever. How many of us are 
 there who have beliefs about social and moral questions which we are 
 ashamed to avow in certain companies for fear of the finger of ridicule 
 being pointed at us? It is not only in the Church, and in reference 
 to purely religious belief, that we have the curse of secret discipleship, but 
 it is everywhere. Wherever there are moral questions which are yet the 
 subject of controversy, and have not been enthroned with the hallelujahs of 
 all men, you get people that carry their convictions shut up in their own 
 breasts, and lock their lips in silence, when there is most need of frank 
 avowal. The political, social, and moral conflicts of this day have their 
 " secret disciples," who will come only out of their holes when the battle is 
 over, and will then shout with the loudest. 
 
 13 
 
THE CAUSES OF SECRET DISCIPLESHIP. 
 
 Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see him? saith 
 the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord. — Jer. xxiii. 24. 
 
 In a society like ours, in which the influence of Christian 
 January . ^^^^y^^y affects a great many people who have no personal 
 connection with Christ, it is not always enough that the life should preach, 
 because over a very large field of ordinary daily life the underground 
 influence, so to speak, of Christian ethics has infiltrated and penetrated, so 
 that many a tree bears a greener leaf because of the water that has found 
 its way to it from the river, though it be planted far from its banks. Even 
 those who are not Christians live outward lives largely regulated by 
 Christian principle. The whole level of morality has been heaved up, as 
 the coast line has sometimes been by hidden fires slowly working, by the 
 imperceptible gradual influence of the Gospel. 
 
 So it needs sometimes that you should say, " I am a Christian," as well 
 as that you should live like one. Ask yourselves, dear friends, whether 
 you have buttoned your great coats over your uniforms, that nobody may 
 know whose soldier you are. Ask yourselves whether you have sometimes 
 held your tongues because you knew that if you spoke, people would find 
 out where you came from and what country you belonged to. Ask yourselves 
 have you ever accompanied the witness of your lives v/ith the commentary 
 of your confession ? Did you ever, anywhere but in a church, stand up 
 and say, " I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, my Lord?" 
 
 And then ask yourselves another question : Have you ever dared to 
 be singular ? We are all of us in this world often thrust into circumstances 
 in which it is needful that we should say, "So do not I because of the 
 fear of the Lord." Boys go to school. They used always to kneel down 
 at their bedsides and say their prayers when they were at home ; they 
 do not like to do it with all those critical and cruel eyes— and there are 
 no eyes more critical and more cruel than young eyes— fixed upon them ; 
 and so they give up prayer. A young man comes to ^Lanchester, goes 
 into a warehouse, pure of life, and with a tongue that has not blossomed 
 into rank fruit of obscenity and blasphemy. And he hears at the next 
 desk there, words that first of all bring a blush to his cheek, and he is 
 tempted into conduct that he knows to be a denial of his Master. And he 
 covers up his principles, and goes with the tempters into evil. I might 
 sketch a dozen other cases, but I need not. In one form or other we 
 have all to go through the same ordeal. We have sometimes to dare 
 to be in a minority of one, if we will not be untrue to our Master and 
 to ours el ve ;. 
 
 14 
 
REASONS FOR UNFAITHFULNESS. 
 
 It is required in stewards, thai a man be found faithful. — I Cor. iv. 2. 
 
 J -g The reasons for the unfaithfulness of Joseph of Arimathea 
 
 ' and Nicodemus are put by John in a very blunt fashion : 
 **for fear of the Jews." That is not what we say to ourselves ; some of us 
 say, "Oh! I have got beyond outward organisations. I find it enough 
 to be united to Christ. The Chrisiian communities are very imperfect : 
 there is not any of them that I quite see eye to eye with ; so I stand 
 apart, contemplating all, and happy in my unsectarianism." Yes ! I quite 
 admit the faults, and suppose that as long as men think at all, they will 
 not find any church which is entirely to their mind ; and I rejoice to think 
 that some day we shall all outgrow visible organisations — when we get 
 there where the seer "saw no temple therein." Admitting all that, I 
 also know that isolation is always weakness, and that if a man stand apart 
 from the wholesome friction of his brethren, he will get to be a great 
 diseased mass of oddities, of very little use either to himself or to men or 
 to God. It is not a good thing on the whole that people should fight for 
 their own hands ; and the wisest thing any of us can do is, preserving our 
 freedom of opinion, to link ourselves with some body of Chrisiian people, 
 and to find in them our shelter and our home. But these two were moved 
 by "fear." They dreaded ridicule, the loss of position, the expulsion 
 from Sanhedrim and synagogue, social ostracism, and all the armoury oi 
 ofrensive weapons which would have been used against them by their 
 colleagues. 
 
 So with us, the fear of loss of position comes into play. I have heard 
 of people saying, "Oh ! we cannot attach ourselves to such and such a 
 community ; there is no society for the children." Then, many of us are 
 very much afraid of being laughed at. Ridicule, I think, to sensitive 
 people, in a generation like ours, is pretty nearly as bad as the old rack 
 and the physical torments of martyrdom. We have all got so nervous and 
 high-strung nowadays, and depend so much upon other people's good 
 opinion, that it is a dreadful thing to be ridiculed. Timid people do not 
 come to the front and say what they believe and take up unpopular 
 causes, because they cannot bear to be pointed at and pelted with the 
 abundant epithets of disparagement which are always flung at earnest 
 people who will not worship at the appointed shrines, and have sturdy 
 convictions of their own. 
 
 Ridicule breaks no bones. It has no power, if you make up your mind 
 that it shall not have. Face it, and it will only be unpleasant for a 
 moment at first. When a child goes into the water to bathe, he is un- 
 comfortable till his head has been fairly under water, and then, after that, 
 he is all right. So it is with the ridicule which out-and-out Christian 
 faithfulness may bring on us. It only hurts at the beginning, and people 
 very soon get tired. Face your fears, and they wall pass away. It is not 
 perhaps a good advice to give unconditionally, but it is a very good one 
 in regard of all moral questions. Always do what you ai'e afraid to do. 
 In nine cases out of ten it will l^e the right thing to do. If people would 
 only discount "the fear of men v/bich bringeth a snare" by making up 
 their minds to it, there would be fewer dumb dogs and secret disciples 
 haunting and weakening the Church of Christ. 
 
 15 
 
THE MISERIES OF SECRET DISCIPLESHIP. 
 
 And the children of Israel did secretly things that were not right against 
 the Lord their God. — 2 KiNGS xvii. 9. 
 
 How much Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus lost ! — all 
 ' those three years of communion with the Master ; all His 
 teaching, all the stimulus of His example, all the joy of fellowship with 
 Him ! They might have had a treasure in their memories that would have 
 enriched them for all their days, and they had flung it all away because 
 they were afraid of the curled lip of a long-bearded Pharisee or two. 
 
 And so it always is, the secret disciple diminishes his communion with 
 his Master. It is the valleys which lay their bosoms open to the sun that 
 rejoice in the light and warmth ; the narrow clefts in the rocks that shut 
 themselves grudgingly up against the light, are all dank and dark and 
 dismal. And it is the men that conie and avow their discipleship that will 
 have the truest communion with their Lord. Any neglected duty puts a 
 film between a man and his Saviour ; any conscious neglect of duty piles 
 up a wall between you and Christ. Be sure of this, that if from cowardly 
 or from selfish regard to position and advantages, or any other motive, we 
 stand apart from Him, and have our lips locked when we ought to speak, 
 there will steal over our hearts a coldness : His face will be averted from 
 us, and our eyes will not dare to seek, with the same confidence and joy, 
 the light of Plis countenance. 
 
 What you lose by unfaithful wrapping of your convictions in a napkin, 
 and burying them in the ground, is the joyful use of the convictions, the 
 deeper hold of the truth by which you live and before which you bow, and 
 the true fellowship with the Master whom you acknowledge and confess. 
 And when these men came to Christ's corpse, and bore it away, what a 
 sharp pang went through their hearts ! They woke at last to know what 
 cowardly traitors they had been. If you are a disciple at all, and a secret 
 one, you will awake to know what you have been doing, and the pang will 
 be a sharp one. If you do not awake in this life, then the distance between 
 you and your Lord will become greater and greater ; if you do, then it will 
 be a sad reflection that there are years of treason lying behind you. 
 Nicodemus and Joseph had the veil torn away by the contemplation of 
 their dead Master. You may have the veil torn away from your eyes by 
 the sight of the throned Lord ; and when you pass into the heavens, may 
 even there have some sharp pang of condemnation when you reflect how 
 unfaithful you have been. 
 
 Blessed be His name ! The assurance is firm that if a man be a disciple, 
 he shall be saved ; but the warning is sure that if he be an unfaithful and a 
 secret disciple, there will be a lifelong unfaithfulness to a beloved Master 
 to be " purged a. way so as by tire." 
 
 16 
 
THE CURE OF SECRET DISCIPLESHIP. 
 
 Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb 
 sing ; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. 
 — Is A. XXXV. 6. 
 
 January 17 JOSEPH of Arimathea and Nicodemus learned to be ashamed 
 * of their cowardice, and their dumb lips learned to speak, and 
 their shy, hidden love forced for itself a channel by which it could flow out 
 into the light ; because of Christ's death. And in another fashion that 
 same death and Cross is for us, too, the cure of all cowardice and selfish 
 silence. The sight of Christ's Cross makes the coward brave. It was no 
 small piece of courage for Joseph to go to Pilate and avow his sympathy 
 with a condemned criminal. The love must have been very true which 
 was forced to speak by disaster and death. And to us the strongest 
 motive for stiffening our vacillating timidity into an iron fortitude, and 
 fortifying us far above the fear of what man can do to us, is to be found in 
 gazing upon His dying love who met and conquered all evils and terrors 
 for our sakes. 
 
 That Cross will kindle a love which will not rest concealed, but will be 
 **like the ointment of the right hand which bewrayeth itself." I can fancy 
 men to whom Christ is only what He was to Nicodemus at first, "a 
 teacher sent from God," occupying Nicodemus"s position of hidden belief in 
 His teaching, without feeling any need to avow themselves His followers ; 
 but if once into our souls there has come the constraining and the melting 
 influence of that great and wondrous love which died for us, then, dear 
 brethren, it is unnatural that we should be silent. If those for whom 
 Christ has died should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry 
 out. That death, wondrous, mysterious, terrible, but radiant and glorious 
 with hope, with pardon, with holiness for us and for all the world, — that 
 death smites on the chords of our hearts, if I may so speak, and brings out 
 music from them all. 
 
 The sight of the Cross not only leads to courage, and kindles a love 
 which demands expression, but it impels to joyful surrender. Joseph gave 
 a place in his own new tomb, where he hoped that one day his bones 
 should be laid by the side of the Master against whom he had sinned — for 
 he had no thought of a resurrection. Nicodemus brought a lavish, almost 
 an extravagant, amount of costly spices, as if by honour to the dead he 
 could atone for treason to the living. And both the one and the other 
 teach us that if once we gain the true vision of that great and wondrous 
 love that died on the Cross for us, then the natural language of the loving 
 heart is — 
 
 " Here, Lord ! I give mysef away ; 
 'Tis all that I can do." 
 
 If following Him openly involves sacrifices, the sacrifices will be sweet, 
 so long as our hearts look to PJis dying love. All love delights in expres- 
 sion, and most of all in expression by surrender of precious things, which 
 are most precious because they give love materials which it may lay at the 
 beloved's feet. What are position, possessions, reputation, capacities, 
 perils, losses, self, but the sweet spices which we are blessed enough to be 
 able to lay upon the alt3.r which glorifies the giver and the gift ? The con- 
 templation of Christ's sacrifice — and that alone— will so overcome our 
 natural selfishness as to make sacrifice for His dear sake most blessed. 
 
 17 C 
 
THE MARK OF THE BEAST. 
 Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. — Gal. vi, 7. 
 
 Wherever a human nature is self-centred, God-forgetting, 
 and therefore God-opposing (for whoever forgets God defies 
 Him), that nature has gone down below humanity, and has touched the 
 lower level of the brutes. 
 
 Men are so made as that they must either rise to the level of God or 
 certainly go down to the level of the brute. And wherever you get men 
 living by their own fancies, for their own pleasure, in forgetfulness and 
 neglect of the sweet and mystic bonds that should knit them to God, there 
 you get ** the image of the beast and the number of his name." 
 
 And besides that godless selfishness, we may point to simple animalism 
 as literally the mark of the beast. He who lives not by conscience and by 
 faith, but by fleshly inclination and sense, lowers himself to the level of the 
 instinctive brute-life, and beneath it, because he refuses to obey faculties 
 which they do not possess ; and what is nature in them is degradation in us. 
 
 Look at the unblushing sensuality which marks many " respectable 
 people" nowadays. Look at the foul fieshliness of much of popular art 
 and poetry. Look at the way in which pure animal passion, the lust of 
 the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the love of good things to eat, 
 and plenty to drink, is swaying and destroying men and women by the 
 thousand among us. Look at the thin veneer of culture over the ugliest 
 lust. Scratch the gentleman, and you find the satyr. Is it much of an 
 exaggeration, in view of the facts of English life to-day, to say that all the 
 world wanders after and worships this beast ? 
 
 Sin is like a great forest-tree that we may sometimes see standing up in 
 its leafy beauty, and spreading a broad shadow over half a field ; but when we 
 get round on the other side, there is a great, dark hollow in the very heart of 
 it, and corruption is at work there. It is like the poison-tree in travellers' 
 stories, tempting weary men to rest beneath its thick foliage, and insinuating 
 death into the limbs that relax in the fatal coolness of its shade. It is hke 
 the apples of Sodom, fair to look upon, but turning to acrid ashes on 
 the unwary lips. When we come to grasp the sweet thing that we have 
 been tempted to seize, there is a serpent that stands up amongst all the 
 flowers. 
 
 The message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away 
 from it unreceived, v.'ithout leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest 
 characteristics strengthened, and ail its best ones depressed, by the fact of 
 rejection. If there were no judgment at all, the natural result of the simple 
 rejection of the Gospel is that, bit by bit, all the lingering remains of noble- 
 ness that hover about the man, like scent about a broken vase, shall pass 
 away ; and that, step by step, through the simple process of saying, " I will 
 not have Christ to rule over me," the whole being shall degenerate, until 
 manhood becomes devilhood, and the soul is lost by its own want of faith. 
 
 18 
 
THE MERCY OF GOD. 
 *' Thy ntercy, O Lord, is in the heavens.'* — PsAi.M xxxvi. ^, 
 
 January 19. ** Mercy " or " loving-kindness " in the Old Testament is 
 ' very nearly equivalent to the New Testament "love"; or 
 perhaps still more nearly equivalent to the New Testament "grace." 
 Both the one and the other mean substantially this — active love communi- 
 cating itself to the creatures that are inferior and that might have expected 
 something else to befall them. Mercy is a modification of love, inasmuch 
 as it is love to an inferior. The hand is laid gently upon the man, because 
 if it was laid with all its weight it would crush him. It is the stooping 
 goodness of a king to a beggar. 
 
 And mercy is likewise love, in its exercise to persons that might expect 
 something else, being guilty. As a general coming to a body of mutineers 
 with pardon and favour upon his lips, instead of with condemnation and 
 death ; so God comes to us, forgiving and blessing. All His goodness is 
 forbearance, and His love is mercy, because of the weakness, the lowliness, 
 and the ill desert of us on whom the love falls. All the attributes of the 
 Divine nature, all the operations of the Divine hand, lie within the circle 
 of His mercy — like a diamond set in a golden ring. Mercy, or love, flow- 
 ing out in blessings to inferior and guilty creatures is the root and ground 
 of all God's character ; it is the foundation and impulse of all His acts. 
 Modern science reduces all modes of physical energy to one, for which it 
 has no name but — energy. We are taught by God's own revelation of 
 Plimself — and most especially by His final and perfect revelation of Him- 
 self in Jesus Christ — to trace all forms of Divine energy back to one which 
 David calls mercy, which John calls love. 
 
 It is last as well as first, the final upshot of all revelation. The last 
 voice that speaks from Scripture has for its special message " God is love." 
 The last voice that sounds from the completed history of the world will 
 have the same message, and the ultimate word of all revelation, the 
 end of the whole majestic unfolding of God's purposes, will be the pro- 
 clamation to the four corners of the universe, as from the trump of the 
 Archangel, of the name of God as Love. 
 
 The northern and the southern pole of the great sphere are one and 
 the same, a straight axle through the very heart of it, from which the 
 bounding lines swell out to the equator, and towards which they converge 
 again on the opposite side of the world. So mercy is the strong axletree, 
 the northern pole and the southern, on which the whole world of the Divine 
 perfections revolves and moves. 
 
 "Thy mercy is in the heavens," towering up above the stars, and 
 dwelling there, like some Divine asther, filling all space. The heavens are 
 the home of light, the source of every blessing, arching over every head, 
 rimming every horizon, holding all the stars, opening into abysses as we 
 gaze, with us by night and by day, undimmed by the mist and smoke of 
 earth, unchanged by the lapse of centuries, ever seen, never reached, 
 bending over us always, always far above us. 
 
 And so the mercy of God towers above us, and stoops down towards us ; 
 rims us all about, and arches over us all ; sheds down its dewy benedictions 
 by night and by day ; is filled with a million stars, and light points of beauty 
 and of splendour ; is near us ever to bless and succour, to help, and holds 
 us all in its blue round. 
 
 19 
 
GOD'S FAITHFULNESS. 
 
 Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. — PsALM xxxvi. 5. 
 
 God's faithfulness is in its narrowest sense His adherence to 
 January 20. ^^^.^ promises. It implies, in that sense, a verbal revelation, 
 and definite words from Him pledging Him to a certain line of action. 
 " He hath said, and shall He not do it ?" He will not alter the thing that 
 is gone out of His lips. It is only a God who has actually spoken to men 
 who can be a "faithful God." He will not palter with a double sense, 
 keeping His word of promise to the ear, and breaking it to the hope. 
 
 But not only His articulate promises, but also His own past actions, bind 
 Him. He is always true to these, and not only continues to do as He has 
 done, but discharges every obligation which His past imposes on Him. 
 The ostrich was said to leave its eggs to be hatched in the sand ; men bring 
 men into positions of dependence, and then lightly shake the responsibility 
 from careless shoulders. But God accepts the cares laid upon Him by His 
 own acts, and discharges them to the last farthing. He is a "faithful 
 Creator." Creation brings obligations with it ; obligations on the creature ; 
 obligations on the Creator. If God makes a being, God is bound to take care 
 of the being that He has made. If He makes a being in a given fashion. He 
 is bound to provide for the necessities that He has created. According to 
 the old proverb, "if He makes mouths, it is His business to feed them.'* 
 And He recognises the obligation. His past binds Him to certain conduct 
 in His future. We can lay hold on the former manifestation, and we can 
 plead it with Him. " Thou hast been, and therefore Thou must be." 
 "Thou has taught me to trust in Thee ; vindicate and warrant my trust by 
 Thy unchangeableness " So His word, His acts, and His own nature 
 bind God to bless and help. His faithfulness is the expression of His un- 
 changeableness. "Because He could swear by no greater, He sware by 
 Himself." 
 
 " Thy faithfulness reacheth to the clouds." Strange that the fixed faith- 
 fulness should be considered with reference to the very emblems of instability. 
 The clouds are unstable ; they whirl and melt and change. Strange to think 
 of the unalterable faithfulness as reaching to them. May it not be that the 
 very mutability of the mutable may be the means of manifesting the unalter- 
 able sameness of God's faithful purpose, of His unchangeable love, and of 
 Ilis ever consistent dealings? May not the apparent incongruity be a part 
 of the felicity of the bold words ? Is it not true that earthly things, as they 
 change their forms and melt away, leaving no track behind, phantomlike as 
 they are, do still obey the behests of that Divine faithfulness, and gather and 
 dissolve, and break in the brief showers of blessing or short, sharp crashes 
 of storm at the bidding of that steadfast purpose which works out one 
 unalteraljle design by a thousand instruments, and changeth all things, being 
 itself unchanged ? The thing that is eternal, even the faithfulness of God, 
 dwells amid it, and shows itself through the things that are temporal, the 
 flying clouds of change. 
 
 20 
 
MERCY AND FAITHFULNESS. 
 
 To show forth Thy loving-kindness in the morning, and Thy faithfulness 
 every night. — Psalm xcii. 2. 
 
 Weave the loving-kindness, or mercy, and faithfulness of 
 ^ ' God together, and see what a strong cord they are on 
 which a man may hang, and in all his weakness be sure that it will never 
 give nor break. Mercy might be transient and arbitrary, but when you 
 braid in "faithfulness" along with it, it becomes fixed as the pillars of 
 Heaven, and immutable as the throne of God. Only when we are sure 
 of God's faithfulness can we lift up thankful voices to Him, "because His 
 mercy endureth for ever." A despotic monarch may be all full of 
 tenderness at this moment to some subject, and all full of wrath and 
 sternness the next. He may have a whim of favour to-day and a whim 
 of severity to-morrow, and no man can say, "What doest thou?" But 
 God is not a despot. He has, so to speak, "decreed a constitution." 
 He has limited Himself He has marked out His path across the great 
 wide region of possibilities of the Divine action, — He has buoyed out His 
 channel on that ocean ; and has declared to us His purposes. 
 
 And so we can reckon on God, as astronomers can foretell the motions 
 of the stars. We can plead His faithfulness along with His love, and feel 
 that the one makes sure that the other shall be from everlasting to ever- 
 lasting. The next beam of the Divine brightness is righteousness. "Thy 
 righteousness is like the great mountains." Righteousness, not in its 
 narrow sense of stern retribution, which gives to the evildoer the punish- 
 ment that he deserves. There is no thought here, whatever there may 
 be in other places in Scripture, of any opposition between mercy and 
 righteousness ; but the notion of righteousness here is a broader and greater 
 one. It is just this, to put it into other words, that God has a law for 
 His being to which He conforms ; and that whatsoever things are fair and 
 lovely and good and pure down here, those things are fair and lovely and 
 good and pure up there ; that He is the archetype of all excellence, the 
 ideal of all moral completeness ; that we can know enough of Him to be 
 sure of this — that what we call right He loves, and that what we call 
 right He practises. 
 
 Unless we have that for the very foundation of our thoughts of God, we 
 have no foundation to rest on. Unless we feel and know " the Judge of 
 all the earth doeth right," and is right, and law and righteousness have their 
 home and seat in His bosom, and are the expression of His inmost being, 
 then I know not where our confidence can be built. Unless Thy righteous- 
 ness, like the great mountains, surrounds and guards the low plain of our 
 lives, they will lie open to all foes. 
 
 21 
 
THE SEA OF GLASS. 
 
 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal. — 
 Rev. iv. 6. 
 
 Janus,r7 22. "^^^^ sea of glass cannot be any part of the material creation, 
 for the symbolism has provided for that otherwise. There 
 seems to be but one explanation of it. and that is that it means the 
 aggregate of the Divine dealings. *' Thy judgments are a mighty deep." 
 " Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and of the knowledge 
 of God ! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding 
 out ! " That great ocean of the judgment of God is crystalline — clear, 
 though it be deep. Does it seem so to us ? Ah ! we stand before the 
 mystery of God's dealings, often bewildered, and not seldom reluctant to 
 submit. The perplexity rising from their obscurity is ofien almost torture, 
 and sometimes leads us into Atheism, or something like it. And yet here 
 is the assurance that that sea is crystal clear ; and if we cannot look to its 
 lowest depths, that is not because there is any mud or foulness there, but 
 partly because the light from above fails before it reaches the abysses, and 
 partly because our eyes are uneducated to search its depths. In itself it is 
 transparent, and it rises and falls without " mire or dirt," like the blue 
 Mediterranean on the marble cliffs of the Italian coast. If it be clear as 
 far as the eye can see, let us trust that beyond the reach of the eye the 
 clearness is the same. 
 
 And it is a crystal ocean as being calm. They who stand there have 
 gotten the victory and bear the image of the Master. By reason of their 
 conquest, and by reason of their sympathy with Him, they see that what 
 to us, tossing upon its surface, appears such a troubled and tempestuous 
 ocean, is calm and still. As frDm some height, looked down upon, the 
 ocean seems a watery plain, and all the agitation of the billows has 
 subsided into a gentle ripple on the surface ; so to them looking down 
 upon the sea that brought them thither, it is quiet — and their vision, not 
 ours, is the true one. 
 
 Just as we fit round a central light sparkling prisms, each of which 
 catches the glow at its own angle, and flashes it back of its own colour, 
 while the sovereign completeness of the perfect white radiance comes from 
 the blending of all their separate rays ; so they who stand round about the 
 starry throne receive each the light in his own measure and manner, and 
 give forth each a true and perfect, and altogether a complete, image of Him 
 who enlightens them all, and is above them all. Like the serene choirs of 
 angels in the old pictures, each one with the same tongue of fire on his 
 brow, with the same robe flowing in the same f(jlds to the feet, with the 
 same golden hair, yet each a separate self, with his own gladness, and a 
 different instrument for praise in his hand, and his own part in that 
 "undisturbed song of pure concert." we shall all be changed into the 
 same image, and yet each heart grow great with its own blessedness and 
 each spirit bright with its own proper lustre of individual and characteristic 
 perfection. 
 
 22 
 
TPIE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. 
 
 And the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteous- 
 ness quietness and confidence for ever. — IsA. xxxii. 17. 
 
 January 23 *'Thy righteousness is like the great mountains." Like 
 these, its roots are fast and stable ; like these, it stands firm 
 for ever ; like these, its summits touch the fleeting clouds of human 
 circumstance ; like these, it is a shelter and a refuge, inaccessible in its 
 steepest peaks, but affording many a cleft in its rocks where a man may 
 hide and be safe. But, unlike these, it knew no beginning and shall know 
 no end. Emblems of permanence as they are, though Olivet looks down 
 on Jerusalem as it did when Melchizedek was its king, and Tabor and 
 Hermon stand as they did before human lips had named them, they are 
 wearing away by winter storms and summer heats. But, as Isaiah has 
 taught us, when the earth is old, Gods might and mercy are young ; for 
 "the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness 
 shall not depart from thee." " The earth shall wax old like a garment, but 
 My righteousness shall not be abolished." It is "more stable than the 
 mountains, and firmer than the firmest things upon earth." 
 
 Here towers Vesuvius ; there at its feet lie the waters of the bay. So 
 the righteousnesss springs up like some great cliff, rising sheer from the 
 water's edge, while its feet are laved by the **sea of glass mingled with 
 fire " — the Divine judgments, unfathomable and shoreless.. The mountains 
 and the sea are the two grandest things in nature, and in their combina- 
 tion sublime ; the one the home of calm and silence, the other in perpetual 
 motion. But the mountain's roots are deeper than the depths of the sea ; 
 and though the judgments are a mighty deep, the righteousness is deeper, 
 and is the bed of that ocean. 
 
 The metaphor, of course, implies obscurity, but what sort of obscurity ? 
 The obscurity of the sea. And what sort of obscurity is that ? Not that 
 which comes from mud, or anything added ; that which comes from 
 depth. As far as a man can see down into its blue-green depths, they are 
 clear and translucent ; but where the light fails and the eye fails, there 
 comes what we call obscurity. The sea is clear, but our sight is limited. 
 
 And so there is no arbitrary obscurity in God's dealings, and we know 
 as much about them as it is possible for us to know ; but we cannot see 
 to the bottom. A man on the cliff can see much deeper down in the ocean 
 than a man on the bank. The further you climb, the further you will see 
 down into the "sea of glass mingled with fire" that lies placid before 
 God's throne. Let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge ot 
 a picture before it is finished, of a building before the scaffolding is pulled 
 down ; and it is a hazardous thing for us to say about any deed or any 
 revealed truth that it is inconsistent with the Divine character. Wait a 
 bit; wait a bit ! " Thy judgments are a great deep.'* The deep will be 
 drained off one day, and you will see the bottom of it 
 
 2Z 
 
THE TRUE OBJECT OF LOVE. 
 
 He that loveth not knoweth not God ; for God is love. — i John iv. 8. 
 
 J 24 ^^ ^^^ made with hearts that need to rest upon an absohite 
 
 ' love ; we are made with understandings that need to grasp 
 a pure, a perfect, and, as I believe, paradoxical though it may sound, a 
 personal Truth. We are made with wills that crave for an absolute 
 authoritative command, and we are made with a moral nature that needs a 
 perfect holiness. And we need all that love, truth, authority, purity to be 
 gathered into one ; for the misery of the world is that when we set out to 
 look for treasures, we have to go into many lands and to many merchants to 
 buy many goodly pearls. But we need One of great price, in which all our 
 wealth may be invested. We need that One to be an undying and per- 
 petual possession. There is One to whom our love can ever cleave, and 
 fear none of the sorrows or imperfections that make earthward-turned love 
 a rose with many a thorn, One for whom it is a pure gain to lose ourselves, 
 One who is plainly the only worthy recipient of the whole love and self- 
 surrender of the heart. And that One is God, revealed and brought near 
 to us in Jesus Christ. In that great Saviour we have a love at once divine 
 and human ; we have the great transcendent instance of love leading to 
 sacrifice. On that love and sacrifice for us Christ builds His claim on us 
 for our hearts, and our all. Life alone can communicate life ; it is only 
 light that can diffuse light ; it is only love that can kindle love ; it is only 
 sacrifice that can inspire sacrifice. And so He comes to us, and asks that 
 we should just love Him back again as He has loved us. He first gives 
 Himself utterly unto us, and then asks us to give ourselves wholly to Him. 
 He first yields up His own life, and then He says, " He that loseth his 
 life for My sake shall find it." The object, the true object, for all this 
 depth of love which lies slumbering in our hearts, is God in Christ, the 
 Christ that died for us. 
 
 God's love is Christ's love ; Christ's love is God's love. And this is the 
 lesson that we gather — that that infinite and Divine loving-kindness does 
 not turn away from thee, my brother and my friend, because thou art a 
 sinner, but remains hovering about thee, with wooing invitations and with 
 gentle touches, if it may draw thee to repentance, and open a fountain of 
 answering affection in thy seared and dry heart. The love of God is deeper 
 than all our sins. " For His great love wherewith Pie loved us, when we 
 were dead in sins. He quickened us." Sin is but the cloud behind which 
 the everlasting Sun lies in all its power and warmth, unaffected by the 
 cloud ; and the light will yet strike, the light of His love will yet pierce 
 through, with its merciful shafts bringing healing in their beams, and 
 dispersing all the pitchy darkness of man's transgression. And as the mists 
 gather themselves up and roll away, dissipated by the heat of that sun in 
 the upper sky, and reveal the fair earth below, so the love of Christ shines 
 in, melting the mist and dissipating the fog, thinning it off in its thickest 
 places, and at last piercing its way through it, clown to the heart of the 
 man that has been lying beneath the oppression of this thick darkness, and 
 who thought that the fog was the sky, and that there was no sun there 
 above. 
 
 24 
 
SHELTERING BENEATH GOD'S WING. 
 
 How excellent is Thy lovitig-kindness^ O God ! therefore the children of 
 men put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings. — Psalm xxxvi. 7. 
 
 God's loving-kindness, or mercy, as I explained the word 
 might be rendered, \s precious, for that is the true meaning of 
 the word translated " excellent." We are rich when we have that for ours ; 
 we are poor without it. The true wealth is to possess God's love, and to 
 know in thought and realise in feeling and reciprocate in affection Ilis 
 grace and goodness, the beauty and perfectness of His wondrous character. 
 That man is wealthy who has God on his side ; that man is a pauper who 
 has not God for his. 
 
 The word rendered, and accurately rendered, " put their trust," has a 
 very beautiful literal meaning. It means to flee for refuge, as the man- 
 slayer might flee into the strong city, or as Lot did out of Sodom to the little 
 city on the hill, as David did into the cave from his enemies. So says 
 the Word. With such haste, with such intensity, staying for nothing, and 
 with the effort of your whole will and nature, flee to God. That is trust. 
 Go to Him for refuge from all evil, from all harm, from your own souls, 
 from all sin, from hell and death and the devil. Put your trust under 
 *' the shadow of His wing." 
 
 That is a beautiful image, drawn, probably, from the grand words of 
 Deuteronomy, where the tenderness of God is likened to the " eagle stirring 
 up her nest, fluttering over her young," with tenderness in her fierce eye 
 and protecting strength in the sweep of her mighty pinion. So God spreads 
 the covert of His wing, strong and tender, beneath which we may all 
 gather ourselves and nestle. And how can we do that ? By the simple 
 process of fleeing unto Him, as made known to us in Christ our Saviour ; 
 to hide ourselves there. For let us not forget how even the tenderness of 
 this metaphor was increased by its shape on the tender lips of the Lord : 
 "How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings." The Old Testament took the 
 emblem of the eagle, sovereign and strong and fierce. The New Testa- 
 ment took the emblem of the domestic fowl, peaceable and gentle and 
 aff"ectionate. Let us flee to that Christ, by humble faith, with the plea on 
 our lips— 
 
 " Cover my defenceless head 
 With the shadow of Thy wings"; 
 
 and then all the Godhead, in its mercy, its faithfulness, its righteousness, 
 and its judgments, will be on our side, and we shall know how precious is 
 the lovingkindness of the Lord, and find in Him the hon 2 and hiding-place 
 of our hearts for ever. 
 
 25 
 
VICTORY THROUGH THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB. 
 
 Thanks be unto God, who give ih us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. — I Cor. xv. 57. 
 
 T 26 That victory is possible. The Apocalypse shows us that 
 
 " there are two opposing Powers — the "beast" on the one 
 side, and "the Lamb" on the other. These two divide the world between 
 them in the seer's vision. That is to say, Jesus Christ has conquered the 
 bestial tendencies of our nature ; He has conquered the selfish godlessness 
 which is apt to cast its spells and weave its chains over us all. The 
 Warrior- Lamb, singular and incongruous as the combination sounds, is the 
 victor. He conquers because He is the Lamb of sacrifice ; He conquers 
 because He is the Lamb of innocence ; He conquers because He is the 
 Lamb of meekness, the gentle and, therefore, the all-victorious. By Christ 
 we conquer. Through faith, which lays hold on His power and victory, 
 we too may conquer. "This is the victory which overcometh the world, 
 even our faith." 
 
 Young men and women ! do not let yourselves be led away captives 
 to the shambles by the fascinations and seductions of this poor, fleeting 
 present. Keep your heel on the neck of the animal that is within you ; 
 take care of that selfish godlessness into which we all are tempted to fall. 
 Listen to the trumpet-call that ought to stir your hearts, that summons you 
 to freedom and to victory through the blood of the Lamb. And do you, by 
 humbly clasping Him as your sacrifice, your leader, and your power, enrol 
 yourselves amongst those who, in His own good time, shall come victorious 
 from the " beast " and from his image. 
 
 Our Captain provides us with an inexhaustible strength, to which we 
 may fully trust. We shall not exhaust it by any demands that we can 
 make upon it. We shall only brighten it up, like the nails in a well-used 
 shoe, the heads of which are polished by stumbling and scrambling over 
 rocky roads. " Thy shoes shall be iron and brass ; and as thy days so 
 shall thy strength be." 
 
 Did you ever see that electric light which is made by directing a strong 
 stream upon two small pieces of carbon ? As the electricity strikes upon 
 these and turns their blackness into a fiery blaze, it eats away their sub- 
 stance as it changes them into light. But there is an arrangement in the 
 lamp by which a fresh surface is continually being brought into the path of 
 the beam, and so the light continues without wavering, and blazes on. 
 The carbon is our human nature, black and dull in itself; the electric beam 
 is the swift energy of God, which makes us light in the Lord. God does 
 not turn people out to scramble over rough mountains with thin-soled boots 
 on. When an Alpine climber is preparing to go away into Switzerland for 
 rock work, the first thing he does is to get a pair of strong shoes, with 
 plenty of iron nails in the soles of them. Each of us may be sure that 
 if God sends us on stony paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and 
 will not send us out on any journey for which He does not equip us welL 
 
 26 
 
MISDIRECTED ZEAL. 
 
 I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to 
 knowledge. — ROM. x. 2. 
 
 There is nothing more tragic in this world than misdirection 
 January . ^^ nian's capacity for love and sacrifice. It is like the old 
 story in the book of Daniel, of how the heathen monarch made a great 
 feast, and when the wine began to inflame the guests, sent for the sacred 
 vessels taken from the Temple of Jerusalem, that had been used for Jehovah's 
 worship, and, as the narrative says, with a kind of shudder at the profana- 
 tion. " They brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple 
 of the House of God, which was at Jerusalem, and the king and his princes, 
 his wives and his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine and praised 
 the gods." 
 
 So this heart of mine, which has the Master's initials and His arms 
 engraven upon it, in token that it is His cup — this heart of mine I too often 
 fill with the poisonous and intoxicating draught of earthly pleasure and 
 earthly affections ; and, as I drink it, the madness goes through my veins, 
 and I praise the gods of my own making instead of Him whom alone I 
 ought to love. We should be our own rebukes in this matter, and the 
 heroisms of the world should put to shame the cowardice and the selfishness 
 of the Church. Contrast the depth of your affection for your household 
 with the tepidity of your love for your Saviour. Contrast the willing- 
 ness with which you sacrifice yourself for some dear one with the grudgingness 
 with which you yield yourselves to Him. Contrast the rest and the sense 
 of satisfaction in the presence of those you love, and your desolation when 
 they are absent, with the indifference whether you have Christ beside you 
 or not. And remember that the measure of your power of loving is the 
 measure of your obligation to love your Lord ; and that if you are all frost 
 to Him and all fervour to them, in a very solemn sense *'a man's foes shall 
 be they of his own household." " He that loveth father or mother more 
 than Me is not worthy of Me ! " 
 
 I would beseech you to bring that power of uncalculating love and 
 self-sacrificing affection which is in you, and fasten it where it ought to fix 
 — on Christ, who died on the Cross for you. Such a love will bring 
 blessedness to you. Such a love will ennoble and dignify your whole nature, 
 and make you a far greater and fairer man or woman than you otherwise 
 ever could be. Like some little bit of black carbon put into an electric 
 current, my poor nature will flame into beauty and radiance when that 
 spark touches it. So, love Him and be at peace ; give yourselves to Him, 
 and He will give you back yourselves, ennobled and transfigured by the 
 surrender. Lay yourselves on His altar, and that altar will sanctify both 
 the giver and the gift. 
 
 27 
 
UNCONSCIOUS POWER FOR SERVICE. 
 We know not with what we must serve the Lord. — Exod. x. 26. 
 
 The weakest and the lowest, the roughest and the hardest, 
 * the most selfishly-absorbed man and woman amongst us has 
 lying in him and her dormant capacities for flaming up into such a 
 splendour of devotion, and magnificence of heroic self-forgetfulness and 
 self-sacrifice as is represented in many words of the Bible. A mother will 
 do it for her child, and never think that she has done anything extraordinary ; 
 husbands will do such things for wives ; wives for husbands ; friends and 
 lovers for one another. All who love the sweetness and power of the 
 bond of affection know that there is nothing more gladsome than to fling 
 one's self away for the sake of those whom we love. And the capacity for 
 such love and sacrifice lies in all of us ; prosaic, commonplace people as 
 we are, with no great field on which to work out our heroisms, yet it is 
 in us all to love and give ourselves away thus if once the heart be stirred. 
 If once the capacity is roused to action, it will make a man blessed and 
 dignified as nothing else will. The joy of unselfish love is the purest joy 
 that man can taste ; the joy of perfect self-sacrifice is the highest joy that 
 humanity can possess, — and it lies open for us alL 
 
 And wherever, in some humble measure, these emotions of which I 
 have been speaking are realised, there you get weakness springing up into 
 strength, and the ignoble into loftiness. Astronomers tell us that, some- 
 times, a star that has shone inconspicuous, away down in tlieir catalogues 
 fifth or sixth magnitude, will all at once flame out, having kindled and 
 caught fire somehow, and will blaze in the heavens, outshining Jupiter 
 and Venus. And so some poor, vulgar, narrow nature, touched by this 
 Promethean fire of pure love that leads to perfect sacrifice, will "flame in 
 the forehead of the morning sky," an imdying splendour, and a light for 
 evermore. All have this capacity in them, and all are responsible for the 
 use of it. What have you done with it ? Is there any person or thing in 
 this world that has ever been able to lift you up out of your miserable 
 selves ? Is there any magnet that has proved strong enough to raise you 
 from the low levels along which your life creeps ? E[ave you ever known 
 the thrill of resolving to become the bondservant and the slave of some 
 great cause not your own? Or are you, as so many are, like spiders 
 living in the midst of your web, mainly intent upon what it can catch for 
 you ? Have you ever set a light to that inert mass of enthusiasm that lies 
 in ycu? Have you ever woke up the sleeper? Learn the lesson that 
 there is nothing that so ennobles and dignifies a common nature as en- 
 thusiasm for a great cause, self-sacrificing love for a worthy heart. 
 
 28 
 
CHRIST THE TRUE OBJECT OF OUR ENDEAVOUR. 
 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. — Phil. i. 21. 
 
 "Whose image and superscription hath it?" said Christ, 
 " looking at the Roman denarius that they brought and laid 
 in His palm. If the Emperor's head is on it, why, then, he has a right to 
 the tribute of it. And then He went on to say, " Render, therefore, unto 
 Csesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 
 So there are things that have God's head upon them, God's image and 
 superscription stamped, and these are your hearts, your whole constitution 
 and nature. As plainly as the penny had the head of Augustus on it, and 
 therefore proclaimed that he was emperor where it was current, so plainly 
 does every soul carry in the image of God the witness that He is its owner, 
 and that it should be rendered in tribute to Him. 
 
 And amongst all these marks of a Divine possession and a Divine 
 destination printed upon human nature, it seems to me that none are 
 plainer than this fact, that we can all of us thus give ourselves away in the 
 abandonment of a profound and all-commanding love. That capacity 
 unmistakably proclaims that it is destined to be directed towards God, and 
 to find its rest in Him. As distinctly as some silver cup, with its owner's 
 initials and arms engraved upon it, declares itself to be " meet for the 
 master's use," so distinctly does your soul, by reason of this faculty, 
 proclaim that it is meant to be turned to Him in whom alone all love can 
 find its perfect satisfaction ; for whom alone it is blessed and great to shed 
 life itself ; and who only has the authority over our human spirits. 
 
 I will not say that such emotions, wherever expended on creatures, are 
 ever wasted. For however unworthy may be the objects on which they 
 are lavished, the man himself is the better and the higher for having 
 cherished them. The mother for her child, though her love and self- 
 forgetfulness and self-sacrifice may, in some respects, be called but an 
 animal instinct, is elevated and ennobled by the exercise of them. The 
 patriot and the thinker, the philanthropist, ay ! even — although I take it 
 to be the lowest of the scale — the soldier, who, in some cause which he 
 thinks to be a good one, and not merely in the tigerish madness of the 
 battlefield, throws away his life, is lifted in the scale of being by the deed. 
 And so I am not going to say that when men love each other passionately 
 and deeply, and sacrifice themselves for one another, or for some cause or 
 purpose affecting only temporal matters, the precious elixir of life is 
 wasted. God forbid ! But I do say that all these objects, sweet and 
 gracious as some of them are, ennobling and elevating as some of them 
 are, if they are taken apart from God, are insufficient to fill your hearts ; 
 and thai if they are slipped in between you and God, as they often are, 
 til ;n they bring sin and sorrow. 
 
 29 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF A RIGHT CHOICE. 
 
 Butter and honey shall he eat^ that he may know to refuse the evil, ana 
 choose the good. — Isa. vii. 15. 
 
 If you choose Christ, you choose all that your nature needs 
 ^ ■ for its rest, for its peace, for its development, for its ex- 
 pansion, for its efllorescence into growing beauty through eternity. If you 
 will take Christ for your Lord, your heart may fold its wings like the dove 
 that came back from the flood, and may rest in His love, which is perfect 
 and pure and wise and unalterable. If you will take Christ for your 
 choice, and become His servant, and let Him save you and rule you, then 
 all the seeking understanding will find in Him, and in the manifold and 
 endless " treasures of wisdom and knowledge " into which His name 
 breaks — like the sunbeam when it strikes upon the mirror, and is shattered 
 into a million dancing brightnesses — all that the intellect can require. If 
 you will take Christ for your Saviour and your King, then that mastering 
 will which so often leads us astray, and those passions which so often 
 plunge us into filth and mire, will own His guidance ; and the lion shall 
 lie down with the lamb, and the bear in the menagerie of your heart will 
 eat straw like the ox, and you will be able to lay your hand on the 
 cockatrice den and not be stung, and all the wild beasts will be tamed, and 
 your feebleness as that of "a little child shall lead them." 
 
 If you will take Christ for your Saviour and your King, the disease of 
 your natures will be healed, which He can only heal. For, oh ! no man 
 looks all the facts in the face, or has made a choice worthy of calling by 
 that name, who has not looked the fact of sin in the face, and settled how 
 he is going to get rid of the three-pronged dart which it flings — guilt, and 
 punishment, and power — if he does not take Christ's way of getting rid of 
 it. There is none that can touch the central corruption of humanity, none 
 that can bring pardon, none that can enable us to shake the venomous 
 beast that has fastened on our hands into the fire, and feel no harm, except 
 Christ only. You may '* cut yourselves with knives and lancets after 
 their manner till the blood gush out," and cry to all the gods besides, and 
 to yourself, who are the Jupiter of them all, from morning to evening, to 
 get rid of the fact of sin, and there will be no voice nor answer, " nor any 
 that regarded." 
 
 If you will take Christ as your Saviour, and serve Him, you will find it 
 possible to live more noble, helpful, manly lives for God and the world 
 than by any other means. If you will take Christ for your Saviour, and 
 yourselves be enrolled as His obedient servants, then you will secure for 
 yourselves a future without a cloud, in which ills have no power to harm, 
 and all things are transmuted into good, and death has no bitterness and 
 eternity no terror. Let Baal come and do the like. Till he does, I urge 
 that no claims can for a moment be set by the side of Christ's. 
 
 30 
 
ITTAI OF GATH. 
 
 And Ittat answered the king, and said: As the Lord liveth, and as my 
 lord the king liveth, surely in zvhat place my lord the king s'.iall be, ivheiher 
 ^or death or for life, even there also will thy servant be. — 2 Sam. xv. 21. 
 
 January 31. LoOK at the picture of that Philistine soldier, as teaching 
 us what grand, passionate self-sacrifice may be evolved out 
 of the roughest na-ures. Here the)' are, "faithful among the faithless"; 
 as foreign soldiers surrounding a king often are, notably, for instance, the 
 Swiss guard in ihe French Revolution. Their strong arms might have been 
 of great use to David, but his generosity cannot think of involving them 
 in his fall, and so he says to them : "I am not going to fight ; I have no 
 plan. I am going where I can. You go back and * worship the rising 
 sun.' Absalom will take you in, and be glad of your help. And as for 
 me, I thank you for your past loyalty. Mercy and peace be with you ! " 
 
 It is a beautiful nature that, in the depth of sorrow, thinks more of 
 dragging other people into it than of its own fate. Generosity breeds 
 generosity, and this rough Philistine captain breaks out into a burst of 
 passionate devotion, garnished in soldier fashion with an unnecessary oath 
 or two, but ringing very sincere, and meaning a great deal. As for himself 
 and his men, they have chosen their side. Whoever goes, they stay. 
 Whatever befalls, they stick by David ; and if the worst come to the worst, 
 they can all die together, and their corpses lie in firm ranks round about 
 their dead king. David's heart is touched and warmed by their outspoken 
 loyalty ; he yields and accepts their service. Ittai and his noble six 
 hundred tramp on, out of our sight, with all their households behind them. 
 Analyse their words, and do you not hear, ringing in them, these three 
 things, which are the seed of all nobility and splendour in human character 
 — a passionate, personal attachment, issuing in spontaneous heroism of 
 self-abandonment, and in supreme satisfaction in the beloved presence? 
 And these may spring up in the rudest, roughest nature. A Philistine 
 soldier was not a very likely man in whom to find refined and lofty 
 emotion. He was hard by nature, hardened by his rough trade ; and 
 unconscious, at the moment here, that he was doing anything at all heroic 
 or great. Something had smitten this rock, and out of it there came the 
 pure refreshing stream. For Ittai and his men the one thing needful was 
 to be beside him in whose eye they had lived, from whose presence they 
 had caught inspiration ; their trusted leader, before whom their souls 
 bowed down. So then his vehement speech is the pure language of love. 
 
 The world knows nothing of its greatest men, but there is a day coming 
 when the spurious mushroom aristocracy of power and the like, that the 
 world has worshipped, will be forgotten — like the nobility of some 
 conquered land, that is brushed aside and relegated to private fife by the 
 new nobility of the conquerors ; and the true nobles, God's greatest — the 
 righteous, who are righteous because they have trusted in Christ — shall 
 shine forth like the sun " in the kingdom of My Father." 
 
 31 
 
"IT PASSETH KNOWLEDGE." 
 
 That they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all 
 the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden. — CoL. ii. 2, 3. 
 
 - I DO not suppose that the paradox of knowing the love of 
 e ruary . (Christ which " passeth knowledge" is to be explained by 
 taking "know" and "knowledge " in two different senses, so as that it means 
 we may experience, and know by conscious experience, that love which the 
 mere understanding is incapable of grasping. That of course is an explana- 
 tion which might be defended, but I take it that it is much truer to the 
 Apostle's meaning to suppose that he uses the words "know" and 
 " knowit;dge" both times in the same sense. And so we get two familiar 
 thoughts. The understanding can grasp, but it can never grasp all round, 
 the love of Jesus Christ. You and I believe, I hope, that Christ's love is 
 not a man's love, or at least that it is more than a man's love. We 
 believe that it is the flowing out to us of the love of God, that all the 
 fulness of the Divine heart pours itself through that narrow channel of 
 the human nature of our Lord, and therefore that the flow is endless and the 
 Fountain infinite. 
 
 I suppose I do not need to show you that it is possible for people to 
 have, and that in fact we do possess, a real, a valid, a reliable knowledge 
 of that which is infinite, although we possess, as a matter of course, no 
 adequate and complete knowledge of it. But I only remind you that we 
 have before us in Christ's love something which, though the understanding 
 is not by itself able to grasp it, yet the understanding led by the heart can 
 lay hold of, and can find in it infinite treasures. But we can only lay our 
 poor hands, as a child might lay its tiny palm upon the base of some great 
 cliff — we can lay our poor hands on His love, and hold it in a real grasp of 
 a real knowledge and certitude ; but we cannot put our hands round it, and 
 feel that we ci?;«prehend as well as a/prehend. Blessed be His name ! we 
 cannot. 
 
 His love can only become to us a subject of knowledge as it reveals 
 itself in its manifestations. Yet after even these manifestations, it remains 
 unuttered and unutterable, even by the Cross and grave, even by the glory 
 and the throne. 
 
 My friend, God hath loved us with an everlasting love. He has 
 provided an eternal redemption and pardon for us. If you would know 
 Christ at all, you must go to Ilim as a sinful man, or you are shut out from 
 Him altogether. If you xvill go to Him as a sinful being, fling yourself 
 down there, not try to make yourself better, but say, " I am all full of 
 unrighteousness and transgression : let Thy love fall upon me and heal me " ; 
 you will get the answer, and in your heart there shall begin to live and 
 grow up a root of love to Him, which shall at last effloresce into all 
 knowledge and into all purity of obedience ; for he that hath had much 
 forgiven, loveth much ; and "he that loveth, knoweth God," and " dwelleth 
 in God, and God in him." 
 
 ^2 
 
THE BRUISED REED RESTORED. 
 A bruised reed shall He not break. — Isa. xHi. 3, 
 
 Februarv 2 Here is the picture. A slender bulrush, growing by the 
 ' margin of some tarn or pond ; its sides crushed and dinted 
 in by some outward power, some gust of wind, some sudden blow, the 
 foot of some passing animal. The head is hanging by a thread, but it is 
 not yet snapped or broken off from the stem. It is "bruised," but the 
 bruise is not irreparable. And so, says this text, there are reeds bruised 
 and "shaken by the wind," but yet not broken. And the tender Christ 
 comes, with His gentle, wise, skilful surgery, to bind these up and to make 
 them strong again. 
 
 On no man has sin fastened its venomous claws so deeply but that 
 these may be wrenched away. In none of us has the virus so gone through 
 our veins but that it is capable of being expelled. The reeds are all 
 bruised, the reeds are none of them broken. And so this text comes with 
 its great triumphant hopefulness, and gathers into one mass as capable of 
 restoration the most abject, the most worthless, the most ignorant, the 
 most sensuous, the most godless, the most Christ-hating of the race. And 
 He looks on all the tremendous bulk of a world's sins with the confidence 
 that He can move that mountain and cast it into the depths of the sea. 
 
 In accordance with other metaphors of Scripture, we may think of 
 "the bruised reed*' as expressive of the condition of men whose hearts 
 have been crushed by the consciousness of their sins. "The broken and 
 the contrite heart," bruised and pulverised, as it were, by a sense of evil, 
 may be typified for us by this bruised reed. And then from the words of 
 this text there emerges the great and blessed hope that such a heart, 
 wholesomely removed from its self-complacent fancy of soundness, shall 
 certainly be healed and bound up by His tender hand. Did you ever see 
 a gardener dealing with some plant, a spray of which may have been 
 wounded? How delicately ancl tenderly the big, clumsy hand busies 
 itself about the tiny spray, and by stays and bandages brings it into an 
 erect position, and then gives it water and loving care. Just so does Jesus 
 Christ deal with the conscious and sensitive heart of a man that has begun 
 to find out how bad he is, and has been driven away from all his foolish 
 confidence. Christ comes to such a one and restores him, and, just because 
 he is crashed, deals with him gently, pouring in His consolation. Where- 
 soever there is a touch of penitence, there is present a restoring Christ. 
 
 Brother and sister ! suffering from any sorrow, and bleeding from any 
 v/ound, there is balm and a physician. There is one hand that will never 
 be laid with blundering kindness or with harshness upon our sore hearts, 
 but whose touching will be healing and whose presence will be peace. 
 
 The Christ that knows our sins and sorrows will not break the bruised 
 reed. The whole race of man may be represented in that parable that 
 came from His own lips, as fallen among thieves that have robbed him 
 and wounded him, and left him bruised, and, blessed be God ! only "half 
 dead,"— sorely wounded, indeed, but not so sorely but that he may be 
 restored. And there comes One with the wine and the oil, and pours 
 them into the wounds. 
 
 33 D 
 
CHRIST THE FOSTERER OF INCIPIENT AND IMPERFECT 
 
 GOOD. 
 
 The smoking flax (the dimly-bumiug wick) shall He not quench. — 
 IsA. xlii. 3. 
 
 J, , 8 ^^ ^^^ men, just because the process of evil and the wounds 
 
 ^ ' from it are not so deep and complete as that ix ,;<jialion is 
 impossible, therefore is there something in their nature which corresponds 
 to this dim flame that needs to be luslered in order to blaze brightly 
 abroad. There is no rnan out of hell but has in him something that wants 
 but to be brought to sovereign power in his life in order to make him a 
 light in the world. You have got consciences at the least ; you have 
 convictions, you know you have, which, if you followed them out, would 
 make Christians of you straight away. You have got aspirations after 
 good, desires after purity and nobleness of living, which only need to be 
 raised to the height and the dominance in your lives which they ought to 
 possess in order to revolutionise your whole course. There is a spark in 
 every man which, fanned and cared for, will change him from darkness 
 into light. Fanned and cared for it needs to be, and fanned and cared for 
 it can only be by a Divine power coming down upon it from without. 
 He from whom all sparks of light have died out is not a man, but a devil. 
 And for all of us the exhortation comes : " Thou hast a law within 
 testifying to God and to duty " ; listen to it and care for it. In a narrower 
 way, the words may be applied to a class. There are some of us who 
 have in us a little spark, as we believe, of a Divine life, the faint beginnings 
 of a Christian character. We call ourselves Chiisl's disciples. We are, 
 but oh ! how dimly the flax burns ! They say that where there is smoke 
 there is fire. There is a deal more smoke than fire in the most of Christian 
 people in this generation. And if it were not for such thoughts as this, 
 about that dear Christ that will not lay a hasty hand upon some httle 
 tremulous spark, and by one rash movement extinguish it for ever, there 
 would be but little hope for a great many of us. 
 
 How do you make ''smoking flax" burn? You give it oil, you give it 
 air, and you take away the charred portions. And Christ will give you, 
 in your feebleness, the oil of His Spirit, that you may burn brightly as one 
 of the candlesticks in His temple ; and He will let air in, and take away 
 the charred portions by the wise discipline of sorrow and trial sometimes 
 in order that the smoking flax may become the shining light. But by 
 whatsoever means it may be, be sure of this, that He will neither despise 
 nor neglect the feeblest inclination of good after Him, but will nourish it 
 to perfection and to beauty. 
 
 The reason why so many Christian men's Christian light is so fuliginous 
 and dim is just that they keep away from Jesus Christ. "Abide in Me 
 and I in you." "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide 
 in the vine, no niore can ye except ye abide in Me." How can the 
 Temple lamps burn bright unless the Priest of the Temple tends them ? 
 Keep near Him, that His hand may nourish your smoking dimness into a 
 pure flame, leaping heavenward and illuminating your lives. 
 
 34 
 
OUR LORD'S PERFECT MANHOOD. 
 
 He shall not fail {or burn dimly, marg.) nor be discouraged (bruised y 
 marg.), till He have set judgment in the earth. — IsA. xlii. 4. 
 
 There are no bruises in this reed. That is to say, Christ's 
 * Manhood is free from all scars and wounds of evil or of sin. 
 There is no dimness in this light. That is to say, Christ's character is 
 perfect, His goodness needs no increase. There is no trace of effort in His 
 holiness, no growth manifest in His God-likeness, from the beginning to 
 the end. There is no outward violence that can be brought to bear upon 
 Him that shall stay Him in His purpose. There is no inward failure of 
 strength that may lead us to fear that His work shall not be completed. 
 And because of all these things, because of His perfect exemption from 
 human infirmity, because in Him was no sin, He is manifested to take 
 away our sins. Because in Him there was goodness incapable of increase, 
 being perfect from the beginning, therefore is He manifested to make us 
 participants of His own unalterable and infinite goodness and purity. 
 Because no outward violence, no inward weakness, can ever stay His 
 course nor make Him abandon His purpose, therefore His Gospel looks 
 upon the world with boundless hopefulness, with calm triumph ; will not 
 hear of there being any outcast and irreclaimable classes ; declares it to be 
 a blasphemy against God and Christ to say that any man or any nations 
 are incapable of receiving the Gospel and of being redeemed by it, and 
 comes with supreme love and a calm consciousness of infinite power to 
 you, my brother, in your deepest darkness, in your moods most removed 
 from God and purity, and declares to you that it will heal you, and will 
 raise all that in you is feeble to its own strength. Every man may pray to 
 that strong Christ who fails not nor is discouraged — 
 
 "What in me is dark, illumine; 
 "What is low, raise and support "— 
 
 m the confidence that He will hear and answer. If you do that you will 
 not do it in vain, but His gentle hand laid upon you will heal the bruises 
 that sin has made. Out of your weakness, as of "a reed shaken with 
 the wind," the Restorer will make a pillar of marble in the temple of His 
 God. And out of your smoking dimness of wavering light — a spark at the 
 best, almost buried in the thick smoke that accompanies it — the fostering 
 Christ will make a brightness which shall flame as the perfect light that 
 "shineth more and more unto the noontide of the day." 
 
 35 
 
A DARK CHAMBER IN EVERY HEART. 
 
 He hath made me to dwell in dark places, as those that have been long 
 dead, — Lam. iii. 6. 
 
 Every man is a mystery to himself as to his fellows. With 
 rebruary 6. 
 
 reverence, we may say of each other as we say of God — 
 
 " Clouds and darkness are round about Him." After all the manifestations 
 
 of a life, we remain enigmas to one another, mysteries to ourselves ; for 
 
 every man is no fixed somewhat, but a growing personality, with dormant 
 
 possibilities of good and evil lying in him, which up to the very last 
 
 moment of life may flame up in altogether unexpected and astonishing 
 
 developments, so as that we have all to feel that after all self-examination 
 
 there lie awful possibilities within us which we have not fathomed ; and 
 
 after all our knowledge of one another we yet do see but the surface, and 
 
 each soul dwells alone. 
 
 There is in every heart a dark chamber. There are very, very few 
 of us that dare tell all our thoughts and show our inmost selves to the 
 dearest ones. The most silvery lake that lies sleeping amidst beauty, 
 itself the very fairest spot of all, when drained off shows ugly ooze and 
 filthy mud, and all manner of creeping abominations in the sUme. I 
 wonder what we should see if our hearts were, so to speak, drained off, 
 and the very bottom layer of everything brought into the light ? Do you 
 think you would like it ? Do you think you could stand it ? 
 
 Well, then, go to God and ask Him to keep you from the unconscious 
 sins. Go to Him and ask Him to root out of you the mischiefs that you 
 do not know are there, and live humbly and self-distrustfully, and feel that 
 your only strength is : " Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe." "Hast 
 thou seen what they do in the dark ? *' 
 
 Trust Christ ! and so thy soul shall no longer be like "the sea that 
 cannot rest," full of turbulent wishes, full of passionate desires that come 
 to nothing, full of endless moanings, like the homeless ocean that is ever 
 working and never flings up any product of its work but yeasty foam and 
 broken weeds, — but thine heart shall become translucent and still, like 
 some land-locked lake, where no winds rave nor tempests rufile ; and on 
 its calm surface there shall be mirrored the clear shining of the unclouded 
 blue, and the perpetual light of the sun that never goes down. 
 
 36 
 
IMPERISHABLE HIEROGLYPHICS. 
 
 The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a 
 diamond : it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of 
 your altars. — Jer. xvii. i. 
 
 You and I, by our memory, by that marvellous faculty that 
 * people call the imagination, by our desires, are for ever 
 painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures. 
 It is an awful faculty that we possess of, so to speak, surrounding ourselves 
 with the pictures of the things that we love, and have yielded ourselves in 
 devotion and desire unto. 
 
 I do not dwell upon that, but I want to drop one very earnest caution 
 and beseeching entreaty. Mind what you paint upon those mystic walls ! 
 Foul things, "creeping things and abominable beasts," only too many of 
 you are tracing there. Mind ! They are ineffaceable. No repentance 
 will obliterate them. I do not know whether even Heaven can blot them 
 out. What you love, what you desire, what you think about, you are 
 photographing, printing on the walls of your immortal nature. And just 
 as to-day, thousands of years after the artists have been gathered to the 
 dust, we may go into Egyptian temples and see the figures on their walls, 
 in all the freshness of their first colouring, as if the painter had but laid 
 down his pencil a moment ago ; so, on your hearts, youthful evils, the 
 sins of your boyhood, the pruriences of your earliest days, may Hve ugly 
 shapes, that no tears and no repentance will ever wipe out. Nothing can 
 do away with "the marks of that which once hath been." What are you 
 painting on the chambers of imagery in your hearts ?— obscenity, foul 
 things, mean things, low things ? Is that mystic shrine within you painted 
 with such figures as in some chambers in Pompeii, where the excavators 
 had to cover up the pictures because they were so foul ? Or, is it hke the 
 cells in the Convent of San Marco at Florence, where Fra Angelico's holy 
 and sweet genius painted on the bare walls, to be looked at, as he fancied, 
 only by one devout brother, in each cell, angel imaginings, and noble, 
 pure celestial faces that calm and hallow those who gaze upon them? 
 What are you doing, my brother, in the dark, in the chambers of your 
 imagery? 
 
 Everything which you do leaves its effect with you for ever, just as 
 long-forgotten meals are in your blood and bones to-day. Every act that 
 a man performs has printed itself upon his soul ; it has become a part of 
 himself; and, though, like a newly-painted picture, after a little while the 
 colours go in, why is that ? Only because they have entered into the very 
 fibre of the canvas, and have left the surface because they are incorporated 
 with the substance, and they want but a touch of varnish to flash out 
 again. 
 
 37 
 
FALSE WORSHIP. 
 
 They worship the work of their own hands, that which their fingers havt 
 made. — Isa. ii. 8. 
 
 Febraarv 7 "^ MAN's true worship is not the worship that he performs 
 in the public temple, but that which he offers down in that 
 little private chapel where nobody goes but himself. Worship is the 
 attribution of supreme excellence to, and the entire dependence of the 
 heart upon, a certain person. And the people or the things to which a 
 man attributes excellence, and on which he hangs his happiness and his 
 well-being, these be his gods, no matter what his outward profession is. 
 You can find out what these are for yourself, if you will honestly ask 
 yourself one or two questions. What is it that I want most ? What is it 
 which makes my ideal of happiness ? What is it which I feel that I should 
 be desperate without ? What do I think about most naturally and 
 spontaneously, when the spring is taken off, and my thoughts are allowed 
 to go as they will? And if the answer to none of these questions is 
 "God !" then I do not know why you should call yourself a worshipper 
 of God. It does not matter, though we pray in the temple, if we have 
 the dark subterranean pit, where our true adoration is rendered. I am 
 afraid there are a great many of us nominal Christians, connected with 
 Christian churches, posing before men as orthodox religionists, who keep 
 this private chapel where we do our devotions to an idol and not to God. 
 If our real gods could be made visible, what a pantheon they would make ! 
 All the foul forms painted on that underground cell would be paralleled in 
 the creeping things — which crawl along the low earth, and never soar nor 
 even stand erect, and in the vile, bestial forms of passion to which some 
 of us really bow down. Honour, wealth, literary or other distinction, the 
 sweet sanctities of human love dishonoured and profaned by being exalted 
 to the place which Divine love should hold, ease, family, animal appetites, 
 lust, drink— these are the gods of some of us. 
 
 "Ephraim is joined to his idols, let htm alone." What a contrast 
 between that condition of mind and the gentle, gracious power which, like 
 the dew, is distilled into the soul by the influences of the Spirit of God. 
 The one is like the frowning cliffs which front the wild Polar ocean, white 
 with ice and black with barren rock ; the other like the limestone walls 
 that keep back the Mediterranean, green and flowery to the water's 
 edge — a barrier as complete, but all draped with beauty, and fruitful and 
 sunny. 
 
 38 
 
WORSHIP GOD. 
 
 Give unto the Lord the ~gloiy due unto His Name : bring an offering, 
 and come before Him : worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. — 
 I Chron. xvi. 29. 
 
 february 8. "^^^ yourselves, not whom do you worship before the eyes 
 of men, but who is the God that in your inmost heart you 
 bow down before ? What do you do in the dark ? That is the question. 
 Whom do you worship there ? The other thing is not worship at all. 
 
 And do not forget that all such diversion of supreme love and depend- 
 ence from God alone is like the sin of the men in Ezekiel's vision 
 (Ezek. viii.), that it is sacrilege. They had taken a chamber in the very 
 Temple, and turned that into a temple of the false gods. Who is your heart 
 made to shrine ? Why ! every stone, if I may so say, of the fabric of 
 our being bears marked upon it that it was laid in order to make a 
 dwelUng-place for God. Who are you meant to worship, by the witness 
 of the very constitution of your nature and make of your spirits ? Is there 
 anybody but One that is worthy to get the priceless gift of human love 
 absolute and entire ? Is there any but One to whom it is aught but 
 degradation and blasphemy for a man to bow down ? Is there any being 
 but One that can still the tumult of my spirit, and that can satisfy the 
 immortal yearnings of my soul ? We were made for God ; and whensoever 
 we turn the hopes, the desires, the affections, the obedience, and that 
 which is the root of them all, the confidence that ought to fix and fasten 
 upon Him, to other creatures, we are guilty, not only of idolatry, but of 
 sacrilege. We commit the sin of which that wild reveller in Babylon was 
 guilty, when, at his great feast, in the very madness of his presumption, he 
 bade them to bring forth the sacred vessels from the Temple at Jerusalem : 
 "And the king and his princes and his concubine^ drank in them, and 
 praised the gods." So we take the sacred chalice of the human heart, on 
 which there is marked the sign-manual of heaven, claiming it for God's, 
 and fill it with the spiced and drugged draught of our own sensualities and 
 evils, and pour out a libation to vain and false gods. Render unto Him 
 that which is His ; and see, even upon the walls, scrabbled all over with 
 the deformities that we have painted there, lingering traces, hke those cf 
 some dropping fresco in a roofless Italian church, which suggest the serene 
 and perfect beauty of the image of the One whose hkeness was originally 
 traced there, and for whose worship it was all built. 
 
 The imitation of the object of worship has always been felt to be the 
 highest form of worship. Many an ancient teacher, beside the Stoic 
 philosopher, has said, " He who copies the gods worships them 
 adequately. " 
 
 39 
 
THOU GOD SEEST ME. 
 
 And she caVed the Name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou art a 
 God that seeth : for she said, Have I even here looked after tinn that seeth 
 iue?^^ — Gen. xvi. 13. 
 
 _, 9 ^^ Ezekiel's vision of the "Chambers of Imagery" 
 
 ^ ' (Ezek. viii.) we see the sudden crashing in upon the 
 cowering worshippers of the revealing light. Apparently the picture 
 suggests that these elders knew not the eyes that were looking upon them. 
 They were hugging themselves in the conceit, "the Lord seeth not ; the 
 Lord hath forsaken the earth." And all the while, all unknown, God and 
 His prophet stand in the doorway and see it all. Not a finger lifted, not 
 a sign to the foolish worshippers, of His presence and inspection, but in 
 stern silence He records and remembers. 
 
 And does that need much bending to make it an impressive form of 
 putting a solemn truth ? There are plenty of us — alas ! alas ! that it 
 should be so — to whom it is the least welcome of all thoughts that there 
 in the doorway stand God and His Word. Why should it be, my brother, 
 that the properly blessed thought of a Divine eye resting upon you should 
 be to you like the thought of a policeman's bull's-eye to a thief? Why 
 should it not be rather the sweetest and the most calming and strength- 
 giving and companioning of all convictions? "Thou God seest me." 
 The little child runs about the lawn perfectly happy as long as she knows 
 that her mother is watching her from the window. And it ought to be 
 sweet and blessed to each of us to know that there is no darkness where a 
 Father's eye comes not. Do not think of His eye as the prisoner in a 
 solitary cell thinks of the pin-hole somewhere in the wall there, through 
 which a jailor's jealous inspection may at any moment be glaring in upon 
 him; but think of Him your Brother, who "knew what was in man," 
 and who knows each man, and see in Christ the all-knowing Godhood 
 that loves yet better than it knows, and beholds the hidden evils of mens 
 hearts, in order that it may cleanse and forgive all which it beholds. 
 
 One day a light will fiash in upon all the dark cells. We must all be 
 manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ. Do you like that thought ? 
 Can you stand it ? Are you ready for it ? My friend ! let Jesus Christ 
 come to you with His light. Let Him come into the dark corners ot your 
 hearts. Cast all your sinfulness, known and unknown, upon Him that 
 died on the Cross for every soul of man, and He will come ; and His 
 liglit, streaming inlo your hearts, like the sunbeam upon foul garments, 
 v.ill cleanse and bleach them wliile by its shining upon them. Let Him 
 come into your hearts by your lowly penitence, by your humble faith, 
 and all these vile shapes that you have painted on its walls will, like 
 phosphorescent pictures in the daytime, pale and disappear when the Sun 
 of Righteousness, with healing on His beams, floods your soul, making na 
 part dark, and turning all into a Temple of the living God. 
 
 40 
 
THE LOVE THAT IS GIVEN. 
 
 Behold what manner of love the Father hath ber towed iipon its, that we 
 should be called the children of God : and such we are. — I John iii. I. 
 
 We are called upon to come with our little vessels to 
 
 ■ measure the contents of the great ocean, to plumb with 
 
 our short lines the infinite abyss, and not only to estimate the quantity, 
 
 but the quality, of that love, which, in both, surpasses all our means of 
 
 comparison and conception. 
 
 Properly speaking, we can do neither the one nor the other, for we 
 have no line long enough to sound the depths, and no experience which 
 will give us a standard with which to compare its quality. But all that 
 we can do, John would have us do — that is, work, and ever look at the 
 workings of that love till we form some not wholly inadequate idea of it. 
 
 We can no more " behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed 
 on us" than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of 
 the sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and 
 beneficent forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which 
 the imagination faints in trying to grasp, and reach their journey's end 
 unwearied and ready for their tasks as when it began. Here are we 
 ninety odd millions of miles from the centre of the system, yet warmed 
 by its heat, lighted by its light, and touched for good by its power in a 
 thousand ways. All that has been going on for no one knows how many 
 aons. How mighty the Power which produces these effects ! In like 
 manner, who can gaze into the fiery depths of that infinite Godhead, into 
 the ardours of that immeasurable, incomparable, inconceivable love ? But 
 we can look at and measure its activities. We can see what it does, and 
 so can in some degree understand it, and feel that after all we have a 
 measure for the Immeasurable, a comparison for the Incomparable, and 
 can thus *' Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us." 
 
 We may gain another measure of the greatness of this love if we put 
 an emphasis on one word, and think of the love given to "wj," such 
 creatures as we are. Out of the depths we cry to Him, not only by the 
 voice oi our supplications, but even when we raise no call of entreaty, our 
 misery pleads with His merciful heart, and from the heights there comes 
 upon our wretchedness and sin the rush of this great love, like a cataract, 
 which sweeps away all our sins, and floods us with its own blessedness and 
 joy. The more we know ourselves, the more wonderingly and thankfully 
 shall we bow down our hearts before Him, as we measure His mercy by 
 our unworthiness. 
 
 41 
 
THE CROSS THE PROOF OF GOD'S LOVE. 
 
 But Cod comtiiendetJi His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet 
 sifiners, Christ died for us, — Rom. v. 8. 
 
 We have to turn to the work of Christ, and especially to 
 ary . j^.^ death, if we would estimate the love of God. The most 
 wonderful revelation to every heart of man of the depths of that Divine 
 heart lies in the gift of Jesus Christ. The Apostle bids me "behold what 
 manner of love." And I turn to the Cross, and I see there a love which 
 shrinks from no sacrifice, but gives " Him up to death for us all." I turn 
 to the Cross, and I see there a love which is evoked by no loveableness on 
 my part, but comes from the depth of His own Infinite Being, who loves 
 because He must, and who must because He is God. I turn to the Cross, 
 and I see there manifested a love which sighs for recognition, which desires 
 nothing of me but the repayment of my poor affection ; and I see there 
 a love that will not be put away by all sinfulness and shortcomings and 
 evil. So, streaming through the darkness of eclipse, and speaking to me 
 even in the awful silence in which the Son of man died there for sin, I 
 "behold," and I hear the " manner of love that the Father hath bestowed 
 upon us." Undeserved and Infinite, boundless and endless, in its measure 
 measureless, in its quality transcendent — the love of God to me in Jesus 
 Christ my Saviour. 
 
 In like manner we have to think, if we would estimate the " manner 
 of this love," that through and in the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ there 
 comes to us the gift of a Divine life like His own. Perhaps it might be 
 a refinement of interpretation ; but it certainly does seem to me that that 
 expression, "To bestow His love upon" us, is not altogether the same 
 as to love us, but that there is a greater depth in it. There may be some 
 idea of that love itself being as it were infused into us, and not merely of 
 its consequences or tokens being given to us ; as Paul speaks of " the 
 love of God shed abroad in our hearts" by the spirit which is given to us. 
 At all events this communication of Divine life, which is at bottom Divine 
 love — for God's life is God's love — is His great gift to men. 
 
 Be that as it may, these two are the great tokens, consequences, and 
 measures of God's love to us — the gift of Christ, and that which is the 
 sequel and outcome thereof, the gift of the Spirit which is breathed into 
 Christian spirits. These two gifts, which are one gift, embrace all that 
 the world needs. Christ for us and Christ in us must both be taken into 
 account if you would estimate the manner of the love that God has 
 bestowed upon us. 
 
 42 
 
FATHERHOOD AND SONSHIP. 
 
 Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest 
 what we shall be. We know thai, if He shall be manifested^ we shall be 
 like Him ; for we shall see Him even as He is. — I John iii. 2. 
 
 February 12. "^^^ doctrine of the New Testament about the Fatherhood 
 of God and the sonship of man does not in the sUghtest 
 degree interfere with these three great truths, that all men, though the 
 features of the common humanity may be almost battered out of recognition 
 in them, are all children of God because He made them ; that they are 
 children of God because still there lies in them something of the hkeness 
 of the creative Father ; and, blessed be His name ! that they are all 
 children of God because He loves and provides and cares for every one of 
 them. All that is blessedly and eternally true ; but it is also true that 
 there is a higher relation than that to which the name " Children of God " 
 is more accurately given, and to which in the New Testament that name 
 is confined ; and if you ask what it is, let me quote to you three passages 
 in this Epistle which will answer the question: "Whosoever beUeveth 
 that Jesus is the Christ is born of God," that is the first ; *' Every one that 
 doeth righteousness is born of God," that is the second ; " Every one 
 that loveth is born of God," that is the third. Or, to put them all into 
 one expression, which holds them all, in the first chapter of John's Gospel 
 you find this, in the great words of his prologue : ** To as many as 
 received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God." 
 Believing in Christ with loving trust produces, and as the result of that 
 belief, doing righteousness and loving the brethren prove, the fact of 
 sonship, in its highest and its truest sense. 
 
 What is implied in that great name by which the Almighty gives us a 
 name and a place as of sons and daughters ? Clearly, first, a communicated 
 life; therefore, second, a kindred nature which shall be "pure as He is 
 pure " ; and, third, growth to full maturity. 
 
 This sonship, which is no mere empty name, is the aim and purpose 
 of God's dealings, of all the revelation of His love, and most especially 
 the great gift of His love in Christ. Has that purpose been accomplished 
 in you? Have you ever looked at that great gift of love that God has 
 given you on purpose to make you His child ? If you have, why has it 
 not made you one? Are you trusting to Jesus Christ, whom God has 
 sent forth that we might receive the standing of sons in Him? Are you 
 a child of God because a brother of that Saviour? Have you received 
 the gift of a Divine life through Him ? My friend ! remember the grim 
 alternative : a child of God or a child of the devil ! Bitter words, 
 narrow words, uncharitable words — as people call them ! And I believe, 
 and therefore I am bound to say it, true words, which it concerns you to 
 lay to heart. 
 
 43 
 
OUR SONSHIP NO EMPTY TITLE. 
 
 Let us not love in word, neither with the tongue, but in deed and truth. 
 Hereby shall we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart 
 before Him. — I John iii. i8, 19. 
 
 Tebruaxy 13. " ^^^ ^^'^^ ^^ are." This is a kind of "aside," in which 
 John adds the Amen for himself and for his poor brothers 
 and sisters, toihng and moiling, obscure among the crowds of Ephesus, to 
 the great truth. He asserts his and their glad consciousness of the reality 
 of the fact of their sonship, which they know to be no empty title. He 
 asserts, too, the present position of that sonship, realising it as a fact 
 to-day, amid all commonplace vulgarities and carking cares and petty aims 
 of life's little day. "Such we are" — the "Here am I, Father," of the 
 child, answering the Father's call, "My Son." He turns doctrine into 
 experience. He is not content with merely having the thought in his 
 creed, but his heart clasps it, and his whole nature says Amen ! to the 
 great truth. I ask you, do you do that ? Do not be content with hearing 
 the truth, or even with assenting to it, and believing it in your under- 
 standings. The truth is nothing to you, unless you have made it your 
 very own by faith. Do not be satisfied with the orthodox confession ; 
 unless it has touched your heart, and made your whole soul thrill with 
 thankful gladness and quiet triumph, it is nothing to you. 
 
 The mere belief of thirty-nine, or thirty-nine thousand, Articles of 
 Christianity is nothing ; but when a man has a true heart-faith in Him whom 
 all articles are meant to make us know and love, then dogma becomes life, 
 and the doctrine feeds the soul. Does it do so with you, my brother ? Can 
 you say, " And such are we " ? Take another lesson. The Apostle was not 
 afraid to say, "I know that I am a child of God." There are many very 
 good people whose tremulous, timorous lips have never ventured to say 
 " I know." They will say, "Well, I hope," or sometimes, as if that was 
 not uncertain enough, they will put in an abverb or two, and say, " I 
 humbly hope that I am." It is a far robuster kind of Christianity, a far 
 truer one, aye ! and a humbler one, too, that throws all considerations of 
 my own character and merits, and all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind 
 me ; and when God says " My son ! " says " My Father " ; and when God 
 calls us His sons and daughters, leaps up and gladly answers, "And we 
 are ! " Do not be afraid of being too confident, if your confidence is built 
 on God, and not on yourself; but be afraid of being too diffident, and be 
 afraid of having a great deal of self-righteousness masquerading under the 
 guise of such a profound consciousness of your own unworthiness that you 
 dare not call yourself a child of God. It is not a question of worthiness 
 or unworthiness ; it is a question, in the first place and mainly, of the 
 truth of Christ's promise and the sufficiency of Christ's Cross ; and in a 
 very subordinate degree of anything belonging to you. 
 
 44 
 
THE NATURAL A TYPE OF THE SPIRITUAL. 
 He that is spiritual judgeth all things. — I CoR. ii. 15. 
 
 The natural impulse of us all is to find shadows and 
 February 14i 
 
 symbols of spiritual life in natural existence. He who spake 
 
 as never man spake, spake in parables, and, knowing all things, took 
 bread and said, "This is My body." Surely, besides all the other purposes 
 of that institution, there is this also to teach us to see everywhere emblems 
 of Him. Every day we walk amidst the " outward and visible signs of an 
 inward and spiritual grace," and in that meaning of the word sacrament, 
 the true and Christian view of this wonderful world is that it is all one 
 great sacrament. All the elements stand as types of spiritual things. 
 The sunshine is to speak to us of the "light of the world," the life of men. 
 The wind blows — an emblem of that Spirit which, though He comes low 
 and soft, as befits a "Comforter," can rise and wax into a tempest against 
 all " the lofty and lifted up." The water speaks of the stream of life and 
 the drink for thirsty souls ; and the fire, of His purity and of His wrath. 
 All objects are consecrated to Him. The trees of the field, in a thousand 
 places, speak of the "root of David," and the vine of which we are all 
 branches. The everlasting mountains are His "righteousness" ; the mighty 
 deep, His judgments." All the Processes of nature have been laid hold of 
 by Him. The gentle dew falls a promise, and the lashing rain forebodes 
 another storm, when many a sand-built house shall be swept away. Every 
 spring is a prophecy ot the resurrection of the dead, every harvest a 
 promise of the coming of His kingdom and the blessed issues of all 
 service for Him. All living things, in like manner, testify of Him. In 
 that sense, as in others. He is lord over the fish of the seas, and over the 
 fowls ol the air, and over the beasts of the field. The eagle "stirring up 
 its nest," the "hen gathering her chickens under her wings," speak of 
 Him, His functions, and His relations to us. The " Lion of the tribe of 
 Judah" and the "Lamb of God" were His names. All occupations 
 of men, also, are consecrated to reveal Him. He laid His hand upon the 
 sower and the vine-dresser, upon the ploughman and the shepherd, upon 
 the merchant and the warrior, upon the king and the prophet and the 
 judge, upon the teacher and the lawgiver, as being emblems of Himself. 
 All relations between men testify of Him. Father and mother, brother and 
 friend, husband, parent, and children, they are all consecrated for this 
 purpose. 
 
 45 
 
CONTEMPLATION OF GOD'S LOVE TO US. 
 
 Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.— 
 John i. 29. 
 
 "Behold" is not the mere exclamation which you often 
 February 15. 
 
 find Loth in the Old and in the New Testaments, which 
 
 is simply intended to emphasise the importance of what follows, but it 
 
 is a distinct command to do the thing — to look and to ever look, and to 
 
 look again, and live in the habitual and devout contemplation of that 
 
 infinite and wondrous love of God. 
 
 I have but two remarks to make about that, and the one is this, that 
 that habit of devout and thankful meditation upon the love of God, as 
 manifested in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the consequent gift of the 
 Divine Spirit, joined with the humble, thankful conviction that I am a 
 child of God thereby, lies at the foundation of all vigorous and happy 
 Christian life. How can a thing which you do not touch with your hands 
 and see with your eyes produce any effect upon you, unless you think 
 about it ? How can a religion which can only influence through thought 
 and emotion do anything in you, or for you, unless you occupy your 
 thoughts and your feelings with it? It is sheer nonsense to suppose it 
 possible. Things which do not appeal to sense are real to us, and, indeed, 
 we may say, are not at all for us, only as we think about them. If you 
 had a dear friend in Australia, and never thought about him, he would 
 even cease to be dear, and it would be all one to you as if he were dead. 
 If he were really dear to you, you would think about him. 
 
 We may say — though, of course, there are other ways of looking at the 
 matter — that, in a very intelligible sense, the degree in which we think 
 about Christ, and in Him behold the love of God, is a fairly accurate 
 measure of our Christianity. 
 
 Now, will you apply that sharp test to yesterday, and the day before, 
 and the day before that, and tell me how much of your life was pagan 
 and how much of it was Christian? You will never make anything of 
 your professed Christianity, you will never get a drop of happiness or any 
 kind of good out of it ; it will neither be a strength, nor a joy, nor a 
 defence to you, unless you made it your habitual occupation to " behold 
 the manner of love " ; and look, and look, and look, ever look, until it 
 warms and fills your heart. 
 
 46 
 
A GLORIOUS EFFORT. 
 
 / determined not to know anything atnong you, save Jesus Christ, and 
 Hiin crucified. — I Cor. ii. 2. 
 
 We cannot keep the great sight of Christ's Cross before 
 February 16. i' t> & 
 
 the eye of our minds without eiTort. You will have very 
 resolutely to look away from something else, if, amid all the dazzling 
 gauds of earth, we are to look over them all to the far-off lustre of that 
 heavenly love. Just as timorous people in a thunderstorm will light a 
 candle that they may not see the lightning, so many Christians have their 
 hearts filled with the twinkling light of some miserable tapers of earthly 
 care and pursuits, which, though they be dim and smoky, are bright 
 enough to make it hard to see the silent depths of heaven, though it blaze 
 with a myriad stars If you hold a sixpence close enough up to the pupil 
 of your eye, it will keep you from seeing the sun ; and if you hold the 
 world close to mind and heart, as many of you do, you will only see, 
 round the rim of it, the least tiny ring of the overlapping love of God. 
 What the world lets you see you will see, and the world will take care 
 that it will let you see very little — not enough to do you any good, not 
 enough to deliver you from its chains. Wrench yourself away, my 
 brother, from the absorbing contemplation of Birmingham jewellery and 
 paste, and look at the true riches. If you have ever had some glimpses 
 of that wondrous love, and ever been drawn by it to cry, Abba, Father I 
 do not let the trifles which belong not to your true inheritance fill your 
 thoughts, but renew the vision, and by determined turning away of your 
 eyes from beholding vanity, look away from the things that are seen, that 
 you may gaze upon the things that are not seen, and chiefest among them, 
 on the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
 
 If you have never looked on that love, I beseech you now to turn aside 
 and see this great sight. Do not let that brightness burn unnoticed while 
 your eyes are fixed on the ground like men absorbed in gold-digging, while 
 a glorious sunshine is flushing the eastern sky. Look to the unspeakable, 
 incomparable, immeasurable love of God, in giving up His Son to death 
 for us all. Look and be saved. Look and live. Behold what manner of 
 love the Father hath bestowed on you, and, beholding, you will become the 
 sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty. 
 
 47 
 
PETER'S PENITENT LOVE.— I. 
 
 Jesus saitit to Simon Peter : Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more 
 than these ? He saith unto Him : Yea 1 Lord; Thou knoivest thai I love 
 Thee. He saith unto him : Feed My hinibs. — John xxi. 15. 
 
 F b uarv 17 ^^ these words there is an obvious intention to recall 
 ' various points in the past of the Apostle's history. In 
 their emphatic dwelling on the human side of his character, they suggest 
 that by his fall he has forfeited the name of the "man of rock," and 
 has proved himself, not stable, but uncertain as the shifting wind. And 
 so they would pierce to his heart. The fact of his risen Lord coming to 
 him with a question about his love upon His lips v/ould be a dagger in 
 his soul ; all the more because he knew that the question was a reasonable 
 one, since he had so shamefully sinned against love. Now, all this de- 
 liberate raking up of the man's past sin looks to be very cruel. Is that 
 like "not breaking the bruised reed nor quenching the smoking flax"? 
 Does that seem like the generosity of love which is ashamed to recall 
 the transgression that it forgives? Would not Christ have been nearer the 
 ideal of Divine and perfect forgiveness if He had not put Peter through this 
 torture of remembrance ? No ! For the happiest love and the deepest 
 to Him must always rest upon the contrite remembrance of sins forgiven. 
 Therefore the tenderest and divinest work of Christ is to help His penitent 
 servant to a true penitence. He cannot give His love, nor honour with 
 service, unless we acknowledge and abandon our sin before Him. He will 
 make sure work. The keenest cut of the surgeon's knife is not cruel. 
 The malignant humours have to be drained out, aye ! even squeezed out 
 by a hand, the pressure of which, because it is firm, however gentle it 
 may be, will always be painful. And it is poor surgery to begin with 
 bandages and styptics, when what is wanted is that the ulcer shall be cut 
 open and the putrescent matter got rid of. Therefore does Christ thus 
 hold the man right up against his past, and make him, as the preliminary 
 to the fullest communication and reception of His love, feel intensely and 
 bitterly the rcaHty of his transgression. 
 
 Peter's answer shows how he has learned some lessons, at any rate, by 
 his fall and restoration. He will not hesitate one moment to avow his 
 love. The consciousness of his treachery does not make his lips falter 
 in the very least. He is ready at once with his "Yes !" But, as many 
 of you know, the love which he professes is not exactly the love which 
 Christ asks about. The two words in the question and in the answer, 
 which are both translated — and rightly translated — "love," are not the 
 same. And though this is not the place to try and draw the delicate lines 
 of distinction that separate between them, it is important for the whole 
 understanding of the story to notice that the love which Peter claims is, 
 in some sense, inferior to the love which Christ asks. He will not say 
 that he has climbed to the heights of that loftier, diviner emotion, but 
 he will avow that he knows he has a hearty, human, natural affection 
 for his Master, such as we cherish for those that are dear to us. So 
 far he will go, but he had rather that his Master should judge him than 
 that he should judge himself. "He knows notliing against himself" in 
 this matter, yet he refers himself to the Lord : '* Thou knowest all things; 
 Thou knowest that I love Thee." 
 
 48 
 
PETER'S PENITENT LOVE.— II. 
 
 He saith to him again a second time, Simon, son of Jonas, Icvest thou 
 Me ? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord ; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He 
 saith unto him, Tend My sheep. — John xxi. 1 6. 
 
 _ , .g The second question and the second answer are identical 
 
 ' with the first. Again Christ craves the higher ; again the 
 Apostle, in his steadfast humility, will not go one step beyond what he 
 feels he is sure about, nor pretend to have anything deeper or loftier than 
 he knows he has. And so once more he answers word for word as he has 
 answered before. 
 
 And then with the third question and answer, this struggle, if I may 
 call it so, between Christ and Peter comes to an end. Christ accepts 
 Peter's word, substitutes it in His question for the word which He had 
 previously employed ; and so, in one aspect, seems to yield to His Apostle, 
 as if He said, "Well then ! if you cannot give me the higher I will take 
 the lower, and be glad to have even that." But, in another aspect the 
 change of the word sharpens the point of the question, and seems to fling 
 a doubt over the genuineness even of the lower kind of affection which 
 Peter was wilHng to profess. "Are you so sure, then, that even as men 
 love one another, you love Me?" Did the denial look as "if you had 
 ati-y kind of love in your heart to Me " ? And the question thus sharpened 
 pierces deeper into the Apostle's heart, and gives rise to a little dash of 
 impatience at being doubted, which is a better proof of his love than many 
 words would have been. He will no more say "Yes!" But he will 
 leave it to the Master to answer for him, as if he said, "Well, then ! if 
 you do not believe me, I will say nothing more ; but look at me ! Thou 
 knowest all things. Here is my heart ; take it and probe it ! I say 
 nothing; Thou seest that I love Thee." And so the questioning ends. 
 
 Now, take these two figures just as they stand before us. Look ! 
 There is Jesus Christ, fresh from the Cross, coming to you for a double 
 purpose, to remind you of your unworthiness, your failures, your denials, 
 your forgetfulness of Him ; and to beseech you for your love. What a 
 depth of perfect placability and forgiveness there is in that, that He comes 
 to the denier with only these gentle and delicate reminders, with no 
 spoken rebuke, with no uttered word in reference to the past ! His 
 questions imply this : "Whatever the past has been, if you can only say 
 in truth that you love Me now, it is all right, and there will never be 
 another word said about your falls ! " He does, in effect, what wise 
 fathers and mothers do with their wayward children after some burst of 
 naughtiness. Their question is, "Do you love me, then?" And if the 
 answer to that is swift and real, then no more need be said about the 
 fault. In a very deep sense, though not in the deepest, the love of 
 the penitent effaces the sin. That which truly effaces it is the blood of 
 Jesus Christ, and the love of the penitent comes after and not before 
 forgiveness, which is the Divine act that blots out iniquity, and is the 
 consequence, not its cause, of forgiveness. But when a penitent denier 
 comes back to the Master, and in humble faith in His pardoning mercy 
 clasps His feet and washes them with tears, the believing love is all that 
 Christ asks, ere He reinstates in all the forfeited privileges. 
 
 49 « 
 
PETER'S LOVE A TYPE OF OURS. 
 
 He saith unto htm the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, Lovesf thou Me ? 
 Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third titne, Lovest thou 
 Me? And he said unto Him, Lord, Thou knowesi all things; Thou 
 knowest that I love Thee. — John xxi. 17. 
 
 _ -g Notice how we have here, not only that figure of Christ 
 
 e ruary . ^^^^^ from the Cross, with all the appeal that His sufferings 
 for us ought to make to our hearts, smiting upon those hearts a deeper 
 consciousness of our transgression, but we have also the figure, full of 
 encouragement and of teaching for us, of the penitent rejoicingly acknow- 
 ledging, notwithstanding his sin, his fervent love to the Master. Do not 
 let any sense of unworthiness make you hesitate in saying, "I love 
 Thee ! " Do not try to find out whether you love Christ or not by 
 inferences from your conduct. 
 
 You do not do that about your love to one another. You do not 
 say, ** I do so-and-so for my wife, or my husband, therefore I conclude 
 that I love him, or her." You start with the feehng, with the conscious- 
 ness of the feehng, with the glad avowal of it ; and then, to the best of 
 your power, you shape your conduct accordingly. It is beginning at the 
 wrong end to begin with conduct, and to look to it for the answer to the 
 questions, " Do I love the Lord or no?" "Am I His, or am I not?" 
 AH of us have to bewail inconsistencies, but any Christian man or woman 
 who seeks to answer the question whether they love Jesus Christ by 
 inferences drawn from conduct is condemning himself or herself to a 
 lifelong burden of weariness, and to a religion in which, because there 
 will be httle joy, there will be little power and freedom. Let us not be 
 afraid, after the example of this man, howsoever dark and numerous may 
 have been our fauUs, let us not be afraid to profess our love to Him. 
 
 The consciousness of our treachery and of His pardon should deepen 
 our love to Christ. So out of our very falls we may rise to a closer and 
 more blessed experience, and come to understand for ourselves how the 
 publicans and harlots m^y go into the Kingdom before the Pharisees. 
 The only source from which a true love to Jesus Christ, warm enough to 
 melt the ice of our hearts, and flov/ing with a powerful enough stream to 
 sweep the corruption out of our natures, can ever flow is the sense of our 
 pardon from Him. That sense will deepen as the consciousness of our 
 manifold transgressions deepens. So the more we feel our evil and 
 our guilt, the more let us cleave to that great Lord that has given Plimself 
 for us. 
 
 It was but a shallow conviction of sin that moved in Peter's breast at 
 the other miraculous draught of fishes, when he said, "Depart from me, 
 LOT I am a sinful man ! " He has learned here a deeper knowledge of his 
 own fault ; he knovv^s better how bad he has been and how weak he still 
 is; and, therefore, instead of sa3ang "Depart !" he says, "Let me cleave 
 to Thee : Thou knowest that I love Thee." 
 
 50 
 
THE SERVICE WITH WHICH LOVE IS HONOURED 
 
 Jesus saith unto him, Feed My sheep. — John xxi. 17. 
 
 The threefold command to Peter, first of all to care for 
 February 20. 
 
 the sustenance of the least, then to guide and direct the 
 
 more advanced, and then to open the deepest stores of God's truth, and 
 
 impart wisdom as well as guidance to all, of all stages, — these are the 
 
 charges which love wins for its honour and its crown. Of course, these 
 
 injunctions apply primarily to the Apostles, and subordinately to the 
 
 teachers of the Church who still remain ; but they also apply to all of us, 
 
 in our measure and degree. The lesson is just this : the spring of all 
 
 service to men is love to Christ. Historically it has been so. 
 
 A wider and a wiser philanthropy has sprung within the limits of the 
 Christian Church than anywhere else. That love is the great antagonist 
 of selfishness ; that love imbues men with Christ's own spirit ; that love 
 leads me to care for all that Christ cares for. It is a poor affection that 
 does not cherish the property of an absent friend. If one that is dear to 
 us, going away to the other side of the world, says to us, "Will you 
 take care of my dog till I come back again ? " we shall care for it if we 
 care for him. And when He says to us, *' Care for My sheep," we shall 
 not have much love for the Shepherd if we forget the flock. 
 
 Therefore, let us further learn, dear friend, that all so-called Christian 
 service which does not rest on the basis of love to Jesus Christ is profitless 
 and naught. People complain that after all the preaching and Sunday- 
 school teaching and the like, so few results should be found. My belief is 
 that we get as much success as we work for, and that if some power could 
 make inaudible every word of our preaching that had been spoken from 
 other motives than love to Jesus Christ, many an eloquent sermon would 
 have little left. And if every line in our religious books which had been 
 written from other motives were expunged, what gaps on the page there 
 would be ! How many names would fade out of our subscription lists ! 
 How many of your Christian activities would disappear if that test were 
 applied to them ! And do you expect God to bless the work which is no 
 Christian service at all — unless its foundation has been laid in love to the 
 Master ? 
 
THE CROWN OF SERVICE. 
 
 JV/ien IfiGU wast yoiaig, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedsi whither thou 
 zvouldest : but iv hen thou shalt be old, thou shall stretch forth thy hands, and 
 another shall gtrd thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This 
 spake He, signifying by what death He should glorify God. — John xxi. l8 
 
 F b 21 The enigmatical words draw a contrast between the earlier 
 
 * days of independence, of self-will, of strength which is its 
 own master and its own guide, and the latter days when some unwelcome 
 necessity should be laid upon him, and the constraint of an external hand 
 should lead him whither he would not. They would sound obscure to 
 Peter at first. The whole depth and meaning of them, no doubt, was not 
 originally disclosed to him, or to his brethren. But before the predicted 
 end came, the Apostle had learned what was meant, and told his brethren 
 that he knew that the "putting ofif of his tabernacle could be a swift 
 process, even as the Lord Jesus had showed him." But still, though they 
 would not be understood in their full depth, these words, no doubt, would 
 be felt to cast something of a sombre shadow over the Apostolic functions 
 and prospects of the future. And so, notice how all that shadow is 
 irradiated with sunlight by the final words, "Follow Me !" which, though 
 no doubt it may have referred to a literal going apart with Jesus at the 
 moment for some unknown purpose, yet is intended to gather up the 
 injunction of service and the prophecy of sufi'ering into one great, all- 
 comprehensive command. Treading in Christ's footsteps, the path of 
 toilsome service becomes easy, and martyrdom itself a trivial pain. 
 
 That last command puts the crown on the service of life and the sutilering 
 of death. He who, living or dying, is the Lord's, and follows Him, can 
 strenuously do and calmly die. It is the sum of all duty, the one all- 
 sufhcient command which absorbs into itself all law, and by its grand 
 simplicity rules all life. 
 
 So this incident yields great truths for us all. The penitent can go back 
 to his Lord and avow his love. Love is the foundation for service. We 
 shall serve Him in the measure in which we love Him ; and if thus drawn 
 by His mighty love, and conscious of our own manifold weaknesses, and 
 smitten with the sense of His pardoning mercy, we cleave close to His 
 footsteps, life will be easy, service will be blessed, and that last moment, 
 which to others is as if some bony hand was stretched out to hale them 
 away whither they would not into a dark land, will be to us like what it was 
 to the Apostle Peter himself in tlie hour of his deliverance from the prison. 
 The Lord Jesus Christ Himself will come to us and say to us, "Rise 
 quickly and follow Me ! " And the chains will drop from our hands, and 
 we shall pass through the iron gate that opens of its own accord ; and we 
 shall find ourselves in the city, and know that it was not a vision, but the 
 reality of the appearance of that Lord whom we love, though we have 
 denied Him so often and served Him so ill. 
 
 52 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S CHARACTER. 
 
 jind the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly ; and may your spirit 
 and soul and body be prsserved entire, without blame at the coming of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. — I Thess. v. 23. 
 
 February 22 ^ PRIEST must be pure. And Christ washes us from all 
 
 stain, and clothes us in priestly garments of holiness, which 
 
 is better than innocence ; for His blood cleanses from all sin, Jind the spirit 
 
 which He puts within all who have faith in Him makes them love 
 
 righteousness and hate iniquity. 
 
 Thus consecrated, admitted to the innermost shrine, appointed to offer 
 the richest sacrifice of self, and clothed in purity, they wiio were captives 
 of sin are made priests of the Most High God. 
 
 Their double dignity is but part of their assimilation to their Lord. 
 Every one that is perfect shall be as his Master, and even here on earth 
 the Christian life is the life of Christ in the soul, and consists in growing 
 likeness to Him. Is He a King ? So are we. Is He a Priest ? So, 
 therefore, are we. Is He a Son ? So are we. Is He the Heir ? So arc 
 we. Is He the "Anointed?" "He that in Christ hath anointed us is 
 God." His offices, His dignity, His character, His very life becomes ours, 
 if we are His. 
 
 This royal diadem and priestly mitre are offered to us all. They are the 
 prerogative of no class. Earthly royalties have no place within the church 
 of the redeemed, where all are brethren ; and not even an apostle has 
 "dominion over " his brethren's "faith." There is no place in it for 
 human priests who offer outward sacrifices and claim a special standing 
 as channels of sacramental grace. We may all have Christ's hand laid on 
 our heads, which will make us kings and priests to God by a true corona- 
 tion and ordination. If we come to Him in penitence and faith, as knowing 
 our sins and looking to Him to loose us from them by His own blood, He 
 will set us on high to reign as the vassal kings of Plis great empire, and 
 bring us near, that we may stand ministering before the Lord the sweet- 
 savoured offering of our ransomed selves. Thus we shall be kings and 
 priests here, and look forward to dim glories yet to come, when we shall 
 reign with Him as kings, and as His servants s'nall do priestly service in 
 the Eternal Temple. 
 
 The one question for us all is. Do our eyes fix and fasten on that dear 
 Lord, and is it the description of our whole lives, that we see Him and 
 walk with Him ? Oh ! if so, then life will be blessed, and death itself will 
 be but as "a Httle while," when we "shall not see Him," and then we 
 shall open our eyes and behold Him close at hand, whom we saw from 
 afar, and with wandering eyes, amidst the mists and illusions of earth. 
 To see Him as He has become for our sakes is heaven on earth. To see 
 Him as He is will be the heaven of heaven ; and before that Face, as the 
 sun shining in his strength, all sorrows, difficulties, and mysteries will melt 
 as morning mists. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S DIRECT ACCESS TO GOD. 
 
 Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we 
 may receive tnercy, and may find grace to help us in the time of need. — 
 Heb. iv. i6. 
 
 „ , Christ, the great High Priest, gives those whom He has 
 
 Pebruary 23. , . 
 
 redeemed priestly access to God. For them the veil of the 
 
 temple is rent, and the hohest place is patent to their reverent entrance. 
 He has done it by His revelation of God, whereby He has brought the 
 whole depth and tenderness of the Father's heart close to our hearts. He 
 has done it by His death, which removes all obstacles to a sinful man's 
 entrance into the presence of that awful holiness, and brings us near 
 through His blood. He does it by putting within our hearts the Spirit 
 which cries Father, the new life which sets towards God as water rises to 
 the level of its source. Thus every soul of man, however ignorant, guilty, 
 and weak, may come into the presence-chamber of God, needing no priest, 
 no hand to lead, no introducer to be present at the interview. Trusting to 
 Christ our Forerunner, who is for us entered within the veil, we may come 
 boldly to the Throne, which we shall find, when so approached, a throne of 
 grace, and, standing close beneath it, may hold direct fellowship with the 
 Father and with the Son. We may dwell in the secret place of the Most 
 High, and depart not from the temple day nor night, if we will go with 
 our hands in Christ's to the God whom Christ reveals, by the path which 
 Christ has opened for us. 
 
 It is needful that every priest should have somewhat to offer. And this 
 great High Priest makes it possible that we should come, not empty- 
 handed, but bringing the one sacrifice acceptable to God — the offering of 
 hearts set on fire by His love. Christ has offered the one all-sufficient 
 sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. And on the footing of that sole 
 and perpetual expiatory sacrifice, we, weak and sinful as we are, can draw 
 near with our thank-offerings, the only sacrifices which we need or can 
 render. Our offerings can never purge away sin : that has been done 
 once for all by the "one sacrifice for sins for ever." And whosoever is 
 thereby loosed from his sins by the blood of Christ is thereby made himself 
 a priest, to offer up spiritual sacrifices of joyful thanksgiving. The sacrifices 
 we have to offer are ourselves — yielding ourselves up in the blessed self- 
 surrender of love, and placing ourselves unreservedly in God's hands, to 
 live to His praise, and be disposed of by Ilis supreme will. With such 
 sacrifices God is well pleased. 
 
 54 
 
GOVERNMENT OF SELF. 
 
 / buffet nty body, and bring it into bondage : lest by any means, after 
 that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected. — I Cor, ix. 27. 
 
 The great love of Christ is not contented with simply 
 ' breaking the bondage of the slaves. It has more to do for 
 them before it reaches its end. Emancipation is not enough. It is only 
 a step in the process, a means towards a more wonderful result. He 
 liberates them that He may ennoble them. He sets them free from the 
 tyrants who held them captive that He may crown them with a crown 
 of glory. He brings them that were bound out of the prison-house, and 
 causes them to have rule among princes. So far-reaching are His great 
 purposes that to loose us from our sins seems inadequate to fulfil the 
 counsel of His love, unless it be followed by the wonderful bestowal of 
 kingly dignity. 
 
 And what does that imply? Are we to lose ourselves in dim, vague 
 thoughts of some future millennial reign and vulgar outward glories ? I 
 think not. John believed — and any man that has learned the Christian 
 view of life will say "Amen" to the belief — that every man who has 
 become the servant of Christ is the king and lord of everything else ; that 
 to submit to Him is to rule all besides. **He hath made us kings" in 
 the act of submission ; and on the head that bends before His throne in 
 grateful love and lowly confidence, He stoops to lay lightly a crown, to 
 raise the man up and sa,y, "Arise and reign!" 
 
 Reign over what ? First of all, over the only kingdom that any man 
 really has, and that is himself. We are meant to be monarchs of this 
 tumultuous and rebellious kingdom within. Vice and lust, fancies, tastes, 
 whims, purposes, desires, they all go boiling and seething in our natures. 
 It is meant that we should keep a tight hand on them, and be lords over 
 them, and not let them run away with us, and carry you whither they 
 would, as so many of us do in our hours of weakness. In our inmost 
 heart and conscience we know that we are meant to be lords of ourselves. 
 There is something in each of us that responds to the noble words — 
 self-control, self-denial ; but the difficulty is how to carry them out, how 
 to reign and rule over this rebellious kingdom within us. Law has no 
 power to get itself obeyed. Conscience shares in law's weakness. It is a 
 voice, authoritative in speech, but without force to compel attention. We 
 cannot curb ourselves. There must be a power without to reinforce our 
 wavering wills and to hold down our rebellious desires. Christ does this 
 for us, and no person or system or power but He can do it thoroughly for 
 any man. 
 
 55 
 
THE CHRISTIAN'S CONSECRATION. 
 
 Who then offereih willingly to consecrate himself this day unto the Lord} 
 — I Chron. xxix. 5. 
 
 All things serve the soul that serves Christ. All are yours 
 ' if ye are His ; and the great old words of that wondrous 
 psalm which sets forth God's purpose in making man so long unaccom- 
 plished, and, as it would seem in so many cases, hopelessly thwarted, will 
 be fulfilled in us. " Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of 
 Thy hands ; Thou hast put all things under his feet." All things are 
 beneath the feet of him who humbly lies at the feet of Jesus Christ, 
 Obedience is sovereignty. Christ's brethren are every one the children 
 of a King. He who looses us from our sins makes us kings, and yet 
 in all the dominion servants, for we become kings, not for ourselves, but 
 "unto God." 
 
 A priest was consecrated by the anointing oil touching hand and foot 
 and ear ; nor was he set apart for his office without sacrifice. Christ's 
 priests are consecrated, not without the willing surrender of their whole 
 being to His service ; wherefore they are called upon to yield or present 
 themselves to God, and their members as instruments of righteousness. 
 But their true consecration comes from the touch of the great High 
 Priest's hand laid upon their spirits, and the anointing with that Spirit 
 which dwelt in Him without measure, by whom He offered Himself to 
 God, and which He gives to all that trust Him. For their sakes He con- 
 secrated Himself that they also might be consecrated. That Spirit dwelling 
 in Him made Him the Messiah, the anointed of God, Prophet, Priest, and 
 King ; and that Spirit of Christ dwelling in His servants makes them His 
 anointed, His prophets, kings, and priests. His anointing is a real, not a 
 ceremonial, setting apart to God's service, the impartation of a real inward 
 fitness to be a holy priesthood. 
 
 So long as we are joined to Christ, we partake of His life, and our lives 
 become music and praise. The electric current flows from Him through 
 all souls that are "in Him," and they glow with fair colours, which they 
 owe to their contact with Jesus. Interrupt the communication, and all is 
 darkness. We have as much of God as we can hold. All Niagara may 
 roar past a man's door, but only as much as he diverts through his own 
 sluice will drive his mill or quench his thirst. That grace is like the 
 figures in the Eastern tales, that will creep into a narrow room no bigger 
 than a nutshell, or will tower heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic 
 tent whose walls expanded or contracted at the owner's wish ; we maj 
 enlarge them to enclose far more of the grace than we have ever possessed. 
 
 56 
 
THE RULE OF CHRIST. 
 
 My yoke is easy, and My burden is light — Matt. xi. 30. 
 
 If you want to rule yourselves let Christ rule you. Put your 
 ' trust in Him ; leave yourself in His hand ; lay yourselves at 
 His feet ; rest upon His great sacrifice ; look to Him for forgiveness ; and 
 then look to Him for marching orders, and for pure hving, and for every- 
 thing else. He will give power to your will, however feeble it was before, 
 and susceptibility to your conscience that it never had when it was case- 
 hardened by your love of evil, and you will be able to subdue the passions 
 which would sweep you away and would laugh at all other control. Put 
 the reins into His hands, and He will bridle and tame your wild desires. 
 Submit to Him, and He will make you "lord of yourself, though not of 
 lands " — man's noblest kingship. 
 
 We are like some of those little Rajahs whose states adjoin our British 
 possessions, who have trouble and difficulty with revolted subjects, and fall 
 back upon the great neighbouring power, saying: "Come and help me ; 
 subdue my people for me, and I will put the territory into your hands." 
 Go to Christ and say: "Lord ! they have rebelled against me ! These 
 passions, these lusts, these follies, these weaknesses, these sinful habits of 
 mine, they have rebelled against me ! What am I to do with them ? Do 
 Thou come and bring peace into the land, and Thine shall be the authority." 
 And He will come and loose you from your sins, and make you kings. 
 
 And there is another realm over which we may rule ; and that is, this 
 bewitching and bewildering world of time and sense, with its phantas- 
 magoria and its illusions and its lies, that draw us away from the real life 
 and truth and blessedness. Do not let the v/orld master you ! It will, 
 unless you have put yourself under Christ's control. He will make you 
 king over all outward things, by enabling you to despise them in comparison 
 with the sweetness which you find in Him, and so to get the highest good 
 out of them. He will make you their lord by helping you to use all the 
 things seen and temporal as means to reach a fuller possession of the things 
 unseen and eternal. Their noblest use is to be the ladder by which we 
 climb to reach the treasures which are above. They are meant to be 
 symbols of the eternal, like painted windows through which our eye may 
 travel to the light beyond, which gives them all their brilliancy. He rules 
 the waves who, with a strong hand on the tiller, makes the currents serve 
 to bear his barque to the harbour. And he rules outward things who 
 bends and coerces them to be the servants of his spirit in its highest 
 aspirations, and so turns them to their noblest use. 
 
 57 
 
THE ROYALTY OF THE REDEEMED. 
 
 He made us to be a kingdom^ to be kings and priests unto His God and 
 Father. — Rev. i. 6. 
 
 *• He loveth us " ; that is the eternal act that lies at the 
 ^^ * foundation of the Universe. *' He hath loosed us from our 
 sins in His own blood " j that is the great fact in Time, done once and 
 needing no repetition, and capable of no repetition, into which all the 
 fulness and sweetness and pathos and power of that infinite love has been 
 gathered and condensed. 
 
 And then there follows, in the words ot this text, the ultimate conse- 
 quence and lofty development, at once, of that eternal, timeless love, and 
 of that redeeming act which "hath loosed us from our sins," and, yet 
 more wonderful, " hath made us kings and priests to God." 
 
 Every Christian man is a king and priest. Those who have been loosed 
 from their sins by the blood of Christ have thereby become members of that 
 Kingdom of God which consists of all whose wills bow to His for His dear 
 love's sake. But, inasmuch as such submission to His sway gives authority 
 and mastership over all beside, that kingdom is a kingdom all whose sub- 
 jects are royal ; and in this sense, too, Christ is King of kings. It would 
 appear that the phrase in the old law was so used to express the double 
 idea of a Kingdom of Kings, in other places of the New Testament, and 
 probably, therefore, here. For instance, we have it quoted again in this 
 book (verse lo), with a clause added which distinctly shows that there 
 "kingdom" is, in the writer's mind, equivalent to "kings" — namely, 
 "and they shall reign (or "they reign") upon the earth." Again, Peter 
 gives it in the form of "a royal priesthood," where the original force of 
 " kingdom " has disappeared altogether, and the idea of the royalty of 
 believers alone remains. It seems probable, then, that in the words before 
 us, we are to see the same idea predominant, though no doubt the other 
 must also be taken into account. 
 
 It is also to be remembered that both these high titles originally and 
 properly belong to Christ, and are bestowed on believers by deviation or 
 transference from Him. The wholesome usage of ancient times forbade 
 the blending of these two offices in one person, but He is a priest after the 
 order of Melchizedek. He wears the mitre and the crown, and, as the 
 prophet Zechariah foretold, " shall be a priest upon His throne " ; what 
 He is. He, in His love, raises all His servants to be. 
 
"GIRD UP YOUR LOINS." 
 
 Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning; and be ye 
 yourselves like unto men looking for their Lord. — Luke xii. 35. 
 
 February 28. '^^'^^ ^^^ foolish virgins did not go awa}'' into any forbidden 
 '' ' paths. No positive evil is alleged against them. They were 
 simply asleep. The other five were asleep, too. I do not need to enter, 
 here and now, into the whole interpretation of the parable, or there might 
 be much to say about the difference between these two kinds of sleep. But 
 what I wish to notice is that there was nothing except negligence darkening 
 into drowsiness, which caused the dying out of the light. This process of 
 gradual extinction may be going on, and may have been going on, for a 
 long while, and the people that carried the lamp be quite unaware of it. 
 
 How could a sleeping woman know whether her lamp was burning or 
 not ? How can a drowsy Christian tell whether his spiritual life is bright 
 or no ? To be unconscious of our approximation to this condition is, I am 
 afraid, one of the surest signs that we are in it. I suppose that a paralysed 
 limb is quite comfortable. At any rate, paralysis of the spirit may be going 
 on without our knowing anything about it. 
 
 So do not put these poor words of mine away from you, and say, *' Oh ! 
 they do not apply to me," I am quite sure that the people to whom they 
 do apply will be the last people to take them to themselves. And while I 
 quite believe, thank God ! that there are many of us who may feel and know 
 that our lamps are not going out, sure I am that there are some of us whom 
 ever^'body but themselves knows to be carrying a lamp that is so far gone 
 out that it is smoking and stinking in the eyes and noses of the people that 
 stand by. 
 
 Be sure that nobody was more surprised than were the five foolish 
 women when they opened their witless, sleepy eyes, and saw the state 
 of things. 
 
 There is only one road, with well-marked stages, by which a back- 
 sliding or apostate Christian can return to his Master. And that road has 
 three halting-places upon it, through which our heart must pass if it have 
 wandered from its early faith and falsified its first professions. The first 
 of them is the consciousness of the fall, the second is the resort to the 
 Master for forgiveness, and the last is the deepened consecration to Him. 
 When the patriarch Abraham, in a momentary lapse from faith to sense, 
 thought himself compelled to leave the land to which God had sent him, 
 because a famine threatened ; when he came back from Egypt, as the 
 narrative tells us with deep significance, he went to the "place where he 
 had pitched his tent at the beginning ; to the altar which he had reared at 
 the first." Yes ! my friend ; we must begin over again, tread all the old 
 path, enter by the old wicket-gate, once more take the place of the penitent, 
 once more make acquaintance with the pardoning Christ, once more devote 
 ourselves in renewed consecration to His service. No man that wanders 
 into the wilderness but comes back by the King's highway, if He comes 
 back at all. 
 
 59 
 
LOST BY DOING NOTHING. 
 The foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil. — Matt. xxv. 8. 
 
 _ . 29 ^^ ^^'^ "°^ °^ ^"^ purpose that the foolish five took no oil 
 
 e ruary . ^.^^^ them. They merely neglected to do so, not having the 
 wit to look ahead and provide against the contingency of a long time of 
 waiting for the bridegroom. Their negligence was the result, not of 
 deliberate wish to let their lights go out, but of their heedlessness ; and 
 because of that negligence they earned the name of "foolish." If we do 
 not look forward, and prepare for possible drains upon our powers, we shall 
 deserve the same adjective. If we do not lay in stores for future use, we 
 may be sent to school to the harvesting ant and the bee. That lesson 
 applies to all departments of hfe ; but it is eminently applicable to spiritual 
 life, which is sustained only by communications from the Spirit of God. 
 For these communications will be imperceptibly lessened, and may be 
 altogether intercepted, unless diligent attention is given to keep open the 
 channels by which they enter the spirit. If the pipes are not looked to, 
 they will be choked by masses of matted trifles, through which the " rivers 
 of living water," which Christ took as a symbol of the Spirit's influences, 
 cannot force a way. The thing that makes shipwreck of the faith of most 
 professing Christians that do come to grief is no positive wickedness, no 
 conduct which would be branded as sin by the Christian conscience, or even 
 by ordinary people, but simply torpor. If the water in a pond is never 
 stirred, it is sure to stagnate, and green scum to spread over it, and a foul 
 smell to rise from it. A Christian man has only to do what I am afraid a 
 good many of us are in great danger of doing — that is, nothing — in order 
 to ensure that his lamp shall go out. Do you try to keep yours alight ? 
 There is only one way to do it — that is, to go to Christ and get Him to 
 pour His sweetness and His power into our open hearts. 
 
 The punishment for shirking work is to be denied work. Just as the 
 converse is true, that in God's administration of the world and of His 
 Church, the reward for faithful work is to get more to do, and the filling a 
 narrow sphere is the sure way to have a larger sphere to fill. So, if a man 
 abandons plain duties, then he will get no work to do. And that is why so 
 many Christian men and women are idle in this world, and stand in the 
 market-place, with a certain degree of truth, saying, "No man hath hired 
 us." No ! because so often in the past tasks have been presented to you, 
 forced upon you, almost pressed into your unwilling hands, that you have 
 refused to take ; and you are not going to get any more. You have been 
 asked to work, — I speak now to professing Christians, — duties have been 
 pressed upon you, fields of service have opened plr.inly before you, and you 
 have not had the heart to go into them. And so you stand idle all the clay 
 now, and the work goes to other people that can do it ; and God honours 
 ihem, and passes you by. 
 
 60 
 
HE WILL NEVER LEAVE US. 
 
 Himself hath said_ I will in no wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise 
 forsake thee. — Heb. xiii. 5. 
 
 March 1 ^^^^^ ^^^ of the old patriarchs had committed a great sin, and 
 had unbelievingly twitched his hand out of God's hand, and 
 gone away down into Egypt to help himself, instead of trusting to God, 
 he was commanded, on his return to Palestine, to go to the place where he 
 dwelt at the first, and begin again at that point where he began when 
 he first entered the land ; which, being translated, is just this : the only 
 way to keep our spirits vital and quick is by having recourse, again and 
 again, to the same power which first imparted life to them, and that is 
 done by the same means, the means of simple reliance upon Christ, in the 
 consciousness of our own deep need, and believingly waiting upon him for 
 the repeated communication of the gifts which we, alas ! have so often 
 misimproved. Negligence is enough to slay. Doing nothing is the sure 
 way to quench the Holy Spirit. 
 
 And, on the other hand, keeping close to Him is the sure way to 
 secure that He will never leave us. You can choke a lamp with oil, but 
 you cannot have in your hearts too much of that Divine grace. And you 
 get all that you need if you choose to go and ask it from him. Remember 
 the old story about Elisha and the poor woman. The cruse of oil began 
 to run. She brought all the vessels that she could rake together, big and 
 little, pots and cups, of all shapes and sizes, and set them, one after the 
 other, under the jet of oil. They were all filled ; and when she brought 
 no more vessels, the oil stayed. If you do not take your empty hearts to 
 God, and say, " Here, Lord ! fill this cup, too ; poor as it is, fill it with 
 thine own gracious influences," be very sure that no such influences will 
 come to you. But if you do go, be as sure of this, that so long as you 
 hold out your emptiness to Him, He will flood it with His fulness, and the 
 light that seemed to be sputtering to its death will flame up again. He 
 will not quench the smoking wick, if only we carry it to Him ; but as the 
 priests in the Temple walked all through the night to trim the golden 
 lamps, so He who walks amidst the seven candlesticks will see to each. 
 
 " Looking ^unto Jesus" is the secret triumph over the fascinations of 
 the world. And if we habitually so look, then the sweetness that we shall 
 experience will destroy all the seducing power of lesser and earthly sweet- 
 ness, and the blessing, the light of the sun will dim and all but extinguish 
 the deceitful gleams that tempt us into the swamps where we shall be 
 drowned. Turn away, then, from these things ; cleave to Jesus Christ ; 
 and though in ourselves we may be as weak as a humming-bird before a 
 snake, or a rabbit before a tiger. He will give us strength, and the light of 
 His face shining down upon us will fix our eyes and make us insensible to 
 the fascinations of the sorcerers. So we shall not need to dread the 
 question, "Who hath bewitched you?" but ourselves challenge the utmost 
 might of the fascinators with the triumphant question, "Who shall separate 
 us from the love of Christ ? " 
 
 Help us, O Lord ! we beseech Thee, to live near Thee. Turn away our 
 eyes from beholding vanity, and enable us to set the Lord always before us, 
 that we be not moved. 
 
 6l 
 
THE GRADUAL EXTINCTION OF GOD'S LIGHT IN 
 
 THE SOUL. 
 
 Our lamps are going out. — Matt. xxv. 8. 
 
 -. , 2 All spiritual emotions, and vitality, like every other kind of 
 
 " ' emotion and vitality, die unless nourished. Let no theological 
 difficulties about "the final perseverance of the saints," or "the inde- 
 feasibleness of grace," and the impossibility of slaying the Divine life that 
 has once been given to a man, come in the way of letting this parable 
 have its full, solemn weight. These foolish virgins had oil and had hght ; 
 the oil gave out by their fault, and so the light went out, and they were 
 startled, when they awoke from their slumber, to see how, instead of 
 brilhant flame, there was smoking wick. 
 
 Let us take the lesson. There is nothing in our religious emotions 
 which has any guarantee of perpetuity in it, except upon certain conditions. 
 We may live, and our life may ebb. We may trust, and our trust may 
 tremble into unbelief We may obey, and our obedience may be broken 
 by the mutinous risings of self-will. We may walk in the paths of 
 righteousness, and our feet may falter and turn aside. There is certainty 
 of the dying out of all communicated life, unless the channel of com- 
 munication with the life from which it was first kindled be kept constantly 
 clear. The lamp may be "a burning and a shining light," or, more 
 accurately translating the phrase of our Lord, "a light kindled and" 
 (therefore) "shining," but it will only be light "for a season," unless it is 
 fed from that from which it was first set alight — and that is, from God 
 Himself 
 
 " Oar lamps are going out." A slow process that ! The flame does 
 not all die into darkness in a minute. There are stages in the process. 
 The white portion of the flame becomes smaller and the blue part extends ; 
 then the flame flickers, and finally shudders itself, as it were, oft the wick ; 
 then nothing remains but a charred red line along the top ; then that line 
 breaks up into little points, and one after another these twinkle out, and 
 then all is black, and the lamp is gone out. And so, slowly, like the 
 ebbing away of the tide, like the reluctant long-protracted dying of summer 
 days, like the dropping of the blood from some fatal wound, by degrees 
 the process of extinction creeps, creeps, creeps on, and the lamp that 
 was going is finally gone out. 
 
 The infinite mercy of God is not mere weak indulgence, which so deals 
 with a man's failures and sins as to convey the impression that these are of 
 no moment whatsoever. And the severity which said, "No! such work 
 is not fit for such hands until the heart has been ' broken and healed,' " is 
 of a piece with the severity which is love. "Thou wast a God that for- 
 gavest them, and didst visit them for their inventions." Let us learn the 
 difference between a weak charity which loves too foolishly, and therefore 
 too selfislily, to let a man inherit the fruit of his doings, and the large mercy 
 which knows how to take the bitterness out of the chastisement, and yet 
 knows how to chastise. 
 
 62 
 
BEARING FRUIT. 
 
 As for Me, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God, — Psalm Hi. 8. 
 
 The God-bedewed soul, beautiful, pure, stronc:, will bear 
 fruit. *' His beauty shall be as the oHve tree." Anybody that 
 has ever seen a grove of olives knows that their beauty is not such as 
 strikes the eye. If it was not for the blue sky overhead, that rays down 
 glorifying light, they would not be much to look at or talk about. The 
 tree has a gnarled, grotesque trunk, which divides into insignificant branches, 
 bearing leaves mean in shape, harsh in texture, with a silvery underside. 
 It gives but a quivering shade, and has no massiveness, nor sympathy. 
 Ay ! but there are olives on the branches. And so the beauty of the 
 humble tree is in what it grows for man's good. After all, it is the 
 outcome in fruitfulness which is the main thing about us. God's meaning, 
 in all his gifts of dew, and beauty, and purity, and strength, is that we 
 should be of some use in the world. 
 
 The olive is crushed into oil, and the oil is used for smoothing and 
 suppling joints and flesh, for nourishing and sustaining the body as food, 
 for illuminating darkness as oil in the lamp. And these three things are 
 the three things for which we Christian people have received all our dew, 
 and all our beauty, and all our strength — that we may give other people 
 light, that we may be the means of conveying to other people nourishment, 
 that we may move gently in the world as lubricating, sweetening, soothing 
 influences, and not irritating and provoking, and leading to strife and 
 alienation. The question, after all, is, does anybody gather fruit off tis, and 
 would anybody call us *' trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, 
 that He may be glorified?" May we all open our hearts for the dew 
 from heaven, and then use it to produce in ourselves beauty, purity, 
 strength, and fruitfulness ! 
 
 Union with Christ is the condition of all fruitfulness. There may be 
 plenty of activity and yet barrenness. Works are not fruit. We can bring 
 forth a great deal *' of ourselves," and because it is of ourselves it is naught. 
 Fruit is possible only on condition of union with Him. He is the productive 
 glory of it all. We are not to be content with a little fruit — a poor 
 shrivelled bunch of grapes that are more like marbles than grapes, here and 
 there, upon the half-nourished stem. The abiding in Him will produce a 
 character rich in manifold graces. "A little fruit" is not contemplated by 
 Christ at all. God forbid that I should say that there is no possibility of 
 union with Christ and a little fruit ! A little union will have a little fruit. 
 Why is it that the average Christian man of this generation bears only a 
 berry or two here and there, like such as are left upon the vines after the 
 vintage, when the promise is that if he will abide in Christ, he will bear 
 much fruit ? 
 
 63 
 
ALL STRENGTH IN CHRIST. 
 
 As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him^ rooted 
 and btiilded up in Him, and stablished in your faith. — Col. ii. 6. 
 
 Speak we of strength? Christ is the type of strength. Of 
 BT&rch 4« 
 
 beauty ? He is the perfection of beauty. And it is only as we 
 
 keep close to Him that our Hves will be all fair with the reflected loveliness 
 
 of His, and strong with the communicated power of His grace — " strong in 
 
 the Lord, and in the power of His might." If we are to set forth anything, 
 
 in our daily lives, of this strength, remember our lives must be rooted in, 
 
 as well as bedewed by, God. Hosea's emblems, beautiful and instructive 
 
 as they are, do not reach to the deep truth set forth in still holier and 
 
 sweeter words. ** I am the Vine, ye are branches." The union of Christ 
 
 and His people is closer than that between dew and plant. Our growth 
 
 results from the communication of His own life to us. Therefore is the 
 
 command stringent and obedience to it blessed, "Abide in Me — for apart 
 
 from Me, ye can do" — and are — " nothing." 
 
 Let us remember that the loftier the top of the tree the wider the 
 spread of its sheaves of dark foliage ; if it is steadfastly to stand, immovable 
 by the loud winds when they call, the deeper must its roots strike into the 
 firm earth. If your life is to be a fair temple-palace, worthy of God's 
 dwelling in, if it is to be impregnable to assault, there must be quite as 
 much masonry undergi'ound as above, as is the case in great old buildings 
 and palaces. And such a life must be a life "hid with Christ in God." 
 Then it will be strong. When we strike our roots deep into Him, our 
 branch also shall not wither, and our leaf shall be green, and all that we 
 do shall prosper. The wicked are not so. They are like chaff— rootless, 
 fruitless, hfeless, which the wind driveth away. 
 
 "Apart from Me ye can do nothing." 77/^^5 is the condemnation of 
 all the busy life of men which is not lived in union with Jesus Christ. It is 
 a long row of figures which, like some other long rows of figures added up, 
 amount just to ze7-o. "Without Me— nothing." All your busy life, when 
 you come to sum it up, is made up oi plus and minus quantities, which pre- 
 cisely balance each other ; and the net result, unless you are in Christ, is just 
 nothing ; and on your gravestones the only right epitaph is a great round 
 cypher — " He did not do anything. There is nothing left of his toil ; the 
 whole thing has evaporated and disappeared." That is life apart from Jesus 
 Christ. Separate from Christ the individual shrivels, and the possibilities 
 of fair buds wither and set into no fruit. x\.nd no man is the man ho might 
 have been unless he holds by Jesus Christ and lets His life come into lum. 
 
 64 
 
STRENGTH OF CHARACTER. 
 
 And cast forth his roots as Lebanon. — Hosea xiv. 5. 
 
 Hi h 5 "^ GoD-BEDEWED soul that has been made fair and pure, by 
 communion with God, ought also to be strong. He shall cast 
 forth his roots " like Lebanon." I take it that simile does not refer to the 
 roots of that giant range that slope away do\vn under the depths of the 
 Mediterranean. That is a beautiful emblem, but it is not in line with 
 the other images in the context. As these are all dependent on the 
 promise of the dew, and represent different phases of the results of its 
 fulfilment, it is natural to expect thus much uniformity in their variety, 
 that they shall all be drawn from plant life. If so, we must suppose a 
 condensed metaphor here, and take " Lebanon" to mean the forests which 
 another prophet calls "the glory of Lebanon." The characteristic tree in 
 these, as we all know, was the cedar. 
 
 It is named in Hebrew by a word which is connected with that for 
 ** strength." It stands as the very type and emblem of stabihty and 
 vigour. Think of its firm roots by which it is anchored deep in the soil ; 
 think of the shelves of massive dark foliage ; think of its unchanged 
 steadfastness in storm ; think of its towering height ; and thus arriving at 
 the meaning of the emblem, let us translate it into practice in our own 
 lives. *' He shall cast forth his roots as Lebanon." Beauty? Yes! 
 Purity ? Yes ! And braided in with them, if I may so say, the strength 
 which can say "No!" which can resist, which can persist, which can 
 overcome; power drawn from communion with God. "Strength and 
 beauty" should blend in the worshippers, as they do in the "sanctuary" 
 in God Himself. There is nothing admirable in mere force ; there is often 
 something sickly and feeble, and therefore contemptible, in mere beauty. 
 Many of us will cultivate the complacent and the amiable sides of the 
 Christian life, and be wanting in the manly " thews that throws the world," 
 and can fight to the death. But we have to try and bring these two 
 excellences of character together, and it needs an immense deal of grace 
 and wisdom and imitation of Jesus Christ, and a close clasp of His hand, 
 to enable us to do that. 
 
 Many a stately elm that seems full of vigorous life, for all its spreading 
 boughs and clouds of dancing leaves, is hollow at the heart, and when the 
 storm comes goes down with a crash, and men wonder, as they look at the 
 ruin, how such a mere shell of life, with a core of corruption, could stand 
 so long. It rotted within, and fell at last because its roots did not go deep 
 down to the rich soil, where they would have found nourishment, but ran 
 along near the surface, among gravel and stones. If we would stand firm, 
 be sound within, and bring forth much fruit, we must strike our roots deep 
 in Him who is the anchorage of our souls and the nourisher of all our 
 being. 
 
 65 
 
THE PURITY AND BEAUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 He shall blossom as the lify, . . . and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, 
 and his smell as Lebanon, — Rosea xiv. 5» 6. 
 
 A SOUL bedewed by God will spring into purity and beauty. 
 Horch 6t 
 
 Ugly Christianity is not Christ's Christianity. Some of us older 
 
 people remember that it used to be a favourite phrase to describe un- 
 attractive saints, that they had *' grace grafted on a crab stick." There 
 are a great many Christian people whom one would compare to any other 
 plant rather than a lily. Thorns and thistles and briars are a good deal 
 more like what some of them appear to the world. But we are bound, if 
 we are Christian people, by our obligations to God, and by our obligations 
 to men, to try and make Christianity look as beautiful in people's eyes as 
 we can. That is what Paul said. "Adorn the teaching" ; make it look 
 well, inasmuch as it has made you look attractive to men's eyes. INIen 
 have a fairly accurate notion of beauty and goodness, whether they have 
 any goodness or any beauty in their own characters or not. Do you 
 remember the words, " Whatsoever things are lovely ; whatsoever things 
 are of good report, whatsoever things are venerable, ... if there be any 
 praise"— from men— "think on these things." If we do not keep that 
 as the guiding star of our lives, then we have failed in one very distinct 
 duty of Christian people— namely, to grow more like a Hly, and to be 
 graceful in the lowest sense of that word, as well as grace-full in the 
 highest sense of it. We shall not be so in the lower, unless we are so 
 n the higher. It may be a very modest kind of beauty, very humble, 
 and not at all like the flaring reds and yellows of the gorgeous flowers that 
 the world admires. These are often like a great sunflower, with a disc as 
 big as a cheese. But the Christian beauty will be modest and unobtrusive 
 and shy, like the violet half-buried in the hedge-bank, and unnoticed by 
 careless eyes, accustomed to see beauty only in gaudy, flaring blooms. 
 But unless you, as a Christian, are in your character arrayed in the 
 "beauty of holiness," and the holiness of beauty, you are not quite the 
 Christian that Jesus Christs wants you to be ; setting forth all the gracious 
 and sweet and refining influences of the Gospel in your daily life and 
 conduct. 
 
 66 
 
GOD'S PROMISE OF GRACE. 
 
 His favour is as dew upon the grass. — Prov. xix. 12. 
 
 The prose of this sweet old promise, that God will be as the 
 dew unto His people, is, ** If I depart I will send Him unto 
 you." If we are Christian people, we have the perpetual dew of that 
 Divine Spirit, which falls on our leaves and penetrates to our roots, and 
 communicates life, freshness, and power, and makes growth possible — more 
 than possible, certain — for us. " I" — Myself through My Son, and in My 
 Spirit — "I will be" — an unconditional assurance — "as the dew unto 
 Israel." 
 
 Yes ! That promise is in its depth and fulness applicable only to the 
 Christian Israel, and it remains true to-day and for ever. Do we see it 
 fulfilled? One looks round upon our congregations, and into one's own 
 heart, and we behold the parable of Gideon's fleece acted over again — • 
 some places soaked with the refreshing moisture, and some as hard as a 
 rock and as dry as tinder, and ready to catch fire from any spark from the 
 devil's forge and be consumed in the everlasting burnings some day. It 
 will do us good to ask ourselves why it is that, with a promise like this for 
 every Christian soil to build upon, there are so few Christian souls that 
 have anything like realised its fulness and its depth. Let us be quite sure 
 of this— God has nothing to do with the failure of Plis promise. And let 
 us take all the blame to ourselves. 
 
 '* I will be as the dew unto Israel." Who was Israel ? The man that 
 wrestled all night in prayer with God, and took hold of the Angel, and 
 prevailed, and wept, and made supplication to Him. So Hosea tells us, 
 and, as he says in the passage where he describes the Angel's wrestling 
 with Jacob at Peniel, "there He spake with us" — when He spake He 
 spake with him who first bore the name. Be you Israel, and God will 
 surely be your dew, and life and growth will be possible. 
 
 The dew, formed in the silence of the darkness, while men sleep, falhng 
 as willingly on a bit of dead wood as anywhere, hanging its pearls on every 
 poor spike of grass, and dressing everything on which it lies with strange 
 beauty, each separate globule tiny and evanescent, but each flashing back 
 the light, and each a perfect sphere, feeble one by one, but united mighty 
 to make the pastures of the wilderness rejoice — so, created in silence by an 
 unseen influence, feeble when taken in detail, but strong in their myriads, 
 glad to occupy the lowliest place, and each "bright with something of 
 celestial light," Christian men and women are to be "in the midst of 
 many people as a dew from the Lord." 
 
 67 
 
THE DEW OF GOD'S GRACE. 
 
 / will be as tkc dew unto Israel. — Hosea xiv. 5. 
 
 Scholars tell us that the kind of moisture that is meant in 
 March 8. 
 
 these words about the dew is not wliat we call dew, of which, 
 
 as a matter of fact, there falls little or none at the season of the year 
 referred to in this text, in Palestine, but that the word really means the 
 heavy night-clouds that come upon the wings of the south-west wind, to 
 diffuse moisture and freshness over the parched plains in the very height 
 and fierceness of summer. The metaphor of "the dew" becomes more 
 beautiful and striking if we note that, in the previous chapter, where the 
 prophet was in his threatening mood, he predicts that "an east wind shall 
 come, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the wilderness" — the 
 burning sirocco, vidth death upon its wings — " and his spring shall become 
 dry, and his fountain shall be dried up." We have, then, to imagine the 
 land gaping and parched, the hot air having, as with an invisible tongue of 
 flame, licked streams and pools dry, and having shrunken fountains and 
 springs. Then, all at once, there comes down upon the baking ground, 
 and the faded, drooping flowers that lie languid and prostrate on the ground 
 in the darkness, borne on the wings of the wind, from the depths of the 
 great unfathomed sea, an unseen moisture. You cannot call it rain, so 
 gently does it diffuse itself; it is but like a mist, but it brings Hfe and 
 freshness ; and everything is changed. The dew, or the night mist, as it 
 might more properly be rendered, was evidently a good deal in Hosea's 
 mind ; you may remember that he uses the image again in a remarkably 
 different aspect, where he speaks ot men's goodness as being like a 
 morning cloud and the early dew that passes away. The natural object 
 which yields the emblem was all inadequate to set forth the Divine gift 
 which is comj)ared to it, because as soon as the sun has risen, with burning 
 heat, it scatters the beneficent clouds, and the "sunbeams like swords" 
 threaten to slay the tender green shoots. But this mist from God, that 
 comes down to water the earth, is never dried up. It is not trani;ient. 
 It may be ours, and live in our hearts. 
 
 68 
 
THE INDWELLING LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 Me that abideth in Me, and I in hint, the same beareth much fruit : for 
 apart from Me ve can do nothing. — ^JOHN xv. 5. 
 
 Like most writers and speakers, John had favourite expressions, 
 U&rch. 9. 
 
 which exercised a fascination over him, and were always ready 
 
 to trickle from his pen or drop from his lips. He has a vocabulary of his 
 own. Life and death, light and darkness, love and hatred, are antitheses 
 constantly recurring in his writings, and in which he puts the deepest 
 things he has to say. These repetitions are not tautology. He turns the 
 jewels every way, and lets the many-coloured light flash from them at all 
 angles. One of his pet words is this "abide," significant of the quiet, 
 Contemplative temper of the man, but significant of a great deal more. 
 He uses it, if I reckon rightly, somewhere between sixty and seventy times 
 in the Gospel and Epistles, far more than all the other instances of its use 
 in the rest of the I-Iew Testament put together. To John, one great char- 
 acteristic of the Christian life was that it was the abiding life. The 
 Christian life is a lii'e of dwelling in Christ. 
 
 I have said that this is one of John's favourite words. He learnt it 
 from his Master. It was in the upper room where it came from Christ's 
 lips, with a pathos which was increased by the shadow of departure that 
 lay over His heart and theirs. It was when He was on the eve of leaving 
 them, as far as outward presence was concerned, that He said to them so 
 tenderly, "Abide in Me, and I in you." No doubt the old Apostle had 
 meditated long on tlie words, and experience and age had done their best 
 work for him, not in carrying him beyond his Master's utterances, but in 
 showing him how these were elastic, and widened out to contain far more 
 of wisdom, of comfort, and of guidance than he had at first suspected them 
 to hold. 
 
 Heaven must bend to earth before earth can rise to heaven. The skies 
 must open and drop down love ere love can spring in the fruitful fields. 
 And it is only when we look with true trust to that great unveiling of the 
 heart of God which is in Jesus Christ that our hearts are melted, and all 
 their snows are dissolved into sweet waters, which, freed from their icy 
 chains, can flow, with music in their ripple and fruitfulness along their 
 course, through our otherwise silent and barren lives. With unworn and 
 fresh heart we may bring forth fruit in old age, and have the crocus in the 
 autumnal fields as well as iii the spring-tirtie of our lives. 
 
 69 
 
"ABIDE IN ME, AND I IN YOU." 
 
 As the branch cannct bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; so 
 neither can ye, except ye abide in Me. — ^JoHN xv. 4. 
 
 "Abide in Me, and I in you." That is the ideal of the 
 Uarch 10. ... . 
 
 Christian life, a reciprocal mutual dwelling of Christ in us and 
 
 of us in Christ. These two thoughts are but two sides of the one truth, 
 
 the interpenetration, by faith and love, of the believing heart and the 
 
 beloved Saviour, and the community of spiritual life as between them. 
 
 The one sets forth more distinctly Christ's gracious activity and wondrous 
 
 love, by which He condescends to enter into the narrow room of our 
 
 spirits, and to communicate their life and all the blessings He can bestow. 
 
 The other sets forth more distinctly our activity, and suggests the blessed 
 
 thought of a home and a shelter, an inexpugnable fortress and a sure 
 
 dwelling-place, a habitation to which all generations may continually 
 
 resort. He dwells in us as the spirit or the life in the body communicated 
 
 to every part, and vitalising every part. We dwell in Him as the limb 
 
 dwells in the frame, or, as He Himself has put it, as the branch dwells in 
 
 the vine. 
 
 Now this thought, in its two sides, as seems to me, is far too little 
 present to the consciousness and to the experience, to the doctrinal belief 
 and to the personal verification of that belief in our own lives, of the mass of 
 Christian people. To me it is the very heart of Christianity, for which that 
 which, in the popular apprehension, has all but crowded it out of view — 
 viz., Christ y^r us — is the preface and introduction. I do not M'ant that 
 that great truth should be in any measure obscured, but I do want that, 
 inseparably connected with it in our belief and in our experience, there 
 should be far more than there is, the companion sister-thought, Christ in 
 us and we in Christ. 
 
 You may call that "mystical," if you like. I am not frightened at a 
 word. There is a good and there is a bad mysticism. And there is no 
 grasp of the deepest things of religion without that which the irreligious 
 mind thinks that it has disposed of by the cheap and easy sneer that it is 
 " mystical." If it is true that we can only speak of spiritual experiences in 
 the terms of analogies drawn from material things ; if it is true that where 
 a man's treasure is there his heart is, wherever his body may be ; if it is 
 true that loving hearts, even in the imperfect unions of earth, do inter- 
 penetrate and enclose one another ; — then the mysticism which says " Christ 
 in me and I in Christ " is abundantly vindicated. And your Christianity 
 will be a shallow one, unless the truths which these two great complementary 
 thoughts suggest be truths verified in your experience. 
 
 70 
 
A MUTUAL INDWELLING. 
 
 That life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is 
 tn the Son of God, who loved me^ and gave Himself for me. — Gal. ii. 20. 
 
 I NEED not remind you how the great thought of mutual 
 indwelling is, through John's writings particularly, extended not 
 only to our relation to Christ, but to our relations to God the Father and 
 God the Spirit. The Apostle almost as frequently speaks about our 
 dwelling in God and God's dwelling in us, as he does about our dwelling 
 in Christ and Christ's dwelling in us. And he reports to us that Christ 
 spoke about the Spirit dwelling with us, and being in us, and that for ever. 
 So it is the " whole fulness of the Godhead," in all the phases of its 
 manifestation and possible relation to humanity, that is thus conceived of 
 as entering into this deep and most real relation to Christian souls. Into 
 that fire of God we may pass, and walk in the midst of the flame unharmed, 
 with nothing consumed except the bonds that hold us. 
 
 Let me say one word about the ways by which this mutual indwelling 
 may be procured and maintained. You talk about the doctrine as being 
 mystical. Well, the way to realise it as a fact is plain and unmystical 
 enough to suit anybody. There are two streams of representation in John's 
 writings about this matter. Here is a sample of one of them : *' He that 
 eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him." 
 Similarly, he says : "If that which ye have heard from the beginning 
 abide in you, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father." And, 
 still more definitely, *' Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of 
 God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God." So, then, the acceptance, by 
 our understandings and by our hearts, of the truth concerning Jesus Christ, 
 and the grasping of these truths so closely by faith that they become the 
 nourishment of our spirits, so that we eat His flesh and drink His blood, is 
 the condition of that mutual indwelling. 
 
 And if that seems to be too far removed from ordinary moralities to 
 satisfy those who will have no mysteries in their religion, and will not have 
 it anything else than a repetition of the plain dictates 01 conscience, take 
 the other stream of representations : " If we love one another, God abideth 
 in us." "He that abideth in love abideth in God." "If ye keep My 
 commandments, ye shall abide in My love." The harm of mysticism is 
 that it is divorced from common pedestrian morality. The mysticism of 
 Christianity enjoins the punctilious discharge of plain duties. " He that 
 keepeth His commandments abideth in Him and He in him." 
 
 71 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ONE OF STEADFAST PERSISTENCE. 
 
 Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. — 
 Rev. ii. lo. 
 
 I AM afraid that there are few things which the average Christian 
 March 12. ^ , . . i \ . , • 
 
 man of this generation more needs than the exhortation to stead- 
 fast continuance in the course which he says he has adopted. Most of us 
 have our Christianity by fits and starts. It is spasmodic and interrupted. 
 We grow, as the vegetable world grows, in the favourable months only, 
 and there are long intervals in which there is no progress. Far too many 
 of us have seasons of quickened consciousness and experience, and then 
 dreary winters in which there is no life, and nothing but black frost binding 
 the ground. 
 
 Take the lesson of this constantly recurring word "abide," and let 
 there be in your Christianity the homely virtue of perseverance, for heaven 
 is won and character is built up by homely virtues. *' No day without a 
 line," said the great author, as the secret of success. I look round upon 
 our Christian communities, and I see many whose Christian experience 
 is like some of the tropical rivers, bank full and foaming this month, and 
 next, when the hot sunshine comes out, a stagnant pond here and another 
 one there, and between them a ghastly stretch of white boulders. When 
 the meteorologist puts his sensitised paper out to record the hours of 
 brilliant sunshine in the day, there will come, in our climate and city, 
 most often, a line where the sun has had its power, and then a long stretch 
 of unchanged paper, where it had gone behind a cloud. That is a picture 
 of the Christian experience of a disastrously large number of us. Let us 
 learn this lesson, "Abide in My word; let My word abide in you." A 
 Christian life should be one of steadfast, unbroken persistence. 
 
 Oh ! but you say, "that is an ideal that nobody can get to." Well ! 
 I am not going to quarrel with anybody as to whether such an ideal is 
 possible or not. It seems to me a woeful waste of time to be fighting 
 about possible limits when we are so far short of the limits that are known. 
 Until our lives approximate a great deal more closely to a continuous line, 
 do not let us take each other by the throat because we may differ as to 
 whether the line can ever be absolutely closed up into unbroken continuity. 
 
 How beautiful it is to see a man, below whose feet time is crumbling 
 away, holding firmly by the Lord whom he has loved and served all his 
 days, and finding that the pillar of cloud, which guided him while he lived, 
 begins to glow in its heart of fire as the shadows fall, and is a pillar of light 
 to guide him when he comes to die. 
 
 72 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ONE OF ABIDING BLESSEDNESS. 
 
 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. — Matt. v. 8. 
 
 M h IS 0^^ Lord, in that same discourse in which He spoke about 
 abiding in us and we in Him, used the word very frequently in 
 n great variety of aspects, and amongst them He said, "These things have 
 [ spoken unto you, that My joy may abide in you." And in other places 
 we read about " abiding in the light," or having eternal life abiding in us. 
 And in all these various places of the use of this expression there lies the 
 one thought that it is possible for us to make, here and now, our lives one 
 long series of conscious enjoyment of the highest blessings. There will 
 be ups and downs, there will be circumstances that agitate and disturb. 
 It will sometimes be liard for us to keep hold of our Lord, when tempests 
 are sweeping us away from Him, and the sea is running hard and high. 
 But, " My joy may remain in you." And, even if there be a circumference 
 of sorrow, joy and peace may be the centre, and not be truly broken by 
 the incursions of calamities. There are springs of fresh water that dart up 
 from the depths of the salt sea, and spread themselves over its waves. It 
 is possible, in the inmost chamber, to be still whilst the storm is raging 
 without. Oh ! if we are keeping our hold on Christ, and dwell in that 
 strong fortress, no matter what enemies may assail us, we shall be kept 
 in perfect peace. It is our own fault if ever external things have power 
 over us enough to shake our inmost and central blessedness. " As sorrowful, 
 yet always rejoicing." 
 
 Amidst all the tragical changes to which all things around us, and we 
 ourselves, are exposed, let us grasp and keep our hold on the abiding 
 Christ, "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever," and in Him we, 
 too, fleeting as we are, shall endure for evermore. 
 
 May I add one word ? John says about another kind of abiding : *' He 
 that loveth not abideth in death" ; and he says, " He that believeth not 
 on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." 
 There is a permanence heavy with all loss and tragical with all despair, 
 "Abide in Me," for, severed from Me, ye are nothing. 
 
 Christ is all in all to His people. He is all their strength, wisdom, and 
 righteousness. They are but the clouds irradiated by the sun, and bathed 
 in its brightness. He is the light which flames in their grey mist and turns 
 it to a glory. They are but the belt, and cranks, and wheels ; He is the 
 power. They are but the channel, muddy and dry ; He is the flashing life 
 which fills it and makes it a joy. They are the body ; He is the soul 
 dwelling in every part to save it from corruption and give movement and 
 warmth. 
 
 "Thou art the organ, whose full breath is thunder, 
 am the keys, beneath Thy finj^ers pressed." 
 
 73 
 
THE PERMANENT LIFE OF THE CHRISTIAN. 
 He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. — i John ii. 17. 
 
 These words imply, not so much dwelling, or persistence, or 
 Karen 14. ^ _ c. i 
 
 continuousness, during our earthly career, as, rather, the absolute 
 and unlimited permanence of the obedient life. It will endure when all 
 tilings else, " the world, and the lust thereof," have slid away into obscurity, 
 and have ceased to be. Now, of course, it is true that Christian men, 
 temples of Christ, are subject to the same law of m.utation and decay as 
 all created things are ; and it is true, on the other hand, that men 
 whose lives are "cribbed, cabined, and confined" within the limits of 
 the material and visible have these lives as permanent, in a very solemn 
 and awful sense, inasmuch as their fruit continues, though it is fruitless 
 fruit, and inasmuch as they have to bear for ever the responsibility of their 
 past. The lives that run parallel with God's will last, and when everything 
 that has been against that will, or negligent of it, is summed up, and comes 
 to nought, and is abolished, these lives continue. The life that is in con- 
 formity with the will of God lasts in another sense, inasmuch as it persists 
 through all changes, even the supreme change that is wrought by death, in 
 the same direction, and is substantially the same. For the man that was 
 doing God's will here, down among cotton bales, and ledgers, and retorts, 
 and dictionaries, will do God's will yonder, amidst the glories ; and it will 
 be the same life, with the same guiding principles, with the same root for 
 its activities. So it will last for ever. 
 
 If we grasp the throne of God, we shall be co-eternal with the throne 
 that we grasp. We cannot die, nor our work pass and be utterly abolished, 
 as long as He lives. Some trees that, like sturdy Scotch firs, have strong 
 trunks, and obstinate branches, and unfading foliage, looking as if they 
 would defy any blast or decay, run their roots along the surface, and down 
 they go before the storm ; others, far more slender in appearance, strike 
 theirs deep down, and they stand whatever winds blow. So strike your 
 roots into God and Christ. "He that doeth the will of God abideth iox 
 ever." And, "In My Father's house are many abiding-places." They 
 that have here dwelt in Christ, persistently seeking to have His truth 
 dwelling in them and wrought out by them, will pass into the permanences 
 of the heavenly home, 
 
 74 
 
THE EVER-PRESENT LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood. — Rev. i. 5. 
 
 The foundation of all our hopes, and all our joys, and all our 
 strength in the work of the world, should be this firm conviction, 
 that we are wrapped about by, and evermore in, an endless ocean, so to 
 speak, of a present Divine love, of a present loving Christ. He loveth us^ 
 says John ; and he speaks to all ages and people. The units of each 
 generation and of every land have a right to feel themselves included in that 
 word, and every human being is entitled to turn the *' us " into *' me." For 
 no crowds block the access to His heart, nor empty the cup of His love 
 before it reaches the thirsty lips on the furthest outskirts of the multitude. 
 He does with all the multitude who hang on Him as He did when He 
 fed the thousands. He ranks' them all on the grass, and in order ministers 
 to each his portion in due season. We do not jostle each other. There 
 is room in that heart of Christ for us all. 
 
 "The glorious sky, embracing all, 
 Is like its Maker's love ; 
 Wherewith encircled, great and small 
 In peace and order move." 
 
 Every star has its separate place in the great round, **and He calleth 
 them all by name," and holds them in His mind. So we, and all our 
 brethren, have each our own orbit and our station in the Heaven of Christ's 
 heart, and it embraces, distinguishes, and sustains us all, *' Unto Him that 
 loveth us." 
 
 Another thought may be suggested, too, of how this present timeless 
 love of Christ is unexhausted by exercise, pouring itself ever out, and ever 
 full notwithstanding. They tell us that the sun is fed by impact, from 
 objects from without, and that the day will come when its furnace-flames 
 shall be quenched into grey ashes. But this love is fed by no contributions 
 from without, and will outlast the burnt-out sun, and gladden the ages of 
 ages for ever. 
 
 All generations, all thirsty lips and ravenous desires, may slake their 
 thirst and satisfy themselves at that great fountain, and it shall not sink one 
 inch in its marble basin. Christ's love, after all creatures have received 
 from it, is as full as at the beginning, and unto us upon whom the ends of 
 the earth are come, this precious and sweet, all sufficing love pours as full 
 a tide as when first it blessed that little handful that gathered round about 
 Him on earth. Other rivers run shallow as they broaden, but this " river of 
 God " is as deep when it wraps the world as if it were poured through the 
 narrows of one heart. 
 
 75 
 
THE UNCHILLED LOVE OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 IVho loved me, and gave Himself for me. — Gal. ii. 20. 
 
 The love of Christ is unchilled by the sovereignty and glory of 
 His exaltation. There is a wonderful difference between the 
 Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of the Revelation. People have 
 exaggerated the difference into contradiction, and then, running to the 
 other extreme, others have been tempted to deny that there was any. 
 But there is one thing that is not different. The nature behind the 
 circumstances is the same. The Christ of the Gospels is the Christ in 
 His lowliness, bearing the weight of man's sins ; the Christ of the 
 Apocalypse is the Christ in His loftiness, ruling over the world and time,— 
 but it is the same Christ. The one is surrounded by weakness and the 
 other is girded with strength, but it is the same Christ. The one is 
 treading the weary road of earth, the other is sitting at the right hand of 
 God the Father Almighty ; but it is the same Christ. The one is the 
 *' Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," the other is the Man 
 glorified and a companion of Divinity ; but it is the same Christ. The 
 hand that holds the seven stars is as loving as the hand that was laid in 
 blessing upon the little children ; the face that is as the sun shining in its 
 strength beams with as much love as when it drew publicans and harlots 
 to His feet. The breast that is girt with the golden girdle is the same 
 breast upon which John leaned his happy head. The Christ is the same, 
 and the love is unaltered. From the midst of the glory and the sevenfold 
 briUiancy of the light which is inaccessible, the same tender heart bends 
 down over us that bent down over all the weary and the distressed when 
 He Himself was weary; and we can lift up our eyes above stars and 
 systems and material splendours, right up to the central point of the 
 universe, where the throned Christ is, and see "Him that loveth us" — 
 
 even us i 
 
 When He was here on earth, the multitude thronged Him and pressed 
 Him, but the wasted forefinger of one poor timid woman could reach the 
 garment's hem for all the crowd. He recognised the difference between 
 the touch that had sickness and supplication in it and the jostlings of the 
 mob, and His healing power passed at once to her who needed and asked 
 it, though so many were surging round Him. So still He knows and 
 answers the silent prayt." of the loving and the needy heart. Howsoever 
 tremulous and palsied the ^;nger, howsoever imperfect and ignorant the 
 faith, His love delights to ai.Nwer and to over-answer it, as He did with 
 that woman, who not only got the healing which she craved, but bore 
 away besides the consciousness of His love and the cleansing of her sins. 
 
 76 
 
THE TYRANNY OF SIN.. 
 
 Every one that commitieth sin is the bond-servant of sin. — John viii. 34. 
 
 __ , ._ Every wrong thing that we do tends to become our master and 
 our tyrant. We are held and bound in the chains of our sins. 
 The awful influence of habit, the dreadful effect upon a nature of a 
 corrupted conscience, the power of regretful memories, the pollution 
 arising from the very knowledge of what is wrong,— these are some of the 
 strands out of which the ropes that bind us are twisted. We know how 
 tight they grip. I am speaking now, no doubt, to people who are as 
 completely manacled and bound by evils of some sort — evils of flesh, of 
 sense, of lust ; of intemperance in some of you ; of pride and avarice and 
 worldliness in others of you ; of vanity and frivolity and selfishness in 
 others of you — as completely manacled as if there were iron gyves upon 
 your wrists and fetters upon your ankles. 
 
 You remember the old story of the prisoner in his tower, delivered by 
 his friend, who sent a beetle to crawl up the wall, fastening a silken thread 
 to it, which had a thread a little heavier attached to the end of that, and 
 so on, and so on, each thickening in diameter until they got to a cable. 
 That is how the devil has got hold of a great many of us. He weaves 
 round us silken threads to begin with, slight, as if we could break them 
 with a touch of our fingers, and they draw after them, as certainly as 
 destiny, "at each remove" a thickening "chain," until, at last, we are 
 tied and bound, and our captor laughs at our mad plunges for freedom, 
 which are as vain as a wild bull's in the hunter's nets. Some of you have 
 made an attempt at shading off sin, — how have you got on with it ? As a 
 man would do who, with a file made out of an old soft knife, tried to work 
 through his fetters. He might make a little impression on the surface, 
 but he would mostly scratch his own skin, and wear his own fingers, and 
 to very little purpose. 
 
 But the chains can be got off. Christ looses them by "His blood." 
 Like a drop of corrosive acid, that blood, falling upon the fetters, dissolves 
 them, and the prisoner goes free, emancipated by the Son. That death 
 has power to deliver us from the guilt and penalty of sin. The Bible does 
 noc give us the whole theory of an atonement, but the fact is seen clear in 
 its passages that Christ died for us, and that the bitter consequences of sin 
 in their most intense bitterness, even that separation from God which is 
 the true death, were borne by Him for our sakes, on our account, and in 
 our stead. 
 
 His blood looses the etters of our sins, inasmuch as His death, touching 
 our hearts, and also bringing to us new powers through His Spirit, which 
 is shed forth in consequence of His finished work, frees us from the power 
 of sin, and brings into operation new powers and motives which free us 
 from our ancient slavery. The chains which bound us shrivel and melt 
 as the ropes that bound the Hebrew youths in the fire, before the warmth 
 of His manifested love and the glow of His Spirit's power. 
 
 77 
 
THE GRATITUDE OF REDEEMED SOULS. 
 
 Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the 
 honour mii the power. — Rev, iv. 1 1. 
 
 Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain. — Rev. v. 12. 
 
 Iff ~ h 18 Irrepressible gratitude bursts into doxologies from John's 
 lips, even here at the beginning of the book, as the seer thinks 
 of the love of Christ ; and all through the Apocalypse we hear the shout of 
 praise from earth or heaven. The book which closes the New Testament 
 "shuts up all" "with a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping 
 symphonies," as Milton says in his stately music, and may well represent 
 for us, in that perpetual cloud of incense rising up fragrant to the Throne 
 of God and of the Lamb, the unceasing love and thanksgiving which 
 should be man's answer to Christ's love and sacrifice. 
 
 Such love and praise, which is but love speaking, is all which He asks. 
 Love can only be paid by love. Any other recompense offered to it is 
 coinage of another currency, that is not current in its kingdom. The only 
 recompense that satisfies love is its own image reflected in another heart. 
 That is what Jesus Christ wants of you. He does not want your admiration, 
 your outward reverence, your lip homage, your grudging obedience ; His 
 heart hungers for more and other gifts from you. He wants your love, and 
 is unsatisfied without it. He desired it so much that He was willing to die 
 to procure it, as if a mother might think, "My children have been cold 
 to me while I lived ; perhaps, if I were to give my life to help them, their 
 hearts might melt." All the awful expenditure of love stronger than 
 death is meant to draw forth our love. He comes to each of us, and 
 pleads with us for our hearts, wooing us to love Him by showing us all 
 He has done for us and all He will do. Surely the Cross borne for us 
 should move us ! Surely the throne prepared for us should touch us into 
 gratitude ! 
 
 That Lord who died and lives dwells now in the heavens, the centre 
 of a mighty chorus and tempest of praise which surges round His throne, 
 loud as the voice of many waters, and sweet as harpers harping on their 
 harps. The main question for us is, Does He hear our voice in it ? Are 
 our lips shut ? Are our hearts cold ? Do we m.eet His fire of love with icy 
 indifference? Do we repay His sacrifice with unmoved self-regard, and 
 meet His pleadings with closed ears ? "Do ye thus requite the Lord, O 
 foolish people and unwise ? " 
 
 Take this question home to your heart, How much owest thou unto the 
 I^ord? He has loved thee, has given Himself for thee, and His sacrifice 
 will unlock thy fetters and set thee free. Will you be silent in the 
 presence of such transcendent mercy? Shall we not rather, moved by His 
 dying love, and joyful in the possession of deliverance through His Cross, 
 lift up our voices and hearts in a perpetual song of praise, to which our 
 lives of glad obedience shall be as perfect music accompanying noble 
 words, " Unto Him that loveth us, and looscth us from our sins by His 
 own blood ? " 
 
 78 
 
A GOOD REASON FOR CONFIDENCE. 
 
 And noiv, my Utile children, abide in Him ; that, if He shall be mani- 
 fested, we may have boldness, and not be ashamed before Him at His 
 coming. — i John ii. 28. 
 
 The happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and 
 making me His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate 
 that darkness that lies on that beyond. 
 
 " We are the sons of God, and,'" just because we are, '* it does not yet 
 appear what we shall be." Or, as the words are rendered in the Revised 
 Version, " it is not yet made manifest what we shall be." The meaning 
 of that expression, " It doth not appear," or, " It has not been manifested," 
 may be put into very plain words, I think, thus : John would simply say 
 to us, '* There has never been set forth before men's eyes in this earthly 
 life of ours an example or an instance of what the sons of God are to be in 
 another state of being." And so, because men have never had the instance 
 before them, they do not know much about that state. 
 
 In some sense there has been a manifestation through the life of Jesus 
 Christ. Christ has died ; Christ is risen again. Christ has gone about 
 amongst men upon earth after resurrection. Christ has been raised to the 
 right hand of God, and sits there in the glory of the Father. So far it has 
 been manifested what we shall be. But the risen Christ is not the glorified 
 Christ ; and although He has set forth before man's senses irrefragably the 
 fact of another life, and to some extent some glimpses and gleams of know- 
 ledge with regard to certain portions of it, I suppose that the "glorious 
 body " of Jesus Christ was not assumed by Him till the cloud received 
 Him out of their sight, nor indeed could He, even while Fle moved among 
 the material realities of this world, and did eat and drink before them. So 
 that, while we thankfully recognise that Christ's resurrection and ascension 
 have brought life and immortality to light, we must remember that it is the 
 fact, and not the manner of the fact, which they make plain, and that, 
 even after His example, it has not been manifested what is the body of this 
 glory which He now wears, and therefore it has not yet been manifested what 
 we shall be when we are fashioned after its likeness. There has been no 
 manifestation, then, to sense or to human experience, of that future, and 
 therefore there is next to no knowledge about it. 
 
 " When He shall be manifested." To what period does that refer ? It 
 seems most natural to take the manifestation here as being the same as that 
 spoken of only a verse or two before. "And now, little children, abide 
 in Him ; that when He shall be fnanifestcd, we may have confidence, 
 and not be ashamed before Him at His coming." That "coming," 
 then, is the " manifestation " of Christ ; and it is at the period of His 
 coming in His glory that His servants shall be like Him, and see Him 
 as He is." 
 
 79 
 
CHRISTIAN GLADNESS. 
 
 With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. — IsA. xii. 3. 
 
 „ ,20 There are better things than joy. Indeed, there are few things 
 of smaller account than it, if taken by itself. A life framed on 
 purpose to secure it is contemptible and barren of nobility or beauty. It 
 is certain to be a failure, as it deserves to be. To pursue it is to lose it. 
 The only way to get it is to follow steadily the path of duty, without 
 thinking of joy, and then, like sleep, it comes most surely unsought, and 
 we "being in the way," the angel of God, bright-haired Joy, is sure to 
 meet us. 
 
 The best in a man recoils from any system which makes much of joy 
 as a motive to action, and Christian teachers have sometimes done unwit- 
 ting harm by preaching a kind of gospel which has come to little more 
 than this : Be Christians that you may be happy. No doubt the natural 
 result of every right and pure course of life is to bring a real joy ; and 
 lightness of heart follows goodness as certainly as fragrance is breathed 
 from the opened flowers. With every pure action pure joy is bound up. 
 Men have staggered at the inequalities of outward fortune, and been driven 
 by them to doubt whether there were any God. But it would be a far 
 more overwhelming difficulty if there were no connection between goodness 
 and happiness ; if a man could love and serve God, and not find joy in 
 proportion to his love and service ; if a pure and sober-suited Joy were 
 not one of the "virgins following" Religion, the Queen, it would be 
 doubly hard to believe in God. 
 
 So, though it is by no means the highest reason for being a Christian, 
 nor the loftiest view to take of the effects of Christianity, it would be folly 
 to refuse to recognise the fact that a true Christian life is a joyful life, or 
 to neglect to use it as a real, though subsidiary, motive to such a life. It is 
 quite possible to be beset all about with cares and troubles and sorrows, 
 and yet to feel, in spite of loss and disappointment and loneliness, a pure 
 foundation of joys Divine and celestial gladness welling up in our inmost 
 hearts, sweet amidst bitter waters. There may be life beneath the snow ; 
 there may be fire burning, like the old Greek fire, below the water ; we 
 may pour oil on the stormiest waves, and it will find its way to the surface^ 
 and do something to smooth the billows ; whilst " in heaviness through 
 manifold temptations" we may yet have a "joy that is unspeakable and 
 full of glory." For I suppose that a man has this power, that if he have 
 two objects of contemplation, to one or other of which he may turn his 
 mind, he can choose which of the two he will turn to. Like a railway 
 signalman, you may either flash the light through the pure white glaot; or 
 the darkly coloured one. You may either choose to look at everything 
 through the medium of the sorrows that belong to time or through the 
 medium of the joys that flow from eternity. The question is, which of the 
 two do we choose shall be uppermost in our hearts and give the colour to 
 our experience. 
 
 80 
 
JOY UNSPEAKABLE AND FULL OF GLORY. 
 
 Whom, not havwg seen, ye love ; on whom, though now ye see Him 
 not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of gloty : 
 receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. — i Peter i. 
 8,9. 
 
 __ , 21 It is a proof of the low average of Christian life that this 
 language seems to most commentators all too wide and exuberant 
 to describe the ordinary Christian. But the Apostle is speaking about the 
 ided type, about the possibility ; and if the reality of an average Christian 
 exj>erience does not come up to that, so much the worse for the experience. 
 It does not affect the possibility in the very slightest degree. I admit the 
 language is strong. But, as we have already remarked, it is not so difficult 
 to explain the strong epithets as applied to the possibilities of Christian joy, 
 even here, as it is to break up a sentence so compactly knit as this into two 
 halves, one referring to this side of the grave and the other to the world 
 beyond. 
 
 But notice that, whatever maybe the depth and greatness of this joy, 
 Peter clearly anticipates that it is to be simultaneous with the " heaviness 
 arising from manifold temptations." 
 
 The two einotions may subsist side by side, neither neutralising the 
 other, nor the bright and the dark so blending as to make a monotonous 
 grey. But the occasions for sorrow may be keenly felt, and the joy which 
 comes from higher springs may none the less possess the soul. Thci separate 
 existence of the two extremes rather than their coalescence in an apathetic 
 middle state is best. Paul's apparent paradox is a deep truth, "as sorrow- 
 ful, yet alway rejoicing." 
 
 And then the language of Peter reminds us that the gladness which 
 thus belongs to the Christian Hfe is silent and a transfigured "joy unspeak- 
 able and glorified," as the word might be rendered. " lie is a poor man 
 who can count his flock," said the old Latin proverb. Those joys are on 
 the surface that can be spoken. The deep river goes silently, with equable 
 flow, to the great ocean ; it is the little shallow brook that chatters amongst 
 the pebbles. And so all great emotion, all deep and noble feeling is 
 quiet ; as Cordelia, in the play, says, she can " love and be silent," so we 
 at our happiest must be glad and silent. If we can speak our joy, it is 
 scarcely worth the speaking. The true Christian gladness does not need 
 laughter nor many words ; it is calra and grave, and the world would say 
 severe. " The gods approve the depth and not the tumult of the soul." 
 
 The true Christian joy is glorified, says Peter. The glory of Heaven 
 shines upon it and transfigures it. It is suffused and filled with the glory 
 for which the Christian hopes, like Stephen when " God's glory smote 
 him on the face " and made it shine as an angel's. Joy may easily become 
 frivolous and contemptible, and there is nothing more difficult in the con- 
 duct of life than to keep gladness from degenerating and from corrupting 
 the character. But the effect of Christianity, even on the common human 
 joys, is to exalt and dignify them, besides the effect in giving the joys proper 
 to itself which are in their very nature exalted and exalting. It changes, 
 if I may so say, the light, fluttering Cupids of earthly joys, with fiims) 
 butterfly wings, into calm, grave angels with mighty plumes. 
 
 81 Q 
 
JOY THE RESULT OF FAITH. 
 
 Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My Name : ask, and ye shall receive ^ 
 that your joy may be fulfilled,''' — John xvi. 24. 
 
 The act of faith is the condition of joy. Joy springs from the 
 *^'' ' contemplation or experience of something calculated to excite it ; 
 and the more real and permanent and all-sufficient that object, the fuller 
 and surer the joy. But where can we find such an object as Him with 
 whom w^e are brought into union by our faith? Jesus Christ is all- 
 sufficient, full of pity, full of beauty and righteousness, all that we can 
 desire, — and all this for ever. Union with Him provides an object on 
 which all the fervour of the heart may pour itself out. In Him our faith 
 grasps the absolutely good and perfect. Confidence is joy. But when 
 confidence fastens on such a Christ, it is joy heightened and glorified. If 
 we have the certain knowledge that the dear Lord died for us, and live 
 realising His power and sanctifying Spirit, His constant tenderness and 
 more than womanly sympathy and affection, then nothing can come to 
 us that will deprive us of our gladness as long as our hearts are anchored 
 upon Him only. Our gladness will be accurately co-temporaneous with our 
 trust. As long as we are exercising faith, so long shall we experience joy ; 
 not one instant longer. It is like a piano, whose note ceases the moment 
 you lift your finger from the key ; not like an organ, in which the sound 
 persists for a time after. 
 
 The moment you turn away your eye from Jesus Christ, that moment 
 does the light fade from your eye. It is like a landscape lying bathed in 
 the sunshine ; a little white cloud creeps across the tace of the sun, and all 
 the brightness is gone from leagues of country in an instant. As long as, 
 and not a hair's breadth longer than, our faith in Christ is exercised, so long 
 have we gladness. You cannot live upon yesterday's faith, nor furbish up 
 again old experience to produce new joy. Ever and ever you must draw 
 afresh from the fountain, and secure constant joy by continuance of renewed 
 confidence in Him. 
 
 There is a sufficient reason for the failure of most Christian lives to 
 attain this perfection of joy as their habitual possession, in the interrupted 
 and iragmcntary character of their faith. If we are only exercising it by 
 fits and starts, we shall have only short and far-between visits of gladness 
 in our lives. The measure of our faith is the measure of our joy. He that 
 soweth sparingly of the former shall reap sparingly of the latter. And the 
 duration of our joy depends on the duration of our faith. What wonder, 
 then, that instead of its continual sunshine, we should have but occasional 
 glimpses of its brightness, and that our skies should mostly be weeping or 
 grey with clouds? The reason for such imperfect and interrupted joy is 
 simply our imperfect and interrupted faith. 
 
 82 
 
THE GIFT WHICH ENHANCES JOY. 
 
 The God of hope Jill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may 
 abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Ghost. — Rom. xv. 13. 
 
 The exercise of faith is itself joy, apart from what faith secures. 
 
 We stretch out our hands to Christ, and the act is blessedness. 
 
 But we lay hold of His hand, and in it there is a blessing which, when we 
 
 take it, makes us glad. Faith is the condition of joy ; and the salvation of 
 
 our souls, which we receive as its end, is the great reason for joy. 
 
 If my heart is humbly, and even tremulously, resting upon Him, I have 
 got, in the measure of my faith, the real germ of all salvation. What are 
 the elements of which salvation consists? The fact and the sense of 
 forgiveness to begin with. Well, I have that, have I not, if I trust Christ ? 
 A consciousness of favour, a sense of the friendship of God in Christ ? — I 
 have these, if I trust Him. A growing possession of pure desires, heaven- 
 wrought tastes, of all that is called in the Bible "the new man" — well! 
 I have that, surely, if I trust Him. My soul is saved when it is delivered 
 from its sin, and filled with the love of God, and when the will is set in 
 glad accord with His will. Such progressive salvation is given to me if 
 I am trusting in Him, '* Whom, having not seen, I love." All these will 
 tend to joy. The consciousness of forgiveness will make me glad. The 
 sense of His love will make me glad. The consciousness of union with 
 Jesus will make me glad. Increasing deliverance from the burden of my 
 self-will will make me glad. A growing obedience to Him will make me 
 glad. It is joy to the just to do judgment. Brightening hopes will make 
 me glad ; and, in a thousand other ways, joy unspeakable and full of glory 
 will attend the reception in our souls of that salvation which begins here 
 and is perfected hereafter. 
 
 Surely, if we can find a power which will thus ennoble and calm our 
 joy, and make it the ally of all things lovely and of good report, we shall 
 have found a treasure indeed. 
 
 Such a power we can find in fellowship with Jesus Christ, through 
 whom our ovs, which have too long trailed along the ground, may be lifted 
 gii above the frivolities, and sometimes criminalities and hollownesses, 
 which, with so many of us, do duty for gladness. "As is the crackling of 
 thorns under a pot," so is much of the world's mirth. Make sure, my 
 friend, that your joy is deep and still, noble and glorified, being drawn 
 from Christ. 
 
 8.3 
 
THE PERFECT JOY OF A PRESENT SALVATION. 
 
 In Thy presence is fuhiess of joy : in Thy right hand there are pleasures 
 for evermore. — Psalm xvi. II. 
 
 The present salvation points onwards to its own completion, 
 "° ■ and in that way becomes further a source of joy. In its depths 
 we see reflected a blue heaven with many a star. The salvation here 
 touches the soul alone ; but salvation in its perfect form touches the body, 
 soul, and spirit, and transforms all the outward nature to correspond to 
 these and make a worthy dwelling for perfected men. That prospect 
 brings joy beyond the reach of aught else to afford. The glory of that 
 perfect salvation gleams already, and touches the Christian joy into noble- 
 ness and solemn greatness. And as the salvation is eternal, so the joy may 
 be abiding. **Joys are like poppies spread," and when the opiate petals 
 swiftly drop, an ugly brown head like a skull is left, full of poisonous 
 seeds. But this joy blooms amaranthine flowers, and being the reflex of 
 Christ's own eternal joy, endures according to His promise, "that My joy 
 might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." 
 
 That perfect salvation heightens our joy here by the hope of a perfect 
 joy hereafter. We dare to look forward to a state when sorrow and joy 
 shall no more be in strange juxtaposition, the white and the black dog in 
 the same leash, but joy shall reign alone and sorrow be dethroned. Our 
 partial experience of salvation here warrants that anticipation. 
 
 Here we are, like the Laplanders in their winter huts, pitched upon the 
 snowy plain. Desolation and white death outside, but inside light and 
 warmth, food and companionship. Without our hut are sorrow, and loss, 
 and change, and care, and loneliness, and anxiety, and perplexity, and all 
 the discipline that is needful for us, though within we have Christ. But 
 then we shall journey south to the lands of the sun, where no storms rage 
 and winter never comes. Here our joy is like an exotic plant, stunted and 
 struggling with an ungenial sky and unkindly soil ; there in its native place 
 it spreads a broader leaf and bears a sweeter fruit. Here we taste of the 
 river of His pleasures, there we shall drink from the fountain. All comes 
 from Christ, the incomplete salvation and sorrow-shaded joy of the present, 
 the perfect salvation and unmingled gladness of the future. The nearer we 
 are to Him, the more of both shall wc possess, till we reach His presence, 
 where there is fulness of joy, and sit at His right hand, where there arc 
 pleasures for evermore. 
 
 *4 
 
OUR LORD'S DIVINE NATURE. 
 
 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness : He who was 
 manifested in the flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among 
 the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory. — i TiM. iii. i6. 
 
 M h 25 '^^^^ Divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is woven through 
 the whole of the Book of Revelation, like a golden thread, and 
 manifestly is needed to explain the fact of this solemn ascription of praise 
 (see Revelation i., 5, 6) to Him, as well as to warrant the application of 
 each clause of it to Kis will. For John to lift up his voice in this grand 
 doxology to Jesus Christ was blasphemy, if it was not adoration of Him as 
 Divine. He may have been right or wrong in his belief, but surely the man 
 who sang such a hymn to his Master beheved Him to be the Incarnate 
 Word, God manifest in the flesh. If we share that faith, we can believe 
 in Christ's present love to us all. It is no misty sentiment or rhetorical 
 exaggeration to believe that every man, woman, and child that is or shall 
 be on the earth till the end of time has a distinct place in His heart, is 
 an object of His knowledge and of His love. 
 
 This one word, then, is the revelation to us of Christ's love, as unaffected 
 by time. Our thoughts are carried by it up into the region where dwells 
 the Divine nature, above the various phases of the fleeting moments which 
 we call past, present, and future. These are but the lower layer of clouds 
 which drive before the v/ind, and melt from shape to shape. He dwells 
 above in the naked, changeless blue. 
 
 As of all His nature, so, blessed be His Name ! of His love we can be 
 sure that time cannot bound it. We say, not, "It was," or, " It will be," 
 but we can proclaim the changeless, timeless, majestic present of that love 
 which burns and is not consumed, but glows v/ith as warm a flame for the 
 latest generations as for those men who stood within the reach of its rays 
 while He was on earth. " I am the First and the Last," says Christ, and 
 His love partakes of that eternity. It is like a golden fringe which keeps 
 the web of creation from ravelling out. Before the earliest of creatures 
 was this love. After the latest it shall be. It circles them all around, and 
 locks them all in its enclosure. It is the love of the Divine heart, for it is 
 the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. It is the love of a human 
 heart, for that heart could shed its blood to loose us from our sins. Shall 
 we not take this love for ours ? The heart that can hold all the units of all 
 successive generations, and so love each that each may claim a share in the 
 grandest issues of its love, must be a Divine heart, for only there is there 
 room for the millions to stand, all distinguishable and all enriched and 
 blessed by that love. Is there any meaning but exaggerated sentiment in 
 this word of Revelation, any meaning that will do for a poor heart struggling 
 with its own evil, and with the world's miseries and devilries, to rest upon, 
 unless we believe that Christ is Divine, and loves us with an everlastino; 
 love because He is God manifest in the flesh ? 
 
THE SIN OF SINS. 
 
 And He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. — 
 Matt. xiii. 58. 
 
 ,, , There is but one sin in the world, properly speakirc:, and that 
 March 26, . - r i y i t,? 
 
 is the sin of not loving God. The sins we commonly speak of 
 are but different manifestations of this one sin — different in degree, diverse 
 in various respects, diverse in enormity, but the enormity is chiefly to be 
 determined by the measure of the revelation made of the character of God 
 unto us. God becomes manifest in Christ ; and lo ! this unknown God is 
 found to be a Being of most amazing love, humbling Himself to the 
 meanest of mankind, bearing all things, suffering long, seeking not His 
 own, answering the insults and contradictions of sinners with words and 
 acts of incredible blessing. 
 
 Thus dods the glorious Being, who upholdeth all things by the word 
 of His power, draw near to you with papers of manumission, whereby you 
 may escape the captivity of sin and Satan, the liability to death and hell ; 
 with hands pierced in the conflict with him who has the power of death, 
 winning for you a path to life and glory ; and now the universe looks on to 
 see how you will receive the words of this Redeemer. It is possible for 
 you to commit a sin of greater magnitude than you conceive of by simply 
 neglecting the words of Christ. How fearful the alienation of the heart 
 from God when such a surpassing embodiment of Divine love fails to 
 overcome the indifference of that heart ! 
 
 The terrible thing about the sin of unbelief is that its life is a life ot 
 slumber. It makes no noise in the heart. It has no visible shape. An 
 angry word that falls from your lips has a reverberation in the depth of 
 your heart ; but unbelief is simply a state, and does not ordinarily reveal 
 itself by any overt symptom. It is the atmosphere in wliich you move ; 
 and, as you never moved in any other, it does not shock you. But it is 
 the sin of sins, and until you learn to hate it above all sins, there is little 
 hope of your deliverance from sin. 
 
 A warmer tone oi spiritual life would change the atmosphere which 
 unbelief needs for its growth. It belongs lo the fauna of tlie glacial epoch ; 
 and when the rigours of that wintry time begin to melt, and warmer days 
 to set in, the creatures of the ice have to retreat to arctic wildernesses, and 
 leave a land no longer suited for their life. Dig down to the living Rock, 
 Christ and His infinite love lo you, and let it be the strong foundation, 
 built into which you and your love may become living stones, a holy 
 temple, partaking of the firmness and nature of that on which it rests. 
 
 86 
 
CHRISTIAN JOY A DUTY. 
 
 Though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shaU fruit be in the vines ; 
 the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; the flock 
 shall be ait off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall; yet 
 J zvill rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of tny salvation.-- 
 Hab. iii. 17, 18. 
 
 It is a plain, positive duty to cultivate true Christian joy. 
 " Rejoice in the Lord always" is a command. The true ideal 
 of Christian character gives a very prominent place to gladness, and they 
 who do not in some measure attain to a joyous religion fail in a very 
 important part of Christian duty. Of course there are many experiences 
 in Christian life, and there are sides of Christian truth which are calculated 
 to produce a sobered solemnity and sadness. But whilst all that is 
 perfectly true, it is also true that it is incumbent upon us Christian people 
 so to gather into our hearts the far more abounding joys of Divine com- 
 munion, quiet trust, and bright hope, as that there shall be no room in our 
 lives for despondency or despair, and not much room in our lives for tears. 
 Christian gladness is Christian duty. 
 
 Ah ! but you say : "I cannot help my circumstances, and they hinder 
 joy." No ! but God's Gospel is given to us to make us think less of our 
 circumstances, and to say, as the prophet said of old, "Though the 
 fig-tree shall not blossom, and there be no fruit in the vine," or, in 
 modern language, "Though trade be bad, and the profits of my business 
 be decreasing ; though I have but a poor outlook for the future, and do 
 not know what I am to turn to next ; though my home be desolate com- 
 pared with what it was, and faces that used to be beside me have gone into 
 the dust for ever, yet will I joy in the Lord, and rejoice in the God of my 
 salvation." 
 
 Has it come to this, that our Christianity is the kind of thing that the 
 devil suggested Job's religion was — that we are only going to trust when 
 there is not much need for it, and to believe in Him and love Him when 
 He is doing well with us ? If we are at the mercy of circumstances, then 
 we need to look to the reality of our Christianity. 
 
 But you may say : " I cannot control my temperament. I am not 
 naturally sanguine or buoyant in my disiDosition." No ! Well, God's 
 Gospel was given to us to control our temperaments, and to make it 
 possible by reason of its great gifts and motives, that characters which 
 were not naturally inclined to be joyful should be made so. And if our 
 Christianity does nothing for us in the way of helping us to appropriate 
 alien virtues, I do not know what difference there is between "nature" 
 and "grace" ; and I think we had better see to it whether we have any 
 higher power than our own working in our hearts. 
 
 S7 
 
THE GREATNESS OF TRIFLES. 
 
 And they compel one passing by, Simon of Cyrene, coming from the 
 country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to go with Him, that he might 
 bear His cross. — Mark xv. 21. 
 
 Iff \2& ^^^^^ little these people knew that they were making this man 
 immortal ! What a strange fate that is which has befallen those 
 persons in the Gospel narrative, who for an instant came into contact 
 with Jesus Christ. Like ships passing across the white splendour of the 
 moonlight on the sea, they gleam silvery pure for a moment as they 
 cross the track, and then are lost and swallowed up again in the darkness. 
 
 This man Simon, fortuitously, as men say, meeting the little procession 
 at the gate of the city, for an instant is caught in the radiance of the light, 
 and stands out visible for evermore to all the world ; and then sinks into 
 the blackness, and we know no more about him. This brief glimpse tells 
 us very little, and yet the man and his act and its consequences may be 
 worth thinking about. If that man had started from the little village 
 where he lived five minutes earlier or later, if he had walked a little faster 
 or slower, if he had happened to be lodging on the other side of Jeru- 
 salem, or if the whim had taken him to go in at another gate, or if the 
 centurion's eye had not chanced to alight on him in the crowd, or if the 
 centurion's fancy had picked out somebody else to carry the cross — then 
 all his life would have been different. And so it is always. You go 
 down one turning rather than another, and your whole career is coloured 
 thereby. You miss a train, and you save your life. Our lives are like 
 the Cornish rocking stones, pivoted on little points. The most apparently 
 insignificant things have got such a strange knack of suddenly developing 
 unexpected consequences, and turning out to be, not small things at all, 
 but great and decisive and fruitful. 
 
 And so let us draw from that thought such lessons as these. Let us 
 look with ever fresh wonder on this marvellous contexture of human life, 
 and on Him that moulds it all to His own perfect purposes. Let us 
 bring the highest and largest principles to bear on the smallest events and 
 circumstances, for you never can tell which of these is going to turn out 
 a revolutionary and formative influence in your life. And if the highest 
 and the holiest Christian principle is not brought to bear upon the trifles, 
 depend upon it it will never be brought to bear upon the mighty things. 
 
 Indeed, in one sense life is made up of trifles : and if the highest religious 
 motives are not brought to bear upon the trifles of life, they will very 
 seldom be brought to bear at all, and life, which is divided into grains 
 like the sand, will have gone by with him while he is preparing for the 
 big events which he thinks worthy of being regulated by lofty principles. 
 Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves. 
 Look after the trifles, for the law of life is like that which is laid down 
 by the psalmist about the kingdom of Jesus Christ: "There shall be 
 a handful of corn in the earth," a little seed sown in an aj^parently un- 
 genial place " on the top of the mountains." Aye ! but this will come 
 of it . " the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon," and the great harvest 
 of benediction or of curse, of joy or of sorrow, will come from the minute 
 seeds that are sown in ilae great trifles of your daily life. 
 
 88 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS AND HONOUR OF HELPING 
 JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Fellow workers in Christ Jesus, — RoM. xvi. 3. 
 
 There are plenty of men in this day that scofif at Jesus, that 
 "° ' mock Him, that deny His claims, that seek to cast Him down 
 from Ilis throne, that rebel against His dominion. It is an easy thing to 
 be a disciple when all the crowd is crying " Hosanna ! " It is a much 
 harder thing to be a disciple when the crowd, or even when the influential 
 cultivated opinion of a generation, is crying " Crucify Him '. Crucify Him ! " 
 And some of you Christian men and women have to learn the lesson that 
 if you are to be Christians you must be Christ's companions when His back 
 is at the wall as well as when men are exalting and honouring Him ; that 
 it is your business to confess Him when men deny Him, to stand by Him 
 when men forsake Him, to avow Him when the avowal is likely to bring 
 contempt upon us with some people ; and thus, if not to bear our own 
 cross, yet in a very real sense to bear His Cross after Him. Let us ^o 
 fortii unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach ; the tail end 
 of His Cross, it is the lightest ! He has got the heaviest on His own 
 shoulders, but we have to ally ourselves with that suffering, and if it be, 
 with that despised Christ, if we are to be His disciples. 
 
 There will be hostility, alienation, a coinparative coolness, and absence 
 of a full sense of sympathy in many people, with you, if you are a true 
 Christian. There will be a share of contempt from the wise and the culti- 
 vated of this generation, as in all generations. The mud that is thrown 
 after the Master will spatter your faces too, to some extent ; and if we are 
 walking with Him, we shall share to the extent of our communion with 
 Him in the feelings with which many men regard Him. Stand to your 
 colours ! Do not be ashamed of the Master in the midst of a crooked and 
 perverse generation. 
 
 Christ needs nothing, and yet He needs us. He needs nothing, and 
 yet He needed that ass that was tethered at the place where two ways met, 
 in order to ride into Jerusalem upon it. He does not need man's help, and 
 yet He does need it, and He asks for it. And though He bore Simon 
 the Cyrenean's sins "in His own body on the tree," He needed Simon the 
 Cyrenean to help Him to bear the tree. 
 
 And He needs us to help Him to spread throughout the world the 
 blessed consequences of that Cross and bitter Passion. So for us all there 
 is granted the honour, and from us all there is required the sacrifice and 
 the service of helping the suffering Saviour. 
 
 89 
 
THE HUMBLEST CHRISTIAN SERVICE REWARDED. 
 
 Wheresoever the Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, 
 that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of 
 her.— Mark xiv. 9. 
 
 „ . ^- The lesson drawn from the story of Simon of Cyrene is that of 
 u . ^j^^ perpetual recompense and record of humblest Christian work. 
 There were diiferent degrees of criminality, and different degrees of sym- 
 pathy with Him, if I may use the word, in that crowd that stood round 
 the Master. The criminality varied from the highest degree of violent 
 malignity in the Scribes and Pharisees, down to the lowest point of ignorance, 
 and therefore innocence, on the part of the Roman legionaries who were 
 merely the mechanical instruments of the order given, and stolidly " watched 
 Plim there " with eyes which saw nothing. 
 
 And, on the other hand, all grades of service, and help, and sympathy, 
 from the vague emotions of the crowd who beat their breasts, and the pity 
 of the daughters of Jerusalem, the kindly-meant help of the soldiers who 
 would have moistened the parched lips, and the heroic love of the women 
 at the Cross, whose ministry was not ended even with His life. But surely 
 the most blessed share in that clay's tragedy was reserved for Simon, whose 
 bearing of the Cross may have been compulsory at first, but became, ere 
 it was ended, willing service. 
 
 But, whatever were the degrees of recognition of Christ's character, 
 and of sympathy with the meaning of His sufferings, yet the smallest and 
 the most transient impulse of loving gratitude that went out towards Him 
 was rewarded then, and is rewarded for ever, by blessed results in the 
 heart that feels it. Besides these, service for Christ is recompensed, as in 
 the instance before us, by a perpetual memorial : " How little Simon knew 
 that wherever in the whole world this Gospel was preached, there also 
 this that he had done should be told for a memorial of him ! " How little 
 he understood when he went back to his rural lodging that night that he 
 had written his name high up on the tablet of the world's memory, to be 
 legible for ever. 
 
 Why, men have fretted their whole lives away to get what this man 
 got, and knew nothing of one line in that chronicle of fame. 
 
 And so we may say it shall be always, " I will never forget any of their 
 works." We may not leave them on any records that men can read. 
 What of that, if they are written in letters of light in that " Lamb's Book 
 of Life," to be read out by Him before His Father and the holy angels 
 in that last great day ? We may not leave any separalile traces of our 
 service, any more than the little brook that comes down some gulley on 
 the hillside flows separate from its sisters, with whom it has coalesced 
 in the bed of the great river or in the rolling, boundless ocean. What of 
 that, so long as the work, in its consequences, shall last ? Men that sow 
 some great prairie broadcast cannot go into the harvest field and say, *' I 
 sowed the seed from which that ear came, and you the seed from which 
 this." But the waving abundance belongs to them all, and each may be 
 sure that his work survives and is glorified there; "that he that soweth 
 and he that reapeth may rejoice together." So a perpetual remembrance 
 is sure for the smallest Christian service. 
 
 90 
 
THE BLESSEDNESS OF CONTACT WITH THE SUFFERING 
 
 CHRIST. 
 
 The fellowship of His sufferings. — Phil. iii. la 
 
 Simon the Cyrenean apparently knew nothing about Jesus 
 ^^ ' Christ when the Cross was laid on his shoulders. He would 
 be reluctant to undertake the humiliating task, and would plod along 
 behind Him for a while, sullen and discontented, but by degrees be touched 
 by more of sympathy and get closer and closer to the Sufferer. And if he 
 stood by the Cross when it was fixed, and saw all that transpired there, 
 no wonder if, after a longer or a shorter examination, he came to under- 
 stand who He was that he had helped, and to yield himself to Him wholly. 
 
 Yes ! Christ's great saying, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
 unto Me," began to be fulfilled when He began to be lifted up. The 
 centurion, the thief, Simon of Cyrene, by looking on the Cross, learned 
 the Crucified. 
 
 And it is the only way by which any of us will ever learn the true 
 mystery and miracle of Christ's great and loving Being and work. I beseech 
 you, take your places there behind Him, near His Cross, gazing upon Him 
 till your hearts melt, and you, too, learn that He is your Lord, and your 
 Saviour, and your God. The Cross of Jesus Christ divides men into classes, 
 as the Last Day will. It, too, parts men — sheep to the right hand, goats 
 to the left. If there was a penitent, there was an impenitent, thief; if 
 there was a convinced centurion, there were gambling soldiers ; if there 
 were hearts touched with compassion, there were mockers who took His 
 very agonies and flung them in His face as a refutation of His claims. On 
 the day that Cross was reared on Calvary it began to be what it has been 
 ever since, and is at this moment to every soul that reads this, *' a savour 
 of Hfe unto life, or of death unto death." Contact with the suffering Christ 
 will either bind you to His service, and fill you with His Spirit, or it will 
 harden your hearts, and make you tenfold more selfish — that is to say, 
 tenfold more a child of hell than you were before you saw and touched and 
 handled that Divine meekness of the suffering Christ. Look to Him, I 
 beseech you, who bears what none can help Him to carry, the burden of 
 the world's sin. Let Him bear yours, and yield to Him your grateful 
 obedience, and then take up your cross daily and bear the light burden 
 of self-denpng service to Him who has borne the heavy load of sin for 
 you and all mankind. 
 
 91 
 
THE CRY FROM THE DEPTHS. 
 
 Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. Lord, heat my 
 voice: let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. — 
 
 P?ALM CXXX. I, 2. 
 
 . ., , The depths are the place for us all. Every man has to go 
 ^ ' clown there, if he take the place that belongs to him. Unless 
 you have cried to God out of these depths, you have never cried to Him 
 at all. Unless you come to Him as a penitent, sinful man, with the 
 consciousness of transgression awakened within you, your prayers are 
 shallow. The beginning of all true personal religion lies in the sense of 
 my own sin and my lost condition. Why, the difference between the 
 tepid, superficial religion, that so many have, and the true thing consists a 
 great deal more in this than in anything else— that in the one case a sense 
 of sin has been awakened, and in the other it has not. I believe, for my 
 part, that as far as creed is concerned, the reason of the larger number of 
 the misapprehensions and waterings-down of the full-toned Christian truth 
 which we see around us comes from this, that men have not appreciated 
 the importance, as a factor in their theology, of the doctrine of sin. And 
 so far as practice is concerned, one main reason why the religion that 
 prevails is such a poor, flabby, impotent thing is the same. If a man 
 does not think much about sin, he does not think much about a Divine 
 Saviour. Wherever you find practically men and women with a Christianity 
 that hes very lightly upon them, that does not impel them to any acts 
 of service and devotion, that seldom breaks out into any heroisms of 
 self-surrender, and never rises into the heights of communion with God, 
 depend upon it that the roots of it are to be found here, that the man has 
 never been down there into the pit, and never sent his voice up from it 
 as some man that liad tumbled down a coalpit might fling a despairing 
 voice up to the surface, in the hope that somebody stumblii:)g past the 
 mouth of it might hear the cry. "Out of the depths" he has not cried 
 unto God. 
 
 You want nothing more than a cry to get you out of the depths. If 
 
 out of the depths you cry, you will cry yourself out of the depths. Here 
 is a pian at the foot of a clilf that rises beetling like a black wall behind 
 him ; the sea in front ; the bare, upright rock at his back ; not a foothold 
 for a mouse between the tide at the bottom and the grass at the top there. 
 What is he going to do ? There is only one thing — he can shout. Per- 
 chance somebody will hear him ; a rope may come dangling down in front 
 of him : and, if he has got nerve, he may shut his eyes and make a jump 
 and catch it. There is no way for you up out of the pit but to cry to God, 
 and that will bring a rope down ; nay, rather, the rope is there, — yom 
 grasping the rope and your cry are one. "Ask, and ye shall receive." 
 God has let down the fulness of His forgiving love in Jesus Christ, and 
 all that we need is the call, which is likewise faith, which accepts while 
 it desires, and desires in its acceptance ; and then we are lifted up there 
 " out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and our feet are set upon a 
 rock, and our goings established." 
 
 92 
 
A DARK FEAR. 
 
 If Thou, Lord, shonldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? — 
 Psalm cxxx 3. 
 
 a :i 2 "^^ "mark iniquities" is to impute them to us. The word in 
 
 ■^ ' ' the original means to watch — that is to say, to remember in 
 order to punish. If a man be regarded by God's eye through the mist 
 of his own sins, they turn the bright sun of God's own light into a red-hot 
 flaming ball of fire. Like a man having to yield ground to an eager 
 enemy, or to bend before the blast, every man has to bow before that 
 flashing brightness, and to own that retribution would be destruction. 
 
 Do we not all know that our characters and our lives have been, as it 
 were, distorted ; that our moral nature has been marred with animal lusts, 
 and that ambitions and worldly desires have come in and prevented us 
 from following the law of conscience ? Is not that very conscience, more 
 or less distorted, drugged and dormant? And is not all this largely 
 voluntary ? Do we not feel, in spite of all pleas about circumstances and 
 "heredity," that we could have helped being what we are? And do we 
 not feel that, after all, if there be such a thing as God's judgment and 
 retribution, it must come on us with terrible force ? That is what the 
 Psalmist means when he says that if God be strict to mark iniquities there 
 is not one of us that can stand before Him ; and we know it is true. 
 You may be a very respectable man ; that is not the question. You may 
 have kept your hands clear from anything that would bring you within the 
 sweep of the law ; that has nothing to do with it. You may have subdued 
 animal passions, been sober, temperate, chaste, generous — a hundred other 
 things. Granted, of course ! Ah ! gross, palpable sin slays its thousands ; 
 and that clean, white, respectable, ghastly purity of a godless, self- 
 complacent morality, I do believe, slays its tens of thousands. And you, 
 not because your goodness is not goodness of a sort, but because you are 
 building upon it, and think that such words as those of the Psalmist, go 
 clean over your heads — you are in this perilous position. 
 
 Oh, dear friend ! will you take ten minutes quietly to think over that 
 verse, "If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall 
 stand ? " Can I ? Can I ? 
 
 Is it not true that, deep below the surface, contentment with the world 
 and the things of the world, a dormant, but lightly slumbering, sense of 
 want and unsatisfied need, lies in your souls ? Is it not true that it wakes 
 sometimes at a touch ; that the tender, dying light of sunset, or the calm 
 abysses of the mighty heavens, or some strain of music, or a line in a book, 
 or a sorrow in your heart, or the solemnity of a great joy, or close contact 
 with sickness and death, or the more direct appeals of Scripture and of 
 Christ, stir a wistful yearning and a painful sense of emptiness in your 
 hearts, and of insufficiency in all the ordinary pursuits of your lives ? 
 
 93 
 
A BRIGHT ASSURANCE. 
 
 But there is forgiveness with Thee^ that Thou may est be feared. — 
 Psalm cxxx. 4. 
 
 A ril 3 ** Forgiveness!" The word so translated has for its literal 
 meaning "cutting-oft",'' ''excision." And so it suggests the 
 notion of taking a man's soul and his sin, that great black deformity that 
 has grown upon it, feeding upon it, and cutting it clean out with a merciful 
 amputating knife. You know that doctors sometimes say, "Well, the 
 only salvation of him would be an operation, but the tumour has got so 
 implicated with the vital tissues that it would scarcely be possible to appl}' 
 the knife." And that is what the world says, and that is what philosophy 
 says, and modern pessimism says, about my sin, and your sin, and the 
 world's sin. "No ! we cannot operate ; we cannot cut out the cankerous 
 tumour." And Christianity says, "Miserable physicians are ye all; stand 
 aside ! " And it does it by a mighty and wondrous act. 
 
 God's Divine mercy and infinite power and love are in that Cross of Jesus 
 Christ, which separates between man and his disease, and cuts out the one 
 and leaves the other more living after the amputation of that which was 
 killing him, and which the world thinks to be a bit of himself. It is not 
 a bit of himself, says the Gospel ; it can all be swept away through His 
 forgiveness. 
 
 Men may say, "There cannot be forgiveness; you cannot alter con- 
 sequences." But forgiveness has not to do only with consequences ; 
 forgiveness has to do with the personal relation between me and God. 
 And that can be altered. The Father forgives as well as the judge ; the 
 Father forgives, though he sometimes chastises. 
 
 If a man has sinned, his whole life thereafter will be different from what 
 it would have been if he had not sinned. I know that well enough. You 
 cannot, by any pardon, alter the past, and make it not to be. I know that 
 well enough. The New Testament doctrine and the Old Testament hope of 
 forgiveness does not assert that you can, but it says that you and God can get 
 right with one another. A person can pardon. We have not merely to do with 
 impersonal laws and symbols; we have not only to do with "the mill of 
 God that grindeth slowly," but with God Himself. There is such a thing 
 as the pardon of God, and forgiveness is possible. His love will come to 
 men free, unembittercd, undammed back by transgressions, if the man will 
 go and say, "Father! I have sinned! Forgive! For Thy dear Son's 
 sake. There is forgiveness with Thee ! " And that forgiveness lies at the 
 root of all true godliness. "There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thoti 
 may est be feared.''^ No man reverences, and loves,, and draws near to 
 God so rapturously, so humbly, as the man that has learned pardon 
 through Jesus Christ. My dear friend, believe this : your religion must 
 have for its foundation the assurance of God's pardoning mercy in Christ, 
 or it will have no foundation at all worth speaking about. I press that 
 upon you, and ask you this one question : Is the basis of your religion the 
 sense that God has forgiven you freely all your iniquities? 
 
 94 
 
GOD'S INEXHAUSTIBLE MERCY. 
 
 O Israel, hope in the Lord ; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with 
 Him is plenteous redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his 
 iniquities. — PsALM cxxx. 7, 8. 
 
 . ., . There is nothing which isolates a man so awfully as a conscious- 
 ness of sin and of his relation to God. But there is nothing 
 that so knits him to all his fellows, and brings him into such wide-reaching 
 bonds of amity and benevolence, as the sense of God's forgiving mercy for 
 his own sin. So the call bursts from the lips of the pardoned man, 
 inviting all to taste the experience and exercise the trust which have made 
 him glad : " Let Israel hope in the Lord." Look at the broad Gospel he 
 has come to preach. " For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him 
 is redemption." Not only forgiveness; but redemption — and that from 
 every form of sin. It is "plenteous" — multiplied, as the word might be 
 rendered. Our Lord has taught us to what a sum that Divine multiplication 
 amounts. Not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but " seventy times seven " is 
 the prescribed measure of human forgiveness ; and shall men be more 
 placable than God ? The perfect numbers, seven and ten multiplied 
 together, and that again increased sevenfold, to make a numerical symbol 
 for the Innumerable, and to bring the Infinite within the terms of the 
 Finite. It is inexhaustible redemption, not to be provoked, not to be 
 overcome by any obstinacy of evil — available for all, available for every 
 grade and every repetition of transgression. That forgiving grace is older 
 and mightier than all sins, and is able to conquer them all. As when an 
 American prairie for hundreds of miles is smoking in the autumn fires, 
 nothing that man can do can cope with it. But the clouds gather, and 
 down comes the rain, and there is water enough in the sky to put out the 
 fire. And so God's inexhaustible mercy, streaming down upon the lurid 
 smoke-pillars of man's transgression, and that alone, is weight enough to 
 quench the flame of man's, and of a world's, transgressions, heated from 
 the lowest hell. "With Him is plenteous redemption ; He shall redeem 
 Israel from a// his iniquities." That is the Old Testament prophecy. Let 
 me leave on your hearts the New Testament fulfilment of it. The Psalmist 
 said, " He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities." He was sure of that, 
 and his soul was at "peace in believing" it. But there were mysteries 
 about it which he could not understand. He lived in the twilight dawn, 
 and he and all his fellows had to watch for the morning, of which they saw 
 but the faint promise in the Eastern sky. The sun is risen for us — " Thou 
 shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." 
 That is the fulfilment, the vindication, and the explanation of the Psalmist's 
 hope. Lay hold of Christ, and He will lift you out of the depths, and set 
 you upon the sunny heights of the mountain of God. 
 
 95 
 
THE ONE HELPER. 
 
 A very present help in trouble. — PsALM xlvi. I, 
 
 Many of us are trying to make up for not having the One by 
 ^^ ' seeking to stay our hearts on the many. But no accumulation 
 of insufficiencies will ever make a sufficiency. You may fill the heaven all 
 over with stars bright and thick as those in the whitest spot in the galaxy, 
 and it will be night still. Day needs the sun, and the sun is one, and when 
 it comes the twinkling lights are forgotten. You cannot make up for God 
 by any extended series of creatures, any more than a row of figures that 
 stretched from here to Sirius and back again would approximate to 
 infinitude. 
 
 The very fact of the multitude of helpers is a sign that none of them are 
 sufficient. There are no end of *' cures" for toothache — that is to say, 
 there is none. There are no end of helps for men that have abandoned 
 God — that is to say, every one in turn, when it is tried, and the stress of the 
 soul rests upon it, gives, and is found to be a broken staft'" that pierces the 
 hand that leans upon it. 
 
 Consult your own experience. What is the meaning of the unrest and 
 distraction that marks the lives of most of the men in this generation? 
 Why is it that you hurry from business to pleasure, from pleasure to 
 business, until it is scarcely possible to get a quiet breathing-time for 
 thought at all ? Why is it but because one after another of your gods have 
 proved insufficient, and so fresh altars must be built for fresh idolatries, and 
 new experiments made, of which we can safely prophecy the result will be 
 the old one. We have not got beyond St. Augustine's saying : " Oh, God ! 
 my heart was made for Thee, and in Thee only doth it find repose." The 
 many idols, though you multiply them beyond count, all put together, will 
 never make the one God. You are seeking what you will never find. The 
 many pearls that you seek will never be enough for you. The true wealth is 
 One, One pearl of great price. 
 
 The Lord may seem to sleep on His hard, wooden pillow in the stern 
 of the little fishing-boat, and even while the frail craft begins to fill may 
 show no sign of help ; but ere the waves have rolled over her, the cry of 
 fear that yet trusts, and of trust that yet fears, wakes Him who knew the 
 need, even while He seemed to slumber, and one mighty word, as of a 
 master to some petulant slave, '* Peace, be still," hushes the confusion, and 
 rebukes the fear, and rewards the faith. We on whom the ends of the 
 earth are come have the same Helper, the same Friend, that "the world's 
 grey patriarchs " had. They that go before do not prevent them that come 
 after. The river is full still. The van of the pilgrim host did, indeed, 
 long, long ago, drink, and were satisfied, but the bright waters are still as 
 pellucid, still as near, still as refreshing, still as abundant as they ever were, 
 
 96 
 
THE PROOF OF GOD'S LOVE. 
 
 God corAiiienaeih His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet 
 sinners, Christ died for us." — RoM. v. 8. 
 
 ' A rii 6 " OOD commendeth His love." That is true and beautiful, but 
 that is not all that the Apostle means. The idea of commenda- 
 tion is certainly in it, but there is also another idea which in order precedes 
 the commendation — viz., that of confirmation, or establishing as a certainty. 
 Now these two things are ordinarily separated. We first of all prove a 
 fact, and then we press it upon people, or " commend " it to their feelings ; 
 but in regard of the love of God these two are one. You cannot prove 
 God's love as you can a mathematical problem, as a bare intellectual 
 process. You mu?t prove it Ijy showing it in operation ; and the confirma- 
 tion of its existence which is derived from the witness of its energy is at 
 once the demonstration of it to the understanding and the commending of 
 it to the heart and the feeUngs. 
 
 So, says Paul, God in one and the same act establishes the certainty of 
 His love, for our understanding, and presses it upon our hearts and con- 
 sciences. " He commends His love towards us." It must be kept in 
 mind that Paul was writing to Roman Christians, a good many years after 
 the death of Jesus Christ — to men and women that had never seen Christ, 
 and whom Christ had never seen in the flesh. And to these people he says, 
 *' Christ died for zis^ You Roman believers that never heard about Him 
 till long after His Crucifixion — He died for you. And God, not coinniendea, 
 but " commendeth, His love towards us " in that death — which, put into other 
 words, is this : the Cross of Jesus Christ is for all the world, for every age, 
 the standing and ever-present demonstration of the boundless love of God, 
 God not merely "commends," but "proves," His love by Christ's death. 
 It is the one evidence which makes that often doubted fact certain. By it 
 alone is it possible to hold the conviction that, in spite of all that seems to 
 contradict the belief, God is Love. 
 
 If this be the summing-up of all religion, a practical conclusion follows. 
 When we feel ourselves defective in the glow and operative driving power 
 of love to God, what is the right thing to do ? When a man is cold he will 
 not warm himself by putting a clinical thermometer into his mouth, and 
 taking his temperature, will he ? Let him go into the sunshine and he will 
 be warmed up. Vou can pound ice in a mortar, and except for the little 
 heat generated by the impact of the pestle, it will keep ice still. But float 
 the iceberg down into the tropics, and what has become of it ? It has all 
 run down into sweet v/arm water, and mingled with the warm ocean that 
 has dissolved it. So do not think about yourself and your own loveless 
 heart so much, but think about God, and the infinite welling up of love in 
 His heart to you, a great deal more. " We love Plim because He first loved 
 us." Therefore, to love Him more, we must feel more that He does love us. 
 
 Then let me say, too, that if we love Him, it will be the motive power 
 and spring of all manner of obediences and glad services. It is the mother- 
 tincture, so to speak, which you can colour, and to which you can add in 
 various ways, and produce variously tinted and tasted and perfumed com- 
 mixtures. Love lies at the foundation of all Christian goodness. It will 
 lead to the suljjugation of the will. And that is the thing that is most of all 
 needed to make a man righteous and pure. So St. Augustine's paradox, 
 rightly understood, is a magnificent truth, " Love ! and do what you will." 
 For then you will be sure to will what God wills, and you ought. 
 
 97 H 
 
FOR HIS SAKE. 
 I do not this for your sake, but for Mine Holy Name. — Ezek. xxxvi. 22. 
 
 Do you not think that the Cross of Jesus Christ speaks to the 
 world of a love which is not drawn forth by any merit of 
 r;oodncss in us? Men love because they dimly discern, or think they 
 do, that there is something worthy of their love. God loves because we 
 need Ilim ; God loves Ijecause He is God. His love is not evoked by 
 anything in m.^. except my dependence and necessity ; but God's love wells 
 up from the infinite depth of His own nature, undrawn forth by anything 
 in His creatures. " I Am that I Am " is His name. He is His own cause, 
 His own motive ; and as His being, so His love, which is His being, is 
 automatic, self-originated, and pouring out for ever, in obedience to the 
 impulse of His own heart, the inexhaustible treasures of His love. "Not 
 for your sakes be it known unto you, O house of Israel, but for Mine own 
 Name's sake." 
 
 But if that love revealed by the Cross be a love which is not drawn 
 forth by any merit or goodness of ours, then, not being contingent upon 
 our goodness, it is not turned away by our badness. We cannot sin it 
 away. It was not bestowed on us at first, any more than His sunshine 
 falls on us, because we deserve it, but because He is God, and He made 
 us. And so it will encircle us for ever, and cleave to us to the very end, 
 and never let us go. 
 
 The Cross of Christ preaches to us a love that has no cause, motive, 
 reason, or origin except Himself. 
 
 That is what is meant by the theological phrase "free grace" — an 
 expression which has often been regarded as the shibboleth of a narrow 
 school, but which, rightly understood, is no hard piece of technical 
 theology, but throbbing with life — the very grandest conception of the 
 heart of God which men can grasp. Such grace, the gilt of such love, 
 does the Christ commend to us. 
 
 "For our behalf,"— bending over us in order that the benefit might 
 come to us, — that is the picturesque metaphor that lies in the little word 
 " for." Observe, too, the significant present tense, " God cowwnendeth 
 His love," and the empliatic repetition three several times in the verse 
 (Rom. v. S) of "us" and " wc." Both peculiarities bring out the great 
 truth that Christ's death is a death, "not for an age, but fur all time" ; 
 nut for this, that, or the other man ; not for a section of the race, but for 
 the whole of us -in all generations. The power of that death, as the 
 sweep of that love, extends over all humanity, and holds forth benefits to 
 ev.'ry man of woman l)f)rn. 
 
 98 
 
IS CHrasT's death a real benefit to me? 
 
 Lord^ to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life. — 
 John vi. 68. 
 
 Now, I want to ask a question ver}' earnestly : In what conceiv- 
 able way can Christ's death be a real benefit to me ? How can 
 it do me any good ? A sweet, a tender, an unexampled, beautiful story 
 of innocence and meekness and martyrdom which will shine in the memoiy 
 of the world, and on the pages of history, as long as the world shall last ! 
 It is all that ; but what good does it do me ? Where does the benefit to ma 
 individually come in ? There is only one answer, and I urge you to ask 
 yourselves if, in plain, sober, common sense, the death of Jesus Christ means 
 anything at all to anybody, more than other martyrdoms and beautiful 
 deaths, except upon one supposition, that He diedy^^r us, because He died 
 instead of us. The two things are not identical ; but, as I believe, and 
 venture to press upon you, in this case they are identical. I do not know 
 where you will find any justification for the rapturous language of the 
 whole New Testament about the death of Christ and its benefits flowing 
 to the whole world, unless you take the Master's own words, " The Son of 
 Man came to minister, and to give His life a ransom instead of mz.x\y." 
 
 Ah ! dear friend, there we touch the bed-rock. That is the truth that 
 flashes up the Cross into lustre, before which the sun's light is but darkness. 
 He who bore it died for the whole woi Id, and was the eternal Son of the 
 Father. If we believe that, then we can understand how Paul here blends 
 together the heart of God and the heart of Christ, and sets high above 
 Nature and her ambiguous oracles, high above Providence and its many 
 perplexities, and in front of all the shrinkings and the fears of a reasonably 
 alarmed conscience, the one truth, "God hath proved His love for us, in 
 that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Is that your faith, 
 your notion of Christ's death, and of its relation to the love of God ? 
 
 There are two passages of Scripture which contain the whole secret of 
 God, and the whole secret of a noble, blessed, human life. And here they 
 are : "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.'* 
 If that is your thought about God, you know enough about Him for tim.e 
 and eternity. " We love Him because He first loved us." If you can say 
 that about yourself, all is well. 
 
 Dear friend, do you believe the one? Do your affirm the other? 
 
 99 
 
SLEEPING THROUGH JESUS. 
 
 For if we believe that Jesus died and I'ose again, even so them also that 
 are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. — i Thess. iv. 14. 
 
 They " sleep through Him." It is by reason of Christ and His 
 ' work, and by reason of that alone, that death's darkness is made 
 beautiful, and death's grimness is softened down to this. Now, in order to 
 grasp the full meaning of such words as these of the Apostle, we must 
 draw a broad distinction between the physical fact of the ending of cor- 
 poreal life and the mental condition which is associated with it by us. 
 What we call death, if I may so say, is a complex thing — bodily phenomenon 
 ^hts conscience ; the sense of sin, the certainty of retribution in the dim 
 beyond. And you have to take these two apart. The former remains ; 
 but if the other is removed, the whole has changed its character, and is 
 become another thing, and a very little thing. The death of Jesus Christ 
 takes all the — I was going to say the nimbus of apprehension and dread 
 arising from conscience and sin, and the forecast of retribution — takes all 
 that away. There is nothing left for us to face except the physical fact ; 
 and any poor soldier, with a coarse red coat upon him, will face that for 
 eighteenpence a day, and think himself well paid. Jesus Christ has 
 abolished death, leaving the mere shell, but taking all the substance out 
 of it. It has become a different thing to men, because in that death of 
 His He has exhausted the bitterness, and has made it possible that we 
 should pass into the shadow, and not fear either conscience or sin or 
 judgment. 
 
 So, dear *' brethren, I would not have you ignorant concerning them 
 which are asleep, that ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope." 
 And I would have you to remember tliat whilst Christ by His work has 
 made it possible that the terror may pass away, and death may be softened 
 and minimised into slumber, it will not be so with you — unless you are 
 joined to Him, and by trust in the power of His death, and the overflowing 
 might of His resurrection, have made sure that what He has passed 
 through, you will pass through, and where He is, and what He is, you 
 will be also. 
 
 Two men die by one railway accident, sitting side by side upon one 
 seat, smashed in one collision. But though the outward fact is the same 
 about each, the reality of their deaths is infinitely different. The one falls 
 asleep through Jesus, in Jesus ; the other dies indeed, and the death of his 
 body is only a feeble shadow of the death of the spirit. Do you knit 
 yourself to the Life, which is Christ, and, then, "He that believeth on Me 
 shall never die ! " 
 
 100 
 
REST AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness : I shall be satisfiea^ 
 when I awake ^ with Tlty likeness. — PsALM xvii. 15, 
 
 The "sleeper in Christ" is not unconscious. He is parted 
 
 ^ * from the outer world ; he is unaware of externals. When 
 Stephen knelt below the old wall, and was surrounded by howling fanatics 
 that slew him, one moment he was gashed with stones and tortured, and 
 the next " he fell on sleep." They might howl, and the stones fly as 
 they would, and he was all unaware of it. Like Jonah sleeping in the 
 hold, what mattered the howling of the storm to him ? But separation 
 from externals does not mean suspense of life or of consciousness ; and the 
 slumberer often dreams, and is aware of himself persistently throughout 
 his slumber. Nay ! some of his faculties are set at liberty to work more 
 energetically because his connection with the outer world is for the time 
 suspended. 
 
 Scripture, as it seems to me, distinctly carries this limitation of the 
 emblem. For what does it mean when the Apostle says, "to depart 
 . . . to be with Christ is far better " ? Surely he that thus spoke 
 conceived that these two things were contemporaneous, " the departing 
 and the being with Him." And surely he who thus spoke could not have 
 conceived that a millennium-long parenthesis of slumberous unconsciousness 
 was to intervene l)etween the moment of his decease and the moment of 
 his fellowship with Jesus. How could a man prefer that dormant state 
 to the state here, of working for and living with the Lord ? Surely, being 
 with Him must mean that we know where we are and who is our 
 companion. 
 
 And what does that text mean, " Ye are come unto the spirits of just 
 men made perfect,"' unless it means that of ihese two classes of persons 
 who are thus regarded as brought into living fellowship, each is aware of 
 the other? Does perfecting of the spirit mean the smiting of the spirit 
 into unconsciousness? Surely not, and surely in the face of such words 
 as these we must recognise the fact that, however limited and imperfect 
 may be the present connection with the disembodied dead, who sleep in 
 Christ, with external things — they know themselves, they know their 
 home and their companions, and they know the blessedness in which they 
 are lapped. 
 
 We have also the idea 01 awaking. The pagans said, as indeed one of 
 their poets has it, "Suns can sink and return, but for us, when our brief 
 light sinks, there is but one perpetual night of slumber." The Christian 
 idea of death is that it is transitory as a sleep in the morning, and sure 
 to end. As St. Augustine says somewhere, "Wherefore are they called 
 sleepers but because in the day of the Lord they will be re-awakened." 
 
 lOI 
 
*'THEM THAT SLEEP." 
 
 So He giveth unto His beloved sleep. — Psalm cxxvii. 2. 
 
 Sweetest, deepest, most appealing to all our hearts is that 
 
 ^ ' emblem of death, "Them that sleep." It is used, if I count 
 
 rightly, some fourteen times in the New Testament, and it carries with it 
 
 large and plain lessons, on which I touch but for a moment. "What, then, 
 
 does this metaphor say to us ? 
 
 Well, it speaks first of rest. That is not altogether an attractive con- 
 ception to some of us. If it be taken exclusively, it is by no means whole- 
 some. I suppose that the young, and the strong, and the eager, and the 
 ambitious, and the prosperous rather shrink from the notion of their 
 activities being stiffened into slumber. But, dear friend, there are some 
 of us, like tired children in a fair, who would fain have done with the 
 weariness, who have made experience of the distractions and bewildering 
 changes, whose backs are stiffened with toil, whose hearts are heavy with 
 loss. And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of shuffling off this 
 weary coil of responsibilities and duties, and tasks and sorrows, and of 
 passing into indisturbance and repose, appeals. I believe, for my part, 
 that after all the deepest longing of men, though they search for it through 
 toil and effort, the deepest longing is for repose. As the poet has taught 
 us, ** there is no joy but calm." Every heart is weary enough, and heavy 
 laden, and labouring enough, to feel the sweetness of a promise of rest — 
 
 "Sleep, full of rest from head to foot, 
 Lie still, dry dust, secure of change." 
 
 Yes 1 But the rest of which our emblem speaks is, as I believe, only 
 applicable to the bodily frame. The word " sleep" is a transcript of what 
 sense enlightened by faith sees in that still form, with the folded hands and 
 the quiet face and the closed eyes. But let us remember that this repose, 
 deep and blessed as it is, is not, as some would say, the repose of uncon- 
 sciousness. I do not believe, and I would have you not believe, that this 
 emblem touches the vigorous spiritual life, or that the passage from out of 
 the toil and moil of earth into the calm of the darkness beyond has any 
 power in limiting or suspending the vital force of the man. 
 
 1 02 
 
THE SLEEP OF DEATH. 
 
 Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep; but I go, that I tnay awake him 
 out of sleep. — ^JOHN xi. ii. 
 
 It is to Jesus primarily that the New Testament writers owe 
 ^^ ' their use of this gracious emblem of sleep. For, as you remem- 
 ber, the word was twice upon our Lord's lips ; once when, over the twelve- 
 years-old maid, from whom life had barely ebbed away, he said, "She is 
 not dead, but sleepeth" ; and once when, in regard of the man Lazarus, 
 from whom life had removed furthei*, he said, " Our friend sleepeth, but 
 I go that I may awake him out of his sleep." But Jesus was not the 
 originator of the expression. You find it in the Old Testament, where the 
 prophet Daniel, speaking of the end of the days and the bodily resurrection, 
 designates those who share in it as " them that sleep in the dust of the 
 earth." And the Old Testament was not the sole origin of the phrase. 
 For it is too natural, too much in accordance with the visibilities of death, 
 not to have suggested itself to many hearts and been shrined in many 
 tongues. Many an inscription of Greek and Roman date speaks sadly of 
 death under this figure. But almost alvrays it is with the added, deepened 
 note of despair, that it is a sleep which knows no waking, but lasts through 
 eternal night. 
 
 Now, the Christian thought associated with this emblem is the precise 
 opposite of the pagan one. The pagan heart shrank from the ugly thing 
 because it was so ugly. So dark and deep a dread coiled round the man 
 as he contemplated it that he sought to drape the.grimness in some kind 
 of thin transparent veil, and to put the buffer of a word between him and 
 its ugliness. But the Christian's motive for the use of the word is the 
 precise opposite. He uses the gentler expression because the thing has 
 become gentler. 
 
 You find one class of representations in the New Testament which 
 speak of death as being a departing and a being with Christ ; or which call 
 it, as one of the Apostles does, an "exodus," where it is softened down 
 to be merely a change of environment, a change of locality. Then another 
 class of representations speak of it as "putting off this my tabernacle," or, 
 the dissolution of the " earthly house" — where there is a broad, firm line 
 of demarcation drawn between the inhabitant and the habitation, and the 
 thing is softened down to be a mere change of dwelling. Again, another 
 class of expressions speak of it as being an "offering," where the main 
 idea is that of a voluntary surrender, a sacrifice or libation of myself, and 
 my life poured out upon the altar of God. 
 
 103 
 
A LOVE THAT SHRINKS FROM NO SACRH-ICE. 
 
 He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how 
 shall He not also with Him freely give us ail things ? — RoM. viii. 32. 
 
 I CANNOT venture to use words of my own about such a subject, 
 April 13. ^ , , , 
 
 but I read in this very Epistle (Romans) of a wonderful com- 
 
 paason, which to me is most beautiful and most instructive, and wakens 
 thoughts that are perhaps too blessed and too mystic to be put into words, 
 when I read, *' He that spared not His own Son, but freely delivered Him 
 up to the death for us all " ; and recognise there an allusive reference to 
 that old story, surely the most pathetic in the pages of the Old Testament 
 history, of the father and son going up the mountain side together to the 
 mysterious sacrifice, and of the sorrow that passed over the heart of 
 Abraham when he had to give up Isaac at the command of the Divine 
 voice. Some shadow of what men call " giving up " and " loss " may be 
 conceived to have passed across the mirror of the Divine experience when 
 Christ died. I know not ; I dare not speak about such things, but I do 
 say that Christ's Cross preaches to you and me of a love on the part of our 
 Father God which shrinks from no sacrifices. " He so loved the world 
 that He gave up His only begotten Son." That Cross proves to you and 
 presses upon you a love which wants nothing but your love ; which 
 hungers, if I may so say, for the return of your love and of your thank- 
 fulness. A great poet of our own generation has described, with an 
 allowable boldness, God as sitting amidst His angels, praising Him as 
 with voice of many thunders, and of harpers with their harps, and saying 
 about one poor man's voice that had for awhile become silent, '*! miss 
 my little human praise." It is true. He wants your love. ** The P'ather 
 seeketh," said Christ— how strange and beautiful !— " the Father seeketh 
 such to worship Him." "My son, give Me thine heart," is the inmost 
 meaning of Christ's Cross. Yield your love to Him, and then your Father 
 will say as you come back, " It was meet that we should be glad, for this 
 My son was dead, and is alive again." 
 
 104 
 
GOD'S LOVE DExMONSTllATED. 
 
 Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent His 
 only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Hitn. — 
 I John iv. 9. 
 
 What is the connection between God's love and Christ's 
 death ? How does any, even the extremest, love and regard 
 and self-sacrifice on the part of Jesus, — how does that demonstrate God's 
 love ? Is it not obvious that we must conceive the relation between God 
 and Christ to be singularly close in order that Christ's death should prove 
 God's love ? 
 
 Suppose it had been said, *' Paul's death proves the love of God"? — 
 there would have been no probative force in that fact. But when we 
 read " Christ's death proves it," I would press this question : Does the 
 assertion hold water, and is there any common sense in it at all except 
 upon one supposition — that the man who said that God's love was proved 
 by Christ's propitiatory death believed that the heart of Christ was the 
 revelation of the heart of God ; and that what Christ did, God did in His 
 well-beloved Son ? 
 
 If you believe, as I believe, that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the 
 flesh, then it is reasonable to say, " God commendeth His own love to us 
 in that Christ died for us. "' 
 
 Let us remember, too, that God's love is all-embracing, because it 
 embraces each. It can only be true that Christ died for us all if every man 
 on earth has a right to say, "Christ died for me.'* 
 
 That is what I pray you to do. Do not take shelter in the crowd. 
 God does not deal with men in a crowd. And Christ's death was not for 
 men in a crowd ; it was not for the abstraction " humanity," " the world," 
 " the race " ; it was for men, one by one, each singly, as if there had not 
 been another human being in existence except just that one. I believe 
 that we were all in Christ's heart, all in His purpose, when He gave Him- 
 self up to the death for us all ; and that, therefore, His cross, — on which 
 He died that you and I, and all of us, might live ; on which He yielded 
 Himself up to the outward penalty of sin in order that none of its inward 
 penalty might ever fall upon them that trust in Him, — is the manifestation 
 of the love of God to the whole world ; because Christ's death embraced 
 in its purpose the whole world, and every unit that is in it, and, therefore, 
 thee, and thee, and thee, my brother ! Do you believe that ? 
 
 105 
 
ALL TRUTH BASED UPON CilRISTIANITV. 
 
 Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from 
 the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is 
 cast by turning. — ^James i. IJ. 
 
 There never was, and there is not, any religion untouched by 
 Christianity that has any firm grip of that truth, "God is Love." 
 There have been all kinds of deities in the world, outside the limits of the 
 circle in which the influence of the Gospel has been felt. You have had 
 cruel, capricious, good-natured, savage, vicious, revengeful, and impure 
 deities. You have had the deification of lust and passion and favouritism 
 and caprice, as well as of lofty and pure things ; but there is no God of 
 Love anywhere that ever I heard of, except where some faint rays of 
 Christianity and its blessed message have come. And the people thai 
 now-a-days are kicking down the ladder by which they have climbed, and, 
 in the name of this conviction which they owe to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
 are turning round and rejecting that Gospel, are committing intellectual 
 suicide, and strike away the very basis upon which the truth that they 
 value so much rests. The fact remains that men have never been able to 
 raise themselves up to, and maintain themselves at, the lofty level of the 
 lofty belief that God is Love, when they have turned their backs on the 
 Cross of Jesus Christ. Let history answer if they have ! 
 
 I believe that the course of thought in cultivated Europe is coming to 
 this plain alternative, — that a mere bare theism cannot keep its hold, and 
 that the choice is between Christ and His Cross on the one hand, and 
 blank disbelief in the love of God, and in God at all, on the other. These 
 two will divide the field. There will either be a happy, calm, triumphant 
 hold of God's love manifest in Jesus Christ, or there will be a despairing 
 sense that we walk in darkness as orphan creatures here, knowing not 
 whether we have a Father and a home. 
 
 Oh, dear brother ! our own conscience may tell us, and the world's 
 history may tell us, and men-made religions may tell us, that it is not an 
 easy thing for a man to say, nor to believe in his heart, that God is Love. 
 
 And when God's love is proved, it needs to be pressed upon us ; does it 
 not ? How we all forget it, and turn away from it, are careless about il ; 
 oppose ice to His flame, selfishness to His love, indifference to His plead- 
 ings ! Do not you, dear brother? Do we not need something that shall 
 touch our hearts, and shall press upon us, as well as prove to us, the endless 
 love of our Father God ? I think we do. 
 
 1 06 
 
THE DIVINE REDEEMER. 
 
 God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Sort, that whoso- 
 ever believeth in Him should not perish ^ but have eternal life. — ^JOHN iii. i6. 
 
 Christ's death proves God's love, because Christ is Divine. 
 April 16. 
 
 IIow else do you account for that extraordinary shifting of the 
 
 persons in these words of Paul, " God commendeth His own love to us, in 
 
 that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us " ? God proves His love 
 
 because Christ died ? How so ? God proved His love because Socrates 
 
 died ? God proved His love because some self-sacrificing doctor went 
 
 into a hospital, and died in curing others ? God proved His love because 
 
 some man sprang into the sea and rescued a drowning woman, at the cost 
 
 of his own life ? Would such talk hold ? Then I want to know how it 
 
 comes that Paul ventures to say that God proved His love because Jesus 
 
 Christ died? 
 
 Unless we believe that Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son of the Father, 
 whom the Father sent, and who willingly came for us men and for our 
 redemption ; unless we believe that in Him dwelt all the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily; unless we believe that, as He Himself said, "He that 
 hath seen Me hath seen the Father " ; unless we believe that His death 
 was the act, the consequence, and the revelation of the love of God, who 
 dwelt in Him as in none other of the sons of men, I, for one, venture to 
 think that Paul is talking nonsense, and that his argument is not worth 
 a straw. You must come to the full-toned belief which, as I think, per- 
 meates and binds together every page of the New Testament — God so 
 loved the world, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins ; that 
 Son who in the beginning was with God, and was God. And then a flood 
 of light is poured on the words of Paul, and we can adoringly bow the 
 head and say " Amen ! God hath to my understanding, and to my heart, 
 proved and commended His love, in that Christ died for us ! " 
 
 The death on the Cross was on our behalf, therefore it was the spon- 
 taneous outgush of an infinite love. It was for us, in that it brought an 
 infinite benefit. And so it was a token and a manifestation of the love 
 of God such as nothing else could be. 
 
 107 
 
GOD PROVES HIS OWN LOVE. 
 
 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He oved us, and sent His 
 Son to be the propiiiation for our sins. — I JOHN iv. lo. 
 
 .. ,_ Let us think for a moment of the fact which is thus the demon- 
 Apnl 17. 5j.j.j^tJQjj Qf the love of God, and try to reahse what it is that that 
 Cross says to us, as we gaze upon the silent Sufferer meekly hanging there. 
 I know that my words must fall far beneath the theme, but I can only hope 
 that you will read them charitably, and try to better them for yourselves in 
 your own thoughts. 
 
 I look, then, to the dying Christ, and I see there the revelation, because 
 the consequence, of a love which is not called forth by any loveableness on 
 the part of its objects. The Apostle emphasises that thought, if we render 
 liis words fully, because he says, "God proves His oivn love" — a love 
 which, like all that belongs to that timeless, self-deiermining Being, has 
 its reason and its roots in Himself alone ! We love because we discern the 
 object to be loveable. God loves by what I may venture to call the very 
 necessity of His nature. Like some artesian well that needs no pumps 
 nor machinery to draw up the sparkling waters to flash in the sunlight, 
 there gushes up from the depths of His own heart the love which pours 
 over every creature that He has made. He loves because He is God. 
 
 It is only the Gospel of a dying Christ that can calm the reasonable 
 consciousness of discord and antagonism that springs in a man's heart when 
 he lets his conscience speak. It is because He died for us that we are sure 
 now that the black mountain-wall of our sin, which, to our own apprehen- 
 sion, rises separating between us and our God, is, if I may so say, surged 
 over by the rising flood of His love. The Cross of Christ teaches me that, 
 and so it is the Gospel for men that know themselves to be sinners. Is 
 there anything else that teaches it ? I know not where it is, if there be. 
 
 That dying Christ, hanging there, in the silence and the darkness of 
 eclipse, speaks to me, too, of a Divine love which, though not turned away 
 by man's sin, is rigidly righteous. There is a current easy-going religion 
 which says, "Oh! we do not want any of your Evangelical contrivances 
 for forgiveness. God is Love. That is enough for us." I venture to say 
 that the thing which that form of thought calls love is not love at all, but 
 pure weakness ; such as in a king or in a father would be immoral. It is 
 not otherwise in God. My brother ! unless you can find some means 
 v/hereby the infinite love of God can get at and soothe the sinner's heart 
 without perilling God's righteousness, you have done nothing to the purpose. 
 Such a one-eyed, lop-sided gospel will never work, has not worked, and it 
 never will. But, when I think of my Christ bearing the sins of the world, 
 I say to myself, " Herein is love. By His stripes we are healed," and in 
 Him love and righteousness are both crowned as distinctive attributes in 
 harmonious oneness. Is there anything else that will do that ? If there 
 be, I, for one, know not what it is. 
 
 loS 
 
A BREVIARY OF CHRISTIAN GRACES. 
 
 Add on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue, and in your 
 virtue knowledge^ and in your knowledge tetnperance, and in your temperance 
 patience, and in your patience godliness, and in your godliness love of the 
 brethren, and in your love of the brethren love. — 2 Peter i. 5, 6, 7. 
 
 All the excellences which precede godliness are of the sterner, 
 ^ ' the more severe, and self-regarding kind, and those which 
 follow it are of the gentler sort, and refer to others. Before it stand 
 strength, discrimination, self-control, patience, all having reference to 
 myself alone, and mainly to the difficulties and antagonisms which I meet 
 with in life. There follow it "brotherly kindness and charity" ; having 
 reference to others, and being gentle and sweet. If I might so say, it is 
 as in some Alpine range, where the side that faces the north presents 
 rugged cliffs and sparse vegetation, and close-knit strength to breast the 
 tempest, and to live amidst the snows ; whilst the southern side has gentler 
 slopes, and a more fertile soil, a richer vegetation, and a sunnier sky. So 
 here : on the one side you get these severe and self- regarding graces, fronting 
 a world full of antagonism and evil ; and on the other side you get the 
 gentler graces, fronting a world full of men that need care and help ; whilst 
 above them all towers the great summit that points to the stars, and lives 
 up amongst the blue, from which flow down on the one side the streams of 
 love and pity, and on the other run down the cliffs that front the stormy 
 north. In the beginning faith ; at the end love ; in the centre godliness ; 
 which will blend into one harmonious whole the virtues of strength and 
 of gentleness, even as the type and example of both are found in the Christ 
 of whom long ago it was said: "He shall come with a strong hand; 
 . . . and shall carry the lambs in His bosom, and gently lead those 
 that are with young." 
 
 And in like manner, the great difficult problem of how far I am to 
 carry my own cultivation of Christian excellence apart from regard to others, 
 and how far I am to let my obligations to help and succour others over- 
 come the necessity for individual cultivation of Christian character ; that 
 difficulty which presses practically upon some of us with great force is best 
 solved as Peter solves il here. Put godliness in the middle, let that be 
 the centre, and from it will flow on the one sid^ all needful self-discipline 
 and tutoring, and on the other all wise and Christlike regard to the needs 
 and the sorrows of the men around us. 
 
 109 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 
 He shall be great in the sight of the Lord. — Luke i. 15. 
 
 So spake the angel who foretold the birth of John the Baptist. 
 April 19. 
 
 *' In the sight of the Lord. Then men are not on a dead level 
 
 in His eyes. Though He is so high and we are so low, the country 
 
 beneath Him that He looks down upon is not flattened to Him, as it is to 
 
 us from an elevation, but there are greater and smaller men in His sight, 
 
 too. No epithet is more misused and misapplied than that of "a great 
 
 man." It is flung about as indiscriminately as ribbons and orders are by 
 
 some petty state. Every little man that makes a noise for awhile gets it 
 
 hung round his neck. Think what a set they are that are gathered in the 
 
 world's Valhalla, and honoured as the world's great men 1 The mass of 
 
 people are so much on a level, and that level is so low that an inch above 
 
 the average looks gigantic. But the tallest blade of grass gets mown down 
 
 by the scythe, and withers as quickly as the rest of its green companions, 
 
 and goes its way into the oven as surely. There is the world's false 
 
 estimate of greatness and there is God's estimate. If we want to know 
 
 what the elements of true greatness are, we may well turn to the life 
 
 of this man, of whom the prophecy went before him, that he should be 
 
 ** great in the sight of the Lord." That is gold that will stand the test. 
 
 We may remember, too, that Jesus Christ, looking back on the career to 
 which the angel was looking forward, endorsed the prophecy, and declared 
 that it had become a fact, and that " of them that were born of woman 
 there had not arisen a greater than John the Baptist." There is no char- 
 acteristic which may not be attained by any man, woman, or child amongst 
 us. **The least in the Kingdom of Heaven" may be greater than he. 
 It is a poor ambition to seek to be called " great." It is a noble desire to 
 be *' great in the sight of the Lord." And if we will keep ourselves 
 close to Jesus Christ that will be attained. It will matter very little what 
 men think of us if at last we have praise from the lips of Him who poured 
 such praise on His servant. We may, if we will. And then it will not 
 hurt us though our names on earth be dark, and our memories perish from 
 among men. 
 
 *'0f so much fame in Heaven expect thy meed." 
 
 no 
 
COURAGE UNWAVERING AND IMMOVEABLE. 
 
 What went ye out into the wilderness to behold ? A reed shaken with 
 the wind ? — Luke vii. 24. 
 
 "What went ve out into the wilderness for to see? a reed 
 April 20. ^ 
 
 shaken with the wind ? " Nay ! an iron pillar that stood firm 
 
 whatsoever winds blew against it. This, as I take it, is in some true sense 
 
 the basis of all moral greatness, that a man should have a grip which 
 
 cannot be loosened — like that of the cuttlefish with all its tentacles round 
 
 its prey— upon the truths that dominate his being and make him a hero. 
 
 **If you want me to weep," said the old artist-poet, " there must be tears 
 
 in your own eyes." If you want me to believe, you yourself must be 
 
 aflame with conviction which has penetrated to the very marrow of your 
 
 bones. And so, as I take it, the first requisite, either for power upon 
 
 others, or for greatness, in a man's own development of character, is that 
 
 there shall be this unwavering firmness of grasp of clearly-apprehended 
 
 truths, and unflinching boldness of devotion to it. 
 
 No doubt there is much to be laid to the account of temperament ; but 
 whatever their temperament may be, the way to this unwavering courage, 
 and firm, clear ring of indubitable certainty, is open to every Christian man 
 and woman ; and it is their own fault, their own sin and their own weakness, 
 if they do not possess these qualities. Temperament 1 What on earth is 
 the good of our religion if it is not to modify and govern our temperament ? 
 Has a man a right to jib on one side, and give up the attempt to clear the 
 fence, because he feels that in his own natural disposition there is little 
 power to take the leap ? Surely not ! Jesus Christ came here for the very 
 purpose of making our weakness strong ; and if we have a firm bold upon 
 Him, then, in the measure in which His love has permeated our whole 
 nature, will be our unwavering courage, and out of weakness we shall be 
 made strong. 
 
 Then let our closeness to Jesus Christ, and our experience of His power, 
 kindle in us the fiery enthusiasm with which He baptizes all His true 
 servants, and let it, because we know the sweetnesses that excel, deprive us 
 of all liability to be tempted away by the vulgar and coarse delights of 
 earth and of sense. Let us keep ourselves clear of the babble that is 
 round about us, and be strong because we grasp Christ's hand. 
 
 Ill 
 
THE HIGHEST TYPE OF COURAGE. 
 
 And when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, and had perceived 
 that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they niarveUed, and they took 
 knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. — ^AcTS iv. 13. 
 
 Moral characteristics do not reach a climax unless there has 
 been much underground building to bear the lofty pinnacle. 
 And no man, when great occasions come to him, develops a courage and 
 an unwavering confidence which are strange to his habitual life. There 
 must be the underground building ; and there must have been many a 
 fighting down of fears, many a curbing of tremors, many a rebuke of 
 hesitations and doubts in the gaunt, desert-loving prophet, before he was 
 man enough to stand before Herod and say, "It is not lawful for thee to 
 have her." 
 
 Of course, the highest type of this undaunted boldness and unwavering 
 firmness of conviction is not in John and his like. He presented strength 
 in a lower form than did the Master from whom his strength came. The 
 willow has a place as well as the oak. Firmness is not obstinacy ; courage 
 is not rudeness. It is possible to have the iron hand in the velvet glove, 
 not of etiquette — observing politeness, but of a true considerateness and 
 gentleness. They who are likest Him that was " meek and lowly m heart" 
 are surest to possess the unflinching resolve which set His face like a flint, 
 and enabled Him to go unhesitatingly and unrecalcitrant to the Cross 
 itself. 
 
 Do not let us forget, either, that John's unwavering firmness wavered ; 
 that over the clear heaven of his convictions there did steal a cloud ; that 
 he from whom no violence could wrench his faith, felt it slipping out of his 
 grasp when his muscles were relaxed in the dungeon ; and that he sent 
 "from the prison" — which was the excuse for the message — to ask the 
 question, " After all, ' Art Thou He that should come ? ' " 
 
 Nor let us forget that it was that very moment of tremulousness which 
 Jesus Christ seized in order to pour an unstinted flood of praise for the firm- 
 ness of his convictions on the wavering head of the Forerunner. So if we 
 feel that though the needle of our compass points true to the pole, yet when 
 the compass frame is shaken the needle sometimes vibrates away from its 
 true goal, do not let us be cast down, but believe that a merciful allow- 
 ance is made for human weakness. This man was great because he had 
 such dauntless courage and firmness that over his headless corpse in the 
 dungeon at Machoerus might have been spoken what the Regent Murray 
 said over John Knox's coffin, " Here lies one that never feared the face 
 of man." 
 
EXALTATION ABOVE WORLDLY GOOD. 
 
 / know how to be abased, and I knoiv also how to abound : in everything 
 and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, 
 both to abound and to be in want. I can do all things in Him that 
 strengtheneih me. — Phil. iv. 12, 13. 
 
 "What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A man 
 
 Anril 22 
 
 clothed in soft raiment?" Ah! you would have gone to a 
 palace if you had wanted to see that, not to the reed-beds of Jordan. As 
 we all know, in his life, in his dress, in his food, in the aims that he set 
 before him, John rose high above all regard for the debasing and perishable 
 sweetnesses that hold of flesh, and are ended in time. He lived con- 
 spicuously for the Unseen. His asceticism, which belonged to his age, 
 was not the highest type of the virtue which it expressed. As the might 
 of gentleness is greater than the might of such strength as John's, so the 
 asceticism of John is lower than the self-government of the Man that comes 
 eating and drinking. 
 
 But whilst that is true, I seek to urge this old threadbare lesson, always 
 needed, never needed more than amidst the senselessly luxurious habits 
 of this generation, that one indispensable element of true greatness and 
 elevation of character is that every one of us should live high above these 
 temptations of gross and perishable joys ; should 
 
 " Scorn delights and live laborious days." 
 
 No man has a right to be called "great " if his aims are small. And the 
 question is, not as modern idolatry of intellect, or, still worse, modern 
 idolatry of success, often makes it out to be, has he great capacities, or, 
 " has he won great prizes," but has he greatly used himself and his life? 
 If your aims are small, you will never be great ; and if your highest aims 
 are but to get a good slice of this world's pudding, no matter what powers 
 God may have given you to use, you are essentially a small man. 
 
 I remember a vigorous and contemptuous illustration of St. Bernard's : 
 he likens a man that lives for these perishable delights which John spurned 
 to a spider spinning a web out of his own substance, and catching in it 
 nothing but a wretched prey of poor little flies. Such a one has no right 
 to be called a great man surely ! Our aims rather than our capacity 
 determine our character, and they who greatly aspire after the greatest 
 things within the reach of men, which are faith, hope, charity ; and who, 
 for the sake of effecting these aspirations, put their heels upon the head 
 of the serpent, and suppress the animal in their nature — these are the men 
 "great in the sight of the Lord." 
 
 113 X 
 
ENTHUSIASM FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 Attd was clad with zeal as a cloke — IsA. lix. 17. 
 
 Aru-il 23 ^^^ "^^y think that fiery enthusiasm has little to do with 
 ' greatness ; I believe it has everything to do with it, and that the 
 difference between men is very largely to be found here, whether they flame 
 up into the white heat of enthusiasm for the things that are right, or 
 whether the only things that can kindle them into anything like earnestness 
 and emotion are the poor shabby things of personal advantage. I need not 
 remind you how, all through John the Baptist's career, there burnt, 
 unflickering and undying, that steadfast light ; how he brought to the service 
 of the plainest teaching of morality a fervour of passion and of zeal almost 
 unexampled and magnificent. I need not remind you how Jesus Christ 
 Himself laid His hand upon this characteristic, when He said of him, 
 "he was a light kindled and shining." But I would lay upon all our 
 hearts the plain practical lesson that if we keep in that tepid region 
 of lukewarmness which is the utmost approach to tropical heat that 
 moral and religious questions are capable of raising in many of us, good- 
 bye to all chance of being "great in the sight of the Lord." We hear a 
 great deal about the '* blessings of moderation," the " dangers of 
 fanaticism," and the like. I venture to think that the last thing which 
 the moral consciousness of England wants to-day is a refrigerator, and that 
 what it needs a great deal more than that is, that all Christian people should 
 be brought face to face with this plain truth — that their religion has, as an 
 indispensable part of it, " a spirit of burning," and that if they have not 
 been baptized in fire, there is little reason to believe that they have been 
 baptized with the Holy Ghost. 
 
 " Full of the Holy Ghost," as a vessel might be to its brim of golden, 
 wine ! Full ! A dribbling drop or two in the bottom of the jar : whose 
 fault is it ? Why, with that rushing mighty wind to fill our sails if we like, 
 should we be lying in the sickly calms of the tropics, with the pitch oozing 
 out of the seams, and the idle canvas flapping against the mast ? Why, 
 with those tongues of fire hovering over our heads, should we be cowering 
 over grey ashes in which there lives a little spark ? Why, with that great 
 rushing tide of the river of the water of life, should we be like the dry 
 watercourses of the desert, with bleached and white stones baking where 
 the streams should be running? "Oh ! thou that art named the house of 
 Israel, is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? Are these His doings?" But 
 if we stay ourselves on God, amidst strug<];]e and change here, He will 
 gladden us yonder with perpetual joys. " Because He is at my right hand 
 I shall not be moved." Every one of us knows that to be kept unmoved 
 will demand the exercise of power far beyond the limitations of humanity. 
 We are swept by such surges of passion ; we are SM'ayed by such storms of 
 temptation ; we are smitten l)y such shocks of destiny, that to stand stead- 
 fast is beyond our power. And there is only one thing that will make us 
 steadfast, and that is that we should be, if I mi;:;;ht use such a figure, bolted 
 and lashed on to, or rather incorporated into, the changeless steadfastness 
 of the unmoved God. 
 
 I long that you and myself may be a flame for goodness ; may be 
 enthusiastic over plain morality ; and may sliow that we are so by our 
 daily life, by our rebuking the opposite, if need be, even if it took us into 
 Herod's chamber and made Herodias our enemy for life. 
 
 114 
 
SELF-ABNEGATION BEFORE JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 He must increase, but I must decrease. — John iii. 30. 
 
 A ril 24 There is nothing that I know in biography anywhere more 
 beautiful, more striking, than the contrast between the two 
 halves of the character and demeanour of the Baptist : how, on the one 
 side, he fronts all men undaunted and recognises no superior, and how 
 neither threats nor flatteries nor anything else will tempt him to step one 
 inch beyond the limitations of which he is aware, nor to abate one inch of 
 the claims which he urges ; and, on the other hand, like some tall cedar, 
 touched by the lightning's hand, he falls prone before Jesus Christ and says, 
 " He must increase, and I must decrease." " A man can receive nothing 
 except it be given him of God." He is all boldness on one side ; all sub- 
 mission and dependence on the other. 
 
 You remember how, in the face of many temptations, this attitude was 
 maintained. The very message which he had to carry was full of tempta- 
 tions to a self-seeking man to assert himself. You remember the almost 
 rough "No!" with which, reiteratedly. he met the suggestions of the 
 deputation from Jerusalem, that sought to induce him to say that he was 
 more than he knew himself to be, and how he stuck by that infinitely 
 humble and beautiful saying, "I am the voice'" — that is all. You 
 remember how the whole nation was in a kind of conspiracy to tempt him 
 to assert himself, and was ready to break into a flame if he had dropped a 
 spark, for "all men were musing in their heart whether he was the Christ 
 or not," and all the lawless and restless elements would have been only too 
 glad to gather round him if he had declared himself the Messiah. 
 Remember how his own disciples came to him, and tried to play upon his 
 jealousy, and to induce him to assert himself. " Master ! lie whom thou 
 didst baptize," and so didst give Him the first credentials that sent men on 
 His course, has outstripped thee, and "all men are coming to Him." And 
 you remember the lovely answer that opened such depths of unexpected 
 tenderness in the rough nature. " He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. 
 The friend of the bridegroom heareth the voice ; and that is enough to fill 
 my cup with joy to the very brim." 
 
 And what conceptions of Jesus Christ had John that he thus bowed his 
 lofty crest before Him, and softened his heart into submission almost abject ? 
 He knew Him to be the coming Judge, with the fan in His hand, who 
 could baptize with fire, and he knew Him to be " the Lamb of God which 
 taketh away the sin of the world." Therefore he fell before Him. We 
 shall not be " great in the sight of the Lord " unless we copy that example 
 of utter self-abnegation before Jesus Christ. Thomas ^ Kempis says some- 
 where, " He is truly great who is small in his own sight and thinks nothing 
 of the giddy heights of worldly honour." You and I know far more ot 
 Jesus Christ than John the Baptist did. Do we bow ourselves before Ilim 
 as he did ? The Source from which he drew his greatness is open to us all. 
 Let us begin with the recognition of the Lamb of God that takes away the 
 world's sin, and with it ours. Let the thought of what He is and what 
 He has done for us bow us in unfeigned submission. Let it shatter all 
 dreams of our own importance or our own desert. The vision of the Lamb 
 of God, and it only, will crush in our hearts the serpent's eggs of self- 
 esteem and self-regard. 
 
DEATH AND LIFE. 
 
 The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made wie free from the law 
 of sin and death. — Rom. viii. 2. 
 
 • ., „, The blood of the first martyr spoke of death ; the blood of 
 Christ speaks of life. 
 
 The former, as I have said, was the first death. We can partly 
 understand how awful must have been the experience of those who stood 
 by and saw, for the first time, that mystery before their eyes — a dead man. 
 How there comes from this first incident the dark foreboding of all the dim 
 subsequent events of a like kind. It heads a great series stretching away 
 into the darkness ; the first of millions like itself, the first experience of 
 that which saddens all hearts sooner or later, of that which lays its hand 
 upon all joys one time or other, of that which comes to each man as a 
 rear, even when the better man within him reaches out towards it as a hope 
 and a deliverance. Abel's death speaks of the beginning of the fulfilment 
 of the solemn law which wraps us all. The veil is spread over all nations, 
 and we walk beneath its black folds. 
 
 **The blood of sprinkling speaketh better things." The blood is the 
 life ; the blood shed is the life given up ; the blood received is the life 
 incorporated. You can live on the blood of Jesus Christ. You can have 
 it, if I may so say, transfused into your veins. The spirit of life which was 
 in Him may be yours. It was shed that it might be partaken of by all 
 the world. 
 
 And so, whilst the stark corpse of the first martyr lying there, pale and 
 bloody in its gore, proclaims the beginning of the reign of death, the blood 
 of Jesus Christ proclaims the beginning of life, and is the means of the 
 communication of His own eternal and Divine life to all that love Him 
 and believe upon Him. The alabaster box of His manhood is broken 
 that the house of the world may be filled with the odour of the ointment. 
 " He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life." 
 
 In that life is given, too, purity like its own. Abel "being dead yet 
 speaketh," and proclaims the nobleness of goodness, of righteousness, and 
 of faith ; but Christ living, not only proclaims the nobleness of goodness 
 and righteousness and faith, but gives us His own purity; and "the law 
 of the Spirit of life which was in Christ Jesus makes us free from the law 
 of sin and of death." 
 
 So, dear brother, one voice speaks of hatred, the other of all-embracing 
 love ; one voice speaks of retribution, the other of pardon ; one voice 
 prophesies a dolorous prophecy of universal death, the other proclaims a 
 glad evangel of all-conquering life. Listen, then, to the solemn warning 
 with which, as with uplifted finger and grave look of admonition, the 
 writer in the Hebrews speaks : " See that ye refuse not Him that 
 speaketh." Let not your ears be dumb to the infinite mercy and gracious 
 pardon which speak to you from the shed blood of Christ. God hears its 
 voice, and forgives all our hate. Do you hearken to its voice, and accept 
 the love that speaks its tenderest message in the blood shed for you. 
 
 116 
 
VENGEANCE AND PARDON. 
 
 Lord, shall u:e smite with the sword? . . . Jesus anszvei'ed, Suffer ye 
 thus far. And He touched his ear^ and healed him. — Luke xxii. 49, 51. 
 
 A "126 "What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood 
 crieth unto Me from the ground" say the grand words of 
 Genesis. There it lies — the earth will not drink it in ; there it lies, 
 pleading, appealing to Divine justice to sniite the evildoer. A vehement 
 figure, representing a solemn truth, that every evil has a tongue which 
 calls to I leaven against the iniquity of the evildoer ; or, to put it into 
 plainer words, all sin necessarily appeals to God for punishment of the 
 sinner. It does so from the very nature of things and the constitution of 
 the universe, ^\^latsoever is contrary to the Divine will calls upon God 
 to smite, and smiting to avenge. And that is true, and will be true 
 through all eternity. And there is no Gospel that does not base and found 
 itself upon that. And the first sin of man against man, this first murder 
 and first martyrdom, proclaims to earth, as it appeals to Heaven, the 
 solemn fact that the law of the Divine nature and the necessity of the 
 universe is that evil shall be punished, and that retribution shall follow 
 upon wrong-doing. 
 
 Christ's death comes under that law too. " His blood be on us, and 
 on our children," shouted the frenzied mob, lightly incurring the awful 
 burden ; and His blood was on them and on their children. And the 
 dissolution of their national existence, and the sweeping away of their 
 special privileges, and the destruction of Temple and worship, and their 
 continuance till tliis day a hissing and a bye-word upon the face of the 
 earth, show us how the blood of Christ spoke what the blood of Abel 
 spoke, and cried to God for vengeance ; and the vengeance came, and is 
 here to-day. 
 
 And yet the cry for retribution is not the predominant tone. There is 
 a deeper voice than that. Christ's blood, meaning thereby the fact of 
 Christ's death, is present in the Divine mind — not only as the consequence 
 of man's sin, and therefore a crime, but as the consequence of its own 
 infinite love, and therefore an atonement and a propitiation. And Avhilst 
 in the one aspect it did bring down, as it ought to bring down, judgments 
 upon the wicked hands that crucified and slew, in the other aspect it has 
 brought down upon all the world, and upon us if we will accept it, the 
 blessing of that pardoning grace that sweeps away all sin and makes us 
 pure and holy. The blood of Jesus Christ cries to God for pardon — that 
 is to say, is an element ever present before the Divine mind, conditioning 
 and modifying the incidence of His judgments, and His punishment for 
 sin. Here is the centre of Christianity. The one thing which makes it 
 a power to bless and to help is the Cross, on which the Sacrifice for the 
 sins of the world has died. Is your Christianity a Christianity which 
 founds on the fact of Christ's death for the sins of the world, and from that 
 draws all your hope, all your knowledge of God and of man, as well as 
 all your power for holiness and obedience ? I beseech you, let that voice 
 speak to your hearts and consciences, that they may be sprinkled from 
 dead works by the blood that " speaketh better things than that of Abel." 
 
 117 
 
THE TWO VOICES. 
 
 The voice of ihy brothers blood crieih ttnio Me from the ground. — 
 Gen iv. 10. 
 
 Speakelh hciler things than that of Abel. — Heb. xii. 24. 
 
 We have the blood that speaks of man's hate, and the other 
 "^^ ' blood that speaks of God's love. The former was shed simply 
 because the milk of brotherly affection was all curdled into hate through the 
 working of jealousy and of envy. So that first dismal story rises up on 
 the very threshold of history as a solemn revelation of the possibilities of 
 diabolical and murderous hatred that lie in all human relationships and in 
 all men's hearts ; and speaks to every one of us the warning that we shall 
 not cherish the tiny seeds of jealousy and envy of a brother's good, which 
 may ripen and fructify into the devilish fruit of murder, as it did there. 
 
 Christ's death was also caused by man's sins, by the antagonism which 
 was raised in man by His very beauty and purity. Eternal goodness came 
 into the world, and the world hated the light, because its deeds were evil. 
 
 But we have to go deeper than that. The blood of Abel proclaimed 
 man's hate, the blood of Christ proclaims God's infinite love. For He 
 died, not because men hated flim, but because He loved men. He did 
 not die because Pharisees and Scribes, with all the others who were roused 
 in antagonism against Him, carried out their schemes, but He died because 
 He would. It was not their hostility that nailed Him to the Cross, it was 
 His purpose to save. It was not because men willed it that He perished 
 from the life of earth, but because He would give Himself for us. And 
 so, whilst from that old dim incident far away there, low down on the 
 horizon of history, there streams out, as it were, a baleful light that speaks 
 of man's sin and hatred, from this other there rays out a celestial brightness, 
 which proclaims the infinite love of the Father who gave His Son, and 
 the infinite love of the Son who gave Himself. The one is reeking with 
 hatred, the other is fragrant with love. The one shows the depths of 
 possible evil in men's hearts, and how all human affection may be 
 embittered and turned to its opposite ; the other shows how the infinite 
 lovingkindness of God lives on and on, like the patient sunshine upon the 
 glaciers, notwithstanding all the coldness and the alienation ot man's 
 nature, and how that infinite and wondrous love shrinks not from even 
 the death which the hate it would win to love can inflict. "The blood 
 of sprinkling speaketh better things than that of Abel," in that against the 
 blackness of man's hate it lifts the sevenfold lustre of the infinite love 
 
 of God. 
 
 118 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. 
 
 The blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. — 
 Heb. xii. 24. 
 
 That dim figure, standing on the very horizon of time, has 
 a tragical significance. Abel's was the first death, the first 
 murder, the first fi-atricide, the first martyrdom. And so, according to the 
 energetic phrase of the Book of Genesis, his blood had a dolorous voice. 
 It cried to God from the ground for retribution. It prophesied of much 
 more to follow. It proclaimed the hatred of the evil against the good, 
 and so it was a voice of lamentation and of woe. 
 
 The blood of Jesus Christ has a significance broadly distinguished from 
 that of all innocent martyrs. Abel is the first of the class, the type of the 
 whole, and "in his hand a glass which showed many more" to follow; 
 for the same causes will produce the same effects. The death of Christ 
 belongs to that class. He, too, is an innocent Victim ; He, too, dies 
 because bad men hate the good with a murderous hatred ; He, too, dies 
 because He bears witness to the truth, and for the truth to which He bears 
 witness. He is a Martyr. 
 
 And is that all ? Does the blood of Christ speak the same things as 
 the blood of Abel, only more tenderly and more loudly ? Nay ; there 
 are some of us, I am afraid, to whom it does ; to whom it only reiterates 
 the old lesson of the world's wages to the world's teachers ; to whom it is 
 nothing more than the highest, the most touching, the most tragic example 
 of what the good man has to meet with when he asserts the principles 
 of his own life against the principles on which the world's lives are mostly 
 regulated. Let me urge upon you that if Christ's blood says nothing 
 more to you than that He is the foremost of the martyrs and the inno- 
 cents, who have died because the world hated them and their goodness, 
 Christ's blood is dumb to you. 
 
 It speaks other lessons altogether than these, dear brother ; does it 
 speak them to you ? Have you penetrated beneath that surface significance 
 which, blessed as it is, is only surface, and have you come down to the 
 characteristic thing, the something more, which makes Christianity all 
 that it is, of blessing and power ? And do you hear another proclamation 
 altogether from the shed blood than the proclamation of innocent martyrdom, 
 as over the fate of the good and the pure ? 
 
 "We love Him, because He first loved us." Very simple words! 
 But they go down into the depths of God, lifting burdens off the heart of 
 humanity, turning duty into delight, and changing the aspect of all things. 
 He who knows that God loves him needs little more for blessedness ; he 
 who loves God back again offers more than all burnt offering and sacrifices. 
 
 119 
 
MUTUAL FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. — Prov. 
 xvii. 17. 
 
 Mutual conHdence is the morlar which binds the stones in 
 Avril 29. 
 
 society together into a building^. It makes the difference 
 
 between the lierding together of beasts and the association of men. No 
 
 community could keep together for an hour without mutual confidence, 
 
 even in regard of the least intimate relationsliips of life. But it is the very 
 
 lifeblood of friendship. You cannot say, "A. B. is my friend, but I do 
 
 not trust him." If suspicion creeps in, like the foul malaria of tropical 
 
 swamps, it kills all friendship. Therefore "he was called the friend of 
 
 God" is by James deduced from the fact that "he believed God, and it 
 
 was imputed to him for righteousness." You cannot make a friend of a man 
 
 that you do not know where to have. There may be some vague reverence 
 
 of, or abject reluctant submission to, " the unknown God," the something 
 
 outside of ourselves that perhaps makes for rigliteousness ; but for any vivid, 
 
 warm throb of friendship there must be, first a clear knowledge, and then 
 
 a living grappling of that knowledge to my very heart, by my faith. Unless 
 
 I trust God I cannot be a friend of God's. If you and I are His friends, we 
 
 trust Him, and He will trust us. For this friendship is not one-sided ; and 
 
 the word, though it may be ambiguous as to whether it means one whom 
 
 I love or one who loves me, really includes both persons to the compact, 
 
 and there are analogous, if not identical, emotions in each. So that, 
 
 if I trust God, I may be sure that God trusts me, and, in Plis confidence, 
 
 leaves a great deal to me, and so ennobles and glorifies me by His reliance 
 
 upon me. 
 
 And so we come to this, that the heavenly and the earthly friend, like 
 
 friends on the low levels of humanity, love each other because they trust 
 
 each other. I have said that the words "my friend" may either mean 
 
 one whom I love or one who loves me, but that the two things are, in the 
 
 present connection, inseparable. Only let us remember where the sweet 
 
 reciprocation and interchange of love begins : "We love Him because He 
 
 first loved us." "When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by 
 
 the death of His Son." And so we have to turn to that heavenly Friend, 
 
 and feel that as life itself, so the love which is the life of life, has its 
 
 beginning in Him, and that never would our hearts have turned themselves 
 
 from their alienation unless there had poured down upon them the attractive 
 
 outflow of His great love. It v/as an old fancy that, wherever a tree was 
 
 struck by lightning, all its tremulous foliage turned in the direction from 
 
 which the bolt had come. When ihe merciful flash of God's great love 
 
 strikes a heart, then all its tendrils turn to the source of the life-giving 
 
 light, and we love back again in sweet reverberation to the primal and 
 
 original love. 
 
 120 
 
THE PERFECT VISION AND THE PERFECT LIKENESS. 
 
 As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness : I shall be salisfed, 
 when I awake, with Thy likeness. — Psalm xvii. 15. 
 
 To behold Christ will be the condition and the means of growing 
 ^" ' like Him. That way of transformation by beholding, or of 
 assimilation by the power of loving contemplation, is the blessed way of 
 ennobling character, which even here, and in human relationships, has 
 often made it easy to put off old vices and to clothe the soul with unwonted 
 grace. Men have learned to love and gaze upon some fair character till 
 some image of its beauty has passed into their ruder natures. To love such 
 and to look on them has been an education. The same process is exem- 
 plified in more sacred regions, and quickened by Divine powers, as men 
 learn to love and look upon Christ, and so become like Him, as the sun 
 stamps a tiny copy of its blazing sphere on the eye that looks at it. But 
 all these are but poor, far-off hints and low preludes of the energy with 
 which that blessed vision of the glorified Christ shall work on the happy 
 hearts that behold Elim, and of the completeness of the likeness to Him 
 which will be stamped in light upon their faces. 
 
 It matters not, though it doth nor yet appear what we shall be, if to all 
 the questionings of our own hearts we have this for our all -sufficient answer, 
 *' We shall be like Him." As good old Richard Baxter has it : — 
 " My knowledge of that life is small, 
 The eye of faith is dim ; 
 But, 'ti ; enough that Christ knows all. 
 And I shall be like Him !" 
 
 It is enough for the servant that he be as his Lord. 
 
 There is no need to go into the dark and difficult questions about that 
 vision. "We shall see Him as He is." For He Himself prayed, in that 
 great intercessory prayer, " Father, I will that these whom Thou hast 
 given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory." And 
 that vision of the glorified manhood of Jesus Christ — certain, direct, clear, 
 and worthy, whether it come through sense or through thought, to be 
 called vision — is all the sight of God that men in Heaven through eternity 
 will have. '* No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him." 
 And through the millenniums of a growing glory, Christ, as He is, will be the 
 manifested Deity. Then, as a bit of glass, when the light strikes it, flashes 
 into sunny glory, as every poor little muddy pool on the pavement, when 
 the sunbeam falls upon it, has the sun mirrored even in its shallow mud, so 
 into your poor heart and mine the vision of Christ's glory will come, 
 moulding and transforming you to its own beauty. Those rays of His 
 beauties will pour right down upon us, "as with unveiled face," reflecting, 
 as glass does, the glory of the Lord, we "shall be changed into the same 
 
 image.*' 
 
 121 
 
THE PEACE OF FORGIVENESS. 
 
 / wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope. My 
 soul looketh for the Lord, more than watchmen look for the morning ; yea, 
 more than watchmen for the morning. — Psalm cxxx. 5, 6. 
 
 „ . This is what I call the permanent, peaceful attitude of the spirit 
 
 *^ ' that has tasted the sweet consciousness of forgiving love, a con- 
 tinual dependence upon God. 
 
 Like a man that has just recovered from some illness, but still leans upon 
 the hand, and feels his need of seeing the face, of that kindly physician that 
 had helped him through, there will be still, and always, the necessity for the 
 continual application of that pardoning love. But they that have tasted 
 that the Lord is gracious can sit very quietly at His feet and trust them- 
 selves to His kindly dealings, resting their souls upon His strong word, and 
 looking for the fuller communication of light from Himself. A beautiful 
 picture of a tranquil, continuous, ever-rewarded, and ever-fresh waiting 
 upon Him, and reliance upon His mercy. 
 
 "More than they that watch for the morning." That is beautiful! 
 The consciousness of sin was the dark night. The coming of His forgiving 
 love flushed all the eastern heaven with diffused brightness that grew into 
 the perfect day. And so the man waits quietly for the dawn, and his whole 
 soul is one absorbing desire that God may dwell with him, and brighten and 
 gladden him. 
 
 The thundery side of the sky makes all the more tender the sapphire 
 blue of the other side : — "But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou 
 mayest be feared." No man ever comes to that confidence that has not 
 sprung to it, as it were, by a rebound from the other thought. It needs, 
 first of all, that the lieart should have tremblingly entertained the contrary 
 by hypothesis, in order that the heart should spring into the relief and the 
 gladness of the counter truth. It must fiist have felt the shudder of the 
 thought, " If Thou, Lord, shouldst," in order to come to the gladness of 
 the thought, " But there is forgiveness with Thee ! " 
 
 Do you know what Beihesda means? " House of Mercy" ; perhaps so 
 named to commemorate some benefactor that had built the portico ; more 
 probably to suggest to the poor sick creatures a gleam of hope from the 
 thought that God had love and care for them. There seemed a sharp con- 
 tradiction between the condition of the people and the name. But we are 
 gathered, as they were, in the House of Mercy. That is to say, though we 
 have all departed from the right way, God's love encompasses us still, and 
 this earth, seamed and stained as it has been by man's sin, is, notwithstand- 
 ing, the chosen field in which He will manifest the tenderness of His 
 compassion and the love of I^is heart. If any of you ever saw St. Peter's 
 in Rome, you will remember the great sweeping colonnades which extend 
 from its front and reach out their arms as though they woald embrace the 
 city and the world ; and in the midst there springs and sparkles a pure 
 fountain. So God's love compasses all us sick folk, and in the midst there 
 rises the fountain which will heal. We are in the House of Mercy. The 
 world is gathered round the fountain opened for sin and for unclcanness. 
 It is not intermittent, Init evermore His blood avails for us. It is not ex- 
 hausted by one cure, or by two or three ; but there is enough for each and 
 enough for all ; enough for thee and me and all our fellows. Christ is 
 coming to you by my poor unworthy words, and saying, " Wilt thou be made 
 whole ? " Take Christ for your Healer, for your healing, for your health. 
 
 123 
 
DELIVERANCE FOR THE CAPTIVES. 
 
 He hath sent me , . . to prodahn liberty to the captives, and the 
 opening of the prison to them that are bound. — IsA, Ixi. I. 
 
 jj 2. Many of us know not the bondage in which we are heM. We 
 are held in it all the more really and sadly because we conceit 
 ourselves to be free. Those poor, light-hearted people, in the dreadful 
 days of the French Revolution, used to keep up some ghastly mockery of 
 society and cheerfulness in their prisons ; and festooned the bars with 
 flowers, and made believe to be carrying on their life freely, as they used 
 to do ; but for all that, day after day the tumbrils came to the gates, 
 and morning after morning the jailer stood at the door of the dungeons 
 with the fatal list in his hand, and one after another of the triflers were 
 dragged away to death. 
 
 And so men and women are living a life which they fancy is free, and 
 all the while they are in bondage, held in a prison-house. You, my brother, 
 are chained by guilt ; you are chained by sin, you are chained by the 
 habit of evil with a strength of which you never know till you try to shake 
 it off. 
 
 And there comes to each of us a mighty Deliverer, who breaks the 
 gates of brass, and who cuts the bars of iron in sunder. Christ comes to 
 us. By His death He has borne away the guilt ; by His living Spirit He 
 will bear away the dominion of sin from our hearts ; and if the Son will 
 make us free, we shall be free indeed. Oh ! ponder that deep truth, I pray 
 you, which the Lord Christ has spoken in words that carry conviction in 
 their very simplicity to every conscience. "He that committeth sin is the 
 slave of sin." And as you feel sometimes — and you all feel sometimes — 
 the catch of the fetter on your wrists when you would fain stretch out your 
 hands to good, listen as to a true Gospel to this old word which, in its 
 picturesque imagery, carries a truth that should be life. To us all *'the 
 breaker is gone up before us, the prison gates are open." Follow His 
 steps, and take the freedom which He gives ; and beware that you ' ' stand 
 fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not 
 entangled again with any yoke of bondage." 
 
 Some of you are the slaves of your own lusts. Some of you are the 
 slaves of the world's maxims. Some of you ai'e held in bondage by some 
 habit that you abominate, but cannot get away from. Here is freedom for 
 you. The dark walls of the prison are round us all. "The Scripture hath 
 shut up all in sin, that He might have mercy upon all." Blessed be His 
 Name ! As the angel came to the sleeping Apostle, and to his light touch 
 the iron gates swung obedient on their hinges, and Roman soldiers who 
 ought to have watched their prey were lulled to sleep, and fetters that held 
 the limbs dropped as if melted ; so, silently, in His meek and merciful 
 strength, the Christ comes to us all, and the iron gate which leadeth out 
 into freedom opens of its ov/n accord at His touch, and the fetters fall from 
 our limbs, and we go forth free men. 
 
 123 
 
THE NEW AND THE LIVING WAV. 
 
 The way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the 
 veily that is to say, His flesh. — IIeb. x. 20. 
 
 If we rightly understand our natural condition, it is not only 
 ' one of bondage to evil, but it is one of separation from God. 
 
 Parts of the Divine character are always beautiful and sweet to every 
 human heart when it thinks about them. Parts of the Divine character 
 stand frowning before a man who knows himself for what he is; and 
 conscience tells us that between Him and us there is a mountain of 
 impediment piled up by our own evil. And Christ comes, the Path-finder 
 and the Path ; the Pioneer who breaks the way for us through all the 
 hindrances, and leads us up to the presence of God. 
 
 For we do not know God as Pie is except by Jesus Christ. We see 
 fragments, and often distorted fragments, of the Divine nature and 
 character apart from Jesus, but the real Divine nature as it is, and as it 
 is in its relation to me, a sinner, is only made known to me in the face 
 of Jesus Christ. When we see Him we see God. Christ's tears are God's 
 pity, Christ's gentleness is God's meekness, Christ's tender drawing love is 
 not only a revelation of a most pure and sweet brother's heart, but a 
 manifestation through that brother's heart of the deepest depths of the 
 Divine nature. Christ is the heart of God. Apart from Him, we come 
 to the God of our own consciences, and we tremble ; we come to the God 
 of our own fancies, and we presume ; we come to the God dimly guessed at 
 and pieced together from out of the hints and indications of His works, and 
 He is little more than a dead name to us. Apart from Christ, we come to 
 a peradventure which we call a God — a shadow through which you can see 
 the stars shining. But we know the Father when we believe in Christ. 
 And so all the clouds rising from our own hearts and consciences and fancies 
 and misconceptions which we have piled together, between God and our- 
 selves, Christ clears away ; and in this way He opens the path to God. It 
 is only the God manifest in Jesus Christ that draws men's hearts to Him. 
 The God that is in Christ is the only God that humanity ever loved. 
 Other gods they may have worshipped with cowering terror and with far-off 
 lip-reverence, but this God has a heart, and wins hearts because He has, 
 and so Christ opens the way to Him. He not only makes God known to 
 us, and not only makes Him so known to us as to draw us to Him, but in 
 that likewise He, by the fact of His Cross and Passion, has borne, and 
 borne away, the impediments of our own sin and transgression which rise 
 for ever between us and Him. 
 
 124 
 
OUR CAPTAIN. 
 
 The breaker is gone up before them ; they have broken forth, and 
 passed on to the gate, and are gone out thereat : and their king is passed on 
 before them, and the Lord at the head of them. — MiCAH ii. 13. 
 
 Our Lord is the breaker, going up before us in the sense that 
 ^^ ' He is the captain of our Hfe's march. The prophet knew not that 
 the Lord their King, of whom it is enigmatically said that he, too, as well 
 as "the breaker," is to go before them, was, in mysterious fashion, to 
 dwell in that breaker ; and that those two, whom he sees separately, are 
 yet in a deep and mysterious sense one. The host of the captives, returning 
 in triumphant march through the wilderness and to the promised land, is, 
 in the prophet's words, headed both by the breaker and by the Lord. We 
 know that the breaker is the Lord, the Angel of the Covenant in whom is 
 the name of Jehovah. Christ breaks the prison of our sins, and leads us 
 forth on the path to God, marches at the head of our life's journey, and is 
 our example and commander, and Himself present with us through all 
 life's changes and its sorrows. Here is the great blessing and peculiarity 
 of Christian morals that they are all brought down to that sweet obligation : 
 "Do as I did." Here is the great blessing and strength for the Christian 
 life in all its difficulties — you can never go where you cannot see in the 
 desert the footprints, haply spotted with blood, that your Master left there 
 before you, and, planting your trembling feet in the prints, as a child might 
 imitate his father's strides, learn to recognise that all duty comes to this : 
 *' Follow Me " ; and that all sorrow is calmed, ennobled, made tolerable 
 and glorified by the thought that He has borne it. 
 
 The Roman matron of the legend struck the knife into her bosom, and 
 handed it to her husband with the words, "It is not painful ! " Christ has 
 gone before us in all the dreary solitude, and in all the agony and pains of 
 life. He has hallowed them all, and has taken the bitterness and the pain 
 out of each of them for them that love Him. If we feel that the breaker is 
 before us, and that we are marching behind Him, then whithersoever He 
 leads us we may follow, and whatsoever He has passed through we may 
 pass through. We carry in His life the all-sufficing pattern of duty. We 
 have in His companionship the all-strengthening consolation. Let us leave 
 the direction of our road in His hands who never says " Go ! " but always 
 " Come !" This general marches in the midst of His battalions, and sets 
 His soldiers on no enterprises or forlorn hopes which He has not Himself 
 dared and' overcome. So Christ goes as our companion before us, the true 
 pillar of fire and cloud in which the present Deity abode, and He is with 
 us in real companionship. Our joyful march through the wilderness is 
 directed, patterned, protected, companioned by Him ; and when He 
 " putteth forth His own sheep," blessed be His Name ! " He goeth before 
 them." 
 
 125 
 
JESUS THE FORERUNNER. 
 
 Within the veil, whtfher as a forerunner Jesus entered for us, having 
 become a High Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek. — Heb. vi. 20. 
 
 „ - Christ's resurrection is the only solid proof of a future life. 
 *^ ' Chrisfs present resurrection life is the power by partaking in 
 which, "though we were dead, yet shall we live." He has trodden that 
 path, too, before us. He has entered into the great prison-house into 
 which the generations of men have been hounded and hurried, and where 
 they lie in their graves, as in their narrow cells ; He has entered there. 
 With one blow He has driven the gates from their hinges, and has passed 
 out, and no soul can any longer be shut in as for ever into that ruined and 
 opened prison. Like Samson, He has taken the gates which from of old 
 barred its entrance, and borne them on His strong shoulders to the city on 
 the hill. And now death's darts are blunted, his fetters are broken, and his 
 gaol has its doors wide open. And there is nothing for him to do now 
 but to fall upon his sword and to kill himself, for the prisoners are gone. 
 " Oh, death ! I will be thy plague ; oh, grave ! I will be thy destruction." 
 *' The breaker has gone up before us " ; therefore it is not possible that we 
 should be holden of the impotent chains that He has broken. 
 
 The Forerunner is for us entered, passed through the heavens, and 
 entered into the holiest of all. We are too closely knit to Him, if we love 
 Him and trust Him, to make it possible that we shall be where He is not, 
 or that He shall be where we are not. Where He has gone we shall go — 
 in Heaven, blessed be His Name ! He will still be the leader of our 
 progress and the captain at the head of our march. For He crowns all 
 His other work by this, that, having broken the prison-house of our sins, 
 and opened for us the way to God, and been the leader and the captain 
 of our march through all the pilgrimage of life, and the opener of the gate 
 of the grave, for our joyful resurrection, and the opener of the gate of 
 Heaven for our triumphal entrance, He will still, as the Lamb that is in 
 the midst of the Throne, go before us, and lead us into green pastures and 
 by the still waters ; and this shall be the description of the growing blessed- 
 ness and power of the saints' life above, *' These are they which follow 
 the Lamb whithersoever He goeth." 
 
 This Master, Christ, works in front of His men. The farmer that goes 
 first among all the sowers, and heads the Hne of reapers in the yellowing 
 harvest-field, may well have diligent servants. Our Master went forth, 
 weeping, bearing precious seed, and has left it in our hands to sow in all 
 furrows. Our ^i aster is the Lord of the harvest, and has borne the heat of 
 the day before His servants. Let it be our life's work to show forth Christ's 
 praise. Let the very atmosphere in which we move and have our being be 
 prayer. Let two great currents set ever through our days, which two, like 
 the great movements in the ocean of the air, are but the upper and under 
 halves of the one movement — that beneath with constant energy of desires 
 rushing in from the cold poles to be warmed and expanded at the tropics, 
 where the all-moving sun pours his direct rays ; that above charged with 
 rich gifts from the Lord of light, glowing with heat drawn from Him, and 
 made diffusive by His touch, spreading itself out beneficent and life- 
 kringing into all colder lands, swathing the world in soft, warm folds, and 
 turning the polar ice into sweet waters. 
 
 126 
 
DIVINE WISDOM. 
 
 If any of you lacketh wisdom, let hun ask of God, who giveth to all men 
 liberally, and upbraideth not. — ^James i. 5» 
 
 What does James mean by "wisdom"? lie means the sum 
 of practical religion. With him, as with the Psalmist, sin and 
 foil}' are two names for the same thing, and so are religion and wisdom. 
 He, and only he, has wisdom who knows God with a living heart-know- 
 ledge which gives a just insight into the facts of life and the bounds of right 
 and wrong, and which regulates conduct and shapes the whole man with 
 power far beyond that of knowledge, however wide and deep, illuminating 
 intellect, however powerful. "Knowledge" is poor and superficial in 
 comparison with this w'isdom, which may roughly be said to be equivalent 
 to practical religion. 
 
 The use of this expression to indicate the greatest deficiency in the 
 average Christian character just suggests this thought, that if we had a 
 clear, constant, certain God-regarding insight into things as they are, we 
 should lack little. Because, if a man habitually kept vividly before him 
 the thought of God, and with it the true nature and obligation and blessed- 
 ness of righteous-loving obedience, and the true foulness and fatalness of 
 sin — if he saw these with the clearness and the continuity with which we 
 may all see the things that are unseen and eternal ; if he " saw life steadily, 
 and saw it whole " ; if he saw the rottenness and the shallowness of earthly 
 things and temptations, and if he saw the blessed issue of every God-pleasing 
 act — why ! the perfecting of conduct would be secured. 
 
 It would be an impossibility for him, with all that illumination blazing 
 in upon him, not to walk in the paths of righteousness with a glad and 
 serene heart. I do not believe that all sin is a consequence of ignorance, 
 but I do believe that our average Christian life would be revolutionised if 
 we each carried clear before us, and continually subjected our lives to the 
 influence of, the certain verities of God's Word. The thing that we want 
 most is clearer and more vivid conceptions of the realities of the Christian 
 revelation and of the facts of human life. These will act as tests, and up 
 will start in his own shape the fiend that is whispering at our ears, when 
 touched by the spear of this Divine wisdom. So here is our root- 
 deficiency ; therefore, instead of confining ourselves to trying to cure 
 isolated and specific faults, or to attain isolated and specific virtues, let us 
 go deeper down, and realise that the more our whole natures are submitted 
 to the power of God's truth, and of the realities of the future and of the 
 present, of Time and Eternity, the nearer shall we come to being " perfect 
 and entire," lacking nothing. 
 
 127 
 
HOW TO GET WISDOM. 
 
 Let hint ask in faith, nothing doubting : for he that doubteth is like the 
 surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. — ^James i. 6. 
 
 __ _ "Let him ask.** This direction might at first sight strike one 
 ^ ' as being like the specification of the thing lacking, scarcely 
 what we should have expected. Does James say, If any of you lack 
 "wisdom," let him sit down and think? No! "If any of >ou lack 
 wisdom," let him take a course of reading ? No ! " If any of you lack wis- 
 dom," let him go to pundits and rabbis, and get it from them ? No ! " If 
 any of you lack wisdom, let him ask." A strange apparent disconnection 
 between the issue and the means suggested ! Very strange, if -wisdom 
 lives only up in the head ! Not so strange if it has its seat in the 
 depths of the human spirit. If you want to learn theology, you have to 
 study. If you seek to master any science, you have to betake yourself 
 to the appropriate discipline. It is of no use to pray to God to make you 
 a good geologist, or botanist, or lawyer, or doctor, unless you also ta' e the 
 necessary means to become one. But if a man wants the Divine wisdom, 
 let him get down on his knees. That is the best place to secure it. " Let 
 him ask " ; because that insight, so clear, so vivid, so constant, and so 
 perfectly adequate for the regulation of the life, is of God. It comes to us 
 trom the Spirit of God that dwells in men's hearts. And to receive that 
 spirit of wisdom the one thing necessary is that we should want it. That 
 is all. Nothing more, but nothing less. I doubt very much whether 
 hosts of the average Christian people of this generation do want it, or would 
 know what to do with it if they had it ; or whether the gift of a heart 
 purged from delusions, and of eyes made clear always to behold the God 
 who is ever with us, and the real importance of the things around us, is 
 the gift that most of us pray for most. " If any man lack wisdom, let him 
 ask." It is a gift, and it is to be obtained from that Holy Spirit who 
 dwells and works in all believers. The measure of their desire is the 
 measure of their possession. That wisdom can be had for the asking, and 
 is not to be won by proudly self-reliant effort. But let us not think that 
 any kind of "asking" suffices to put that great gift in our hearts. The 
 petition that avails must be sincere, intense, constant, and accompanied 
 by corresponding conduct. 
 
 Wisdom is not exactly what we should have expected to be named as 
 the main thing lacking in the average Christian. James uses this venerable 
 word with all the associations of its use in the Old Testament, and in all 
 the solemn depth of meaning which he had learned to attach to it, on the 
 lips of psalmists, prophets, and teachers of the true wisdom. If that were 
 at all doubtful, it is made certain by his own subsequent description of 
 " wisdom." He says that it is " from above," and then goes on to ascribe 
 all manner of moral and spiritual good to its presence and working on a 
 man. It is "pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy 
 and good fruits." You cannot say such glowing things about the wisdom 
 which has its scat in the understanding only, can )'0u? These character- 
 istics must apply to something a great deal more aujust and more powerful 
 in shaping and refininij; character. 
 
 12S 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD'S PRESENCE. 
 
 / will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. — Psalm xxiii, 6. 
 
 What the Psalmist desires is that he should be able to keep 
 up unbroken consciousness of being in God's presence, and 
 should be always in touch with Him. That seems hard, and people say, 
 "Impossible ! How can I get above my daily work, and be perpetually 
 thinking of God and His will, and realising consciously communion with 
 Him ? " But there is such a thing as having an under-current of conscious- 
 ness running all through a man's life and mind ; such a thing as having a 
 melody sounding in our ears perpetually, "so sweet we know not we are 
 listening to it " until it stops, and then, by the poverty of the naked and 
 silent atmosphere, we know how sweet were the sounds that we scarcely 
 knew we heard, and yet did hear so well high above all the din of earth's 
 noises. 
 
 Every man that has ever cherished such an aspiration as this does 
 know the difficulties all too well. And yet, without entering upon thorny 
 and unprofitable questions as to whether the absolute, unbroken continuity 
 of consciousness of being in God's presence is possible for men here below, 
 let us look at the question, which has a great deal more bearing upon our 
 present condition — viz., whether a greater continuity of that consciousness 
 is not possible than we attain to to-day. It does seem to me to be a 
 foolish and miserable waste of time and temper and energy for good 
 people to be quarrelling about whether they can come to the absolute 
 realisation of this desire in this world when there is not one of them that 
 is not leagues below the possible realisation of it, and knows that he is. 
 At all events, whether or not the line can be drawn without a break at all, 
 the breaks may be a great deal shorter and a great deal less frequent than 
 they are. An unbroken line of conscious communion with God is the 
 ideal ; and that is what this singer wanted and worked for. How many 
 of my feelings and thoughts to-day, or of the things that 1 have said and 
 done since I woke this morning, would have been done and said and felt 
 exactly the same if there were not a God at all, or if it did not matter in 
 the least whether I ever came into touch with Him or not ? Oh ! dear 
 friend, it is no vain effort to bring out lives a little bit nearer unbroken 
 continuity of communion with Him. And God knows, and eacli for 
 himself knows, how much and how sore our need is of such a union. 
 " One thing have I desired, that will I seek after ; that I," in my study ; 
 I, in my shop ; I, in my parlour, kitchen, or nursery ; I, in my studio ; 
 I, in my lecture-hall — "may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days 
 of my life." In our "Father's house are many mansions." The room 
 that we spend most of our lives in, each of us at our tasks or our work- 
 tables, may be in our Father's house, too ; and it is only we that can 
 secure that it shall be. 
 
 129 K 
 
DESIRE FOR GOD. 
 
 We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, the holy place of 
 Thy ttniple. — Psalm Ixv. 4. 
 
 jg. g The inmost meaning of the Psalmist's desire is that the con- 
 ' sciousness of God shall be diffused throughout the whole of a 
 man's days, instead of being coagulated here and there at points. The 
 Australian rivers in a drought present a picture of the Christian life of far 
 too many of us — a stagnant, slinking pool here, a stretch of blinding gravel 
 there ; another little drop of water a mile away, then a long line of 
 foul-smelling mud, and then another little pond. Why ! it ought to run 
 in a clear stream — that has a scour in it, and that will take all filth off the 
 surface. 
 
 The Psalmist wanted to break down the distinction between sacred and 
 secular ; to consecrate work, of whatsoever sort it was. He had learned 
 what so many of us need to learn far more thoroughly, that if our religion 
 does not drive the wheels of our daily business, it is of little use ; and that 
 if the field in which our religion has power to control and impel is not that 
 of the trivialities and secularities of our ordinary life, there is no field for it 
 at all. 
 
 " All the days of my life ! " — Not only on Sundays ; not for five minutes 
 in the morning, when I am eager to get to my daily work, and less than 
 five minutes at night, when I am half asleep, but through the long day 
 doing this, that, and the other thing for God, and by God, and with God, 
 and making Him the motive and the power of my course, and the companion 
 to heaven ! And if we have, in our lives, things over which we cannot 
 make the sign of the Cross, the sooner we get rid of them the better. And 
 if there is anything in our daily work, or in our characters, about which we 
 are doubtful, here is a good test : does it seem to check our continual 
 communion with God as a ligature round the wrist might do the continual 
 flow of the blood? or does it help us to realise His presence? If the 
 former, let us have no more to do with it ; if the latter, let us seek to 
 increase it. 
 
 Modern teachers tell us that the religious emotions may be exercised, 
 and all the blessing and all the advantage of them secured, although they 
 are not directed to a personal God. The God of this religion without a 
 God is, according to some, collective humanity ; according to others, 
 a vague unknowable ; according to others, nature, or the physical universe, 
 which can call forth the admiralion and dependence and suljmission, which 
 are the constituents of "religion." But all that is "moonshine." The 
 only real religion is the religion v/hich lays a believing hand on Jesus Christ 
 as the Revealer of the Father and the Saviour of the world ; and sees in 
 Him a God near enough to be known, tender enough to be loved, mighty 
 enough to succour, compassionate enough to answer and to forgive. There 
 can be no substitute for the living God. Reverence, worship, the con- 
 secration of heart and hfe, need a living person to evoke them, and deep 
 beneath all other necessities and cries of the human spirit hes this, so 
 tragically misinterpreted by many of us : " My soul thirsteth for God, for 
 the living God," who is made known to us in the fulness of His gentleness 
 and Flis power in the person and face of Jesus Christ. 
 
 130 
 
DWELLING IN GOD'S HOUSE. 
 
 This is My resting-place for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired 
 it.-' — Psalm cxxxii. 14. 
 
 jj jrt This is an allusion not only, as I think, to the Temple, but 
 ' al30 tqfillie Oriental habit of irivins: a man who took refui^e in the 
 
 tent of the s;:T?r^Tf' y,uest-riles of protection and provision and friendship. 
 The habit exists to this day, and travellers among the Bedouin tell us 
 lovely stories of how even an enemy with the blood of the closest relative 
 of the owner of the tent on his hands, if he can once get in there and 
 partake of the salt of the host, is safe, and the first obligation of the owner 
 of the tent is to watch over the life of the fugitive as over his own. 
 
 So the Psalmist says in one place, " I desire to have guest-rites in Thy 
 tent ; to lift up its fold, and shelter there from the heat of the desert. 
 And although I be dark, and stained with many evils and transgressions 
 against Thee, yet I come to claim the hospitality and provision and 
 protection and friendship which the laws of the house do bestow upon a 
 guest." Carrj'-ing out substantially the same idea, Paul tells the Ephesians, 
 as if it were the very highest privilege that the (xospel brought to the 
 Gentiles: *'Ye are no more strangers, but fellow-citizens with the saints, 
 and of the household of God'''' ; incorporated into Plis household, and 
 dwelling safely in His pavilion as their home. That is to say, the blessed- 
 ness of keeping up such a continual consciousness of touch with God is, 
 first and foremost, the certainty of infallible protection. Oh ! how it 
 minimises all trouble, and brightens all joys, and calms amidst all dis- 
 tractions, and steadies and sobers in all circumstances, to feel ever the 
 hand of God upon us ! He who goes through life finding that, when he 
 has trouble to meet, it throws him back on God, and that, when bright 
 mornings of joy drive away nights of weeping, these wake morning songs 
 of praise and are brightest because they shine with the light of a Father's 
 love, will never be unduly moved by any vicissitudes of fortune. Like 
 some inland and sheltered valley, with great mountains shutting it in, that 
 •'heareth not the loud winds when they call" beyond the barriers that 
 enclose it, our lives may be tranquilly free from distraction, and may be 
 full of peace, of nobleness, and of strength, on condition of our keeping in 
 God's house all the days of our lives. 
 
 Trust brings rest, because it casts all our burdens on another. Every 
 act of reliance, though it does not deliver from responsibility, delivers from 
 anxiety. We see that even when the object of our trust is but a poor 
 creature like ourselves. Husbands and wives who find settled peace in one 
 another, parents and children, patrons and protected, and a whole series 
 of other relationships in life, are witnesses to the fact that the attitude of 
 rehance brings the actuality of repose. A little child goes to sleep beneath 
 its mother's eye, and is tranquil, not only because it is ignorant, but because 
 it is trustful. So, if we will only get behind the shelter, the blast will not 
 blow about us, but we shall be in what they call on the opposite side of the 
 Tweed — in a word that is music in the ears of some of us — a " lown place," 
 where we hear not the loud winds when they call. Trust is rest ; even 
 when we lean upon an arm of flesh, though that trust is often disappointed. 
 "What is the depth of the repose that comes not from trust that leans against 
 something supposed to be a steadfast oak, that proves to be a broken reed, but 
 against the Rock of Ages I We which have "believed do enter into rest." 
 
 131 
 
UNION WITH GOD. 
 
 Whoso hearkciieth unto Me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear 
 of evil. — Prov. i. 33. 
 
 The God whom men know, or think they know, outside of the 
 ^ * revelation of Divinity in Jesus Christ, is a God before whom 
 they sometimes tremble, who is far more often their terror than their love, 
 who is their "ghastliest doubt" still more frequently than He is their 
 dearest faith. But the God that is in Christ wooes and wins men to Him, 
 and from His great sweetness there streams out, as it were, a magnetic 
 influence that draws hearts to Him. He has made "the rough places 
 plain and the crooked things straight " ; levelled the mountains and raised 
 the valleys, and cast up across all the wilderness of the world a highway 
 along which "the wayfaring man, though a fool," may travel. Narrow 
 understandings may know, and selfish hearts may love, and low-pitched 
 confessions may reach the ear of, the God who comes near to us in Christ, 
 that we in Christ may come near to Him. The breaker is gone up 
 before us. " Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest 
 of all ... by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for 
 us, . . . let us draw near with true hearts." 
 
 One of the blessings that come to the dweller in God's house, and not 
 a small one, is that, by the power of this one satisfied longing, driven like 
 an iron rod through all the tortuosities of my life, there will come into it 
 a unity which otherwise few lives are ever able to attain, and the want of 
 which is no small cause of the misery that is great upon men. Most of us 
 seem, to our own consciousness, to live amidst endless distractions all our 
 days, and our lives to be a heap of links parted from each other rather than 
 a chain. But if we have that one constant thought with us, and if we are, 
 through all the variety of occupations, true to the one purpose of serving 
 and keeping near God, then we have a charm against the frittering away 
 of our lives in distractions, and the misery of multiplicity, and we enter 
 into the blessedness of unity and singleness of purpose; and our lives become, 
 like the starry heavens in all the variety of their motions, ol:)edient to one 
 impulse. For unity in a life does not depend upon the monotony of its 
 tasks, but upon the simplicity of the motive which impels to all varieties of 
 work. So it is possible for a man harassed by multitudinous avocations, 
 and drawn hither and thither by sometimes apparently conflicting and 
 always bewildering, rapidly-following duties, to say, "This one thing I 
 do," if all his doings are equally acts of obedience to God. 
 
 132 
 
GUESTS OF GOD 
 
 Oite thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may 
 dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. — PsAl.M xxvii. 4. 
 
 "One thing have I fl'<fj/y.;a^, . . . that will I j;?,?/^ after. " There 
 *^ * are two points to be kept in view to that end. A great many 
 people say, "One thing have I desired," and fail in persistent continuous- 
 ness of the desire. No man gets rights of residence in God's house for 
 a longer time than he continues to seek for them. The most advanced of 
 us, and those that have longest been like Anna, who "departed not from 
 the temple " day nor night, will certainly eject ourselves, unless, like the 
 Psalmist, we use the verbs in both tenses, and say, "One thing have I 
 desired, . . . that will I seek after." John Bunyan saw that there was 
 a back door to the lower regions close by the gates of the Celestial City. 
 There may be men who have long lived beneath the shadow of the 
 sanctuary, and at the last shall be found outside the gates. 
 
 But the words not only suggest by the two tenses of the verbs the 
 continuity of the desire which is destined to be granted, but also by the 
 two verbs themselves — desire and seek after — the necessity of uniting prayer 
 and work. Many desires are unsatisfied because conduct does not corre- 
 spond to desires. Many a prayer for greater holiness and closer communion 
 with God remains unanswered because its pray-ers never do a thing to fulfil 
 their prayers. I do not say they are hypocrites ; certainly they are not 
 consciously so, but I do say that there is a large measure of conventionality 
 that means nothing in the prayers of average Christian people for more 
 holiness and likeness to Jesus Christ. 
 
 If we want this desire of dwelling in the house of the Lord to be 
 fulfilled, the day's work must run in the same direction as the morning's 
 petition, and we must, like the Psalmist, say, " I have desired it of the 
 Lord, and I, for my part, will seek after it.^' Then, whether or not we 
 reach absolutely to the standard, which is none the less to be aimed at, 
 though it seems beyond reach, we shall draw nearer and nearer to it, and, 
 God helping our weakness and increasing our strength, quickening us to 
 " desire," and upholding us to " seek after," we may hope that, when the 
 days of our life are past, we shall but remove into an upper chamber, more 
 open to the sunrise and flooded with light, and shall go no more out, but 
 " dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." 
 
 133 
 
TRUE AND FALSE SORROW FOR SIN. 
 
 Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance which 
 bringeth no regret: but the sorrow of the world worketh death, — 2 CoR. 
 vii. I a 
 
 There is a broad distinction between the right and the wrong 
 
 *^ ' kind of sorrow for sin. ** Godly sorrow" is literally rendered 
 ** sorrow according to Gody'' which may either mean sorrow which has 
 reference to God, or sorrow which is in accordance with His will ; that is 
 to say, which is pleasing to Him. If it is the former, it will be the latter. 
 I prefer to suppose that it is the former sorrow, which has reference to God. 
 
 And then, opposite to that, there is another kind of sorrow, which the 
 Apostle calls the "sorrow of the world," which is devoid of that reference 
 to God. Here we have the characteristic difference between the Christian 
 way of looking at my own faults and shortcomings, and the sorrow of the 
 world, which has got no blessing in it, and will never lead to anything like 
 righteousness and peace. It is just this — one has reference to God, puts 
 its sin by His side, sees its blackness relieved against the "fierce light" of 
 the Great White Throne, and the other way has not that reference. 
 
 To expand that for a moment, there are plenty of us that, when our 
 sin is behind us, and its bitter fruits are in our hands, are sorry enough for 
 our faults. A man that is lying in the hospital, a wreck, with the sin of 
 his youth gnawing the flesh off his bones, is often enough sorry that he did 
 not live more soberly and chastely and temperately in the past days. That 
 fraudulent bankrupt that has not got his discharge, and has lost his reputa- 
 tion, and can get nobody to lend him money enough to start himself in 
 business again, as he hangs about the streets slouching in his rags, is sorry 
 enough that he did not keep the straight road. The " sorrow of the world " 
 has no thought about God in it at all. The consequences or sin set many 
 a man's teeth on edge that does not leel any compunction for the wrong 
 that he did. My brother, is that your position ? 
 
 And then we can come a step further. Crime means the transgression 
 of man's law ; wrong means the transgression of conscience's law. Some 
 of us would perhaps have to say, ** I have done crime." We are all of us 
 quite ready to say, " I have done wrong many a time " ; but there are 
 some of you that hesitate to take the other step, and say, ** I have done 
 sin," which is the transgression of God's law. 
 
 134 
 
SIN AND GOD. 
 
 / zvill be tmrciftil to their iniquities^ and their sins will I remember no 
 more. — Heb. viii. 12. 
 
 Six has, for its correlative, God. If there is no God, there is no 
 ' sin. There may be faults, there may be failures, there may be 
 transgression, breaches of the moral law, things done inconsistent with 
 man's nature and constitution, and so on ; but if there be a God, then we 
 have personal relations to that Person and His law ; and when we break 
 His law, it is more than crime ; it is more than fault ; it is more than 
 transgression ; it is more than wrong ; it is sin ; and it is when you lift 
 the shutter off conscience, and let the light of God rush in upon your hearts 
 and consciences, that you have the wholesome sorrow that worketh repent- 
 ance and salvation and life. 
 
 Oh, dear friend, I do beseech you to lay these simple thoughts to 
 heart ! Remember, I am urging no rigid uniformity of experience or 
 character, but I am saying that unless a man has learned to see his sin 
 in the light of God, and in the light of God to weep over it, he has yet to 
 know " the straight gate that leadeth unto life." 
 
 I believe that a very large amount of the superficiality and easy- 
 goingness of the Christianity of to-day comes just from this, that so many who 
 call themselves Christians, that profess it, have never once got a glimpse of 
 themselves. I remember once holding on by the ground on the top of 
 Vesuvius, and looking full into the crater, all swirling with sulphurous 
 fumes. Have you ever looked into your hearts like that, and seen the 
 wreathing smoke and the flashing fire that are there ? If you have, you will 
 cleave to that Christ who is your sole deliverance from sin. 
 
 But, remember, there is no prescription about depth or amount or 
 length of time during which this sorrow shall be felt. If, on the one hand, 
 it is essential, on the other hand there are a great many people that ought 
 to be walking in the light and the liberty of God's Gospel who bring dark- 
 ness and clouds over themselves by the anxious scrutinising question, " Is 
 my sorrow deep enough ? " 
 
 Deep enough 1 What for ? What is the use of sorrow for sin ? To 
 lead a man to repentance and to faith. If you have got as much sorrow as 
 leads you to penitence and trust, you have got enough. It is not your 
 sorrow that is going to wash away your sin ; it is Christ's blood. So let no 
 man trouble himself about the question, Have I sorrow enough ? The one 
 question is, " Has my sorrow led me to cast myself on Christ ?" 
 
 135 
 
SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD. 
 
 And David said uuto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And 
 Ka'han said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin. — 
 2 Sam. xii. 13. 
 
 ^ jg In 2 Corinthians vii. 10 the Apostle Paul takes it for granted 
 that a recognition of my own evil and a consequent peniienl regret- 
 fulness lies at the foundation of all true Cliristianity. Now, I do not want 
 to insist upon any uniformity of experience in people, any more than I 
 should insist that all their bodies should be of one shape or of one pro- 
 portion. Human lives are infinitely different, human dispositions are 
 subtly varied ; and because both one and the other are never reproduced 
 exactly in any two peo]")]e, therefore the religious experience of no two 
 souls can ever be precisely alike. 
 
 We have no right to ask — and much harm has been done by asking — 
 for an impossible uniformity of re igious experience. You can print off as 
 many copies as you like, for instance, of a drawing of a flower, on a print- 
 ing press, and they shall ail be alike, petal for petal, leaf for leaf, shade 
 for shade ; but no two hand-drawn copies will be so precisely alike, still 
 less will any two of the real buds that blow on the bush there. Life 
 produces resemblance with difl'erences ; it is machinery that makes fac- 
 similes. 
 
 So we insist on no pedantic or unreal uniformity ; and yet, whilst 
 leaving the widest scope for divergencies of individual character and 
 experience, and not asking that a man all diseased and blotched with the 
 leprosy of sin for halt a lifetime, and a little child that has grown up at its 
 mother's knee, " in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and "so has 
 been saved innocent of much transgression," shall have the same ex- 
 perience, — yet Scripture, as it seems to me, and the nature of the case do 
 unite in asserting that there are certain elements which, in varying pro- 
 portions indeed, will be found in all true Christian experience, and of these 
 an indispensable one — and in a very large number, if not in the majority 
 of cases, a fundamental one — is this which Paul calls "godly sorrow." 
 
 Surely a reasonable consideration of the facts of our conduct and char- 
 acter point to that as the attitude that becomes you and me ! Does it not ? 
 I do not charge you with crimes, as the law interprets them. I do not 
 suppose that many who read these lines are living in flagrant disregard 
 of the elementary principles of common every-day morality. There are 
 some, no doubt. Tliere are, no doubt, unclean men ; there are some who 
 eat and drink more than is good for them habitually ; there are, no doubt, 
 men and women that are living in avarice and worldliness, and things that 
 the ordinary consciences of the populace point to as faults and blemishes. 
 But I appeal to the so-called respectable people, that can say : "I am not 
 as other men are, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." I come 
 to you, and I have this one question to put to you : Looking at your 
 character all round, in the light of the purity and righteousness and love 
 of God, how say ye — "guilty or not guilty," sinful or not sinful? 
 
 Be honest with yourself, and the answer will not be far to seek. 
 
 136 
 
THE LAW OF LIFE. 
 
 PVa/k worthily of God, who calleth you into His own kingdom and glory. 
 — I Thess. ii. 12. 
 
 Here we have the whole law of Christian conduct in a nutshell. 
 
 *^ ■ There may be many detailed commandments, but they can all 
 he deduced from this one. We are lifted up above the region of petty 
 prescriptions, and breathe a bracing mountain air. Instead of regulations, 
 very many and very dry, we have a principle which needs thought and 
 sympathy in order to apply it, and is to be carried out by the free action of 
 our own judgments. The whole sum of Christian duty lies in conformity 
 to the character of a Divine Person with whom we have loving relations. 
 
 The Old Testament says : "Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am 
 holy." The New Testament says : " Be ye imitators of God, and walk in 
 love." So then, whatever in that Divine nature of flashing brightness and 
 infinite profundity is far beyond our apprehension and grasp, there are in 
 that Divine nature elements — and those the best and divinest in it — which 
 it is perfectly within the power of every man to copy. 
 
 Is there anything in God that is more God-like than righteousness and 
 love ? And is there any difference in essence between a man's righteous- 
 ness and God's — between a man's love and God's? The same gases 
 make combustion in the sun and on the earth, and the spectroscope tells 
 you that it is so. The same radiant brightness that flames burning in the 
 love, and flashes white in the purity of God, that may be reproduced n 
 man. 
 
 Love is one thing all the universe over. Other elements of the bond 
 that unites us to God are rather correspondent in us to what we find in 
 Him. Our concavity, so to speak, answers to His convexity ; our hollow- 
 ness to His fulness ; our emptiness to Flis all-sufficiency. So our faith, for 
 instance, lays hold upon His faithfulness, and our obedience grasps, and 
 bows before. His commanding will. But the love with which I lay hold 
 of Him is like the love with which He lays hold on me ; and righteousness 
 and purity, howsoever different may be their accompaniments in an Infinite 
 and uncreated Nature from what they have in our limited and bounded and 
 progressing being, in essence are one. So, " Be ye holy, for I am holy" ; 
 "Walk in the light, as He is in the light," is the law available for all 
 conduct ; and the highest Divine perfections, if I may speak of pre- 
 eminence among them, are the imitable ones, whereby He becomes our 
 Example and our Pattern. 
 
 X37 
 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL. 
 
 On'y let your manner of life be worthy of the Gospel of Christ. — 
 PiiiL. i. 27. 
 
 I^ET no man say that such an injunction is vague or hopeless. 
 
 You must have a perfect ideal if you are to live at all by an 
 ideal. There cannot be any flaws in your pattern if the pattern is to be of 
 any use. You aim at the stars, and if you do not hit them you may pro- 
 gressively approach them. We need absolute perfection to strain after, 
 and one day — blessed be His Name ! — we shall attain it. Try to walk 
 worthy of God, and you will find out how tight that precept grips, and how 
 close it fits. 
 
 The love and the righteousness which are to become the law of our 
 lives are revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Whatever may sound im- 
 practicable in the injunction to imitate God assumes a more homely and 
 possible shape when it becomes an injunction to follow Jesus. And just 
 as that form of the precept tends to make the law of conformity to the 
 Divine nature more blessed and less hopelessly above us, so it makes 
 the law of conformity to some mere ideal of goodness less cold and un- 
 sympathetic. It makes all the difference to our joyfulness and freedom 
 whether we are trying to obey a law of duty, seen only too clearly to be 
 binding, but also above our reach, or whether we have the law in a living 
 Person whom we have learned to love. In the one case there stands upon 
 a pedestal above us a cold perfection, white, complete, marble ; in the 
 other case there stands beside us a living law in pattern, a Brother, bone 
 of our bone and flesh of our flesh, whose hand we can grasp, whose 
 heart we can trust, and of whose help we can be sure. To say to me, 
 " Follow the ideal of perfect righteousness," is to relegate me to a dreary, 
 endless struggling ; to say to me, '* Follow your Brother, and be like your 
 Father," is to bring warmih and hope and liberty into all my effort. The 
 word that says, "Walk worthy of God," is a royal law, the perfect law 
 of perfect freedom. 
 
 When we say, " Walk worthy of God," we mean two things — one, 
 ** Do after His example," and the other, " Render back to Ilim what He 
 deserves for what He has done to you." And so this law bids us measure, 
 by the side of that great love that died on the Cross for us all, our poor, 
 imperfect returns of gratitude and of service. He has lavished all His 
 treasure on you ; what have you l^rought Him back ? He has given you 
 the whole wealth of His tender pity, of His forgiving mercy, of His infinite 
 goodness. Do you adequately repay such lavish love ? Has He not 
 " sown much and reaped little " in your heart ? Has He not poured out 
 the fulness of His affection, and have we not answered Him with a few 
 gru.ljing drops squeezed from our hearts? 
 
 138 
 
THE ONE RULE OF CONDUCT. 
 
 " Be ye therefore initiators of God, as beloved children ; and ivaJk in love, 
 even as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us." — Eph. v. I, 2. 
 
 People have always been apt to think of the Gospel more as a 
 
 message of deliverance than as a practical guide. And we all 
 
 need to make an effort to prevent our natural indolence and selfishness 
 
 from making us forget that the Gospel is quite as much a rule of conduct as 
 
 a message of pardon. 
 
 It is both by the same act. In the very facts on which our redemption 
 depends lies the law of our lives. Do not always be looking at Christ's 
 Cross only as your means of acceptance. Do not only be thinking of 
 Christ's Passion as that which has barred for you the gates of punish- 
 ment, and has opened for you the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven. It 
 has done all that ; but if you are going to stop there, you have only got 
 hold of a very maimed and imperfect edition of the Gospel. The Cross 
 is your patlern, as well as the anchor of your hope and the ground 
 of your salvation — if it is anything at all to you. And it is not the 
 ground of your salvation and the anchor of your hope unless it is your 
 pattern. It is the one in exactly the same degree in which it is the other. 
 
 So all self-pleasing, all harsh insistence on your own claims, all neglect 
 of suffering and sorrow and sin around you, comes under the lash of this 
 condemnation. If Christian men and women would only learn to take 
 away the scales from their eyes and souls, — not looking at Christ's Cross 
 with less absolute trustfulness, as that by which all their salvation comes, 
 but also learning to look at it as closely and habitually as yielding the 
 pattern to which their lives should be conformed, — and would let the heart- 
 melting thankfulness which it evokes when gazed at as the ground of our 
 hope prove itself true by its leading them to an effort at imitating that great 
 love, and so walking worthy of the Gospel, how their lives would be 
 transformed ! It is far easier to fetter your life with yards of red-tape 
 prescriptions — do this, do not do that ; far easier to out-pharisee the 
 Pharisees in punctilious scrupulosities, than it is honestly, and for one hour, 
 to take the Cross of Christ as the pattern of your lives, and to shape your- 
 selves by that. 
 
 One looks round upon a lethargic, a luxurious, a self-indulgent, a self- 
 seeking, a world-besotted professing Church, and asks, " Are these the 
 people on whose hearts a cross is stamped ? " Do these men — or rather let 
 us say, do we live as becometh the Gospel which proclaims the divinity of 
 self-sacrifice, and that the law of a perfect human life is perfect self-forget- 
 fulness, even as the secret of the Divine nature is perfect love ? " Walk 
 worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." 
 
 139 
 
A WORTHY CALLING. 
 
 By this shall all tnen know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to 
 another. — John xiii. 35. 
 
 Men that are called to high functions prepare themselves 
 therefore. If you knew that you were going away to Australia 
 in six months, would you not be beginning to get your outfit ready ? You 
 Christian men profess to believe that you have been called to a condition in 
 which you will absolutely obey God's will, and be the loyal subjects of 
 His Kingdom, and in which you will partake of God's glory. Well then, 
 obey His will here, and let some scattered sparklets of that uncreated light 
 that is one day going to flood your soul lie upon your face to-day. Do not 
 go and cut your lives into two halves, one of them all contradictory to 
 that which you expect in the other, but bring a harmony between the 
 present, in all its weakness and sinfulness, and that great hope and certain 
 destiny that blazes on the horizon of your hope, as the joyful state to 
 which you have been invited. " Walk worthy of the calling to which you 
 are called." That same thought of the destiny should feed our hope, and 
 make us live under its continual inspiration. A walk worthy of such a 
 calling and such a Caller should know no despondency, nor any weary, 
 heartless lingering, as with tired feet on a hard road. Brave good cheer, 
 undimmed energy, a noble contempt of obstacles, a confidence in our 
 final attainment of that purity and glory which is not depressed by con- 
 sciousness of present failure, — these are plainly the characteristics which 
 ought to mark the advance of the men in whose ears such a summons from 
 such lips rings as their marching orders. And a walk worthy of our 
 calling will turn away from earthly things. If you believe that God has 
 summoned you to His Kingdom and glory, surely, surely, that should 
 deaden in your heart the love and the care for the trifles that lie by the 
 wayside ! Surely, surely, if that great Voice is inviting, and that merciful 
 Hand is beckoning you into the light, and showing you what you may 
 possess there, it is not walking according to that summons if you go with 
 your eyes fixed upon the trifles at your feet, and your whole heart absorbed 
 in this present fleeting world ! Unworldliness, in its best and purest 
 fashion, — by which I mean not only a contempt for material wealth and all 
 that it brings, but the setting loose by everything that is beneath the stars, — 
 unworldliness is the only walk that is " worthy of the calling wherewith ye 
 are called." 
 
 And if you hear that voice ringing like a trumpet call, or a commander's 
 shout on the battlefield, into your cars, ever to stimu'ate you, to rebuke 
 your lagging indifference ; if you are ever conscious in your inmost hearts 
 of the summons to His Kingdom and glory, then, no doubt, by a walk 
 worthy of it, you will make your calling sure ; and there shall "an entrance 
 be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting Kangdom." 
 
 140 
 
"CALLED TO BE SAINTS." 
 
 Beloved of God ; called to be saints. — Rom. i. *J, 
 
 __ gjj In the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (verse 2), we 
 ^ ' read about a very small matter, that it is to be done " worthily 
 of the saints." It is only about the receiving of a good woman that was 
 travelling from Corinth to Rome, and extending hospitality to her in such 
 a manner as became professing Christians ; but the very minuteness of the 
 details to which the great principle is applied points a iesson. The biggest 
 principle is not too big to be brought down to the narrowest details, and 
 that is the beauty of principles as distinguished from regulations. Regula- 
 tions try to be minute, and however minute you make them, some case 
 always starts up that is not exactly provided for in them. And so the 
 regulations come to nothing. A principle does not try to be minute, but 
 it casts its net wide, and it gathers various cases into its meshes. Like the 
 fabled tent in the old legend, that could contract so as to have room for 
 but one man, or extend wide enough to hold an army ; so this great 
 principle of Christian conduct can be brought down to giving '* Phoebe 
 our sister, who is a servant of the Church at Cenchrea," good food and a 
 comfortable lodging, and any other little kindnesses, when she comes to 
 Rome. And the same principle may be widened out to embrace and direct 
 us in the largest tasks and most difficult circumstances. 
 
 *' Worthily of saints " — the name is an omen, and carries in it rules of 
 conduct. The root idea of "saint" is "one separated to God," and the 
 secondary idea which flows from that is " one who is pure " All Christians 
 are "saints." They are consecrated and set apart for God's service, and 
 in the degree in which they are conscious of and live out that consecration, 
 they are pure. So their name, or rather the great fact which their name 
 implies, should be ever before them, a stimulus and a law. We are bound 
 to remember that we are consecrated, separated as God's possession, and 
 that therefore purity is indispensable. The continual consciousness of this 
 relation and its resulting obligations would make us recoil from impurity 
 as instinctively as the sensitive plant shuts up its little green fingers when 
 anything touches it ; or as the wearer of a white robe will draw it up 
 high above the mud on a filthy pavement. Walk " worthily of saints" is 
 another way of saying, Be true to your own best selves. Work up to the 
 highest ideal of your character. That is far more wholesome than to be 
 always looking at our faults and failures, which depress and tempt us to 
 think that the actual is the measure of the possible, and the past or present 
 of the future. There is no fear of self-conceit or of a mistaken estimate of 
 ourselves. The more clearly we keep our best and deepest self before 
 our consciousness, the more shall we learn a rigid judgment of the 
 miserable contradictions to it in our daily outv/ard life, and even in our 
 thoughts and desires. It is a wholesome exhortation, when it follows 
 these others of which we have been speaking (and not else), which bids 
 Christians remember that they are saints and live up to their name. 
 
 141 
 
THE ALL-COMPREHENSIVE LAW. 
 
 Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes 
 and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingduin of Heaven.-^ 
 Matt. v. 20. 
 
 ■vt 2\ ^ Christian's inward and deepest self is better than his out- 
 ' ward life. We have all convictions in our inmost hearts which 
 we do not work out, and beliefs that do not influence us as we know they 
 ought to do, and sometimes wish that they did. By our own fault our lives 
 but imperfectly show their real inmost principle. Friction always wastes 
 power before motion is produced. 
 
 So then we may well gather together all our duties in this final form of 
 the all-comprehensive law, and say to ourselves, " Walk worthily of saints." 
 Be true to your name, to your best selves, to your deepest selves. Be true 
 to your separation for God's service, and to the purity which comes from it. 
 Be true to the life which God has implanted in you. That life may be 
 very feeble, and covered by a great deal of rubbish, but it is Divine. Let 
 it work, let it out ! Do not disgrace your name ! 
 
 These are the phrases of the law of Christian conduct. They reach far, 
 they fit close, they penetrate deeper than the needle-points of minute 
 regulations. If you will live in a manner corresponding 10 the character, 
 and worthy of the love of God as revealed in Christ, and in conformity 
 with the principles that are enthroned upon His Cross, and in obedience to 
 the destiny held forth in your high calling, and in faithfulness to the name 
 that He Himself has impressed upon you ; then your righteousness shall 
 exceed the righteousness of the painful and punctilious pharisaical obedience 
 to outward commands, and all things lovely and of good report will spring 
 to life in your hearts and bear fruit in your lives. 
 
 All these exhortations go on the understanding that you are a Christian ; 
 that you have taken Christ for your Saviour, and are resting upon Him, and 
 recognising in Him the revelation of God, and in His Cross the foundation 
 of your hope ; that you have listened to, and yielded to, the Divine 
 summons, and that you have a right to be called a saint. Is that pre- 
 sumption true about you, my friend ? If it is not, Christianity thinks that 
 it is of no use wasting time talking to you about conduct. 
 
 The first message which Christ sends to you is. Trust your sinful selves to 
 Him as your only, all-sufficient Saviour. When you have accepted Him, 
 and are leaning on Him with all your weight of sin and suffering, and loving 
 Him with your ransomed heart, then, and not till then, will you be in a 
 position to hear His law for your life, and to obey it ; then, and not till 
 then, will you appreciate the Divine simplicity and breadth of the great 
 command to walk worthy of God. and the Divine tenderness and power of 
 the motive which enforces it, and prints it on yielding and obedient hearts, 
 even the dying love and Cross of His Son. Till then, listen to and accept 
 that great answer of our Lord's to those who came to Him for a rule of 
 conduct, instead of for the gift of Life : " Tiiis is the work of God, that ye 
 should believe on Him whom He hath sent." 
 
 T42 
 
BLIND TO OUR OWN FAULTS. 
 
 And David said to Nathan, As the Lord Uveth, the man that hath done 
 this is worthy of death, . . . becatise he did this thing, and because he had ito 
 pity. And ISathan said to David, Ihou art the man ! — 2 Sam. xii. 5-7. 
 
 M V 22 ^^ ^ man's own sin is held up before him a little disguised, he 
 ' says, " How ugly it is ! " And if only for a moment he can be 
 persuaded that it is not his own conduct, but somebody else's, that he is 
 judging, the instinctive condemnation comes. We have got two sets of 
 names lor vices : one set which rather mitigates and excuses them, and 
 another set which puts them in their real hideousness. We keep the 
 palliative set for home consumption, and liberally distribute the plain- 
 spoken, ugly set amongst the vices and faults of our friends. 
 
 The same thing which I call in myself prudence, I call in you meanness. 
 The same thing which you call in yourself generous living, you call in 
 your friend filthy sensualism. That which, to the doer of it, is only 
 righteous indignation, to the onlooker is passionate anger. That which, in 
 the practiser of it, is no more than a due regard for the interests of his own 
 family and himself in the future, is, to the envious lookers-on, shabbiness 
 and meanness in money matters. That which, to the liar, is only prudent 
 diplomatic reticence, to the listener is falsehood. That which, in the man 
 that judges his own conduct, is but "a choleric word," is, in his friend, 
 when he judges him, " flat blasphemy." 
 
 And so we go all round the circle, and condemn our own vices, when 
 we see them in other people. So the King who had never thought, when 
 he stole away Uriah's one ewe lamb, and did him to death by traitorous 
 commands, setting him in the front of the battle, that he was wanting in 
 compassion, blazes up at once, and righteously sentences the othei " man" 
 to death, "because he had no pity." He had never thought of blmsolf or 
 of his crime as cruel, as mean, as selfish, as heartless. But when he sees 
 a partially disguised picture of it, he knows it for the devil's child that it is. 
 
 "Oh! wad some power the gifiie gie us 
 lo see oursels as ithers see us ; 
 It wad frae many an error free us " : 
 
 and so it would, to see ourselves as we see others. We judge our brother 
 and ourselves by two different standards. 
 
 For godliness, we need to cultivate the habit of discrimination between 
 good and evil, right and wrong, because the world is full of illusions, and 
 we are very blind. And v/e need to cultivate the habit of self-control, and 
 rigid repression of passions, and lusts, and desires, and tastes, and inclina- 
 tions before His calm and sovereign will, because the world is lull of fire, 
 and our hearts and natures are tinder. And we need to cultivate the habit 
 of patience in all its three senses of endurance in sorrow, of persistence in 
 service, and of hope of the future, because the more a man cultivates that 
 habit, the larger will be his stock of proofs of the loving-kindness and good- 
 ness of his God, and the easier and more blessed it will be for him to live in 
 continual communion with Him. There is no way by which your religion 
 can become deep, all-pervasive, practical, sovereign in your lives, but the 
 old road of efitbrt and of prayer. " Exercise thyself," as a gymnast does in 
 the arena ; — exercise thyself unto godliness, — and do not fancy that the 
 Chrisiian life comes as a matter of course on the back of some one initial 
 act of a long-forgotten faith in Jesus Christ. 
 
 143 
 
FAMILIARISATION OF HABIT. 
 
 Who js he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth 
 it not? — Lam. lii. 37. 
 
 „ g- Let me remind you how a strong wish for a thing that seems 
 ^ cies'rable always lends to confuse to a man the plain distinction 
 
 between right and wrong ; and how pass ons once excited, or the animal 
 hists and desires once kindled in a man, go straight to their object with- 
 out the smallest regard to whether that object is to be reached by the 
 breach of all laws, human and Divine, or not. If a man Is hungry, and 
 bread is before him, his mouth waters, whether it is his own or other 
 l)eople's. Excite any passion, and the passion is but a blind propensity 
 towards certain good, and has no question or consideration of whether right 
 or wrong is involved at all. Habit familiarises with evil, and diminishes 
 our sense of it as evil. A man that has been for a half-a day in some ill- 
 ventilated room does not notice the poisonous atmosphere ; if you go into 
 it, you are half-suffocated at first, and breathe more easily as you get used to 
 it. A man can live amidst the foulest poison of evil ; and, as the Styrian 
 peasants get fat upon arsenic, his whole nature may seem to thrive by the 
 poison that it absorbs. They tell us that the breed of fi.sh that live in the 
 lightless caverns in the bowels of some mountains, by long disuse have 
 had their eyes atrophied out of them, and are blind because they have 
 lived out of the light. And so men that live in the love of evil lo.se the 
 capacity of discerning the evil. And he that walketh in darkness becomes 
 blind, blind to his sin, and blind to all the realities of life. 
 
 Then is it not true, too, that many of us systematically and of set 
 purpose continually avoid all questions as to the moral nature of our con- 
 duct ? How many a man and woman never sits down to think whether 
 what they have been doing is right or wrong, because they have got, deep 
 down, an uneasy suspicion as to what the answer would be. So. by reason 
 of fostering passion, by reason of listening to wishes, by reason of the habit 
 of wrong doing, by reason of the systematic avoidance of all careful in- 
 vestigation of our character and of our conduct, we lose the power of fairly 
 deciding upon the nature of our own acts. 
 
 In order to secure habitual godliness, you will want manly strength and 
 vigour, because you can get no hold of an unseen God except by a definite 
 effort of thought, which will require resolute will. There we touch on 
 one of the reasons why much modern Christianity is so feeble. We do not 
 screw ourselves up to think about God and Christ in our daily life. So the 
 truths which we believe slip from our slack grasp before we know that they 
 are gone. A conjuror will put a coin in a man's palm, and shut his hand 
 upon it, and say, "Are \ou sure you have got it?" "Open your hands." 
 It is not there. That is how a good many of you lose your religion ; you 
 think you have it ; you once had it. The last time you looked at it, it was 
 there. It is not there now. Why? Because )ou have not added to your 
 faith strength, and made the efforts of mind and will which are needed in 
 order to keep hold of the things which have been freely given to you of 
 God. Do not sjiend your time ujjon merely trying to cultivate special 
 graces of the Christian character, however needful they may l;e for you, 
 and however beautiful they maybe in themselves. Seek to have that which 
 sanctifies and strengthens them all. Faith is the foundation, godliness the 
 apex and crown. 
 
 144 
 
GOD'S GREAT DESIRE. 
 
 God our Saviour, who willeth that all men should be saved, and come to 
 he knowledge of i he truth. — I Tim. ii. 3, 4. 
 
 God wants to save the world, but God can only save men one at a 
 *^ ■ time. There must be an individual access to llim, as I have said 
 about the conviction of sin, just as if He and I were the only two beings in 
 the whole universe. There is no wholesale reception into God s Church or 
 into God's kingdom ; God's mercy is not given to crowds, except as composed 
 of individuals who have individually received it. There must be the 
 personal act of faith ; there must be my solitary coming to Him. As the 
 old mystics used to define prayer, so I might define the whole process by 
 which men are saved from their sins, '* the flight of the lonely soul to the 
 lonely God." My brother, it is not enough for you to say, "We have 
 sinned"; say, "I have sinned." It is not enough that from a gathered 
 congregation there should go up the united litany, *'Lord, have mercy 
 upon us!" "Christ, have mercy upon us!" "Lord, have mercy upon 
 us ! " You must make the prayer your own : " Lord, have mercy upon 
 me ! " It is not enough that you should believe, as I suppose most of you 
 fancy that you believe, that Christ has died for the sins of the whole world. 
 That belief will give you no share in His blessedness. You must come to 
 closer grips with Him than that ; and you must be able to say, *' Who 
 loved me^ and gave Himself for ;;/^." Let us have no running away into 
 the crowd. Come out, and stand by yourself, and for yourself stretch 
 out your own hand, and take Christ for yourself. 
 
 A man may die of starvation in a granary. You may be lost in the 
 midst of this abundance that Christ has supplied for you. And the 
 difference between really possessing salvation and losing it Hes very largely 
 in the difference between saying "us" and "me." " Thou art the man " 
 in regard of the general accusation of sin ; "Thou art the man" in regard 
 of the solemn law which proclaims " the soul that sinneth it shall die " 
 And— blessed be God! — "Thou art the man" in regard of the great 
 promise that says, " If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink." 
 Christ gives you a blank cheque in this world : " Whoso cometh unto 
 Me, I will in no wise cast out," Write thine own name in, and by thy 
 personal faith in the Lamb of God that died for thee, thy sins shall pass 
 away ; and all the fulness of God shall be thy very own for ever. " If 
 thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself ; and if thou scornest, thou alone 
 Shalt bear it" 
 
 145 L 
 
A MESSAGE OF MERCY. 
 
 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and a contrite 
 hearty O God, Thou wilt not despise. — Fsalm li. 17. 
 
 May 25 ^^^ indispensable characteristic and certain criterion of a 
 tme message and Gospel from God is that it pierces the 
 conscience a'.id kindles the sense of sin. There is a great deal of so- 
 called Christian teaching, both from pulpits and books, in this day, which, 
 to my mind, is altogether defective by reason of its under-estimate of the 
 cardinal fact of sin, and its consequent failure to represent the fundamental 
 characteristic of the Gospel as being deliverance and redemption. I am 
 quite sure that the root of nine-tenths of all the heresies that have ever 
 atflicted the Christian Church, and of the weakness of so much popular 
 Christianity, is none other than this failure adequately to recognise the 
 universality and the gravity of the fact of transgression. If a thing comes 
 to you, calls itself God's message, and does not start with man's sin, nor 
 put in the forefront of its utterances the way by which the dominion of 
 that sin in your own heart can be broken, and the penalties of that sin 
 in your present and future life can be swept away, ipso facto, it is con- 
 demned, as not a Gospel from God, or fit for man. Oh, my brother ! it 
 sounds harsh ; but it is the truest kindness, when Nathan stands before 
 the King, and with his flashing eye, and stern, calm voice says, "Thou 
 art the man." Was not that nobler, truer, tenderer, worthier of God, 
 than if he had smoothed him down with soft speeches that would not 
 have roused his conscience ? Is it not the truest benevolence that keeps 
 the surgeon's hand steady whilst his heart is touched by the pain he 
 inflicts, as he thrusts his gleaming instrument of tender cruelty into 
 the poisonous sore ? And is not God's mercy and love manifest for us 
 in this, that He begins all His work with us with the grave, solemn 
 indictment of each soul by itself, "Thou art the man." "He showed 
 me all the mercy, for He taught me all the sin." 
 
 Sin is a universal disease. Humanity is bound in one because all of us 
 are among the multitude of impotent folk. Like the boils and blains that 
 broke out in Egypt when Moses tossed the dust in the air, whether it is 
 Pharaoh or the slave grinding at the millstone, or the outcast on the dung- 
 hill, the blain is there on every skin. Does not the assurance that (iod's 
 great love is not turned away from men by their transgressions feed the 
 hope — nay, rather, inspire the certainty — that for all the sick there is 
 healing? It seems to me that any man that believes in a God who is not a 
 devil ought to believe in a God who reveals Himself. Here is the very 
 weakness of what nowadays is called Theism, that, asserting the existence 
 of a Supreme Being who is love and righteousness, it maintains that that 
 Being has never said a single word to men, and never done a single thing, 
 to lift them out of the mire. Whosoever may believe that, I cannot ; and 
 it seems to me that the doctrine of Christianity is far more in consonance 
 with the assurance that He is love than that dreary creed that the infinite 
 and loving God has not spoken, and never will nor can speak, to His world. 
 Carlyle, in one of his bursts of melancholy, said, speaking about the Deity 
 as he conceived Him, "And He has done nothing ! " He has done some- 
 thing. He has opened "a fountain for sin and for uncleanness." 
 
 146 
 
THE NEED OF A DIVINE REVELATION. 
 
 Ye search the Scriptures^ because ye think that in them ye have eternal 
 life ; and these are they which bear witness of Me. — John v. 39. 
 
 We want another than our own voice to lay down the law 
 ^^ * of conduct, and to accuse and condemn the breaches of it. 
 Conscience is not a wholly reliable guide, nor either an impartial nor 
 an all-knowing judge. Unconsciousness of evil is not innocence. It is 
 not the purest of women that ** wipes her mouth and says, I have 
 done no harm." My conscience says to me, "It is wrong to do 
 wrong"; but when I say to my conscience, "Yes, and pray what is 
 wrong?" there is a large variety of answers possible. A man may 
 sophisticate his conscience, and bribe his conscience, and throttle his 
 conscience, and sear his conscience. And so the man that is worst, 
 who, therefore, ought to be most chastised by his conscience, has 
 most immunity from it ; and where, if it is to be of use, it ought to 
 be most powerful, there it is weakest. 
 
 What then ? Why this, then — a standard that varies is not a 
 standard ; men are left with a leaden rule. My conscience, your 
 conscience, is like the standard measures which we at present possess, 
 which by their very names — foot, handbreath, nail, and the like — tell us 
 that they were originally but the length of one man's limb. And so 
 your measure of right and wrong, and another man's measure, though 
 they may substantially correspond, yet have differences due to your 
 differences of education, character, and a thousand other things. So 
 that the individual man's standard needs to be rectified. You have to 
 send all the weights and measures up to the Tower now and then, to 
 get them stamped and certified. And, as I believe, this fluctuation of 
 our moral judgments shows the need for a fixed pattern and firm, un- 
 changeable standard, external to our mutable selves. A light on deck 
 which pitches with the pitching ship is no guide. It must flash from a 
 white pillar founded on a rock and immovable amid the restless waves. 
 Our need of such a standard raises a strong presumption that a good 
 God will give us what we need, it He can. Such a standard He has 
 given, as I believe, in the revelation of Himself which lies in this book 
 of God, and culminates in the life and character of Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. There, and by that, we can set our watches. There we can 
 read the law of morality, and by our deflections from it we can measure 
 the amount of our guilt. 
 
 147 
 
THE EMPIRE OF FEAR. 
 
 TV/io is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His 
 servant ? he that walketh in darkness^ and hath no light, let him trust in the 
 uatne of the Lord. — IsA. 1. 10. 
 
 Fear is a shrinking apprehension of evil as befalling us, from the 
 * person or thing which we dread. We are sometimes brought face 
 to face with that solemn thought that there are conditions of human nature in 
 which the God who ought to be our dearest joy and most ardent desire 
 becomes our ghastliest dread. The root of such an unnatural perversion of 
 all that a creature ought to feel towards its loving Creator Hes in the simple 
 consciousness of discordance between God and man, which is the shadow 
 cast over the heart by the face of sin. God is righteous ; God righteously 
 administers His universe. God enters into relations of approval or dis- 
 approval with His responsible creature. Therefore there lies, dormant for 
 the most part, but present in every heart, and active in the measure in 
 which that heart is informed as to itself, the slumbering cold dread that 
 between it and God things are tiot as they ought to be. 
 
 I believe, for my part, that such a dumb, dim consciousness of discord 
 attaches to all men, though it is often smothered, often ignored, and often 
 denied. But there it is ; the snake hibernates, but it is coiled in the 
 heart all the same ; and warmth will awake it. Then it lifts its crested 
 head, and shoots out its forked tongue, and venom passes into the veins. 
 A dread of God I — the ghastliest thing in the world, the most unnatural 
 but universal, unless expelled by perfect love ! 
 
 Arising from that discomforting consciousness of discord there come, 
 likewise, other forms and objects of dread. For if I am out of harmony 
 with Him, what will be my fate in the midst of a universe administered by 
 Him, and in which all are His servants? Oh ! I sometimes wonder how it 
 is that godless men front the facts of human life, and do not go mad ! For 
 here are we, naked, feeble, alone, plunged into a whirlpool, from the 
 awful vortices of which we cannot extricate ourselves. There foam and 
 swirl all manner of evils, some of them certain, some of them probable, 
 any of them possible, since we are at discord with Him who wields all the 
 forces of the universe, and wields them all with a righteous hand. "The 
 stars in their courses fight against " the man that does not fight for God. 
 Whilst all things serve the soul that serves Him, all are embattled against 
 the man that is against, or not for, God and His will. 
 
 Then there arises up another object of dread, which, in like manner, 
 derives all its power to terrify and to hurt from the fact of our discordance 
 with God ; and that is *' the shadow feared of man," that stands shrouded 
 by the path, and waits for each of us. 
 
 14S 
 
FEAR GOD. 
 
 Fear God, and keep His commattdments : for this is the whole duty of 
 man. — EcCLES. xii. 13. 
 
 Blay 28 ^°^ ' God's universe ; God's messenger, Death,— these are 
 facts with which we stand in relation, and if our relations with 
 Him are out of gear, then He, and all of these, are legitimate objects of dread 
 to us. 
 
 But there is something else that casts out fear than perfect love, and 
 that is — perfect levity. For it is the explanation of the fact that so many of 
 us know nothing about v/hat I am saying, and fancy that I am exaggerating 
 or putting forward false views. There is a type of men who are below 
 both Fear and Love, directed towards God ; for they never think about 
 Him, or trouble their heads concerning either Him or their relations to 
 Him, or anything that flows therefrom. It is a strange faculty that 
 we all have, of forgetting unwelcome thoughts and shutting our eyes to 
 the things that we do not want to see, like Nelson when he put the 
 telescope to his blind eye at Copenhagen, because he would not obey the 
 signal of recall. But surely it is an ignoble thing that men should ignore 
 or shuffle out of sight with inconsiderateness the real facts of their condition, 
 like boys whistling in a churchyard, to keep their spirits up, and saying, 
 ** Who's afraid?" just because they are so very much afraid. Ah! dear 
 friend, do not rest until 3^ou face the facts, and, having faced them, have 
 found the way to reverse them 1 Surely, surely, it is not worthy of men to 
 turn away from anything so certain as that between a sin-loving man and 
 God there must exist such a relation as will bring evil and sorrow to that 
 man, as surely as God is ! And He is. I beseech you, take to heart these 
 things, and do not turn away from them with a shake of your shoulders, 
 and say, *' He is preaching the narrow, old-fashioned doctrine of a religion 
 of fear." No ! I am not. But I am preaching this plain fact, that a man 
 who is in discord with God has reason to be afraid, and I come to you 
 with the old exhortation of the prophet, "Be troubled, ye careless ones." 
 For there is nothing more ignoble or irrational than security which is 
 only possible by covering over unwelcome facts. ** Be troubled ! " and let 
 the trouble lead you to the Refuge. 
 
 149 
 
THE MISSION OF FEAR. 
 
 Every man hath his sword upon his thigh, because of fear in the night. — 
 Song of S. iii. 8. 
 
 jj pg John uses a rare word when he says, "Fear hath torment.'''* 
 " Turment " does not convey the whole idea of the word. It 
 means sufferinijj, but suiTeririg for a purpose ; suOering which is correction ; 
 suffering which is disciplinary ; suffering which is intended to lead to 
 something beyond itself. Fear, the apprehension of personal evil, has the 
 same function in the moral world as pain has in the ph)sical. It is a 
 symptom of disease, and is intended to bid us look for the remedy and the 
 Ph3sician What is an alarm-bell for but to rouse the sleepers, and to 
 hurry them to the refuge ? And so this wholesome, manly dread of the 
 certain issue of discord with God is meant to do for us what the angels did 
 for Lot ; lay a mercifully violent hand on the shoulder of the sleeper, and 
 shake him into aroused wakefulness, and hasten him out of Sodom before 
 the fire bursts through the ground, and was met by the fire from above. 
 The intention of fear is to lead to that which shall annihilate it and take 
 away its cause. 
 
 There is nothing more ridiculous, nothing more likely to betray a man, 
 than the indulgence in an idle fear which does nothing to prevent its own 
 fulfilment. Horses in a burning stable are so paral;,sed by dread that they 
 cannot stir, and get burnt to death. And for a man to be afraid — as every 
 man ought to be who is conscious of unforgiven sin — for a man to be afraid, 
 and there an end, is absolute insanity. I fear ; then what do I do ? 
 Nothing ! And that is true about hosts of us. 
 
 What ought I to do? Let the dread direct me to its source, my own 
 sinfulness. Let the discovery of my own sinfulness direct me to its remedy, 
 the rigiitcousness and the Cross of Jesus Christ. He, and He alone, can 
 deal with the disturbing element in my relation to God. Pie can " dehver 
 me from my enemies, for they are too strong for nie." It is Christ and His 
 work, Christ and His sacrifice, Christ and His indwelling Spirit, that will 
 comfort and overconie sin and all its cons;equences in any man and every 
 man ; taking away its ixnialty, lightening the heart of the burden of its 
 guilt, delivering from its love and dominion — oil three of which things are 
 the barbs of the arrows with wliich fear riddles heart and conscience. So 
 my fear should proclaim to me the merciful " Name that is above every 
 name," and drive me as well as draw me to Christ, the Conqueror of sin 
 and the Antagonist of all dread. I am not preaching the religion of Fear; 
 but I think we shall scarcely understand the religion of Love unless we 
 recognise that dread is a legitimate part of an unforgiven man's attitude 
 towards God. lily fear should be to me like the misshapen guide that may 
 lead me to the fortress where I shall be safe, Oh ! do not tamper with the 
 wholesome sense of dread Do not let it lie, generally sleeping, and now 
 and then awaking in your hearts, and bringing about nothing. Sailors 
 that crash on with all s:dls set — slunsails and all— whilst the barometer is 
 rapidly falling, and the bo iing clouds are on the horizon, and the line of 
 the approaching gale is ruilling the sea )onder, have themselves to blame if 
 they founder, L(;ok to the falling barometer, and make ready for the 
 coming storm, and remember that tlie mission of Fear is to lead you to the 
 Christ who will take it away. 
 
 150 
 
THE EXPULSION OF FEAR. 
 
 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear : because fear 
 hath punishment ; and he that feareth is not made perfect in love. — 
 I John iv, i8. 
 
 „ g- You cannot love and fear the same person, unless the love is of 
 ^ * a very rudimentary and imperfect cliaracter. But just as when 
 you pour pure water into a bladder, the poisonous gases that it may have 
 contained will be driven out before it, so when love comes in dread goes 
 out. The river, turned into the foul Augean stables of the heart, will 
 sweep out all the filth before it, and leave everything clear. The black, 
 greasy smoke-wreath, touched by the fire of Christ's love, will flash out into 
 ruddy flame like that which has kindled them. And Christ's love will 
 kindle in your hearts, if you accept it, and apprehend it aright, a love 
 which will burn up and turn into fuel for itself the now useless dread. 
 
 Inconsistent as the two emotions are in themselves, in practice, they 
 may be united by reason of the imperfection of the nobler. And in the 
 Christian life they are united with terrible frequency. There are many 
 professing Christian people who Uve all their days with a burden of shiver- 
 ing dread upon their shoulders, and an icy-cold fear in their hearts, just 
 because they have not got close enough to Jesus Christ, and kept their 
 hearts with sufficient steadfastness under the quickening influences of His 
 love, to have shaken off their dread as a sick man's distempered fancies. 
 A little love has not mass enough in it to drive out thick, clustering fears. 
 There are hundreds of professing Christians who know very little indeed of 
 that joyous love of God which swallows up and makes impossible all dread, 
 who, because they have not a loving present consciousness of a loving 
 Father's loving will, tremble when they front in imagination, and still more 
 when they meet in reahty, the evils that must come, and who cannot face 
 the thought of death with anything but shrinking apprehension. There is 
 far too much of the old leaven of selfish dread left in the experiences of 
 many Christians. " I feared thee because thou wert an austere man — and 
 so, because I was afraid, I went and hid my talent, and did nothing for 
 thee " — is a transcript of the experience of far too may of us. The one way 
 to get deliverance is to go to Jesus Christ and keep close by Him. 
 
 There is only one wise thing to do, and that is to make clean work of 
 getting rid of the occasion of dread, which is the fact of sin. Take all 
 your sin to Jesus Christ ; He will — and He only can — deal with it. He 
 will lay His hand on you, as He did of old, with the characteristic word 
 that was so often upon His lips, and which He alone is competent to speak 
 in its deepest meaning. *' Fear not, it is I," and He will give you the 
 courage that He commands. 
 
 God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of "power, and of love, 
 and of a sound mind." " Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again 
 to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba ! 
 Father," and cling to Him as a child who knows his father's heart too well 
 to be afraid of anything in his father, or of anything that his father's hand 
 can send. 
 
THE PROMISE OF THE PENTECOST. 
 
 Is the Spirit of the Lord sfrailencd ? — MiCAll ii. 7. 
 
 A7id they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. — ACTS ii. 4. 
 
 „ „ W HAT did the Pentecost declare and hold forth for the faith 
 *^ ' of the Church ? I need not dwell at any length upon this 
 thought. The facts are familiar to you, and the inferences drawn from 
 them are commonplace and known to us all. But let me just enumerate 
 them as briefly as may be. " Suddenly there came a sound, as of the 
 rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house wliere they were 
 sitting." And there came " cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each 
 of them ; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." What lay in 
 that ? First, the promise of a Divine Spirit whose symbols express some, 
 at all events, of the characteristics and vvonderfulness of His work. The 
 *' rushing of a mighty wind " spoke of a power which varied in its manifes- 
 tations from the gentlest breath that scarce moves the leaves on the summer 
 trees to the wildest blast that casts down all which stands in its way. The 
 natural symbolism of the wind, the least material to the popular apprehen- 
 sion of all material forces, and of which the connection with the immaterial 
 part of a man's personality has been expressed in all languages, point to 
 a Divine, to an immaterial, to a mighty, to a life-giving power which is 
 free to blow whither it listeth, and of which men can mark the effects, 
 though they are all ignorant of the force itself. The twin symbol, the fiery 
 tongues which parted and sat upon each of them, speak in like manner of 
 the Divine influences, not as destructive, but full of quick rejoicing energy 
 and life, the power to transform and to purify. Whithersoever the fire 
 comes, it changes all things into its own substance. Whithersoever the fire 
 comes, there the ruddy spires shoot upwards towards the heavens. Whither- 
 soever the fire comes, there all bonds and fetters are melted and consumed. 
 And so this fire transforms, purifies, ennol:)les, quickens, sets free ; and 
 where the fiery spirit is, there is energy, swift life, rejoicing activity, trans- 
 forming and transmuting power which changes the recipient of the flame 
 into flame himself. 
 
 In the fact of Pentecost there is the promise of a Divine Spirit which 
 is to influence all the moral side of humanity. This is the great and 
 glorious distinction between the Christian doctrine of inspiration and all 
 others which have, in heathen lands, partially reached similar conceptions, 
 that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has laid emphasis upon the Holy Spirit, and 
 has declared that holiness of heart is the touchstone and test of all claims 
 of Divine inspiration. Gifts are much, graces are more ; an inspiration 
 which makes wise is to be coveted, .in inspiration which makes good is 
 transcendently better. And there we find the safeguard against all the 
 fanaticisms which have sometimes invaded the Christian Church, that the 
 Spirit which dwells in men, and makes them free from the obligations of 
 outward law and cold morality, is a Spirit that works a deeper holiness 
 than law dreamed, and a more spontaneous and glad conformity to all 
 things that are fair and good than any legislation and outward command- 
 ment can ever enforce. 
 
 152 
 
THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire ; 
 and it sat upon each one of them. — Acts ii. 3. 
 
 The Spirit that came at Pentecost is not merely a Spitit of 
 June 1. ^^gj^jng might and of swift-flaming energy, but it is a Spirit of 
 holiness whose most blessed and intimate work is all the homely virtues 
 and sweet, unpretending goodnesses which can adorn and gladden humanity. 
 And then the early story carried in it the promise and prophecy of a Spirit 
 granted to all the Church. "They were ail filled with the Holy Ghost." 
 There is the true democracy of Christianity, that its very basis is laid 
 in the thought that every member of the body is equally close to the Head, 
 and equally recipient of the life. There are none now who have a Spirit 
 which others do not possess. The ancient aspiration of the Jewish Law- 
 giver, *' Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the 
 Lord would put His Spirit upon them," is fulfilled in the experience of 
 Pentecost ; and the handmaiden and the children, as well as the old men 
 and the servants, receive of that universal gift. Therefore sacerdotal claims, 
 special functions, privileged classes, are alien to the spirit of Christianity, 
 and blasphemies against the inspiring God. If " one is your master, all ye 
 are brethren." And if we have all been made to drink into one Spirit, then 
 no longer hath any man dominion over our faith for power for us to intervene 
 and to intercede with God. The promise of the early history was that of a 
 spirit of swift energy, of transforming power, acting upon the moral nature 
 granted to the whole Church, and filling the whole humanity of the men to 
 whom He was granted ; filHng in the measure, of course, of their receptivity ; ^ 
 filling, as the great sea does, all the creeks and the indentations along the 
 shore. The deeper the creek, the deeper the water in it ; the further 
 inland it runs, the further will the refreshing sea water penetrate the bosom 
 of the continent. And so each man, according to his character, stature, 
 circumstances, and all the varying conditions which determine his power of 
 receptivity, will receive a varying measure of that gift ; and yet it is meant 
 that all shall be full. The little vessel, the tiny cup, as the great cistern 
 and the enormous vat, each contains according to its capacity. And if all 
 are filled, then this quick Spirit must have the power to influence all the 
 provinces of human nature, must touch the intellectual, must touch the 
 moral, must touch the spiritual. The temporary manifestations and extra- 
 ordinary signs of His power may well drop away as the flower drops away 
 when the fruit has set. The operations of the Divine Spirit are to be felt 
 thrilling through all the nature, and every part of the man's being is to be 
 recipient of the power. Just as when you take a candle and plunge it into 
 a jar of oxygen it blazes up, so my poor human nature, immersed in that 
 Divine Spirit, baptized in the Holy Ghost, shall flame in all its parts into 
 unsuspected and hitherto inexperienced brightness. Such are the elements 
 of the promise of Pentecost 
 
THE REWARD OF CHRIST'S CONFLICT. 
 
 IVko for the joy that was set before Htm, endured the Cross, despising 
 shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. — 
 Heb. xii. 2. 
 
 Our Lord's whole life is represented as being shaped and 
 influenced by a vivid realisation of an unseen reward ; which 
 vivid realisation He owed to His faith. What was this unseen reward ? The 
 "joy that was set before Him." The image of the race is carried on here 
 from the previous verses. At the winning-post hangs the glittering crown, 
 full in the view of the runners ; so shining afar, and ever in the eye of that 
 fighting, struggling Captain of our salvation, hung the gleaming glories of 
 the "joy that was set before Him." 
 
 And what was the joy ? I think the subsequent words must be taken 
 as being the answer to it : "for the joy that was set before Him" was 
 the joy into which He has entered — viz., His session at the right hand of 
 God, or, in other words, the lifting up of His manhood into a participation 
 with Divinity. 
 
 Along with the strong impulse of obedience to the will of the Father, 
 and in perfect harmony with self-forgetting and supreme love to tlie whole 
 world, another strand of the gold cord which bound our great sacrifice to 
 the horns of the altar was the thought of the joy that was to come to Him- 
 self. That joy was to sit at the right hand of the Throne. 
 
 And if this seems to introduce an element of self-regard into our Lord's 
 passion, which strikes cold on our hearts, let us not forget that all that 
 exaltation is for our sakes, that it was all left for our sakes by the 
 Incarnate Word, and that all which He won by His Cross and Passion was 
 but the entrance of His manhood into the glory which was His own before 
 the world was. Nor are we to forget that He is ^^for us entered" witliin 
 the veil, nor that His exaltation is in order to His saving to the uttermost 
 them who come unto God by Him. As He did not look upon His equality 
 with God, before His incarnation, as a thing to be eagerly retained, so He 
 did not look upon His sitting on the Father's Throne, after His passion, 
 as a thing to be eagerly desired for Himself alone, but chiefly because by 
 it He could carry on and complete His great work. So that we may 
 allowably say, "The joy of the Lord is the salvation of His servants." 
 " He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied," and the joy of 
 the shepherd when he bears the lost sheep on his shoulders, and the joy 
 of the householder when the lost treasure is recovered, and the joy of a 
 true elder brother when the prodigal comes home — are all blended in that 
 great motive which nerved Jesus for His Cross, and form part, and the chief 
 part, of the joy that was set before Him. 
 
 154 
 
THE PATH OF SUFFERING. 
 
 For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted^ He is able to succour 
 them that are tempted. — Heb. ii. l8. 
 
 J , Tins issue of our Lord's life He had to keep before Himself by 
 a constant effort. He trod the same path which others have to 
 tread. He, too, like Abraham and Moses, and the others of the host of 
 the faithful, had to keep His conviction of an unseen good, bright and 
 powerful, by an effort of will, while surrounded by the illusions of time 
 and sense. His faith grasped the unseen, and in the strength of that con- 
 viction impelled Him to do and suffer. 
 
 We have the same path to tread. We, too, if we are to do anything 
 in this world befitting or like our Master, must rule our lives in the same 
 fashion as our Master ruled His. That is to say, we must subordinate 
 rigidly the present, and all its temptations, fascinations, cares, joys, and 
 sorrows, to that far-off issue discerned by faith and by faith alone, but by 
 faith clearly ascertained to be the one real substance, the one thing for 
 which it is worth while to live and blessed to die. A life of faith, a life of 
 effort to keep ever before us the unseen crown, will be a life noble and 
 loft}'. We are ever tempted to forget it. The "Man with the Muck- 
 rake," in John Bunyan's homely parable, was so occupied with the foul- 
 smelling dung-heap that he thought a treasure, that he had no eyes for the 
 crown hanging a hair's breadth over his head. A hair's breadth ? Yes ! 
 And yet the distance was as great as if the universe had lain between. 
 
 Every man's life is ennobled in the measure in which he lives for a 
 future. Even if it be a shabby and near future, in so far as it is future, 
 such a life is better than a life that is lived for the present. A man that 
 gets his wages once in a twelvemonth will generally be, in certain respects, 
 a higher type of man than he who gets them once a week. To take 
 far-off views is, pro tanto, as far as it goes — an elevation of humanity. To 
 be absorbed in the present moment is to be degraded to the level of the 
 beasts. 
 
 The Christian ** prize," which faith makes clear to us, has this great 
 advantage over all other objects of pursuit — that it is too far off ever to be 
 reached and left behind. Men in this world win their objects or lose them ; 
 but in either case they pass them and leave them in the rear. Whether 
 is it better to creep, like the old mariners, from headland to headland, 
 altering your course every day or two, or strike boldly out into the great 
 deep, steering for an unseen port on the other side of the world that you 
 never beheld, though you know it is there ? Which will be the nobler 
 voyage ? 
 
 If one looks at the lives of most professing Christians, it looks as if we 
 had but a very dim vision of this glory. And surely, if there is one thing 
 that needs to be rung into our ears, compassed about as we are by the 
 fascinations, temptations, and occupations of this life, it is that old exhorta- 
 tion, never more needed than by the worldly-minded Christians of this day, 
 " Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth." Take 
 Christ for your example, and live, " having respect unto the recompense of 
 the reward." 
 
 155 
 
"HE ENDURED THE CROSS." 
 
 Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into His 
 glory ? — Luke xxiv, 26. 
 
 " Endured the Cross " does not merely mean ** experienced the 
 pain," but it means stood steadfast under, endured in the fullest 
 and noblest sense of the word. Many a man endures suffering in the 
 lower sense who does not endure it in the higher ; but Christ did in both. 
 And, of course, that endurance of the Cross was not confined to the 
 moments of His life when the actual physical pain of the Crucifixion was 
 upon Him, not confined to that last day, but stretched through His whole 
 career. Therefore we may apply this "endurance," not only to the 
 moment of actual physical sufferin'^s, but to the whole of our Lord's earthly 
 career, the patient, heroic steadfastness with which He bore them. 
 
 That is an aspect of our Lord's character that is not often enough 
 presented to our minds. *' The velvet glove has hidden the iron hand," in 
 popular apprehension. Temptations which shatter feebler resolutions, as 
 the waves some feel)le dyke, broke like the vain spray against that break- 
 water ; His fixed will — that will hke adamant, that could not be moved, 
 that could not be broken, that never faltered — led Him to tread, from the 
 beginning to the end of His career, a path every step of which was strewed 
 with hot ploughshares and sharp swords. He trod it with bleeding and 
 with seared feet, but without a quiver and without a falter ; and, as the 
 hour drew near, we read that " He steadfastly set His face" — made it hard 
 as a flint — to go to Jerusalem, impelled by that threefold, mighty force of 
 obedience to the Father, love to man, and vision of the glory, so that His 
 disciples were struck with wonder and awe at the fixed determination 
 stamped on the settled countenance, and manifested in the eager steps 
 which outran them on the rocky road to the Cross. That heroic endurance 
 must be ours too, if we are not to rot in selfish and inglorious ease. Life 
 at first niny seem gay and brilliant, a place for recreation or profit or 
 pleasure, but we very soon find out that it is a sand-strewn wrestling- 
 ground. Many flowers cannot grow where are the feet of the runner and 
 the strife of the combatants. The first thing done to make an arena for 
 wrestlers is to take away the turf and the daisies, then to beat the soil down 
 hard and flat. And so our lives get flattened, stripped of their beauty and 
 their fragrance, because they are not meant to be gardens, they are meant 
 to be wrestling-grounds. There comes to every life that is worth living 
 h.ours of sacrifice when duty can only be done at the cost of a bleeding 
 heart. Every man that is not the devil's servant has to carry a cross, and 
 to be fastened to it, if he will do his I^Lastcr's work. Besides which 
 crucifixion in service, there are all the other common sorrows storming in 
 upon us, so that sometimes it is as much as a man can do not to be swept 
 away by the current, but to keep his footing in mid-channel 
 
 156 
 
NO CROSS, NO CROWN. 
 
 Be thou faithful unto deaths and I will give thee the crown of life. — 
 Rev. ii. lo. 
 
 The way to endure the cross is to look unto the crown, and the 
 Jtme 5. ^j^j.jgj^ Q^ jj^g (-j.Qgg jjg proclaimed, " It is finished." But the 
 
 ending of the work on the Cross was but the beginning of a form of Kis 
 work for us, which shall never cease until the trumpet of victor>' shall sound 
 " It is done ! " when the world has yielded to His love. He works for us, 
 with us, and in us, as Lord of Providence and King of Grace, sustaining 
 and upholding us in all our weakness, and tending the smoky flame of our 
 dim faith till it bursts into clear radiance. The Captain has gone up from 
 the field, and His soldiers are still in it But He has not left them to 
 struggle alone. He sits on high, looking down on us still fighting in the 
 arena with wild beasts ; but He does not only behold, but also helps our 
 conflict, as Stephen, looking up, saw Him *' standing," not sitting, at the 
 right hand of God, as if He had sprung to His feet to succour and receive 
 the martyr-spirit. Nor is He exalted only to work for and in us, or to 
 shed on our hearts the plenteous rain of His heavenly influences. He has 
 entered within the veil as our Great High Priest, to make intercession for 
 us, so making us confident that His great sacrifice is ever present to the 
 Divine mind, as determining its acts towards those who trust in Christ. 
 Nor is our share in His exaltation limited by these great privileges, for He 
 has gone to prepare a place for us ; and dimly as we may know what that 
 means, we know, at all events, that but for Christ's presence there Heaven 
 would be no place for us. Nor is this all ; for, if we have given our hearts 
 to Him, and are joined to the Lord by faith, we are, in a very profound 
 sense, one spirit with Him. 
 
 So real is the union between us and Jesus that it cannot be that the 
 Head shall be glorified and the members have no share in the glory. The 
 Captain of Salvation is laurelled and crowned, and all His soldiers, the 
 weakest and the sinfulest amongst them, if only they are knit to Him by 
 humble faith, share in His victory, receive from His Throne showers of 
 grace and blessing, which He pours down upon them, are inspired by His 
 continual presence who "teaches their hands to war and their fingers to 
 fight," and will be brought at last by Him coming for them again, that 
 " Where He is there His servants may be also." 
 
 And so each of us, if only we take Christ for our Lord and Commander, 
 may say in the calmness of a confident hope what David's soldier said to 
 him in the heroism of his self-devotion, "As my Lord the King liveth, in 
 what place soever my Lord the King shall be, whether in life or death, 
 there also shall Thy servant be." 
 
 157 
 
♦» DESPISING THE SHAME." 
 
 They therefore departed from the presence of the cotinctl, rejoicing that they 
 xvere counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the Name. — Acts v. 41. 
 
 The struggles of the Captain of our salvation are the pattern for 
 June 6. *" *" 
 
 His people, in what I may call the wholesome and wise con- 
 tempt for the ills that bar His progress : " Despising the shame." 
 
 Contempt is an ugly word, but there are things which deserve it ; and 
 though we do not often associate the idea of it with the meek and gentle 
 Christ, there were things in His life on which it was exercised. He 
 despised the contumely. That is to say, He reduced it to its true insig- 
 nificance by taking the measure of it, and looking at it as it was. And 
 that is what I want you to feel we have all of us in our power. There are 
 hosts of difficulties in our lives as Christian men, which will be big or little 
 just as we choose to make them. You can either look at them through a 
 magnifying or a diminishing glass. The magnitude of most of the trifles 
 that affect us may be altered by our way of looking at them. 
 
 Learn the practical wisdom of minimising the hindrances to your 
 Christian career, pulling them down to their true smallness. Do not let 
 them come to you and impose upon you with the notion that they are big 
 and formidable ; the most of them are only white sheets, and a rustic 
 boor behind them, like a vulgar ghoBt. You go up to them, and they will 
 be small immediately! ''Despise the shame !" and it disappears. And 
 how is that to be done? In two ways. Go up the mountain, and the 
 things in the plain will look very small ; the higher you rise, the more 
 insignificant they will seem. Hold fellowship with God, and live up 
 beside your Master, and the threatening foes here will seem very, very 
 unformidable. 
 
 Another way is : pull up the curtain, and gaze on what is behind it 
 The low foot-hills that lie at the base of some Alpine country may look high 
 when seen from the plain, as long as the snowy summits are wrapped in 
 mist ; but when a little puff of wind comes and clears away the fog from the 
 lofty peaks, nobody looks at the little green hills in front. So the world's 
 hindrances, and the world's difficulties and cares, they look very lofty till 
 the cloud lifts. And when we see the great white summits, everything 
 lower does not seem so very high after all. Look to Jesus, and that will 
 dwarf all difficulties. 
 
 158 
 
OUR COMMANDER'S AND OUR TRIUMPH. 
 
 We have such a High Priest, who sat down on the right hand of the 
 throne of the Majesty in the heavens. — Heb. viii. I. 
 
 The new thing which accrued because of Christ's Incarnation 
 and sacrifice was that, as this text puts it with great emphasis, 
 *^ Jesus sat at the right hand of the Throne " ; or, to put it into other words, 
 that the humanity of our Lord and Brother was Hfted up to a participation 
 in Divinity and the rule of the universe. That "sitting" expresses Rest, 
 as from a finished and perfect work, a Rest which is not inactivity j 
 Dominion, extending over all the universe ; and Judgment. These three — 
 Rest, Dominion, Judgment — are the prerogatives of the Man Jesus. That 
 is what He won by His bloody passion and sacrifice. 
 
 And now what has that to do with us? We are to think of this 
 triumph of the Commander as being a revelation and a prophecy for us. 
 Nobody knows anything about the future life except by means of Jesus 
 Christ. We have no knowledge of another world except as we believe in 
 the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and His Ascension up on 
 high. We may have dreams, we may have hopes, we may have fore- 
 bodings, we may argue from analogy, we may get the length of saying 
 ** peradventure," "probably" ; but we cannot say we know, unless we will 
 consent to take all our light, and all our knowledge, and all our certitude, 
 and all hope from that great Lord whose death and resurrection are to the 
 whole v/orld the only guarantee of the future, whose presence there is the 
 only light in all the darkness. 
 
 In His exaltation to the Throne a new hope dawns on humanity. If we 
 believe that the Man Jesus sits on the throne of the universe, we have a new 
 conception of what is possible for humanity. If a perfect human nature 
 have entered into the participation of the Divine, our natures, too, may be 
 perfect, and what He is and where He is, there, too, we may hope to come. 
 So this Epistle in the secpnd chapter, quoting the grand words of the 
 Psalm, which sometimes and in some moods seems more like irony than 
 revelation: "Thou hast crowned Him with glory and honour; Thou 
 hast put all things under Plis feet," comments : " We see not yet all things 
 put under Him." Nay, much the contrary. Look at all this weary world, 
 with its miseries and its cares. What has become of the grand dream of 
 the psalm? Has it all gone into moonshine and vapour ? "We see not 
 yet all things put under Him." Weary centuries have rolled away, and it 
 does not seem a bit nearer. " But we see Jesus crowned with glory and 
 honour." He, and not all these failures and abortions of existing manhood 
 — He is the type that God means us to be, and what we all may one day 
 come to. 
 
 159 
 
WATCHFULNESS AND WORK. 
 
 Blessed ts that servant whom his Lord ^ when He cometh, shall find 'so 
 doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that He will make him ruler over all 
 that He hath. — Luke xii. 43, 44. 
 
 The temptdtion for any one who is much occupied with the 
 June 8. 
 
 hope of some great change and betterment in the near future 
 
 is to be restless and unable to settle down to his work, and to yield 
 
 to distaste of the humdrum duties of every day. If some man that kept 
 
 a little chandler's shop in a back street was expecting to be made a 
 
 king to-morrow, he would not be likely to look after his poor trade 
 
 with great diligence. So we find in the Apostle Paul's second letter — 
 
 that to the Thessalonians — that he had to encounter, as well as he 
 
 could, the tendency of hope to make men restless, and to insist upon 
 
 the thought — which is the same lesson as is taught us by this passage — 
 
 that if a man hoped, then he had with quietness to work and eat his 
 
 own bread, and not be shaken in mind. 
 
 *' Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall 
 
 find so doing." It may seem humble work to serve out hunches of 
 
 bread and pots of black broth to the family of slaves, when the steward is 
 
 expecting the coming of the master of the house, and every nerve is 
 
 tingling with anticipation. But it is steadying work, and it is blessed work. 
 
 It is better that a man should be found doing the homeliest duty as 
 
 the outcome of his great expectations of the coming of his Master, than 
 
 that he should be fidgetting and restless and looking only at that thought 
 
 till it unfits him for his common tasks. Who was it who, sitting playing 
 
 a game of chess, and being addressed by »ome scandalised disciple with 
 
 the question, *' WTiat would you do if Jesus Christ came, and you were 
 
 playing your game?" answered, **I would finish it"? The best way for 
 
 a steward to be ready for the Master, and to show that he is watching, 
 
 is that he should be " found so doing " the humble tasks of his stewardship. 
 
 The two women that were squatting on either side of the millstone, and 
 
 helping each other to whirl the handle round in that night, were in the right 
 
 place, and the one that was taken had no cause to regret that she was not 
 
 more religiously employed. The watchful servant should be a working 
 
 servant. 
 
 160 
 
REST AND RULE. 
 
 Blessed ts that servant whom, when his Lord conieth^ He shall Jind so 
 doing. Verity, I say unto you. That He shall set hitn over all that He 
 hath. — Matt. xxiv. 46, 47. 
 
 Verily I say unto you, He shall "gird Himself, and make them to 
 sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." I do 
 not know that there is a more wonderful promise, with more light lying in 
 its darkness, in all Scripture than that. Jesus Christ continues in the 
 heavens to be found in " the form of a servant." As here He girded 
 Himself with the towel of humiliation in the upper room, so there He girds 
 Himself with the robes of His Imperial Majesty, and uses all His powers for 
 the nourishment and blessedness of His servants. His everlasting motto is, 
 " I am among you as one that serveth." On earth His service was to wash 
 His disciples' feet ; in heaven the pure foot contracts no stain and needs 
 no basin. But in heaven He still serves, and serves by spreading a table, 
 and, as a king might do at some ceremonial feasts, waiting on the astonished 
 guests. Repose, in contrast with the girded loins and the weary waiting 
 of the midnight watch ; nourishment and the satisfaction of all desires j 
 joy ; society, — all these things, and who knows how much more, that we 
 shall have to get there to understand, lie in that metaphor, "Blessed is 
 that servant " who is served by the JNIaster and nourished by His presence. 
 It is a wonderful confession of *' the weariness, the fever, and the fret," 
 the hunger and loneliness of earthly experience, that the thought of heaven 
 as the opposite of all these things should have almost swallowed up the 
 other thought with which our Lord associates it here. He would not have 
 us think only of repose. He unites with that representation, so fascinating 
 to us weary and heavy-laden, the other of administrative authority. He 
 will set him "over all that He hath." The relation between earthly 
 faithfulness and heavenly service is the same in essence as that between 
 the various stages of our work here. The reward for work here is more 
 work ; a wider field, greater capacities. And what depths of authority, 
 of new dignity, of royal supremacy, lie in these solemn and mysterious 
 words I know not : " He will set him over all that He hath." My union 
 with Christ is to be so close as that all His is mine ; and I am master of 
 it. But at all events this we can say, that the faithfulness here leads to 
 larger service yonder ; and that none of the aptitudes and capacities which 
 have been developed in us here on earth will want a sphere when we pass 
 yonder. 
 
 So let watchfulness lead to faithfulness, and watchful faithfulness and 
 faithful watchfulness will lead to repose which is activity, and rule which 
 is rest. 
 
 161 M 
 
MEMORY AND HOPE. 
 
 When my soul fainied in tne, I remembered the Lord. — ^JONAH ii. 7, 
 
 Memory and Hope are tv/ins. The latter can only work with 
 Jxine 10. 
 
 the materials supplied by the former. Hope could paint nothing 
 
 on the blank canvas of the future unless its palette was charged by Memory. 
 Memory brings the yarn which Hope weaves. 
 
 Our thankful remembrance of a past which was filled and moulded by 
 God's perpetual presence and care ought to make us sure of a future which 
 shall, in like manner, be moulded. "Thou hast been my help" : if we 
 can say that, then we may confidently pray, and be sure of the answer, 
 " Leave me not, nor forsake me, O God of my salvation." And if we feel, 
 as memory teaches us to feel, that God has been working for us, and with 
 us, we can say with another psalmist, "Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth 
 for ever. Forsake not the work of Thine own hands " ; and we can rise to 
 His confidence : " The Lord will perfect that which conccrneth me." 
 
 Our remembrance, even of our imperfections, and our losses, and our 
 sorrows, may minister to our hope. For surely the life of every man on 
 earth, but most eminently the life of a Christian man, is utterly unintel- 
 ligible, a mockery and a delusion and an impossibility, if there be a God 
 at all, unless it prophesies of a region in which imperfection will be ended, 
 aspirations will be fulfilled, desires will be satisfied. We have so much 
 that unless we are to have a great deal more, we had better have had 
 nothing. We have so much that if there be a God at all, we must have 
 a great deal more. The new moon with a ragged edge, even in its imper- 
 fection beautiful, is a prophet of the complete resplendent orb. '* On earth 
 the broken arc, in heaven the perfect round." 
 
 The memory of defeat may be the parent of the hope of victory. The 
 stone Ebenezer, "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us," was lifted to com- 
 memorate a victory that had been won on the very site where Israel, 
 fighting the same foes, had once been beaten. There is no remembrance 
 of failure so mistaken as that which takes the past failure as certain to be 
 repeated in the future. Surely, though we have fallen seventy times seven 
 — that is 490, is it not ? — at the 491st attempt we may, and if we trust in 
 God we shall, succeed. 
 
 162 
 
GOD'S GIFT OF HIMSELF TO US. 
 
 I will be their God, in truth and in righteousness. — Zech. viii. 8. 
 
 These words go far deeper than the necessary Divine relation 
 to all His creatures. He is a God to every star that burns, and 
 to every worai that creeps, and to every gnat that dances for a moment. 
 But there is a closer relation, and more blessed, than that. He is a God 
 to every man that lives, lavishing upon him manifestations of His Divinity, 
 and sustaining him in life. But within these great and wondrous universal 
 relations which spring from the very fact of creative power and creatural 
 dependence, there is a tender, a truer relationship of heart to heart, of 
 spirit to spirit, which is set forth as the prerogative of the men that 
 trust in Jesus Christ. The special does not contradict or deny the universal, 
 the universal does not exclude the special : '* I will be a God to them," in 
 a deeper, more blessed, soul-satisfying, and vital sense than to others 
 around them. 
 
 And what lies in that great promise passes the wit of man and the 
 tongues of angels fully to conceive and tell. All that lies in that majestic 
 monosyllable, which is shorthand for life and light and all perfectness, 
 lived in a living person who has a heart, that word God ; — all that is 
 included in that, God will be to you and me if we like to have Him for 
 such. J^**I will be a God to them" — then round about them shall be cast 
 the bulwark of the everlasting arm and the everlasting purpose. " I will 
 be a God to them " — then in all dark places there will be a light, and in 
 all perplexities there will be a path, and in all anxieties there will be 
 quietness, and in all troubles there will be a hidden light of joy, and 
 in every circumstance life will be saturated with an Almighty Presence 
 which shall make the rough' places plain and the crooked things 
 straight. " I will be a God to them " — then their desires, their hunger- 
 ings after blessedness, their seekings after good need no longer roam 
 open-mouthed and empty throughout a waste world, where there is only 
 scanty fodder, enough to keep them from expiring, and never food 
 enough to satisfy them ; but in Him longings and hopes will al) find their 
 appropriate satisfaction. And there will be rest in God, and whatsoever 
 aspirations after lofi.ier goodness, and whatsoever base hankerings still 
 lingering may have to be cherished and fought, the strength of a present 
 God will enable us to aspire, and not to be disappointed, and to cast 
 ourselves into the conflict, and be ever victorious. "I will be to them 
 a God " is the same as to say that everything which my complex nature 
 can require I shall find in Him. 
 
 163 
 
OUR GOD FOR EVER AND EVER. 
 
 / will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people. — Heb. viii. lO. 
 
 God's gift of Himself to me teaches that all that Godhood, in 
 all the incomprehensible sweep of its attributes, is on my side, 
 if I will. They tell us that there are rays in the spectrum which no eye 
 can see, but which yet have mightier chemical and other influences than 
 those that are visible. The spectrum of God is not all visible, but beyond 
 the limits of comprehension there lie dark energies which are full of blessed- 
 ness and of power for us. ** I will be to them a God." We must under- 
 stand something of what that name signifies ; and all that is enlisted for us. 
 There is much which that name signifies that we do not understand ; and 
 all that, too, is working on our side. 
 
 Now, remember that this giving of God to us by Himself is all con- 
 centrated in one historical act. He gave Himself to us v.hen He spared 
 not His only begotten Son. This text is one of the articles of the New 
 Covenant. And what sealed and confirmed all the articles of that Covenant? 
 The blood of Jesus Christ. It was when *' God spared not His own Sen," 
 and when the Son spared not Himself on that Cross of Calvary, that there 
 came to pass the ratifjing and filling out and perfecting of the ancient 
 typical promise, " I will be to them a God." There was the unspeakable 
 gift in which God was given to humanity. 
 
 Here is a treasure — of gold lying in the road. Anybody that picks it 
 up may have it ; the man that does not pick it up does not get it, though 
 it is there for him to lay his fingers on. Here is a river flowing past your 
 door. You may put a pipe into it, and bring all its wealth and refreshment 
 into your house, and use it for the quenching of your thirst, for the cleansing 
 of your person, for the cooking of your victuals, for the watering of your 
 gardens. And here is all the fulness of God welling past us. But Niagara 
 may thunder close by a man's door, and he may perish of thirst. *' I will 
 be to them a God." What does that matter if I do not turn round and 
 say, "O Lord! Thou art my God?" Nothing! Beggars come to your 
 door, and you give them a bit of bread, and they go away, and you find it 
 flung round the corner into the mud. God gives us Himself. I wonder 
 how many of us have tossed the gift over the first hedge, and left it there. 
 Yet all the while we are dying for want of it, and do not knjw that 
 we are. 
 
 Brother ! you have to enclose a bit of the prairie for your very own, 
 and put a hedge round it, and cultivate it, and you will get abundant fruits. 
 You have to translate "their" into the singular possessive pronoun, and 
 say "mine," and put out the hand of faith, and make Him in very deed 
 yours. Then, and only then, is this giving perfected. 
 
 164 
 
MYSELF FOR GOD 
 
 My Beloved is tntne, and I am His. — Song of S. ii. l6. 
 
 God enters into loving relations with me, and it is only when I 
 June 18. 
 
 am melted and encouraged by the perception and reception of 
 
 these relations that there comes the answering throb in my heart. The mirror 
 
 in our spirit has the other one reflected upon it ; then it flings back its own 
 
 reflection to the parent glass. God comes first with the love that He pours 
 
 over us poor creatures ; and when " we have known and believed the love 
 
 that God hath to us," then, and only then, do we throb back the reflected, 
 
 aye, the kindred, kindred love. For love is the same thing in the Divine 
 
 heart and in my heart. In the other bonds that unite men to what is man's 
 
 corresponds to what is God's. My faith corresponds to His faithfulness. My 
 
 dependence corresponds to His sufficiency. My weak clinging answers to 
 
 His strong grasp ; my obedience to His commanding. But my love not 
 
 only corresponds to, as the concave does to the convex, but it assimilates 
 
 to, and is the UkeHest thing in the creature to the infinitude of the Creator. 
 
 And so there is a parallel, wonderful and blessed, between the giving love 
 
 which says, " I will be to them a God," and the recipient love which 
 
 responds, "We are to Thee a people." 
 
 Remember, too, that not only is there this general resemblance, but 
 that our love manifests itself to God — I was going to say, just as God's love 
 manifests itself to us, though, of course, there are differences that I do not 
 need to touch upon here, in the act of self-surrender. He gave Himself to 
 us. Ay ! and we may use another form of speech still more emphatic, and 
 say. He gave up Himself For, surely, difficult as it may be for us to keep 
 our footing in those lofty heights where the atmosphere is so rare, the gift 
 of Jesus Christ was surrender ; when the Father spared not His own Son, 
 but delivered Him up for us all ! 
 
 Not only is there this mutual possession, but each half, when cleft and 
 analysed, reveals the necessity for a similar reciprocity. For God's giving 
 of Himself to us is nothing to us without our taking of God for ours ; and, 
 in hke manner, our giving of ourselves to God would be all incomplete 
 unless, in His strange love. He stooped from amidst the praises of Israel to 
 accept the poor gifts that we bring. 
 
 16'; 
 
THE SAINT'S GIFT TO HIS LORD. 
 
 And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in the day that I do 
 make, even a peculiar treasure. — Mal. iii. 17. 
 
 What is the surrender of the man that receives the love of 
 God ? In what region of my nature is that giving up of myself 
 most imperative and blessed ? In my will. The will is the man. The 
 centre-point of every human being is the will, and it is no use for us to talk 
 about our having given ourselves to God, in response and in thankfulness 
 to His gift of Himself to us, unless we come and say, '* Lord, not my will, 
 but Thine " ; and bow ourselves in unreluctant and constant submission to 
 His commandments and to all His will. We give ourselves to God when, 
 moved by His giving of Himself to us, we yield up our love to Him ; and 
 love never rests until it has yielded up its will to the Beloved. He 
 indeed gives, asking for nothing ; but He gives in a still deeper sense, 
 asking for everything — and that everything is myself. And I yield myself 
 to Him in the measure in which I cast my thankful love upon Him, and 
 then bow myself as His servant, in humble consecration, to Himself, 
 with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. 
 
 " They shall be My people." That is wonderful ! It is strange that we 
 can imitate God, in a certain fashion, in the gift of self; but it is yet more 
 strange and blessed that God accepts that gift, and counts it as one of His 
 treasures to possess us. One of the psalmists had a deep insight into the 
 miracle of the Divine condescension when he said, "He was extolled with 
 my tongue." Strange that the loftiest of creatures should be lifted higher 
 by the poor, tremulous lever of my praises ; and yet it is so. He takes as 
 His such poor creatures, full of imperfection and tremulous faith and 
 disproved love, as you and I know ourselves to be, and He says, *' My 
 people." " They shall be Mine " ; my jewels, says He, " in the day which 
 I make." Oh ! it sometimes seems to me that it is more wonderful that 
 God should take me for His than that He should give me Himself for mine. 
 
 Have you given yourself to Him ? Have you begun where He begins, 
 taking first the gift that is freely given to you of God, even Jesus Christ, in 
 whom God dwells, and who makes all the Godhead yours, for your very 
 own? Have you taken God for yours, by faith in that Lord "who loved 
 me, and gave Himself for me"? And then, smitten by His love, and 
 having the chains of self melted by the fire of His great mercy, have you said : 
 " Lo ! truly I am Thy servant. Thou hast loosed my bonds" ? You never 
 own yourself till you give yourself away ; and you never will give your- 
 self to God, to be His, unless, with all your heart and strenglh, you cling 
 to the rock-truth, that God has given Himself to every man that will take 
 Him, in Jesus Christ, to be that man's God for ever and ever. 
 
 166 
 
THE NEW COVENANT. 
 
 This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the 
 Lord. — Heb. X. i6. 
 
 J .- We can scarcely estimate the shock to a primitive Hebrew 
 Christian when he discovered that Judaism was to fade away. 
 Such an earthquake might seem to leave nothing standing. Now, the 
 great object of this Epistle to the Hebrews is to insist on that truth, and to 
 calm the early Hebrew Christians under it, by showing them that the dis- 
 appears n^e of the older system left them no poorer, but infinitely richer, 
 inasmuch as all that was in it was more perfectly in Christ's Gospel. The 
 writer has accordingly been giving his strength to show that all along the 
 line Christianity is the perfecting of Judaism, in its Founder, in its priest- 
 hood, in its ceremonies, in its Sabbath. Here he touches the great central 
 thought of the Old Covenant between God and man, and he falls brck upon 
 the strange words of one of the old prophets. Jeremiah had declared as 
 emphatically as he, the writer, has been declaring, how the ancient system 
 was to melt away and be absorbed in a new covenant between God and 
 man. Is there any other instance of a rehgion which on the one side pro- 
 claims its own eternal duration, " the Word of the Lord endureth for ever," 
 and on the other side declares that it is to be abrogated, antiquated, and 
 done away ? The writer of the Epistle had learnt from sacreder lips than 
 Jeremiah's the same lesson, for the Master said at the most solemn hour of 
 His career, "This is the blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for 
 many for the remission of sins." These articles of the New Covenant go 
 very deep into the essence of Christianity, and may well be thoughtfully 
 pondered by us all, if we want to know what the specific differences 
 between the ultimate revelation in Jesus Christ and all other systems are. 
 
 The earliest Christian confession, the simplest and sufficient creed, was, 
 Jesus is the Christ. What do we mean by that ? We mean that He is the 
 realisation of the dim figure which arose, majestic and enigmatical, through 
 the mists of a partial revelation. We mean that He is, as the word signifies 
 etymologically, "anointed" with the Divine Spirit for the discharge of all 
 the offices which, in old days, were filled by men who were fitted and 
 designated for them by outward anointing — prophet, priest, and king. We 
 mean that He is the substance of which ancient ritual was the shadow. 
 We mean that He is the goal to which all that former unveihng, in part, of 
 the mind and will of God steadfastly pointed. This, and nothing less, is 
 the meaning of the declaration that Jesus is the Christ. The true presence 
 of God, the true lustrous emanation from, and manifestation of, the abysmal 
 brightness, is in Jesus Christ, " the effulgence of His glory, and the express 
 image of His Person." For the central blaze of God's glory is God's love, 
 and that rises to its highest degree in the name and mission of Jesus Christ 
 our Saviour. If we would see God, our faith must grasp the Man, the 
 Christ, the I^ord — as Climax of all names — the Incarnate God, the Eternal 
 Word who has come among us to reveal to us all the glory of the Lord. 
 So let us make sure that the fleshly tables of our hearts are not like the 
 mouldering stones that antiquarians dig up on some historical site, bearing 
 half-obliterated inscriptions, with fragmentary names of mighty kings of 
 long ago, but with the many-syllabled Name written firm, clear, legible, 
 complete upon them, as on some granite block fresh from the stone- 
 cutter's chisel. 
 
 167 
 
GOD'S WRITING ON THE HEART. 
 
 I will put My law in their inward partSy and in their heart will I write 
 tt, — Jer. XX xi. ^2>' 
 
 J will / ut My laws into their mind, and on their heart also will I write 
 them, — Heb. viii. lo. 
 
 J ,g It seems to me that the two clauses in each of these passages are 
 not precisely parallel, but parallel with a difference. I take it 
 that **mind" here means very much what we make it mean in our popular 
 phraseology — a kind of synonym for the understanding, or the intellectual 
 part of a man's nature ; and that " heart," on the other hand, means some- 
 thing a little wider than it does in our popular phraseology, and indicates 
 not only the affections, but the centre of personality in the human will as 
 well as the seat of love. So these two clauses will mean, you see, if we 
 carry that distinction with us, two things — the clear perception of the will 
 of God and the coincidence of that will with our inclinations and desires. 
 In men's natural consciences there is the law written on their minds ; but, 
 alas ! we all know that there is an awful chasm between perception and 
 inclination, and that it is one thing to know our duty and quite another to 
 wish to do it. So the heart of this great promise is that these two things 
 shall coincide in a Christian man, shall cover precisely the same ground, as 
 two of Euclid's triangles, v/ith the same angles, will, if laid upon each other, 
 coincide line for line and angle for angle. Thus it is possible — and, if we 
 observe the conditions, it shall be actual in us — that knowledge and will 
 shall cover absolutely and exactly the same ground. Inchnation shall be 
 duty, and duty shall be inchnation and delight. 
 
 And how is that wonderful change upon men to be accomplished? "/ 
 will put, / will write." Only He can do it. We all know, by our own 
 experience, the schism that gapes between the two things. Every man in 
 the world knows a vast deal more of duty than any man in the world does. 
 The worst of us has a standard that rebukes his evil, and the best of us has 
 a standard that transcends his goodness, and, alas ! often transcends his 
 inclination. But the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour comes armed with 
 sufficient power to make this miracle an actuality for us all ; for it comes 
 to substitute for all other motives to obedience the one motive of love. 
 They but half understand the Gospel who dwell upon its sanctions of reward 
 and punishment, and would seek to frighten men into goodness ; and they 
 misinterpret it almost as much who fin(.i the chief motive for Christian obedi- 
 ence in the glories of the heavenly state. The Gospel appeals to men, not 
 merely nor chiefly on the ground of self-interest, but it comes to them with 
 one appeal, " If yc love Me, keep My commandnients." That is how the 
 law is written on the heart. Wherever there is love, there is a supreme 
 delight in divining and in satisfying the wish and will of the Beloved. His 
 lightest word is law to the loving heart ; His looks are spells and command- 
 ments. And if it is so in regard of our poor, imperfect human loves, how 
 infinitely more so is it where the heart is touched by true affection for His 
 own infinite love's sake, of that "Jesus" who is "most desired" ! The 
 secret of Christian morality is that duty is changed into choice, because 
 love is made the motive for obedience. 
 
 l68 
 
DELIGHT IN GOD'S WILL. 
 
 / delight to do Thy will, O my God: yea, Thy law is within my heart. — 
 Psalm xl. 8. 
 
 To have Christ shrined in the heart is the heart of Christianity, 
 ""® ■ and Christ Himself is our law. So, in another sense than that 
 which I have been already touching, the law is written on the heart on 
 which, by faith and self-surrender, the name of Christ is written. And 
 when it becomes our whole duty to become like Him, then He, being rhroned 
 in our hearts, our law is within, and. Himself to His " darlings " shall be, as 
 the poet has it about another matter, " both law and impulse.'"' Write His 
 name upon your hearis, and your law of life is thereby written there. The 
 very specific gift of Christianity to men is the gift of a new nature, which 
 is " created in righteousness and holiness that flows from truth." The 
 communication of a Divine life kindred with, and percipient of, and 
 submissive to, the Divine will, is the gift that Christianity — or, rather, let 
 us put away the abstraction and say that Christ — oflers to us all, and gives 
 to every man who will accept it. And thus, and in other ways on which 
 I cannot dwell now, this great article of the New Covenant lies at the 
 very foundation of the Christian life, and gives its peculiar tinge and cast 
 to all Christian morality, commandment, and obhgation. 
 
 But let me remind you how this great truth has to be held with caution. 
 The evidence of this letter (Hebrews) itself shows that, whilst the writer re- 
 garded it as a distinctive characteristic of the Gospel, that by it men's wills 
 were stamped with a delight in the law of God, and a transcript thereof, he 
 still regarded these wills as unstable, as capable of losing the sharp lettering, 
 of havh^g the writing of God obliterated, and still regarded it as possible 
 that there should be apostasy and departure. So there is nothing in God's 
 promise which suspends the need for effort and for conflict. Still " the 
 flesh lusteth against the spirit." Still there are parts of the nature on 
 which that law is not written. It is the final triumph, that the whole man, 
 body, soul, and spirit, is, through and through, penetrated with and 
 joyfully obedient to the commandments cf the Lord. There is need, too, 
 not only for continuous progress, effort, conflict, in order to keep our hearts 
 open for His handwriting, but also for much caution, lest at any time we 
 should mistake our own self-will for the utterance of the Divine voice. 
 " Love, and do what thou wilt," said a great Christian teacher. It is an 
 unguarded statement ; but, profoundly true as in some respects it is, it is 
 only absolutely true if we have made sure that the "thou" that "wills" 
 is the heart on which God has written His law. 
 
 Only God can do this for us. One Man has transcribed the Divine will 
 on His will without blurring a letter or omitting a clause. One Man has 
 been able to say, in the presence of the most fearful temptations, "Not 
 My will, but Thine, be done." One Man has so completely written, 
 perceived, and obeyed the law of His Father, that, looking back on all 
 His life. He was conscious of no defect or divergence, either in motive or 
 in act, and could affirm on the Cross, "It is finished." He who thus 
 perfectly kept that Divine law will give to us, if we ask Him, His Spirit, 
 to write it upon our hearts, and "the law of the spirit of hfe which was 
 in Christ Jesus shall make us free from the law of sin and death." 
 
 169 
 
THE IMPASSABLE GULF BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND 
 OTHER RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS. 
 
 Their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. 
 Deut. xxxii. 31. 
 
 Christianity is a new covenant, undoubtedly, an altogether 
 ' new thing in the world. For whatever other laws have been 
 promulgated among men have had this in common, that they have stood 
 over against the will with a whip in one hand and a box of sweets in the 
 other, and have tried to influence desires and inclinations, first by the 
 setting forth of duty, then by threatening, and then by promises to obedience. 
 There is the inherent weakness of all, which is merely law. You do not 
 make men good by telling them what goodness consists in, nor yet by 
 setting forth the bitter consequences that may result from wrong-doing. 
 All that is surface work. But here is a system that says that it deals with 
 the will as from within, and moves and moulds and revolutionises it. 
 "You cannot make men sober by Act of Parliament," people say. Well ! 
 I do not believe the conclusion which is generally drawn from that state- 
 ment, but it is perfectly true in itself. To tell a man what he ought to do 
 is very, very little help towards his doing it. I do not under-estimate the 
 value of a clear perception of duty, but I say that, apart from Christianity, 
 in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that clear perception of duty is like 
 a clear opening of a great gulf between a man and safety, which only makes 
 him recoil in despair with the thought, "How can I ever leap across and 
 clear thal?^* But the pecuharity of the Gospel is that it gives both the 
 knowledge of what we ought to be, and with and in the knowledge the 
 desire, and with and in the knowledge and the desire the power to be what 
 God would have us to be. 
 
 All other systems, whether the laws of a nation, or the principles of a 
 scientific morahty, or the solemn voice that speaks in our minds proclaim- 
 ing some version of God's law to every man, — all these are comparatively 
 impotent. They are like bill-stickers going about a rebellious province 
 posting the king's proclamation — unless they have soldiers at their back, 
 the proclamation is not worth the paper it is printed upon. But Christianity 
 comes, and gives us that which it requires from us. So, in his epigrammatic 
 way. Saint Augustine penetrated to the very heart of this truth when he 
 prayed, "Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt." 
 
 170 
 
THE FREEDOM AND BLESSEDNESS OF CHRIST'S 
 
 SERVICE. 
 
 This is the love ofGod^ that ive keep His commandtnents : and His cotn- 
 ntandtnents are not grievous. — I John v. 3. 
 
 Not to do wrong may be the mark of a slave's timid obedience. 
 Not to wish to do wrong is the charter of a son's free and blessed 
 service. There is a higher possibility yet, reserved for Heaven — not to be 
 able to do wrong. Freedom does not consist in doing what I like,— that 
 turns out, in the long run, to be the most abject slavery, under the severest 
 tyrants, — but it consists in liking to do what I ought. When my wishes 
 and God's will are absolutely coincident, then, and only then, am I free. 
 That is no prison, out of which we do not wish to go. Not to be confined 
 against our wills, but voluntarily to elect to move only within the sacred, 
 charmed, sweet circle of the discerned will of God, is the service and 
 liberty of the sons of God. 
 
 Alas ! there are a great many Christians, so-called, who know very 
 little about such blessedness. To many of us religion is a burden. It 
 consists of a number of prohibitions and restrictions and commandments 
 equally unwelcome. *' Do not do this," and all the while I would like to 
 do it. "Do that," and all the while I do not want to do it. "Pray, 
 because it is your duty ; go to chapel, because you think it is God's will ; 
 give money that you would much rather keep in your pockets ; abstain from 
 certain things that you hunger for ; do other things that you do not a bit 
 desire to do, nor find any pleasure in doing." That is the religion of hosts 
 of people. They have need to ask themselves whether their religion 
 is Christ's religion. Ah, brother! "My yoke is easy and My burden 
 light." Not because the things that He bids and forbids are less or lighter 
 than those which the world's morality requires of its followers, but because, 
 so to speak, the yoke is padded with the velvet of love, and inclination 
 coincides in the measure of our true religion with the discerned will of 
 God. This is ever so far ahead of the experience of crowds of professing 
 Christians. There are still great numbers of professing Christians, and I 
 doubt not that I speak to some such, on whose hearts only a very few 
 of the syllables of God's will are written, and these very faintly and 
 blotted. But remember that the fundamental idea of a covenant implies 
 two people, and duties and obligations on the part ot each. If God is 
 in covenant with you, you are in covenant with God. If He makes a 
 promise, there is something for you to do in order that that promise may 
 be fulfilled to you. 
 
 171 
 
"WHAT WILT THOU HAVE ME TO DO?" 
 
 And the multitudes asked Him, saying, What then must we do? — 
 Luke iii. lo. 
 
 What is there to do ? First, and last, and midst, keep close to 
 Jesus Christ. In the meas'ure in which we keep ourselves in 
 continual touch with Him will His law be written upon our hearts. If 
 we are for ever twitching away the paper ; if we are for ever flinging blots 
 and mud upon it, how can we expect the transcript to be clear and legible ? 
 We must keep still that God may write. We must keep near Him that He 
 may write. We must wait habitually in His presence. When the 
 astronomer wishes to get the image of some far-off star, invisible to the eye 
 of sense, he regulates the motion of his sensitive plate, so that for hours it 
 shall continue right beneath the invisible beam. So we have to still our 
 hearts, and keep their plates — the fleshly tables of them— exposed to the 
 heavens ; then the likeness of God will be stamped there. 
 
 Be faithful to what is written there, which is the Christian shape of the 
 heathen commandment, "Do the duty that lies nearest thee; so shall the 
 next become plainer." Be faithful to the line that is " written," and there 
 Vv'ill be more on the tablet to-morrow. 
 
 Now this is a promise for us all. Howe\'er blotted and blurred and 
 defaced by crooked, scrawling letters, like a child's copybook, with its first 
 pothooks and hangers, our hearts may be, there is no need for any of us to 
 say despairingly, as we look on the smeared page, " What I have written I 
 have written." He is able to blot it all out, to " take away the hand- 
 writing" — our own — " that is against us, naiUng it to His Cross," and to 
 give us, in our inmost spirits, a better knowledge of, and a glad obedience 
 to, His discerned and holy will. So that each of us, if we hke, and will 
 observe the conditions, may be able to say with all humility, " Lo ! I come, 
 in the volume of the book it is written of tne. I delight to do Thy will. 
 Yea ! Thy law is within my heart." 
 
 Two mirrors set one against each other reflect one another, and them- 
 selves in each other, in long perspective. Two hearts that love, with 
 similar reciprocation of influence, mirror back to each other their own 
 affections. " I am thine ; thou art mine," is the very mother-tongue of 
 love, and of blessedness the source. All loving hearts know that. This 
 mutual surrender, and, in surrender, reciprocal possession, is lifted up here 
 into the highest regions. " I will be their God, they shall be My people." 
 
 172 
 
REPENTANCE AND FAITH. 
 
 Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. — 
 Acts xx. 21. 
 
 J 2j Very near the close of his missionary career the Apostle Paul 
 summed up his preaching as being all directed to two points, 
 " Repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." These 
 two, repentance and faith, ought never to be separated in thought, as they 
 are inseparable in fact. Genuine repentance is impossible without faith ; 
 true faith cannot exist without repentance. 
 
 And yet the two are separated very often, in this day especially, even by 
 earnest Christian teachers who have a great deal to say about faith, and 
 not nearly enough in proportion about repentance ; and the effect is to 
 obscure the very idea of faith, and not seldom to preach, " Peace ! peace ! 
 where there is no peace." A Gospel which is always talking about faith, 
 and scarcely ever talking about repentance, is denuded indeed of some of 
 its most unwelcome characteristics, but is also deprived of most of its power, 
 and it may very easily become an ally of all righteousness and an indulgence 
 to sin. 
 
 Some of the most formidable objections to the Christian doctrine of 
 forgiveness — viz., that it is immoral in its substance — arise chiefly from 
 forgetting that "repentance" towards "God" is as real a condition of 
 salvation as is "faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." We have here the 
 Apostle's deliverance about one of these twin thoughts. We have three 
 stages — the root, the stem, the fruit ; sorrow, repentance, salvation. But 
 there is a right and a wrong kind of sorrow for sin. The right kind breeds 
 repentance, and thence reaches salvation ; the wrong kind breeds nothing, 
 and so ends in death. Look at this ladder, which the Apostle sets up 
 "from the horrible pit and the miry clay" of evil, up to the sunny heights 
 of salvation, and trace its stages ; not forgetting that it is not a complete 
 statement of the case, and needs to be supplemented, in the spirit of the 
 words already quoted, by the other part of the inseparable whole, "faith 
 towards our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 It would be an interesting study to examine the two letters of the 
 Apostle Peter, in order to construct from them a picture of what he became, 
 and to contrast it with his own earlier self, when full of self-confidence, 
 rashness, and instability. It took a lifetime for Simon, the son of Jonas, to 
 grow into Peter ; but it was done. And the very faults of the character 
 became strength. What he had proved possible in his own case he 
 commands and commends to us ; and from the height to which he has 
 reached he looks upwards to the infinite ascent which he knows he will 
 attain when he puts off this tabernacle, and then downwards to his 
 brethren, bidding them, too, climb and aspire. His last word is like that 
 of the great Roman Catholic apostle to the East Indies: "Forward!" 
 He is like some trumpeter on the battlefield who spends his last breath in 
 sounding an advance. Immortal hope animates his dying injunction : 
 " Grow ! grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour." 
 
 173 
 
THE BEGGAR'S PETITION. 
 
 ^nd when he heard that it ztas Jesus of Nazareth^ he began to cry out 
 and say y Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. — MARK x. 47. 
 
 Jesus was now on His last journey to Jerusalem. That night 
 '"^^ "" He would sleep at Bethany : Calvary was but a week off. He 
 had paused to save Zacchoeus, and now He has resumed His march to His 
 Cross. Popular enthusiasm is surging round Him, and for the first time He 
 does not try to repress it. A shouting multitude are escorting Him out of 
 the city. They have just passed the gates, and are in the act of turning 
 towards the mountain gorge through which ran the Jerusalem road. A long 
 file of beggars is sitting, as beggars do still in Eastern cities, outside the 
 gate ; well accustomed to lift their monotonous wail at the sound of passing 
 footsteps. Bartimseus is amongst them. He asks, according to Luke, 
 what is the cause of the bustle, and is told that "Jesus of Nazareth is 
 passing by." The name wakes strange hopes in him, which can only be 
 accounted for by his knowledge of Christ's miracles done elsewhere. It is 
 a witness to their notoriety that they had filtered down to the talk of beggars 
 at city gates. And so, true to his trade, he cries, "Jesus, . . . have mercy 
 upon me ! " In the cry there throbs the sense of need, deep and urgent ; 
 in it there is also the realisation of the possibility tliat the widely flowing 
 blessings of which Bartinueus had heard might be concentrated and poured, 
 in their full flood, upon himself. He individualises himself, his need, 
 Christ's power and willingness to help him. And, because he has heard 
 of so many who have, in like manner, received His healing touch, he comes 
 with the cry, " Have mercy upon ;;/^." 
 
 All this is upon the low level of physical blessings, need, and desire. 
 But let us lift it higher. It is a mirror in which we may see ourselves, our 
 necessities, and the example of what our desire ought to be. Ah, Ijrother ! 
 the deep consciousness of impotence, need, emptiness, bhndness, lies at the 
 bottom of all true crying to Jesus Christ. If you have never — knowing 
 yourself to be a sinful man, in peril, present and future, from your sin, and 
 stained and marred by reason of it — gone to Jesus Christ, you never have 
 gone to Him in any deep and adequate sense at all. Only when I know 
 myself to be a sinful man am I driven to cry, "Jesus ! have mercy on me." 
 And I ask you not to answer it to me, but to press the question on your 
 own consciences — " Have I any experience of such a sense of need ; or am 
 I groping in the darkness and saying, I see ; weak as water, and saying I 
 am strong?" "Thou knowest not that thou art poor, and naked, and 
 blind " ; and so that Jesus of Nazareth should be passing by has never 
 moved thy tongue to call, " Son of David ! have mercy upon me." 
 
 174 
 
THE SON OF DAVID. 
 
 Whai think ye of Christ ? Whose Son is He ? They say unto him, 
 The Son of David, — r^lATT. xxii. 42. 
 
 The cry of blind Bartimoeus expressed a clear insight into 
 something at least of our Lord's unique character and power. 
 Unless we know Him to be all that is involved in that august title, "the 
 Son of David," I do not think our cries to Him will ever be very earnest. 
 It seems to me that they will only be earnest when, on the one hand, we 
 recognise our need of a Saviour, and, on the other hand, behold in Him 
 the Saviour that we need. I can quite understand — and ever see plenty of 
 illustrations of it all round about us — a kind of Christianity, real as far as 
 it goes, but in my judgment very superficial, which has no adequate con- 
 ception of what sin means, in its depth, in its power upon the subject of it, 
 or in its consequences here and hereafter ; and, that sense being lacking, 
 the whole scale of Christianit}', as it were, is dropped, and Christ comes 
 to be, not, as I think, the New Testament tells us He is, the Incarnate 
 Word of God, who for us men and for our salvation bore our sins in His 
 own body on the tree, and was made sin for us, that we might be made 
 the righteousness of God in Him, but an Example, a Teacher, or a pure 
 Model, or a Social Reformer, or the like. If men think of Him only as 
 such, they will never cry to Him, " Have mercy upon me." 
 
 Oh ! I pray you, whether you begin with looking into your own hearts 
 and recognising the crawling evils that have made their home there, and 
 thence pass to the thought of the sort of Redeemer that you need and find 
 in Christ — or whether you begin at the other side, and looking upon the 
 revealed Christ in all the fulness in which He is represented to us in the 
 Gospels, and from thence go back to ask yourselves the question, "What 
 sort of man must I be if that is the kind of Saviour that I need ?" — I pray 
 you ever to blend these two things together, the consciousness of your own 
 need of redemption in His blood, and the assurance that by His death 
 we are redeemed, and then to cry, " Lord ! have mercy upon me," and 
 claim your individual share in the wide-flowing blessing, to turn all the 
 generalities of His grace into the particularities of your own possession. 
 We have to go one by one to His Cross, and one by one to pass through 
 the wicket-gate. We have not cried to Him as we ought if our cry is only, 
 "Christ ! have mercy upon us. Lord ! have mercy upon us. Christ ! have 
 mercy upon us." We must be alone with Him, that into our own hearts we 
 may receive all the fulness of His blessing ; and our petition must be, 
 ** Thou Son of David ! have mercy upon me." Have you said that ? 
 
 175 
 
JESUS AND THE BLIND MAN. 
 
 " The son of Timcetis, Bartiiiicvits, a blind beggar, was sitting by the 
 way side. — Mark x. 46. 
 
 The blind befT<jar had a clear insight into Christ's place and 
 dignity. The multitude said to him, "Jesus of A'azarcth 
 pnsseth by." That was all they cared for or knew. He cries, "Jesus, 
 Thou Son of David,^' distinctly recognising our Lord's Mesiianic character, 
 His power and authority, and on that power and authority he built a con- 
 fidence ; for he says not as some other suppliants had done, either, " If 
 Thou wilt Thou canst," or, " If Thou canst do anything, have compassion 
 on us " ; he is sure of both the power and the will. 
 
 Now, it is interesting to notice that this same clear insight other blind 
 men in the Evangelist's story are also represented as having had. Blindness 
 has its compensations ; it leads to a certain steadfast brooding upon 
 thoughts, free from disturbing influences. Seeing ]es\\s did not work faith ; 
 not seeing Him seems to have helped it. It left imagination to work 
 undisturbed, and He was all the loftier to these men because the conceptions 
 of their minds were not limited by the vision of their eyes. At all events, 
 here is a distinct piece cf insight into Christ's dignity, power, and will to 
 which the seeing multitudes were blind. 
 
 The disciples attempted to stifle the cry. No doubt it was in defence of 
 the Master's dignity, as they construed it, that the people sought to silence 
 the persistent, strident voice piercing through their hosannas. Ah ! they 
 did not know that the cry of wretchedness was far sweeter to Him than their 
 shallow hallelujahs. Christian people of all churches, and some stiffened 
 churches very especially, have been a great deal more careful of Christ's 
 dignity than He is, and have felt that their formal worship was indecorously 
 disturbed when by chance some earnest voice forced its way through it 
 with the cry of need and desire. But this man had been accustomed for 
 many a day, sitting outside the gate, to reiterate his petition when it was 
 unattended to, and to make it heard amidst the noise of passers-by. So 
 he was persistently bold and importunate and shameless, as the shallow 
 critics thought, in his crying. The more they silenced him the more a 
 great deal he cried. Would (jod tliat we had more crying like that ; and 
 that Christ's servants did not so often seek to suppress it, as some of them 
 do. If there are any of you who, by reason of companions, or cares, or 
 habits, or sorrows, or a feeble conception of your own need, or a doubtful 
 recognition of Christ's power and mercy, have been tempted to stop your 
 supplications, do like Bartimceus, and the more these, your enemies, seek 
 to silence the deepest voice that is in you, the more let it speak. 
 
 176 
 
THE MASTER'S CALL. 
 
 The Master is here, and calleth thee. — John xi. 28. 
 
 ** He stood still, and commanded him to be called " Remember 
 June . jj^^j^ pj^ ^^g ^^ jjig X02A to His Cross, and the tension of spirit 
 which the Evangelists notice as attaching to Him then, and which filled the 
 disciples with awe as they followed Him, absorbed Him, no doubt, at this 
 hour, so that He heard little of the people's shouts. But He did hear the 
 blind beggar's cry, and He arrested His march in order to attend to it. That 
 pause of the King, and the quick ear which discerned the difference between 
 the unreal shouts of the crowd and the terrible sincerity in the cry of the 
 beggar is still open. He is in the heavens, surrounded by its glories, and, 
 as I think Scripture teaches us, wielding providence and administering the 
 affairs of the universe. He does not need to pause in order to hear you and 
 me. If He did. He would — if I may venture upon such an impossible sup- 
 position — bid the hallelujahs of heaven hush themselves, and suspend the 
 operations of His providence if needs were, rather than you or I, or any poor 
 man who cries to Him, should be unheard and unhelped. The living Christ 
 is as tender a friend, has as quick an ear, is as ready to help at once, to-day, 
 as He was outside the gate of Jericho. And every one of us may lift his or 
 her poor, thin voice, and it will go straight up to the throne, and not be lost 
 in the clamour of the hallelujahs that echo round His seat. Christ still 
 hears and answers the cry of need. Send you it up, and you will find that 
 true. Notice the suppliant's response. That is a very characteristic right- 
 about-face of the crowd, who one moment were saying, " Hold your tongue, 
 and do not disturb Him," and the next moment were all eager to encumber 
 him with help, and to say, *' Rise up! be of good cheer ! He calleth thee." 
 No thanks to them that He did. And what did the man do? "Sprang 
 to his feet " — as the words rightly rendered would be — and flung away the 
 frowsy rags that he had round himself for warmth and softness of seat, as he 
 waited at the gate; "and he came to Jesus." Brother ! "casting aside 
 every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, let us run'' to the 
 same refuge. You have to abandon something if you are to go to Christ to 
 be healed. I daresay you know well enough what it is. I do not, but 
 certainly there is something that entangles your legs and keeps you from 
 finding your way to Him. And if there is nothing else there is yourself, and 
 your trust in self, and that is to be put away. Cast away the garment 
 spotted with the flesh, and go to Christ, and you will get succour, 
 
 177 N- 
 
THE ALL-GRANTING LOVE OF CHRIST. 
 
 If you abide in Me, and My words abide inyou^ ask whatsoever ye will^ 
 and it shall be done unto you. — John xv. 7, 
 
 "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee ? " A very few hours 
 before He had put the same question, with an entirely different 
 significance, when the sons of Zebedee came to Him, and tried to get Him to 
 walk blindfold into a promise. He upset their scheme with the simple 
 question, *' What is it that you want ? " And that meant, " I must know 
 and judge before I commit Myself" But when He said the same thing to 
 Bartimaeus, He meant exactly the opposite. It was putting the key of the 
 treasure-house into the beggar's hand. It was the implicit pledge that 
 whatever he desired he should receive. He knew that the thing this man 
 wanted was the thing that He delighted to give. 
 
 But the tenderness of the words, and the gracious promise that is 
 hived in them, must not make us forget the singular authority that speaks 
 in them. Think of a man doing as Jesus Christ did, standing before another 
 and saying, '* I will give you anything that you want." Either a madman, 
 or a blasphemer, or " God manifest in the flesh " ; almighty power guided 
 by infinite love 1 
 
 And what said the man ? He had no doubt what he wanted most : the 
 opening of these blind eyes of his. And, dear brother, if we knew ourselves 
 as well as Bartimseus knew his blindness, we should have as httle doubt 
 what it is that we need most. Suppose you had this wishing- cap that 
 Christ put on Bartimseus's head put on yours, what would you ask ? It is a 
 penetrating question if men will answer it honestly. Think what you con- 
 sider to be your chief need. Suppose Jesus Christ stood where I stand, and 
 spoke to you : " What is it that I should do for you ?" If you are a wise 
 man, if you know yourself and Him, your answer will come as swiftly as the 
 man's — '* Lord I heal me of my blindness, and take away my sin, and give 
 me Thy salvation." There is no doubt about what it is that every one of us 
 needs most. And there should be no doubt as to what each of us would 
 ask first. The supposition that I have been making is realised. That 
 gracious Lord is here, and is ready to give you the satisfaction of your 
 deepest need, if you know what it is, and will go to Him for it. *' Ask ! and 
 ye shall receive." 
 
 178 
 
THE HEALER AND THE HEALED. 
 
 And Jesus said unto hintf Go thy way ; thy faith hath made thee 
 whole. — Mark x. 52. 
 
 J 2_ Bartim^-US had scarcely ended speaking when Christ began. He 
 
 was blind at the beginning of Christ's Httle sentence ; he saw at 
 
 the end of it. " Go thy way ; thy faith hath saved thee." The answer 
 
 came instantly, and the cure was as immediate as the movement of Christ's 
 
 heart in answer. 
 
 I here and now proclaim the possibility of an immediate passage from 
 weakness to light. Some folk look askance at us when we talk about 
 sudden conversions, but these are perfectly reasonable ; and the experience 
 of thousands asserts that they are actual. As soon as we desire we have, 
 and as soon as we have we see. Whenever the lungs are open the air 
 rushes in ; sometimes the air opens the lung that it may. The desire is all 
 but contemporaneous with the fulfdment, in Christ's dealings with men. 
 The message is flashed along the wire from earth to heaven in an in- 
 calculably brief space of time, and the answer comes swift as thought 
 and swifter than light. So, dear friend, there is no reason whatever why 
 a similar instantaneous change should not pass over you now. You are 
 unsaved ; you may be saved. It is for yourself to settle whether you are 
 or are not. 
 
 Here we have a clear statement of the path by which Christ's mercy 
 rushes into a man's soul. "Thy faith hath saved thee." But it was 
 Christ's power that saved him. Yes ! it was ; but it was faith that made it 
 possible for Christ's power to make him whole. Physical miracles indeed 
 did not always require trust in Christ, as a preceding condition, but the 
 possession of Christ's salvation does, and cannot but do. There must be 
 trust in Him in order that we may partake of the salvation which is owing 
 solely to Ilis power, His love, His work upon the Cross. The condition is 
 for us ; the power comes from Him. My faith is the hand that grasps His. 
 It is His hand, not mine, that holds me up. My faith lays hold of the rope. 
 It is the rope, and the person above that holds it, that lifts me out of the 
 horrible pit and the miry clay. My faith flees for refuge to the City. It 
 is the City that keeps me safe from the Avenger of Blood. Brother ! 
 exercise that faith, and you will find that vision. If you will fling away 
 your hindrances, and grope your path to His feet, and fall down before Him, 
 knowing your deep necessity, and trusting to Him to supply it. He will save 
 you. Your new sight will gaze upon your Redeemer, and you will follow 
 Him in the way of loving trust and glad obedience. 
 
 Jesus Christ was passing by. He was never to be in Jericho any more. 
 If Bartimaeus did not get his sight then, he would be bhnd all his days. 
 Christ and His salvation are oflered to thee, my friend, now. Perhaps if 
 you let Him pass you will never hear Him call again, and may abide in the 
 darkness for ever. Do not run the risk of such a fate. 
 
 179 
 
KNOWING GOD. 
 
 Thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, 
 the Mighty One of Jacob. — ISA. Ix. i6. 
 
 We all know the difference between hearsay and sight. We 
 June 23. 
 
 may have read books of travel that tell of some scene of great 
 
 natural beauty or historic interest, and may think that we understand all about 
 
 it, but it is always an epoch when our own eyes look for the first time at 
 
 the snowy summit of an Alp, or for the first time at the Parthenon on its 
 
 rocky height. We all know the difference between hearsay and experience. 
 
 W^e read books of the poets that pourtray love and sorrow, and the other 
 
 emotions that make up our throbbing, changeful Hfe ; but we need to go 
 
 through the mill ourselves before we understand what the grip of the iron 
 
 teeth of the harrow of affliction is ; and we need to have had our own hearts 
 
 dilated by a true and blessed affection before we know the sweetness of 
 
 love. Men may tell us about it, but we have to feel it ourselves before we 
 
 know. 
 
 To come still closer : we all know the dift'erence between hearing about 
 a man and making his acquaintance. We may have been told much about 
 him, and be familiar with his character, as we think ; but, when we come 
 face to face with him, and actually for ourselves experience the magnetism 
 of his presence, or come under any of the influences of his character, then 
 we know that our former acquaintance with him, by means of hearsay, was 
 but superficial and shadowy. " I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the 
 ear, but now mine eyes see Thee." Can you say that? If so, you under- 
 stand the text. "They shall no more teach every man . . . his brother, 
 saying, Know the Lord, and make acquaintance with Him " — as if He 
 were a stranger — for " all shall know Me, from the least to the greatest." 
 
 There is all the difference between knowing about God and knowing 
 God ; just the difference that there is between dogma and life, between 
 theology and religion. We may have all the articles of the Christian creed 
 clear in our understandings, and may owe our possession of them to other 
 people's teaching; we may even, in a sense, believe them, — and yet they 
 may be absolutely outside of our lives. And it is only when they pass into 
 the very substance of our being, and influence the springs of our conduct — 
 it is only then that we know God. 
 
 i£o 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GOD. 
 
 Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace : thereby good shall 
 cotne unto thee. — Job xxii. 21. 
 
 Acquaintance with God may not include any more intellectual 
 June 29t . . , __. , 
 
 proposition about Him than the man had before he knew Him, 
 
 but it has turned doctrines into fact, and instead of the mere hearsay and 
 traditional religion, which is the only religion of millions, it has brought 
 the true heart-grasp of Him, which is the only thing worth calHng a know- 
 ledge of God. For let me remind you that whilst we may know a science 
 or proposition by the exercise of our understandings in appropriate ways, 
 that is not how we know people. And God is a Person, and to know 
 Him does not mean to understand abozit Him, but to be on speaking terms 
 with Him, to have a familiar acquaintance with Him, to "summer and 
 winter " with Him, and so, by experience, to verify the things that before 
 were mere doctrines. I want you to ask yourself, and I would ask 
 myself, whether my religion is knowing about God or knowing Him ; 
 whether it is all made up of a set of truths which I assent to mainly 
 because I am not sufficiently interested in them to contradict them, or 
 whether these truths have become the very substance of my life. I do not 
 believe in a religion without a dogma — I was going to say, I believe still 
 less in a dogma without religion ; and that is the Christianity of hosts of 
 professing Christians. It is as useless as are the dried seeds that rattle 
 in the withered head of a poppy in the autumn, or as the shrivelled kernel 
 that sounds in the hollowness of a half-empty nut. 
 
 Remember that to know God is to become acquainted with Him, and 
 that only on the path of such familiar, friendly, loving intercourse and com- 
 munion with Him can men find the confirmation of the truths about Him 
 which make up the eternal revelation of Him in the Gospel. ** We know " 
 — that is a valid certainty, arising from experience, and it has as good a 
 right to call itself knowledge as any of the processes by which men come 
 to be sure about the physical facts of this material universe. Nay ! I would 
 even go further, and say that the fact that such a continual stream of wit- 
 nesses, through all the generations, have been able to say, " I have tasted and 
 I have seen that God is good," is to be taken into account by all impartial 
 searchers after truth. And if men want to square their creeds with all the 
 facts of humanity, let them not omit, in their consideration of the claims 
 of Christian evidence, this fact, that from generation to generation men 
 have said, and their lives have witnessed to its truth, "We know in whom 
 we have believed, and that He is able to keep us." We know that we are 
 of God. The whole case for Christianity cannot be appreciated from out- 
 side. " Taste and see." 
 
 i8i 
 
"ALL SHALL KNOW ME." 
 
 They shall not teach every man his felloiv-ci'izen, and every man his 
 brot'ier, sayijig, Know the Lord : for all shall knew Me, front the least to 
 the greatest of them. — Keb. viii. ii. 
 
 "TiiEY all, from the least to the greatest, shall know." There 
 June 30. 
 
 is to be no distinction of rank or age, or endowment, which 
 
 shall result in some of the people of God having a position from which any 
 of the others are altogether shut out. The writer is, of course, contrasting 
 in his mind, though he does not express the contrast, the condition of 
 things of old, when the spiritual aristocracy of the nation received com- 
 munications which they then imparted to their fellows. In the morning 
 dawn the highest summits catch the rays first, but as the sun rises it floods 
 the lower levels, and at mid-day shines right down into the depths of the 
 cavities. So the world is now flooded with the light of Christ ; and every 
 Christian man and woman, by virtue of their Christian character, does 
 possess the unction from the Holy One, in which lie the potency and the 
 promise of the knowledge of all things that are needful to be known for 
 life and godliness. This is the true democracy of the Gospel — the universal 
 possession of the life of Christ by the Spirit. 
 
 Now, if that be so, then it is by no means a truth to be kept simply for 
 the purpose of fighting against ecclesiastical or sacerdotal encroachm.ents 
 and denials of it, but it ought to be taken as the candle of the Lord, by 
 each of us, and in the light of it we ought to search very rigidly and very 
 often our own Christian character and experiences. Do you know any- 
 thing about that inward knowledge of God which comes from friendship 
 with Him, and speaks irrefragable certainties in the heart which receives 
 it ? " If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." If you 
 owe all your knowledge of, and your faith in, the great verities of the 
 Gospel, and the loving personality of God, to the mere report of others, if 
 you cannot verify these by your own experience, if you cannot say, " Many 
 things I know not ; you can easily puzzle me with critical and philosophical 
 subtleties, but this one thing I do know, that whereas I was bl nd, now I 
 see " — if you cannot say that, I pray you, bethink yourself whether your 
 religion is not mainly a form, and how far it has any life in it at all. 
 
 182 
 
INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 
 
 To him, therefore^ that knoweth to do goodf and doeth it notf to him it is 
 sin, — James iv. 17. 
 
 The recognition of the universality of the knowledge of God 
 ^ ' in all Christian people has great revolutionary work to do 
 amongst the churches of Christendom yet. For I do not know that there 
 are any of them that have sufficiently recognised this principle. Not only 
 in a church where there is a priesthood and an infallible head of the Church 
 en earth, nor in churches only that are bound by human creeds imposed on 
 them by men, but also in churches like ours, where there is no formal 
 recognition of either of these two errors, the practical contradiction of this 
 universahty is apt to creep in. It is a great deal more the fault of the 
 people than of the priest ; a great deal more the fault of the congregation 
 than of the pastor, when they are lazily contented to take all their religion 
 at second-hand from him, and to shuffle all the responsibility off their own 
 shoulders on to his. If this truth obliges me, and all men who stand in my 
 position, to say with the Apostle, "Not for that we have dominion over 
 your faith, but are helpers of your joy," it obliges you to take nothing from 
 me, or any man, on our bare words, nor to exalt any of us into a position 
 which would contradict this great principle, but yourself, at first hand, to 
 go to God, and get straight from Him the teaching which He only can give. 
 Dominion and subjection, authority and submission to men, in any office in 
 the church, are shut out by such words as these. 
 
 But brotherly help is not shut out. If a party of men are climbing a 
 hill, and one is in advance of his fellows when he reached the summit, he 
 may look down and call to those below, and tell them how fair and wide 
 the view is, and beckon them to come and give them a helping hand up. 
 So, because Christian men vary in the extent to which they possess and 
 utilise the one gift of knowledge of God, and some of them are in advance 
 of the others, it is all in accordance with this principle, that they that 
 are in advance should help their brethren, and give them a brotherly 
 hand. Not as if my brother's word can give me the inward knowledge of 
 God, but it may help me to get that knowledge for myself. We can but 
 do what the friend of the bridegroom does : he brings the bride to her 
 lover, and then he shuts the door and leaves the two to themselves. That 
 is all that any of us can do. You must yourself draw the water from the 
 well of salvation. We can only tell you, *' There is the well, and the 
 water is sweet." 
 
 183 
 
THE SOURCE OF THE TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 
 
 I^ow we believe, not because of thy [the woman of Samaria') speaking; 
 for -ae have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour 
 of the world. — John iv. 42. 
 
 All inward knowledge of God, which is the prerogative of every 
 July 2. 
 
 Christian man, is made possible and actual for any of us only 
 
 by and through the mission, and especially the death, of Jesus Christ our 
 
 Lord. For therein does He set forth God to be known as nothing else 
 
 but that supreme suffering and supreme self-surrender upon the Cross ever 
 
 can do or has done. We know God as He would have us know liim, only 
 
 when we see Jesus suffering and dying for us ; and then adoringly, as one 
 
 in the presence of a mystery into which he can but look a little way, say 
 
 that even there and then "he that hath seen that Christ hath seen the 
 
 Father." 
 
 Jesus Christ's blood, the seal of the Covenant, is the great means by 
 which this promise is fulfilled, inasmuch as in that death He sweeps away 
 all the hindrances which bar us out from the knowledge of God. The 
 great dark wall of my sin rises between me and my Father. Christ's 
 blood, like some magic drops upon a fortification, causes all the black 
 barrier to melt away like a cloud ; and the access to the throne of God is 
 patent, even for sinful creatures like us. The veil is rent, and by that 
 blood we have access unlo the holiest of all. 
 
 Christ is the Source of this knowledge of God ; inasmuch, further, as 
 by His mission and death there is given to the whole world, if it will receive 
 it, and to all who exercise faith in His name, the gift of that Divine Spirit 
 who teaches in the inmost spirit the true knowledge of His Son. To 
 delight in the Jaw of the Lord is the sure way to know more of the Lord. 
 One act of obedience from the heart will teach us more of God than all the 
 sages can. It is more illuminating simply to do as He willed than to read 
 and think and speculate and study. *' If any man wills to do His will, he 
 shall know of the teaching." And mutual possession of God by us, and 
 of us by God, leads to fuller knowledge. To possess God is to love Him ; 
 and "he that loveth knoweth God, yea ! rather is known of God." 
 
 So, do not be content with traditional religion, with a hearsay Christianity. 
 ** Acquaint now thyself with Him," and be at peace. 
 
 184 
 
A TRIUMPHANT ASSURANCE. 
 
 Thou hast made the Most High thy habitation ; there shall no evil befal 
 thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy tent. — Psalm xci. 9, 10. 
 
 We shall understand God's dealings with us, and get to the very 
 ^ ' throbbing heart of such promises as these in this 91st Psalm, 
 far better if we start from the certainty that whatever it means it does not 
 mean that, with regard to external calamities and disasters, we are going 
 to be God's petted children, or to be saved from the things that fall upon 
 other people. No ! no ! we have to go a great deal deeper than that. If 
 we have felt a difficulty, as I suppose we all have sometimes, and are ready 
 to say with the half-despondent Psalmist, *' My feet were almost gone, and 
 my steps had well-nigh slipped " ; when we see what we think the com- 
 plicated mysteries of the Divine providence in this world, we have to come 
 to this belief, that the evil that is in the evil will never come near the man 
 sheltered beneath God's wing. The physical external event may be entirely 
 the same to him as to another, who is not covered with His feathers. Here 
 are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man, and the other is 
 not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bankrupts. Is 
 their insolvency to the one the same as it is to the other ? Here are two 
 men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other thinking it 
 all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both drowned. Is 
 drowning the same to the two ? As their corpses lie side by side among 
 the ooze, with the weeds over them, and the lobsters at them, you may say 
 of the one, but only of the one, ' ' There shall no evil befal thee, neither 
 any plague come nigh thy d\\elling." 
 
 For the protection that is granted to faith is only to be understood by 
 faith. It is deliverance from the evil in the evil which indicates, as no 
 exaggera'ion, nor as merely an experience and a promise peculiar to the 
 old theorising of Israel, but not now realised — the grand sayings of this 
 psalm. The poison is all wiped off the arrow by that Divine protection. 
 It may still wound, but it does not putrefy the flesh. The sewage water 
 comes down, but it passes into the filtering bed, and is disinfected and 
 cleansed before it is permitted to flow over our fields. 
 
 And so, if any of you are finding that the psalm is not outwardly true, 
 and that through the covering wing the storm of hail has come and beaten 
 you down, do not suppose that that in the slightest degree impinges upon 
 the reality and truthfulness of this great promise, "He shall cover thee 
 with Plis feathers." Anything that has come throug'i iheui is manifestly 
 not an " evil." '* Who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that 
 which is good?" "If God be for us, what can be against us?" Not 
 what the world calls, and our wrung hearts feel that it rightly calls, 
 "sorrows" and "afflictions." These all work for our good; and protec- 
 tion consists, not in averting their blows, but in changing their character. 
 
 185 
 
THE COVERING WING. 
 
 He shall cover thee with His pinions, and under His wings shall thou 
 take refuge ; His truth is a shield and a buckler. — PsALM xci. 4. 
 
 The main idea in this image is that of protection and fostering. 
 ' There seems to me to be a very distinct triad of thoughts. There 
 is the covering wing ; there is the flight to its protection ; and there is the 
 warrant for that flight. " He shall cover thee with His pinions" ; that is 
 the Divine act. " Under His wings shalt thou trust " ; that is the human 
 condition. "His truth shall be thy shield and buckler"; that is the 
 Divine manifestation which makes the human condition possible. Thus 
 the idea is that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the 
 callow young lie and are gathered. Whatsoever kites may be in the sky, 
 whatsoever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, they are safe there. 
 The image suggests not only the thought of protection, but those of fostering, 
 downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental 
 love, and a multitude of other happy privileges realised by those who nestle 
 beneath that wing. But while these subsidiary ideas are not to be lost sight 
 of, the promise of protection is to be kept clear as that chiefly intended by 
 the Psalmist. 
 
 This psalm rings throughout with the doctrine that a man who dwells 
 "in the secret place of the Most High" has absolute immunity from all 
 sorts of evil, and there are, too, regions in which that immunity, secured 
 bv being under the shadow of the Almighty, is exemplified in the psalm : 
 the one, that of our outward dangers ; the other, that of temptation to sin 
 and what we may call spiritual foes. Now, these two regions and depart- 
 ments in which the Christian man does realise, in the measure of his faith, 
 the Divine protection exhibit that protection as administered in two 
 entirely different ways. No man that lies under the shadow of God, and 
 has his heart filled with the continual consciousness of that presence, is 
 likely to fall before the assaults of evil that tempt him away from God ; and 
 the defence which He gives in that region is yet more magnificently 
 impregnable than the defence which He gives against external evils. For, 
 as the New Testament teaches us, we are kept from sin not by any outward 
 breastplate or armour, or even by the Divine wing lying above us to cover 
 us, but by an indwelling Christ in our hearts. His Spirit within us makes 
 UB free from the law of sin and death, and conquerors over alJ temptations. 
 
 1S6 
 
A SHELTER FROM THE STORM. 
 
 A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the 
 tempest ; as rivers of wa!er in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in 
 a weary land. — Is A. xxxii. 2. 
 
 *' Under His wings shalt thou flee to a refuge.'* Is not that a 
 July 5. 
 
 vivid, intense, picturesque, but most illuminative, way of telling 
 
 us what is the very essence, and what is the urgency, and what is the worth 
 of what we call faith ? The Old Testament is full of the teaching — which 
 is masked to ordinary readers ; the same teaching as the New Testament 
 is confessedly full of— of the necessity of faith as the one bond that binds 
 men to God. If only our translators had wisely determined upon a uniform 
 rendering in Old and New Testament of words that are synon)'mous, the 
 reader would have seen what is often now reserved for the student, that all 
 these sayings in the Old Testament Book about "trusting in God" run on 
 all fours with " believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." 
 But just mark, the faith which unites with God, and brings a man 
 beneath the shadow of His wings, is nothing more nor less than the flying 
 into the refuge that is provided for us. Does that not speak to us of the 
 urgency of the case ? Does that not speak to us eloquently of the perils 
 which environ us? Does it not speak to us of the necessity of flight, swift, 
 with all the powers of our will ? Is the faith which is a flying into a refuge 
 fairly described as an intellectual act of believing in a testimony ? Surely it 
 is something a great deal more than that ! A man out in the plain, with 
 the avenger of blood, hot-breathed and bloody-minded, at his back, might 
 believe, as much as he liked, that there would be safet)^ within the walls of 
 the City of Refuge, but unless he took to his heels without loss of time, the 
 spear would be in his back before he knew where he was. There are 
 plenty of men that know all about the security of the Refuge, and believe 
 it utterly, but never run for it ; and so never get into it. Faith is the 
 gathering up of the whole powers of the nature to fling myself into an 
 Asylum, to cast myself into God's arms, to take shelter beneath the shadow 
 of His wings. And unless a man does that, and swiftly, he is exposed to 
 every bird of prey in the sky, and to every beast of prey lurking in wait for 
 him. A man is not saved because he believes that he is saved, but because 
 by believing he lays hold of the salvation. It is not the flight that is 
 impregnable, and makes those behind its strong bulwarks secure. Not my 
 outstretched hand, but a Hand that my hand grasps, is what holds me up. 
 The power of faith is but that it brings me into contact with God, and sets 
 me behind the seven-fold bastions of the Almighty protection, 
 
 187 
 
OUR DIVINE WARRANT. 
 
 The faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with thetn that love 
 Hiyyi and keep His conttyiandments to a thousand generations. — Deut. vii. 9. 
 
 You cannot trust a God that has not given you an inkling of His 
 character or disposition, but if He has spoken, then " you know 
 where to have Him." How can a man be encouraged to fly into a refuge 
 unless he is absolutely sure that there is an entrance for him into it, and 
 that, entering, he is safe? And that security is provided in the great 
 thought of God's troth. "Thy faithfulness is like the great mountains." 
 *' Who is like unto Thee, O Lord ; or to Thy faithfulness round about Thee ? " 
 That faithfulness shall be our " shield," not a tiny targe that a man could 
 bear upon his left arm, but the word means the large shield, planted in the 
 ground in front of the soldier, covering him, however hot the fight, and 
 circling him around, like a tower of iron. 
 
 God is ''faithful" to all the obligations under which He has come by 
 making us. That is what one of the New Testament writers tells us when» 
 he speaks about Him as *' a faithful Creator." Then, if He has put desires 
 into our hearts, be sure that somewhere there is their satisfaction ; and if 
 He has given us needs, be sure that in Him there is the supply ; and if He 
 has lodged in us aspirations which make us restless, be sure that if we will 
 turn them to Him, they will be satisfied and we shall be at rest. "He 
 never sends mouths but He sends meat to fill them." " He remembers our 
 frame," and measures His dealings accordingly. When He made me He 
 bound Himself to make it possible that I should be blessed for ever. And 
 He has done it. 
 
 God is faithful to His word, according to that great saying in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, where the writer tells us that by "God's counsel," and 
 " God's oath," " two immutable things," we might have " strong consola- 
 tion who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us." 
 
 God is faithful to His own past. The more He has done the more He 
 will do. " Thou hast been my help : leave me not, neither forsake me." 
 Therein we present a plea which God Himself will honour. And He is 
 faithful to His own past in a yet wider sense. For all the revelations of 
 His love and of His grace in times that are gone, though they might be 
 miraculous in their form, are permanent in their essence. So one of the 
 psalmists, hundreds of years after the time that Israel was led through the 
 wilderness, sang, " There did wi? '" — of this present generation — "rejoice 
 in Him." What has been, is, and will be, for Thou art " the same yester- 
 day, and to-day, and for ever." 
 
 We have no God that lurks in darkness, but one that has come into the 
 light. We have to run, not into a refuge that is built upon a " perhaps," 
 but upon " Verily, verily ! I say unto thee." Let us buikl rock upon rock, 
 and let our faith correspond to the faithfulness of Him that has promised. 
 
 188 
 
THE ANGEL OF THE LORD. 
 
 The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Htm, and 
 delivereth them. — Psalm xxxiv. 7. 
 
 There run throughout the whole of the Old Testament notices 
 of the occasional manifestation of a mysterious person who is 
 named ^^ the Angel," " the Angel of the Lord." For instance, in the great 
 scene in the wilderness, where the bush burned and was not consumed. He 
 who appeared is named '''■the Angel of the Lord"; and His lips declare 
 '' I Am that I Am,'^ In like manner, soon after, the Divine voice speaks 
 to Moses of "the Angel in whom is My name." When Balaam had his 
 path blocked amongst the vineyards, it was a replica of the figure that 
 stayed his way — a Man with a drawn sword in His hand, who speaks in 
 autocratic and Divine form. When the parents of Samson were apprised 
 of the coming birth of the hero, it was the Angel of the Lord that 
 appeared to them, accepted their sacrifice, declared the Divine will, and 
 disappeared in a flame of fire from the altar. A psalm speaks of " the 
 Angel of the Lord " as " encamping round about them that fear Him, and 
 delivering them." Isaiah tells us of the "Angel of His face," who was 
 "afflicted in all Israel's afflictions, and saved them." And the last 
 prophetic utterance of the Old Testament is most distinct and remarkable 
 in the strange identification and separation of Jehovah and the Angel, when 
 it says, " the Lord shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Angel of the 
 Covenant." Now, if we put all these passages — and they are but select 
 instances — if we put all these passages together, I think we cannot help 
 seeing that there runs, as I said, throughout the whole of the Old Testa- 
 ment a singular strain of revelation in regard to a person who, in a 
 remarkable manner, is distinguished from the created hosts of angel beings, 
 and also is distinguished from, and yet in name, attributes, and worship all 
 but identified with, the Lord Himself. 
 
 If we turn to the narrative in Joshua v. we find there similar phenomena 
 marked out. For this mysterious "Man with the sword drawn" in His 
 hand, quotes the very words which were spoken at the bush, when He says, 
 " Loose thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is 
 holy " ; and by fair implication. He would have us to identify the persons in 
 these two great theophanies. He ascribes to Himself, in the further con- 
 versation in the next chapter, directly Divine attributes, and is named by the 
 sacred name, " The Lord said unto Joshua, see I have given into thy hand 
 Jericho and its king." 
 
 189 
 
THE WORD OF THE LORD. 
 
 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. — John i. 14. 
 
 If we turn to the New Testament we find that there, under another 
 ' image, the same strain of thought as in the Old Testament is pre- 
 sented. The Word of God, who from everlasring "was with God, and was 
 God," is represented as being the Agent of Creation, the Source of all human 
 illumination, the Director of Providence, the Lord of the Universe. " By 
 Him were all things, and in Him all things consist." So, surely, these two 
 halves make a whole : and the Angel of the Lord, separate and yet so strangely 
 identified with Jehovah, who at the crises of the nation's history, and stages 
 of the development of the process of Revelation, is manifested, and the 
 Eternal Word of God, whom the New Testament reveals to us, are one and 
 the same. 
 
 This truth was transiently manifested in the Old Testament. The 
 vision of Joshua {see Joshua v. ) passed, the ground that was hallowed by 
 His foot is undistinguished now in the sweltering plain round the mound 
 that once was Jericho. But the fact remains : the humanity, that was only 
 in appearance, and for a few minutes assumed then, has now been taken up 
 into everlasting union with the Divine nature, and a Man reigns on the 
 Throne and is Commander of all who battle for the truth and the right. 
 The eternal order of the universe is before us here. 
 
 It only remains to say a word in reference to the sweep of the command 
 which Joshua's vision assigns to the Angel of the Lord. " Captain of the 
 Lord's host " means a great deal more than the true General of Israel's 
 little army. It does mean that, or the words and the vision would cease to 
 have relevance and bearing on the moment's circumstances and need. But 
 it includes also, as the usage of Scripture would sufficiently show, if it were 
 needful to adduce instances of it, all the ordered ranks of loftier intelligent 
 beings, and all the powers and forces of the universe. These are conceived 
 ot as an embattled host, comparable to an army in the strictness of their 
 discipline and their obedience to a single will. It is the modern thought 
 that the universe is a Cosmos and not a Chaos, an ordered unit, with the 
 addition of the truth beyond the reach and range of science, that its unity is 
 the expression of a personal will. It is the same thought which the 
 centurion had, to Christ's wonder, when he compared his own power as an 
 officer in a legion, where his will was implicitly obeyed, to the power of 
 Christ over diseases and sorrows and miseries and death, and recognised 
 that all these were Ilis servants, to whom, if His autocratic lips chose to say 
 " Go," they went, and if he said, " Do this," they did it. So the Lord of 
 the universe and its ordered ranks is Jesus Christ. That is the truth which 
 was flashed from the unknown like a vanishing meteor in the midnight 
 before the face of Joshua, and which stands like the noonday sun, unsetting 
 and irradiating for us who live under the Gospel. 
 
 190 
 
THE CAPTAIN OF THE LORD'S HOST. 
 
 And He said, Nay ; but as Captain of the Host of the Lord am I now 
 come. — Joshua v. 14. 
 
 The army of Israel was just beginning a hard conflict under an 
 untried leader. Behind them Jordan barred their retreat, in 
 front of them Jericho forbade their advance. Most of them had never seen 
 a fortified city, and had no experience nor engines for a siege. So we may 
 well suppose that many doubts and fears shook the courage of the host as it 
 drew around the doomed city. Their chief had his own heavy burden. He 
 seems to have gone apart to meditate on what his next step was to be. 
 Absorbed in thought, he lifts up his eyes mechanically, as brooding men 
 will, not expecting to see anything, and is startled by the silent figure of " a 
 Man with a sword drawn " in His hand, close beside him. There is nothing 
 supernatural in His appearance ; and the immediate thought of the leader 
 is, "Is this one of the enemy that has stolen upon my solitude?" So, 
 promptly and boldly, he strides right up to Him with the quick challenge • 
 *' Whose side are You on ? Are You one of us, or from the enemy's camp ? " 
 And then the silent lips open : " Upon neither the one nor the other. I 
 am not on your side, you are on Mine, for as Captain of the Lord's host 
 am I come up." And then Joshua falls on his face, recognises his Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, owns himself a subordinate, and asks for orders. "What 
 saith my Lord unto His servant ? " 
 
 *' The Captain of the Lord's host." He Himself takes part in the fight. 
 He is not like a general who, on some safe knoll behind the army, sends 
 his soldiers to death, and keeps his own skin whole ; but He has fought and 
 He is fighting. Do you remember that wonderful picture in two halves, at 
 the end of one of the gospels, " the Lord went up into Heaven and sat at the 
 right hand of God, . . . they went forth everywhere preaching the word ? " 
 Strange contrasts between the repose of the seated Christ and the toils of 
 His peripatetic servants ! Yes ! Strange contrast ; but the next words 
 harmonise the two halves of it : " The Lord also working with them, and 
 confirming the word with signs following." The Leader does not so rest as 
 that He does not fight ; and the servants do not need so to fight as that they 
 cannot rest. Thus the old legends of many a land and tongue have a 
 glorious truth in them to the eye of faith ; and at the head of all the armies 
 that are charging against any form of the world's misery and sin there moves 
 the form of the Son of Man, whose aid we have to invoke, even from His 
 crowned repose at the right hand of God. " Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, 
 O Most Mighty, and in Thy majesty ride forth prosperously, and Thy right 
 hand shall teach Thee terrible things." 
 
 191 
 
OUR LEADER N THE WORLD'S WARFARE. 
 
 In the world ye have tribulation : but be of good cheer ; I have overcomt 
 the world. — John xvi. 33. 
 
 If the revelation made to Joshua and his host be for us as truly as 
 ^ ' for them a revelation of who is our true leader, surely all of us in 
 our various degrees, and especially any of us who have any ''Quixotic 
 crusade " for the world's good on our consciences and on our hands, may 
 take the lessons and the encouragements that are here. Own your Leader. 
 That is one plain duty. And recognise this fact, that by no other power 
 than by His, and with no other weapons than those which He puts into our 
 hands, in His Cross and meekness, can a world's evils be overcome, and the 
 victory be won for the right and the truth. I have no faith in crusades which 
 are not under the Captain of our salvation. And I would that the earnest 
 men, and there are many of them, — the laborious and the self-sacrificing men 
 in many departments of philanthropy and benevolence and social reforma- 
 tion — who labour unaware of who is their Leader, and not dependent upon 
 His help, nor trusting in His strength — would see beside them the Man 
 with the drawn sword in His hand, the Christ with the sharp two-edged 
 sword going out of His mouth, by whom, and by whom alone, the world's 
 evil can be overcome and slain. 
 
 Own your General ; submit to His authority ; pick the weapons that He 
 can bless ; trust absolutely in His help. We may have, we shall have, in all 
 enterprises for God and man that are worth doing, need of patience, just as 
 the army of Israel had to parade for six weary days round Jericho blowing 
 their useless trumpets, whilst the impregnable walls stood firm, and the 
 defenders flouted and jeered their aimless procession. But the seventh 
 day will come, and at the trumpet blast down will go the loftiest ramparts 
 of the cities that are walled up to heaven, with a rush and a crash, and 
 through the dust and over the ruined rubbish Christ's soldiers will march 
 and take possession. So trust in your Leader, and be sure of the victory, 
 and have patience and keep on at your work. 
 
 Do not make Joshua's mistake. *' Art Thou for us ? " — Nay ! *' Thou art 
 for yl/<?." That is a very different thing. We have the right to be sure that 
 God is on our side, when we have made sure that we are on God's. So 
 take care of self-will and self-regard, and human passions, and all the other 
 parasitical insects that creep round pliilanthropic religious work, lest they 
 spoil your service. There is a great deal that calls itself after Jehu's fashion, 
 " My zeal for the Lord," which is nothing better than zeal for my own 
 notions and their preponderance. Therefore we must strip ourselves of all 
 that, and not fancy that the cause is ours, and then graciously admit Christ 
 to help us, but recognise that it is His, and lowly submit ourselves to His 
 direction, and what we do, do, and when we fight, fi^ht, in His name and 
 for His sake. 
 
 I<>2 
 
OUR ALLY IN OUR WARFARE WITH OURSELVES. 
 / can do all things in Hint that strengtheneth me. — Phil. iv. 13. 
 
 - , -J That is the worst fight — our battle with ourselves ; far worse 
 
 " ^ ' than all these Plittites and Hivites, and the other tribes with 
 their barbarous names. Far worse than all external foes are the foes that 
 each man carries about in his own heart. In that slow hand-to-hand and 
 foot-to-foot slruggle I do not believe that there is any conquering power 
 available for a man that can for a moment be compared with the power 
 that comes through submission to Christ's command and acceptance of Christ's 
 help. He has fought every foot of the ground before us. We have to " run 
 the race" — to take another metaphor — " that is set before us, looking unto 
 Jesus," the great Leader, and in His own Self the Perfecter of the faith which 
 conquers. In Him, His example, the actual communication of His Divine 
 Spirit, and in the motives for brave and persistent conflict which flow from 
 Plis Cross and Passion, we shall find that which alone will make us the 
 victors in this internecine warfare. There can be no better directory given 
 to any man than to tread in Christ's footsteps, and learn how to fight from 
 Him, who in the wilderness repelled the triple assault with the single " It is 
 written " ; thus recognising the word and will of God as the only directory 
 and defence. Thus, if we humbly take service in Plis ranks, and ask Him to 
 show us where our foes within are, and to give us the grace to grapple with 
 them, and cast them out, anything is possible rather than ultimate defeat ; 
 and however long and sore the struggle may be, its length and its severity 
 are precious parts of the disciphne that makes us strong, and we are at last 
 more than conquerors through Him that loveth us. 
 
 Think of Christ, what lie is, and what resources He has at His back, of 
 what are His claims for our service, and loyal, militant obedience. Think 
 of the certain victory of all who follow Plim amongst the armies of Heaven, 
 clad in fine linen, clean and white. Think of the crown and the throne 
 for Him that overcomes. 
 
 Remember the destructive powers that sleep in Him : the drawn sword 
 in His hand ; the two-edged sword out of Plis mouth ; the wrath of the Lamb. 
 Think of the ultimate certain defeat of all antagonisms ; of that last cam- 
 paign when Pie goes forth with the name written on liis vesture and on His 
 thigh, " King of kings and Lord of lords." Think of how Pie strikes through 
 kings in the day of Plis wrath, and fills the place with the bodies of the 
 dead ; and how His enemies become His footstool. 
 
 Ponder. His own solemn word, " He that is not with Me is against 
 Me." There is no neutraUty in this warfare. Either we are for Him or we 
 are for His adversary. " Under which King ? — speak or die ! " As a sensible 
 man, not indifferent to your highest and lasting well-being, ask yourself, 
 " Can I, with my ten thousand, meet Him with His twenty thousand ?" Put 
 yourself under His orders, and Pie will be on your side. " He will teach 
 your hands to war, and your fingers to fight ; will cover your head in the 
 day of battle," and bring you at last, palm-bearing and laurel-crowned, to 
 that blissful state where there will still be service, and He still be the Captain 
 of the Lord's host, but where swords will be beaten into ploughshares and the 
 victors shall need to learn war no more. 
 
 193 O 
 
ALL HAVE SINNED. 
 
 There is no distmciioit ; for all have sinned^ and fall short of the glory 
 God. — Rom. iii. 22, 23. 
 
 What does the Bible mean by sin ? Everything that goes against 
 " ^ 'or neglects God's law. And if you will bring into all the acts of 
 every life the reference, which really is there, to God and His will, you will 
 not need anything more to establish the fact that "all have sinned, and 
 come short of the glory of God." Whatever other differences there are 
 between men, there is this fundamental similarity. Neglect — which is a 
 breach— of the law of God pertains to all mankind. Everything that we do 
 ought to have reference to Him. Does everything that we do have such 
 reference ? If not, there is a quahty of evil in it. For the very definition 
 of sin is living to myself and neglecting Him. He is the Centre ; and, if I 
 might use a violent figure, every planet that wrenches itself away from gravi- 
 tation towards, and revolution round, that Centre, and prefers to whirl on its 
 own axis, has broken the law of the celestial spheres, and brought discord 
 into the heavenly harmony. All men stand condemned in this respect. 
 
 Now, there is no need to exaggerate. I am not saying that all men 
 are on the same level. I know there are great differences in the nobleness, 
 purity, and goodness of lives, and Christianity has never been more unfairly 
 represented than when good men have, as one of them called, with St. 
 Augustine, the virtues of godless men, "splendid vices." But though the 
 differences are not unimportant, the similarity is far more important. The 
 pure, clean-living man, and the gentle, loving woman, though they stand 
 high above the sensuality of the profligate, the criminal, stand in this respect 
 on the same footing that they, too, have to put their hands on their mouths, 
 and their mouths in the dust, and cry, "Unclean!" I do not want to 
 exaggerate, and sure I am that if men will be honest with themselves there 
 is a voice that responds to the indictment when I say sadly, in the solenin 
 language of Scripture, "we all have sinned, and come short of the glory of 
 God. For there is no difference." If you do not believe in a God, you 
 can laugh at the old wife's notion of " sin." If you do believe in a God, 
 you are shut up to believe this other, " Against Thee, Thee only, have I 
 sinned." And if this universal fad is indeed a fact, it is the gravest element 
 in human nature. It matters very little, in comparison, whether you and I 
 are wise or foolish, educated or illiterate, rich or poor, happy or miserable. 
 All the superficial distinctions which separate men from one another, and 
 are all right in their own places, dwindle away into nothing before this 
 solemn truth, that in every frame there is a plague spot, and that the leprosy 
 has smitten us alL 
 
 194 
 
"/ HAVE SINNED." 
 
 Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in 
 Thy sight. — Psalm li. 4. 
 
 J . .3 Do not let us lose ourselves in generalities. All means each, and 
 * each means me. We all know how hard it is to bring general 
 truths to bear with all their weight upon ourselves. That is an old common 
 phase. "All men think all men mortal but themselves" ; and we are quite 
 comfortable when this indictment is kept in the general terms of universality 
 — " all have sinned." Suppose I sharpen the point a little — God grant that 
 the point may get to some indurated conscience ! — suppose, instead of 
 reading " All have sinned," I beseech each one of my readers to strike out 
 the general word, and put in the individual one, and to say, " / have sinned." 
 You have to do with this indictment just as we have to do with the promises 
 and offers of the Gospel — wherever there is a " whosoever, " put your pen 
 through it, and write your own name over it. The blank cheque is given 
 to us in regard of the promises and offers, and we have to fill in our own 
 names. The charge is handed to us in regard to this indictment, and if we 
 are wise we shall write our own names there, too. I leave this on your con- 
 science, and I will venture to ask that you would put to yourself the 
 question, " Is it I ?" iVnd sure I am that, if you do, you will see a finger 
 pointing out of the darkness, and hear a voice sterner than that of Nathan 
 saying, " Thou art the man." 
 
 The people in one crowd that gathered about Christ were not all 
 diseased. Some of them He taught ; some of them He cured ; but that 
 crowd, where healthy men mingled with cripples, is no type of the condition 
 of humanity. Rather, we are to find it in that Pool of Eethescla, with its 
 five porches, wherein lay a multitude of impotent folk, tortured with varieties 
 of sickness, and none of them sound. Blessed be God ! we are in Betkesda, 
 which means " house of mercy," and the Fountain that can heal is perpetually 
 springing up beside us all. There is a disease which affects and infects all 
 manlvind — sin. Sin is universal, and it is personal. " / have sinned." 
 
 I ask you to go into the depths of your own heart, and to be honest 
 in recalling your own experience, and to say if, notwithstanding all the 
 gladness of a godless life, there does not lie, grim and silent for the most 
 part, but there, and felt to be there all the same, a great yearning and 
 consciousness of unrest. Every good has in it some fatal flaw and incom- 
 pleteness. There is always a break in the circle ; always a stone missing 
 out of the bracelet. There is always one unlighted window in the Aladdin's 
 palace. There is always a Mordecai sitting dark as a thunder-cloud and 
 unparticipant of the common emotion, who makes Haman say, "All this 
 availeth nothing." There is always disappointment in earthly fruition. 
 The fish never proves so big when it is lying panting on the grass as it did 
 in the water, when the fisher was struggling with it. The chase is always 
 better than the capture. In all earthly good there is a fatal disproportion 
 between it and the heart that seeks to solace itself with it ; so that after all 
 satisfactions, there is the old cry of the heart, "I hunger still." And, 
 above all, there is the certainty which pushes itself in— like the skeleton 
 at the feasts of the Egyptian kings, or the mocking slave that walked 
 behind the conqueror in his triumph as he went up the steps of the capitol 
 — the certainty that we have to leave them all behind us. And what is 
 the naked soul going to do when it ' ' flares forth into the dark ? " 
 
 195 
 
THE THREE-HEADED EVIL THING.— I. 
 
 The heart is deceitful above all ihingSy and it is desperately sick : who 
 can know it? — Jer. xvii. 9. 
 
 I was going to use an inappropriate word, and say, the superb 
 
 ^ ' ease with which Christ grappled with, and overcame, all types of 
 
 disease is a revelation on a lower level of the inexhaustible and all -sufficient 
 
 fulness of His healing power. He can cope with all sin, the world's sin and 
 
 the individual's. And, as I believe. He alone can do it. 
 
 Just look at the problem that lies before any one who attempts to staunch 
 these wounds of humanity. What is needed in order to deliver men from 
 the sickness of sin? Well ! that evil thing, like the fabled dog that sits at 
 the gate of the infernal regions, is three-headed. And you have to do some- 
 thing with each of these heads if you are to deliver men from that power. 
 
 There is, first, the awful power that evil once done has over us of 
 repeating itself on and on. There is nothing more dreadful, to a reflective 
 mind, than the damning influence of habit. The man that has done some 
 wrong thing once is a i-ara avis indeed. If once, then twice ; if twice, 
 then onward and onward through all the numbers. And the intervals 
 between will grow less, and what were isolated points will coalesce into a 
 line ; and impulses wax as motives wane, and the less delight a man has in 
 his habitual form of evil the more its dominion over him ; and he does it at 
 last, not because the doing of it is any delight, but because the jwf doing of 
 it is a misery. If you are to get rid of sin and to eject the disease from a 
 man, you have to deal with that awful degradation of character and the 
 tremendous chains of custom. That is one of the heads of the monster. 
 
 But, as I said, sin has reference to God, and there is another of the 
 heads. For with sin comes guilt. The relation to God is perverted ; and 
 the man that has transgressed stands before Him as guilty, with all the 
 dolefulness that that solemn word means ; and that is another of the heads. 
 
 The third is this— the consequences that follow in the nature of penalty — 
 ** Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." So long as there is 
 a universal rule by God, in which all things are concatenated by cause and 
 effect, it is impossil^le but that " Evil shall slay the wicked." And that is 
 the third head. These three, habit, guilt, and penalty, have all to be dealt 
 with if you are going to make a thorough job of the surgery. 
 
 And here I want not to argue, but to preach. Jesus Christ died on the 
 Cross for you, and your sin was in His heart and mind when He died, and 
 His atoning sacrifice cancels the guilt, and suspends all that is dreadful in the 
 penalty of the sin. Nothing else — nothing else will do that. Who can 
 deal with guilt but the offended Ruler and Judge? Who can trammel up 
 consequences but the Lord of the Universe ? The blood of Jesus Christ 
 is the sole and sufficient oblation for, and satisfaction for, the sins of the 
 whole world. 
 
 196 
 
THE THREE-HEADED EVIL THING.— II. 
 
 The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and voith the point of a 
 diamond : it is graven upon the table of their heart. — Jer. xvii. I. 
 
 Two of the monster's heads are disposed of. What about the 
 Jiily 15. 
 
 third ? Who will take the venom out of my nature ? What will 
 
 express the black drop from my heart ? How shall the Ethiopian change 
 his skin or the leopard his spots? How can the man that has become 
 habituated to evil *' learn to do well " ? Superficially there may be much 
 reformation. God forbid that I should forget that, or seem to minimise it. 
 But for the thorough rejection from your nature of the corruption that you 
 have yourself brought into it, I believe — and that is why I am. here, for I 
 should have nothing to say if I did not believe it — I believe that there is 
 only one remedy, and that is that into the sinful heart there should come, 
 rejoicing and flashing, and bearing on its broad bosom before it, all the 
 rubbish and filth of that dunghill, the great stream of the new hfe that is 
 given by Jesus Christ. He was crucified for our offences, and He lives to 
 bestow upon us the fulness of His own holiness. So the monster's heads 
 are smitten off. Our disease and the tendency to it, and the weakness con- 
 sequent upon it, are all cast out from us, and He reveals Himself as "the 
 Lord who healeth thee." 
 
 Now, you may say " That is all very fine talking." Yes ! but it is some- 
 thing a great deal more than fine talking. For eighteen centuries have 
 established the fact that it is so ; and with all their imperfections there have 
 been millions, and there are millions to-day, who are ready to say, 
 •' Behold ! it is not a delusion ; it is not rhetoric. / have trusted in Him, 
 and He has made me whole." 
 
 Now, if these things that I have been saying do fairly represent the 
 gravity of the problem which has to be dealt v/ith in order to heal the sick- 
 nesses of the world, then there is no need to dwell upon the thought of how 
 absolutely confined to Jesus Christ is the power of thus deahng. God 
 forbid that I should not give full weight to all other methods for partial 
 reformation and bettering of humanit}-. I would wish them all God-speed. 
 But there is nothing else that will deal either with my sin in its relation 
 to God, or in its relation to my character, or in its relation to my future, 
 except the message of the Gospel. There are plenty of other things, very 
 helpful and good in their places, but I do want to say in one word that 
 there is nothing else that goes deep enough. 
 
 197 
 
HUMAN REMEDIES FOR SIN UNAVAILING. 
 
 Though thou wash thee with lye, and take thee much soap, yet thini 
 iniquity is tnarked before me, saith the Lord God. — Jer. ii. 22. 
 
 Education ? Yes ! it will do a great deal, but it will do nothing 
 July 16. 
 
 in regard of sin. It will alter the type of the disease, because the 
 
 cultured man's trangressions will be very different from those of the illiterate 
 boor. But wise or foolish, professor, student, thinker, or savage with 
 narrow forehead and all but d§ad brain, are alike in this, that they are 
 sinners in God's sight. I would that I could get through the fence that 
 some of you have reared round you, on the ground of your superior enlighten- 
 ment and education and refinement, and make you feel that there is 
 something deeper than all that, and that you may be a very clever, and a 
 very well educated, a very highly cultured, an extremely thoughtful and 
 philosophical sinner, but you are a sinner all the same. 
 
 Again, we hear a great deal at present, and I do not desire that we should 
 hear less, about social and economic and political changes, which some eager 
 enthusiasts suppose will bring the millennium. Well, if the land were nation- 
 ahsed, and all " the means of production and distribution " were nationalised, 
 and everybody got his share, and we were all brought to the communistic 
 condition, what then ? That would not make men better, in the deepest 
 sense of the word. The fact is, these people are beginning at the wrong 
 end. You cannot better humanity merely by altering its environment 
 for the better. Christianity reverses the process. It begins with the inmost 
 man, and it works outwards to the circumference ; and that is the thorough 
 way. Why ! suppose you took a company of people out of the slums, for 
 instance, and put them into a model lodging-house, how long will it continue 
 a model ? They will take their dirty habits with them, and pull down the 
 woodwork for firing, and make the place where they are as like as possible 
 to the hovel whence they came in a very short time. You must change 
 the men, and then you can change their circumstances, or, rather, they will 
 change them for themselves. Now, all this is not to be taken as casting 
 cold water on any such efforts to improve matters, but only as a protest 
 against its being supposed that these alo7ie are sufficient to rectify the ills 
 and cure the sorrows of humanity. *' Ye have healed the hurt of the 
 daughter of My people slightly." The patient is dying of cancer, and you 
 are treating him for a skin disease. It is Jesus Christ alone that can cure 
 the sins, and so the sorrows, of humanity. 
 
 198 
 
THE LORD THAT HEALETH THEE. 
 
 / ant the Lord that healeih thee. — Exod. xv. 26. 
 
 The:n that had need of healing He healed. — Luke ix. II. 
 
 _ , ._ All the sick in the crowd round Christ were sent away well ; 
 ^•^ * but the gifts He bestowed so broadcast had no relation to their 
 spiritual natures, and gifts that have relation to our spiritual nature cannot 
 be thus given in entire disregard of our actions in the matter. 
 
 Christ cannot heal you unless you take His healing power. He did 
 on earth sometimes, though not often, cure physical disease without the 
 requirement of faith on the part of the healed person or his friends, but 
 He cannot (He would if He could) do so in regard of the disease of sin. 
 There, unless a man goes to Him and trusts Flim, and submits his spirit 
 to the operation of Christ's pardoning and hallowing grace, there cannot 
 be any remedy applied, nor any cure effected. That is no Hmitation of the 
 universal power of the Gospel. It is only saying that if you do not take 
 the medicine you cannot expect that it will do you any good. And surely 
 that is plain, common sense. There are plenty of people who fancy that 
 Christ's healing and saving power will, somehow or other, reach all 
 men, apart from the man's act. It is all a delusion. If it could, it 
 would. But if salvation could be thus given, independent of the man, 
 it would come down to a mere mechanical thing, and would not be worth 
 the having. So I say, if you will not take the medicine, you cannot get 
 the cure. 
 
 I say, further, if you do not feel that you are ill you will not take the 
 medicine. A man crippled with lameness, or tortured with fever, or 
 groping in the daylight and blind, or deaf to all the sounds of this sweet 
 world, could not but know that he was a subject for the healing. But 
 the awful thing about our disease is that the worse you are the less you 
 know it ; and that when conscience ought to be speaking loudest it is 
 quieted altogether, and leaves a man often perfectly at peace, so that after 
 he has done evil things he wipes his mouth and says, " I have done 
 no ' harm.' " Do not be contented until you have recognised what is true, 
 that you — you, stand a sinful man before God. 
 
 There is surely no madness comparable to the madness of the man that 
 prefers to keep his sin and die rather than go to Christ and live. Will 
 you look into your own heart? Will you recognise that awful solemn 
 law of God, which ought to regulate all our doings, and, alas ! has been 
 so often neglected and so often transgressed by each of us ? Oh ! if once 
 you saw yourself as you are, you would turn to Him and say, " Heal 
 me" ; and you would be healed, and He would lay His hand upon you. 
 If only you will go, sick and broken, to Him, and trust in His great 
 sacrifice, and open your hearts to the influx of His healing power, He v/ill 
 give you "perfect soundness" ; and your song will be, "Bless the Lord, 
 O my soul. . . . Who forgiveth all thine iniquities ; who healeth thy 
 diseases." 
 
 199 
 
SEEKING AND FINDING. 
 
 / will seek that whicJi was lost, and will bring again that which was 
 driven awayT — Ezek. xxxiv. 1 6. 
 
 There are two kinds of finding. There is the casual stumbling 
 ^ * upon a thing that you were not looking for, and there is the 
 finding as the result of seeking. It is the latter kind that is here. Clirist 
 did not casually stumble upon Philip, upon that morning, before they de- 
 parted from the fords of the Jor, an on their short journey to Cana of Galilee. 
 He went to look for another Galilean, one who was connected with Andrew 
 and Peter, a native of the same village. He went and found him ; and 
 whilst Philip was all unexpectant and undesirous, the Master comes to 
 him and lays His hand upon him, and draws him to Himself. 
 
 Now I say that is what Christ often does with people. There are men 
 like " the merchantman that went all over the world seeking goodly 
 pearls," who, with some eager longing to possess light, or truth, or good- 
 ness, or rest, search up and down and find it nowhere, because they arc 
 looking for it in a hundred different places. They are expecting to find 
 a little here and a little there, and so piece it all together, and make of the 
 fragments one all-sufficing restfulness. Then, when perhaps they are most 
 eager in their search, or, when perhaps it has all died down into despair 
 and apathy, the veil seems to be witlidrawn, and they see Him whom 
 they have been seeking all the time and knew not that Pie was there beside 
 them. All, and more than all, that they sought for in the many pearls 
 is stored for them in the one Pearl of great price. The ancient covenant 
 stands firm to-day as for ever. " Seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it 
 shall be opened unto you." 
 
 But then there are others, like Paul on the road to Damascus ; like 
 Matthew, the pubhcan, sitting at the receipt of custom, on whom there 
 is laid a sudden hand, to whom there comes a sudden conviction, on whose 
 eyes, not looking to the east, there dawns the light of Christ's presence. 
 Such cases occur all through the ages, for He is not going to be confined — 
 bless His Name ! — within the narrow limits of answering, seeking souls, and 
 showing Himself to people that are brought to Him by human instru- 
 mentality ; but far beyond these bounds He goes, and many a time discloses 
 His beauty and His sweetness to hearts that wist not of Him, and who 
 can only say, ** Lo ! God was in this place, and I knew it not." **Thou 
 wast found of them that sought T^^ee nt^t." 
 
 200 
 
THE SEEKING CHRIST. 
 
 On the morrow, He was minded to go forth into Galilee, and He 
 findeth Philip ; and Jesus said unto hint, Follow Me. — John i. 43. 
 
 J 1 19 "Jesus findeth Philip," who was not seeking Jesus, and who 
 
 ™^ * was brought by nobody. To him Christ reveals Himself as 
 drawing near to many a heart that has not thought of Him, and laying 
 a masterful hand of gracious authority on the springs of hfe and character 
 in that autocratic word, " Follow Me ! " So we have a gradual heightening 
 revelation of the Master's graciousness to all souls, to them that seek 
 and to them that seek Him not. It is a revelation of the seeking Christ. 
 
 Everybody that reads this chapter (John i.) with even the slightest 
 attention must observe how "seeking" and "finding" are repeated over 
 and over again. Christ turns to Andrew and John with the question, 
 "What seek ye?" Andrew, as the narrative says, '•''findeth his own 
 brother, Simon, and saith unto him, "We h?i\Q foimd the Messias!'" 
 Then, again, ^qsm^ finds Phihp ; and again, Phihp, as soon as he has been 
 won to Jesus, goes off iofiind Nathaniel ; and his glad word to him is, once 
 more, "We have fonnd the Messias." It is a reciprocal play of finding 
 and seeking all through these verses. 
 
 As it was in His miracles upon earth, so it has been in the sweet and 
 gracious works of His grace ever since. Sometimes He healed in response 
 to the yearning desire that looked out of sick eyes or that spoke from 
 parched lips. And no man that ever came to Him and said, " Heal me ! " 
 was sent away beggared of His blessing. Sometimes He healed in response 
 to the beseeching of those who, with loving hearts, carried their dear ones 
 and laid them at His feet. But sometimes, to magnify the spontaneity 
 and the completeness of His own love, and to show us that He is bound 
 and limited by no human co-operation, and that He is His own motive, 
 sometimes He reached out the blessing to a hand that was not extended 
 to grasp it ; and by His question, "Wilt thou be made whole?" kindled 
 desires that else had lain dormant for ever. 
 
 And so in this story before us : He will welcome and ever answer 
 Andrew and John when they come seeking ; He will turn round to them 
 with a smile on His face, that converts the question, "What seek ye?" 
 into an invitation, "Come and see." And when Andrew brings his 
 brother to Him, He will go more than half-way to meet him. But when 
 these are won there still remains another way by which He will have 
 disciples brought into His Kingdom, and that is by Himself going out and 
 laying His hand on the man and drawing Him to His heart by the revelation 
 of His own. But He really is seeking us all, whether through human 
 agencies or not ; whether our hearts are seeking Him or not, still in 
 deepest truth. There is no heart upon earth which Christ does not desire, 
 and no man or woman within the sound of His Gospel whom He really 
 is not — in no metaphorical, but in a simple, literal, prosaic sense — seeking 
 that He may draw them to Himself. 
 
 201 
 
CiiiUSrS UiSiSOUGHT LOVE. 
 
 I am found of them that sought Me not. — Isa. Ixv. I. 
 
 Christ's own word is a wonderful one : "The Father seckelh such 
 to worship Him " ; as if God went all up and down the world 
 looking for hearts to love Him and to turn to Him with reverent thank- 
 fulness. And as the Father, so the Son — for us the "revelation of the 
 Father: "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was 
 lost." Nobody on earth wanted Him, or dreamed of His coming. When 
 He bowed the heavens and gathered Himself into the narrow space of the 
 manger in Bethlehem, and took upon Him the limitations and the burdens 
 and the weaknesses of manhood, it was not in response to any petition, it was 
 in reply to no seeking, but He came spontaneously, unmoved, obeying but 
 the impulse of His own heart, and because He would have mercy. He 
 who is the Beginning, and will be first in all things, was first in this. 
 "Before they call I will answer," — and came upon earth unbesought and 
 unexpected, because His own infinite love brought Him hither. Christ's 
 mercy to a world does not come like water in a well that has to be pumped 
 up, by our petitions, by our search, but like water in some fountain, rising 
 sparkling into the sunlight by its own inward impulse. He is His own 
 motive ; and came to a forgetful and careless world, like a shepherd who 
 goes after his flock in the wilderness, not because they bleat for him, since 
 they crop the herbage which tempts them even further from the fold and 
 remember him or it no more, but because he cannot have them lost. Men 
 are not conscious of needing Christ till He comes. The supply creates the 
 demand. He is like the "dew which tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth 
 for the sons of men." But not only does Christ seek us all inasmuch as the 
 whole conception and execution of His great work are independent of man's 
 desires, but He seeks us each in a thousand ways. He longs to have each 
 of us for His disciples. He seeks each of us for His disciples, by the 
 motion of His Spirit on our spirits, by stirring convictions on our consciences, 
 by pricking us often with a sense of our own evil, by all our restlessness 
 and dissatisfaction, by the disappointments and the losses, as by the bright- 
 nesses and the goodness of earthly providences, and often through such poor 
 agencies as my lips and the lips of other men. The Master Himself, who 
 seeks all mankind, has sought and is seeking you at this moment. Oh ! you 
 yield to His search. The shepherd goes out on the mountain side, for all 
 the storms and the snow, and wades knee-deep through the drifts until he 
 finds the sheep. And your Shepherd, who is also your Brother, has come 
 looking for you, and at this moment is putting out His hand and laying 
 hold of you through my poor words, and saying to you, as He said to 
 Philip, " Follow Me ! " 
 
 702 
 
"FOLLOW ME.'* 
 
 And He saiih, Come ye after Me, and I will make you fishers of men, 
 
 Matt. iv. 19. 
 
 July 21 "J^sus findeth Philip, and saith unto him, 'Follow Me !'" No 
 ' doubt there was a great deal more passed, but no doubt what 
 more passed was less significant and less important for the development of 
 faith in this man than what is recorded. The word of authority, the invitation 
 which was a demand, the demand which was an invitation, and the personal 
 impression which He produced upon Philip's heart, were the things that 
 bound him to Jesus Christ for ever. "Follow Me," spoken at the begin- 
 ning of the journey of Christ and His disciples back to Galilee, so might 
 have meant merely, on the surface, "Come with us on our return." But 
 they have, of course, a much deeper meaning. They mean, Be My disciple. 
 Think what is implied in them, and ask yourself whether the dem.and that 
 Christ makes in these words is an unreasonable one, and then ask yourself 
 whether you have yielded to it or not. " Follow Me ! " We lose the force 
 of the image by much repetition. Think of what it implies. Sheep follow 
 a shepherd ; travellers follow a guide. Here is a man upon some dangerous 
 cornice of the Alps, with a bit of limestone as broad as the palm of your 
 hand for him to pick his steps upon, and perhaps a couple of feet of snow 
 above that for him to walk upon, a precipice of two thousand feet on either side. 
 And his guide says, as he ropes himself to him, "Now, look here ! You 
 tread where I tread?" Jesus said to Phihp, "Follow Me !" Travellers 
 follow their guides, soldiers follow their commanders. There is the hell of 
 the battlefield ; here a line of wavering, timid, raw recruits. Their com- 
 mander rushes to the front, and throws himself upon the advancing enemy 
 with the one word, ' ' Follow ! " And the weakest becomes a hero. Soldiers 
 follow their captains. 
 
 Your Shepherd comes to you and calls, " Follow Me ! " Your Captain 
 and Commander comes to you and calls, " Follow Me ! " In all the dreary 
 wilderness, in all the difficult contingencies and conjunctions, in all the 
 conflicts of life, this Man strides in front of us and proposes Himself to us 
 a Guide, Example, Consoler, Friend, Companion, everything ; and gathers 
 up all duty, all blessedness, in the majestic and simple words, " Follow 
 Me ! " 
 
 What business has Jesus Christ to ask me to follow Him? Why should 
 I? Who is He that would set Himself up as being the perfect Example and 
 the Guide for all the world ? What has He done to bind me to Him, that 
 I should take Him for my Master, and yield myself up to Him in a 
 subjection that I refuse to the mightiest names in hterature and thought 
 and practical benevolence ? Who is this that is thus going to dominate over 
 us all? Ah, brother ! there is only one answer. " This is none other than 
 the Son of God, who has given Himself a ransom for me, and therefore 
 has the right, and therefore only has the right, to say to me, 'Follow 
 Me ! '" 
 
 203 
 
A CALL TO FAITFI AND OBEDIENCE. 
 
 Jf any man serve Me, let hint follow Me ; and where I am, there shall 
 also My servant be. — John xii. 26. 
 
 From the beginning Christ's disciples did not look upon Him 
 ^ ' as a Rabbi's disciples did, as being simply a teacher, but 
 recognised Him as the Messias, the Son of God, the King of Israel. So 
 that they were called upon by His commands to accept His teaching in 
 a very special way, not merely as Rittel or Gamaliel asked their disciples 
 to accept theirs. Do you do that ? Do you take Him as your illumination 
 about all matters of theoretical truth and of practical wisdom? Is His 
 declaration of God your theology ? Is His declaration of His own Person 
 your creed ? Do you think about His Cross as He did when He elected to 
 be remembered in all the world by the broken body and the shed blood, 
 which were the symbols of His reconciling death ? Is His teaching, that 
 the Son of Man comes to give His life a ransom for many, the ground of 
 your hope ? Do you follow Him in your belief, and following Him in your 
 belief, do you accept Him as the Saviour of your soul, by His death and 
 passion ? That is the first step, to follow Him, to trust Him wholly for 
 what He is, the Incarnate Son of God, the Sacrifice for the sins of the 
 whole world, and therefore for yours and for mine. This is a call to faith. 
 It is also a call to obedience. *' Follow Me ! " certainly means, " Do as 
 I bid you " ; but that is harsh. Sedulously plant your little feet in His 
 firm footsteps ; where you see His track going across the bog, be not afraid 
 to walk after Him, though it may seem to lead you into the deepest and 
 the blackest of it. Follow Him, and you will be right ; follow Flim, 
 and you will be blessed. Do as Cnrist did, or as according to the best of 
 your judgment it seems to you that Christ would have done if He had 
 Deen in your circumstances; and you will not go far wrong. "The 
 Imitation of Christ," which the old anonymous monk wrote his book 
 about, is the sum of all practical Christianity. "Follow Me!" makes 
 discipleship to be something better than intellectual acceptance of His 
 teaching, something more than even reliance for my salvation upon Flis 
 work. It makes discipleship to be, springing out of these two, the 
 acceptance of His teaching and the consequent reliance, by faith, upon 
 His word — to be a practical reproduction of His character and conduct 
 in mine. 
 
 It is a call to communion. If a man follows Christ he will walk close 
 behind Him, and near enough to Him to hear Him speak, to be "guided 
 by His eye." He will be separated from other people and from other 
 things. In these four things, then — Faith, Obedience, Imitation, Com- 
 munion — lies the essence of discipleship. No man is a Christian who has 
 not in some measure all four. Have you got them ? 
 
 204 
 
HESITATING TO FOLLOW CHRIST. 
 And they that followed Him were afraid. — Mark x. 32. 
 
 T 1 23 Quickly a soul may be won or lost ! That moment, when Philip's 
 decision was trembling in the balance, was but a moment. It 
 might have gone the other way, for Christ has no pressed men in His army; 
 they are all volunteers. It might have gone the other way. A moment 
 may settle for you whether you will be His disciple or not. People tell us 
 that the belief in instantaneous conversions is unphilosophical ; it seems 
 to me that the objections to them are unphilosophical. All decisions are 
 matters of an instant. Hesitation may be long, weighing and balancing 
 may be a protracted process ; but the decision is always a moment's work, 
 a knife-edge. And there is no reason whatever why any one may not now, 
 if they will, do as Philip did, on the spot ; and when Christ says, " P^ollow 
 Me," return to Him and answer, "I follow Thee whithersoever Thou 
 goest." 
 
 There is an old Church tradition which says that the disciple who, at a 
 subsequent period, answered Christ, '* Lord, suffer me first to go and bury 
 my father," was this same Apostle. I do not think that it is at all likely, 
 but the tradition suggests to us one thought about the reasons why 
 people are kept back from yielding this obedience to Christ's invitation. 
 Many are kept back, as that man in the story was, because there are 
 some other duties, and they are duties, no doubt, which you feel or make 
 to be more important. " I will think about Christianity and about turning 
 religious when this, that, or the other thing has got over. I have my 
 position in life to make. I have a great many things to do that must be 
 done at once, and really I have not time to think about it." 
 
 Then there are some that are kept from following Christ because they 
 have never found out yet that they need a guide at all. Then there are 
 some that are kept back because they like very much better to go their 
 own way and to follow their own inclination, and dislike the idea of following 
 the will of another. 
 
 There are a host of other reasons, but they are all not worth looking at. 
 They are excuses, they are not reasons. " They all with one consent began 
 to make excuse." Excuses, not reasons ; and manufactured excuses, in 
 order to cover a decision which has been taken before, and on other grounds 
 altogether, which it is not convenient to bring up to the surface ! 
 
 Follow Him ! Trust, obey, imitate, hold fellowship with Him. You 
 will always have a Companion, you will always have a Protector. " He 
 that followeth Me," saith He, " shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 
 the light of life." And if you will listen to the Shepherd's voice and 
 follow Him, that sweet old promise will be true, in its deepest and Divinest 
 sense about your Hfe, in time ; and your life in the moment of death, the 
 isthmus between two worlds ; and about your life in eternity. " They shall 
 not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the sun nor heat smite them ; for He 
 that hath mercy on them shall lead them, by the springs of water shall He 
 guide them." Follow thou Me ! 
 
 205 
 
THE ANTIDOTE TO ALL DESPONDENCY. 
 
 Hast thou not knoivn ? hast thou not heard ? The Everlasting God, 
 the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earthy fainteth not, neither is weary. — 
 IsA. xl. 28. 
 
 Here is an appeal to the familiar theught of an unchangeable 
 July 4. Q^^ ^g ^1^^ antidote to all despondency and the foundation of all 
 hope. To whom is the prophet speaking ? The words of the previous verse 
 tell us, in which he addresses himself to Jacob, or Israel, who is represented 
 as complaining, "My way is hid from the Lord." That is to say, he 
 speaks to the believing, but despondent, part of the exiles in Babylon ; and 
 to them He comes with this vehement question, which implies that they 
 were in danger, in their despondency, of practically forgetting the great 
 thought. There is wonder in the question, there is a tinge of rebuke in 
 it, and there is distinctly imphed this : that whensoever there steals over 
 our spirits despondency or perplexity about our own individual history, or 
 about the peace and the fortunes of the Church or the world, the one 
 sovereign antidote against gloom and low spirits, and the one secret of 
 unbroken cheer and confidence is to hft our eyes to the unwearied God. 
 
 The Hfe of men and of creatures is like a river, with its source and its 
 course and its end. The life of God is like the ocean, with joyous move- 
 ment of tides and currents of life and energy and purpose, but ever the 
 same, and ever returning upon itself. "The Everlasting God " is "the 
 Lord," and Jehovah the Unchanged, Unchangeable, Inexhaustible Being, 
 spends, and is unspent ; gives, and is none the poorer ; works, and is never 
 wearied ; lives, and with no tendency to death in His life ; flames, with no 
 tendency to extinction in the blaze. The bush burned and was not con- 
 sumed : " He fainteth not, neither is weary." 
 
 The prophet takes his stand upon the most elementary truths of religion. 
 His appeal to them is : " What do you call God ? You call Him the Lord, 
 do you not ? What do you mean by calling Him that ? Do you ever ask 
 yourselves that question ? You mean this, if you mean anything : * He 
 fainteth not, neither is wearied.'" "Jehovah" is interpreted from the lips 
 of God Himself: " I Am that I Am." That is the expression of what 
 metaphysicians call absolute, underived, eternal Being, limited and shaped 
 and determined by none else, flowing from none else ; eternal, hfted up 
 above the fashions of time. Of Him men cannot say " He was " or " He 
 will be," but only "He is" — by Himself, of Himself, for ever unchanged. 
 
 206 
 
THE COMFORTING GOD. 
 
 Comfort ye, comfort ye My people^ saith your God, — IsA. xl. I, 
 
 This magnificent chapter is the prelude or overture to the grand 
 " ^ ■ music of the second part of the prophecies of Isaiah. Its first 
 words are its keynote : " Comfort ye. comfort ye My people." That 
 purpose is kept steadily in view throughout ; and in this introductory 
 ciiapter the prophet points to the onh' foundation of hope and consolation 
 for Babylonian exiles, or for modern Englishmen, to that grand vision of 
 the enthroned God "sitting on the circle of the earth, before whom the 
 inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers." 
 
 "They build too low who build beneath the sky." 
 
 For nations and for individuals, in view of political disasters or of private 
 sorrows, the only holdfast to which cheerful hope may cling is ilie old 
 conviction, " The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." 
 
 Notice how, first, the prophet points to the unwearied God ; and then his 
 e)xs drop from Heaven to the clouded, saddened earth, where there are the 
 faint and the weak, and the strong becoming faint, and the youths fading 
 and becoming weak with age. Then he binds together these two opposites 
 — the unwearied God and the fainting man— in the grand thought that He 
 is the Giving God, who bestows all His power on the weary. And see 
 how, finally, he rises to the blessed conception of the wearied man becoming 
 like the Unwearied God. " They shall run, and not be weary ; they shall 
 walk, and not faint." 
 
 And let me say, here is a lesson for us to learn of meditative reflection 
 upon the veriest commonplaces of our religion. There is a tendency 
 amongst us all to forget the indubitable, and to let our religious thought be 
 occupied with the disputable and secondary parts of revelation rather than 
 with the plain deep verities which form its heart and centre. The common- 
 places of religion are the most important. Ever3'body needs air, light, 
 bread, and water. Dainties are for the few ; but the table which our 
 religion sometimes spreads for them is like that at a rich man's feast — plenty 
 of rare dishes, but never a bit of bread ; plenty of wine and wine-glasses, 
 but not a tumblerful of spring water to be had. Every pebble that you 
 kick with your foot, if thought about and treasured, contains the secret of 
 the universe. The commonplaces of our faith are the food upon which our 
 faith will most richly feed. 
 
 And so here, in the old, old Word, that we all take for granted as being 
 so true that we do not need to think about it, lies the source of all consola- 
 tion—the Hope for men, for churches, for the world. We all have times, 
 depending on mood or circumstances, when things seem black and we are 
 weary. This great truth will shine into our gloom like a star into a 
 dungeon. Are our hearts to tremble for God's truth to-day ? Are we to 
 share in the pessimist views of some faint-hearted and little-faith Christians? 
 Surely as long as we can remember the name of the Lord, and His un- 
 wearied arm, we have nothing to do with fear or sadness for ourselves, or 
 for His Church, or for His world. 
 
 207 
 
POWER FOR THE FAINT. 
 
 He, giveth power to the faint. . . . Even the youths shall faint and be 
 weary . . . but they that zvait upon the Lord shall renew their streug/h; they 
 shall mount up with ivings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and 
 they shall walk^ and not faint. — Isa. xl. 29-31. 
 
 - , 26 Earth knows no independent strength. All earthly power is 
 ' limited in range and duration, and by the very law of its being 
 is steadily tending to weakness. 
 
 But though that has a sad side, it has also a grand and blessed one. 
 Man's needs are the open mouth — if I may say so — into which God puts His 
 gifts. The more sad and pathetic the condition of feeble humanity by con- 
 trast with the strength, the immortal strength of God, the more wondrous 
 that grace and power of His, which is not contented with hanging there in the 
 Heavens above us, but bends right down to bless us and to turn us into its 
 own likeness. The low earth stretches, grey and sorrowful, flat and dreary, 
 beneath the blue, arched heaven, but the heaven stoops to encompass, ay ! 
 to touch it. " He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might 
 He increaseth strength." 
 
 All creatural life digs its own grave. " The youths shall faint with the 
 weakness of physical decay, the weakness of burdened hearts, the weakness 
 of consciously distracted natures, the weakness of agonising conscience. 
 They shall be weary with the weariness of dreary monotony, of uncongenial 
 tasks, of long-continued toil, of hope deferred, of disappointed wishes, of 
 bitter disenchantments, of the learning the lesson that all is vanity, the 
 weariness that creeps over us all as life goes on." All these are the 
 occasions for the inward strength of God to manifest itself even in us ; 
 according to the great word that He spoke once and means ever: "My 
 grace is sufficient for thee, and My strength is made perfect in weakness." 
 
 Isaiah did not know — or, if he did, he knew it very dimly — what every 
 Christian child knows : that the highest revelation of the power of Him 
 that " fainteth not, neither is weary," is found in Him who, "being weary 
 with His journey, sat thus on the well," and, being worn out with the long 
 work and excitement of a hard day, slept the sleep of the labouring man on 
 the wooden pillow of the little boat amid the whistle of the tempest and the 
 dash of the waves. 
 
 And Isaiah did not know — or, if he did, he knew it very dimly and as 
 from afar — that the highest fulfilment of His own word — '* He giveth power 
 to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength "— 
 would be found when a gentle voice from amidst the woes of humanity 
 said : " Come unto Me ! all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest Take My yoke upon you ; and ye shall find rest unto your 
 souls." 
 
 208 
 
LIFTED TO THE HIGH LEVEL. 
 
 « 
 
 They go from strength to strength ; every one of them appeareth before 
 God in Zion. — Psalm Ixxxiv. 7* 
 
 The phrase means, of course, the continuous bestowment in 
 July 27. unintermitting sequence of fresh gifts of power, as each former 
 gift becomes exhausted, and more is required. Instant by instant, with 
 unbroken flow, as golden shafts of hght travel from the central sun, and 
 each beam is linked with the source from which it comes by a line that 
 stretches through milhons and millions of miles, so God's gift of strength 
 pours into us as we need. Grace abhors a vacuum, as nature does. And 
 just as the endless procession of the waves rises up on to the beach, or as the 
 restless network of the moonlight irradiation of the billows stretches all across 
 the darkness of the sea, so that unbroken continuity of strength after strength 
 gives grace for grace according to our need ; and as each former supply is 
 expended and used up, God pours Himself into our hearts anew. That con- 
 tinuous communication leads to the "perpetual youth" of the Christian 
 soul. For the words of Isaiah, "They shall mount up with wings as 
 eagles," might perhaps more accurately be rendered, " They shall put forth 
 their pinions as eagles" — the allusion being to the popular behef that in 
 extreme old age the eagle moulted and renewed its feathers — that popular 
 belief which is referred to in Psalm ciii., " Who satisfieth thy mouth with 
 good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's." 
 
 The same idea is here that though, according to the law of physical 
 life, decaying strength, and advancing years, that tame and sober and 
 disenchant and often make weary because they are famiUar with all things 
 and take the edge off everything, — though these tell upon us whether we are 
 Christians or not, and in some important respects tell upon us all alike, yet, 
 if we are "waiting upon God," keeping our hearts near Him, living on His 
 love, trying to realise His inward presence and His outstretched hand, then 
 we shall have such a continuous communication of His grace, strength, and 
 beauty as that we shall grow younger as we grow older, and, as the good 
 old Scotch psalm has it, 
 
 '* In old age, when others fade, 
 They fruit still forth shall bring." 
 
 **The oldest angels are the youngest," said Swedenborg. "They that 
 wait upon 'the Lord' have drunk of the fountain of perpetual youth, 
 for the buoyancy and the inextinguishable hope which are the richest 
 possessions of youth may abide with them whose hopes are set on things 
 beyond tlie sky." 
 
 209 p 
 
CONTINUOUS STRENGTH. 
 He giveth more grace. — ^James iv. 6. 
 
 Jul 28 ^^^'s strength, poured into our hearts, if we wait upon Him, 
 ^ ' shall fit us for the moments of special hard effort. *' They shall 
 run and not be weary," for the crises which require more than an ordinary 
 amount of energy to be put forth ; and for the long dreary hours which 
 require nothing but keeping doggedly at monotonous duties, " They shall 
 walk and not faint." 
 
 It is a great deal easier to be up to the occasion in some shining moment 
 of a man's life when he knows that a supreme hour has come than it is to 
 keep that high tone when plodding over all the dreary plateaux of unevent- 
 ful, monotonous travel and dull duties. It is easier to run fast for a minute 
 than to grind along the dusty road for a day. 
 
 Many a ship has stood the tempest, and then has gone down in the 
 harbour because its timbers have been gnawed to pieces by white ants. 
 And many a man can do what is wanted in the trying moments, and yet 
 make shipwreck of his faith in uneventful times. 
 
 " Like ships that have g-one down at sea, 
 When heaven was all tranquillity. 
 
 Soldiers who could stand firm and strike with all their might in the hour 
 of battle will fall asleep or have their courage ooze out at their fingers' ends 
 when they have to keep solitary watch at their posts through a long winter's 
 night. We have all a few moments in life of hard, glorious running ; but 
 we have days and years of walking, the uneventful discharge of small 
 duties. We need strength for both ; but paradoxical as it may sound, 
 we need it most for the multitude of smaller duties. We know where to 
 get it. Let us keep close to " Christ, the Power of God," and open our 
 hearts to the entering in of His unwearied strength. " Then shall the 
 lame man leap as a hart," and we shall " run with patience the race that 
 is set before us," if we look to Jesus, and follow in His steps. 
 
 A man complains that his path is hid, his course on earth seems so sad 
 and cloudy and weary as compared with the paths of those great stars 
 that move without friction, effort, confusion, dust, noise, while all these 
 things — friction, effort, confusion, dust, noise — beset our little carts as we 
 tug them along the dreary road of life. 
 
 But, says Isaiah, His power does not show itself so nobly up there 
 among the stars as it does down here. It is not so much to keep the strong 
 in their strength as to give strength to the weak. It is much to " preserve 
 the stars from wrong," it is more to restore and to break the power into 
 feeble men ; much to uphold all them that are falling so that they may not 
 fall, Ixit it is more to raise up all those that are fallen and are bowed down. 
 So, brother, what God does with a poor, weak creature like me, when He 
 lilts up our weakness and replenishes our weariness ; pouring oil and wine 
 into our wounds and a cordial into our lips, and sending us, with the joy of 
 pardon, upon our road again ; that is a greater thing than when He rolls 
 Neptune in its mighty orl)it round the central sun, or upliolds with unwearied 
 arms, from cycle to cycle, the circle of the heavens with ail its stars. '* He 
 giveth power to the faint " is His divinest work. 
 
 2IO 
 
THE PERFECTION OF HOPE. 
 
 Evety one that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself ^ even as He is 
 pure. — I John iii. 3. 
 
 What constitutes perfect hope ? First, that it shall be certain ; 
 
 " ^ * and no earthly hope is so. For we all know that there blends 
 with, and shadows the brightness of, every such anticipation an opposite 
 possibility. "It may be ; it may not be.' And when thus " hopes and 
 fears that kindle hope" are blended as *'an indistinguishable throng," 
 and we are tossed from one to the other as a shuttlecock between two 
 battledores, there can be no perfection of hope. If my anticipations are 
 set upon contingent things, they must vary with their objects. You cannot 
 build a solid house on a quagmire ; you must have rock for that. So, the 
 only perfect hope is that which grasps a perfect certainty. Christian hope 
 ought to be, if I might so say, screwed up to the level of that on which 
 it is fastened. It is a shame that Christian people should be wavering in 
 their anticipations of that which in itself is certain. A sure and steadfast 
 hope is the only perfect hope. 
 
 Again, the perfection of hope lies in its being patient, persistent through 
 discouragement, burning bright in the darkness, like a pillar of fire by 
 night ; and most of all in its being operative upon life, and contributing 
 to steadfastness of endurance and to energy of effort. This is exactly what 
 the feeble and fluctuating hopes of earth never do. For the more a man 
 is living in anticipation of an uncertain good, the less is he able to fling 
 himself with wholeness of purpose and effort into the duties and enjoyments 
 of the present. But a perfect hope will be the ally and not the darkener 
 of the brightness of the present. And if we hope as we should for that we 
 see not, then shall we with patience wait for it. I fancy that the experience 
 of most men is that the more they indulge in the pleasant, but profitless, 
 amusement of forecasting to themselves future earthly good, the less are 
 they fit for the strenuous work of to-day. To-morrow deceives us when 
 it is an earthly to-morrow. But " every man that hath this hope in Christ," 
 and only the man who has, " purifies himself even as He is pure." 
 
 Here, then, is the sort of hope which it is laid upon us Christian people 
 consciously to try to cherish, one which is fixed and certain, one which 
 is the mother of patience and endurance, one which persists through and 
 triumphs over all trouble and sorrow, one which nerves us for effort and 
 opens our eyes to appreciate the blessings of the present, and one which 
 wars against all uncleanness and lifts us up in aspiration and aim towards 
 the purity of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Think of the blessedness of living thus, lifted up above all the un- 
 certainties that rack men when they think about to-morrow. Try to 
 realise the blessedness of escaping from the disappointments which come 
 from all earthward-turned expectations, when the radiant bubble bursts, 
 and there is nothing left in our hands but a little dirty soap-suds, as is the 
 case with so many of our fulfilled anticipations of good. Try to realise 
 the blessedness of escaping from that despairing hopelessness that creeps 
 over men as life ebbs away and the years diminish. And remember the 
 buoyant words of the Psalmist, who, because God was his hope, therefore, 
 though he was "old and grey-headed," sang, "I shall hope continually." 
 The brightest blaze of Christian hope may be on the verge of the darkness 
 of the grave. 
 
 211 
 
THE DISCIPLINE OF HOPE. 
 
 Wherefore, girding up the loins of your nvlnd, be sober ^ and set your 
 hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of 
 Jesus Christ. — I Peter i. 13. 
 
 "Gird up the loins of your mind." I suppose I do not need 
 ^ ■ to do more than remind you that that figure, appHed to travellers, 
 to soldiers, to any men who have a hard task upon their hands, simply 
 expresses the gathering together of all one's powers, the training one's self 
 for given tasks. It suggests that there is a great deal in this life that 
 makes it very difficult for us to keep firm hold of the facts on which 
 alone a perfect hope can be built. Unless we tighten up our belt, and 
 so put all our strength into the effort, the truths of the resurrection which 
 beget to a lively hope, of the great salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, 
 of the meaning and end of all our trials and sorrows, will slip away from 
 us, and we shall be left at the mercy of the varying anticipations of good 
 or evil which may emerge from the varying circumstances of the fleeting 
 moment. We have, then, to gather ourselves up and set our teeth in the 
 effort to keep hold of Christ, of His work, of its bearing upon ourselves, 
 of the meaning of our sorrows, if we would not have like fluctuations in 
 our heavenly to those which necessarily belong to our earthly hopes. 
 
 "Be sober." That means, not only gather yourself together with 
 a consecrated efibrt, but "keep your heel well down on the necks of lower 
 and earthly desires." The word, of course, points, first, to temperance — 
 not, as we use it, only in respect to one form of sensual indulgence, but to 
 temperance — in regard of all the animal necessities and desires. The fleshly 
 lusts that belong to everybody must be subdued. That goes without saying. 
 But, then, there are others more subtle, more refined, but not less hostile 
 to the perfectness of a heaven -directed hope than are these grosser ones. 
 We must keep down all the desires and appetites of our nature, both of the 
 flesh and of the spirit. For we have only a certain quantity of energy to 
 expend, and if we expend it upon the things of earth there is nothing left 
 for the things above. If you take the river, and lead it all out into the 
 gardens that are irrigated by it, or into the stream that drives your mills, 
 its bed will be left bare, and little of the water will reach the great ocean 
 which is its home. If a gardener wants a tree to grow high, he strips 
 off the side shoots. Our hopes follow our desires. What we deem good 
 is what we hope for ; and if our desires all go trailing and grovelling along 
 the earth, our hopes will never rise to the heavens. A gorged eagle 
 cannot soar. Christian men whose heads and hearts are stuffed full of tlie 
 trivialities of earth have little of the perfect hope which fastens on Christ. 
 
 212 
 
THE OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN HOPE. 
 
 Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ. — Titus ii. 13, 
 
 Jul 31 ^^ ^^ interesting to notice the various phases under which the 
 
 ^ ' ■ future perfecting of the Christian life and fehcity in Heaven is 
 set forth in the New Testament. Sometimes we read of the object of our 
 hope as being the resurrection from tlie dead ; sometimes we read of the 
 "hope of righteousness"; sometimes we read of the "hope of eternal 
 life" ; sometimes of the "hope of the glory of God" ; sometimes of the 
 " hope of salvation." But all these are but the many facets of the one jewel, 
 flashing many-coloured and yet harmonious light. Peter adds another 
 general expression when he sums up the felicities and perfectness of that 
 future life in this remarkable and unusual phrase, "the grace that is to be 
 brought." 
 
 Now, we generally, in our ordinary, popular, religious speech, draw a 
 broad distinction between "grace" and "glory." But the use of the word 
 here, though unusual, and just because it is unusual, is instructive and 
 significant. It suggests to us the great thought that all the lustrous light 
 that lies beyond, to the furthest distances of eteriiity, is the free gift of love, 
 undeserved, and bestowing its treasures on those who have no claim to it, 
 at the end of countless millennium's, any more than they had at the beginning. 
 " Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life" ; and no man of the 
 countless nations of the blessed can say, " Give me the portion for which 
 I have worked," but all must bow and say, "Give me from Thine own 
 loving heart that which I do not deserve," " the grace that is to be brought 
 at the appearing of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Then there is another thought suggested by this remarkable expression, 
 and that is the essential identity of the Christian life here and hereafter. 
 We are accustomed to include all the virtues and blessednesses that here 
 belong to faith and love under that one common designation of "grace," 
 while, on the other hand, we name the future heavenly state "glory." But, 
 according to the Apostle, grace and glor)^ are one in essence. The tender 
 green of the springing corn is the prophet of the yellow full ear. What we 
 have here is a spark which shall be fanned yonder into a radiant flame. 
 But the difference is one of degree, and not of kind. "Grace" is "glory" 
 in the bud ; " glory "is " grace " in the fruit. 
 
 There are many good people who are so unduly conscious of their imper- 
 fections and sins that they think it is almost wrong in them to assume the 
 tone of steadfast anticipation which the New Testament sets before us as 
 proper for us, and who scarcely venture to say, "I hope to enter into that 
 rest." Brother ! we are neglecting a plain duty and impoverishing our- 
 selves unnecessarily, by the want of a treasure which belongs to us, unless 
 we are making conscious efforts for our increase in hope as in faith and 
 charity. 
 
 213 
 
THE GRACE OF HOPE. 
 
 Good hope through grace. — 2 Thess. ii. 1 6, 
 
 In I Peter i. 13 we are exhorted to '* set our hope perfectly on 
 ^^ ■ the grace that is to be brought at the appearing of Jesus Christ." 
 It is to be " brought unto you." Now, the margins of your Bibles give you 
 a truer notion of the Apostle's meaning. Pie did not write "that is to be 
 brought," as if the gift was all a future one, but " that is being borne towards 
 you " ; or, as one of the old commentators on Peter says, in his archaic 
 and forcible English, " the grace that is a bringing to you." The word is 
 the same which is used to describe the audible approach of that mighty wind 
 on the Day of Pentecost — "rushing." The notion suggested is that this 
 great gift has, as it were, already started on its passage towards us, across 
 the fields of space and the ages of the world. It is in motion towards us, 
 as if some choir of angels were winging their way to this small island in the 
 deep across the abysses, bearing in their hands this holy bestowment. It 
 is bearing down upon us, like a ship at sea, or like some star travelling 
 towards us, first a point of light, then a disc of brightness, then a world of 
 glory which envelops us. That representation is true, because every tick 
 of the pendulum brings '* the grace " nearer. Though centuries pass before 
 the light from the far-off shining reaches us, it is travelling, travelling, 
 travelling towards us at every moment. So we should hope. Peter further 
 suggests to us that this swi tly moving and approximating grace is all 
 wrapped up in " the appearing of Jesus Christ." When He comes, it comes ; 
 for it is but the impartation of Him, and we know that " when He shall 
 appear we shall be hke Him, for we shall see Him as He is." 
 
 Such, then, is the object of Christian hope stated in its most general 
 terms — a grace which includes resurrection, salvation, righteousness, eternal 
 life, the glory of God, and that grace ever tending towards us, and that ever 
 tending grace to be ours in its fulness, when Christ is manifested and "we 
 shall be manifested with Plim in glory." How diflerent in its dignity, in 
 its certainty, in its remoteness, which is a blessing — how different from 
 the paltry, shortsighted anticipations of a near future which delude us 
 along the path of earthly effort ! Surely, surely, this great and strange 
 prerogative of humanity, the large discourse which looks before and after, 
 was given to us for other purposes than that we should lavish and waste it 
 upon fleeting things! But the most of us behave with that great faculty 
 of anticipating and imagining the future as an astronomer might do, who, 
 having in his possession a telescope fit to pierce the secrets of the skies, 
 should prefer to turn it only upon the trivialities of earth. "Wherefore, 
 hope perfectly for the grace that is being brought to you in the appearing 
 of Jesus Christ." 
 
 214 
 
FOR HIS SAKE. 
 
 Thus satth the Lord God : I do not this for your sake, O House of Israel, 
 but for Mine Holy Name. — Ezek. xxxvi. 22. 
 
 The foundation of all God's love to us sinful men lies not in us, 
 Augfust 2. 
 
 nor anything about us, not in anything external to God Himself. 
 He, and He alone, is the cause and reason, the motive and the end, of His 
 own love to our world. And unless we have grasped that magnificent 
 thought as the foundation of all our acceptance in Him, I think we have not 
 yet learnt half of the fulness which, even in this world, may belong to our 
 conceptions of the love of God — a love that has no motive but Himself ; a 
 love that is not evoked even (if I may so say) by regard to His creatures' 
 wants ; a love, therefore, which is eternal, being in that Divine heart before 
 there were creatures upon whom it could rest ; a love that is its own 
 guarantee, its own cause — safe and firm, therefore, with all the firmness and 
 serenity of the Divine nature — incapable of being affected by our transgres- 
 sion, deeper than all our sins, more ancient than our very existence, the 
 very essence and being of God Himself. ** He frankly forgave them both." 
 If you seek the source of Divine love, you must go high up into the moun- 
 tains of God, and learn that it, as all other of His (shall I say ?) emotions and 
 feelings and resolutions and purposes owns no reason but Himself, no 
 motive but Himself ; lies wrapped in the secret of His nature, who is all- 
 sufficient for His own blessedness, and all whose work and being is caused 
 by, and satisfied, and terminates in His own fulness. "God is love"; 
 therefore, beneath all considerations of what we may want — deeper and 
 more blessed than all thoughts of a compassion that springs from the feeling 
 of human distress and the sight of man's misery — lies this thought of an 
 affection which does not need the presence of sorrow to evoke it, which 
 does not want the touch of our finger to flow out, but by its very nature is 
 everlasting, by its very nature is infinite, by its very nature must be pouring 
 
 out the flood of its own joyous fulness for ever and ever ! 
 
 215 
 
GOD'S LOVE DEEPER THAN OUR SINS. 
 
 / have loved thee with an everlasting love : therefore with loving-kiiulitess 
 have I drawn thee. — Je:i. xxxi. 3. 
 
 " This Man, if He were a prophet, would have known who 
 ° ' and what manner of woman this is that toucheth Him," says 
 the unloving and self righteous heart, "for she is a sinner." Ah! there 
 is nothing more beautiful than the difference between the thought about 
 sinful creatures which is natural to a holy being, and the thought about sin- 
 ful creatures which is natural to a self-righicoiis being. The one is 
 all contempt ; the other, all pity. He knew what she was, and there- 
 fore He let her come close to Him with the touch of her polluted 
 hand, and pour out the gains of her lawless life and the adornments of 
 her former corruption upon His most blessed and most holy head. His 
 knowledge of her as a s.'nner, what did it do to His love for her? It made 
 that love gentle and tender, as knowing that she could not bear the 
 revelation of the blaze oi His purity. It smoothed His face and softened 
 His tones, and breathed through all His knowledge and notice of her 
 timid and yet confident approach. "Daughter, I know all about it — 
 all thy wanderings and thy vile transgressions : I know them all, and My 
 love is mightier than all these. They may be as the great sea, but My love 
 is like the everlasting mountains, whose roots go down beneath the ocean ; 
 and My love is like the everlasting heaven, whose brightness covers it all 
 over." God's love is Christ's love ; Christ's love is God's love. And this 
 is the lesson — that that infinite and Divine loving-kindness does not turn 
 away from thee because thou art a sinner, but remains hovering about thee, 
 with wooing invitations and gentle touches, if it may draw thee to 
 repentance, and open a fountain of answering affection in thy seared and 
 dry heart. The love of God is deeper than all our sins. 
 
 Sin is but the cloud behind which the everlasting sun lies in all its 
 power and warmth, unaffected by the cloud ; and the light will yet strike, 
 the light of His love will yet pierce through, with its merciful shafts 
 bringing healing in their beams, and dispersing all the pitchy darkness of 
 man's transgression. And as the mists gather themselves up and roll 
 away, dissipated by the heat of that sun in the upper sky, and reveal the 
 fair earth below, so the love of Christ shines in, melting the mist and 
 dissipating the fog, thinning it off in its thickest places, and at last piercing 
 its way right through it, down to the heart of the man that has been lying 
 beneath the oppression of this thick darkness, and who thought that the 
 fog was the sky, and that there was no sun there above. God be thanked ! 
 The everlasting love of God, that comes from the heart of His own being, 
 and is there because of Himself, will never be quenched because of 
 man's sin. 
 
 216 
 
THE CHRIST AT THE DOOR. 
 
 Behold I stand at the door and knock ; if any man hear My voice, and 
 open the dour, I will come in to hint, and will sup with him, and he with 
 Me, — Rev. iii. 20. 
 
 Autrust 4 ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ *^^ exalted Christ aslcing to be let in to a man's 
 heart. The latter words of the verse si;2:gest the image of a 
 banqueting-hall. The chamber to which Christ desires entrance is full of 
 feasters. There is room for everybody else there but Him. JNIusic and 
 dancing and lights and good cheer and laughter fill the house, and He 
 stands without. There is no room for Him, as there was not at His 
 birth. 
 
 Now the plain, sad truth which that sets forth is this, that we are more 
 wilhng to let anybody and anything come into our thoughts, and find 
 lodgment in our affections, than we are to let Jesus Christ come in. Is it 
 so, or is it not ? The doors that swing wide for vanities and selfishnesses, 
 lusts and passions, whims and fancies, and favourite pursuits, are barred 
 and bolted in His face. We welcome to the chief seats in our hearts His 
 and our worst enemies. They flock in ; He stands without, like some 
 exiled and dethroned monarch, who, coming back to his own land and his 
 own palace, stands amongst the ragged losels on the pavement, and sees 
 the upstarts and the rebels passing into the lighted halls ; all His own, 
 where He may not enter. Is it so, or is it not ? 
 
 The reality of Christ's knocking is represented not only as being the 
 touch of an importunate hand, but is accompanied also with the beseeching 
 of a voice. That is not a pretty metaphor only. Jesus Christ is living and 
 working to-day ; He is at your side, present though unseen, working upon 
 you though you know it not ; trying to draw you to Himself ; pleading 
 with you year by year and moment by moment. It is one of the deepest 
 facts of human existence, a barred heart, and a present Saviour suing for 
 entrance. 
 
 And how does He sue? Does He not knock at your heart by that 
 Book of which the very spirit in all its parts is the testimony to Him ? Is 
 Pie not knocking at your heart loud blows, by sorrows and gentle touches, 
 waxen touches, soft and warm and sweet as a baby's hand ; by the mercies 
 that come to you day by day? When Absalom would not go to Joab, 
 Joab burned his corn, and then Absalom came to him. When a man will 
 not come to Christ, sometimes He burns his corn, and then, sometimes, 
 the man comes. And the further we go from Him, the louder the beseeching 
 impressiveness of the knocks of His hand. Have you never found rising 
 up in your soul a sudden conviction, with which you had nothing to do l)ut 
 to listen to it ; teUing you what you ought to do and to be ? Have you 
 not sometimes had flashing in upon you, like a sudden glare in the dark, the 
 conviction, "I ought to be a Christian and to follow Jesus Christ"? 
 Such voices — 
 
 "Our inward ear 
 Catches sometimes Loui afar. 
 Listen, ponder, hold ihem dear, 
 For of God— of God, they are." 
 
 Every conviction, every impression, every half inclination towards Him 
 that has risen in your hearts, though you fought against it and smothered 
 it, and did anything with it Isut obeyed it, has been His knocking there. 
 
 217 
 
CHRIST'S YEARNING COMPASSION. 
 
 It is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to Me, . . . for 
 My head is filled with dew, My locks with the drops of the night. — Song of 
 
 S. V. 2. 
 
 Men that bear precious gifts for the world do not often need to 
 August . |3gg£g(,|^ [ha^t they shall be accepted, but He comes to it and ' ' prays 
 us with much entreaty that we should receive the gift." We are mostly too 
 proud to sue for love, especially if once the petition has been repulsed, but 
 He asks to be let into your heart because His nature and His name is Love, 
 and, being such. He yearns to be loved by you, and He yearns to bless you. 
 His asking entrance is, then, a revelation of His tenderness, a revelation of 
 His lowhness, and also a revelation of His patience. Repulsed, He con- 
 tinues to plead ; neglected and unanswered, still that uninterrupted craving 
 admission goes on ; Uke Peter at the gate of Mary's house, " He continues 
 knocking." Christ never gives up anybody, Christ never abandons as hope- 
 less the task of drawing any to Himself. We are weary of trying to reclaim 
 the "irreclaimable " people, and we talk very ghbly — some of us— about the 
 "hopeless classes" that are outside the reach of moral influences, and the 
 like. There are no such classes in His vision. With patience of a God, 
 patience that accepts as its own the limits which He set for ours, "until 
 seventy times seven," He will not be put away: but He pleads with you, my 
 brother ! as He did when you were a httle child ; as He did in the hot 
 heyday of your early youth, when passions were strong, and novelty was 
 attractive, and bonds were unwelcomed, and religion seemed too serious for 
 the brightness that was around )^ou ; and as He has done with some of you 
 in the maturity of life, when cares have burdened your hearts, and the 
 deceitfulness of riches and the anxieties of life have made such a din that you 
 could not hear His fingers on the door. He pleads with us all, and after 
 every repulse : " I ^'\\Y yet plead with you, saith the Lord." At your heart, 
 dear friend, by all your mercies and by all your cares, by the sudden impres- 
 sions that have been made upon you, by the quick monitions of conscience, 
 by the emotions of the mind within, by the words of human teachers, by His 
 Book and Gospel, by all life and all nature which are in His hands, and by 
 hidden ways which only a Divine foot can tread. Pie draws nearer to us, 
 pleading with us — all for this, that we will let Him come into our hearts. 
 
 So, dear brother, when He stands before you with the old summons and 
 the old promise on His hps, " Lift up your heads ! O ye gates ! and the 
 King of Glory shall come in," I beseech you fling wide your hearts ; say to 
 Him : " If Thou hast judged me to be faithful, come and abide in my 
 house " ; and He will enter in, and bring with Him His gifts — peace, pardon, 
 purity, and blessedness, and He and you will, even on earth, sit together at 
 His table. 
 
 When after tossing and toil on the midnight sea the morning brings us 
 to the shore, we shall find Him waiting with His welcome and a feast spread 
 and prepared by His own hands, to which He will honour us by bidding 
 us bring the results of the long night of labour ; and so in highest 
 fashion this great word will be fulfilled, and at His table in His Kingdom 
 the King Himself shall sup with us and we with Him. 
 
 2lS 
 
THE RESPONSIBLE POWER OF CHOICE. 
 
 She obeyed not the voice ; she received not correction ; she trusted not in 
 the Lord ; she drew not near to her God. — Zeph. iii. 2. 
 
 . g "If any man will open the door" — the door has no handle on 
 
 the outside. It opens iTom within. Christ knocks ; we open. 
 I do not need to plunge into metaphysics : it is a plain fact that men can, 
 and that men do, reject all this pleading love and meek patience of the 
 beseeching Christ. It is the history of the lives of some of us ; hundreds 
 of times we have done it, and have settled ourselves into the attitude and 
 habit of doing it. Do not be sophisticated out of the recognition of the fact 
 that it is your fault if you are not a Christian by any quasi-philosophical 
 theory about responsibility and the like. "If any man open the door," 
 says Christ. The man has to open it ; and if the man does not open it, it stops 
 shut. 
 
 And how do you open it? If, when He comes to you and says, 
 *' Child ! thou art sinful ; I have died for thee ! trust thyself to Me," thou 
 sayest, "Amen ! Lord, I trust" ; thou hast opened the door. What we 
 call faith — by which we simply mean the yielding of ourselves to Him, 
 and the leaning upon His finished work and His mighty love and His 
 Divine person for our salvation and our purity and our all— is the opening 
 of the door. We open when in faith we yield the will, and say to Him, 
 " Come in, Thou Blessed of the Father ! " 
 
 And oh ! is it not plain that that simple condition is a condition not 
 imposed by any arbitrary action on His part, but a condition indispensable 
 from the very nature of the case ? A man cannot get these Divine blessings 
 if He does not want them. You take a hermetically sealed bottle, and put 
 it into the sea ; it may float about in mid-ocean for a century, surrounded by a 
 shoreless ocean, and it will be as dry and empty inside at the end as it was 
 at the beginning. So you and I float, live, move, and have our being in 
 that great ocean of the Divine love in Christ ; but you can cork up your 
 hearts, and wax them over with an impenetrable cover, through which that 
 grace does not come. And you do do it, some of you. If you are doing 
 that, your heart must remain barred to Flis entrance. There is nothing for 
 it but that if you do not let Christ come in, He must stop outside ; and if He 
 stops outside, there stop out with Him all the blessings that He brings. If 
 you do not believe yourself to be a sinner, you will never feel that you want 
 pardon ; if you do not feel that you want pardon, you will never take Him 
 for your Saviour ; if you do not take Him for your Saviour, you cannot be 
 saved. God cannot do it, and Christ cannot do it. They have done all 
 they could for you ; and He stands before the world and says: "Judge, I pray 
 you, betwixt Me and My vineyard. What could have been done more to it 
 that I have not done in it ? " He has done all He could. Oh, my brother ! 
 open the door, and the great rejoicing tide shall flow in and flood your heart. 
 " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved." 
 
 219 
 
HOST AND GUEST IN ONE. 
 
 He brought fne to the banqueting-house, and his banner over me was 
 love. — Song of S. ii. 4. 
 
 I 
 
 . _ The entrance of Jesus Christ into the opened heart is no mere 
 
 * metaphor, and it is not beweakened down to the preseiice In the 
 spirit of the influence of His truth, or anything of that sort. There is a deep 
 and substantial reality in the presence within a believing heart of Jesus 
 Christ Himself. It is the central gift and promise of the Gospel, " that Christ 
 may dwell in your hearts by faith." The old question that tortured men in 
 early days, "Will God in very deed dwell with men upon the earth?" is 
 answered now ; and we have not only a Christ that was once incarnated in the 
 son of a virgin to look back upon, but we have a Christ who dwells in our 
 human spirits, if we open them by faith for His entrance. He Himself is 
 the greatest of His gifts, and where He comes there spring, at the touch 
 of His foot, all gracious, noble, and good things in the human heart. He 
 never comes empty-handed, but when He enters in He endows the soul with 
 untold riches. 
 
 We have also Christ's presence as a Guest. How wonderful that is! "I 
 will come in and sup with him." All sweet and familiar intercourse may be 
 ours. It is even so that He, the glorious Lord, whose majesty, as revealed 
 to John, prostrated even the disciple, who had leaned on His bosom at 
 supper, as one dead, will bring all these splendours into this poor heart ! 
 He will come, and that as our Guest. What great and wonderful things are 
 contained in that assurance ! Can we present anything to Him that He can 
 partake of ? Yes ! We may give Him our service, and He will take that ; 
 we may give Him our love, and He will regard it as an odour of a sweet 
 smell, and as dainty and delightsome food. 
 
 Christ comes to us not only as a Guest, but also as Host : — " I will sup 
 with him and he %vith Ale.^^ As when they asked Him to the rustic wed- 
 ding at Cana of Galilee, He came as the Guest, but presently He turned the 
 water of earthly felicity into the wine of heavenly gladness, and was Him- 
 self the Provider of the feast. As upon that night at Emmaus, when the 
 two wearied men asked the wearied Companion of their journey to come in 
 and stay with them at their humble meal, and He took His place at the table 
 as an invited Guest, but in a moment assumed the rdle of the Master of the 
 house, and broke the bread and blessed it, so making their gift to Him into 
 His to them. So when He comes into your heart, and you offer Him your 
 poor fare, your loyalty and your love and your faith and your service, He 
 gives you the powers and the resources to love and serve Him ; and sliil more, 
 Ke gives you Himself, the Bread of God that came down from heaven, 
 that your soid may feed upon that, and be satisfied and glad. As when 
 some great prince offers to honour a poor subject with his presence, and let 
 him provide some insignificant portion of the entertainment, whilst all the 
 substantial and costly parts of it come in the retinue of the monarch, from 
 the palace. 
 
 220 
 
CHRIST GLORIFIED IN HIS SAINTS. 
 
 He shall come to be glorified in His saittts. — 2 Thess. i. lO. 
 
 The two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the Apostle's 
 ^ " ' earliest letters, both give very great prominence to the 
 thought of the second coming of our Lord to judgment. In the immediate 
 context we have that coming described, with circumstances of majesty and 
 of terror. He "shall be revealed .... with the angels of His power." 
 " Flaming fire " shall herald His coming ; vengeance shall be in His hands ; 
 punishment shall follow His sentence ; everlasting destruction shall be the 
 issue of evil confronted with " the face of the Lord '" — for so the words in 
 the previous verse, rendered "the presence of the Lord" might more 
 accurately be translated. 
 
 And all these facts and images are, as it were, piled up in one half of the 
 Apostle's sky, as in thunderous lurid masses ; and on the other side there 
 is the pure blue and the peaceful sunshine. For all this terror and 
 destruction, and flashing fire, and punitive vengeance come to pass in the 
 day when " He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be wondered 
 at in all them that believe." 
 
 Christ is glorified in the men who are glorified in Christ. If you look on 
 a couple of verses you will find that the Apostle returns to this thought, 
 and expresses in the clearest fashion the reciprocal character of that 
 "glorifying" of which he has been speaking. "The name of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ," says he, "may be glorified in you, and ye in Him." 
 
 So, then, glorifying has a double meaning. There is a double process 
 involved. It means either "to make glorious" or "to manifest as being 
 glorious." And men are glorified, in the former sense, in Christ, that Christ 
 in them may, in the latter sense, be glorified. He makes them glorious by 
 imparting to them of the lustrous light and flashing beauty of His own 
 perfect character, in order that that light, received into their natures, and 
 streaming out at last conspicuously manifest from their redeemed perfectness, 
 may redound to the praise and the honour, before a whole universe, of 
 Kim who has thus endued their weakness with His own strength, and 
 transmitted their corruptibility into His own immortality. We are glorified 
 in Christ in some partial, and, alas ! sinfully fragmentary manner here ; we 
 shall be so perfectly in that day. And when we are thus glorified in Him, 
 then — wondrous thought ! — even we shall be able to manifest Him as 
 glorious before some gazing eyes, which without us would have seen Him 
 as less fair. Dim, and therefore great and blessed, thoughts about what 
 men may become are involved in such words. The highest end, the great 
 purpose of the Gospel and of all God's dealings with us in Christ Jesus is to 
 make us like our Lord. As we have borne the image of the earthly we 
 shall also bear the image of the heavenly. "We, beholding the glory, are 
 changed into the glory." 
 
 221 
 
"YE ARE MY WITNESSES." 
 
 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself that they themselves also may be 
 sanctified in truth. — ^JoHN xvii. 19. 
 
 . q The glorifyinjT of men in Christ, which is the goal and highest 
 
 " ■ end of Christ's Cross and Passion and of all God's dealings, 
 is accomplished only because Christ dwells in the men whom He glorifies. 
 And as is the Son with the Father, participant of mutual and reciprocal 
 glorification, so is the Christian with Christ, glorified in Him and therefore 
 glorifying Him. 
 
 What may be involved therein of perfect moral purity, of enlarged 
 faculties and powers, of a bodily frame capable of manifesting all the finest 
 issues of a perfect spirit, it is not for us to say. These things are great, 
 being hid<.1en ; and are hidden because they are great. But whatever may 
 be the lofty heights of Christlikeness to which we shall attain, all shall 
 come from the indwelling Lord who fills us with His own Spirit. 
 
 And then, according to this great teaching, this glorified humanity, 
 perfected and separated from all imperfection, and helped into all sym- 
 metrical unfolding of dormant possibilities, shall be the highest glory of 
 Christ even in that day when He comes in His glory and sits upon the 
 throne of His glory with His holy angels with Him. One would have 
 thought that if the Apostle wanted to speak of the glorifying of Jesus Christ, 
 he would have pointed to the Great White Throne, His majestic Divinity, 
 the solemnities of His judicial office ; but he passes by all these, and says, 
 " Nay ! the highest glory of the Christ lies here, in the men whom He has 
 made to share His own nature." 
 
 The artist is known by his work. You stand in front of some great 
 picture, or you listen to some great symphony, or you read some great 
 book, and you say, " This is the glory of Ratfaelle, Beethoven, Shakespeare." 
 Christ points to His saints, and He says, " Behold My handiwork ! Ye 
 are My witnesses. This is what I can do." 
 
 But tne relation between Christ and His saints is far deeper and more 
 intimate than simply the relation between the artist and his work ; for all 
 the flashing light of moral beauty, of intellectual perfectness which the 
 Christian man can hope to receive in the future is but the light of the Christ 
 that dwells in them, "and of whose fulness all they have received." 
 Like some poor vapour, in itself white and colourless, which lies in the 
 eastern sky there, and as the sun rises is flushed up into a miracle of rosy 
 beauty, because it has caught the light amongst its flaming threads and 
 vaporous substance, so we, in ourselves pale, ghostly, colourless as the 
 mountains when the Alpine snow passes oft" them, being recipient of an 
 indwelling Christ, shall blush and flame in beauty. "Then shall the 
 righteous blaze forth like the sun in My Father's Kingdom." Or, riilher, 
 they are not suns shining by their own light, but moons reflecting the light 
 of Christ, who is their Light. 
 
 And perchance some eyes, incapable of beholding the sun, may be aljle 
 to look undazzled upon the sunshine in the cloud, and some eyes that could 
 not discern the glory of Christ as it shines in His face, as the sun shineth 
 in its strength, may not be too weak to behold and delight in the light as it 
 is reflected from the face of His servants. At all events, He shall come to 
 be gloritied in the saints whom He has made glorious. 
 
 222 
 
MIRACLES OF GRACE. 
 
 It shall be to them a renown, in the day that I shall be glorified. — 
 EzEK. xxxix. 13. 
 
 The transformation of men is the great miracle and marvel of 
 _u^ . (^|^j.jg|.'g power. "He shall come to be admired" — which 
 word is employed in its old English signification, "to be wondered at" — 
 "in all them that believe." So fair and lovely is He that He needs but 
 to be recognised for what He is in order to be glorified. So great and 
 stupendous are His operations in redeeming love that they need but to 
 be beheld to be the object of wonder. " His name shall be called 
 Wonderful." And wonderfully the energy of His redeeming and sanctifying 
 grace shall then have wrought itself out to its legitimate end. There you 
 get the crowning marvel of marvels, and the highest 'of miracles. He did 
 wonderful works upon earth which we rightly call miraculous — things to be 
 wondered at ; but the highest of all His wonders is the wonder that takes 
 such material as you and me, and by such a process and on such conditions, 
 simply because we trust Him, evolves such marvellous forms of beauty and 
 perfectness from us. " He is to be wondered at in all them that believe." 
 
 Such results from such material ! Chemists tell us that the black bit of 
 coal in your grate and the diamond on your finger are varying forms of the 
 one substance. What about a power that shall take all the black coals in 
 the world and transmute them into flashing diamonds, prismatic with the 
 reflected light that comes from His face and made gems on His strong right 
 hand ? The universe shall wonder at such results from such material, at 
 the process by which they were accomplished, wondering at the depth of 
 His pity, revealed all the more pathetically now from the Great White 
 Throne, which casts such a light on the Cross of Calvary ; wondering at the 
 long, weary path which He who is now declared to be the Judge humbled 
 Himself to travel in the quest of these poor sinful souls whom He has thus 
 redeemed and glorified. The miracle of miracles is redeeming love ; and 
 the high-water mark of Christ's wonders is touched in this fact, that out of 
 men He makes saints, and out of saints He makes perfect likenesses of 
 Himself. 
 
 There will be spectators of this glory. To whomsoever in the whole 
 universe Christ at that Great Day shall be manifested, to them, whoever 
 they be, will His glory, in His glorified saints, be a revelation beyond what 
 they have known before. " Every eye shall see Him." And whatsoever 
 ej'es look upon Him, then on His throne, they shall behold the attendant 
 courtiers and the assessors of His judgment, and see in them the manifestation 
 of His own lustrous light. 
 
 We need not speculate ; it is better not to enter into details. But this, 
 at least, is clear, that that solemn winding up of the long, mysterious, sad, 
 blood- and tear-stained history of man upon the earth is to be an object of 
 interest and a higher revelation of God to other creatures than those that 
 dwell upon the earth ; and we may well believe that for that moment, at all 
 events, the centre of the universe, which draws the thoughts of all thinking, 
 and the eyes of all seeing, creatures to it shall be that valley of judgment 
 wherein sits the Man Christ and judges men, and round Him the flashing 
 reflectors of His glory in the person of His saints. 
 
 223 
 
FAITH THE PATH TO GLORY. 
 
 He shall come , , . to be marvelled at in all thetn that believed. — 
 2 Thess. i. lo. 
 
 That is to say, they who on earth were His, consecrated and 
 yff"8 . jjg^roted to Him, and in some humble measure partaking even 
 here of His reflected beauty and imparted righteousness, — these are they 
 in whom He shall be glorified. They who "believed" : poor, trembling, 
 struggling, fainting souls, that here on earth, in the midst of many doubts 
 and temptations, clasped His hand ; and howsoever tremulously, yet truly 
 put their trust in Him, these are they in whom He shall *' be wondered at." 
 The simple act of faith knits us to the Lord. If we trust Him, He comes 
 into our hearts here, and begins to purify us and to make us like Himself; 
 and, if that be so, and we keep hold of Him, we shall finally share in His 
 glory. 
 
 What a hope, what an encouragement, what a stimulus and exhortation 
 to humble and timorous souls there is in that great word, "In all them 
 that beheved" ! Howsoever imperfect, still they shall be kept by the 
 power of God unto that final salvation. And when He comes in His glory, 
 not one shall be wanting that put their trust in Him. It will take them all, 
 each in his several way reflecting it, to set forth adequately the glory. As 
 many diamonds round a central light, which from each facet give off a 
 several ray and a definite colour, so all that circle round Christ, and par- 
 taking of His glory, will each receive it, transmit it, and so manifest it 
 in a different fashion. And it needs the innumerable company of the 
 redeemed, each a several perfectness, to set forth all the fulness of the 
 Christ that dwells in us. 
 
 So, beginning with simple faith in Him, partially receiving the beauty 
 of His transforming Spirit, seeking here on earth by assimilation to the 
 Master in some humble measure to adorn the doctrine and to glorify 
 the Christ, we may hope that each blackness shall be all changed into 
 brightness, our limitations done away with, our weakness lifted into 
 rejoicing strength ; and that we shall be like Him, seeing Him as He is, 
 and, glorified in Him, shall glorify Him before the universe. 
 
 You and I will be there. Choose whether He shall be revealed and the 
 light of His face be to you like a sword whose flashing edge means destruc- 
 tion, or whether the light of His face shall fall upon your heart, because you 
 love Him and trust Him, like the sunshine on the Alpine snow, lifting it 
 to a more lustrous whiteness, and tinging it with an ethereal hue of more 
 than earthly beauty, which no other power but an indwelling Christ can 
 give. He shall come with "everlasting destruction from the face " ; and 
 " He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in all 
 them that believed." Choose which of the two shall be your portion in 
 that day. 
 
 224 
 
CITIZENSHIP IN THE HEAVENS. 
 
 Our citizenship is in heaven ; from whence also we wait for a Saviour, 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. — Phil. iii. 20. 
 
 August 12 T^^^ figure of citizenship is, of course, originally drawn from 
 the registers of the triLes of Israel. In that use, tliough not 
 without a glance at some higher meaning, it appears in the Old Testament, 
 where we read of " those who are written among them living in Jerusalem " ; 
 or "are written in the writing of the house of Israel." And the thought 
 that comes out of this great metaphor is that all of us, if we are Christian 
 people, belong to another polity, another order of things than that in which 
 our outward lives are spent. And the plain, practical conclusion that comes 
 from it is, cultivate the sense of belonging to another order. Just as 
 it swelled the heart of a Macedonian Philippian with pride, when he 
 thought that he did not belong to the semi-barbarous people round about 
 him, but that his name was written in the books that lay in the Capitol of 
 Rome, so should we cultivate that sense of belonging to another order. It 
 will make our work here none the worse, but it will fill our lives with the 
 sense of nobler affinities, and point our eftbrts to grander work than any that 
 belongs to "the things that are seen and temporal." Just as the little 
 groups of Enghshmen in treaty-ports own no allegiance to the laws of the 
 country in which they live, but are governed by English statutes, so we have 
 to take our orders from headquarters to which we have to report. Men in 
 our Colonies get their instructions from Downing-street, The officials there, 
 appointed by the Home Government, think more of what they will say 
 about them at Westminster than of what they say about them at ^lelbourne. 
 So we are citizens of another country, and have to obey the laws of our own 
 kingdom, and not those of the soil on which we dwell. Never mind about 
 the opinions of men, the battlements of the people in the land you live in. 
 To us, the main thing is that we be acceptable, well-pleasing unto Him. 
 Are you solitary ? Cultivate the sense of, in your solitude, being a member 
 of a great community that stretches through all the ages, and binds into one 
 the inhabitants of eternity and of time. 
 
 Remember that this citizensliip in the heavens is the highest honour that 
 can be conferred upon a man. The patricians of Venice used to have their 
 names inscribed upon what was called the "golden book " that was kept in 
 the Doge's palace. If our names are written in the book of gold in the 
 heavens, then we have higher dignities than any that belong to the fleeting 
 chronicles of this passing, vain world- So we can accept with equanimity 
 evil report or good report, and can acquiesce in a wholesome obscurity, and 
 be careless though our names appear on no human records and fill no 
 trumpet of fame blown by earthly cheeks. Intellectual power, wealth, 
 gratified ambition, and all the other things that men set before them are 
 small indeed compared with the honour, with the blessedness, with the 
 repose and satisfaction that attend the conscious possession of citizenship in 
 the heavens. Let us lay to heart the great words of the Master, which put 
 a cooling hand on all the feverish ambitions of earth : " In this rejoice, not 
 that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice that your names are 
 written in Heaven." 
 
 225 Q 
 
NAMES IN THE BOOK OF LIFE. 
 
 The rest of my fellow-workers , whose names are in the Book of Life, — 
 Phil. iv. 3. 
 
 Paul was as gentle as he was strong. Winsome courtesy and 
 Au^st 13. 
 
 delicate considerateness lay in his character, in beautiful union 
 
 with fiery impetuosity and undaunted tenacity of conviction. We have 
 
 here a remarkable instance of his quick apprehension of the possible efifects 
 
 of his words, and of his nervous anxiety not to wound even unreasonable 
 
 susceptibilities. 
 
 He had had occasion to mention three of his fellow-workers, and he 
 wishes to associate with them others whom he does not purpose to name. 
 Lest any of these should be ofifended by the omission, he soothes them with 
 this graceful, half-apologetic reminder that their names are inscribed on a 
 better page than his. It is as if he had said, "Do not mind though I 
 do not mention you individually. You can well afford to be anonymous 
 in my letter since your names are inscribed in the Book of Life." 
 
 There is a consolation for obscure good people, who need not expect 
 to live except in two or three loving hearts ; and whose names will only be 
 preserved on mouldering tombstones, that will convey no idea to the reader. 
 We may well dispense with other commemoration if we have this. 
 
 It is hard to realise the essentially individualising and isolating character 
 of our relation to Jesus Christ. But we shall never come to the heart of the 
 blessedness and the power of His Gospel unless we translate all " us "-es and 
 " everyones " and " worlds " in Scripture into " I " and " me," and can say 
 not only He gives Himself to be " the propitiation for the sins of the whole 
 world," but " He loved me and gave Himself for me.''' The same individu- 
 ilising love which is manifested in that mighty universal Atonement, if we 
 rightly understand it, is manifested in all His dealings with us. One by one 
 we come under His notice ; the Shepherd tells His sheep singly as they pass 
 out through the gate or into the fold. He knows them all by name. "I 
 have called thee by INIy name ; thou art Mine." 
 
 Lift up your eyes and behold who made all these — the countless host of 
 the nightly stars. The nebulae to our eyes are blazing suns and planets to 
 His. " He telleth the number of the stars ; He calleth them all by name by 
 the greatness of His power, for that He is strong in might ; not one faileth." 
 So we may nestle in the protection of His hand, sure of a separate place in 
 His knowledge and His heart. 
 
 226 
 
DIVINE INDIVIDUALISING KNOWLEDGE AND CARE. 
 
 Fear not: I have redeemed thee ; I have called thee by thy name ; thou art 
 Mine. — Isa. xliii. I. 
 
 . ^ ,. In the Old Testament the Book of Life is called " Thy Book," 
 Augnst 14. ^ ' 
 
 in the New it is called " the Lamb's Book." That is of a piece 
 
 with the whole relation of the New to the Old, and of Jesus Christ, the 
 
 Incarnate Word and Manifester of God, to the Jehovah revealed in former 
 
 ages. For, unconditionally, and without thought of irreverence or idolatry, 
 
 the New Testament lifts over bodily, and confers upon Jesus Christ the 
 
 attributes which the Old jealously preserved as belonging only to Jehovah. 
 
 And thus Christ, the Manifester of God, and the Mediator to us of all 
 
 Divine powers and blessings, takes the book and makes the entries in it. 
 
 Each man of us, as in your ledgers, has a page to himself. His account is 
 
 opened, and is not confused with other entries. There is individualising 
 
 love and care, and, as the basis of both, individualising knowledge. My 
 
 name, the expression of my individual being, stands there. Christ does not 
 
 deal with me as one of a crowd, nor fling out blessings broadcast, that I may 
 
 grasp them in the midst of a multitude if I choose to put out a hand, but 
 
 He deals with each of us singly, as if there were not any beings in the world 
 
 but He and I, our two selves, all alone. 
 
 Deliverance and security are the results of that individualising care. In 
 one of the Old Testament instances of the use of this metaphor we read that, 
 in the great day of calamity and sorrow, "Thy people shall be delivered, 
 even every one that is written in Thy Bock." So we need not dread any- 
 thing if our names are there. The sleepless King will read the Book, and 
 will never forget, nor forget to help and succour, His poor servants. 
 
 But there are two other variations of this thought in the Old Testament 
 even more tenderly suggestive of that individualising care and strong sufficient 
 love than the emblem of " the Book." We read that when, in the exercise 
 of his official functions, the high priest passed into the tabernacle, he wore 
 upon his breast, near the seat of personality and the home of love, the names 
 of the tribes graven, and that the same names were written on his shoulders, 
 as if guiding the exercise of his power. So we may think of ourselves as 
 lying near the beatings of His heart, and as individually the objects of the 
 v/ork of His almighty arm. Nor is this alL For there is yet another and 
 still tenderer application of the figure, when we read of the Divine voice as 
 saying to Israel, "I have graven thee on the palms of My hands." The 
 name of each who loves and trusts and serves is written there — printed deep 
 in the flesh of the Sovereign Christ. We bear in our bodies the marks, the 
 stig77iaia, that tell whose slaves we are — "the marks of the Lord Jesus." 
 And He bears in His body the marks that tell who His servants are. 
 
 227 
 
THE BOOK OF LIFE. 
 
 A book of remembrance was written before Him, for them, that feared the 
 Lord, and that thought upon His Name, — Mal. iii. l6. 
 
 The "Book of Life," it is called in the New Testament. Its 
 ^ ^ ■ designation in the Old might as well be translated " the book 
 of living " as " the book of life." It is a register of the men who are truly 
 alive. 
 
 Now, that is but an imaginative way of putting the commonplace of the 
 New Testament, that anything which is worth calling life comes to us, not 
 by creation or physical generation, but by being born again through faith in 
 Jesus Christ, and by receiving into our else dead spirits the life which He 
 bestows upon all them that trust Him. In the New Testament "life" is 
 far more than "being"; far more than physical existence; removed by a 
 whole world from these lower conceptions, and finding its complete explana- 
 tion only in the fact that the soul which is knit to God by conscious surrender, 
 love, aspiration, and obedience, is the only soul that really lives. All else 
 is death — death ! He " that liveth in pleasure is dead while he liveth." 
 The ghastly imagination of one of our poets, of the dead man standing on 
 the deck pulling at the ropes by the side of the living, is true in a very deep 
 sense. In spite of all the feverish activities, the manifold vitalities, of 
 practical and intellectual life in the world, the deepest, truest life of every 
 man who is parted from God by alienation of will, by indifference, and 
 neglect of love, lies sheeted and sepulchred in the depths of his own heart. 
 Brother, there is no life worth calling life, none to which that august name 
 can without degradation be applied, except the complete life of body, soul, 
 and spirit, in lowly obedience to God in Christ. The deepest meaning of 
 the work of the Saviour is that He comes into a dead world, and breathes 
 into the bones — very many and very dry— the breath of His own life. 
 Christ has died for us ; Christ will live in us if we will ; and, unless He 
 does, we are twice dead. 
 
 Do not put away that thought as if it were a mere pulpit metaphor. It 
 is a metaphor, but yet in the metaphor there lies this deepest truth, which 
 concerns us all, that only he is truly himself, and lives the highest, best, and 
 noblest life that is possible for him, who is united to Jesus Christ, and 
 drawing from Christ his own life. " He that hath the Son hath life : he 
 that hath not the Son hath not life." Either my name and yours are written 
 ' in the Book of Life, or they are written in the register of a cemetery. We 
 have to make our choice which. 
 
 228 
 
"IS MY NAME WRITTEN THERE?" 
 
 Another book was opened, which is the Book of Life, — Rev. xx. 12. 
 
 We read, in the highly imaginative picture of the final judg;- 
 "^'^^ ' raent, that when the thrones are set, two books are opened, one 
 the Book of Life, the other the book in which are writcen the deeds of men, 
 and that by these two books men are judged. There is a judgment by 
 conduct. There is also a judgment by the Book of Life, That is to say, 
 the question at last comes to be, " Is this man's name written in that book ? " 
 Is he a citizen of the kingdom, and therefore capable of entering into it? 
 Has he the life from Christ in his heart ? Or, in other words, the question 
 is, first, Has the man who stands at the bar faith in Jesus Christ ? and, 
 second, Has he proved that his faith is genuine and real by the course of his 
 earthly conduct ? These are the books from which the judgment is made. 
 We read further in that blessed vision — the vision of the City of God " that 
 came down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband " — that only 
 they enter in there who are "written in the Lamb's Book of Life." Only 
 citizens are capable of entrance into the city ; aliens are necessarily shut 
 out. The Lord, when He writeth up His people, shall count that this man 
 was born there, though he never trod its streets while on earth, and therefore 
 can enter into his native home. What need we care what other people may 
 think about us, or whether the "hollow wraith of dying fame" that comes 
 like a nimbus round some men may fade wholly or no, so long as we may 
 be sure of acknowledgment and praise from Him from whom acknowledgment 
 and praise are precious indeed. 
 
 Remember that names can be blotted out of the book. The metaphor 
 has often been pressed into the service of a doctrine of unconditional and 
 irreversible predestination. But, rightly looked at, it points in the opposite 
 direction. Remember Moses's agonised cry, "Blot me out of Thy book," 
 and the Divine answer, " Him that sinneth against Me, his name will I blot 
 out of My book." And remember that it is only to " him that overcometh " 
 that the promise is made, " I will not blot him out." We are made par- 
 takers of Christ if we "hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto 
 the end." 
 
 Remember that it depends upon ourselves whether our names are there 
 or not. John Buuyan describes the armed man who came up to the table 
 where the man with the book and the inkhorn was seated, and said, " Set 
 down my name." And you and I may do that. If we cast ourselves on 
 Jesus Christ, and yield our wills to be guided by Him, and give our lives 
 for His service, then He will write our names in His book. If we trust 
 Him we shall be citizens of the City of God, shall be filled with the life of 
 Christ, shall be objects of an individualising love and care, shall be accepted 
 in that day, and shall enter in through the gates into the city. "They that 
 forsake Me shall be written on the earth," and there wiped out as are the 
 children's scribbles on the sand when the ocean comes up. They that trust 
 in Jesus Christ shall have their names written in the Book of Life, graven 
 on the High Priest's breastplate, and insci'ibed on His mighty hand and His 
 faithful heart. 
 
 229 
 
PERSECUTION FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. 
 
 If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you ; if they kept My word, 
 they will keep yours also. — John xv. 20. 
 
 We may fairly infer that in the reception a disciple of Christ 
 August 17. 
 
 may expect from the world, we have one of the points in 
 
 which, very specially, the likeness of a true disciple to the Master will be 
 
 brought out. If they have called Him Beelzebub, they will not grace us 
 
 with the fine names of approbation and flattery. " If they have not 
 
 received My sayings," they will turn a deaf ear to yours. " If ye were of 
 
 the world, the world would love its own." Now, let me say a plain word 
 
 about this matter. That law is in a fashion abrogated now. Nineteen 
 
 centuries have not passed in vain. The "world" — meaning thereby the 
 
 aggregate of godless men, " society," to use a modern phrase— has been 
 
 largely leavened by Christian principles and sentiment. An atmosphere 
 
 has been created, else all these centuries would have passed in vain. But 
 
 whilst that is quite true, and I suppose in lands like ours we do not 
 
 need to be afraid of the rougher forms of the world's enmity, it does not 
 
 seem to me that in substance this law has ceased to operate, nor will it, 
 
 until either the Church has become wholly worldly — which, thank God ! it 
 
 never will do — or until the world has become wholly Christ's. There are 
 
 plenty of evidences round us that it still remains true that an out-and-out 
 
 consistency of Christian conduct shall be unwelcome to the mass of society. 
 
 You have only to look at the bitter antagonism to aggressive Christianity 
 
 which is manifested in much of our popular literature to see that. They 
 
 used to burn us ; they only sneer at us nowadays ; but the sentiment is 
 
 pretty much the same. In your Christian activity, touch the social sins of 
 
 this generation, and you will see the claws come out fast enough, and 
 
 scratch deep enough, for all the velvet skin and the purring that sometimes 
 
 is heard. Let a man live the life, and shape himself .ifter Christ's pattern, 
 
 and he will not miss having to bear his share of the treatment given to his 
 
 Master. If we take Him for our pattern, and try to be like Him, we have 
 
 to make up our minds to "go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing 
 
 His reproach," and to live a godly life amidst ungodly people ; and that 
 
 will never be done without some experience of the deep-seated antagonism 
 
 l>etween the true disciple and the world. 
 
 230 
 
THE DISCIPLE AS HIS LORD. 
 
 The Lord ivill perfect, that which concerneth me. — Psalm cxxxviii. 8. 
 It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as 
 his lord. — Matt. x. 25. 
 
 . . ,0 The disciple's schooling is not ended until he has learned all 
 that the master can teach ; and the duty 01 the servant is not 
 performed until he has done all that the lord commands. There is no 
 adequate end to the experiences of the imperfect Christian life on earth, 
 except that of being wholly assimilated to the character of Jesus Christ, 
 So much accomplished, and so much unaccomphshed — the contradiction 
 between the two halves cannot continue for ever. The likeness of Jesus 
 Christ, which is imperfectly realised in a man here, has in it " the promise 
 and the potency " of a perfect conformity hereafter. Michael Angelo left 
 several of his works with a part finished and polished to the last point of 
 statuesque perfection, and the rest rough marble, with the marks of a tool 
 upon it here and there. The face or the form was half-extricated from, and 
 half still embedded in, the rude and formless block. You can see in Eaalbec 
 a pillar partially rounded and hewn out of the rock, and the rest of it still 
 undelivered from its environment. So the Christian life here, in its incom- 
 pleteness, prophesies of that which is to come. For if Christ is the Worker, 
 then His work must correspond to His own perfection. If He is our 
 Master, then He will not cease Plis teaching until we have learned all His 
 ** treasures of wisdom and knowledge." If He is our Lord, then we shall 
 be perfectly like Himself. Never shall it be said of this man that "he 
 began to build, and was not able to finish." " The Lord will perfect that 
 which concerneth thee." 
 
 "It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master." Is it not 
 enough for the heart, enough to know for the mind, amid all the dimness 
 and the darkness of that future ? We know not what lies beyond the pass : 
 the fair lands on the other side the mountains are all unseen ; but, as good 
 old Richard Baxter says in his hymn — 
 
 "It is erouiih that Christ knows all, 
 And 1 shall be like Him." 
 
 If that likeness is to be completed hereafter, it must be begun here. What- 
 ever speculations men may indulge in about the efifect of passing beyond 
 the vale, there is nothing either in what we know of the phenomenon of 
 death, nor in what Scripture plainly teaches, to warrant the belief that the 
 accident of dying shall revolutionise a man's attitude to Jesus Christ. And 
 it is a desperate risk to run, that we should trust to begin beyond the grave 
 a life dead against the life that was lived here. We do know that, if imper- 
 fectly, we try to follow Christ on earth, there we shall follow the Lamb 
 whithersoever He goeth. We do know that if here we enter ourselves in 
 Christ's school, there we shall get our remove to a higher form. We do 
 know that if here the likeness begins, there it shall be perfected. As some 
 poor bit of glass, smitten by a sunbeam, blazes with the light which it 
 reflects, so, when we behold His countenance "as the sun shineth in his 
 strength," we, too, " shall shine like the sun in the Heavenly Father's 
 Kingdom." 
 
 So the question comes to be, "Am I Christ's scholar? Have I begun 
 to be like Him ? " Then I have the beginnings of peace and of heart- 
 satisfaction. To be like Christ is enough for a man ; nothing less is. 
 
 2-^1 
 
"IT IS THE LORD." 
 
 That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter^ It is the 
 Lord. — John xxi. 7. 
 
 A 1 19 ^^o^^ ^^^ always, as in that morning twilight on the Galilean 
 ' lake, Christ comes to men. Everywhere He is present, every- 
 where revealing Himself. Now, as then, our eyes are holclen by our own 
 fault, so that we recognise not the merciful Presence which is all around us. 
 Now, as then, it is they who are nearest to Christ by love who see Him 
 first. Now, as then, they who are nearest to Him by love are so because 
 He loves them, and because they know and believe the love which He has 
 to them. Only they who love see Christ. John, the Apos'Je of Love, 
 knew Him first. In religious matters love is the foundation of knowledge. 
 There is no way of knowing a person except love. A man cannot argue 
 his v\^ay into knowing Christ No skill in drawing inferences will avail 
 him there. The treasures of wisdom — earthly wisdom — are all powerless 
 in that region. Man's understanding and natural capacity — let it keep 
 itself within its own limits and region, and it is strong and good ; but in the 
 region of acquaintance with God and Christ, the wisdom of this world is 
 foolishness, and man's understanding is not the organ by which he can 
 know Christ. Oh no ! there is a better way than that : "He that loveth 
 not knoweth not God, for God is love." As it is, in feebler measure, with 
 regard to our personal acquaintance with one another, where it is not so 
 much the power of the understanding, or the quickness of the perception, 
 or the talent and genius of a man, that make the foundation of his know- 
 ledge of his friend, as the force of his sympathy and the depth of his 
 affection ; so — with the necessary modification arising from the transference 
 from earthly acquaintance to the great Friend and Lover of our souls in 
 heaven — so is it witli regard to our knowledge of Christ. Love will trace 
 Him everywhere. Love's quick eye pierces through disguises impenetrable 
 to a colder scrutiny. Love has in it a longing for His presence which 
 makes us eager and quick to mark the lightest sign that He for whom it 
 longs is near, as the footstep of some dear one is heard by the sharp ear of 
 affection long before any sound breaks the sU':nce to those around. Love 
 to Him strips from our eyes the fdm that self and sin, sense and custom, 
 have drawn over them. It is these which hide Him from us. It is because 
 men are so indifferent to, so forgetful of, their best Friend that they fail to 
 behold Him. "It is the Lord'' is written large and plain on all things, 
 but, like the great letters on a map, they are so obvious, and fill so wide a 
 space, that they are not seen. They who love Him know Him, and they 
 who know Him love Him. The true eye-salve for our blinded eyes is 
 applied when we have turned with our hearts to Christ. The simple might 
 of faithful love opens them to behold a more glorious vision than the 
 mountain full of chariots of fire, which once flamed before the prophet's 
 servant of old — even the august and ever-present form of the Lord of life, 
 the Lord of history, the Lord of providence. When they who love Jesus 
 turn to see the voice that speaks with them, they ever behold the Son 
 of man in His glory ; and where others see but the dim beach and a 
 mysterious stranger, it is to their lips that the glad cr>' first comes, "It 
 is the Lord ! " 
 
 232 
 
A iNEW NAME AND A NEW NATURE. 
 
 If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature : the old things are passed 
 away ; behold^ they are become new. — 2 COR. v. 17. 
 
 A 1 20 J^^u^ Christ gave the Apostle, whom He called to Himself in 
 
 ^^ ' the early days, a new name, in order to prophesy the change 
 which, by the discipline of sorrow and the communication of the grace of 
 God, should pass over Simon Barjona, making him into a Peter, the Man 
 of Rock. With characteristic independence, Saul chooses for himself a 
 new name, which shall express the change that he feels has passed over his 
 inmost being. True, he does not assume it at his conversion, but that is 
 no reason why we should not believe that he assumes it because he is 
 beginning to understand what it is that has happened to him at his 
 conversion. 
 
 The central heart of Christianity is the possession of a new life, 
 communicated to us through faith in that Son of God who is the Lord 
 of the Spirit. Wheresoever there is a true faith, there is a new nature. 
 
 Opinions may play upon the surface of a man's soul, like the moonbeams 
 on the silver sea, without raising its temperature one degree or sending a 
 single beam into its dark caverns. And that is the sort of Christianity that 
 satisfies a great many of you — a Christianity of opinion, a Christianity of 
 surface creed, a Christianity which at the best slightly modifies some of your 
 outward actions, but leaves the whole inner man unchanged. 
 
 Paul's Christianity meant a radical change in his whole nature. He went 
 out of Jerusalem a persecutor ; he came into Damascus a Christian. He 
 rode out of Jerusalem hating, loathing, despising Jesus Christ ; he groped 
 his way into Damascus broken, bruised, clinging contrite to His feet, and 
 clasping His Cross as his only hope. He went out proud, self-reliant, 
 pluming himself upon his many prerogatives, his blue blood, his pure 
 descent, his Rabbinical knowledge, his pharisaical training, his externally 
 religious earnestness, his pure morality ; he rode into Damascus blind in 
 the eyes, but seeing in the soul, and discerning that all these things were, 
 as he says in his strong vehement way, " but dung " in comparison with his 
 winning Christ. And his theory of conversion, which he preaches in all 
 his epistles, is but the generalisation of his own personal experience, which 
 suddenly, and in a moment, smote his old self to shivers, and raised up a 
 new life, with new tastes, views, tendencies, aspirations, with new allegiance 
 to a new King. Such changes, so sudden, so revolutionary, cannot be 
 expected often to take place amongst people who, like us, have been listening 
 to Christian teaching all our lives. But unless there be this infusion of a 
 new life into men's spirits which shall make them love and long and aspire 
 after new things that once they did not care for, I know not why we should 
 speak of them as being Christians at all. The transition is described by 
 Paul as "passing from death unto life." That cannot be a surface thing. 
 A change which needs a new name must be a profound change. Has our 
 Christianity revolutionised our nature in any such fashion ? It is easy to be 
 a Christian after the superficial fashion which passes muster with so many of 
 us. A verbal acknowledgment of belief in truths which we never think 
 about, a purely external performance of acts of worship, a subscription or 
 two winged by no sympathy, and a fairly respectable life between the cloak 
 of which all evil may burrow undetected — make the Christianity of thousands. 
 Paul's Christianity transformed him ; does yours transform you ? If it dees 
 not, are you quite sure that it is Christianity at all ? 
 
 a33 
 
SAUL AND PAUL. 
 Saulf who t's also called Paul, /Hied with the Holy Ghost. — AcTS xiii. 9. 
 
 . g. Paul is a Roman name. He strips himself of his Jewish 
 
 ° ' connections and relationships. His fellow-countrymen who 
 
 lived amongst the Gentiles were in the h?.bit of doing the same thing ; but 
 they carried boi/i their names — their Jewish for use amongst their own 
 people, their Gentile one for use amongst Gentiles. Paul seems to have 
 altogether disused his old name of Saul. It was almost equi\.'ilent to 
 seceding from Judaism. It is like the acts of the renegades one sometimes 
 hears of, who are found by some travellers dressed in turban and flowing 
 robes, and bearing some Turkish name ; or like some English sailor, lost 
 to home and kindred, who deserts his ship in some island of the Pacific, 
 and drops his English name for some barbarous title, in token that he has 
 given up his faith and his nationality. 
 
 The spirit which led the Apostle to change the name of Saul, with its 
 memories of the royal dignity which, in the person of its great wearer, 
 had honoured his tribe, for a Roman name is the same which he formally 
 announces as a deliberately adopted law of his life: "To them that are 
 without law I became as without law, .... that I might gain them that 
 
 are without law I am made all things to all men, that I might by 
 
 all means save some." 
 
 It is the very inmost principle of the Gospsl. The principle that 
 influenced the servant in this comparatively little matter is the principle 
 that influenced the Master in the mightiest of all events. " He who was 
 in the form of God, and thought not equality with God a thing to be eagerly 
 snatched at, made Himself of no reputation, and was found in fashion as a 
 man and in form as a servant, and became obedient unto death." " For- 
 asmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood. He Himself 
 likewise took part of the same " ; and the mystery of incarnation was 
 transacted, because when the Divine would help men, the only way by 
 which the infinite love could reach this end was that the Divine should 
 become man; identifying Himself with those whom He would help, and 
 stooping to the level of the humanity that He would lift. 
 
 Sympathy is the parent of all wise counsel, because it is the parent of 
 all true understanding of our brethren's wants ; sympathy is the only thing 
 to which people will listen ; sympathy is the only disposition correspondent 
 to the message that we Christians are entrusted with. For a Christian man to 
 carry the Gospel of infinite condescension to his fellows in a spirit other than 
 that of the Master, and the Gospel which He speaks, is an anomaly and a 
 contradiction. 
 
 You remember the old story of some heroic missionary or other that 
 wanted to carry the Gospel of Jrsus Christ amongst captives, and as there 
 was no other way of reaching them, he let himself be sold for a slave, and 
 put out his hands to have the manacles fastened upon them. It is the 
 law for all (. hristian service : become like them if you will help them. 
 "To the weak as weak, all things to all men, that we might by all means 
 save some." And, my brother, there was no obligation on Paul's part to 
 do Christian work which does not lie on you. 
 
 234 
 
MEMORIALS OF VICTORY. 
 
 Ye are our glory and our joy, — i Thess. ii. 20* 
 
 f 22 P-'^Ul's name was that of his first convert. He takes it, as I 
 ^" ' suppose, because it seemed to him such a blessed thing that at 
 the very moment when he began to sow, God helped him to reap. He 
 had gone out to his work, no doubt, with much trembling, with weakness 
 and fear. And lo ! here, at once, the fields were white already to the 
 harvest. 
 
 Great conquerors have been named from their victories : Africanus, 
 Germanicus, Nelson of the Nile, Napier of Magdala, and the like. Paul 
 names himself from the first victory that God gave him to win ; and so, 
 as it were, carries ever at his breast a memorial of the wonder that through 
 him it had been given to preach, and that not without success, amongst 
 the Gentiles " the unsearchable riches of Christ." 
 
 That is to say, this man Paul thought of it as his highest honour, 
 and the thing best worthy to be remembered about his life, that God had 
 helped him to help his brethren to know the common Master. Is that 
 your idea of the best thing about a life ? What would you like to have for 
 an epitaph on your grave, professing Christian? " He was rich ; he made 
 a big business." " Pie was famous ; he wrote books." " He was happy 
 and fortunate." Or, "He turned many to righteousness"? "This man 
 flung away his literary tastes, his home joys, and his personal ambition, 
 and chose as that for which he would live, and by which he would fain be 
 remembered, that he should bring dark hearts to the light in which he and 
 they together walked " ? 
 
 His name, in its commemoration of his first success, would act as a 
 stimulus to service and to hope. No doubt the Apostle, like the rest of us, 
 had liis times of indolence and languor, and his times of despondency when 
 he seemed to have laboured in vain and spent his strength for nought. 
 He had but to name himself to find the antidote to both the one and the 
 other, and m the remembrance of the past to find a stimulus for service for 
 the future, and a stimulus for hope for the time to come. His first convert 
 was to him the first drop that predicts the shower, the first primrose that 
 prophesies the wealth of yellow blossoms and downy green leaves that 
 will fill the woods in a day or two. The first convert " bears in his hand 
 a glass which showed many more." Look at the workmen in the streets 
 trying to get up a piece of the roadway. How difficult it is to lever out 
 the first paving-stone from the compacted mass ! But when once it has 
 been withdrawn, the rest is comparatively easy. We can understand Paul's 
 triumph and joy over this first stone which he had worked out of the 
 strongly cemented v/all and barrier of heathenism ; and his conviction that 
 having thus made a breach, if it were but big enough to get the end of his 
 lever in, the fall of the whole was only a question of time. I suppose that 
 if the old alchemists had only turned one grain of base metal into gold the}'^ 
 might have turned tons, if only they had had the retorts and the appliances 
 with which to do it. And so, what has brought one man's soul into 
 harmony with God, and given one man the true life, can do the same for all 
 men. In the first fruits we may see the fields whitening to the harvest. 
 Let us rejoice, then, in any little work that God helps us to do, and be sure 
 that if so great be the joy of the first fruits, great beyond speech will be the 
 joy of the ingathering. 
 
 235 
 
THE SPIRIT OF PAUL'S LIFE'S WORK. 
 
 / hold not viy life of any account as dear uttto tnyself, so that I may 
 accomplish my course^ and the ministry which I received from, the Lord 
 Jesus. — Acts xx. 24. 
 
 . .on Paul, contemplating for his life's work preaching amongst the 
 ^' Gentiles, determines at the beginning, "I lay down all of 
 v.-hich I used to be proud. If my Jewish descent and privileges stand in my 
 way, I cast t}i-*m aside. I wrap them together in one bundle, and toss 
 them behind me, that I may be the better able to help some to whom they 
 would have hindered my access." A man with a heart will throw off his 
 silken robes that his arm may be bared to rescue and his feet free to run to 
 succour. The only way to help people is to go down to their level. If you 
 want to bless men you must identify yourself with them. It is no use 
 standing on an eminence above them, and patronisingly talking down to 
 them. You cannot scold, or hector, or lecture men into the possession and 
 acceptance of religious truth if you take a position of superiority. As our 
 Master has taught us. if we want to make blind beggars see, we must take 
 the blind beggars by the hand, 
 
 "Paul" means "Uttle"; "Saul" means "desired." He abandons 
 the name that prophesied of favour and honour, to adopt a name that bears 
 upon its very front a profession of humility. His very name is the con- 
 densation into a word of his abiding conviction. " I am less than the least 
 of all saints." Perhaps even there may be an allusion to his low stature, 
 which may be pointed at in the sarcasm of his enemies that his letters were 
 strong, though his bodily presence was "weak." If he was, as Monsieur 
 Renan calls him, "an ugl)^ little Jew," the name has a double appropriate- 
 ness. Bat, at all events, it is an expression of the spirit in which he sought 
 to do his work. The more lofty the consciousness of his vocation, the more 
 lowly will a true man's estimate of himself be. The higher my thought of 
 what God has given me grace to do, the more shall I feel weighed down by 
 the consciousness of my unfitness to do it. 
 
 So, for all hope, for all success in our work, for all growth in Christian 
 grace and character, this disposition of lowly self-abasement and recognised 
 unworthiness and infirmity is absolutely indispensable. The mountain-tops 
 that lift themselves to the stars are barren, and few springs find their rise 
 there. It is in the lowly valleys that the flowers grow and the rivers run. 
 And it is they who are humble and lowly in heart to whom God gives 
 strength to serve Him, and the joy of accepted service. Learn your true 
 life's task by identifying yourself with the humbler brethren whom you 
 would help. Learn the spirit of lowly self-abasement. And, above all, 
 learn this, that unless you have the life of God in your heart, you have no 
 life at all. If you have that faith by which we receive into our spirits 
 Christ's own spirit to be our life, then you are a new creature, with a new 
 name, perhaps dimly visible, and faintly audible, amidst the imperfections of 
 earth, but sure to shine in the Lamb's Book of Life ; and to be read, "with 
 tumults of acclaim," before the angels of Heaven. "I will give him a 
 white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth 
 save he that receiveth it." 
 
 236 
 
PROGRESSIVE BRIGHTNESS. 
 
 The path of the righteous is as the shining light {the light of dawn, 
 marg.), that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. — Prov. iv. i8. 
 
 A t 24 This is what a Christian life ought to be. The hght of the 
 Christian hfe, hke its type in the heavens, may be analysed into 
 three beams : purity, knowledge, blessedness ; and these three, blended 
 together, make the pure whiteness of a Christian soul. Every Christian 
 life should be a life of increasing lustre, uninterrupted, and the natural 
 result of increasing communion with, and conformity to, the very fountain 
 itself of heavenly radiance. Progress is laid down emphatically in Scripture 
 as the mark of a religious life. In many ways Scripture lays it down as a 
 rule that life in the highest region, like life in the lowest, is marked by 
 continual growth. It is so in regard of all other things. Continuity in any 
 kind of practice gives increasing power in the art. The artizan, the black- 
 smith with his hammer, the skilled artificer at his trade, the student at his 
 subject, the good man in his course of life, and the bad man in his, do 
 equally show that use becomes second narure. And so let me say what 
 incalculable importance there is in our getting habit, with all its mystical 
 power to mould hfe, on to the side of righteousness, and of becoming 
 accustomed to do good, and so being unfamiliar with evil. 
 
 This intention of continuous growth is marked by the gifts that are 
 bestowed upon us in Jesus Christ. He gives us — and it is by no means the 
 least of the gifts that He bestows — an absolutely unattainable aim as the 
 object of our efforts. For He bids us not only be perfect, as our Father in 
 Heaven is perfect, but He bids us be entirely conformed to His own Self. 
 The misery of men is that they pursue aims so narrow and so shabby that 
 they can be attained, and are therefore left behind, to sink hull down on the 
 backward horizon. But to have before us an aim which is absolutely un- 
 reachable, instead of being, as ignorant people say, an occasion of despair 
 and of idleness, is, on the contrary, the very salt of life. It keeps us 
 young, it makes hope immortal, it emancipates from lower pursuits, it 
 diminishes the weight of sorrows, it administers an anaesthetic to every pain. 
 If you want to keep life fresh, seek for that which you can never fully 
 find. 
 
 Christ gives us infinite powers to reach that unattainable aim, for He 
 gives us access to all His own fulness, and there is more in His storehouses 
 than we can ever take, not to say more than we can ever hope to exhaust. 
 And therefore, because of the aim that is set before us, and because of the 
 pov/ers that are bestowed upon us to reach it, there is stamped upon every 
 Christian hfe unmistakably, as God's purpose and ideal concerning it, that 
 it should for ever and for ever be growing nearer and nearer, as some 
 ascending spiral that ever circles closer and closer, and yet never absolutely 
 unites with the great central Perfection which is liimself. So for every one 
 of us, if we are Christian people at all, " this is the will of God, even your 
 perfection." 
 
f 
 
 INTERRUPTED LIVES, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 When by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again 
 that some one teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of 
 God. — IIeb. v. 12. 
 
 . . gt Consider the sad contrast of too many Christian lives. There 
 ' are many so-called and, in a fashion, really Christian people, to 
 whom Christ and His work are mainly, if not exclusively, the means of 
 escaping the consequences of sin — a kind of "fire-escape." And to very 
 many it comes as a new thought, in so far as their practical lives are con- 
 cerned, that these ought to be lives of steadily increasing deliverance from 
 the love and the power of sin, and steadily increasing appropriation and 
 manifestation of Christ's granted righteousness. There are, I think, many 
 of us from whom the very notion of progress has faded away. I am sure 
 there are some of us who were a great deal further on, on the path of the 
 Christian life, years ago, when we first felt that Christ was anything to us, 
 than we are to-day. 
 
 There is an old saying of one of the prophets that a child would die a 
 hundred years old, which in a very sad sense is true about very many folk 
 within the pale of the Christian Church who are seventy-year-old babes 
 still, and will die so. Suns "growing brighter and brighter until the noon- 
 day ! " Ah ! there are many of us who are a great deal more like those 
 strange, variable stars that sometimes burst out in the heaven? into a great 
 blaze, that brings them up to the brightness of stars of the first magnitude, 
 for a day or two, and then they dwindle until they become little specks of 
 light that the telescope can hardly see. . 
 
 And there are hosts of us who are instances, if not of arrested, at any 
 rate of unsymmetrical, development The head, perhaps, is cultivated ; the 
 intellectual apprehension of Christianity increases, while the emotional 
 and the moral and the practical part of it are all neglected. Or, the 
 converse may be the case ; and we may be full of gush and of good emotion, 
 and of fervour when we come to worship or to pray, and our lives may not 
 be a hair the better for it all. Or, there may be a disproportion because of 
 an exclusive attention to conduct and the practical side of Christianity, 
 while the rational side of it, which should be the basis of all, and the 
 emotional side of it, which should be the driving power of all, are com- 
 paratively neglected. 
 
 So, what with interruptions, what with growing by fits and starts, and 
 long, dreary winters like the Arctic winters, coming in between the two or 
 three days of rapid, and therefore brief and unwholesome, development, we 
 must all, I think, take to heart the condemnation, when we compare the 
 reality of our lives with the Divine intention concerning them. Let us ask 
 ourselves, "Have I more command over myself than I had twenty years 
 ago ? Do I live nearer Jesus Christ to-day than I did yesterday ? Have I 
 more of His Spirit in me? Am I growing? Would the people that know 
 me best say that I am growing in the grace and knowledge of my Lord and 
 Saviour ? " Astronomers tell us that there are dark suns, that have burnt 
 themselves oi t, and are wandering unseen through the skies. I wonder if 
 there are any extinguished suns among my readers. 
 
 238 
 
FROM DAWN TO NOON. 
 
 They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the fimiament^ and 
 they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. — 
 Dan. xii. 3. 
 
 The most radiant thing on earth is the character of a rood 
 August 26. 
 
 man. The world calls men of genius and intellectual force its 
 
 lights. The Divine estimate, which is the true one, confers the name on 
 
 righteousness. This Divine purpose concerning us may be realised by us, 
 
 the Alpha and the Omega of which, the one means which includes all 
 
 other, is laid down by Jesus Christ Himself when He said, "Abide in Me, 
 
 and I in you, so shall ye bring forth much fruit." Our path will brighten, 
 
 not because of any radiance in ourselves, but in proportion as we draw 
 
 nearer and nearer to the fountain of heavenly radiance. The planets that 
 
 move round the sun, further away than we are on the earth, get less of its 
 
 light and heat ; and those that circle around it within the limits of our 
 
 orbit, get proportionately more. The nearer we are to Him, the more 
 
 shall we shine. The sun shines by its own light, drawn indeed from the 
 
 shrinkage of its mass, so that it gives away its very life in warming and 
 
 illuminating its subject-worlds. But we shine only by reflected light, and 
 
 therefore the nearer we keep to Him the more shall we be radiant. 
 
 That keeping in touch with Jesus Christ is mainly to be secured by the 
 
 direction of thought and love and trust to Him. If we follow close upon 
 
 Him, we shall not walk in darkness. It is to be secured and maintained 
 
 very largely by what I am afraid is much neglected by Christian people of 
 
 all sorts nowadays, and that is the devotional use of the:/ Bibles. That is 
 
 the food by which we grow. It is to be secured and maintained still more 
 
 largely by that which I, again, am afraid is but very imperfectly attained 
 
 to by Christian people now, and that is, the habit of prayer. It is to be 
 
 secured and maintained, again, by the honest conforming of our lives, day 
 
 by day, to the present amount of our knowledge of Him and of His will. 
 
 Whosoever will make all his life the manifestation of his belief, and turn all 
 
 his creed into principles of action, will grow both in the comprehensiveness 
 
 and in the depths of his Christian character. "Ye are light in the Lord." 
 
 Keep in Him, and you will become brighter and brighter. So shall we 
 
 "go from strength to strength, till we appear before God in Zion." 
 
 239 
 
THE EARTHLY SETTING, THE BRIGHTER RISING. 
 
 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sim in the kingdom of their 
 Father. — Matt. xiii. 43. 
 
 . -- Beauty, intellect, power, goodness, all go down into the 
 
 "^^ * dark. The sun sets, and there is left a sad and fadin'.^ glow in 
 the darkening pensive sky, which may recall the vanished light for a little 
 while to a few faitliful hearts, but steadily passes into the ashen grey of 
 forgetfulness. The momentary setting is but apparent ; and, ere it is well 
 accomplished, a new sun swims into the " ampler ether, the diviner air " of 
 that future life, *' and, with new spangled beams, flames in the forehead of 
 the morning sky." 
 
 The reason for the inherent brightness is that the soul of the righteous 
 man passes from earth into a region out of which we " gather all things that 
 offend, and them that do iniquity." There are other reasons for it, but 
 that is the one which our Lord dwells on. Or, to put it into modern 
 scientific language, environment corresponds to character. So, when the 
 clouds have rolled away, and no more mists from the undrained swamps of 
 selfishness and sin and animal nature rise up to hide the radiance, there 
 shall be a fuller flood of light poured from the re-created sun. 
 
 That brightness thus promised has for its highest and most blessed 
 character that it is conformity to the Lord Himself. Eor, as you may 
 remember, the last use of this emblem that we find in Scripture refers not 
 to the servant, but to the Master, whom His beloved disciple in Apocalyptic 
 vision saw, with His "countenance as the sun shining in his strength." 
 Thus, "we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." And, 
 therefore, that radiance of the sainted dead is progressive, too. For it has 
 an infinite fulness to draw upon ; and the soul that is joined to Jesus 
 Christ, and derives its lustre from Him, cannot die until it has outgrown 
 Jesus and emptied God. The sun will one day be a dark, cold ball. We 
 shall outlast it. 
 
 But remember that it is only those who here on earth have progressively 
 appropriated the brightness that Christ bestows who have a right to reckon 
 on that better rising. It is contrary to all probability to believe that the 
 passage from life can change the ingrained direction and set of a man's 
 nature. We know nothing that warrants us in affirming that death can 
 revolutionise character. Do not trust your future to such a dim per- 
 adventure. Here is a plain truth. They who on earth are as the shining 
 light that shineth more and more until the " perfect day," shall, beyond 
 the shadow of eclipse, shine on as the sun does, behind the opaque, inter- 
 vening body, all unconscious of what looks to mortal eyes on earth an 
 eclipse, and " shall blaze out like the sun in their Heavenly Father's 
 Kingdom." For all that we know, and are taught by experience, religious 
 and moral distinctions are eternal. " He that is righteous, let him be 
 righteous still ; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still." 
 
 240 
 
THE FRIEND OF GOD. 
 
 He was called the friend of God. — ^James ii. 23. 
 
 When and by whom was he so called? There are two 
 "^"^ ■ passages in the Old Testament in which an analogous designa- 
 tion is applied to the patriarch, but probably the name was one in current 
 use amongst the people, and expressed in a summary fashion the impression 
 tliat had been made by the history of Abraham's life. A sweet fate to have 
 that as the brief record of a character, and to be known throughout the 
 ages by such an epitaph ! As many of us are aware, this name, *'the 
 Friend," has displaced the proper name, Abraham, on the lips of all 
 Mohammedan people to this day; and the city of Hebron, where his corpse 
 lies, is commonly known simply as "the Friend." How beautiful and 
 blessed a thought it is which underlies this and similar representations of 
 Scripture — viz., that the bond which unites us to God is the very same 
 as that which most sweetly and strongly ties men to one another ; and that, 
 after all, religion is nothing more nor else than the transference to Him 
 of the emotions which make all the sweetness of human life and society. 
 
 But whilst this behef in God was the ver}'- nerve and centre of Abraham's 
 whole character, and was the reason v/hy he was called the friend of God, 
 we must also remember that, as James insists upon it here, it was no mere 
 idle assent, no mere intellectual conviction that God could not tell lies, which 
 was dignified by the name of belief, but that it was, as James insists upon in 
 the context, a trust which proved itself to be valid, because it was continually 
 operative in the life. " Faith without w^orks is dead." **And Abraham, 
 our father, was he not justified by works ?" 
 
 And so the Epistle to the Hebrews, if you will remember, traces up to 
 his faith all the chief points in his life. " By faith he went out from the 
 land where he dwelt ; by faith he dwelt in tabernacles," in the promised 
 land, beheving that it should be his and his seeds. '* By faith" he offered 
 up his son on the altar. 
 
 And then, in the future life, with new modes of manifestation and new 
 capacities of apprehension, we shall draw nearer and nearer to the sun that 
 we beheld here shining through the mists and the clouds ; and it will be to 
 us as it would be to an inhabitant of the furthest planet that wheels his 
 course away out in what seems to us darkness and cold, if he were brought 
 and set down in that one which cii cles round the sun in the narrowest orbit, 
 and receives most of his fervid beams and dazzling light. If we, amidst 
 the shows and gauds of time and the crowds of thronging men and the dis- 
 tractions of our daily occupations, steadfastly seek and see the Lord, and 
 have beams coming from Him, as a light shining in a dark place. He will 
 lift us yonder, and turn the whole benediction of the sunlight of His face 
 upon us, and, saturated with the brightness, we shall walk in the light of 
 His countenance and be amongst the people of the blessed. 
 
 24: R 
 
GOD'S FA.MILIARITY WITH HIS FRIENDS. 
 
 And the Lord said, Shall I hide frotn Abraham that which I do?^ 
 Gen. xviii. 17. 
 
 A t 29 ** ^ CALL you not servants, but friends ; for all things that 
 ^ ' 'I have heard of My Father I declare unto you." So much for 
 God's frankness. What about Abraham's frankness with God ? Remember 
 how he remonstrated with Him ; how he complained to Kim of His dealings ; 
 how he persisted with importunity, which would have been presumptuous 
 but for the friendship which underlay it, and which is expressed in words. 
 And let us take the simple lesson that if we are friends and lovers of God, 
 we shall delight in His company. Ah ! it is a strange kind of religion 
 that does not care to be with God, that would rather think about anything 
 else than about Him, that is all unused to quiet, solitary conversation and 
 communion with Him, but it is the religion of I wonder how many of us ? 
 He would be a strange friend that never crossed your threshold if he could 
 help it ; that was evidently uncomfortable in your presence, and ill at ease 
 till he got away from you ; and that when he came was struck dumb, and 
 had not a word to say for himself, and did not know or feel that he and you 
 had any interests or subjects in common. Is that not a good deal like 
 the religion of hosts of professing Christians ? 
 
 If we are friends of God we shall have no secrets from Him. There 
 are very few of those that are dearest to us to whom we could venture to lay 
 bare all the depths of our hearts. There are black things down in the 
 cellars that we do not like to take our friends down into. We keep them 
 upstairs, in the rooms for company. But you can take God all through 
 the house. And if there is the trust and the love that I have been speaking 
 about, we shall not be afraid to spread all our foulness and our meanness 
 and our unworthy thoughts of, and acts towards. Him before His "pure 
 eyes and perfect judgment." 
 
 Tell God all, if you mean to be a friend of His. And do not be afraid 
 to tell Him your harsh thoughts of Him, and your complaints of Him. He 
 never resents anything that a man that loves Him says about Him, if he 
 says it to Him. What He resents — if I might use the word — is our huddling 
 up grudges and murmurings and questionings in our own hearts, and saying 
 never a word to the Friend against whom they offend. Out with it all. 
 Complaints, regrets, questionings, petitions, hot wishes— take them all to 
 Him ; and be sure that, instead of breaking, they will, if spoken, cement 
 the friendship, which is disturbed by secrecy on our parts. 
 
 If we are God's lovers He will have no secrets from us. "The secret 
 of the Lord is v/ith them that fear Him ; and He will show them Flis 
 Covenant." There is a strange wisdom and insight, sometimes amounting 
 even to prophetic anticipation, which creeps into a simple heart that is knit 
 closely to God. But whether the result of our friendship with Him be such 
 communication of such kinds of insight or no, we may be sure of this, that 
 if we trust Him, and love Him, and arc frank with Him, He will in so far 
 be frank with us, that He will impart unto us Himself, and in the know- 
 ledge of His love we shall find all the knowledge that we need. 
 
 242 
 
A MUTUAL FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his 
 friend. — ExOD. xxxiii. II. 
 
 . -- Abraham, the humble earthly friend of God, did as God bade 
 
 him, substantially, all his life, from the day when he made the 
 
 "Great Refusal," and left behind him home and kindred and all, until 
 
 the day when he went up the sides of Moriah to offer there his son. 
 
 Abraham met God's wishes because Abraham trusted and loved God. 
 
 And what about the Divine Friend ? Did He not meet Abraham's 
 wishes? You remember that wonderful scene, which presents, in such 
 vivid and dramatic form, the everlasting truth that the man who bows his 
 will to God bows God's will to his, when he pleaded for Sodom, and won 
 his case by persistence and importunity of lowly prayer. And these 
 historical notices on both sides are for us the vehicles of the permanent 
 truth, that, if we are God's lovers and friends, we shall find nothing sweeter 
 than bowing to His will and executing His commandments. The very 
 mark and signature of love is that it delights to divine and fulfil the 
 desires of the beloved, and that it moulds the will of each of the parties 
 into conformity with the will of the other. 
 
 Ah ! what a commentary our religion is upon such thoughts ! To 
 how many of us is the very notion of religion that of a prohibition of 
 things that we would much like to do, and of commands to do things that 
 we would much rather not do ? All the slavery of abject submission, of 
 reluctant service, is clean swept away when we understand that friendship 
 and love find their supreme delight in discovering and in executing the will 
 of the beloved. And surely if you and I are the friends of God, the cold 
 words, " duty," " must," " should," will be struck out of our vocabulary, 
 and will be replaced by "delight," "cannot but," "will" ! For friends 
 find the very life — I was going to say the voice — of their friendship in 
 mutual obedience. 
 
 And God, the heavenly Friend, will do what we wish. In that very 
 connection did Jesus Christ put the two thoughts of friendship with Him 
 and His executing His disciples' behests ; in one breath saying, "Ye are 
 My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," and in the next, "Ye 
 shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." This conformity 
 of will, so that there is but one will in the two hearts, which is the very 
 consummation and superlative degree of human friendship and love, applies 
 as truly to the friendship between man and God. 
 
 243 
 
GOD'S METHOD OF GIVING. 
 
 hie that spared not His own Son, but delivered Httn for us all, how 
 shall He not also with Him freely give us all things ? — ROM. viii. 32. 
 
 , „- Abraham's gift of his son to God was but a feeble shadow 
 
 ^^^ ' of God's gift of His Son to men. And if the surrender on the 
 part of the human friend was the infallible token of his love, surely the 
 surrender on the part of the heavenly Friend is no less the infallible sign 
 of His love to all the world. If we are God's friends and lovers we shall 
 give Him, in glad surrender, our whole selves. And if you feel that you 
 have separate interests from Him ; if you keep things and do not let Him 
 say, "These are Mine " ; if you grudge sacrifice, and will not hear of self- 
 surrender, and are living lives centred in, ruled by, devoted to, self, you 
 have little reason to call yourself a Christian. " Ye are My friends if ye," 
 not only "do whatsoever I command you," but "if you give yourself 
 to Me." Yield yourself to God, and in the giving of yourself to Him 
 you will get back yourself glorified and blessed by the gift. There is no 
 friendship where self shuts out the friend from participation in what is the 
 other's. As long as "mine" lives on this side of a high wall, and 
 *' thine " on the other, there is but little friendship. Down with the wall, 
 and say about everything, "Ours"; and then you have a right to say, 
 " I am the friend of God." 
 
 " I am thy shield ; fear not, Abraham," said God, when His friend was in 
 danger from the vengeance of the Eastern kings whom he had defeated. And 
 all through life the same strong arm was cast around him. And Abraham 
 had to stand up for God amidst this heathen people. If we are God's 
 friends and lovers He will take up our cause. Be sure that if God be for 
 us it matters not who is against us. Vv^hat would you think of a man who, 
 in going away to a far-off country, said to some friend, " I wish you would 
 look after so-and-so for me as long as I am gone " ; and the friend would 
 say, " Yes !" and never give a thought nor lift a finger to discharge the 
 obligation ? God trusts His reputation to you. He has interests in this 
 world that you have to look after. You have to defend Him as really 
 as He has to defend you. And it is the dreadful contradiction of religious 
 people's profession of religion that they often care so little, and do so little, 
 to promote the cause, to defend the name, to adorn the reputation, and 
 to further what I may venture to call the interests of their heavenly Friend 
 in the world. 
 
 Can you venture to say that you are a friend of God ? It you cannot, 
 what are you ? Our relations to men admit of our dividing them into three 
 — friends, enemies, nothings. We may love, we may hate, we may be 
 absolutely indifferent and ignorant. I am afraid the three states cannot 
 be transferred exactly to our relations to God. If not His friend, what 
 are you ? Have you only a far-off bowing acquaintance with Him ? Well, 
 then, that is because you have neglected, if you have not spurned, His 
 offered friendship. And oh ! how much you have lost ! No human 
 heart is a millionth part so sweet, and so capable of satisfying you, as 
 God's. All friendship here has its limits, its changes, its end ; God's is 
 b(jundless, immutable, eternal. 
 
 244 
 
GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH. 
 
 ^F/.'o i's the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. 
 ^COL. i. 15. 
 
 _ , . Why does our Lord on one occasion (John xiv. 9) charge 
 ^ * Philip with not knowing Him ? Because PhiHp had said, 
 
 ** Lord ! show us the Father and it suf'ticeth us." And why was that 
 question a betrayal of Philip's ignorance of Christ ? Because it showed 
 that he had not discerned Him as being " the Only Begotten of the Father, 
 full of grace and truth," and had not understood that " He that hath seen 
 Me hath seen the Father. You do not know, and not knowing that, all 
 your knowledge of Me, howsoever tender and sweet it may have been, 
 howsoever full of love and reverence and blind admiration — all your know- 
 ledge of Me is but twilight knowledge, which may well be called ignorance." 
 Not to know Christ as the manifest God is practically to be ignorant of 
 Him altogether. Philip asked for some visible manifestation, such as 
 their old books told them had been granted to Moses on the mountain, to 
 Isaiah in the temple, and to many another one besides. 
 
 But if such a revelation had been given — and Christ could have given 
 it if He would — what a poor thing it would have been, put side by side 
 with that mild and lambent light that was ever streaming from Him, 
 making God visible to every sensitive and responsive nature ! For these 
 external manifestations for which Philip is here hungering, what could they 
 show ? They could show certain majestic, splendid, pompous, outside 
 characteristics of God, but they could never show Gcd, much less could 
 they show " the Father." Righteousness and love, the revelation of these 
 two, could be entrusted to no flashing brightnesses, and to no thunders and 
 lightnings. There can be no revelation of these things to the outward eye, 
 but only to the inward heart through the medium of a human life. For 
 not the power which knows no weariness, not the eye which never closes, 
 not the omniscience which holds all things, great and small, in its grasp, 
 make God. These are but the fringe, the outermost parts, of the circum- 
 ference ; the living Centre is a Righteous Love. And you cannot reveal 
 that by any means but by showing it in action ; nor show it in action by 
 any means so sure as in a human life. Therefore, above all other forms 
 of manifestation of God, stands the Person of Jesus Christ — God manifest 
 in the flesh. 
 
 Jesus is Lord. My brother, a Man, is King of the universe. The new 
 thing in Christ's return to " the glory which He had with the Father before 
 the world was" is that He took the Manhood with Him in indissoluble 
 union with the Divinity, and that a Man is Lord. So you and I can 
 cherish that wonderful hope. " I will give to him that overcometh to sit 
 wiih Me on My throne." Nor need we ever fear but that all things con- 
 cerning ourselves and our dear ones, and the Church and the vi'oild, will be 
 ordered aright, for the hand that sways the universe is the hand that was 
 many a time laid in blessing upon the sick and the maimed, and that 
 gathered little children to His bosom. 
 
 245 
 
CHRIST'S OWN CLAIM. 
 
 No one knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither doth any know the 
 Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Htm. 
 — Matt. xi. 27. 
 
 It seems to me that if there is anything certain at all, it is 
 certain that Jesus Christ, whilst upon earth, claimed 
 habitually to be the visible manifestation of God, in a degree, in a manner 
 •wholly unlike that in which a pure, good, wise, righteous man may claim 
 to shine with some reflected beams of Divine brightness. And we have to 
 reckon and make our account with that, and shape our theology accordiiigly. 
 I come to some of you who admire and reverence this great Teacher, 
 this pure Humanity, who know much of Him, who seek to follow in His 
 footsteps in some measure, but who stand outside that innermost circle 
 wherein He manifests Himself as the God Incarnate, the Sacrifice, and the 
 Saviour of the sins of the world ; and whilst I thankfully admit that a 
 man's relation to Christ may be a great deal deeper and more vital and 
 blessed than his articulate creed, I am bound to say that not to know Him 
 in this His very deepest and most essential character is little different from 
 being ignorant of Him altogether. 
 
 Here is a great thinker or teacher, perhaps, whose fame has filled the 
 world, whose books are upon every student's shelf; he lives in a little 
 remote country hamlet : the cottagers beside him know him as a kind 
 neighbour and a sympathetic friend. They never heard of his books, they 
 never heard of his thoughts, they do not know anything of what he has 
 done all over the world. Do you call that knowing him i You do not 
 know a man if you only know the surface and not the secrets of his being. 
 You do not know a man if you only know the subordinate characteristics of 
 his nature, but not the essential ones. The very heart of Christ is this : 
 the Incarnate God, the sacrifice for ihe sins of the whole world. 
 
 You may be disciples, in the imperfect sense in which the apostles were 
 disciples before the Cross and the Resurrection and the Ascension, im- 
 perfect disciples like them, but without their excuse for it. Rut oh ! you 
 will never know Him until ynu know Him as the Eiernal Word, and until 
 you can say, " We beheld Ilis glory, the glory as of the Oiily r-ev;otten of 
 the Father, full of grace and truth." Not seeing that, you see but as a dim 
 speck, or a star a little brighter than its brethren that hang in the heavens 
 of history, Him who really is the Central Sun, from whom all light comes, 
 to whom the whole creation moves. If you know Him for the Incarnate 
 Word and Lamb who bears the world's sin, you know Him for what He is. 
 All the rest is most precious, most fair ; but without that cer.tral truth, you 
 have but a fragmentary Christ, and nothing less than the whole Chribt is 
 enough for you. 
 
 246 
 
THE PATIENT TEACHER AND THE SLOW SCHOLARS. 
 
 Jesus saith unto htm, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou 
 not know Me, Philip ? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. — 
 John xiv. 9. 
 
 _ , , g In these v/ords we have a glimpse into the pained and 
 ^' ™ ' loving heart of our Lord. We very seldom hear Him 
 speak about His own feelings or experience ; and when He does, it is 
 always in some such incidental way as this. So that these glimpses, like 
 liitle windows opening out upon some great prospect, are the more 
 precious to us. 
 
 I think we shall not misunderstand the tone of this question to Philip 
 if we see in it wonder, pained love, and tender, chiding remonstrance. 
 " Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?" In 
 another place we read : " He marvelled at their unbelief." And here 
 there is almost a surprise that He should have been shining so long and so 
 near, and yet the purblind eyes should have seen so little. 
 
 But there is more than that, there is a complaint and pain in the 
 question — the pain of vainly endeavouring to teach, vainly endeavouring to 
 help, vainly endeavouring to love. And there are few pains like that. 
 All men that have tried to help and bless their fellows have known what it 
 is to have their compassion and their efforts thrown back upon themselves. 
 And there are few sorrows heavier to carry than this : the burden of a 
 heart that would fain pour its love into another heart if that heart would 
 only let it, but is repelled and obliged to bear its treasures unimparted. 
 The slowness of the pupil is the sorrow of the honest teacher ; the in- 
 gratitude and non-receptiveness of some churlish nature that you tried to 
 lavish good upon, have they not often brought a bitterness to your hearts? 
 If ever you have had the bitter experience of a child or a friend or a dear 
 one that you have tried to get by all means to love you, and to take your 
 love, and who has thrown it all back in your face, you may know in some 
 faint measure what was at least one of the elements which made Him the 
 "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief." But there is not only the 
 pain caused by slow apprehension and unrequited love, but also the depth 
 and patience of a clinging love that is not turned away by the pain. How 
 tenderly the name " Philip" comes in at the end ! It recalls that other 
 instance when a whole world of feeling and appeal was compressed into the 
 one word to the weeping woman, "Mary," and when another Avorld of 
 Ui. utterable rapture and surprise was in her one answering word, " Rabboni." 
 W^e may think of that patient love of Plis that will not be soured by any 
 slowness or scantiness of response. Dammed back by our sullen rejection, 
 it still flows on, seeking to conquer by long-suffering. Refused, it still 
 lingers round the closed door of the heart, and knocks for entrance. Mis- 
 understood, it still meekly manifests itself. The same feelings of pain and 
 patient love are in the heart of the throned Christ to-day. Mystery and 
 paradox as it may be, I suppose that there passes over even His victorious 
 and serene repose in the heavens some shadow of pain and sorrow still, 
 when you and I turn away from Him. We cannot understand it ; but if it 
 be true that He has still a " fellow-feeling of our pains," it is not less true 
 that His love is still wounded by our lovelessness, and His manifestation 
 of Himself made sad by the slowness of our reception of Him. 
 
 247 
 
OUR NARROW VISION OF CHRIST. 
 Having eyes, see ye not? And having ears, hear ve not? — Mark viii. 1 8. 
 
 - . In Christ there are infinite depths to be experienced and to 
 
 ^ ' become acquainled with ; and if we know Him at all as we 
 
 ought to do, our knowledge of Him will be growing day by day. But how 
 
 many of us stand at the same spot that we did when we first said that we 
 
 were Christin.ns? 
 
 We are like the Indians that live in rich gold countries, that could only 
 gather the ore that happened to lie upon the surfiice or could be washed out 
 of the sands of the river ; but in this great Christ there are depths of gold, 
 great reefs and veins of it, that will enrich us all if we dig — and we shall not 
 get it unless we do. 
 
 He is the boundless ocean. We have contented ourselves with coasting 
 along the shore and making timid excursions from one headland to another ; 
 let us strike out into the middle deep and see all the wonders that are there. 
 This great Christ is like the infinite sky with its unresolved nebulte. We have 
 but looked with our poor dim eyes ; let us take the telescope that will reveal 
 to us suns blazing where now we only see darkness. 
 
 If we have any true knowledge of Jesus Christ at all, it ought to be 
 growing every day. And why does it not ? Why does it not ? You know 
 a man because you are much with him. As the old proverb says, " If you 
 want to know anybody, you must summer and winter with them " ; and if 
 you want to know Jesus Christ, there must be a great deal more meditative 
 thoughtfulness and honest study of His life and work than any of us have 
 ever put forth. We know people, too, by sympathy and by love and by 
 keeping near them. Keep near your Master, Christian men ! Oh, it is a 
 wonder and a shame and a sin for us professing Christians that, having 
 tasted the sweetness of His love, we should come down so low as to long 
 for the garbage of earth. Who is fool enough to prefer vinegar to wine, 
 bitter herbs to grapes, dross to gold? Who is there that, having consorted 
 with the King, would gladly herd with ragged rebels ? And yet that is what 
 we do. We love one another, the world, people round about us. We labour 
 in the effort to make acquaintances, to surround ourselves with friends, and 
 to fill our hearts from these many fountains. All right and well ! But let 
 us seek to know Cnrist more, and to know Him most chiefly in this, that 
 He is for us the manifest God and the Saviour of the world. 
 
 Some of us may have seen a weiglity acknowledgment from a distin- 
 guished biologist, lately deceased, vvhich strikes me as relevant to this 
 thought. Listen to his confession : " I know from experience the intel- 
 lectual distractions ot scientific research, philosophical speculation, and 
 artistic pleasures, but am also well aware that even when all are taken 
 together, and well sweetened to taste, in respect of consequent reputation, 
 means, social position, etc., the whole concoction is but as high confec- 
 tionery to a starving man. ... It has l)een my lot to know not a few of 
 the foremost men of our generation, and I have always observed that this 
 is profoundly true." That is the testimony of a man that had tried the 
 highest, least material forms of such a trust. And I know that there is an 
 "amen ! " to it in every heart, and I lift up opposite to all such experiences 
 the grand summary of Christian experience : " We which have believed do 
 enter into rest." 
 
 248 
 
DO YOU KNOW JESUS? 
 
 This is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and 
 Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ. — John xvii. 3. 
 
 , It is the great wonder of human history that after ein;hteen 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ' hundred years the world knows so little of Jesus Christ. 
 The leaders of opinion, the leaders of the literature of England, the men 
 that profess to guide the thoughts of this generation, how little they know, 
 really, about this Master ! What profound misconceptions of the whole genius 
 of Christianity, and of Him who is Christianity, we see among the teachers 
 who pay Him high homage and conventional respect, as well as among 
 those who profess to reject Him and His mission ! Some people take a 
 great deal more trouble to understand Buddha than they do to understand 
 Christ. How little, too, the mass of men know about Him ! It is enough 
 to break one's heart to look round one, and think that He has been so long 
 time with the world, and that this is all which has come of it. 
 
 Light has been shining for all these eighteen hundred years, and yet 
 the mist is so little cleared away, and the ice is so little melted. The great 
 proof that the world is bad is that it does not believe in Jesus Christ the 
 Son of God, and that He has stood before it for nearly nineteen centuries 
 now, and so few have been led to turn to Him with the adoring cry, " My 
 Lord and my God." But let us narrow our thoughts to ourselves. This 
 question comes to many of you who shall read these lines in a very pointed 
 way. You have known about Jesus Christ all your lives, and yet in a real, 
 deep sense you do not know Him at this moment. For the knowledge 
 of which I speak is the knowledge of acquaintance with a person rather 
 than the knowledge that a man may have of a book. And it is the know- 
 ledge of experience. Have you that? Do you know Christ as a man 
 knows his friend, or do you know Him as you know about Julius Coesar ? 
 Do you know Christ because you live with Him and He with you, or do 
 you know about Him in that fashion in which a man in a great city knows 
 about his neighbour across the street there, that has lived beside him for 
 five-and-twenty years and never spoken to him once all the time? Is that 
 your knowledge of Christ? If so, it is no knowledge at all. "I have 
 heard of Him by the hearing of the ear," describes all the acquaintance 
 which a great many of us have with Him. 
 
 Oil, my brother ! the very fact that He has been so long with you is the 
 reason why you know so little about Him. People that live close by some- 
 thing that men come from the ends of the earth to see have often never 
 seen it. A man may have lived all his life witliin sound of the Niagara, 
 and perhaps never have gone to look at the rush of the waters. 
 
 Is that what you do with Jesus Ciirist ? Are you so accustomed to hear 
 about Him that you do not know Him ; having so long heard of Him that 
 you never came to see Him ? 
 
 249 
 
ALL STRENGTH IN CHRLST. 
 / can do all things in Him tliat sirengthetuth tne. — Pkil, iv. 13. 
 
 S-DtemberG *' ^ ^^^ ^° ^^^ things." That rendering of Paul's words 
 does not exactly represent what he really meant. In one 
 aspect they say more than Paul sa) s, and in another less. For he is not 
 only speaking about what he can do, but also of what he can endure. 
 Action is but half — and often the lesser half — of life ; so we have to widen 
 the expression to include both doing and bearing. But, on the other hand, 
 "all things" must be subject to some limitations. Common sense dictates 
 these. The Apostle is making no preposterous claim to a kind of quasi- 
 omnipotence. He felt himself ready for anything that might come. **I 
 am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to 
 suffer need. ... I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be 
 content." But "content" is not Paul's meaning. The plain rendering is 
 " self-sufficient." Take away from that word all the arrogance that is in it, 
 and understand it to mean independent of circnmstances or lord of externals. 
 What Paul says is that he is ready for everything, equipped for any fortune, 
 able to do whatever is commanded, able to bear whatever is imposed. 
 
 We have here just the true attitude for a Christian soul : to be so far 
 self-sufficing as that externals do not gain the mastery. We should be able 
 always to keep the bilge-water down by working the pumps, and to have 
 our hands on the tiller and follow the course which the Alaster-Navigatoi 
 has chartered out for us, whatever winds blow or waves roll. So shall we 
 have strength for all things, and be equal to any variety of fortune. In some 
 great cathedral the temperature will vary little between midsummer and mid- 
 winter. The walls are thick ; and it matters not whether the sunshine be 
 blazing on the piazza outside or whether icicles be hanging from the cornices 
 of the building, there is the same atmosphere within. We should carry our 
 atmospheres with us. Our spiritual heat, like the temperature of our bodies, 
 should keep pretty nearly the same at the poles and at the equator. 
 
 " I have strength for everything." Now, that may be said in a great 
 many different keys and moods, and may be the expression of almost 
 opposite feelings. It may be the proud boast of an unnatural and over- 
 strained stoicism which tries to crush down the sensibilities of human nature, 
 and thereby destroys the nature that it is trying to steady. Or the boast 
 may come from an underestimate of the difficulties and vicissitudes that 
 fall to be encountered in every life, and an over-estimate of our poor 
 powers to face them. Many a young man flings himself into the battle of 
 life with an unbounded confidence that he is equipped for all its events, and 
 by the time that grey hairs begin to show upon the black head, instead o 
 saying, "I can do all things," he is ready to wail, "I can do nothing; I 
 am an utter failure." But " I can do all things" may be said, and ought 
 to be said, by us, as the result of our simply leaning on an Almighty 
 strength. Then levity, ignorance of one's own weakness, ignorance of 
 the serried ranks of enemies that beset every attempt at noble life, dis- 
 appear, and what on other lips sounds like the most arrogant and insane 
 presumption, which is sure to be punished, comes to be an utterance fitted 
 for the lips of the humblest and the most self-distrustful. " I have strength 
 for anything," and yet not 1, "but Christ in me." 
 
 2;o 
 
TRIUMPHANT CONFIDENCE. 
 
 / rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length ye have revived you? 
 
 thought of me Not that I speak in respect of want : for I rave 
 
 learned^ tn whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. — Phil. iv. lo, ii. 
 
 g , , - I BELIEVE that one of the great secrets of the weakness of 
 modern Christianity is that practically that doctrine - no ! 
 do not let us call it a doctrine — that fact of the dwelling of the Christian 
 soul in Christ, and the reciprocal indwelling of Christ, in every believing 
 heart, has, to a large extent, faded out of popular conceptions of Christianity. 
 We talk a great deal, and we cannot talk too much, but we may talk too 
 exclusively, about Christ for us. We must regard that as the basis of all 
 Christ's work. But then the New Testament builds upon it this other 
 truth — Christ in us and we in Christ. I would that Christian people realised 
 more as a simple fact — mystical, if you like, and none the worse for that — • 
 that there is a union between the believing spirit and the Christ whom 
 it trusts, so close and intimate as that local metaphors of mutual indwelling 
 do but partially express it. As the branch is in the vine so are we in 
 Christ. As the soul is in the body so is Christ in us ; the Life of our lives, 
 the Soul of our souls. And it is by union with Jesus Christ, and by this 
 most deep and real dwelling in Him as the atmosphere, in which we "live 
 and move and have our being," that the word ceases to be presumption 
 and becomes humility ; self-distrust and confidence in Him. 
 
 I wish sometimes that I could get Christian people to take the epistles, 
 and read them through once, for one purpose, that is, to note the variety 
 of applications in which that phrase " in Christ Jesus " occurs. If anybody 
 would do that, he would get a new impression of the reality and of the 
 prominence in the whole scheme of Christianity, of the thought — *'m 
 Him." 
 
 How is that indwelling to be realised? You perhaps say, ** Oh ! 
 such a union with Christ is mystical ; it is far away from our ordinary 
 experience." Yes ! I believe it is far away from ordinary experience. 
 But there is no reason why it should be so. For, however profound the 
 thought, the way of making it a fact in our lives is as plain as the thought 
 is profound. You are in Him when you trust Him. You are not in Him 
 if your confidence is in self, or in creatures. You are not in Him if all the 
 day long your mind is busy with other thoughts, and your heart with other 
 affections. But you are in Him if you are occupied, heart and mind, with 
 Him and with His truth. You are in Him if, trusting Him, and having 
 Him present by the direction of mind and heart towards Him, as the motive 
 and power of your lives, you serve Him with lowly obedience. And you 
 are not in Him if you assert your own independence, and perk yourself up 
 in His face and say, " Not as Thou wilt, but as I will." Trust, meditation, 
 practical obedience — these are the three angels that guide us into the very 
 presence-chamber of the Most High. 
 
 251 
 
SPIRITUAL DECLENSION AND CHANGE. 
 
 Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this ! and be ye very desolate, saith the 
 Lord ; for My people have committed two evils : they have forsaken Me, 
 the Fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, 
 that can hold no water. — ^Jer. ii. 12, 13. 
 
 It does seem inexplicable that if a man has once got a 
 ep em er . gij,-f^pse of the beauty, preciousness, and sweetness of 
 Christ, His love and His power, his eyes should ever turn away or his 
 heart ever become unfaithful. And yet it is the history of the Church 
 as a whole, and of the individual members of it. As to the Church as a 
 whole, how early it needed to be said, "Ye have left your first love" ! 
 and how constantly it has had to be repeated ever since ! The apostles 
 were not cold in their graves when grievous wolves began to enter in and 
 spoil the flock. The law seems to work almost inevitably that close on the 
 heels of every period of earnestness and quickened life there shall follow a 
 period of reaction and torpor. However high the arrow is shot, the impulse 
 that sped it on its way heavenwards soon seems to die, and gravitation 
 begins, and down it comes again. 
 
 Look at Germany after the Reformation. Look at the England of the 
 eighteenth century after the outburst of Puritanism. Look at the deadness 
 that fell upon the first periods of this century after the strong new life of 
 Whitefield and the Wesleys. Look all over the history of the Church, and 
 you find the same thing. Then ask the question : Is there any more con- 
 vincing proof of a living Christ tjian the fact that the Church has not been 
 dead and buried long ago ? And is there any better sign that Christianity 
 is not of man than the fact that it has always been so hard for men to keep 
 themselves for any length of time upon its level ? 
 
 I am sure there is not a man or a woman reading this that has not had 
 moments of illumination, when the conscience was quickened, and things that 
 they thought they believed all their days flared out upon them with altogether 
 strange and startling force and reality. And what has become of the moments, 
 what has become of the impressions that were made upon us then ? Where 
 have they all disappeared to ? and what is left behind when the heavens have 
 closed again ? Use and wont has gathered about us once more ; the old 
 opium soporifics that have lulled us to sleep so often have been quaffed 
 again ; and after the momentary illumination and expansion, we have fallen 
 back into the miserable old ruts of half belief and whole indifi"erence, and 
 yet call ourselves Christians. I was reading in a book of African travel the 
 other day that the great moun Iain-peak of Kilima-njaro will lie for weeks 
 and weeks hidden behind the mis'.s, except now and then in the morning, 
 when, like an apparition, its wedge forces itself through the rolling vapour, 
 and for half-an-hour it gleams there, the lord of the landscape ; and then 
 it is blotted out. How many of our lives in their morning hours had a 
 vision, when the rolling lies, unsubstantial but opacjue, which veiled the 
 realities have been swept away, and for an instant you saw what is always 
 there, whether you see it or not, the reality of God in Christ, His love and 
 His work for you ? 
 
 252 
 
THE FASCINATING INFLUENCES OF THE WORLD. 
 
 OfooUsh Galaiians, who did bewitch you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ 
 was openly set forth crucified? — Gal. iii. I. 
 
 What glittering eye is it, envious and covetous, that has 
 Septemtoer 3. ,4 overlooked " you, as they say about infants unaccountably 
 wasting, and so made you to wither away ? 
 
 Let us understand clearly about this matter, that whatever blame may 
 be laid at the door of external causes, and of what we may call fascinations, 
 what gives them all their power is our own weakness and folly. It it all 
 very well to analyse the causes of religious declension, and to try and 
 guard ourselves against them, but that is leading men upon a false quest, 
 unless we remind ourselves at the beginning that the real cause lies within. 
 No outward temptation, nothing in earth, hell, or heaven, has any power 
 to turn away my eyes from Jesus Christ unless I choose to give it the power. 
 I am not to put the blame of my feeble Christian life, or of my utter 
 irreligion upon anything or anybody, but only myself. If I had not com- 
 bustibles in my heart, it would do me no harm to put ever so fierce a light 
 to it. But if I carry about a keg of gunpowder within me, I am not to 
 blame the match if there comes an explosion. It is because our hearts 
 do not find in Jesus Christ all that they crave that we are unfaithful and 
 turn away from Him ; and it is because our hearts are foolish and bad that 
 they do not find in Jesus Christ all that they crave. If you and I were as 
 we should be, there would not be a desire in us that would not be met 
 in our loving Lord, in His sweetness and grace. And if there were not 
 a desire in us that was not met in our loving Lord's sweetness and grace, 
 then all these temptations might play upon us innocuously, and we should 
 walk through the fire and not be harmed. So let us take it all to ourselves, 
 and remember that whatever temptations may be brought to bear upon us, 
 we, we alone, are responsible for the effects that they produce. 
 
 Who, then, are the fascinators ? I am not going to deal at all with the 
 immediate occasion of these words, which referred to the Galatians falling 
 away from the doctrinal Christianity preached by Paul ; but I will just 
 remind you in passing that the thing which caused all this vehemence of 
 argument and expostulation on the part of the Apostle was that the Galatian 
 Christians had listened to teachers who did not deny salvation by faith in 
 Jesus Christ, but who sought to make an outward rite necessary, side by 
 side with faith. It makes no difference to the principle involved that the 
 rite which the Judaising teachers tried to force on the Gentiles who believed 
 was circumcision, and that the rites which the modern Judaisers make 
 essential are Baptism and Lord's Supper. The principle is identical ; and 
 wherever you get an attempt to mix up these two things, salvation through 
 faith in Jesus Christ and salvation through sacraments, the slcdge-liammer 
 blows of this Epistle to the Galatians come down upon the unnatural 
 amalgam and smite it to pieces. It is hard for men to keep up on the 
 level of the New Testament and of its spiritual conceptions of worship. 
 It is hard to use ordinances and rites as merely material aids to spiritual 
 apprehension and affection. It is hard to keep them in their due place of 
 subordination. 
 
 253 
 
THE POWER OF THE FLESH. 
 
 Thus saiih the Lord, Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, andmakeih 
 flesh his arm. — Jer. xvii. 5. 
 
 The "flesh" is ever apt to make '* sacraments" out of 
 
 P ni er . «'Qj.Jinauces," and to blend in disastrous union a faith in 
 Jesus Christ and a faith in them. It cannot be done. It must be the one 
 thing or the other. The reh'ance on the sacraments will in the long run 
 kill the faith in Christ, or the faith in Christ drive out the reliance on the 
 sacraments. Little as it may seem so at first, all experience has proved 
 that Paul spoke with unerring instinct when he declared to the Galatians 
 that if they yielded to the teaching of the Judaisers, and submitted to circum- 
 cision as necessary, they would get no good from Christ. He must be all 
 or nothing. This was the earliest corruption of Christianity. It subsists 
 perennially through the generations ; it crops up ever and anon when we 
 thought it was cut down. It is all about us in England to-day, devastating 
 the Churches ; and its roots are in each of us. Nothing but Christ's Cross, 
 and nothing as bringing the power of that Cross into my life but my simple 
 faith — that is what Paul preached ; and if he could have stood to-day, and seen 
 men running after sacraments and ritual and outward forms and the aesthetics 
 of worship, and turning the preacher of a Gospel into the priest of a sacra- 
 ment, his voice would have rung out in as earnest and as surprised 
 remonstrance : " Oh, foolish ! who hath bewitched you ?" 
 
 But we are all in danger from other fascinations and seducers, such as 
 worldly cares, occupation, treasures. *'As thy servant was busy here and 
 there, he was gone," said the negligent soldier, to account for the escape 
 of the prisoner in his charge. That is exactly the history of the way in 
 which a great many men's Christianity trickles out of them without their 
 knowing it. They are too busy to look after it, or even to notice its escape, 
 and so drop, drop, drop, slow and unnoticed through the leak it slips, until 
 there is none left ; and the man fancies the vessel is full, till he comes to need 
 to draw on it, and then ! How many of us, I wonder, are like the elm trees 
 that have sent their top roots down to a layer of innutritious earth, and are 
 standing magnificent stems, but hollow inside, ready to be blown over in the 
 first gale of wind ? 
 
 Oh ! how much Christian life is murdered every year ! How much 
 devotion dies in the air of the business street ! How hard it is for you that 
 have to go away every Monday morning, and keep at it all the week long, 
 to keep up the fervour of your faith and the simplicity of your piety I 
 Brother ! there is only one way to do it, and that is to keep near to the 
 Master, whose strength will hold you up. The attrition of worldly cares 
 eats away the impression upon our hearts. As the soft south wind gradually 
 eats away the inscriptions off the temples that may front it, so the writing 
 upon our hearts is l)lurred by the constant, soft, moist breath of earth's busi- 
 ness and cares impinging upon it. 
 
 And the fascinations that slay most of us are all summed up in the 
 solemn old words : '* The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the 
 pride of life." These bewitch you, before whose eyes Christ was set forth. 
 
 254 
 
THE EVIL EYE. 
 
 If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. — Matt. vi. 23. 
 
 g . . . J The reference to the evil eye gives especial emphasis to the 
 words in Galatians, '''• Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was 
 set forth." For the evil eye, according to the old superstition, operated most 
 pow-erfully on the persons who allowed their eyes to dwell upon it. If the 
 Galatians had kept their gaze fixed on Jesus Christ, the tempter's fatal glance 
 would have had no power over them. The Galatian Christians, with 
 characteristic Celtic fickleness, had fallen away from the apostolic doctrine, 
 and had cooled in the fervour of their love to Himself. It looks, thinks 
 Paul, as if some malignant sorcerer had affected them. 
 
 If we would escape the power of these evil eyes, we must so order our 
 religious lives as to keep the facts of Christ's work and death for us ever 
 before our minds. We shall not be able to keep that vision of Christ 
 crucified before our eyes in the midst of daily distractions unless it is stamped 
 deep on mind and heart by the habit of quiet meditation. The absence of 
 that habit is one chief reason for the weakness of so much of our modern 
 Christianity. Meditation is almost a lost art amongst us. I wonder how 
 many of us there are who, from one week's end to another, ever spend ten 
 minutes' quiet thought upon the Cross, not so much for the purpose of 
 investigation or confirmation or proof, but simply for the purpose of getting 
 the sweetness of the thought more and more into our hearts, and the power 
 of it more and more into our lives ? 
 
 How often do you realise that great truth of Christ crucified for you ? 
 Do you ever think of it ? Does the memory of Him and of His death for 
 you come to you in your daily work and struggles ? 
 
 I beseech you, fix your thoughts and your love on Him, and look away 
 from all else. Make Him and His love and His death the theme of your 
 thankful meditation in many a quiet hour of high communion. Try to have 
 that vision as your companion everywhere, and on every common thing to 
 see " placarded " the Crucified Christ. That sight will take the brightness 
 out of many a false glitter, as a poor candle pales before the electric light, or 
 as the sun puts even it to shame. It will make many a tempting fiend, 
 who squats at your ear to drop his poison in, start up in his own shape. If 
 you look to Jesus crucified for you, He will give you " power to tread upon 
 the serpent and the scorpion, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.' 
 You may be as powerless of yourself before temptations as a humming-bird 
 before a snake ; but if you look fixedly to Him, neither the glittering eye of 
 the serpent nor the forked tongue with its hiss will harm or frighten you. 
 And the question of Paul, instead of being one of indignant rebuke and 
 wonder, will become to each of us the expression of our triumphant confi- 
 dence that we shall "tread upon the serpent and the adder," and conquer 
 our tempters: "Who is he that will bewitch us, if before our eyes there 
 ever shines Christ crucified ? " 
 
 255 
 
THE AMULET. 
 
 Far be it from me to gt'ory, save in the Cross of ottr Lord Jesus Christ, 
 through which the world hath been crucified unto Me, unU 1 unto the 
 world. — Gal. vi. 14. 
 
 „ . .„ The counter- charm that keeps a man safe from the enchant- 
 oep em er . ^^.^gj^^g q£ ^Y\q. world lies in these words : " Before whose eyes 
 Jesus Christ was evidently set forth crucified." The secret of security is, 
 do not look at the glittering eye that would fascinate you. And the way to 
 do that is to fix your eye on something else. A man that has to walk across 
 a foaming torrent upon some narrow plank knows that the only way to keep 
 himself steady is to fix his eye upon something on the farther side. If he 
 looks to his feet, or the bridge, or the water as it boils amongst the rocks 
 below, down he will go. The one safety is, fix your eye upon the point to 
 which you go, and keep steadfastly looking at that ; and your feet will take 
 care of themselves. 
 
 And so it is in this matter. If we are to have the power of turning away 
 from these things that tempt us, and are thus to deprive the sorcerer of his 
 influence, because we will not look at him, we must look at Jesus Christ. 
 Hearts and minds that are occupied with Him will not be at leisure for lower 
 and grosser tastes. An empty vessel let down into the ocean will have its 
 sides bulged in far more quickly than one that is filled. Fill your hearts, and 
 keep them full, with Jesus Christ, and they will be able to resist the pressure 
 of temptation. 
 
 The true way to conquer temptations is not to fight them in detail, but to 
 go up into a loftier region, where they cease to be temptations. How is it 
 that grown men do not like the sweetmeats that used to tempt them when 
 they were children ? They have outgrown them. Then outgrow the 
 temptations of the world ! How is it that there are no mosquitoes nor 
 malaria on the mountain tops? They cannot rise above the level of the 
 swamps by the river. Go up to the mountain top, and neither malaria nor 
 mosquitoes will follow you — which being interpreted is, live near Jesus 
 Christ, and keep your hearts and minds occupied with Him, and you will 
 dwell in a region high above the temptations which buzz and sting, which 
 infest and slay, on the lower levels. 
 
 But remember that it is the contemplation of Christ crucified which has 
 this power to elevate and act as a charm against the spells of evil. There 
 is not substance or transforming power enough in a Christianity without a 
 Cross to overcome the world. It has always been the case that when 
 Christ's death has ceased to be the centre of the Church's faith and testi- 
 mony, the Church has become worldly. When men have not had a 
 crucified Christ to gaze upon, they have turned to look at the fiiscinators, 
 and their very life has been sucked out of them. It is only by His Cross 
 that the world becomes dead to me, and I unto the world. The victorious 
 power of Christianity lies in the continual contemplation of Christ's death 
 for me. 
 
 256 
 
THE ATTACHMENTS OF FAITH. 
 
 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen 
 them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were 
 strangers and pilgrims on the earth. — Heb. xi. 13. 
 
 ,^ . THEgreatroll-callof heroes of faith in this chapter (Heb. xi.) 
 e^) eiiiu„r . g^^g ^y^^^ ^j-^g supposition that the living spirit of religion 
 was the same in Old and in New Testament times. In both it was faith 
 which knit men to God. It has often been alleged that that great word 
 faith has a different signification in this Epistle from that wliich it has in 
 the other New Testament writings. The allegation is largely true ; in so 
 far as the things believed are concerned they are extremly different, but it 
 is not true in so far as the person trusted or in so far as the act of trusting 
 are concerned, — these are identical. It was no mere temporal and earthly 
 promise on which the faith of these patriarchs was builded. They looked 
 indeed for the land, but in lookijig for the land they looked *' for the City 
 which hath foundations " ; and their future hopes had the same dim haze 
 of ignorance, and the same questions unresolved about persi^ective and 
 relative distances which our future hopes have ; and their faith, whatever 
 were its contents, was fundamentally the same out of it soul casting itself 
 upon God which is the essence of our faith in the Divine Son in whom God 
 is made manifest. So with surface difference there is a deep-lying, absolute 
 oneness in the faith of the Old Testament and ours, in their essential nature, 
 in the Object which they grasp, and in their practical effects upon life. 
 Therefore these words, describing what faith did for the world's grey fore- 
 fathers, have a more immediate bearing upon us than at first sight may 
 appear, and may suggest for us some thoughts about the proper, practical 
 issues of Christian faith in our daily lives. 
 
 Observe that the words, "And were persuaded of them," in our Old 
 Version are a gloss, — no part of the original text. Observe, further, that 
 the adverb " afar off'' is intended to apply to both the clauses : " Having 
 seen them " and " embraced them." And that, consequently, " embraced" 
 must necessarily be an inadequate representation of the writer's idea ; for 
 you cannot embrace a thing that is "afar off"; and to "embrace the 
 promises " was the very thing that these men did not do. The meaning of 
 the v/ord is, here, not e/nbraced, but saluted, ox greeted ; and the figure that 
 lies in it is a very beautiful one. As some traveller topping the water-shed 
 may see far off the white porch of his home, and wave a greeting to it, 
 though it be distant, while his heart goes out over all the intervening, weary 
 leagues ; or as some homeward-bound crew catch, away yonder on the 
 horizon, the tremulous low line that is home, and welcome it with a shout 
 of joy, though many a billow dash and break between them and it, these 
 men looked across the weary waste, and saw far away ; and as they saw, 
 their hearts went out towards the things that were promised, because they 
 "judged Him faithful that had promised." And that is the attitude and 
 the act which all true faith in God ought to operate in us. 
 
 257 S 
 
FAITH'S VISION. 
 
 Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not 
 seen. — Heb. xi. i. 
 
 - People say, " Seeing is believing." I should be disposed 
 
 ep em er . ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ aphorisin right round, and to say, " Believing is 
 seeing," For there is a clearer insight, and a more immediate, direct 
 contact with the thing beheld, and a deeper certitude in the vision of faith 
 than in llic poor purbhnd s'ght of sense, all fiill of illusions, and which has 
 no real possession in it of the things which it beliolds. The sight that 
 Faith gives is solid, substantial, clear, certain. If I might so sa}-, the true 
 exercise of Faith is to stereoscope the dim, ghostlike realities of the future, 
 and to make them stand out solid in relief there before us. And he who, 
 clasping the hand, and if I might so say, looking through the eyes of God, 
 sees the future, in humble acceptance of His great words of promise, in 
 some measure as God sees it — he has a source of knowledge, clear, imme- 
 diate, certain, which sense, with its lies and imperfections, is altogether 
 inadequate even to symbolise. The vision of P^.ith is far deeper, far more 
 real, far more correspondent to the realities, and far more satisuing to the 
 eye that gazes, than is any of the sight of sense. Do not you be deceived 
 or seduced, by talk that assumes to be profound and philosophical, into 
 beheving that when you venture your all upon God's Word, and doing so 
 say, " I know, and behold mine inheritance," you are saying more than 
 calm reason and common sense teaches us. We have the thing, and we 
 see it, if we believe Him that in His Word shows it to us. 
 
 This vision of Faith, with all its blessed clearness and certitude and 
 sufficiency, is not a direct perception of the things promised, but only a 
 sight of them in the promise. And does that make it less blessed? Does 
 the astronomer that sits in his chamber, and when he would most care- 
 fully observe the heavens, looks downwards on to the mirror of the reJJectiug 
 telescope that he uses, feel that he sees the starry liglUs less clearly and 
 less really than when he gazes up into the abyss itself and sees Ihcin there ? 
 Is not the reflection a better and a more accurate source of knowledge for 
 him than even the observation direct of the sky would be ? And so, if we 
 look down into the promise, we shall see, gleaming and glittering there, the 
 starry points which are the true im iges adapted to our present sense and 
 power of reception of the great invis.ble lights al>ove. God be thanked that 
 P'aith looks to the promises ai.d not to the realities, else it were no more 
 F"aith, and would lose some of its blessedness. 
 
 Let me remind you that this vision of Faith varies in the measure of our 
 faith. It is not always the same. Refraction brings up sometimes, above 
 the surface of the sea, a spectral likeness of the opposite shore ; and men stand 
 now and tlien upon our Southern coasts, and for an hour or two, in some 
 conditions of the atmosphere, they see the low sandhills of the French or the 
 Belgian coast, as if they were in arm's length. So Faiih, refracting the 
 rays of light that strike from the Throne of God, brings up the image, and 
 when it is strong the image is clear, and when it flags the image "fades 
 away into the light of common day " ; and where there glowed the fair out- 
 lines of the far-off land, there is nothing but a weary wash of waters and a 
 solitary stretch of sea. 
 
 258 
 
THE DETACHMENTS OF FAITH. 
 
 Ye are no more strangers and sojourners^ but ye are fellow-citizens with 
 the saints, and of the household of God, — Eph. ii. 19. 
 
 g , ,g Faith produces a sense of detachment from the pre- 
 p emoer . ^^^^^ "They confessed that they were strangers and 
 pilgrims on the earth." 
 
 Now, there are two different kinds of consciousness that we are 
 strangers and sojourners here. There is one that merely comes from the 
 consideration of the natural transiency of all earthly things and the short- 
 ness of human life ; there is another that comes from the consciousness 
 that we belong to another kingdom and another order. A "stro.nger'' is a 
 man who, in a given constitution of things, in some country with a settled 
 government, owes allegiance to another king and belongs to another 
 polity. A " pilgrim " or a " sojourner" is a man who is only in the place 
 where he now is for a little while. So the one of the two words expresses 
 the idea of belonging to another state of things, and the other expresses the 
 idea of transiency in the present condition. 
 
 But the true Christian consciousness of being "a stranger and a 
 sojourner " comes, not from any thought that life is fleeting and ebbing 
 away, but from the better and more blessed operation of the faith which 
 reveals the things promised, and knits me so closely to them that I cannot 
 but feel separated from the things that are round about me. INIen that live 
 in mountainous countries, when they come down into the plains, be it 
 Switzerland or the Highlands or anywhere else, pine and fade away, 
 sometimes with the intensity of the " Heimweh,'' the homesickness which 
 seizes them. And we, if we are Christians, and belong to the other order 
 of things, shall feel that this is not the native soil, nor here the home in 
 which we would dwell. Abraham could not go to live in Sodom, though 
 Lot went ; and he and his son and grandson kept themselves outside of the 
 organisation of the society in the midst of which they dwelt, because they 
 were so sure that they belonged to another. They " dwelt in tents because 
 they looked for the City.'' 
 
 My brother ! does your faith lessen the bonds that bind you to earth ? 
 Does it detach you from the things that are seen and temporal ? or is your 
 life ordered upon the same maxims, and devoted to the pursuit of the same 
 objects, and gladdened by the same transitory and partial successes, and 
 embittered by the same fleeting and light afflictions which rule and sway 
 as the tempest sways the grass on the sandbanks, as the lives that are rooted 
 only in earth ? If so, what business have we to call ourselves Christians ? 
 If so, how can we say that we live by faith when we are so blind, and so 
 incapable of seeing afar off, that the smallest trifle beside us blots out from 
 our vision, as a fourpenny-piece held up against your eyeball might do the 
 sun itself in the heavens there. True faith detaches a man from this 
 present. If your faith does not do that, look into it, and see where the 
 falsity of it is. 
 
 259 
 
FAITH TRIUMPHANT IN DEATH. 
 
 He looked for the city which hath the foundations^ whose Builder and 
 Maker is God. — Heb. xi. lO. 
 
 Faith triumphs in the article of death. "These all died 
 ' in faith," That is a very grand thought as applied to those 
 old patriarchs, that just because all their lives long God had done nothing 
 for them of what He had promised, therefore they died believing he was 
 going to do it. All the disappointments fed their faith. Because the words 
 on which they had been leaning all their lives had not come to a fulfilment, 
 therefore they must be true. That is a strange paradox, and yet it is the 
 one which filled these men's hearts with peace, and which made the dying 
 Jacob break in upon his prophetic swan-song, at the close, with the verse 
 which stands in no relation to what goes before it or what comes after it, 
 " I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord." "These all died in faith" 
 just because they had " not received the promises." So, for us, the end of 
 life may have a faith nurtured by disappointments, made more sure of 
 everything because it has nothing ; certain that he calls into existence 
 another world to redress the balance of the old, because here there has been 
 so much of bitterness and weariness and woe. 
 
 And our end, like theirs, may be an end beautified by a clear vision of 
 the things that "no man hath seen, nor can see" ; and into the darkness 
 there may come for us, as there came of old to another, an open heaven 
 and a beam of God's glory smiting us on the face and changing it into the 
 face of an angeL And so there may come for us all in that article and act 
 of death a tranquil and cheerful abandonment of the life which has been 
 futile and frail, except when thought of as the vestibule of Heaven. Some 
 men cling to the vanishing skirts of this earthly hfe, and say, " I will not 
 let thee go." And others are able to say, " Lord ! I have waited for Thy 
 Salvation." " Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace." 
 
 " These all died in faith " ; and the sorrows and disappointments of the 
 past made the very background on which the bow of promise spanned the 
 sky, beneath which they passed into the Promised Land. "These all 
 died in faith " ; with a vision gleaming upon the inward sense which made 
 the sohtude of death bliss, and with a calm willingness "to depart, and to 
 be with Christ, which is far better." 
 
 Choose whether you will live by sense and die in sorrow, or whether 
 you will live by the faith of the Son of God, and die to enter " the City 
 which hath foundations," which He has built for them that love Him, and 
 which even now, " in seasons of calm weather," we can see shining on the 
 hill- top far away. 
 
 260 
 
THE SILENCE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, 
 which are not written in this book : but these are zvritten that ye might 
 believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye might 
 have life in His Name. — ^JOHN xx. 30, 31. 
 
 8 t b 17 "^^^ silence of Scripture is quite as eloquent as its speech. 
 
 ep em er . -p^^jj^^^ ^^^ instance, of how many things in the Bible are 
 taken for granted that you would not expect to be taken for granted in a 
 book of religious instruction. It takes for granted the Being of a God. It 
 takes for granted our relations to Him. It takes for granted our moral 
 nature. In its later portions, at all events, it takes for granted the future 
 life. Look at how the Bible, as a whole, passes by, without one word of 
 explanation or alleviation, a great many of the difficulties v^^hich gather 
 round some of its teaching. For instance, we find no attempt to explain 
 the Divine nature of our Lord, or the existence of the three Persons in the 
 Godhead. It has not a word to say in explanation of the mystery of prayer, 
 or of the difficulty of reconciling the omnipotent will of God on the one 
 hand with my own free will on the other. It has not a word to explain, 
 though many a word to proclaim and enforce, the fact of Christ's death as 
 the atonement for the sins of the whole world. Observe, too, how scanty 
 the information on points on which the heart craves for more light. Plow 
 closely, for instance, the veil is kept over the future life ! How many 
 questions which are not prompted by mere curiosity our sorrow and our 
 love ask in vain ! 
 
 Nor is the incompleteness of Scripture as a historical book less marked. 
 Nations and men appear on its pages abruptly, rending the curtain of 
 oblivion, and striding to the front of the stage for a moment, and then they 
 disappear, swallowed up of night. It has no care to tell the stories of any 
 of its heroes, except for so long as they were the organs of that Divine 
 breath, which, breathed through the weakest reed, makes music. The 
 self-revelation of God, not the acts andfortunesof even His noblest servants, 
 is the theme of the Book. It is full of gaps about matters that any sciolist 
 or philosopher or theologian would have filled up for it. There it stands, 
 a Book unique in the world's history, unique in what it says, and no less 
 unique in what it does not say. 
 
 Why was it that in the Church, after the completion of the Scriptural 
 canon, there sprang up a whole host of apocryphal gospels, full of childish 
 stories of events which they felt had been passed over with strange silence 
 in the teachings of the four evangelists ? Put the four gospels down by the 
 side of the two thick octavo volumes which it is the regulation thing to 
 write nowadays about any man that has a name at all, and you will feel 
 their incompleteness as biographies. They are but a pen-and-ink drawing 
 of the sun ! And yet, although they be so tiny that you might sit down and 
 read them all in an evening over the fire, is it not strange that they have 
 stamped on the whole world an image so deep and so sharp, of such a 
 character as the world never saw besides ? They are fragments, but they 
 have left a symmetrical and a unique impression on the consciousness of the 
 whole world. 
 
 261 
 
THE INCOMPLETENESS OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they 
 should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not 
 contain the books that should be written. — ^JOHN xxi. 25. 
 
 Se tember 18 Christ, the Son of God, is the Centre of Scripture ; and 
 the Book — whatever be the historical facts about its origin, 
 its authorship, and the date of the several portions of which it is composed 
 — the Book is a unity, because there is driven right through it, like a core 
 of gold, either in the way of prophecy and onward-looking anticipation, or 
 in the way of history and grateful retrospect, the reference to the one 
 *' Name that is above every name," the name of the Christ, the Son of 
 God. 
 
 " They that went before, and they that followed after, cried, * Hosanna ! 
 Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.'" That Christ 
 towers up above the history of the world and the process of revelation, like 
 Mount Everest among the Himalayas. To that great peak all the country 
 on the one side runs upwards, and from it all the valleys on the other 
 descend ; and the springs are born there which carry verdure and life over 
 the world. 
 
 And all the incompleteness of Scripture, its fragmentariness, its careless- 
 ness about persons, are intended, as are the slight parts in a skilful painter's 
 handiwork, to emphasise the beauty and the sovereignty of that one central 
 Figure on which all the lights are concentrated, and on which he has 
 lavished all the resources of his art. So God — for God is the Author of the 
 Bible — on this great canvas has painted much in sketching outline, and left 
 much unfilled in, that every eye may be fixed on the central Figure, the 
 Christ of God, on whose head comes down the dove, and round whom 
 echoes the Divine declaration : "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am 
 well pleased." 
 
 But it is not merely in order to represent Jesus as the Christ of God 
 that these are written, but it is that that representation may become the 
 object of our faith. If the intention of Scripture had been simply to 
 establish the fact that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of God, it might 
 have been done in a very different fashion. A theological treatise would 
 have been enough to do that. But, if the object be that men should not 
 only accept with their understandings the truth concerning Christ's office 
 and no.ture, but that their hearts should go out to Him, and that they should 
 rest their sinful souls upon Him ar the Son of God and the Christ, then 
 there is no other way to accomplish that but by the history of His life and 
 the manifestation of His heart. If the object were simply to make us know 
 about Christ, we do not need a Book like this ; but if the object is to lead 
 us to put our faith in Him, then we must have what we have here, the 
 infinitely touching and tender figure of Jesus Christ Himself set forth 
 before us in all its sweetness and beauty, as He lived and moved and died 
 for us. 
 
 Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ? Do you trust 
 your soul to Him in these characters? If you do, I think we can shake 
 hands. If you do not. Scripture has failed to do its work on you, and you 
 have not reached the point which all God's lavish revelation has been 
 expended on the world that you and all men might attain. 
 
 262 
 
THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF GOD'S WORD. 
 
 These are they which bear ivitness of Me ; and ye will not come to Me, 
 that ye may have life. — ^JoHN v. 39, 40. 
 
 S t b 19 Scripture is not given to us merely to make us know 
 something about God in Christ, nor only in order that we 
 may have faith in the Christ thus revealed to us, but for a further end — ■ 
 great, glorious, but, blessed be His Name ! not distant — namely, that we 
 may "have life in His Name." "Life" is deep, mystical, inexplicable 
 by any other words than itself. It includes pardon, holiness, well-being, 
 immortality. Heaven ; but it is more than they all. 
 
 This life comes into our dead hearts, and quickens them by union with 
 God. That which is joined to God lives. Union with Christ in His 
 Sonship will bring life into dead hearts. He is the true Prometheus that 
 has come from Heaven with fire, the fire of the Divine Life in the reed 
 of His humanity ; and Pie imparts it to us all if we will. He lays Himself 
 upon us, as the prophet laid himself on the little child in the upper chamber ; 
 and lip to lip, and beating heart to dead heart. He touches our death, and it 
 is quickened into life. And the condition on which that great Name will 
 bring to us life is simply our faith. If you trust Him as the Son of God 
 who comes down to earth that we in Him might have the immortal life 
 He is ready to give, then the end that God has in view in all His revelation, 
 that Christ had in view in His bitter Passion, has been accomplished for 
 you. If you do not, it has not. You may admire Him, you may think 
 loftily of Him, you may be ready to call Him by many great and 
 appreciative names, but oh ! unless you have learned to see in Him the 
 Divine Saviour of your souls, you have not seen what God means you to 
 see. But if you have, then all other questions about this Book, important 
 as they are in their places, may settle themselves as they will ; you have 
 got the kernel, the thing that it was meant to bring you. Many an 
 erudite scholar that has studied the Bible all his life has missed the 
 purpose for which it was given ; and many a poor old woman in her 
 garret has found it. It is not meant to be wrangled over, it is not 
 meant to be read as an interesting product of the rehgious consciousness, 
 it is not to be admired as a specimen of the literature of a nation that had 
 a genius for religion, but it is to be taken as being God's great Word to 
 the world, t^e record of the revelation that He has given us in His Son. 
 The Eternal Word is the theme of all the written Word. Plave you made 
 the jewel which is brought us in that casket your own ? Is Jesus to you 
 the Son of the living God, believing on whom you share His life, and 
 become sons of God by Him ? Can you take on to your thankful lips that 
 triumphant and rapturous confession of the doubling Thomas — the flag 
 flying on the completed roof-tree of this Gospel — "My Lord and my 
 God " ? If you can, you will receive the blessing which Christ then 
 promised to all of us standing beyond the hmits of that little group, " who 
 have not seen and yet have believed " — even that eternal life which flows 
 into our dead spirits from the Christ, the Son of God, who is the Light 
 of the world and the Life of men. 
 
 263 
 
YOU NEED A REFUGE. 
 
 Look on tny right hand^ and see ; for there is no man that knozveth me : 
 refuge hath failed me ; no man caretk for my soul, — PsALM cxlii. 4, 
 
 There is nothing sadder than the strange power which 
 ep em er . ^^^^^ have of blinking the great facts of their own condition 
 and of human life. I know few things that seem to me more tragic, and 
 certainly none that are more contemptible, than the easy-going, superficial 
 optimism, or the easy-going, superficial negligence, with which hosts of people 
 altogether slur over, even if they do not deny, the plain fact that every man 
 and woman of us stands here in this world, though compassed by many 
 blessings, and in the enjoyment of much good, and having many delights 
 flowing into our lives, and being warranted in laughter and mirth, still 
 stands like an unsheltered fugitive in the open, with a ring of enemies 
 round about that may close in upon him. Self-interest seems often to 
 be blind, and in many, I am sure, it is blind to the plainest and 
 largest truths with reference to themselves, I heir necessities, and their 
 conditions. Ah, dear friend ! after all that we say about the beauty 
 and the brightness and the joyfulness of life and the beneficence of 
 God, we live in a very stern world. There are evils that may come, 
 and there are some that certainly will come. Young people — thank 
 God for it, but do not abuse it — are buoyant in hope, and take short 
 views, and are glad, where older folk, that have learnt what life is 
 generally, have sober estimates of its possibilities, and our radiant 
 visions have toned down into a very subdued grey. Sorrow, disappoint- 
 ments, broken hopes, hopes fulfilled and disappointed — and that is 
 worst of all — losses, inevitable partings when the giant shrouded figure 
 of Death forces its way in at the rose-covered portal in spite of the puny 
 efforts of Love to keep it out, sicknesses, failures in business, griefs of 
 many kinds that I cannot touch — the slings and arrows of outrageous 
 fortune, and all the ills that flesh is heir to,— these lie waiting somewhere 
 on the road for every one of us. Are )'ou going to stand in the unsheltered 
 plain, a mark for all these ? Do you think you can front them in your 
 own strength ? Are you able, calmly and soberly, remembering the possi- 
 bilities that lie in the black clouds over your head, to say, '* Pour on ! I 
 will endure ? " Nay ! verily ; you need a refuge. 
 
 You carry your own worst danger buttoned up in your own waistcoats 
 and gowns ; you bear about with you in your hearts, in your passions, in 
 your desires, a vase of combustibles amidst the sparks of a volcano, so to 
 speak. And any one of these that fill the air may drop into it, and bring 
 about a conflagration. No man that has measured himself, the irritability 
 of his nerves, the excitability of his passions, the weakness of his will, and 
 its ugly trick of goii g over to the enemy at the very critical moment of the 
 fight, but, if he is a wise man, will say, "I need something stronger than 
 myself to fall back upon, I need some damp cloth or other to be laid over 
 the magazine of combustibles in my heart : I need a refuge from myself." 
 
 264 
 
THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 / remember God, and am disquieted : I coinplain, and my spirit is 
 overwhelmed. — PsALM Ixxvii. 3. 
 
 You carry — no matter whence it came, or how it was 
 ^^ ^ ' developed ; that is of no consequence, you have got it — 
 
 you carry a conscience, that is not altogether silent in any man, I suppose, 
 and that certainly is not altogether dead in you. Its awful voice speaks 
 many a time in the silence of the night, and in the depths of your own 
 heart, and tells you that there are evil things in your past and a page black 
 in your biography which you can do nothing to cancel or to erase the stains 
 frum or to tear out. " What I have v/ritten I have written." And so 
 long as memory holds her place, and conscience is not shattered altogether, 
 there needs no other hell to make the punishment of the evil-doer. You 
 need a refuge from the stings of the true indictments of your own con- 
 sciences. 
 
 Your conscience is a prophet. It is not, nowadays, fashionable to 
 preach about the Day of Judgment — more's the pity, I think. We say 
 that every one of us shall give an account of ourselves to God. Have you 
 ever tried to believe that about yourself, and to realise what it means? 
 Think that all, down to the oozy depths that we are ashamed to look at 
 ourselves, shall be spread out before the " pure eyes and perfect judgment 
 of the all-judging" God. Oh ! brother, you will need a refuge, " that you 
 may have boldness before Him in the Day of Judgment." These things 
 that I have been speaking about, external ills, ungoverned self, the accusa- 
 tions of conscience, which is the voice of God, and that future to which 
 we are all driving as fast as we can — these things are trtiths ; and, being 
 truths, they should enter in, as operative facts, into your lives. My 
 question is. Have they done so ? 
 
 You need a refuge ; have you ever calmly contemplated the necessity ? 
 Oh ! do not let that dogged ignorance of the facts bewitch you any longer. 
 Do not let the inconsequent levity that cannot see an inch beyond its nose 
 hide from you the realities of our own condition. People in the prisons, 
 during the September massacres of the French Revolution, used to amuse 
 themselves, although the tumbrils were coming for some of them to-morrow 
 morning, and the headsman was waiting for them — used to amuse them- 
 selves as if they were free, and got up entertainments with a ghastly 
 mockery of joy. That is something like what some of us do. One has 
 seen a mule going down an Alpine pass, ambling quite comfortably along, 
 with one foot over a precipice, and a thousand feet to fall if it slips. That 
 is how some of us travel along the road. Sheep will nibble the grass, 
 stretching their stupid necks a little bit further to get an especially succulent 
 tuft on the edge of the cliffs, with eight hundred feet and a crawling sea 
 at the bottom of it to receive them if they stumble. Do not be like that. 
 " Be ye not as the horses or the mules that have no understanding," but 
 look the facts in the face, and do not be content till you have acted as they 
 prescribe. 
 
 265 
 
THE REFUGE THAT YOU NEED. 
 
 Thou hast been a Stronghold to the poor, a Stronghold to the needy in 
 his distress, a Refuge from, the storm, a Shadoiv from the heat. — IsA. xxv. 4. 
 
 '^'^^ writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes the 
 September Z2. cj-^^-isfj^n's Refuge as " the hope set before us." Now ! by 
 "hope" there, he obviously means, not the emotion, but the Object upon 
 which it is fixed. For it is something "set before" him — that is to say, 
 external to him, and on which, when it is set before him, he can lay an 
 appropriating hand, so that by the hope here is meant the thing hoped for. 
 That, of course, is a very common usage, in v/hich we transfer the name 
 of a feeling to the thing that excites it. So here it is the thing that 
 Christians have laid hold of which is called "the hope set before us." 
 
 That thing set before men as the object of hope is the great and faithful 
 promise of God, confirmed by His oath long ago to the ancient patriarchs, 
 the promise of Divine blessings and of a future inheritance. And, says the 
 writer, away down here, in the very latest ages, we have the very same 
 solid substance to grasp and cling to that Abraham of old had. For God 
 said to him, " Blessing, I will bless thee," and He says it to us ; and that is 
 a "Refuge." God said to him, "Thou shalt have a land for an inherit- 
 ance," and He says it to us ; and that is a Refuge. The presence of God, 
 and the promise of a blessed inheritance, are the elements of the hope of 
 which the writer is speaking. Then, in his rapid way, he crowds figure 
 upon figure, and, not content with two, the asylum and the strong stay, 
 he adds a third, and likens this hope to the anchor of the soul, giving 
 steadfastness and fixity to the man who clings, being in itself "sure" so 
 that it will not break, and "steadfast" so that it will not drag. He goes 
 on to say that this object of hope enters "into that within the veil." But 
 notice that in the very next verse he speaks of some one else that entered 
 within the veil — viz. , Jesus Christ. So, as in a dissolving view, you have, 
 first, the figure of Hope, as the poets have painted her, calm and radiant and 
 smiling ; and then that form melts away, and there stands instead of the 
 abstraction Hope, the Person Jesus Christ. Which, being translated into 
 plain words, is just this, the Refuge is Christ. Jesus Christ is our Hope — 
 and Refuge, because He is our Priest. Ah, dear brother, all other 
 enemies and ills are tolerable, and a man may make shift to bear them all 
 without God, though he will bear them very imperfectly ; but the deepest 
 need of all, the most threatening enemy of all, can only be dealt with and 
 overcome by the Gospel which proclaims the Priest whose death is the 
 abolition of Death, whose sacrifice is the removal of sin. 
 
 How utterly different all the inevitable ills and sorrows of this mortal 
 life become when we lay hold on Him, and find shelter there ! "A man 
 shall be a refuge from the storm and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of 
 water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. " We 
 can bear sickness and sorrows and disappointments and failures and 
 partings and all griefs, and the arrow-heads are blunted, or, at all events, 
 the poison is wiped off the barbs when we have Christ for our Refuge and 
 our Friend. 
 
 266 
 
FLEEING AND CLINGING. 
 
 We . . . who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before 
 us. — Heb. vi. 
 
 g ^ , 23 The writer blends two vivid metaphors here, the one of a 
 fu;;;itive unsheltered in the open, surrounded by foes ; the 
 other of a man grasping some strong stay. Look at the two pictures. 
 " Fled for refuge." The scene brought before us is that of a man flying 
 for his life, with the pursuer clattering at his heels, and his lance-point 
 within a yard of the fugitive's back. Grass will not grow under that man's 
 feet ; he v/ill not stop to look at the flower by the road. The wealth of 
 South Africa, if it were spread before him, would not check his headlong 
 flight. It is a race for life. If he gets to the open gate he is safe. If he 
 is overtaken before he reaches it, he is a dead man. The moment he gets 
 within the portal the majesty of law compasses him about, and delivers 
 him from the wild justice of revenge. " By-and-bye "kills its tens of 
 thousands. For one man that says, "I am not a Christian, and, what is 
 more, I never intend to be," there are a dozen that say, " To-morrow ! to- 
 morrow ! " " Let me sow my wild oats as a young man ; let me alone for 
 a little while. I am busy at present ; when I have a convenie; : season I 
 will send for thee." What would have become of the man-slayer if he had 
 curled himself up in his cloak, and laid down beside his victim, and said, 
 " I am too tired to run for it" ? He would have been dead before morn- 
 ing. A rabbi's scholar, as the Jewish traditions tell us, once said to him, 
 "Master! when shall I repent?" "The day before you die," said the 
 Rabl)i. The scholar said, " I may die to-day." Then said the Rabbi, 
 "Repent to-day." "Choose you this day "whether you will stand un- 
 sheltered out there, exposed to the pelting hustling of the pitiless storm, or 
 will flee to the Refuge and be saved. 
 
 Look at the other picture : "to lay hold of the hope." Perhaps the 
 allusion is to the old instiiution of Sanctuary, which perhaps existed in 
 Israel, and at any rate was well known in ancient times. When a man 
 grasped the horns of the altar he was safe. If so, the two metaphors may 
 really blend into one : the flight first, and then the clutching to that which, 
 so long as the twining fingers could encompass it, would permit no foe to 
 strike the fugitive. This metaphor speaks of the fixity of the hold with 
 which we should grasp Jesus Christ by our faith. The shipwrecked sailor 
 up in the rigging, with the wild sea around him, and the vessel thumping 
 upon the sand, will hold on, with frozen fingers, for hours, to the shrouds, 
 knowing that if he slips his grasp the next hungry wave will sweep him 
 away and devour him. And so you should cling to Jesus Christ with the 
 consciousness of danger and helplessness, with the tight grasp of despair, 
 with the tight grasp of certain hope. 
 
 I remember reading of an inundation in India, when a dam, away up in 
 a mountain gorge, burst at midnight. Mounted messengers were sent down 
 the glen to gallop as hard as they could and rouse the sleeping villagers. 
 Those who rose and fled in an instant were in time to reach the high 
 ground, as they saw the tawny flood coming swirling down the gorge, laden 
 with the wrecks of happy homes and many a corpse. Those who hesitated 
 and dawdled were swept away by it. 
 
 267 
 
CHRIST'S COMING TO THE WORLD.— I. 
 
 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let hitrt 
 say. Come. — Rev. xxii. 17. 
 
 c * V r»i The two halves of this verse do not refer to the same 
 oeptember a, ^i ,, . ., ,^ _ . 
 
 persons or the same " commg. The first portion as an 
 
 invocation or a prayer ; the second portion is an invitation or an offer. The 
 
 one is addressed to Christ, the other to men. The commentary upon the 
 
 former is the last words of the Book, where we find the seer answering the 
 
 promise of his Master: "Behold! I come quickly!" with the sigh of 
 
 loiging : "Even so! Come! Lord Jesus." And in precisely a similar 
 
 fashion the bride here, longing for the presence of the bridegroom, 
 
 answers His promise : " Behold, I come quickly !" which occurs a verse or 
 
 two before, with the petition which all who hear it are bidden to swell till 
 
 it rolls in a great wave of supplication to His feet. 
 
 And then with that coming, another " coming" is connected. The one 
 is the coming of Christ to the world at last ; the other is the coming of men 
 to Christ now. The double office of the Church is represented here, the 
 voice that rose in petition to Heaven has to sound upon earth in proclama- 
 tion. And the double relation of Christ to His Church is implied here. 
 He is absent, therefore He is prayed to come ; but He is in such a fashion 
 present as that any who will can come to Him. He will come again ; but 
 ere He does, and because He will, men are invited to approach Him now, 
 and if we do, to our hearts, too. His appearing will be a joy and not a 
 terror. And the sweetness of His presence with us amidst the shows of 
 time will be perfected by the glories of our presence with Him when He 
 comes at last. 
 
 Christ has come, Christ will come. These are the two great facts from 
 which, as from two golden hooks, the whole chain of human history hangs 
 in a mighty curve. The one fills all the past, the other should brighten all 
 the future. Memory should feed upon the one, hope should leap up to 
 grasp the other. And so closely are these two connected as that the former 
 is incomplete and ineffectual without the latter. He has come, therefore 
 He will come. 
 
 And that coming is to be in bodily form, even as the angels said : 
 "This Jesus shall so come m like i?ianner as ye have seen Him go." 
 What was the likeness ? The differences are enormous : He came in 
 weakness ; He will come in power. He came in humiliation ; He will come 
 in glory. He came to redeem ; He will come to judge. But the similarity 
 is this, that as in true bodily form He truly entered into human conditions, 
 and walked amongst men upon earth, having a local habitation and a name 
 amongst us, so He comes again in no metaphor, in no ideal lashion, but in 
 simple corporeal reality, once more manifest and visible amongst the 
 children of earth. 
 
 He came in obscurity, stealing into the world with but a handful of poor 
 shepherds for the witnesses. He will come, "and every eye shall see 
 Him." He will come in a body no less truly human, no less really 
 corporeal, but in a body of glory, which shall fitly manifest and ray out the 
 indwelHng of Divinity. And lie comes for judgment, and He comes to 
 perfect the union between Himself and all humble hearts that love Him 
 and trust Him. 
 
 268 
 
CHRIST'S COMING TO THE WORLD.~II. 
 
 He that cometh shall come, and shall not tarry. — Heb. x. 37. 
 
 In anticipation of that ultimate coming, in bodily form, 
 Septeml)er 25. ^^^ ^j^^^ ^^ earth's sorrows and the consummation of 
 earth's history, there are many comings of Christ through the ages ; and 
 like in principle, though lesser in degree, destructions of Jerusalem, and 
 falls of the Roman Empire by Gothic invasions, and Reformations of the 
 Popish corrupt Church, and French Revolutions, and American Wars of 
 Slavery, and many another secular change by w^hich the old order changeth, 
 yielding place to new, are what the old prophets called " Days of the 
 Lord," the same in principle as that last great day. Christ "comes," 
 though He is always present in human history — comes to our apprehensions 
 in eras of rapid change, in revolutionary times when some ancient iniquity 
 is smitten down, and some new fair form emerges from the chaos. The 
 electricity is long in gathering during the fervid summer heat, in the 
 slow moving and changing clouds ; but when it is gathered, there comes 
 the flash. The snow is long in collecting on the precipitous face of the 
 Alp ; but when the weight has become sufficient, down it rushes, the white 
 death of the avalanche. For fifty-nine (silent) minutes and fifty-nine (silent) 
 seconds the hand moves round the dial, and at the sixtieth it strikes. So, 
 at long intervals in history of nations, a crash comes, and men say : 
 " Behold the Lord ! He cometh to judge the world." 
 
 Surely, surely, it needs no words to enforce the thought that all who 
 love Him and all who love truth and righteousness, which are His, and all 
 who desire that the world's sorroAvs should be alleviated and the world's 
 evils should be chastised and smitten, must lift up the old, old cry : " Even 
 so ! Come ! Lord Jesus." The bride must long for the coming of the 
 bridegroom. Burdened hearts that writhe and are afflicted with the sorrows 
 of humanity, and hearts that plod wearily along some lonely path in 
 darkness and in pain — these all lift up their cry to Him, the Avenger, the 
 Lover, the Judge, the Purifier, that He would come with that rod of His 
 mouth which slays the wicked, and that fiery indignation which burns up 
 only the evil that is killing mankind. 
 
 The earnest belief in, and the longing for the coming of, Jesus Christ 
 has been too much surrendered to one school of interpreters in unfulfilled 
 prophecy, who have no greater claim to possess it than the rest of us. It 
 belongs, or ought to belong, to us all. All the signs of the times, intellectual 
 and social ; the rottenness of much of our life ; the abounding luxury ; the 
 hideous vice that flaunts unblamed and unabashed before us all ; the 
 unsettlement of opinion in which it is unbelief that seems to be " removing 
 the mountains " that all men thought stood fast and firm for ever ; — all these 
 things cry out to Him whose ear is not deaf even if our voice does not join 
 in the cry, and beseech Him to come. 
 
 Let your heart be so near to Him, your soul so full of His love and 
 the longing for some of His presence, that you, too, may join in that 
 universal prayer which the genius of the great Puritan has put into the 
 music of these words : " Come forth out of Thy royal pavihon, oh. Thou 
 Prince of all the kings of the earth. Put on the visible robes of Thine 
 imperial majesty ; take unto Thee the unlimited sceptre which Thy 
 heavenly Father hath bequeathed Thee ; for now the voice of Thy Bride 
 calls Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed." 
 
 269 
 
THE WONDERFUL INVITATION. 
 
 Jlnd he that is athirst, let him come : he that will, let him take the water 
 of life freely. — Rev. xxii. 17. 
 
 St be 26 ^^ these words there are echoes of precious older words, 
 "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; 
 and he that hath no money, come, let him buy . . . yea, come, buy wine 
 and milk without money and without price." And again, " If any man 
 thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." On both of these more ancient 
 savings, the saying of the evangelical prophet and the saying of our Lord 
 Himself, these great words seem to be founded. 
 
 What is it to come ? Christ said, standing in the Temple courts, *' If 
 any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." Christ is now absent, 
 but still His bodily presence did not make coming to Him any the 
 easier when He was here. Many of those that touched His garments, and 
 clasped His hands, and look-ed into His eyes were an infinite distance 
 from Him. 
 
 What is it to come? Listen to His own explanation: *'He that 
 Cometh unto Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in Me shall 
 never thirst." Then "coming" and "taking" and " drinking" are all 
 but various forms of representing the one act of believing in Him. We 
 come to Him when we trust Kim. We are separated from Him by all 
 the distance between earth and heaven, corporeally. He is near every one 
 of us in spirit, and He is ready to come so much nearer that He will dwell 
 in our hearts and break down all ine barriers between us, if we will only 
 draw near to Him. My friend, let no vague metaphor blind you to the 
 simple requirement which is here. To " come to Christ" is nothing more 
 than to trust Him. Lean your weight upon Him, and your soul leaps over 
 the gulfs in which stars and systems move, and touches the Son of man 
 at the right hand of God. Faith has a long arm ; it can grasp " the High 
 Priest that has passed through the heavens," and is exalted far above 
 them all. To come to Christ is only as a sinful man laden with infirmities 
 and stooping beneath many a burden of sin and sorrow and sore weakness ; 
 to lean my sinful self upon Flim, and so to be joined to the Lord. To 
 come to Christ is faith. 
 
 Who is it that are asked to come? " He that thirsteth" and "he that 
 willeth." The one phrase expresses the universal condition, the other 
 only the limitation necessary in the very nature of things. " He that 
 thirsteth." Who does not? The desires of every soul are deep and 
 ravenous and fierce. Your heart is parched for love ; your mind, whether 
 you know it or not, is restless and athirst for truth that you can cleave to 
 in all circumstances. Your will longs for a loving authority tliat shall 
 subdue and tame it. Your conscience is calling out for cleansing, for 
 pacifying, for purity. Your whole being is one great want and emptiness. 
 " My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God" ; it is only He that can 
 slake the thirst, that can satisfy the hunger. You have tried other things, 
 plenty of them ; and has not your experience been that all other sources 
 of satisfaction or delight have done for you what the sea-water docs to the 
 half-mad shipwrecked sailor that will drink it? They make men thirstier 
 and drive them madder. Every man may come ; for we are all perishing 
 by the side of muddy and waterless springs, from which we have madly 
 sougiit to slake an immortal thirst. 
 
 270 
 
'♦WHOSOEVER WILL." 
 
 Ho, every one that thtrsfethy come ve to the waters, and he that hath nc 
 money ; ccnie ye. buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money 
 and witJiout price. — IsA. Iv. I. 
 
 c. X ,. ow "Whosoever will." A wish is enough, but a wish is 
 indispensable. How strange, and yet how common, it is 
 that the thirsty man is not the willing man ! There are people miser- 
 able for want of Christ, and half believing that that is what maiccs them 
 miserable, and who yet have not the will to take Him for their own. 
 There is no barrier but the barrier that you yourself build in an averted 
 will or in indifference. 
 
 These two words gather the whole of humanity, and beneath their ample 
 folds every one of us may shelter him or herself. " Let him that is athirst 
 come." Lord ! my lips are cracking and black with the parched misery. 
 *' Whosoever will." My friend, do you say, " Whosoever will not, / will, 
 and do, now." 
 
 Further, what is offered ? *' The water of life." Something that shall 
 satisfy all the immortal thirst of the soul. And what is that ? Not a thing, 
 but a Person. The water of life, in its deepest interpretation, is Christ 
 Himself; even as He said, " If any man thirst, let him come to Mt, and 
 drink." And if only you will go and trust yourself to Him, His Spirit 
 shall pass into your spirit, and with the communication of His Spirit there 
 will be given an inward fountain that will spring up into life everlasting. 
 It were a poor thing if the offer that Christ makes were only of some 
 external gift that should satisfy our aspirations and still our desires. What 
 He promises and gives is an inward spring that shall well up within us, 
 and shall go with us whithersoever we go. " He that believeth on Me, 
 out of him shall flow rivers of living water." This spake " He of the 
 Spirit." The promise to us all is of the gift of His own precious Self, to 
 dwell in our hearts ; to make us blessed, peaceful, calm ; to fill our desires, 
 to gladden our whole nature, to dominate our wills, to cleanse our con- 
 sciences, to inform our understandings, and flood our hearts with the 
 peaceful deluge of His own love and perfect life. " If any man thirst, let 
 him come to Me, and drink." 
 
 And what are the conditions? "Let him take the water of life for 
 nothing," as the word might have been rendered, " For nothing." He 
 says to us, "I will not sell it to you, I will give it to you." And too 
 many of us say to Him, " We had rather buy it, or at any rate pay some- 
 thing towards it." No effort, no righteousness, no sacrifice, no anything 
 is wanted: "Without money and without price." You have only got 
 to give up yourself. " Sell all that thou hast." Self is " all that thou 
 hast." Sell. Part with it. Buy ! by the surrender of all confidence in 
 anything that you can do or are. Come, not too proud to owe your salva- 
 tion wholly to undeserved, unpurchased mercy. 
 
 Nothing in Tn3f hand I bring. 
 Simply to Thy cross I cling. 
 
 Take the water of life " freely." 
 
 ■211 
 
CHRIST'S COMING AND MEN'S COMING. 
 
 / came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly, --» 
 John x. io. 
 
 If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. — John vii. 37. 
 
 There is a twofold connection between the two comings 
 that I would point out to you, and leave to your thoughts. 
 Christ does not yet come in order that men may come to Him. There 
 are many reasons beyond our reach and ken v/hy for so long a time the 
 Lord of the servants is absent from His household : but amongst these 
 reasons certainly not the least is, that all the world may hear that great 
 pleading voice of invitation, and may come to Him, their Saviour and their 
 Judge. Even as He Himself said, in words the whole sweep and meaning 
 of which we do not yet understand, "This Gospel of the kingdom must 
 first be preached in all nations ; and then shall the end come." So that He 
 delays His drawing near, in His long-suffering mercy and tender pity, in 
 order that over all the earth the glad news may flash, and to every spirit 
 the invitation may come. Christ tarries that you may hear, and repent, 
 and come to Him. That is the first phase of the connection between these 
 two things. 
 
 The other is — because Christ will come to the world, therefore let us 
 come to Him now. Joyful as the spring after the winter, and as the sun- 
 shine after the darkness, so that coming of His ought to be to all ; and 
 though it be the object or desire to all hearts that love Him, and the healing 
 for the miseries and sorrows of the world, do not forget it has a very solemn 
 and a very terrible side. He comes, when He does come, to judge you and 
 me and the rest of our brethren. He comes, not as of old, in lowliness, to 
 heal and to succour and to save, but He comes to heal and to succour and 
 to save all them that love His appearing, and them only, and He comes to 
 judge all men v.hether they love His appearing or no. " Every eye shall 
 see Him." *' To what purpose," said one of the old prophets, " is the day 
 of the Lord unto you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light.'* 
 Let that certain coming of the Lord be to you what .t ought to be — a mighty 
 motive for your coming to Him. Make your choice whether your heart 
 shall leap up with gladness when the joyful cry is heard: "Behold! the 
 Bridegrom cometh " ; or whether you will call upon the rocks and the hills 
 to fall upon you and cover you from His face. Come to Him now, trust 
 Him, " take the water of life freely," and thus " ye shall have a song as in 
 the night, when a holy solemnity is kept," and boldness of heart, and not 
 be ashamed before Him at His coming. 
 
 272 
 
THE SOUL LONGING FOR GOD. 
 
 O God, Thou art my God ; early will I seek Thee : my soul thirsteth for 
 Thee, my flesh longeih for Thee in a dry and weary land^ where no water 
 is, — Psalm Ixiii. I. 
 
 St be "9 In that arid tract which stretches along the- western shore 
 ' ' of the Dead Sea, and thence northward, David was twice 
 during his adventurous life : once during the Sauline persecution, once 
 during Absalom's revolt. It cannot be the former of these which is referred 
 to here, because the Psalmist was not then a king ; it must therefore be the 
 latter. 
 
 That was the darkest hour of his life. His favourite and good-for- 
 nothing son was seeking to grasp his sceptre ; his familiar friends in whom 
 he trusted had lifted up the heel against him. He knew that his own sin 
 had come back to roost with him ; and so, with bleeding heart, with 
 agonised conscience, with crushed spirit, he bowed himself, and meekly 
 and penitently accepted the chastisement. Therefore it was sweetened to 
 him ; and this psalm, with its passion of love and mystic rapture, is a 
 monument for us of how his sorrows had brought him a closer union with 
 God, as our sorrows may do for us ; like some treasure washed to our feet by 
 a stormy sea. 
 
 This longing is not that of a man who has no possession ; rather is it the 
 desire of a heart which is already in union for a closer union ; rather is it the 
 tightening of the grasp with which the man already holds his leather in Heaven. 
 All begins with the utterance of a personal appropriating faith. " O God, 
 Thou art my God ! " That is the beginning of all personal religion — when 
 I am conscious of a personal relation with God ; when I feel that He and I 
 possess each other by a mutual love ; when I put out my hand, and humbly, 
 but confidently, claim my individual portion in the world-wide power and 
 love. A Christian is he who says, " He loved nie, and gave Plimself for w^." 
 We must individualise, and appropriate as our very own, the promises and 
 the grace that belong to the whole world *' O God, Thou art my God ?" 
 
 Notice the picturesque, poetic beauty of taking his surroundings as the 
 emblem of his feelings. Nature seems to reflect his mood. He looks out 
 on the stony, monotonous, burnt-up, barren country about him ; at the 
 cracks in the soil gaping for the rain wlucli comes not ; and he sees the 
 emblem of a heart yearning after God and not possessing Him. He and 
 his men have been toiling, v/earied, across the " burning marl," looking in 
 all the torrent-beds for some drop of water to cool their parched throats, 
 and finding none. And that seems to him like the search of a soul after a 
 far-off God : " My soul thirsteth for Thee ... in a dry and thirsty land, 
 where no water is." 
 
 Notice, also, the intensity of the desire. Think of the picture that rises 
 from these graphic v/ords. Here is the caravan toiling through the desert : 
 men's lips black with thirst ; their parched tongues lolling from their 
 mouths ; a film comes over their glazing eyes, tlieir steps totter, their heads 
 throb, and far away yonder there is a stunted tree which tells of water near 
 it. How they plunge their lips into the black mud when they come to it, 
 and with what a fierce passion tliey satisfy their cravings ! 
 
 Can anybody say that this is an honest description of the ordinary 
 experience of ordinary Christians ? Is that, or anything like it, true about 
 you ? What sort of Christians are we if it is not ? 
 
 273 T 
 
THE HABITUAL DESIRE OF THE SOUL. 
 
 So have I looked upon Thee in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy 
 glory. — Psalm Ixiii. 2. 
 
 September 30 WHEN was it that David thus longed for God ? In the 
 midst of his sorrow. Even then the thing that he wanted 
 most was not restoration to Jerusalem, or the defeat of his enemies, but 
 union with God. Oh ! that is a test of faith, one which very little of our 
 faith could stand, that even when we are ringed about by calamities that 
 seem to crush us, what we long for most is not the removal of the sorrow, 
 but the presence of our Father. Good men are driven to God by the stress 
 of tempests, and ordinary and bad men are generally driven away from 
 Him. What does your sorrow do for you, friend ? Does it make you 
 writhe in impatience ? does it make you murmur sullenly against His im- 
 position of it ? or does it make you feel that now in the stress and agony 
 there is nothing that you can grasp and hold to but Him, and Him alone ? 
 And so in the hour of darkness and need is my prayer, in its deepest mean- 
 ing, not, '* Take away Thy heavy hand from me," but, '* Give me more of 
 Thyself, that Thy hand may thereby be lightened ? " 
 
 I notice that this longing, though it be struck out by sorrow, is not 
 forced upon him for the first time by sorrow. The second verse of the 
 psalm might be more accurately rendered : "So have I gazed upon Thee 
 in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy glory." That is to say, as in 
 the sorrows and in the wilderness he is conscious of this desire after God, 
 so amidst the sanctities of the Tabernacle and the joyful services and 
 sacrifices of its ritual worship, does he remember that he looked through 
 the forms to Him that shone in them, and in them beheld His power and 
 His glory. So the longing that springs in his heart is an old longing. He 
 remembers that his days of sorrow are not the first days in which He has 
 been driven to say, "Come Thou and help me." He can remember glad, 
 peaceful moments of communion, and these are homogeneous and of a 
 piece with his religious contemplations in his hours of sorrow. 
 
 Ah ! that life is but a poor, fragmentary one which seeks God by fits 
 and starts ; and that seeking after God is but a half-hearted and partial one 
 which is only experienced in the moments of pain and grief. It is well to 
 cry for Him in the wilderness, but it is not well that it should only be in the 
 wilderness in which v/e cry for Him. It is well when darkness and disaster 
 teach us our need of Him ; but is not well when we require the darkness 
 and the disaster to teach us our need. 
 
 And, on the other hand, that is but a poor, fragmentary life, and that 
 religion is but a very incomplete and insincere one, which is more pro- 
 ductive of raptures in the sanctuary than of seeking after God in the wilder- 
 ness. There are plenty of Christian people who have a great deal more 
 consciousness of God's presence in the idle emotions of a church or a 
 chapel than in the strenuous efforts of daily life. Both things separately are 
 maimed and miserable ; and both must be put together — the communion in 
 the sanctuary and the communion in the wilderness, seeking after Him in 
 the sanctities of worship, and seeking after Him in the prose of daily life — 
 if ever the worship of the sanctuary or the prose of daily life are to be 
 brightened with His presence. 
 
 274 
 
THE LONGING SOUL SATISFIED. 
 
 For Thy loving-kindness is better than life ; my lips shall praise Thee, 
 So will I bless Thee while I live : I will lift up my hands in Thy Name. My 
 soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness. — Psalm Ixiii. 3-5. 
 
 tob 1 Life is good mainly as the field upon which God's loving- 
 kindness may be manifested and grasped. It is Hke the 
 white sheet on which the beam of hght is thrown, worth nothing in 
 itself, worth everything as the medium for the manifestation of that lustrous 
 light. It is like a stained-glass window, only a poor bit of glass till 
 the sunshine gleams behind it, and then it flashes up into rubies and purples 
 and gold. Life is best when through life there filters or flashes on us the 
 brightness of the loving-kindness of the Lord. 
 
 And all real religion includes in it a calm, deliberate, fixed preference of 
 God to life itself. Does your religion do that ? Can you say, *' It were 
 wise and it were blessed to die, to get more of God into my soul " ? If not, 
 our longing, v/hich is the very language of the Spirit in our hearts, has to 
 be intensified much ere it reaches its fitting height. 
 
 And then, still further, this longing is accompanied with a firm resolve 
 of continuance : " Thus will I bless Thee while I live." *'Thus" — as I 
 am doing now in the midst of my longing — " I will lift up my hands in Thy 
 name." *' My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." 
 
 Notice how very beautiful that immediate turn in the Psalmist's feelings 
 is. The fruition of God is contemporaneous with the desire after God. 
 The one moment, *' my soul thirsteth"; the next moment, "my soul is 
 satisfied." As in the wilderness when the rain comes down, and in a couple 
 of days what was baked earth is flowery meadow, and all the torrent-beds 
 where the white stones glistened ghastly in the heat are foaming with 
 rushing water and fringed with budding willows — so in the instant in which 
 a heart turns with true desire to God, in that instant does God draw near to 
 it. The Arctic spring comes with one stride ; to-day snow, to-morrow 
 flowers. There is no time needed to work this telegraph ; while we speak 
 He hears ; before we call He answers. We have to wait for many of His 
 gifts, never for Himself. We have to wait sometimes when by our own 
 faults we postpone the coming of the blessings that we have asked. If we 
 are thinking more about Absalom and Ahithophel than about God, more 
 about our sorrows and our troubles than about Himself; if we are busy 
 with other things ; if having asked we do not look up and expect ; if we 
 shut the doors of our hearts as soon as our prayer is offered, or languidly 
 stroll away from the place of prayer ere the blessing has fluttered down 
 upon our souls ; — of course we do not get it. But God is always waiting to 
 bestow ; and all that we need to do is to open the sluices, and the great 
 ocean flows in, or as much of it as our hearts can hold. *' My soul 
 thirsteth " is the experience of the one moment, and ere the clock has 
 ticked again "my soul shall be satisfied." 
 
 275 
 
THE FULNESS OF GOD'S SUPPLY. 
 
 They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house ; and 
 Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures. — PsALM xxxvi. 8. 
 
 ^ , 2 The soul that possesses God is fed full. The emblem 
 here, of course, is of a joyful feast, possibly of a sacrificial 
 one ; but the fact is that whoever has got a living hold of God, and a little 
 bit of God lovingly embedded in his heart, has got as much as he wants ; 
 that between God and him there is such a correspondence as that He is the 
 absolute and all-sulficient good. If I may so say, every hollow in my 
 nature answers to a protuberance in His ; and when you put the two 
 together, the little heart is filled by the great heart that has come to it. We 
 are at rest when we have God, and to long for Him is to insure the 
 possession of an absolute and all-sufficient good. 
 
 The satisfied soul breaks into the music of praise. " My mouth shall 
 praise Thee with joyful lips when I remember Thee upon my bed, and 
 meditate on Thee in the night-watches." There is a reference, no doubt, 
 there, to the little camp in the wilderness, where David and his men, 
 unguarded save by God, laid themselves dov/n to sleep beneath the Syrian 
 sky with all its stars, and where the leader, no doubt, often awoke in the 
 night, with pricked-up ears listening for the sound of the approaching 
 enemy. And even then into his heart there steals the thought of his great 
 Protector ; and as he says in another of the Psalms dating from this period, 
 ** I will lay me down in peace and sleep, because Thou makest me to dwell, 
 though solitary, in safety." The heart that feeds upon God is secure, and 
 breaks into songs in the night, and music of praise. That feast has always 
 minstrels at it. I'he spontaneous utterance of a heart feeding on God is 
 thankfulness and music of praise, which is as natural as smiles when we 
 are glad, or as tears when we mourn. 
 
 And then, this satisfaction leads on to an absolute security. ** Because 
 Thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of Thy wings will I 
 rejoice." Such a past and such a present can only have one kind of future 
 as their consequence — a future in which the seeking soul nestling itself 
 beneath the great wings outstretched shall crowd close to the father's 
 heart, and be guarded by His love. If we hold fellowship with Plim, He 
 protects us. As another psalm says, using a similar metaphor : " Pie that 
 dwellcth in the secret place of the Most Pligh shall abide under the 
 shadow of the Almighty." Communion with God means protection 
 by God. 
 
 The part of the seeking soul is the certain pledge of its future. The 
 uncertainties of the dim to-morrow, in so far as earth is concerned, are so 
 many that we can never say, "To-morrow shall be as this day." And in 
 regard of all other sources of blessing, the dearest and the purest, wc Jiave 
 all to feel, with sinking, sickening hearts, that the longer we have had 
 them the nearer comes the day of their certain loss. But about Him we 
 can say, "Because Thou hast been my Helper, therefore in the shadow of 
 Thy wings will I rejoice." And in union with Him we can look out over 
 all the dim sea that stretches before us ; and though we know not what 
 storms may vex its surface, or whither its currents may carry us, we can aiy, 
 " Thou wilt be with Me, and in Thee I shall have peace." 
 
 276 
 
THE SATISFIED SOUL STILL SEEKING. 
 
 My soul followeth hard after Thee : Thy right hand upholdeth me. — 
 Psalm Ixiii. 8. 
 
 The word translated yb//ozc;?/A here literally means to cleave, 
 or to ding. And there is a beautiful double idea of a 
 tv.-ofold relationship expressed in that somewhat incongruous form of 
 speech "cleave after Thee," the former word giving the idea of union and 
 possession, the latter suggesting the other idea of search and pursuit : so 
 that the two main currents of thought in the psalm are repeated in that 
 little phrase ; and we are back again — though with a wonderful difference — 
 to the ground-tone of the first section. There the soul thirsteth ; here 
 "the soul cleaveth after" — both expressive of pursuit, but the latter, as 
 consequent upon the satisfaction which followed upon the thirst, speaks of 
 a profounder possession and of a less sense of want. 
 
 " My soul cleaveth after God." That is to say, inasmuch as He is 
 infinite, and this nature of mine is incapable of indefinite expansion, each 
 new possession of Him which follows upon an enlarged desire will open 
 the elastic walls of my heart so that they shall enclose a wider space and be 
 capable of holding more of God, and therefore I shall possess more. 
 Desire expands the heart ; possession expands the heart. More of God 
 comes when we can hold more of Him, and the end of all fruition is the 
 renewed desire after further fruition. 
 
 This world's gifts cloy and never satisfy ; God satisfies and never cloys. 
 And we have, and we shall have, if we are His children, the double delight 
 of a continual fruition and a continued desire. So we shall ascend, if I 
 may so say, in ever higher and higher spirals, which will rise further and 
 draw in more closelj^ towards the unreached and unattainable Throne of 
 the Blessed Himself: " My soul thirsteth " ; " my soul is satisfied " ; " my 
 satisfied soul still longs and follows." 
 
 And then there is also very beautifully here the co-operation and 
 reciprocal action of the seeking soul and of the sustaining God. ** My soul 
 followeth hard after Thee ; Thy right hand upholdeth me." We hold and 
 we are held. We hold because we are held, and we are held while we 
 hold. We follow, and yet He is with us ; we long, and yet we possess ; 
 we pursue, and yet in the very act of pursuit we are upheld by His hand. 
 We shall not follow unless He holds us up. He will not hold us up 
 unless we follow. All controversies of grace and freewill are reconciled 
 and lulled to sleep in tliese great words: "My soul followeth hard after 
 Thee ; Thy right hand upholdeth me." 
 
 277 
 
THE CERTAINTY OF VICTORY. 
 
 But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of 
 the earth. They shall be given over to the power of the sword : they shall 
 be a portion for foxes. But the king shall rejoice in God : every one that 
 sweareth by Iliin shall glory : for the mouth of them thai speak lies shall be 
 stopped. — Psalm Ixiii. 9-11. 
 
 This last portion of the psalm describes one consequence 
 
 CO er . ^£ piessing after God. The soul thus cleaving and following 
 is gif"ted with a prophetic certainty. " Those that seek my soul are destined 
 for destruction" (so is the probable rendering); "they shall go into the 
 lower parts of the earth " — swallowed up like Korah and his rebellious 
 company. "They shall each be given up to the power of the sword" 
 (as the words might be rendered); "they shall be a portion for foxes" 
 (or jackals^ as the word means). Their unburied bodies shall lie in the 
 wilderness, and the jackals sliall tear and devour. David regarded his 
 enemies as God's enemies. David's point of view permitted him to exult 
 with a stern but not unrighteous joy in their destruction. But these words 
 are not prayer nor imprecation, but prophecy and the insight of a soul 
 conscious of union with God, and therefore assured that everything which 
 stands in the way of its possession of the God whom it loves is destined 
 for annihilation. 
 
 And, disengaging the words from the mere husk and shell of Old 
 Testament experience, all of us, if we cleave to God, may have this 
 confidence, that nothing can hinder our fellowship with God, and that 
 whatsoever stands in the way of our closer union with Him shall l)e swept 
 out of the way. David's certainty of the destruction of his foes is the same 
 triumphant assurance, on a lower spiritual level, as Paul's trumpet blast 
 of victory : " Who shall separate us from the love of God ? Shall tribula- 
 tion, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or 
 sword?" "Nay, in all these things," — and overall these things, — "we 
 are more than conquerors through Him that loved us." 
 
 There is the other side of this prophetic certainty here. "The King 
 shall rejoice in God ; every one that sweareth by Him s: all glory." He 
 and his faithful followers shall realise a Divine deliverance, which shall be 
 the su])ject of their praise ; and the adversary's lips shall be sealed with 
 silence, their vindication shall slick in their throat, and they shall be dumb 
 before the judgment of Almighty God. That confidence, too, may stand 
 as a symbol of the certainty of hope which refreshes the soul wliich seeks 
 and possesses God, even in the wilderness, and while compassed with 
 sorrows and fears. We, too, may find in our present union with God a 
 prophecy, fixed and firm as the pillars of His throne, of our future kingly 
 dignity, and rapturous joy in Him. It is reserved not for us only, but for 
 all whose lips confessed Him on earth and shall therefore be opened to 
 lift up before Him triumphant praise, which shall drown the disc<-rds of 
 opposing voices, and no more be broken by sobs or weeping. 
 
 My brother ! we are all thirsty. Do you know what it is that makes 
 you restless? Do you know who it is that you need? Listen to Him 
 that says, "If any man thirst, let Him come to Me, and drink." Choose 
 whether you will thirst with mad and aimless cravings, and perish in a dry 
 land; or whether you will come to the " Fountain of Lite in Christ your 
 Saviour, and slake your thirst at God Himself." 
 
 278 
 
THE PARADOX OF LOVE'S MEASURE. 
 Of His fulness vce all received^ and grace for grace. — John i. i6. 
 
 _ - _ It is the immeasurable measure, the boundless bounds and 
 dimensions of the love of Christ, which iires the Apostle's 
 thoughts when writing to the Ephesian Church (Eph. iii. 17-19). Of course 
 he had no separate idea in his mind attaching to each of these measures 
 of magnitude, but he gathered them all together simply to express the one 
 thought of the greatness of Christ's love. 
 
 Depth and height are the same dimension measured from opposite ends. 
 The one begins at the top and goes down, the other begins at the bottom 
 and goes up, but the surface is the same in either case. So we have the 
 three dimensions of a solid here — breadth, length, and depth. 
 
 And I suppose that I may venture to use these expressions with a some- 
 what different purpose from that for which the Apostle employs them ; and 
 to see in each of them a separate and blessed aspect of the love of God in 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 And that love v/hich thus towers above us, and gleams the summit and 
 the apex of the universe, like the shining cross on the top of some lofty 
 cathedral spire, does not gleam there above us inaccessible, nor lie before 
 us like some pathless precipice, up which nothing that has not wings can 
 ever hope to rise ; but the height of the love of Christ is a hospitable height, 
 which can be scaled by us. Nay, rather, that heaven of love, which is 
 "higher than our thoughts," bends down, as by a kind of optical delusion 
 the physical heaven seems to do, towards each of us, only with this blessed 
 difference, that in the natural world the place where heaven touches earth 
 is always the furthest point of distance from us ; and in the spiritual world, 
 the place where heaven stoops to me is always right over my head, and 
 the nearest possible point tome. He has come to lift us to Himself. And 
 this is the height of His love, that it bears us up, if we will, up and up 
 to sit upon that throne where He Himself is enthroned. 
 
 So round about us all, as some sunny tropical sea may embosom in its 
 violet waves a multitude of luxuriant and happy islets, so all of us, islanded 
 on our little individual lives, lie in that great ocean of love, all the dimen- 
 sions of which are immeasurable, and which stretches above, beneath, 
 around, shoreless, tideless, bottomless, endless. 
 
 But remember ! this ocean of love you can shut out of your lives. It is 
 possible to plunge a jar into miu-Atlanlic, further than soundings have ever 
 descended, and to bring it up on deck as dry inside as if it had been Ipng 
 on an oven. It is possible for us to live and move and have our being in 
 that sea of love, and never to have got one drop of its richest gifts into 
 our hearts or our lives. Open your heart for Him to come in by humble 
 faith in His great sacrifice for you. For if Christ dwell in your heart 
 by faith, then, and only then, will experience be your guide ; and you 
 will be able to comprehend the boundless greatness, the endless duration, 
 the absolute perfection, and to know the love of Christ which passeth 
 knowledge, 
 
 279 
 
THE BREADTH OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 
 
 There the Lord ivill be wiih us iti majesty, a place of broad rivers and 
 streams. — Isaiah xxxiii. 21. 
 
 The love of God in Christ Jesus is as broad as humanity. 
 October 6. ^^^ ^^|j ^^^ stars lie in the firmament, so all creatures rest in 
 the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common characteristics. We 
 all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all aspire ; and, blessed be God ! we 
 all occupy precisely the same relation to the love, the Divine love, which 
 lies in Jesus Christ. There are no step-children in His great family, and 
 none of them receive a more grudging or less ample share of His love and 
 goodness than every other. Broad as the race, and curtaining it over as 
 some great tent may enclose on a festal day a wliole tribe, the breadth 
 of Christ's love is the breadth of humanity. And it is universal because it 
 is Divine. No human heart can be stretched so as to comprehend the 
 whole of the members of mankind, and no human heart can be so emptied 
 of self as to be capable of this absolute universality and impartiality of 
 affection. But the intellectu.il difficulties which stand in the way of the 
 width of our human affection, and the moral difficulties which stand still 
 more frowningly and forbiddingly in the way, all disappear before that 
 love of Christ's vv'hich is close and tender, and clinging with all the tender- 
 ness and closeness and clingingness of a human and lofty and universal 
 and passionless and perpetual, with all the height and breadth and calm- 
 ness and eternity of a Divine, heart. 
 
 And this broad love, broad as humanity, is not shallow because it is 
 broad. Our human affections are too often like the estuary of some great 
 stream which runs deep and mighty as long as it is held within narrow 
 banks, but as soon as it widens becomes slow and powerless and shallow. 
 The intensity of human affection varies inversely as its extension. A 
 universal philanthropy is a passionless sentiment. But Christ's love is 
 deep, though it be wide, and suffers no diminution because it is shared 
 amongst a multitude. It is like the great feast that He Himself spread, 
 five thousand men, women, and children, all seated at a table, "and they 
 did all eat and were filled." 
 
 The whole love is the property of each recipient of it. It is not as it is 
 with us, who give a part of our heart to this one and to that one, and 
 share the treasure of our affections amongst a multitude. All this gift belongs 
 to every one, just as all the sunshine comes to every eyo, and as every 
 beholder sees the moon path across the dark waters, stretching from tlie 
 place where he stands to the centre of light. 
 
 There are two ways of arguing about the love of Christ, both of them 
 valid, and both of them needing to be employed by us. We have a right 
 to say, "He loves all, therefore He loves me." And we have a right to 
 say, " He loves me, therefore He loves all." For surely the love that has 
 stooped to me can never pass by any human soul. What is the bread ili 
 of the love of Christ ? It is broad as mankind, it is narrow as myself. 
 
 280 
 
THE LENGTH OF CHRIST'S LOVE. 
 
 The mercy of the Lord ts from everlasting to everlasting upon them flmt 
 fear Him. — PsALM ciii. 17. 
 
 What is the length of the love of Christ ? If we are to 
 c er 7. |.]^jj^]^ yf j^ij-n only as a man, however exalted and hov/ever 
 perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When 
 He was here on earth it may have been sent down the generations in some 
 vague, pale way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a 
 great statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which he 
 dimly sees will be affected by his sacrifice and service. But we do not 
 call that love. Such a poor, pale, shadowy thing has no right to the warm, 
 throbbing name ; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of 
 affection ; and unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and 
 other than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human 
 form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love can be 
 stretched to touch you. And if we content ourselves with that altogether 
 inadequate and lame conception of Him and of His nature, of course there 
 is no present Ijond between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd 
 to talk about His present love as extending in any way to me. But we 
 have to believe, rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the 
 nature and person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the Divine 
 that dwelt in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of 
 His man's heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals 
 that should make up the race till the end of time ; so as that you and I, 
 looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the length 
 of the love of Christ, can say, *' It stretches over all the years, and it 
 reached then as it reaches now to touch me, upon whom the ends of the 
 earth have come." 
 
 That thought of eternal being, when we refer it to God, towers above 
 us and repels us ; and when we turn it to ourselves, and think of our own 
 life as unending, there comes a strangeness and an awe that is almost 
 shrinking over the thoughtful spirit. But when we transmute it into the 
 thought of a love whose length is unending, then, over all the shoreless, 
 misty, melancholy sea of eternity, there gleams a light, and every wavelet 
 flashes up into glory. There is another measure of the length of the love 
 oi Christ. " Master ! How often shall my brother sin against me, and I 
 forgive him ?" "I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy 
 times seven." So said the Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice 
 — two sevens and a ten— in order to express the idea of boundlessness. 
 And the law that He laid down for His servant is the law that binds Him- 
 self The pitying Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks 
 down from Heaven upon every one of us ; goes with us in all our wander- 
 ings ; bears with us in all our sins. His pleadings sound on, like some stop 
 in an organ continuously persistent through all the other notes. And 
 round His throne are written the Divine words which have been spoken 
 about our human love modelled after His. "Charity suffereth long, and is 
 kind ; is not easily provoked, is not soon angry, beareth all things." The 
 length of the love of Christ is the length of eternity, and out-measures all 
 human sin. 
 
 281 
 
THE HEIGHT AND DEPTH OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 
 
 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God ! 
 — Rom. xi. 33. 
 
 « 1. 1. o Depth and height are but two ways of expressing the same 
 October 8. ,. . ,, *=> 1 • * ..u .. 1 j 
 
 dimension ; the one we begm at the top and measure down, 
 
 the other we begin at the bottom and measure up. The top is the Throne ; 
 and the downward measure — how is it to be stated ? In what terms of 
 distance are we to express it ? How far is it from the Throne of the 
 Universe to the manger at Bethlehem and the Cross at Calvary and the 
 sepulchre in the garden ! That is the depth of the love of Christ. How- 
 soever far may be the distance from that loftiness of co-equal Divinity in 
 the bosom of the Father, and radiant with glory, to the lowliness of the 
 form of a servant, and the sorrows, limitations, rejections, pains, and final 
 death — that is the measure of the depth of Christ's love. As if some planet 
 were to burst from its track and plunge downwards in amongst the mists 
 and the narrowness of our earthly atmosphere, so we can estimate the 
 depth of the love of Christ by saying, "He came from above, He taber- 
 nacled with us." The way to measure the depth is to begin at the Throne, 
 and go down to the Cross and to the foul abysses of evil. The way to 
 measure the height is to begin at the Cross and the foul abysses of evil, and 
 to go up to the Throne. That is to say, the topmost thing in the Universe, 
 the shining apex and summit, glittering away up there in the radiant un- 
 setting light, is the love of God in Jesus Christ. 
 
 A well-known modern scientist has hazarded the speculation that the 
 origin of life on this planet has been the falling upon it of the fragment of 
 a meteor or an aerolite, from some other system, with a speck of organic 
 life upon it, from which all has developed. Whatever may be the case in 
 regard of the physical life, that is absolutely true in the case of spiritual life. 
 It all comes because this Heaven descended Christ has come down the 
 long staircase of Incarnation, and has brought with Him into the clouds 
 and oppressions of our terrestrial atmosphere a germ of life which He has 
 planted in the heart of the race, there to spread for ever. That is the 
 measure of the depth of the love of Christ. And there is another way to 
 measure it. My sins, my helpless miseries, are deep : but they are shallow 
 as compared with the love that goes down beneath all sin ; that is deeper 
 than all sorrow, deeper than all necessity ; that shrinks from no degrada- 
 tion ; that turns away from no squalor ; that abhors no wickedness so as to 
 avert its face from it. When a coal-pit gets blocked up by some explosion, 
 no brave rescuing party will venture to descend into the lowest depths of 
 the poisonous darkness until some ventilation has come there. But this 
 loving Christ goes down, down, down into the thickest, most pestilential 
 atmosphere, reeking with sin and corruption, and stretches out a rescuing 
 hand to the most abject and undermost of all the victims. How deep is 
 the love of Christ ? The deep mines of sin and of alienation are all under- 
 mined and countermined by His love. Sin is an abyss, a mystery, how 
 deep only they know who have fought against it ; but 
 
 "O Love ! t'.iou bottomless abyss, 
 My sius are swallowed up m Tiiee." 
 
 2S2 
 
DEATH AND GROWTH. 
 
 And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And 
 the children of Israel tvcre fruitful, and increased abundundy, and -multi' 
 plied, and waxed exceeding uiiglity. — Exod. i. 6, 7. 
 
 rt i. V- o Here we have an illustration of a twofold process which is 
 October 9. , ^ 11^1 , • ," 
 
 always at work — silent dropping away and suont gro\\'th. 
 
 It seems to me that the writer of these words in Exodus, probably un- 
 consciously, being profoundly impressed with certain features of that 
 dropping away, reproduces them most strikingly in the very structure of 
 his sentence : "Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation." 
 The uniformity of the fate, and the separate times at which it befel in- 
 dividuals, are strongly set forth in the clauses, which sound like the three- 
 fold falls of earth on a coffin. They all died, but not all at the same time ; 
 they went one by one, one by one, till, at the end, they were all gone. 
 
 If you were ever out at sea, and looked over a somewhat stormy 
 water, you will have noticed, I dare say, how strangely the white crests of 
 the breakers disappear, as if some force, acting from beneath, had plucked 
 them under, and over the spot where they gleamed for a moment runs the 
 blue sea. So the waves break over the great ocean of time, I might say, 
 like swimmers pulled under by sharks — man after man, man alter man, 
 gets twitched down, till at the end — "And Joseph died, and all his 
 brethren, and all that generation." 
 
 There is another process going on side by side with this. In the 
 vegetable world, spring and autumn are two different seasons ; May rejoices 
 in green leaves and opening buds, and nests with their young broods ; but 
 winter days are coming when the greenery drops and the nests are dry, and 
 the birds flown. But the singular and impressive thing (which we should 
 see if we were not so foolish and blind) is that at the same time the two 
 opposite processes of death and renewal are going on ; so that if you look at 
 the facts from the one side, it seems nothing but a charnel-house and a Gol- 
 gotha that we Hve in, while, seen from the other side, it is a scene of 
 rejoicing, budding young life and growth. You get these two processes 
 in the closest juxtaposition in ordinary hfe. There is many a house where 
 there is a coffin upstairs and a cradle downstairs. The churchyard is often 
 the children's playground The web is being run down at the one end and 
 woven at the other. Wherever we look — 
 
 " Every moment, di^s a man, 
 Every moment one is born." 
 
 ** Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the 
 children of Israel . . . multiplied . . . exceedingly." 
 
 But there is another thought here than that of the contemporaneousness 
 of the two processes, and that is, as it is written on John Wesley's monu- 
 ment in Westminster Abbey, "God buries the workmen and carries on the 
 work." The great Vizier who seemed to be the only protection of Israel 
 is lying in "a coffin in Egypt." And all these truculent brothers of his 
 that had tormented him, they are gone, and the whole generation is swept 
 away. What of that ? They were the depositories of God's purposes for 
 a little while. Are God's purposes dead because the instruments that 
 wrought them in part are gone ? By no means. If I might use a very 
 vulgar proverb, " There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it," 
 especially if God casts the net. So when the one generation has passed 
 away, there is the other to take up the work. 
 
"GOD BURIES HIS WORKMEN, AND CARRIES ON HIS 
 
 WORK." 
 
 But I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for 
 nought and vanity : yet surely 7:ty judgment is with the Lord, and my 
 recompense with my God. — Is A. xlix. 4. 
 
 October 10 The twofold process always at work — the silent dropping 
 away and silent growth — suggests lessons which should be 
 enforced. Let us be quite sure that we give them their due weight in our 
 thoughts and lives, that we never give an undue weight to the one half of 
 the whole truth. There are plenty of people who are far too much, con- 
 stitutionally and (perhaps by reason of a mistaken notion of religion) 
 rehgiously, inclined to the contemplation of the more melancholy side of 
 these truths ; and there are a great many people who are far too exclusively 
 disposed to the contemplation of the other. But the bulk of us never 
 trouble our heads about either the one or the other, but go on, forgetting 
 altogether that swift, sudden, stealthy, skinny hand that is put out to lay 
 hold of the swimmer and then pull him underneath the water ; and which 
 v/ill clasp us by the ankles one day, and draw us down. Do you ever 
 think about it? If not, surely, surely you are leaving out of sight one of 
 what ought to be the formative elements in our lives. And then, on the 
 other hand, when our hearts are faint, or when the pressure of human 
 mortality — our own, that of our dear ones, or that of others— seems to 
 weigh us dov/n, or when it looks to us as if God's work was failing for want 
 of people to do it, let us remember the other side. So we shall keep the 
 middle path, which is the path of safety, and so avoid the folly of extremes. 
 This double contemplation of the two processes under which we live ought 
 to stimulate us to service. It ought to say to us, "Cast in your lot with 
 that work which is going to be carried on through the ages. See to it that 
 your little task is in the same line of direction as the great purpose which 
 God is working out — the increasing purpose which runs through the ages." 
 An individual life is a mere little bo.ckwater, as it were, in the great ocean. 
 But the minuteness does not matter, if only the great tidal wave which rolls 
 away out there, in the depths and the distance amongst the fathomless 
 abysses, tells also on the tiny pool far inland and yet connected with the 
 sea, with some narrow long fiord. 
 
 If my little life is part of that great ocean, then the ebb and flow will 
 alike act on it and make it wholesome. If my work is done in and for 
 God, I shall never have to look back and say, as we certainly shall say one 
 day, either here or yonder, unless our lives be thus part of the Divine plan, 
 " What a fool I was ! Seventy years of toihng and moiling and effort and 
 sweat, and it has all come to nothing ; like a long algebraic sum that covers 
 pages of intricate calculations, and the j-Vzifj^j and minuses just balance 
 each other : and the net result is a big round nought." So let us remember 
 the twofold process, and let it stir us to make sure that "in our embers" 
 shall be "something that doth live," and that, not "Nature," but some- 
 thing better — God — remembers what was so fugitive. It is not fugitive ii 
 it is a part of the mighty whole. 
 
 2S4 
 
OUR INSIGNIFICANT AND UNFINISHED WORK. 
 
 And he died in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honour ; and 
 Solomon his son reigned in his siead. — i Chron. xxix. 28. 
 
 11 Joseph might have said when he lay dpng : "Well! 
 
 October 11. pgj.}^^pg j made a mistake after all. I should not have 
 brought this people down here, even if I have been led hither. I do not 
 see that I have helped them one step towards the possession of the land." 
 Do you remember the old proverb about certain people who should not see 
 half-finished work ? All our work in this world has to be only what the 
 physiologists call functional. God has a great scheme running on through 
 ages. Joseph gives it a helping hand for a bit, and then somebody else 
 takes up the running, and carries the purpose forward a Uttle further. A 
 great many hands are placed on the ropes that draw the car of the Ruler of 
 the world— and one after another they get stiffened in death ; but the car 
 goes on. We should be contented to do our httle bit of the work : never 
 mind whether it is complete and smooth and rounded or not ; never mind 
 whether it can be isolated from the rest and held up, and people can say 
 " He did that entire thing unaided." That is not the way for most of us. 
 A great many threads go to make the piece of cloth, and a great many 
 throws of the shuttle to weave the web. A great many bits of glass make 
 up the mosaic pattern ; and there is no reason for the red bit to pride 
 itself on its fiery glow, or the grey bit to boast of its silvery coolness. 
 They are all parts of the pattern, and as long as they keep their right places 
 they complete the artist's design. Thus, if we think of how one soweth 
 and another reapeth, we may be content to receive half-done works from 
 our fathers, and to hand on unfinished tasks to them that come after us. It 
 is not a great trial of a man's modesty, if he lives near Jesus Christ, to be 
 content to do but a very small bit of the Master's work. 
 
 Moses dies ; Joshua catches the torch from his hand. And the reason 
 why he catches the torch from his hand is because God said, "As I was 
 with Moses, so I will be with thee.'* Therefore we have to turn away in 
 our contemplations from the mortality that has swallowed up so much 
 wisdom and strength, eloquence and power, which the Church or our own 
 hearts seem so sorely to want ; and, whilst we do, we have to look up to 
 Jesus Christ, and say, " He lives ! He lives ! No man is indispensable for 
 public work, or for private affection and solace, so long as there is a living 
 Christ for us to hold by." We need that conviction for ourselves often. 
 When life seems empty and hope dead, and nothing is able to fill the 
 vacuity or still the pain, we have to look to the vision of the Lord sitting on 
 the empty throne, high and Hfted up, and yet very near the aching and 
 void heart. Christ lives, and that is enough. So the separated workers in 
 all the generations, who did their little bit of service, like the many 
 generations of builders who laboured through centuries upon the 
 completion of some great cathedral, will be united at the last; "and he 
 that soweth, and he that reapeth, shall rejoice together " in the harvest 
 which neither the sower nor the reaper had produced, but He who blessed 
 the toils of both. 
 
 285 
 
COSTLY AND FATAL HELP. 
 
 He sacrificed unto the gods of Damafcus^ ivhich smote him ; and ke 
 said, Because the gods of the kings of Syria help thetn, therefore will I 
 sacrifice to them, that they may help me. But they were the ruin of him, 
 and of all Israel. — 2 CllRON. xxviii. 23. 
 
 * h 12 ■A.HAZ came to the throne when a youth of twentj-. From 
 the beginning he reversed the policy of his father, and threw 
 himself into the arms of the heathen party. In a comparatively short reign 
 of sixteen years he stamped out the worship of God, and nearly ruined the 
 kingdom. He did not plunge into idolatry for want of good advice. The 
 greatest of the prophets stood beside him. Isaiah addressed to him re- 
 monstrances which might have made the most reckless pause, and promises 
 which might have kindled hope and courage in the bosom of despair. 
 Hosea in the northern kingdom, Micah in Judah, and other less brilliant 
 names were amongst the stars which shone even in that dark night. But 
 their light was all in vain. The foolish lad had got the bit between his 
 teeth, and, like many another young man, thought to show his " breadth" 
 and his "spirit" by neglecting his father's counsellors and abandoning 
 his father's faith. He was ready to worship anything that called itself a 
 god, always excepting Jehovah. The more he multiplied his gods the 
 more he multiplied his sorrows, and the more he multiplied his sorrows 
 the more he multiplied his gods. From all sides the invaders came ; 
 from north, north-east, east, south-east, south, they swarmed in upon 
 him. They tore away the fringes of his kingdom ; and hostile armies 
 flaunted their banners beneath the very wails of Jerusalem. And then, in 
 his despair, like a scorpion in a circle of fire, he inflicted a deadly wound 
 on himself by calling in the fatal help of Assyria. Nothing loth, that 
 warlike power responded, scattered his less formidable foes, and then 
 swallowed the prey which it had dragged from between the teeth of the 
 Israelites and Syrians. The result of Ahaz's frantic appeals to false gods 
 and faithless men may still be read on the Cuneiform inscriptions, wliere 
 amidst a long list of unknown tributary kings, stands, with a Philistine 
 on one side of him and an Ammonite on the other, the shameful record, 
 "Ahaz of Judah." 
 
 Is the breed extinct, think you ? Is there anybody who, if he cannot 
 get what he wants by foir ways, will try to get it by foul ? Do none of you 
 ever bow down to Satan for a slice of the kingdoms of this world ? Ahaz 
 has got plenty of brothers and sisters. 
 
 This story illustrates what, alas ! is only too true. Look at the so- 
 called cultured classes of Europe to-day ; turning away, as so many of 
 them are, from the Lord God of their fathers — what sort of things are they 
 v/orshipping instead ? Scraps from Budhism, the Vedas, any sacred books 
 but the Bible ; quackeries and Charlatanism, and dreams, and fragmentary 
 philosophies all pieced together, to try and make up a whole, instead of 
 the old-fashioned whole that they have left behind them. " The garment 
 is narrower than that a man can wrap himself in it." And a creed 
 patched together so will never make a seamless whole which can be trusted 
 not to rend. Ahaz had, as he thought, two strings to his bow. lie had 
 the gods of Damascus, and of other lands up there ; he had the King of 
 Assyria down here. They both of them exacted onerous terms before they 
 would stir a foot to his aid. Do you buy this world's help any cheaper? 
 Yqu zn\ nothing for nothing in that market. It is a bii^ price. 
 
 2U 
 
WHOLE-HEARTED RELIGION. 
 
 They ... sought Him with their whole desire ; and He was found of 
 them : and the Lord gave them rest round about. — 2 Chron. xv. 15. 
 
 . One reason why the great mass of professing Christians 
 make so little of their religion is because they are only l;alf- 
 hearted in it. If you divide a river into two streams the force of each is 
 less than half the power of the original current ; and the chances are that 
 you will make a stagnant marsh where there used to be a flowing stream. 
 " All in all, or not at all," is the rule for life in all departments. It is a 
 rule in daily business. A man that has only half himself in his profession 
 or trade, M'hile the other half is dreaming, is predestined to fail. The 
 same is true about our religion. If you and I attend to it as a kind of by- 
 occupation ; if we give the balance of our time and the superfluity of our 
 energy, after we have done a hard day's work — say, an hour upon a 
 Sunday — to seeking God, and devote all the rest of the week to seeking 
 worldly prosperity, it is no wonder if our religion languishes, and is 
 mainly a matter of forms, as it is with such hosts of people that call them- 
 selves Christians. There is more unconscious unreality in the average 
 Christian man's endeavour to be a better Christian than there is in almost 
 anything else in the world : 
 
 *' One foot on the sea, and one on land, 
 To one thing' constant never." 
 
 That is why so many of us know nothing of a progressive strengthening of 
 our faith, and an increasing conquest of ourselves, and a firmer grasp of 
 God, and a fuller realisatTon of the blessedness of walking in His ways. 
 This whole-heartedness does not mean that there are to be no other desires, 
 for it is a great mistake to pit religion against other things which are meant 
 to be its instruments and its helps. We are not required to seek nothing 
 else in order to seek God wholly. He demands no impossible and fantastic 
 detachment of ourselves from the ordinary and legitimate occupations, 
 affections, and duties of human life ; but He does ask that the dominant 
 desire after Him should be powerful enough to express itself through all 
 our actions, and that we should seek for God in them and for them in 
 God. There must be detachment if there is to be attachment. If some 
 climbing plant, for instance, has twisted itself round the unprofitable thorns 
 in the hedge, the gardener, before he can get it to go up the support that 
 it is meant to encircle, has carefully to detach it from the stays to which it 
 has wantonly clung, taking care that in the process he does not break its 
 tendrils and destroy its power of growth. So, to train our souls to cleave 
 to God, and to grow on round the great stay that is provided for us, there 
 is needed, as an essential part of the process, the voluntary, conscious, 
 conscientious, and constant guarding of ourseh es from the vagrancies of our 
 desires, which send out their shoots away from Him. 
 
 It is when God comes into the Temple that Dagon falls on the threshold. 
 It is when a new affection begins to spring in the heart that old loves are 
 thrust out of it. To seek Him with the whole heart is to engage the whole 
 self in the quest, and that is the only kind of seeking which has the 
 certainty of success. 
 
 287 
 
THE SEARCH THAT ALWAYS FINDS. 
 
 And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me zmth all 
 your heart. — Jer. xxix. 13. 
 
 toh 14 Anything is possible rather than that a whole-hearted search 
 after God should be a vain search. For there are, in that case, 
 two seekers — God is seeking for us more truly than we are seeking for Him. 
 And if the mother is seeking her child, and the child its mother, it will 
 be a very wide desert where they will not meet. "The Father seeketh 
 such to worship Him." That is — the Divine activity is going about the 
 world, searching for the heart that turns to Him, and it cannot but be that 
 they that seek Him shall find Him. Open the windows, and you cannot 
 keep out the sunshine ; open your lungs, and you cannot keep out the air. 
 *' In Him we live and move and have our being " ; and if our desires turn, 
 however blindly, to Him, and are accompanied with the appropriate action, 
 heaven and earth are more likely to rush to ruin than such a searching to be 
 frustrated of its aim. 
 
 Is there anything else in the world of which you can say, "Seek, and ye 
 shall find " ? We, with white hairs on our heads, have we found anything 
 else in which the chase was sure to result in the capture ; in wliich capture 
 was sure to yield all that the hunter had wished ? There is only one direc- 
 tion for a man's desires and aims in which disappointment is an impossibility. 
 In all other regions the most that can be promised is, "Seek, zxid perhaps 
 you will find " ; and when you have found, perhaps you will find that the 
 prize was not worth the finding. Or it is, "Seek, and possibly you may 
 find ; and after you have found and kept for a little while, you may lose." 
 Though it may be 
 
 " Better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all," 
 
 a treasure that slips out of our fingers is not the best treasure that we can 
 search for. But here the assurance is, " Seek, and ye shall find ; and shall 
 never lose. Find, and you shall always possess." 
 
 What would you think of a company of gold-seekers, hunting about in 
 some exhausted claim for hypothetical grains— ragged, starving — and all the 
 while in the next gulley were lying lumps of gold for the picking up? And 
 that figure fairly represents what people do and suffer who seek for good and 
 do not seek for God. That turning of mind, will, and affection towards 
 God must be ours if we are to be among those wise and happy seekers who 
 are sure to find that which— or rather Him whom — they seek, and to rest 
 in Him whom they find. The famous saying which prefers the search after 
 to the possession of truth is more proud than wise ; but the comparison 
 which it institutes is so far true that there is a joy in the aspiration after and 
 the efforts towards truth only less joyous than that which attends its attain- 
 ment. But truth divorced from God is finite and may pall, become familiar 
 and lose its radiance, like a gathered flower ; and hence the preference for 
 the search is intelligible, though one-sided. But God does not pall, and the 
 more we find Him ihe more we delight in Him. The highest bliss is to find 
 Him, the next highest is to seek Him ; and, since seeking and finding Him 
 are never wholly separate, these kindred joys blend their lights in the 
 experience of all His children. 
 
 288 
 
THE REST OF FINDING CHRIST. 
 
 There I will meet with thee, and I will comtnune with thee front above the 
 mercy-seat. — Exod. xxv. 22. 
 
 n *^i.- IK Seeking God does not cover our heads from the storm of 
 
 October la. .... , • t i . i 
 
 external calamities, nor arm our hearts against the darts and 
 
 daggers of many a pain, anxiety, and care ; but disturbance around is a very 
 
 small matter if there be a better thing — rest within. Do you remember 
 
 who it was that said, " In the world ye shall have tribulation . . . but in 
 
 Me ye shall have peace " ? Then we have, as it were, two abodes — one, as 
 
 far as regards the life of sense, in the world of sense — another, as far as 
 
 regards the inmost self, which may, if we will, be in Christ, A vessel with 
 
 an outer casing and a layer of air between may be kept at a temperature 
 
 above that of the external atmosphere. So we may have round us— and, if 
 
 God so wills, let us not kick against His will — the very opposite of repose ; 
 
 we may have conflict and stir and strife, and yet a better rest than that of 
 
 King Asa and his people {see 2 Chron. xv. 15) may be ours. *' Rest round 
 
 about" is sometimes good and sometimes bad. It is often bad, for it is the 
 
 people that " have no changes " who most usually " do not fear God." But 
 
 rest within, that is sure to come when a man has sought with all his desire 
 
 for God, whom he has found in all His fulness, is good only and best of all. 
 
 We all know, thank God ! in worldly matters and in inferior degree, 
 how blessed and restful it is when some strong affection is gratified, some 
 cherished desire fulfilled ! Though these satisfactions are not perpetual, nor 
 perfect, they may teach us what a depth of blessed and calm repose, in- 
 capable of being broken by any storms or by any tasks, will come to and 
 abide with the man whose deepest love is satisfied in God, and whose most 
 ardent desires have found more than they sought for in Him ! Be sure of 
 this, dear friend, that if we do thus seek, and thus find, it is not in the 
 power of anything "that is at enmity with joy" utterly to "abolish or 
 destroy" the quietness of our hearts. " Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently 
 for Him." They who thus repose will have peace in their hearts, even 
 whilst tasks and temptations, changes and sorrows, disturb their outward 
 lives. 
 
 Thus we may have the peace of God, rest in and from Him, entering 
 into us, and in due time, by His gracious guidance and help, we shall enter 
 into eternal rest. Whilst to seek is to find Him, in a very deep and blessed 
 sense, even in this life ; in another aspect all our earthly life may be 
 regarded as seeking after Him, and the future as the true finding of Him. 
 That future shall bring to those whose hearts have turned from the shows 
 and vanities of time to God a possession of Him so much fuller than was 
 experienced here that the lesser discoveries and enjoyments of Him which 
 are experienced here, scarcely deserve in comparison to be called by the 
 same name. " He was found of them, and the Lord gave them rest round 
 about," as well as within, in the land of peace, where sorrow and sighing, 
 and toil and care, shall pass from memory ; and they that warred against us 
 shall be far away. 
 
 289 U 
 
THE SHEPHERD-KING. 
 
 The Lord is my Shepherd : I shall not want. — Psalm xxiii. I, 
 
 The king who had been the shepherd-bov, and had been 
 October 16. . 
 
 taken from the quiet sheep-cotes to rule over Israel, sings this 
 
 little psalm of Him who is the true Shepherd and King of men. We do 
 not know at what period of David's life it was written, but it sounds as if it 
 were the work of his later years. There is a fulness of experience about it, 
 and a tone of subdued, quiet confidence, which speak of a heart mellowed 
 by years and of a faith made sober by many a trial. A young man would 
 not write so calmly, and a life which was just opening would not afford 
 material for such a record of God's guardianship in all changing circum- 
 stances. If, then, we think of the psalm as the work of David's later years, 
 is it not very beautiful to see the old king looking back with such vivid and 
 loving remembrance to his childhood's occupation, and bringing up again 
 to memory in his palace the green valleys, the gentle streams, the dark 
 glens where he had led his flock in the old days ; very beautiful to see him 
 traversing all the stormy years ol warfare and rebellion, of crime and sorrow, 
 which lay between, and finding in all God's guardian presence and gracious 
 guidance? The faith which looks back and says, " It is all very good," is 
 not less than that which looks forward and says, " Surely goodness and 
 mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." There is nothing difficult 
 of understanding in the psalm. The train of thought is clear and obvious. 
 The experiences which it details are common, the emotions it expresses 
 simple and familiar. The tears that have been dried, the fears that have 
 been dissipated, by this old song ; the love and thankfulness which have 
 ound in them their best expression, prove the worth of its simple words. 
 It lives in most ol our memories. There is a double progress of thought 
 in it. It rises, from mem(iries of the past and experiences of the present 
 care of God, to hope for the future. " The Lord is 7ny Shcthcrd^'' — " / 
 will fear no evil." Then, besides this progress from what was and is to 
 what will be, there is another string, so to speak, on which the gems are 
 threaded. The various methods of God's leading of His flock, or, rather, 
 we should say, the various regions into which He leads them, are described 
 in order. These are : Rest, Work, Sorrow ; and this series is so combined 
 with the order of time already adverted to, as that the past and the present 
 are considered as the regions of rest and of work, while the future is antici- 
 pated as having in it the valley of he shadow of death. 
 
 290 
 
GOD LEADS HIS SHEEP INTO REST. 
 
 He niaketh me to lie down in green pastures ; He leadeth tne beside the 
 Still waters. — Psalm xxiii. 2. 
 
 P , . .- It is the hot noontide, and the desert lies bal<ing in the 
 awful glare, and every stone on the hills of Judaea burns the 
 foot that touches it. But in that panting, breathless hour, here is a little 
 green glen, with a quiet brooklet, and a moist lush herbage all along its 
 course, and great stones that fling a black shadow over the dewy grass at 
 their base ; and there would the shepherd lead his flock, while the "sun- 
 beams, like swords," are piercing everything beyond that hidden covert. 
 Sweet silence broods there. The sheep feed and drink, and couch in cool 
 lairs till he calls them forth again. So God leads Plis children. Rest and 
 refreshment are putyfrj/, as being the most marked characteristic of God's 
 dealings. After all, it is so. The years are years of unbroken continuity 
 of outward blessings. The reign of afflictions is ordinarily measured by 
 days. Weeping endures for a night. It is a rainy climate where half the 
 days have rain in them ; and that is an unusually troubled life of which it 
 can with any truth be afflrmed that there has been as much darkness as 
 sunshine in it. 
 
 But it is not mainly of outward blessings that the Psalmist is thinking ; 
 they are precious chiefly as emblems of the better spiritual gifts. And it is 
 not an accommodation of his words, but is the appreciation of their truest 
 spirit, when we look upon them, as the instinct of devout hearts has ever 
 done, as expressing both God's gift of temporal mercies and His gift of 
 spiritual good, of which higher gift all the lower are meant to be significant 
 and symbolic. Thus regarded, the image describes the sweet rest of the 
 soul in communion with God, in whom alone the hungry heart finds 
 food that satisfies, and from whom alone the thirsty soul drinks draughts 
 deep and limpid enough. This rest and refreshment has for its conse- 
 quence the restorat'on of the soul, which includes in it both the invigor- 
 ati(m of the natural life by the outward sort of these blessings, and the 
 quickening and restoration of the spiritual life by the inward feeding upon 
 God and repose in Him. 
 
 The Divine rest is not only a pattern of what our earthly life may 
 become, but is a prophecy of what our heavenly life shall surely be. 
 There is a basis of likeness between the Christian life on earth and the 
 Christian life in heaven, so great as that the blessings that are predicted 
 of the one belong to the other. Only here they are in blossom, sickly 
 often, putting out very feeble shoots and tendrils ; and yonder, transplanted 
 into their right soil, and in their native air, with heaven's sun upon them, 
 they burst into richer beauty, and bring forth fruits of immortal life. 
 Heaven is the earthly life of a believer glorified and perfected. If here by 
 faith we enter into the beginning of rest, yonder, through death with faith, 
 we shall enter into the perfection of it. Heaven will be for us rest in 
 work, and work that is full of rest. Our Lord's heaven is not an idle 
 heaven, and the heaven of all spiritual natures is not idleness. Man's 
 delight is activity. The loving heart's delight is obedience. The saved 
 heart's delight is grateful service. The joys of heaven are not the jo}'S of 
 passive contemplation, of dreamy remembrance, of perfect repose ; but they 
 are described thus : "They rest not day nor night." " His servants serve 
 Him and see His face." Heaven is perfect " rest." 
 
 291 
 
GOD GUIDES KIS PEOPLE INTO V;ORK. 
 
 He guideth n^e in the paths of righteousness for fits Nantc^s sake. — 
 Psalm xxiii. 3. 
 
 - , ._ The quiet mercies of the precedinj^ verse are not in thcm- 
 **" ' selves the end of our Shepherd's guidance ; they are means 
 to an end, and that is — work. Life is not a fold for llie sheep to he down 
 in, but a road for them to walk on. All our blessings of every sort are 
 indeed given us for our delight. They will never fit us for the duties for 
 which they are intended to prepare us, unless they first be thoroughly 
 enjoyed. The highest good they yield is only reached through the lower 
 one. But, then, when joy fills the heart, and life is bounding in the veins, 
 we have to learn that these are granted, not for pleasure only, but for 
 pleasure in order to power. We get them, not to let them pass away like 
 waste steam puffed into empty air, but that we may use them to drive the 
 wheels of life. The waters of happiness are not for a luxurious bath where 
 a man may lie, till, like flax steeped too long, the very fibre be rotted 
 out of him ; a quick plunge will brace him, and he will come out refreshed 
 for work. Rest is to fit for work ; work is to sweeten rest. All this is 
 emphatically true of the spiritual life ; its seasons of communion, its 
 hours on the mount, are to prepare for the sore sad work in the plain. And 
 he is not the wisest disciple who tries to make the Mount of Transfiguration 
 the abiding place for himself and his Lord. 
 
 It is not well that our chief object should be to enjoy the consolations 
 of religion ; it is better to seek first to do the duties enjoined by religion. 
 Our first question should be, not " How may I enjoy God?" but " How 
 may I glorify Him ?" " A single eye to His glory " means that even our 
 comfort and joy in religious exercises shall be subordinated, and, if need 
 were, postponed, to the doing of His will. While, on the one hand, there 
 is no more certain means of enjoying Him than that of humbly seeking to 
 walk in the ways of His commandments, on the other hand, there is 
 nothing more evanescent in its nature than a mere emotion, even though it 
 be that of joy in God, unless it be turned into a spring of action for God. 
 Such emotions, like photographs, vanish from the heart unless they be 
 fixed. Work for God is the way to fix them. Joy in God is the strength 
 of work for God, but work for God is the perpetuation of joy in God. 
 Here is the figurative expression of the great evangehcal principle, that 
 works of righteousness must follow, not precede, the restoration of the soul. 
 We are justified, not by works, but for works ; or, as the Apostle puts it, 
 which sounds like an echo of this psalm, we are " created in Christ Jesus 
 unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should 7i alk in 
 them." The basis of obedience is the sense of salvation. We work, not 
 for the assurance of acceptance and forgiveness, but fro?n it. First the 
 restored soul ; then the paths of righteousness for His Name's sake who 
 has restored me, and restored me that I may be like Him. 
 
 292 
 
THE PATH OF SORROW. 
 
 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of deaths I will 
 fear no evil; for Thou art with me : Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort 
 me. — Psalm xxiii. 4. 
 
 The " valley of the shadow of death " does not only mean the 
 
 October 19. r 1 i , i 1 . 
 
 dark approach to the dark dissolution of soul and body, but any 
 
 and every gloomy valley of weeping through which we have to pass. Such 
 sunless gorges we have all to pass at some time or other. It is striking 
 that the Psalmist puts the sorrow, which is as certainly characteristic of our 
 lot as the rest or the work, into the future. Looking back, he sees none. 
 Memory has softened down all the past into one uniform tone, as the 
 mellowing distance wraps in one solemn purple the mountains which, when 
 close to them, have many a barren rock and gloomy rift. All behind is 
 good. And, building on this hope, he looks forward with calmness, and 
 feels that no evil shall befal. But it is never given to human heart to 
 meditate of the future without some foreboding. And when *' Hope en- 
 chanted smiles," with the light of the future in her blue eyes, there is ever 
 something awful in their depths, as if they saw some dark visions behind 
 the beauty. Some evils may come ; some will probably come ; one, at 
 least, is sure to come. However bright may be the path, somewhere on it, 
 perhaps just round that turning, sits the "shadow feared of man." So 
 there is never pure In ope in any heart that wisely considers the future. But 
 to the Christian heart there may be this — the conviction that sorrow, when 
 it comes, will not be evil, because God will be with us ; and the conviction 
 that the Hand which guides us into the dark valley will guide us through 
 it and up out of it. Yes, strange as it may sound, the presence of Him who 
 sends the sorrow is the best help to bear it. The assurance that the Hand 
 which strikes is the Hand which binds up, makes the stroke a blessing, 
 sucks the poison out of the wound of sorrow, and turns the rod which 
 smites into the staff to lean on. 
 
 The sheep are led by many a way, sometimes through sv/eet meadows, 
 sometimes limping along sharp-flinted dusty highways, sometimes high up 
 over rough rocky mountain-passes, sometimes down through deep gorges, 
 with no sunshine in their gloom ; but they are ever being led to one place ; 
 and when the hot day is over, they are gathered into one fold, and tlie 
 sinking sun sees them safe, where no wolf can come, nor any robber climb 
 up any more, but all shall rest for ever under the Shepherd's eye. 
 
 293 
 
THE BLIND WATCHERS AT THE CROSS. 
 
 And they sat and watched Him there. — Matt, xxvii. 36. 
 
 October 20. ^^^^ possible it is to look at Christ on the Cross and see 
 nothing ! For half a day there they sat. It was but a dying Jew 
 that they saw — One of three. A touch of pity came into their hearts once 
 or twice, alternating with mockery which was not savage because it was 
 simply brutal ; but when it was all over, and they had pierced His side, 
 and gone away back to their barracks, they had not the least notion that 
 they, with their dim purblind eyes, had been looking at the most stupendous 
 miracle in the whole world's history ; had been gazing at the thing into 
 which angels desired to look ; and had seen that to which the hearts and 
 the gratitude of unconverted millions would turn for all eternity. They 
 laid their heads down on their pillows that night and did not know what 
 had passed before their eyes ; and they shut the eyes that had served them 
 so ill, and went to sleep, altogether unconscious that they had seen the 
 pivot on which the whole history of humanity had turned ; and been the 
 unmoved witnesses of God manifest in the flesh, dying on the Cross for 
 the whole world, and for them. And if we thus look, and look with calm, 
 unmoved hearts ; if we look without personal appropriation of that Cross 
 and dying love to ourselves, and if we look without our hearts going out in 
 thankfulness and laying themselves at His feet in a calm rapture of life-long 
 devotion, then we need not wonder that four ignorant heathen men sat and 
 looked at Him for four long hours and saw nothing, for we are as blind as 
 ever they were. 
 
 You say, "We see." Do you see? Do you look? Does the look 
 touch your hearts ? Have you fathomed the meaning of the fact ? Is it to 
 you the incarnation of the loving God for your salvation ? Is it to you the 
 death on which all your hopes rest ? You say you see. Do you see that 
 in it ? Do you see your only ground of confidence and peace ? And do you 
 so see that, like a man that has looked at the sun for a moment or two, 
 when you turn away your head you carry the image of what you beheld 
 still stamped on your eyeball, and have it both as a memory and a present 
 impression ? So, is the Cross photographed on your heart ? And is it true 
 about us that every day and all days we behold our Saviour, and, beholding 
 Him, are being changed into His likeness? Is it true about us that we 
 bear about with us in the body "the dying of the Lord Jesus"? If we 
 look to Ilim with faith and love, and make His Cross our own, and keep 
 it ever in our memory, ever before us as an inspiration and a hope and a 
 joy and a pattern, then we see. If not, " for judgment am I come into 
 the world, tl:at they which see not may see, and that they which see might 
 be made blind," For no men are so blind to the infinite pathos and 
 tenderness, power, mystery, and miracle of the Cross, as those who all their 
 lives have heard a Gospel which has been held up before their lack-lustre 
 eyes, and have looked at it so long that they cannot see it any more. Let 
 us pray that our eyes may be purged ; that we may see, and, seeing, may 
 copy, that dying love of the ever-loving Lord. 
 
 294 
 
"BE CAREFUL FOR NOTHING." 
 
 Be not therefore anxious for the morrow, for the morrow will be anxious 
 for itself — Matt. vi. 34. 
 
 October 21. An apparently impossible ad^^ce. That word "careful," in a 
 great many places in the New Testament, does not mean what 
 it has come to mean to-day ; but it means what it should still mean, " lull 
 of care." And "care" meant, not prudent provision, forethought, the 
 occupation of a man's common sense with his duty and his work and his 
 circumstances, but it meant the thing which of all others unfits a man most 
 for such prudent provision, and that is, the nervous irritation of a gnawing 
 anxiety which, as the word in the original means, tears the heart apart and 
 makes a man quite incapable of doing the wise thing, or seeing the wise 
 thing to do, in the circumstances. "Careful" here means neither more 
 nor less than " anxious." 
 
 But even with that explanation, is it not like an unreachable ideal 
 that Paul puts forward ? "Be anxious about nothing." How can a man 
 who has to face the possibilities that we all have to face, and who knows 
 himself to be as weak to deal with them as we all are — how can he help 
 being anxious ? There is no more complete waste of breath than those sage 
 and reverend advices which people give us, not to do the thin^^s nor to 
 feel the emotions which our position make absolutely inevitable and almost 
 involuntary. Here, for instance, is a man surrounded by all manner of 
 calamity and misfortune ; and some well-meaning, but foolish, friend comes 
 to him, and, without giving him a single reason for the advice, says, " Cheer 
 up, my friend ! " Why should he cheer up ? What is there in his circum- 
 stances to induce him to fall into any other mood ? Or some unquestionable 
 peril is staring him full in the face, coming nearer and nearer to him, and 
 some well-meaning, loose-tongued friend, says to him, " Do not be afraid ! " 
 But he ought to be afraid. That is about all that worldly wisdom and 
 morality have to say to us when we are in trouble and anxiety. " Shut 
 your eyes very hard, and make believe very much, and you will not fear." 
 An impossible exhortation ! Just as well bid a ship in the Bay of Biscay 
 not to rise and fall upon the wave, but to keep an even keel — ^just as well 
 tell the willows in the river-bed that they are not to bend when the wind 
 blows — as come to me, and say to me, " Be careful about nothing," unless 
 you have a great deal more than that to say. I must be, and I ought to be, 
 anxious about a great many things. Instead ot anxiety being folly, it will 
 be wisdom ; and the folly will consist in not opening our eyes to facts, and 
 in not feeling emotions that are appropriate to the facts which force them- 
 selves against our eyeballs. Threadbare maxims, stale, musty old common- 
 places of unavailing consolation and impotent encouragement say to us, 
 " Do not be anxious." We try to stiffen our nerves and muscles in order 
 to bear the blow ; or some of us, more basely still, get into a habit of 
 feather-headed levity, making no forecasts, nor seeing even what is plainest 
 before our eyes. But all that is of no use when once the hot pincers of 
 real trouble, impending or arrived, lay hold of our hearts. Then, of all idle 
 expenditures of breath in the world, there is none to the wrung heart more 
 idle and more painful than the one that says. Be anxious about nothing. 
 
 295 
 
HOW TO OBEY AN APPARENTLY IMPOSSIBLE 
 INJUNCTION. 
 
 In nothing be anxious ; but in everything by prayer and supplication 
 ZL'iih thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. — Phil. iv. 6. 
 
 October 22 Paul here directs to the mode of feeling and action which 
 will give exemption from the else inevilable gnawing of 
 anxious forethought. He introduces his positive counsel with an eloquent 
 " But," which implies that what follows is the sure'prescrvutive against the 
 temper which he deprecates. " But in everything by prayer and suppli- 
 cation with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." 
 
 There are, then, these alternatives. If you do not like to take the one, 
 you are sure to have to take the other. There is only one way out of the 
 wood, and it is this which Paul expands in these last words. If a man 
 does not pray about everything, he will be worried and anxious about most 
 things. If he does pray about everything, he will not be troubled, beyond 
 what is good for him, about anything. So there are these alternatives ; 
 and we have to make up our mintls which of the two we are going to take. 
 The heart is never empty. If not full of God, it will be full of the world 
 and of worldly care. Luther says somewhere that a man's heart is like a 
 couple of millstones ; if you do not put something between them to grind, 
 they will grind each other. It is because God is not in our hearts that the 
 two stones rub the surJace off one another So the victorious antagonist of 
 anxiety is trust, and the only way to turn gnawing care out of my heart and 
 life is to usher God into it. and to keep Him resolutely in it. 
 
 '*' In everything." If a thing is great enough to threaten to make me 
 anxious, it is great enough for me to talk to God about. If He and I are 
 on a friendly footing, the instinct of friendship will make me speak. If so, 
 how irrelevant and superficial seem to be discussions whether we ought to 
 pray about worldly things or confine our prayers entirely to spiritual and 
 religious matters ! Why ! if God and I are on terms of friendship and 
 intimacy of communication, there will be no question as to what I am to 
 talk about to Him ; I sliall not be able to keep silent as to anything that 
 interests me. And we are not right with God unless we have come to that 
 point. That entire openness of speech marks our communications with Him ; 
 and that as naturally as men, when they come from business, like to tell 
 their wives and children what has liajjpened to them since they left home 
 in the morning, so naturally we talk to our PViend about everything that 
 concerns us. " In everything let your requests be made known unto 
 God." That is the wise course, becai/se a multitude of little pimples may 
 be quite as painful and dangerous as a large ulcer. A cloud of gnats may 
 IHit as much poison into a man with their many stings as will a snake with 
 its one bite. And if we are not to get hclj) from God by telling Him about 
 little things, there will be very little of our lives that we shall tell Him 
 about at all. For life is a mountain made up of minute flakes. The years 
 arc only a collection of seconds. Every man's life is an aggregate of trifles. 
 "In everything make your requests known." 
 
 296 
 
THE CURE FOR ANXIETY. 
 
 Casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He careth for you. — 
 I Peter v. 7- 
 
 '"'By prayer": that does not mean, as a superficial ex- 
 October 23. . ^ \ ,. . . . ^ 
 
 penence of religion is apt to suppose it to mean, actual 
 
 petition that follows. For a great many of us the only notion that we 
 have of prayer is asking God to give us something that we want. But 
 there is a far higher region of communion than that, in which the soul 
 seeks and finds, and sits and gazes, and aspiring possesses, and possessing 
 aspires. Where there is no spoken petition for anything affecting outward 
 life, there may be the prayer of contemplation such as the burning seraphs 
 before the Throne do ever glow with. The prayer of silent submission, in 
 which the will bows itself before God ; the prayer of quiet trust, in which 
 we do not so much seek as cleave ; the prayer of still fruition, — these, in 
 Paul's conception of the true order, precede ''supplication." And if we 
 have such union with God, by realising His presence, by aspiration after 
 Plimself, by trusting Him and submission to Him, then we have the 
 victorious antagonist of all our anxieties, and the "cares that infest the 
 day shall fold their tents" and *' silently steal away." For if a man has 
 that union with God which is effected by such prayer as I have been 
 describing, it gives him a fixed point on which to rest amidst all per- 
 turbations. It is like bringing a light into a chamber when thunder is 
 growling outside, which prevents the flashing of the lightning from being 
 seen. 
 
 Years ago an ingenious inventor tried to build a vessel in such a fashion 
 as that the saloon for passengers should remain upon one level, howsoever 
 the hull might be tossed by waves. It was a failure, if I remember rightly. 
 But if we are thus joined to God, Pie will do for our inmost hearts what the 
 inventor tried to do with the chamber within his ship. The hull may be 
 buffeted, but the inmost chamber where the true self sits will be kept 
 levelled and unmoved. Brother ! prayer in the highest sense, by which I 
 mean the exercise of aspiration, trust, submission — prayer will fight against 
 and overcome all anxieties. 
 
 " By prayer and supplication." Actual petition lor the supply of present 
 wants is meant by ' ' supplication." To ask for that supply will very often 
 be to get it. To tell God what I think I need goes a long way always to 
 bringing me the gift that I do need. If I have an anxiety of which I am 
 ashamed to speak to Him, that silence is a sign that I ought not to have it ; 
 and if I have a desire that I do not feel I can put into a prayer, that 
 feeling is a warning to me not to cherish such a desire. 
 
 297 
 
THANKSGIVING AN ANTIDOTE OF CARE. 
 
 / will sacrifice unto Thee with the voice of thanksgiving. — Jonah ii. 9. 
 
 There are many varue and oppressive anxieties that come 
 October 24. , 1 , /it 
 
 and cast a shadow over our hearts, that, ir we could once 
 
 define and put into plain Vv'ords, we should find that we vaguely fancied 
 
 them a great deal larger than they were, and that the shadow they flung 
 
 was immensely longer than the thing that flung it. Put your anxieties into 
 
 definite speech. It will reduce their proportions to your own apprehension 
 
 very often. Speaking them, even to a man who may be able to do little to 
 
 help, eases them wonderfully. Put them into definite speech to God, and 
 
 there are very few of them that will survive. 
 
 " By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving." That thanksgiving 
 is always in place. If one only considers what he has from God, and 
 realises that whatever he has he has received from the hands of Divine 
 love, thanksgiving is appropriate in any circumstances. Do you remember 
 when Paul was in gaol at the very city to which this letter (Phihppians) 
 went, with his back bloody with the rod and his feet fast in the stocks, 
 how then "he and Silas prayed and sang praises to God" ? Therefore the 
 obedient earthquake came and set them loose. Perhaps it was some 
 reminiscence of that night which moved him to say to the church that knew 
 the story — of which perhaps the gaoler was still a member — " By prayer and 
 supplication with thanksgiving make your requests known unto God." 
 
 One aching nerve can monopolise our attention and make us uncon- 
 scious of the health of all the rest of the body ; so, a single sorrow or loss 
 obscures many mercies. We are like men that live in a narrow alley in 
 some city, with great buildings on either side towering high above their 
 heads, and only a strip of sky visible. If we see up in that strip a cloud, 
 we complain and behave as if the whole heavens, right away round the 
 three hundred and sixty degrees of the horizon, were black with tempest. 
 But we see only a little strip, and there is a great deal of blue in the sky ; 
 however, there may be a cloud in the patch that we see above our heads, 
 from the alley where we live. Everything, rightly understood, that Ciod 
 sends to men is a cause of thanksgiving; therefore, "in everything by 
 prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known 
 unto God." 
 
 " Casting all your anxieties upon Him," says Peter, " for He " — not is 
 anxiotis ; that dark cloud does not rise much above the earth— but, "Pie 
 careth fur you." And that loving guardianship and tender care is the one 
 shield, armed with which we can smile at the poisoned darts of anxiety 
 which would else fester in our hearts and, perhaps, kill. " Be careful for 
 nothing" — an impossibility unless "in everything" we make "our re- 
 quests known unto God." 
 
 298 
 
A FATHER'S DISCIPLINE. 
 
 For they verily for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but 
 He for our profity that we may be partakers of His holiness. — Heb. xii. lO. 
 
 t be 25 Few words of Scripture have been oftener than these laid as 
 a healing bahai on wounded hearts. They may be long 
 unnoticed on the page, like a lighthouse in calm sunshine ; but sooner or 
 la.ter the stormy night falls, and then the bright beam flashes out and is 
 welcome. They go very deep into the meaning of life as discipline. They 
 tell us how much better God's discipline is than that of the most loving 
 and wise of parents ; and they give that superiority as a reason for cur 
 yielding more entire and cheerful obedience to Him than we do to such. 
 
 Now, to grasp the full meaning of these words, we have to notice that 
 the earthly and the heavenly disciplines are described in four contrasted 
 clauses, which are arranged in what students call inverted parallelism — • 
 that is to say, the first clause corresponds to the fourth, and the second to 
 the third. "For a few days" pairs off with "that we might be partakers 
 of His holiness." Now, that does not seem a contrast at first sight; but 
 notice that the "for" in the former clause is not the "for" of duration, 
 but of direction. It does not tell us the space during which the chastise- 
 ment or discipHne lasts, but the end towards v/hich it is pointed. Tlie 
 earthly parent's discipline trains boy or girl for circumstances, pursuits, 
 occupations, professions, all of which terminate with the brief span of life. 
 God's training is for an eternal day. It would be quite irrelevant to bring 
 in here any reference to the length of time during which an earthly father's 
 discipline lasts, but it is in full consonance with the writer's intention to 
 dwell upon the limited scope of the one and the wide and eternal purpose 
 of the other. Then, as for the other contrast — "for their own pleasure," 
 or, as the Revised Version reads it, "as seemed good to them" — "but He 
 for our profit." Elements of personal peculiarity, whim, passion, limited 
 and possibly erroneous conceptions of what is the right thing to do for the 
 child, enter into the training of the wisest and most loving amongst us ; 
 and we often make a mistake and do harm when we think we are doing 
 good. But God's training is all from a simple and unerring regard to the 
 benefit of His child. God corrects, chastens, trains, educates. That is 
 the deepest word about everything that befals us. All which befals us 
 has a will behind it, and is co-operant to an end. Life is not a heap of 
 unconnected incidents, like a number of links flung down on the ground, 
 but the links are a chain, and the chain has a staple. It is not a law with- 
 out a law-giver that shapes men's lives. It is not a blind impersonal 
 chance that presides over it. Why ! these very meteors that astronomers 
 expect to-night to be filing and flashing through the sky in apparent wild 
 disorder, all obey law. Our lives, in like manner, are embodied thoughts 
 of God's, in as far as the incidents which befal in them are concerned. 
 We may mar, may fight against, may contradict the prciiiding Divine 
 purpose ; but yet, behind the wild dance of flashing and transitory lights 
 that go careering all over the sky, there guides, not an impersonal Power, 
 but a living, loving Will. He, not it ; He, not r/iey—merx, circumstances, 
 what people call second causes— .^^ corrects, and He does it for a great 
 purpose. 
 
 299 
 
THE SAINTS' PUPILAGE. 
 
 Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser ; teach a righteous 
 man, and he will increase in learning. — Prov. ix. 9. 
 
 October 26. The world is God's nursery. There are many mansions in 
 the Father's house ; and this is where He keeps the little 
 ones. That is the true meaning of everything that befals us. It is 
 education. It would not be worth doing at all if it were not. Life is 
 given to us to teach us how to live, to exercise our powers, to give us 
 habits and facilities of working. We are like boys in a training-ship that 
 lies for most of the time in harbour, and now and then goes out upon some 
 short and easy cruise, not for the sake of getting anywhere in particular, 
 but for the sake of exercising the lads in seamanship. There is no meaning 
 worthy of tis — to say nothing of God—in anythmg that we do, unless it is 
 looked upon as schooling. We all say we believe that. Alas ! I am afraid 
 very many of us forget it. 
 
 But that conception of the meaning of each event that befals us carries 
 
 with it the conception of the whole of this life as being an education towards 
 
 another. I do not understand how any man can bear to live here, and to 
 
 do all his painful work, unless he thinks that by it he is getting ready for 
 
 the life beyond; and that "nothing can bereave him of the force that he 
 
 made his own, being here." The rough ore is turned into steel by being 
 
 " Plunged into baths of hissing tears, 
 And heated all v.ith hopes ar.d f-ars, 
 And battered with the shocks of doom." 
 
 And then — what then ? Is an instrument thus fashioned and tempered and 
 polished destined to be broken and "thrown as rubbish into the void"? 
 Certainly not ! If this life is education, as is obvious upon its very face, 
 then there is a place where we shall exercise the facilities that we have 
 acquired here, and manifest in loftier forms the characters which we have 
 made our own. 
 
 If we carry these thoughts with us habitually, what a difference it will 
 make upon everything that befals us ! You hear men often maundering 
 and murmuring about the mysteries of the pain and sorrow and suffering of 
 this world, wondering if there is any loving will behind it all. That 
 perplexed questioning goes on the hypothesis that life is meant mainly for 
 enjoyment or for material good. If we once apprehended in its all- 
 applicable ranges this simple truth, that life is a discipline, we should have 
 less difficulty in understanding what people call the mysteries of Providence. 
 I do not say it would interpret everything, but it would interpret an immense 
 deal. It would make us eager, as each event came, to find out its special 
 mission, and what it was meant to do for us. It would dignify trifles, and 
 bring down the overwhelming magnitude of the so-called great events, and 
 would make us lords of ourselves, and lords of circumstances, and ready to 
 wring the last drop of possible advantage out of each thing that befel us. 
 Life is a Father's discipline. 
 
 300 
 
THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE OF CHRISTIAN DISCIPLINE. 
 
 All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous^ but grievous ; yet 
 afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto theyn that have been exercised 
 thereby. — Heb. xii. II. 
 
 « ^ , «- I HAVE already said that, even in the most wise and unselfish 
 October 27. . . , •' ^^_^ ^ ^\ -n • i i • .• 
 
 training by an earthly parent, there will mingle subjective 
 
 elements, pecuharitics of view and thought, and sometimes of passion and 
 whim and other ingredients, which detract from the value of all such 
 training. The guiding principle for each earthly parent can only be his 
 conception of what is for the good of his child, even at the best ; and 
 oftentimes that is not purely the guide by which the parent's disciphne is 
 directed. So the words (Heb. xii. lo) turn us away from all these incom- 
 pletenesses, and tell us, *' He for our profit" — with no sidelong look to 
 anything else, and with an entirely wise knowledge of what is for our good, 
 so that the result will be always and only for our good. This is the point of 
 view from which every Christian man ought to look upon all that befals him. 
 
 What follows? This, plainly :— there is no such thing as evil except 
 the evil of sin. All that comes is f^ood, of various sorts and various 
 complexions, but all generically the same. The inundation comes up over 
 the fields, and men are in despair. It goes down ; and then, like the slime 
 left from the Nile in flood, there is better soil for the cultivation of our 
 fields. Storms keep sea and air from stagnating. All that men call evil, 
 in the material world, has in it a soul of good. If it be that all my hfe is 
 paternal discipline, and that God makes no mistakes, then I can embrace 
 whatever comes to me, and be sure that in it I shall find that which will be 
 for my good. 
 
 Ah ! it is easy to say so when things go well ; but, surely, when the 
 night falls is the time for the stars to shine. The gracious word should 
 shine upon some of us in to-day's perplexities and pains and disappoint- 
 ments and sorrows — " He for our profit." That great thought does not in 
 the least deny the fact that pain and sorrow and so-called evil are very 
 real. There is no false stoicism in Christianity. The mission of our 
 troubles would not be effected unless they did trouble us. The good that 
 we get from a sorrow Avould not be realised unless we did sorrow. "Weep 
 for yourselves," said the Master, "and for your children." It is right that 
 we should writhe in pain. It is right that we should yield to the impressions 
 that are made upon us by calamities ; but it is not right that we should be 
 so affected as that we should fail to discern in them this gracious thought — 
 "for our profit." God sends us many love-tokens, and amongst them are 
 the great and the little annoyances and pains that beset our lives; and on 
 each of them, if we would look, we should see, written in His own hand, 
 this inscription : " For your good." Do not let us have our eyes so full of 
 tears that we cannot see, or our hearts so full of regrets that we cannot 
 accept, that sweet, strong message. The guiding principle of all that 
 befals us is God's unerring knowledge of what will do us good. That will 
 not prevent, and is not meant to prevent, the arrow from wounding, but 
 it does wipe the poison off the arrow, and diminish the pain, and should 
 diminish the tears. 
 
 301 
 
THE AIM OF ALL GOD'S CORRECTION. 
 
 Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneih, and scourgeth every son whom lie 
 receiveth. — Heb. xii, 6. 
 
 October 28 ^^^' ^^''^^b' Parent trains his son, or her daughter, for 
 earthly occupations. These last a little while. God trains 
 us for an eternal end. Holiness, likeness to God, is the only end which 
 it is worthy of a man, being what he is, to propose to himself as the issue 
 of his earthly experience. If I fail in that, whatever else I have accom- 
 plished, I fail in everything. I may have made myself rich, cultured, 
 learned, famous, refined, prosperous ; but if I have not at least begun to 
 be like God in purity, in will, in heart, then my whole career has missed 
 the purpose for which I was made, and for which all the discipline of 
 life has been lavished upon me. Fail there, and wherever you succeed 
 you are a failure. Succeed there, and wherever you fail you are a success. 
 
 That great and only worthy end may be reached by the ministration ot 
 circumstances and the discipline through which God passes us. These 
 are not the only ways by which He makes us partakers of His holiness, as 
 we well know. There is the work of that Divine Spirit who is granted 
 to every believer to breathe into him the holy breath of an immortal and 
 incorruptible life. To work along with these there is the influence that 
 is brought to bear upon us by the circumstances in which we are placed 
 and the duties which we have to perform. These may all help us to be 
 nearer and liker to God. 
 
 That is the intention of our sorrows. They will wean us ; they wall 
 refine us ; they will blow us to His breast, as a strong wind might sweep 
 a man into some refuge from itself. I am sure there are some" who can 
 thankfully attest that they were brought nearer to God by some short, 
 sharp sorrow than by many long days of prosperity. 
 
 But the sorrow that is meant to bring us nearer to Him may be in vain. 
 The same circumstances may produce opposite effects. I daresay there 
 are people who will read these words who have been made hard and sullen 
 and bitter and paralysed for good work because they have some heavy 
 burden to carry, or some wound or ache that life can never heal. Ah I 
 brother, we are often like shipwrecked crews, of whom some are driven 
 by the danger to their knees, and some are driven to the spirit casks. 
 Take care that you do not waste your sorrows ; that you do not let the 
 precious gifts of disappointment, pain, loss, loneliness, ill-health, or similar 
 afflictions that come in your daily liie, mar you instead of mending you. 
 See that they send you nearer to God, and not that they drive you further 
 from Him. See that they make you more anxious to have the durable 
 riches and righteousness which no man can take from you, than to grasp 
 at what may yet remain of fleeting earthly joys. So let us try to school 
 ourselves into the habitual and operative conviction that life is discipline. 
 Let us beware of getting no good from what is charged to the brim with 
 good. May it never have to be said of any of us that we wasted the mercies 
 which were judgments, too, and found no good in the things that our 
 tortured hearts felt to be also evils, lest God should have to wail over any 
 of us, " In vain have I smitten your children ; they have received no 
 correction." 
 
 302 
 
THE CHARGE TO THE TEMPLE WATCHERS. 
 
 Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, which by night 
 stand in the House of the Lord ! Lift up your hands to the Sanctuary, and 
 bless ye the Lord. The Lord bless thee out of Zion, even He that made 
 heaven and earth. — PsALM cxxxiv. I-3. 
 
 - , , -- Figure to yourself the band of white-robed priests gathered 
 in the court of the Temple, their flashing torches touching 
 pillar and angle with strange light, the city sunk in silence and sleep — and 
 ere they part to their posts the chant rung in their ears : 
 
 " Behold ! bless ye the Lord, 
 All ye servants of the Lord, 
 Who by night stand in the House of the Lord, 
 Lift up your hands to the Sanctuary, 
 And bless the Lord." 
 
 The priests' duty is to praise. It is because they are the servants of 
 the Lord that, therefore, it is their business to bless the Lord. It is 
 because they stand in the House of the Lord that it is theirs to bless the 
 Lord. They who are gathered into His House, they who hold communion 
 with Him, they who can feel that the gate of the Father's dwelling, like 
 the gate of the Father's heart, is always open to them, they who have been 
 called in from their wanderings in a homeless wilderness, and given a 
 place and a name in His House better than of sons and daughters, have 
 been so blessed in order that, filled with thanksgiving for such an entrance 
 into God's dwelling and of such an adoption into His family, their silent 
 lips may be filled with thanksgiving and their redeemed hands be uplifted 
 in praise. So for us Christians. We are servants of the Lord — His priests. 
 That we "stand in the House of the Lord" expresses not only the fact 
 of our great privilege of confiding approach to Him and communion vdth 
 Him, whereby we may ever abide in the very Holy of Holies, and be in 
 the secret place of the Most High, even while we are busy in the world ; 
 but it also points to our duty of ministering — for the word "stand" is 
 employed to designate the attendance of the priests in their ofiice, and is 
 almost equivalent to " serve." The purpose of that full horn of plenty, 
 charged with blessings which God has emptied upon our heads, is that 
 our dumb lips may be touched into thankfulness, because our selfish 
 hearts have been wooed and charmed into love and life. 
 
 The rabbis had a saying that there were two sorts of angels : the 
 angels that served, and the angels that praised ; of which, according to 
 their teaching, the latter were the higher in degree. It was only a half- 
 truth, for true service is praise. But whatever the form in which praise may 
 come, whether it be in the form of vocal thanksgiving, or whether it be the 
 glad surrender of the heart, manifested in the conscious discharge of the 
 most trivial duties ; whether we lift up our hands in the Sanctuary, and 
 " bless the Lord " with them, or whether we turn our hands to the tools of 
 our daily o cupation and handle them for His sake ; — alike we may be 
 praising Him. And the thing for us to remember is that the place where 
 we, if we are Christians, stand, and the character which we, if we are 
 Christians, sustain, bind us to live blessing and praising Him whilst 
 we live. 
 
 303 
 
SERVICE AND COMMUNION. 
 
 IVhoso offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth Me ; and to him 
 that ordcreth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God. 
 — Psalm 1. 23. 
 
 Q , , „- It is not enough to patrol the temple courts unless we " lift 
 up our hands to the Sanctuary," and with our hearts "bless 
 the Lord." And all we who in any degree and any department are officially 
 or seini-ofticially connected with the work of the Christian Church have 
 very earnestly and especially to lay this to heart. We ministers, deacons, 
 Sunday-school teacliers, tract distributors, have much need to take care 
 that we do not confound watching in the courts of the temple with lifting 
 up our own hands and hearts to our Father that is in Heaven, and remember 
 that the more outward work we do the more inward Hie we ought to have. 
 The higher the stem of the tree grows, and the broader its branches spread, 
 the deeper must strike and the wider must extend its underground roots, if 
 it is not to be blown over and become a withered ruin. 
 
 And so will you take the plain lesson that is here : all 5'e that stand 
 ready for service, and doing service, all " ye that stand in the House of the 
 Lord, behold" — your peril and your duty — and "bless ye the Lord. 
 And remember that the more work the more prayer to keep it from rotting ; 
 the more effort the more communion ; and that at the end we shall discover 
 with alarm, and wii.h shame confess, " I kept others' vineyards, and my 
 own vineyards have I not kept " ; unless, like our Master, we prepare for 
 a day of work and toil in the temple by a night of quiet communion with 
 our Father on the mountain-side. 
 
 And then there is another lesson, and that is that all times are times 
 for blessing God. " Ye who by night stand in the House of the Lord, 
 bless the Lord." So, though no sacrifice was smoking on the altar, and no 
 choral songs went up from the company of praising priests in the ritual 
 service, and although the nightfall had silenced the worship and scattered 
 the worshippers, yet some low murmur of praise would be echoing through 
 the empty halls all the night long, and the voice of thanksgiving and of 
 blessing would blend with the clank of the priests' feet on the marble 
 pavements as they went their patrolling rounds ; and their torches would 
 send up a smoke not less acceptable than the wreathing columns of the 
 incense that had filled the day. And so, as in some convents you will 
 find a monk kneeling on the steps of the altar at each hour of the four- 
 and-twenty, adoring the Sacrament exposed upon it, so (but in inmost 
 reality and not in a mere vulgar outside form that means nothing) in the 
 Christian heart there should be a perpetual adoration and a continual 
 praise — a prayer without ceasing. What is it that ct)mes first of all into 
 your minds when you wake in the middle of the night ? Yesterday's 
 business, to-morrow's vanities, or God's present love and your dependence 
 upon Ilim? 
 
 In the night of sorrow, too, do our songs go up, and do we hear and 
 obey the charge which commands not only perpetual adoration, but bids 
 us fill the night with music and with praise? Well for us if it be, antici- 
 pating the time when " they rest not day nor night saying. Holy ! Holy 1 
 Holy I" 
 
 304 
 
RECIPROCAL BLESSING. 
 
 / will bless thee . . . and be thou a blessing. — Gen. xii. 2. 
 
 f h 31 There are two kinds of blessing which answer to one 
 another — God's blessing of man and man's blessing of God. 
 The one is communicative, the other receptive and responsive. The one 
 is the great streism which pours itself over the precipice, the other is the 
 basin into which it falls, and the showers of spray which rise from its 
 surface, rainbowed in the sunshine, as the cataract of Divine mercies comes 
 down upon it. God blesses us when He gives. We bless God when we 
 thankfully take, and praise the Giver. God's blessing, then, must ever 
 come first. We love Him because Pie first loved us. Ours is but the 
 echo of His; but the ackno\\ ledgment of the Divine act, which must 
 precede our recognition of it, as the dawn must come in order that the birds 
 may wake to sing. 
 
 Our highest service is to take the gifts of God, and with glad hearts to 
 praise the Giver. Our blessings are but words. God's blessings are 
 realities. We wish good to one another when we bless each other. But 
 He does good to men when He l:)]e>;ses them. Our wishes may be deep 
 and warm, but, alas ! how ineffectual ; they flutter round the heads of 
 those whom we would bless, but how seldom do they actually rest upon 
 their brows ! But God's blessings are powers ; they never miss their 
 mark. Whom He blesses are blessed indeed. The channel through 
 which God's blessings come is — "out of Zion." For the Jew, the fulness of 
 the Divine glory dwelt between the Cherubim, and the richest of the 
 Divine blessings were bestowed on the waiting worshippers there. And no 
 doubt it is still true that God dwells in Zion, and blesses men from thence. 
 The correspondence in Christianity to the temple where God dwelt and 
 from which He scattered His blessings is twofold — one proper and original, 
 the other secondary and derived. In the true sense, Jesus Christ is the 
 Temple. In Him God dwelt ; in Him man meets God ; in Him was the 
 place of Revelation ; in Him the place of Sacrifice. " In this place is one 
 greater than the temple"; and the abiding of Jehovah above the mercy-seat 
 was but a material symbol, shadowing and foretelling the true indwelling of 
 all the fulness of the Godhead bodily in that true tabernacle which the 
 Lord hath pitched and not man. So the great P'ountain of all possible 
 good and benediction, which was opened for the believing Jew in " Zion," 
 is open for us in Jesus Christ, who stood in the very court of the temple, 
 and called in tones of clear, loud invitation : " If any man thirst, let him 
 come unto Me and drink." W^e may each pass through the rent veil into 
 the holiest of all, and there, laying our hand on Jesus, touch God. and 
 opening our empty palm extended to Him, can receive from Him all the 
 blessing that we need. There is another application of the temple symbol 
 in the New Testament — a derivative and secondary one — to the Church, 
 that IS, to the aggregate of behevers. In that Zion all God's best blessings 
 are possessed and stored, that the Church may, by faithful service, impart 
 them to the world. Whosoever desires to possess these blessings must 
 enter thither, not by any ceremonial act or outward profession, but by 
 becoming one of those who put their whole heart's confidence in Jesus 
 Christ. If we are knit to Christ by our faith, we share, in proportion to our 
 fai<th, in all the wealth of blessing with which God has blessed Him, We 
 possess Christ and in Him all. 
 
 505 X 
 
CHRISTIAN SELF-POSSESSION. 
 
 This is the will of God, even your sanctiJicaUon, . . . that each one, of 
 you know how to possess himself of his own vessel in sanctification and 
 honour. — i Thess. iv. 3, 4. 
 
 J- , . Self-control is self-possession, as the popular use of that 
 word "self-possessed" hints at. A man that has the 
 mastery of his inclinations, dispositions, emotions, and passions, and can 
 keep them all down where they ought to be, is the man whom we call 
 ** self-possessed" — which is just to say, that only he who governs himself 
 by temperate reason and firm will and pure conscience, only he is, in 
 truth, his own owner and master. Why, to take one of the plainest and 
 grossest instances : suppose a drunkard who resolves, with all the power 
 left to his enfeebled \\\\\, that he will never touch drink again. He goes 
 out into the street full of his resolution, and before he has gone a couple of 
 hundred yards, and passed a public-house or two, it all oozes out at his 
 fingers' ends, and in he goes. Is he master of himself? Does he own 
 himself, in any true sense of the expression ? No ! That tyrannous lust 
 dominates ; to it he belongs ; he has no power of governing his own 
 nature. His reason, his will, his conscience, are all drowned out of sight 
 by the flood of ungoverned passion that comes rushing from his indulged 
 animal appetite like winter torrents from the recesses of the hills, that cover 
 fertile lands with hideous slime and sterile gravel. You cannot call such a 
 man as that his own master. To use a common phrase, he, at any rate, 
 cannot call his soul his own. It belongs to the tempter whom he cannot 
 resist. That, of course, is an illustration of an extreme kind, drawn from 
 a gross appetite, but the principle involved in it can be applied to other 
 much more refined and subtle desires. Wherever there is a passion, an 
 inclination that masters a man, and brushes aside the sovereign faculties of 
 reason and will and conscience, and says to them, "You may all lay your 
 heads together as you like, but I am going to take the reins into my hands," 
 there is a man who does not belong to himself, but to the dominant in- 
 clination and to the object which excites it. 
 
 Self-sacrifice is self-possession. From a selfish point of view, it is a 
 gross mistake to make myself my own aim and centre. " Who pleasure 
 follows, pleasure slays," says the poet. The surest way to gratify and 
 satisfy all that is good in myself is to put the satisfaction of self out of sight, 
 and to yield myself up to something higher and nobler. They tell us that 
 if a man gazes full-front at the Pleiades they do not appear so bright, and 
 he cannot count so many of them as if he looks a little on one side of them. 
 Whoever makes self the aim of his vision and of his effort thereby defeats 
 his own end, and ceases to possess himself. There are far sweeter delights 
 in the love of others, to which a man yields up himself, than are ever found 
 in loving self. The poignant joys that spring in a heart that is inflamed by 
 high enthusiasm for any great cause, be it what it may, are nobler, rarer, 
 more tlnilling by far, than any which are to be found on the low levels of 
 self-indulgence. The secret of hnppiness is self-oblivion. "He that 
 loveth his life shall lose it '' is true all round the circumference of a man's 
 nature. 
 
 :o6 
 
A BETTER AND AN ENDURING SUBSTANCE. 
 
 Knowing that ye yourselves have a better possession and an abiding 
 one, — Heb. X. 34. 
 
 November 2. '^^^ writer has just spoken in the previous clause about 
 " taking joyfully the spoiling of your goods" and for " posses- 
 sion" he employs a word closely related to that, which is translated 
 "goods." So that he is pointing back, and suggesting that the wealth 
 that had been taken was trivial and poor in comparison with the wealth 
 which the believing Hebrews retained. They had lost farthings ; they had 
 kept pounds. 
 
 That possession is better, just because it is within and not without. 
 The wealth that a man has is only apparently his possession. There is 
 many a man in Manchester about whom we say, " He has mills or capital 
 amounting to so many thousands, or millions," when it would be a great 
 deal truer to say, "The mills and the capital and the millions have hnn." 
 He is not their owner ; he is their slave. But even when outward posses- 
 sions do not become tyrants, it is still true that whatever lies outside of us 
 is less precious than what we have within. Love is more than money ; 
 peace is more than plenty. It is better to have a quiet heart than a full 
 cupboard. It is better to have a clear record of conscience than a bank- 
 note with a heavy balance on the credit side. What we have, or what has 
 us, is small in comparison with what we are. The wealth within is the 
 true wealth ; and there is nothing that will satisfy a man except having 
 himself re-made after the image of Jesus Christ, and so being " lord of 
 himself if not of lands." The difference between these two kinds of posses- 
 sion is the difference between having to go a weary way to a well with a 
 pitcher, and bringing back a scanty and not very pure or cool supply, and 
 having a fountain in your courtyard. " A good man shall be satisfied from 
 himself," says the Book of Proverbs ; and that is better than being a 
 pauper dependent on the contingent satisfactions that come from anything 
 outside of us. 
 
 "A better and an enduring possession " — or, perhaps, we should rather 
 say, better because enduring. Nothing can deprive me of myself but myself. 
 Only its own hands can break the sweet bonds that knit a believing soul 
 to Jesus Christ. The world may blow its fiercest hurricanes of losses, and 
 sorrows may come storming upon us, but they will only blow the dead 
 leaves off the tree, while the living ones remain, and the strong bole and 
 sturdy branches are unharmed. The branches may toss ; the stem and the 
 roots are unmoved. So it is better to have wealth which the world cannot 
 give and cannot take away than to be enriched with all the fast-fading 
 sweets that it offers. 
 
 This wealth is better because it is altogether unaffected by and per- 
 sistent through that change which takes away everything besides. As the 
 grim psalm has it, "his glory shall not descend after him," As the grim 
 proverb has it, "Shrouds have no pockets." The corpse laid out upon a 
 board to be buried has the hands that clutched straightened out, open and 
 empty for evermore. But we take ourselves with us when we go — what 
 we have made of ourselves, and what Christ in us has made of us. 
 " Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for . . . their works do follow 
 them," and their wealth goes with them. 
 
 ■^1 
 
THE MISSION OF PERSECUTION. 
 
 Ye both had compassion on them that were in bonds, and took iqyfully 
 the s/)oi/in£^ o/your possessions. — Heb. x. 34. 
 
 The possession of the enduring substance of Christ lifts us 
 above all loss or change. *' Ye \.oo\^ joyfully the spoiling of 
 your goods," says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaking to his 
 hearers of some afflictions and persecutions which have long faded out of 
 memory. We know not what the circumstances were to which he refers. 
 Evidently there had been some pretty stringent and severe persecution of 
 Christians, which had led to large financial losses. " Ye took joyfully the 
 spoihng of your goods." How came it that they were so turned about from 
 man's usual attitude as to welcome what most people resist, or at least 
 regret? How came it? Why — "knowing that ye had yourselves for a 
 better and an enduring possession." It does not matter much to the man 
 that has vaults on vaults full of sacks of bullion whether a few shillings may 
 be lost in the course of a day's work. It does not matter much to the 
 merchant wl o has his warehouse piled with goods though one or two day's 
 transactions may be unprofitable. And if we have the durable riches in the 
 possession of our own selves, we can afford to look — and we shall look — 
 with comparatively quiet hearts on the going of all that can go, and be able 
 to bear losses and sorrows, and '* all the ills that flesh is heir to," in an 
 altogether different fashion from what we should do if we could not fall 
 back upon the wealth within, and feel that nothing can touch that. 
 
 If we rightly understood the mission of loss, pain, or sorrow, and that 
 each was intended to make us possess more fully the only true riches — that 
 each was meant to make us better, more masters of ourselves, and enriched 
 by such possession— we should not so often murmur or faint when the blows 
 come, nor be so ready to exclaim, "Oh! the mysteries of Providence!" 
 but rather be quick to say, " All things work together for good to them 
 that love God." For, if my "loss" of outward things makes me "gain" 
 in patience, in refinement, in fixed faith in Jesus Christ, in quiet submission 
 to Him, then I enter the item on the wrong page if I put it upon the 
 " losses" side of the book. I should put it on the "profits" side ; for it 
 profits a man more to gain himself than to gain or keep the whole world. 
 
 So the right understanding of what our wealth is, and the right under- 
 standing of the relation of sorrow and pain and loss to the true wealth in 
 ourselves, would make us not only take patiently, but "joyfully," all pos- 
 .sible disaster and loss. And we may come to reproduce that heroism of 
 glad faith which the old prophet showed when he sang, "Though the fig- 
 tree shall not blossom, and there be no fruit in the vine ; though the labour 
 of the olive shall fail, and there be no meat in the field ; though the flock 
 be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stall, yet shall I rejoice 
 in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation." 
 
 308 
 
THE DIVINE HOST AND THE HUMAN GUESTS 
 
 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of fiiine enemies ; Thou 
 hast anointed my head with oil ; my cup runneth over. — Psalm Kxiii. 5. 
 
 Life is a sore fight ; but to the Christian man, in spite of all 
 Ifovember 4. ^^^ tumult, life is a festal banquet. There stand the enemies, 
 ringing him round with cruel eyes, waiting to be let slip upon him like 
 eager dogs round the poor beast of the chase. But, for all that, here is 
 spread a table in the wilderness, made ready by invisible hands ; and the 
 grim-eyed foe is held back in the leash till the servant of God has fed and 
 been strengthened. This is our condition — always the foe, always the 
 table. What sort of a meal should that be ? The soldiers who eat and 
 drink, and are drunken in the presence of the enemy, like the Saxons 
 before Hastings, what will become of them ? Drink the cup of gladness, 
 as men do when their foe is at their side, looking askance over the rim, 
 and with one hand on the sword, ready, aye ! ready, against treachery and 
 surprise. But the presence of the danger should make the feast more 
 enjoyable, too, by the moderation it enforces and by the contrast it affords 
 — as to sailors on shore, or soldiers in a truce. Joy may grow on the very 
 face of danger, as a slender rose-bush flings its bright sprays and fragrant 
 blossoms over the lip of a cataract ; and that not the wild mirth of men in 
 a pestilence, with their " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," but 
 the simple-hearted gladness of those who have preserved the invaluable 
 childhood gift of living in the present moment, because they know that to- 
 morrow will bring God, whatever it brings, and not take away His care and 
 love, whatever it takes away. 
 
 This, then, is the form under which the experience of the past is pre- 
 sented in the second portion of this Shepherd -psalm — joy in conflict, rest 
 and food even in the strife. Upon that there is built a hope which trans- 
 cends that in the previous portion of the psalm. As to this life, '* Goodness 
 and mercy shall follo^u us " This is more than ^^ I ivill fear no evil" That 
 said. Sorrow is not evil if God be with us. This says. Sorrow is mercy. 
 The one is hope looking mainly at outward circumstances ; the other is 
 hope learning the spirit and meaning of them all. These two angels of 
 God — Goodness and Mercy— shall follow and encamp around the pilgrim. 
 The enemies whom God held back while he feasted may pursue, but will 
 not overtake him. They will be distanced sooner or later ; but the white 
 wings of these messengers of the covenant shall never be far away from the 
 journeying child, and the air shall often be filled with the music of their 
 comings, and their celestial M'eapons shall glance around him in all the fight, 
 and their soft arms shall bear him up over all the rough ways, and up higher 
 at last to the throne. 
 
 309 
 
THE LONELINESS OF CHRIST. 
 
 Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is cotne, that ye shall be scattered^ every 
 man to his own, and shall leave Ale alone ; and vet I am not alone, because 
 the Father is with Ale. — JoHN xvi. 32. 
 
 November 5 THAT is not the aspect ot our Lord's sorrows, the element 
 of our Lord's Passion, which is most often dealt with and 
 thought about ; but it is a very real one, and one that I think deserves to 
 be far more considered than we are in the habit of doing. Attention has 
 been too exclusivcl}' directed to the physical sufferings of our Lord's Passion, 
 and to the mysterious element in His mental passion which made it unique 
 and atoning. We have too much forgotten the sorrows which pressed upon 
 Him as upon us, the same in kind, only infinitely deeper in degree, and 
 hence we have lost some of the sense of reality of our Lord's sufferings of 
 these sorrows. I do not know that any is more sharp than the solitude in 
 which He lived and yet more awful solitude in which Pie died. Jesus 
 Christ was the loneliest man that ever lived. A little ignorant love and a 
 little outward companionship Pie had ; and soothing and strengthening it 
 was to be surrounded by the affection even of such ignorant friends as the 
 disciples. But there was not a single human being who fully understood 
 or believed Him. There were none who sympathised with His aims, none 
 v/ho could receive His confidences. His thoughts were unshared, His 
 words unintelligible, Plis life's purpose shrouded in mystery. " He came 
 to His own, and His own received Plim not." " His soul was as a star, and 
 dwelt apart." And so He travelled on, bearing a great burden of love 
 which none would accept ; the loneliest soul that ever wore human flesh. 
 
 All great spirits are solitary ; the men that lead the world have to go 
 before the world, and to go by themselves. Starlings fly in flocks, the 
 eagle soars singly. And so the pages of the biographies, teachers and 
 religious reformers, and thinkers and path-breakers generally, tell us of the 
 pains of uncomprehended aims, of the misery of living apart from one's 
 kind, of the agony of hungering for sympathy, for comprehension, for 
 acceptance of a truth which dooms its possessors to isolation. But all that 
 men have experienced in that kind is as nothing as compared with the 
 blackness of darkness which the loneliness of Jesus Christ assumed as it 
 settled dov/n upon Plim. 
 
 Let me remind you what it was thfit condemned Plim to this absolute 
 loneliness. It was the very purity and sinlessness of His nature v/hich 
 necessarily made Him separate from sinners. Pie saw eternal things as no 
 other e^.-e saw them, and His vision of land, where others saw only cloud, 
 parted Him from them. 
 
 He read men as no other eye read them : He saw not only the clock-face, 
 but the springs. He looked upon the flesh and behind the spirit, its inmost 
 essence, its destiny and end. Before His human eye there stood pl.i.'nly 
 ntanifested the pale kingdoms of the dead, and all that vision separated 
 Him from men. The children on the street used to point at Dante as he 
 yiassed, saying, " There goes the man that has seen hell," and to shrink 
 from him as if he carried his own atmosphere in which others could not 
 breathe. But the equal vision which Christ had of all things, of all men, 
 ■of all worlds, made His life an aljsolute solitude ; and when He spake that 
 He knew, and testified what He had seen, no man received His testimony. 
 Hence came a deeper loneliness. 
 
LIFE'S ISOLATIONS. 
 
 I have trodden the winepress alone. — IsA. Ixiii. 3. 
 
 «• V g The very things that made the solitude of Christ made its 
 agony. The same characteristics in Jesus Christ which 
 separated Him from men made Him feel, as no other man ever felt, the 
 pain and bitterness of being so separated. Other men wear an armour of 
 selfishness and, alas ! of procHvity to evil which makes it less of a torture to 
 be brought close to it. But He stood with bared breast, and every blow 
 struck full home. Christ was lonely in the midst of crowds. It would have 
 been so much easier for Him to have come neither eating nor drinking ; or 
 like John the Baptist, to have gone into the desert and lived an ascetic life 
 of outward solitude there. But that could not be. He must be kindly 
 with His kind. He had to live the life which was to be every man's 
 pattern and inspiration. So He must enter into all common relationships, 
 and hallow ordinary duties and scenes by Himself passing through them. 
 Therefore He came eating and drinking, and sat at feasts where there was 
 no love and scant courtesy, and kept company with men, the very associa- 
 tion with whom was a deeper soHtude than He would have found in the 
 dreariest wilderness. 
 
 Christ's loneliness deepened as the end drew near. The disciples 
 understood Him even less when He spoke about His death than in the rest 
 of His teaching. He had, in a very special sense, to go down into the 
 valley alone. Death is ever a solitude, and, perhaps, is most terrible be- 
 cause it is. The fondest love can only go with us to the gate. We must 
 part outside the barrier, and all alone pass in and take our journey. But 
 His death, compassed by treachery, and preceded by the flight of His 
 friends and the denial of His chief apostle, was, in a very special sense, a 
 solitary death. The little faith which had feebly been building itself up in 
 some hearts was shattered. The love seemed to have gone. No man 
 in all the world believed in Him now. "We trusted" was the most they 
 would say. And so, wrapped in darkness. He dies, as He had lived, alone ! 
 How profoundly must our Lord have felt the pain of His solitude ! The 
 thought of His loneliness is made more bitter to Him by its contrast with 
 the companionship which His faithless followers so easily secured. " Ye 
 shall be scattered, each one to his own." They had all congenial surround- 
 ings and friends to return to, and, fleeing to that shelter, they leave Him 
 solitary, hke a traveller, on a waste unsheltered heath, to meet the whole 
 fury of the storm. ''Bis own," to whom He had come with hands out- 
 stretched craving a welcome, had turned from Him, and the isolation 
 aggravated even the solemn pains of His test passion. 
 
 The piteous petition that came from His lips in Gethsemane reveals 
 this : " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Tarry ye here 
 and watch with Me." Even the company of these three, who understood 
 so little, and the imperfection of whose love He saw so plainly, was a kind 
 of solace. And when even that poor staff broke as he leaned upon it, pain 
 as well as wonder spoke in the gentle remonstrance, " Could ye not watch 
 with Me one hour ? " Lonely and hungering for human companionship. 
 He entered into the agony and fought His last fight for us all that we might 
 not fight it alone. 
 
 311 
 
CHRIST'S VOLUNTARY SUFFERINGS. 
 
 Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay doivn My life, that I 
 may take it again. No one taketh it away frovyi Me, but I lay it down of 
 Myself. — ^JoHN x. 17, 18. 
 
 ITovember 7. "^^^ ^^^^ suffering and solitude of Christ were voluntarily en- 
 dured, and tliat for us. All man's sorrow He experienced. 
 Every ingredient that adds bitterness to our cup was familiar to His taste, 
 ind He tasted them, as He tasted death, "for every man," that His ex- 
 perience of them might make them less hard for us to bear, and that the 
 touch of His lips lingering on the cup might sweeten the draught for us. 
 
 His endurance of this, as of all the sorrows of human life, was at every 
 moment a fresh act of willing surrender of Himself for us. He wore our 
 manhood and Fie bore manhood's griefs, not because He must, but because 
 He would. He willed to be born. He willed to abide in the flesh. He 
 willed, pang by pang, to bear our sorrows. He could have ended it all. 
 But His love held Him here. That was the cord which bound Him to the 
 stake. His enemies were wiser than they knew, when they mocked at 
 Flim, and said He saved others — and precisely, therefore — Himself He 
 cannot save. So all that drear solitude in which He groped for a hand to 
 grasp and found none was voluntarily borne and was as truly a part of His 
 bearing the consequences of man's sin, as when He bowed His head to 
 death, and, therefore, to be gazed on by us with thankfulness as an element 
 in the suffering wherewith He has redeemed us. 
 
 These thoughts may encourage us all to bear the necessary isolation of 
 life, and in a special manner may strengthen some of us whom God in His 
 providence has called upon to live outwardly lonely lives. But after all 
 companionship, we have to live alone. Each man has to live his own life. 
 We come singly into the world ; and though God setteth the solitary in 
 families, and there are manifold blessings of love and companionship for 
 most of us, yet the awful burden of personality weighs upon us all. Alone 
 we live in the depths of our hearts ; alone we have to front joy and 
 sorrow. If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, and, if thou scorn- 
 est, thou alone shall bear it. The heart knoweth its own bitterness. All 
 human love feel-s its own limitations in presence of the impossibility of sharing 
 the bodily sicknesses of those nearest to us. Two hearts shall be bound 
 in closest love, and the one shall beat languidly in a wasted frame and the 
 other throb in ruddy health. Two hearts shall be knit in tender sympathy, 
 and the one shall have a sense of guilt from some dark passage in its past 
 history, of which no shadow falls on the other. For some of us solitary 
 days are appointed. We may think of Christ and see the prints of His 
 footsteps before us on the loneliest road. If any of us are called to know 
 the pain of unsatisfied longings for earthly companions, let us stretch out our 
 hands to lay hold on the hand of that solitary Man who knew this, as He 
 knows all, sorrow. He felt all the bitterness of having to stand alone, with 
 no arm to lean upon and no heart to trust. If we are left alone, let us 
 make Christ our companion. We shall not be utterly sohtary if He is with 
 us. Perhaps God takes away earthly props that our love and desires may 
 reach higher, and twine round the throne where Christ sits. 
 
 312 
 
THE COMPANION OF THE LONELY CHRIST. 
 
 / a*n not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me. — John viii. 1 6. 
 
 -J. , J, One cannot but feel the sudden change in the words from 
 plain time to exulting notes, from the pathetic minors of an 
 y^^olian harp to the joyous clang of the trumpet. " Yet I am not alone, 
 for the Father is with Me." Here is the reality of the perpetual Divine 
 presence with Christ and through Him wiih us. That is the first point : 
 "the Father is wiih ^Nle." Now, we are not concerned here with that 
 mysterious and Divine union between the Divine Father and the Divine 
 Son, which, as I believe, is a distinct revelation of Scripture, taught in 
 such words as, "The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the 
 Father" ; or, "I and l\Iy P'ather are One" ; or, by His Name, "the Son 
 of Man which is in Heaven." All that belongs to another region, where 
 thought and language can safely go no farther than as His own declarations 
 lead them. But here it is the presence of God with Christ's perfect man- 
 hood which is spoken of — a presence the same in kind, however different in 
 degree, which is granted to all loving and pure hearts. 
 
 Take the words, then, as a wonderful utterance or our Lord's own 
 consciousness. That nature, perfect in mind, in will, in heart, was always 
 conscious of an unbroken union with God. The mind was filled with His 
 truth ; the will ever consciously bowing to His supreme law ; the heart ever 
 at rest in His perfect love and goodness. Like some pure mirror of steel, 
 on which there is no dint nor scratch nor stain, but every portion of it 
 capable, and equally capable, of receiving and flashing back in brightness 
 the rays of the sun, the whole Man, Christ Jesus, spread Himself out, if I 
 may so say, beneath the lustre of God, and was shone upon with the 
 unvarying radiance of His unclouded presence. 
 
 And that is possible for us through Him. " I do always," said He, 
 *'the things that please Him." And, therefore, "the Father hath not left 
 Me alone." We can come to Him, though our natures, as compared with 
 His, be like the same shield — all battered and bruised, and stained with 
 evil, and eaten into with rust, and incapable of catching the light or of 
 throwing it back. We can go to that Christ in whom we come near to 
 God, and in whom God comes near to us ; and, holding by Him, we can 
 enter into the fellowship, the wondrous fellowship, of the Father God, who 
 will draw near to our minds and hearts and wills, and make all the fitful 
 and fleeting days of our earthly existence stately and noble, and happy with 
 the benediction and the elevation of His felt presence. "The Father is 
 with Me." My brother, is He with you, or has He ever been with you in 
 such a fashion as this? It is possible that He should be. Christ has 
 brought God near to us ; He will bring us near to God. He is near us 
 in His own gracious presence, and in Him God is near. His Name is 
 Immanuel — God with us. He that hath the Son hath the Father also. 
 He lived alone, and went down into death alone, that no soul need ever be 
 solitary any more. 
 
A SUFFICIENCY FOR ALL NEED. 
 
 / atn poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me. — Psalm xl. 1 7. 
 
 jj , g The joy and triumph which ring through the words of Christ, 
 "I am not alone," suggest the sufticiency of that Divine 
 presence for all the needs of the heart. Christ felt that He was not alone, 
 that the dreariness of the solitude had passed away, l^ecause the Father's 
 presence was enough. He was the loneliest of men, and He was also the 
 most rich in sufficient companionship — the most sad and the most happy. 
 So the surface and the depth of His life present the sharpest contrasts. 
 Opposites meet in Him : He was the Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with 
 grief, "and yet God anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His 
 fellows." He was "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; poor, yet making the 
 world rich ; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." For Him 
 the Father's presence was sunshine in the darkness ; summer in the depth 
 of winter ; life in the very jaws of death. 
 
 And for you and me the Father's presence will be enough, too. It will 
 not be exactly the same thing as the society and communion of dear ones, 
 and there may be a sense of loss and pain with us, as there was with Him, 
 but yet the blessed consciousness of God's presence will satisfy our hearts. 
 So, whether we have to walk a lonely road, or are compassed by lovers and 
 friends, and yet feel often much apart, let us lift our hearts to God in 
 Christ, and He will come to be our companion. God and you will make 
 society enough for you. " Thou hast made me exceeding glad through Thy 
 countenance." 
 
 We never know the blessedness of God's presence till we have felt the 
 loneliness of life. " I was left alone and I saw this great vision." We 
 must detach ourselves from earth, and shut our doors about us before we 
 can have the vision of God. Solitude is the mother of all great and holy 
 thoughts. To enter into thyself, said one of the mystics, is to ascend to 
 Heaven. He who is at all times alone, said another, is worthy of God 
 who is then present. Prayer is the flight of the lonely soul to the alone 
 God. 
 
 The blessed communion between Christ and God, the Man Christ Jesus 
 and His Divine Father, was broken once. " My God ! My God ! why 
 hast Thou forsaken Me?" Broken once — wherefore? How? Because 
 He, in the depth of His love, in the might of His sympathy, in the reality 
 of His union with mankind, so identified Himself with us, in our sins and 
 in their punishment, that the last issue of sin fell upon Him, and He tasted 
 the extremes! bitterness of the cup, in the separation from God, which is 
 eternal death. That was for us and for all men. " I could wish myself 
 accursed," said the servant. The Master did more than wish ; He made 
 Himself a curse for us. He bore that last, most awful, consequence of sin, 
 and was left alone, bereft of God, in the darkness, that we might never lose 
 the light of God's face, nor the strength and joy of our Father's presence. 
 
 Let us bow with hushed and grateful spirits before that miracle and 
 mystery of love, and yield ourselves to Him. Trusting to Him, we shall 
 never be solitary any more, for He hath said, " Lo ! I am with you 
 always." 
 
 3M 
 
"FEAR NOT: ONLY BELIEVE." 
 
 Jesus hearing it, attswered him, Fear not : only believe, and she shall be 
 made whole. — Luke viii. 50. 
 
 This is the word of cheer which sustains a staggering faith. 
 How preposterous this rekindling of hope must have seemed 
 to Jairus when the storm had blown out the last flickering spark ! How 
 irrelevant, if it were not cruel, the "Fear not" must have sounded when 
 the last possible blow had fallen. And yet, because of the word in the 
 middle, embedded between the obligation to hope and the prohibition to 
 fear, neither the one nor the other is preposterous. "Only believe."' 
 That is in the centre; and on the one side, "Fear not!" — a command 
 ridiculous without it ; and on the other side, hope ! — an injunction impossible 
 apart from faith. 
 
 Jesus Christ is saying the very same things to us. His fundamental 
 commandment is, "Only believe"; and there effloresce from it the two 
 things, courage that never trembles, and hope that never despairs. " Only 
 beheve." Usually He made the outflow of His miraculous power contingent 
 upon the faith either of the sufferer himself or of some others. There was 
 no necessity for the connection. We have instances in His life of miracles 
 wrought without faith, without asking ; simply at the bidding of His own 
 irrepressible pity. But the rule in regard to His miracles is, that faith was 
 the condition which drew out the miraculous energy. The connection 
 between our faith and our experience of His supernatural sustaining, 
 cleansing, gladdening, enlightening power is closer than that. For, with- 
 out our trust in Him, He can do no mighty works upon us ; and there must 
 be confidence on our part before there is in our experience the reception 
 into our lives of His highest blessings ; just because they are greater and 
 deeper, and belong to a more inward sphere than these outv/ard and 
 inferior miracles of bodily healing. Therefore the connection between our 
 faith and His gifts to us is inevitable and constant, and the commandment, 
 "Only believe," assumes a more imperative stringency in regard to our 
 spiritual experience, than it ever did in regard to those who felt the power 
 of His miracle-working hand. So it stands for us as the one central 
 appeal and exhortation which Christ, by His life, by the record of His 
 love, by His Cross and Passion, by His dealings and pleadings with us, 
 through His Spirit, and His providence to-day, is making to us all. " Only 
 believe" — the one act that vitally knits the soul to Christ, and makes it 
 capable of receiving unto itself the fulness of His loftiest blessings. 
 
HOPE AND FEAR. 
 
 Fear not^Jor I am with thee, and will bless thee. — Gen. xxvi. 24. 
 
 W . ,, Faith is the one counterpoise of fear. There is none other 
 for the deepest dreads that lie cold and paralysing, though 
 often dormant, in every human spirit ; and that ought to lie there. If a 
 man has not faith in God, in Christ, he otighi to have fear. For there rise 
 before him — solitary, helpless, inextricably caught into the meshes of this 
 mysterious and awful system of things — a whole host of possible, or pro- 
 bable, or certain calamities ; and what is he to do ? stand there in the open, 
 with the pelting of the pitiless storm coming down upon him ? The man 
 is an idiot if he is not afraid. And what is to calm those rational fears — 
 the fear of wrath, of life, of death, of what lies beyond death? You can- 
 not whistle them away. You cannot ignore them always. You cannot 
 grapple with them in your own strength. '' Only believe," says the Com- 
 forter and the Courage-Bringer. The attitude of trust banishes dread, and 
 nothing else will effectually and reasonably do it. I will forewarn you 
 whom ye shall fear — Him who can slay and who judges. You have, and 
 you cannot break, a connection with God. He ought to be one of two 
 things: your ghastliest dread or your absolute trust. "Only believe." 
 '* Fear not." Believe not, then be afraid ; for you have reason to be. 
 
 Men say, " Oh ! keep your courage up," and they contribute no means 
 to keep it up. Christ says, " Fear not, only believe," and gives to faith 
 the courage which He enjoins. Like a child that never dreams of any 
 mischief being able to reach it when the mother's breast is beneath its head 
 and the mother's arms are round its little body, each of us may rest on 
 Christ's breast, and feel His arm round about us. Then we may smile at 
 all that men call evils ; and whether they are possible, or probable, or 
 certain, we can look at them all and say, "Ah ! I have circumvented you." 
 "All things work together for good to them that" trust Christ. "Fear 
 not : only believe." 
 
 But, on the other hand, from that simple faith will spring up also hope 
 that cannot despair. "She shall be made whole," said the Master to 
 Jairus. Irreversible disasters have no place in Christian experience. 
 There are no irrevocable losses to him who trusts. There are no wounds 
 that cannot be staunched, when we go to Him who has the balm and the 
 bandage. Although it is true that dead faces do not smile again upon us 
 until we get beyond earth's darkness, it is also true that bonds broken may 
 be knit in a finer fashion, if faith instead of sense weaves them together ; 
 and that in the great future we shall find that the true healing of those that 
 ^vent away was not by deliverance from, but by passing through the death 
 that emancipates from, the long disease ot earthly life. 
 
 If we trust Christ, we may "hope perfectly." If we do not trust 
 Him, our firmest hopes are as spiders' webs that are swept away by a 
 besom, and our deepest desires remain unfulfilled. " Only beheve." Then, 
 en the one side, " Fear not," and on the other side, " Hope ever." 
 
THE VOICE V/HICH SOFTENS THE GRIiMNESS OF DEATH. 
 
 j4ll were weepivg and bewailing her ; but He said. Weep not : for she is 
 not dead, but sleepeih. — Luke viii. 52. 
 
 ■N" h 12 ^UR Lord reaches the house of afiQiction, ar.d finds it a house 
 of hubbub and noise. The hired mourners, with their shrill 
 shrieks, were there ah-eady, bewailing her. The tumult jarred upon His 
 calmness, and He says, "Weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth." One 
 wonders that some people have read those words as if they declared that 
 the apparent physical death was only a swoon or a faint, or some kind of 
 coma, and that so there was no miracle at all in the case. " They laughed 
 Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead." You can measure the holiow- 
 ness of their grief by its change into scornful laughter when a promise of 
 consolation began to open before them. And you can measure their worth 
 as witnesses to the child's resurrection by their absolute certainty of her 
 death. But notice that our Lord never forbids weeping unless He takes 
 away its cause. " Weep not " is another of the futile forms of words with 
 which men try to encourage and comfort one another. There is nothing 
 more cruel than to forbid tears to the sad heart. Jesus Christ never did 
 that except when He was able to bring that which took away occasion for 
 weeping. Fie lets grief have its way. He means us to run rivers of waters 
 down our cheeks when He sends us sorrows. We shall never get the 
 blessing of them till we have felt the bitterness of them. We shall never 
 profit by them if we stoically choke back the manifestations of our grief, 
 and think that it is submissive to be dumb. Let sorrow have way. Tears 
 purge the heart from which their streams come. But Jesus Christ says to 
 us all, "Weep not," because He comes to us all with that which, if I may 
 so say, puts a rainbow into the tear-drops, and makes it possible that the 
 great paradox should be fulfilled in our hearts, "as sorrowful, yet always 
 rejoicing." Weep not; or, if you weep, let the tears have thankfulness as 
 well as grief in them. It is a difficult commandment, but it is possible 
 when His lips tells us not to weep, and we have obeyed the central exhorta- 
 tion, " Only believe." How He smooths away the grimness of death t 
 I do not claim for Him anything like a monopoly of that most obvious and 
 natural symbolism which regards death as a sleep. It must have occurred 
 to all who ever looked upon a corpse. But I do claim that when He used 
 the metaphor, and by His use of it modified the whole conception of death 
 in the thoughts of His disciples, He put altogether different ideas into it 
 from that which it contained on the lips of others. He meant to suggest 
 the idea of repose : — 
 
 " Sleep, full of rest from head to foot." 
 The calm immobility of the body, so lately racked with pain, or restless in 
 feverish tossings, is but a symbol of the deeper stillness of truer repose 
 which remaineth for the people of God. He meant to suggest the idea of 
 separation from this material world. He did not mean to suggest the idea 
 of unconsciousness. A man is not unconscious when he is asleep, as dreams 
 testify. He meant, above all, if a sleep, then waking. So the grim fact is 
 smoothed down, not by blinking any of its aspects, but by looking deeper 
 into them. They who, only believing, have lived a life of courage and of 
 hope, and have fronted sorrows, and felt the benediction of tears, pass into 
 the great darkness, and know that they there are rocked to sleep on a loving 
 breast, and, sleeping in Jesus, shall wake with the earliest morning h'ght. 
 
A LIFE-GIVING WORD OF POWER. 
 
 He, taking her by the hand, called, saying, Maiden, artsc. And her 
 spirit returned, and she rose up immediately. — Luke viii. 54, 55. 
 
 November 13 " ^Iaiden, arise !" All the circumstances of the miracle 
 are marked by the most lovely consideration, on Christ's 
 part, of the timidity of the little girl of twelve years of age. It is because 
 of that that He seeks to raise her in privacy, whereas the son of the widow 
 of Nain, and Lazarus, were raised amidst a crowd. It is because of that 
 that He selects as His companions in the room only the three chief apostles 
 as witnesses, and the father and mother of the child. It is because of that 
 He puts forth His hand and grasps hers, in order that the child's eyes when 
 they open should see only the loving faces of parents, and the not less 
 loving face of the Master ; and that her hand, when it began to move 
 again, should clasp, first. His own tender hand. It is for the same 
 reason that the remarkable appendix to the miracle is given — "He 
 commanded that they should give her food." Surely that is an inimitable 
 note of truth. No legend-manufacturer would have dared to drop down 
 to such a homely word as that, after such a word as " Maiden, arise !" 
 An economy of miraculous power is shown here, such as was shown when, 
 after Lazarus came forth, other hands had to untie the grave-clothes which 
 tripped him as he stumbled along. Christ will do by miracle what is 
 needful and not one hair's breadth more. In Plis calm majesty He bethinks 
 Himself of the hungry child, and leaves to others the task of giving her 
 food. That homely touch is, to me, indicative of the simple veracity of 
 the historian. 
 
 But the life-giving word itself — what can we say about it ? Only this 
 one thing : here Jesus Christ exercises a manifest Divine prerogative. It 
 was no more the syllables that He spoke than it was the touch of His 
 hand that raised that child. What was it ? The forth-putting of His will, 
 which went away straight into the darkness ; and if the disembodied spirit 
 was in a locality, went straight there, and, somehow or other, laid hold of 
 the spirit, and, somehow or other, reinstated it in its home. Christ's 
 will, like the king's writ, runs through all the universe. *' He spake, and 
 it was done " — whose prerogative is that ? God's ; and God manifest in 
 the flesh exercised it. The words of the Incarnate Word have power over 
 physical things. 
 
 Here, too, is the prelude and firstfruits of our resurrection. Not that 
 there are not wide differences betv/een the raising of this child and that 
 future resurrection to which Christian hope looks forward, but that in this 
 one little incident — little compra'ed with the majestic scale of the latter — 
 there come out these two things : the demonsti-ation that conscious life 
 runs on, irrespective of the accident of its being unilcd witli or separated 
 from a bodily organisation ; and the other, that Jesus Christ has power 
 over men's spirits, and can fit them at His will to bodies appropriate to 
 their condition. Time is no element in the case. What befals the 
 particles of the human frame is no element in the case. " Thou sowcst 
 not the body that shall be." But if that Lord had the power, which He 
 showed in that one chamber, with that one child, then, as a little window 
 may show us great matters, so we see through this single incident the time 
 when " they that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come 
 forth." 
 
 318 
 
THE GREAT ALTERNATIVE. 
 
 Elijah came near tmto all the people and said, How long halt ye between 
 two opinions ? If the Lord be God, follow Him ; but if Baal, then follow 
 him. — I Kings, xviii. 2i. 
 
 N be 14 The vehement question of Elijah is, perhaps, still more 
 picturesque in the original, for one rendering gives, "How 
 long limp ye on two knees?" a vulgar, but expressive, figure by which 
 indecision is likened to a cripple hobbling along first on one knee and 
 then on the other. But whether that be so or no, there is no mistaking 
 the ring of contempt and impatience with which the prophet, so convinced 
 himself, rebukes the pitiable weakness that sought to unite two such 
 discrepancies as the V;'orship of God and the worship of Baal. Unite, I 
 say ; for it is to be observed that, in accordance with the tone of the 
 question and the facts of the case, the worship of idols was not proposed 
 as a substitute for, but as an accompaniment and a form of, worship of 
 Jehovah. The only person that objected was Jehovah. Polytheism is 
 always hospitable ; for when " there are gods many and lords many," one or 
 two more make very Httle difference, and Baal had no objection to Jehovah's 
 altar standing behind his. But Jehovah is intolerant, for He is alone. 
 " Thou shalt have none other gods beside Me," and to enthrone another 
 is to dethrone Him. 
 
 What do I mean by choice ? I mean, first, an honest fronting of all 
 the facts of the case, so far as these are ascertainable. Have you ever sat 
 down and taken stock of your position? Have you ever looked at the 
 claims of God revealed in Christ — at your own natures, and what they tell 
 you you ought to be to Him, and He, and He only, may be to you. Have 
 you fronted eternity, and given that its due weight as a factor in the 
 decision of your conduct? Unless you have, you may say, " I choose not 
 to be a Christian," but the word choice is as much misapplied to that 
 instinctive decision as it would be to the child's act when it puts out its 
 hand to lay hold of the moon. First and foremost, the state of the case 
 should be looked at all round ; and until you have done that you have no 
 business to make a choice ; for God gave you the power of choice that 
 it should be ruled by your reason, and your reason directed by your 
 conscience, and your conscience illuminated by His revelation. 
 
 And then I mean that a deliberate decision should be made in accord- 
 ance with the evidence, and that you should not, first of all, contemplate 
 the facts of the case, and then shut your eyes, and, to use a vulgar 
 expression, "go it blind," and decide as you like and not as reason and 
 conscience tell you. And I mean, further, that on the back of intelligent 
 weighing of the facts and deliberate decision, moulded by these, there 
 should come appropriate action. " If the Lord be God, follow Him." 
 
 Now, I believe that these three things are deplorably wanting, as in 
 regard of all the lives of all of us, so most eminently in regard of the lives 
 of the great majority of people who have not committed the keeping of 
 their souls to Jesus Christ, and taken service in His army. 
 
 319 
 
''NOW IS THE ACCEPTED TIME." 
 
 Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days 
 come, and the years draw nigh, zvhen thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in 
 them. — EccLES. xii. I. 
 
 J- VIC Would it not have been a very sensible thing of the 
 Israelites on Carmel if, after ihey saw the miracle of the fire 
 falling from heaven, they had said to the prophet, "We will hear thee 
 again on this matter?" They were wiser. Ctnviction followed im- 
 mediately. Resolution and action came close on the heels of conviction. 
 "All the people fell on their faces and said, The Lord ! He is God. The 
 Lord ! He is God." That is a wise course always. To-morrow is the 
 fool's plea, by which he cheats himself, but cheats neither this inexorable 
 universe nor the God that made it. Many a man dies a drunkard who 
 for half a lifetime has been saying, "To-morrow I will begin to reform." 
 And when the last of the to-morrows has sunk into yesterday, it leaves him 
 as it found him. Procrastination in doing right is continuance in doing 
 wrong. We live in too uncertain and too strenuous a world to allow any 
 grass to grow under our feet in putting into exercise our deliberate 
 decisions. That is true all round, but most eminently in regard of our 
 submission to Jesus Christ. 
 
 Consider how much youth needs the guidance and the grace of Jesus 
 Christ. Your experience is little, your hopes are bright, your passions are 
 strong, your temptations are many. Everything is fresh and radiant round 
 you. With the unreflectiveness and the buoyant hopefulness which are 
 your beautiful privileges, and are so soon knocked out of us, you are eager 
 to cast yourself into the fray. You sometimes think that religion is very 
 good for old people like me, but not necessary for you. "Wilt thou not 
 from this time say, My P'ather, Thou art the Guide of my youth " ? That 
 will keep you from many a sore heart and from many a sad hour. 
 
 Consider how favourable youth is to decision. We older men are like 
 flies in a spider's web, with a hundred filaments, poisonous and dirty, spun 
 round us, and making movement difficult. You have but little of that yet. 
 You are not yet "tied and bound by the cords of your sins." You have 
 not many deep-rooted evil habits to break. There are not many black 
 pages on your diary which you would fain erase, and which make you 
 feel that the tragedy of life is "What I have written I have written." 
 This is your time to plant. Your lives are before you, your characters as 
 yet are plastic. The lava is molten ; it is hardening very frst. Do you 
 not put off this dehberate decision about which I am speaking till it is 
 hardened into rock. 
 
 Consider how much you gain by youthful decision for Jesus Christ. 
 So much the longer blessedness, so many more hours of peaceful growth ; 
 no cleft in your lives between a past that your cheek burns to think about, 
 and a poor present in which you try to redeem it, the m\stic influence of 
 habit on the side of godliness. Oh, it is beautiful ! when we have "first 
 the blade, then the ear, tlien the full corn in the ear." And the men that 
 have done most work for God and man in the world are, in nine cases out 
 of ten, the men who in their early days were kept innocent and ignorant 
 of much transgression because they were the servants of the Lord from 
 their youth. 
 
 32© 
 
BLESSED UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking 
 with Him. — ExOD. xxxiv. 29. 
 
 V iR The experience of Moses teaches us that the loftiest beauty 
 November . ^^ character comes from communion with God. That is the 
 use that the Apostle makes of this remarkable incident in 2 Corinthians iii., 
 where he takes the light that shone from Moses' face as being the symbol of 
 the better lustre that gleaiTis from all those who behold (or reflect) the glory 
 of the Lord with unveiled faces, and, by beholding, are changed into the 
 likeness of that on which they gaze with adoration and longing. The 
 great law to which, almost exclusively, Christianity commits the perfecting 
 of individual character is this : Look at Ilim till you are hke Him, and, 
 in beholding, be changed. There have been in the past, and there are 
 to-day, thousands of simple souls shut out by lowHness of position and 
 other circumstances from all the refining and ennobling influences of which 
 the world makes so much, who yet in character and bearing, aye, and 
 sometimes in the very look of their meek faces, are living witnesses how 
 true and mighty to transform a nature is the power of loving gaze upon 
 Jesus Christ. There is no influence to refine and beautify men like that 
 of living near Jesus Christ, and walking in the light of that beauty which 
 is the effulgence of the Divine glory and the express image of His Person. 
 
 But, then, the bearer of the radiance is unconscious of it. In all regions 
 of life the consummate apex and crov/ning charm of excellence is un- 
 consciousness of excellence. Whenever a man begins to suspect that he 
 is good he begins to be bad ; and you rob every virtue and beauty of 
 character of some portion of its attractive fairness when the man who bears 
 it knows, or fancies that he knows, it. The more a man is like Christ, 
 the less he knows it ; and the better he is the less he suspects it. Let us 
 try to lose ourselves in Jesus Christ. It is safe for us to leave all thoughts 
 of our miserable selves behind us, if instead of them we have the thought 
 of that great, sweet, dear Lord filling mind and heart. 
 
 Think constantly and longingly of the unattained. " Brethren, I count 
 net myself to have apprehended." Endless aspiration and a stinging 
 consciousness of present imperfection are the loftiest states of man here 
 below. The people down in the valley, when they look up, may see our 
 figures against the sky-line, and fancy us at the summit ; but our loftier 
 elevation reveals untrodden heights beyond, and we have only risen^ so 
 high in order to discern more clearly how much higher we have to rise. 
 The best way to keep unconscious of present attainments is to set our faces 
 forward, and to make " all experience " as " an arch where through gleams 
 that untravelled world to which we move." Let us cultivate a clear sense 
 of our own imperfections. We do not need to try to learn our goodness 
 that will suggest itself to us only too clearly ; but what we do need is to have 
 a very clear sense of our shortcomings and failures, our faults of temper, our 
 faults of desire, our faults in our relations to our fellows. A true man will 
 never be so much ashamed of himself as when he is praised, for it will 
 always send him to look into the deep places of his heart, and there will be 
 plenty of ugly creeping things under the stones there if he will only turn 
 them up and look beneath. 
 
 321 Y 
 
TRAGIC UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 He wist not that the Lord was departed from him. — ^JUDG. xvi. 20. 
 
 __ V 17 Samson, fresh from his coarse debauch, and shorn of the 
 locks which he had vowed to keep, strides out into the air, 
 and tries his former feats. But his strength has left him because the Lord 
 has left him ; and the Lord has left him because, in his fleshly animalism, 
 he has left the Lord. Tlie strong man made weak is unconscious of his 
 weakness. All evil, by its very nature, tends to make us insensitive to its 
 presence. Conscience becomes dull by practice of sin and by neglect 
 of conscience, until that wliich at first was as sensitive as the palm of a 
 little child's hand becomes as if it were "seared with a hot iron." The 
 foulness of the atmosphere of a crowded hall is not perceived by the people 
 in it. It needs a man to come in from the outer air to detect it. We can 
 accustom ourselves to any mephitic and poisonous atmosphere, and many 
 of us live in one all our days, and do not know that there is any need of 
 ventilation or that the air is not perfectly sweet. The deceitfulness of sin 
 is its great weapon. Christian people may lose their strength because they 
 let go their hold upon God, and know nothing about it. Spiritual declen- 
 sion, all unconscious of its own existence, is the very history of hundreds 
 of nominal Christians. When the life-blood is pouring out of a man, he 
 faints Ijefore he dies. The swoon of unconsciousness is the condition ot 
 some professing Christians. Frost-bitten limbs are quite comfortable, and 
 only tingle when circulation is coming back. I remember a great elm- 
 tree, the pride of an avenue in the south, that had spread its branches for 
 more years than the oldest man could count, and stood, leafy and green. 
 Not until a winter storm came one night and laid it low with a crash did 
 anybody suspect what everybody saw in the morning — that the heart was 
 eaten out of it, and nothing left but a shell of bark. Some Christian people 
 are like that : they manage leaves, and even some fruit ; but when the 
 storm comes, they will go down, l^ecause the heart has been out of their 
 religion for years. And so, because there are so many things that 
 mask the ebbing away of a Christian life, and because our own self-love 
 and habits come in to hide declension, let us watch ourselves very narrowly. 
 Unconsciousness does not mean ignorant presumption or presumptuous 
 ignorance. It is difficult to make an estimate of ourselves by poking into 
 our own sentiments and supposed feelings and convictions, and the estimate 
 is likely to be wrong. There is a better way than that. Two things tell 
 what a man is — one, what he wants, and the other, what he does. As the 
 will is, the man is. Where do the currents of your desires set ? If you 
 watch their flow, you may be pretty sure whether your religious life is 
 an ebbing or a rising tide. The other way to ascertain what we are is 
 rigidly to examine and judge what we do. " Let us search and try our 
 ways, and turn again to the Lord." Actions are the true test of a man. 
 Conduct is the best illumination of character, especially in regard to our- 
 selves. So watch, and be sober — sober in our estimate of ourselves, and 
 determined to find every lurking evil, and to drag it forth into the light. 
 
 ^22 
 
A COMPANIONSHIP THAT CHEERS. 
 Shall two walk together , except they have agreed ?— Amos iii. 3, 
 
 jj. V 18 There are three phrases in the Old Testament very like 
 each otlier and yet presenting different facets or aspects of 
 the same great truth. Sometimes we read about "walking before God," 
 as Abraham was bid to do. That means ordering the daily life under the 
 continual sense that v/e are ever in the great Taskmaster's eye. Then 
 there is "walking after God," and that means conforming the will and 
 active efforts to the rule that He has laid down ; setting our steps firm on 
 the paths that He has prepared, that we should walk in them ; and accepting 
 His providences. But also, then, high above both these conceptions of a 
 devout life, is the one which was realised in the case of the patriarch Enoch 
 — walking "with God." For to walk before Him may have with it some 
 tremor, and may be undertaken in the spirit of the slave, who would be 
 glad to get away from the jealous eye that rebukes his slothfulness ; and 
 "walking after Him" may be a painful and partial effort to keep His 
 distant figure in sight ; but to *' walk with Him " iaiplies a constant, quiet 
 sense of His Divine presence which forbids that I should ever be lonely, 
 which guides and defends, which floods my soul and fills my life, and in 
 which, as the companions pace along side by side, words may be spoken by 
 either, or blessed silence may be eloquent of perfect trust and rest. 
 
 But far above us as such experience seems to sound, such a life is a 
 possibility for every one of us. We may be able to say, as truly as our 
 Lord said it, "' I am not alone, for the Father is with me." It is possible 
 that tlie dreariest solitude of a soul, such as is not realised when the body is 
 removed from men, but is felt most in the crowded city, where there is none 
 that loves or fathoms and sympathises, may be turned into blessed fellow- 
 ship with Him. Yes ! but that solitude will not be so turned unless it is 
 first painfully felt. As Daniel said, " I was left alone, and I saw the great 
 vision." We need to feel in our deepest hearts that loneliness on earth 
 before we walk with God. 
 
 If we are so walking, it is no piece of fanaticism to say that there will be 
 mutual communications. As really as it was ever true that the Lord said 
 unto Abraham, or Isaiah, or Paul, it is true that He now speaks to the man 
 that walks with Him. Frank speech on both sides beguiles many a weary 
 mile when lovers or friends foot it side by side And this pair of friends, of 
 whom I have spoken, have mutual intercourse. God speaks with His 
 servant now, as of old, "as a man speaketh with his friend." And we, on 
 our parts, if we are truly walking with Him, shall feel it natural to speak 
 frankly to God. As two friends on the road will interchange remarks about 
 trifles, and, if they love each other, the remarks about the trifles will be 
 weighted with love, so we can tell our smallest affairs to God; and, if we 
 have Him for our Pilgrim-Companion, we do not need to lock up any 
 troubles or concerns of any sort, big or little, in our hearts, but may speak 
 them all to our Friend that goes with us. 
 
 323 
 
COMMUNION WITH GOD. 
 
 If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with 
 another, and the blood of fesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin. — 
 I John i. 7. 
 
 __ 1, iQ The " two" whom the prophet Amos (iii. 3) would fain see 
 ' walking together are God and Israel ; and his question 
 suggests not onh' the companionship and communion with God which are 
 the highest form of religion, and the aim of all forms and ceremonies of 
 worship, but also the inexorable condition on which alone that height of 
 communion can be secured and sustained. Two Diay walk together, though 
 the one be God in Heaven and the other be I in Manchester. But they 
 have to be agreed thus far, at any rate, that both shall wish to be together, 
 and both be going the same road. 
 
 The two may walk together. That is the end of all religion. What 
 are creeds for? What are services and sacraments for? What is theology 
 for ? What is Christ's redeeming act for ? All culminate in this true, 
 constant fellowship between men a.nd God. And unless, in some measure, 
 that result is arrived at in our cases, our religion, let it be as orthodox as 
 you like ; our faith in the redemption of Jesus Christ, let it be as real as you 
 will; our attendances on services and sacraments, let them be as punctilious 
 and regular as maybe — are all " sounding brass and tinkling cymbal." Get 
 side by side with God. That is the meaning of the whole, and fellowship 
 with Him is the climax of all religion. 
 
 It is also the secret of all blessedness, the only thing that will make a 
 life absolutely sovereign over sorrow, and fixedly unperturbed by all 
 tempests, and invulnerable to all " the slings and arrows of outrageous 
 fortune." Hold fast by God, and you have an amulet against every evil, 
 and a shield against every foe, and a mighty power that will calm and 
 satisfy your whole being. Nothing else, nothing else will do so. As 
 Augustine said, " O God ! Thou hast made us for Thyself, and in Thyself 
 only are we at rest." If the Shepherd is with us, we will fear no evil. 
 
 There may be, and therefore there should be, running unbroken through 
 a Christian life, one long, bright line of coir.munion with God and happy 
 inspiration from the sense of His presence with us. Is it a line in viy life, 
 or is tliere but a dot here, and a dot there, ainl long breaks between ? The 
 long embarrassed pauses in a conversation between two who do not know 
 much of, or care much for, each other are only too like what occurs in 
 many professing Christians' intercourse v/ith God. Their communion is 
 like those time-worn inscriptions that archceologists dig up, with a word 
 clearly cut and then a great gap, and then a letter or two, and then another 
 gap, and then a little bit more reading, and then the stone broken, and all 
 the rest gone. Did you ever read the meteorological reports in the 
 newspapers and observe a record like this : " Twenty minutes sunshine out 
 of a possible eight hours"? Do you not think that such a state of affairs is 
 a lilile like the experience of a great many Christian people in regard to 
 their communion with God? It is broken at the best, and imperfect at the 
 complctest, and shallow at the deepest. Oh ! rise to the height of your 
 possibilities, and live as close to God as He lets you live, and nothing will 
 much trouble you. 
 
 324 
 
FOLLOWING AFAR OFF. 
 
 Bui Peter followed Him afar off. — Matt. xxvi. 58. , 
 
 Many women were there beholding from, afar. — Matt, xxvii. 55. 
 
 _- V 20 '^^^ consciousness of God's presence with us is a very 
 
 ovem er . j^jj^^j.^ thing. It is like a very sensitive thermometer, 
 which will drop when an iceberg is a league off over the sea, and scarcely 
 visible. We do not want His company, or we are not in harmony with 
 His thoughts, or we are not going His road, and therefore, of course, we 
 part. At bottom there is only one thing that separates a soul from God, 
 and that is sin — sin of some sort, like tiny grains of dust that get between 
 two polished plates in an engine, that ought to move smoothly and closely 
 against each other. The obstruction may be invisible, and yet be powerful 
 enough to cause friction which hinders the working of the engine and 
 throws everything out of gear. A light cloud, that we cannot see, may 
 come between us and a star, and we shall only know it is there because the 
 star is 7ioi visibly there. Similarly, many a Christian, quite ignorantly, has 
 something or other in his habits or in his conduct or in his affections 
 which would reveal itself to him, if he would look, as being wrong because 
 it blots out God. 
 
 Let us remember that very little divergence will, if the two paths are 
 prolonged far enough, part their other ends by a world. Our way may go 
 off from the ways of the Lord at a very acute angle. There may be scarcely 
 any consciousness of parting company at the beginning. Let the man 
 travel on upon it far enough, and the two will be so far apart that he cannot 
 see God or hear Him speak. Take care of the little divergences which 
 are habitual, for their accumulated results will be complete separation. 
 There must be absolute surrender if there is to be uninterrupted fellowship. 
 
 Such, then, is the direction in which we are to look for the reasons for 
 our low and broken experiences of communion with God, Oh ! dear 
 friend, when we do as we sometimes do, wake with a start, like a child 
 that all at once starts from sleep and finds that its mother is gone — when 
 we wake with a start to feel that we are alone, then do not let us be afraid 
 to go straight back. Only be sure that we leave behind us the thing that 
 parted us. 
 
 You remember how Peter signalised himself on the lake, on the occasion 
 of the second miraculous draught of fishes, when he floundered through the 
 water, and clasped Christ's feet. He did not say then, " Depart from me, 
 for I am a sinful man, O Lord ! " He had said that before on a similar 
 occasion, when he felt his sin less; but knew that the best place for the 
 denier was with his head on Christ's bosom. 
 
 So, if we have parted from our Friend, there should be no time lost ere 
 we go back. May it be with us all that we walk with God, so that at last 
 the great promise may be fulfilled about us, " that we shall walk with Him 
 in white," being, by His love, accounted " worthy," and so " follow," and 
 keep company with, " the Lamb whithersoever He goeth." 
 
 325 
 
THE REFUGE OF THE DEVOUT SOUL. 
 
 For Thou, O Lord, art my Refuge ! — Psalm xci. 9. 
 
 -- V 01 This cry of the devout soul, recognising God as its Asylum 
 November 21. 1 tt • .. ^ .- c A ^^ 
 
 and Home, comes m response to a revelation of God s 
 
 nlessing and to large words of promise. Let us be sure that we are 
 hearkening to the voice with which He speaks through our daily circum- 
 stances as well as by the unmistakeable revelation of His will and heart in 
 Jesus Christ. And then let us be sure that no word of His that comes 
 fluttering down from the heavens, meaning a benediction and enclosing 
 a promise, shall fall at our feet ungathered and unregarded, or shall be 
 trodden into the dust by our careless heels. The manna lies all about us; 
 let us see that we gather it. Turn His promises into your creed, and 
 whatever He has declared in the sweet thunder of His voice, loud as the 
 voice of many waters, and melodious as harpers harping with their harps, 
 do you take for your profession of faith in the faithful promises of your God. 
 
 This cry of the devout soul suggests to me that our response ought to 
 be the eslablishment of a close personal relation between us and God. 
 " Thou, O Lord, art my Refuge." We must isolate ourselves and stand, 
 God and we, alone together — at heart-grips, we grasping His hands, and 
 He giving Himself to us — if the promises which are sent down into the 
 world for all who will make them theirs can become ours. They are made 
 payable to your order ; you must write your name on the back before you 
 get the proceeds. There must be what our good old Puritan forefathers 
 used to call, in somewhat hard language, "the appropriating act of faith," 
 in order that God's richest blessings may be of any use to us. Put out 
 your hand to grasp them, and say " mine," not " ours." The thought of 
 others as sharing in them will come afterwards, for he who has once 
 realised the absolute isolation of the soul and has been alone with God, 
 and in solitude has taken God's gifts as his very own, is he who will feel 
 fellowship and brotherhood with all who are partakers of like precious 
 faith and blessings. The "ours" will come ; but you must begin with the 
 "mine" — " fiiy Lord and 7?iy God." " He loved ?fie, and gave Himself for 
 me." Just as when the Israelites gathered on the banks of the Red Sea, 
 and Miriam and the maidens came out with songs and timbrels, though 
 their hearts throbbed with joy, and music rang from their lips for national 
 deliverance, their hymn made the whole deliverance the property of each, 
 and each of the chorus sang, "The Lord is my Strength and my Song, He 
 also is become my Salvation," so we must individualise the common 
 blessing. Every poor soul has a right to the whole of God ; and unless 
 a man claims all the Divine nature as his, he has little chance of possessing 
 the promised blessings. 
 
 This cry of the devout soul recognises God as He to wliom we must go 
 because we need a refuge. Only he who knows himself to be in danger 
 bethinks himself of a refuge. It is only when we know our danger 
 and defencelessness that God, as the Refuge of our souls, becomes precious 
 to us. So, underlying, and an essential part of, all our confidence in God 
 is the clear recognition of our own necessity. The sense of our own 
 emptiness must precede our grasp of Plis fulness. 
 
 326 
 
GOD'S ANSWER TO THE SOUL'S CRY. 
 
 Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good. — 
 I Peter iii. 13. 
 
 jj h 2" "^^^ y°^ ^^'^^ notice that there are two dwelling-places 
 spoken of in the 91st Psalm? " Thou hast made the Most 
 High thy habitation," " There shall no plague come nigh thy dwelling " ; or, 
 literally translated, as in the Revised Version, " a tent " — a particular kind 
 of abode. The same word, "habitation," is employed in the 90th Psalm 
 — "dwelling-place." Beside that venerable and ancient abode that has 
 stood fresh, strong, incorruptible, and unaffected by the lapse of millenniums, 
 there stands the little transitory canvas tent in which our earthly lives are 
 spent. We have two dwelling-places. By the body we are brought into 
 connection with this frail, evanescent, illusory outer world, and we try 
 to make our homes out of shifting cloud-wrack, and dream that we can 
 compel mutability to become immutable, that we may dwell secure. 
 W^e need a better dwelling-place than earth and that which holds to earth. 
 We have God Himself for our true Home. Never mind what becomes 
 of the tent as long as the mansion stands firm. Do not let us be saddened, 
 though we know that it is canvas, and that the walls will soon rot and 
 must some day be folded up and borne away, if we have the Rock of Ages 
 for our dwelling-place. 
 
 But the wide scope and the paradoxical completeness of the promise 
 itself, instead of being a difficulty, point the way to its true interpretation. 
 " There shall no plague come nigh thy dwelling" — and yet we are smitten 
 down by all the woes that afFxict humanity. "No evil shall befalthee" 
 — and yet " all the ills that flesh is heir to" are dealt out sometimes with a 
 more liberal hand to them who abide in God than to them who dwell only 
 in the tent upon earth. What then ? Is God true, or is He not ? Did 
 this Psalmist mean to promise the very questionable blessing of escape 
 from all the good of the discipline of sorrow ? Is it true, in the un- 
 conditional sense in which it is often asserted, that "prosperity is the 
 blessing of the Old Testament, and adversity of the New " ? I think not ; 
 and I am sure that this Psalmist, when he said " there shall no evil befal 
 thee, nor any plague come nigh thy dwelling," was thinking exactly the 
 same thing which Paul had in his mind when he said, "All things work 
 together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according 
 to His purpose. " If I make God my Refuge, I shall get something a great 
 deal better than escape from outward sorrow — namely, an amulet which 
 will turn the outward sorrow into joy. The bitter water will still be given 
 me to drink, but it will be filtered water, out of which God will strain all 
 the poison, though He still leaves plenty of the bitterness in it ; for bitter- 
 ness is a tonic. The evil that is in the evil will be taken out of it, in the 
 measure in which we make God our Refuge, and "all will be right that 
 seems most wrong" when we recognise it to be " His sweet will." Nothing 
 can be " evil " which knits me more closely to God ; and whatever tempest 
 drives me to His breast, though all the four winds of the heavens strove 
 on the surface of the sea, it will be better for me than calm weather that 
 entices me to stray farther away from Him. 
 
 Z^7 
 
THE EXALTED CHRIST. 
 
 So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken unto them, was received up 
 into Heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. — Mark xvi. 19. 
 
 •NT V- 00 How strangely calm and brief this record of so stupendous 
 NovemDCr 23. , ^ ■r< ^ ^ ^ 11. 
 
 an event ! Do these sparing and reverent words sound to 
 
 you like the product of a devout imagination, embellishing with legend the 
 
 facts of history ? To me their very restrainedness, calmness, matter-of- 
 
 faclness, if I may so call it, is a strong guarantee that they are the utterance 
 
 of an eye-witness, who verily saw what he tells so simply. There is 
 
 something sublime in the contrast between the magnificence and almost 
 
 inconceivable grandeur of the thing communicated, and the quiet words, 
 
 so few, so sober, so wanting in all detail, in which it is told. 
 
 That stupendous fact of Christ sitting at the right hand of God is the 
 one that should fill the present for us all, even as the Cross should fill the 
 past, and the coming for Judgment should fill the future. So for us 
 the one central thought about the present, in its loftiest relations, should 
 be the throned Christ at God's right hand. 
 
 We are taught to believe, according to His own words, that in His 
 ascension Christ was but returning whence He came, and entering into the 
 "glory which He had with the Father before the world was." And that 
 impression of a return to His native and proper abode is strongly conveyed 
 to us by the narrative of His ascension. Contrast it for instance with the 
 narrative of Elijah's rapture, or with the brief reference to Enoch's 
 translation. The one was taken by God up into a region and a state 
 which he had not formerly traversed ; the other was borne by a fiery 
 chariot to the heavens ; but Christ slowly sailed upwards, as it were, by 
 His own inherent power, returning to His abode, and ascending up where 
 He was before. 
 
 But whilst this is one side of the profound fact, there is another side. 
 What was new in Christ's return to His Father's bosom ? This, that He 
 took His manhood with Him. It was the Everlasting Son of the Father, 
 the Eternal Word, which from the beginning "was with God and was 
 God," that came down from heaven to earth to declare the Father ; but 
 it was the Incarnate Word, the Man Christ Jesus, that went back again. 
 This mo5t blessed and wonderful truth is taught with emphasis in His own 
 words before the council, "Ye shall see the Son of 7iian sitting on the 
 right hand of power." Christ, then, to-day bears a human body; not, 
 indeed, the "body of His humiliation," but the body of His glory, which 
 is none the less a true corporeal frame, and necessarily requires a locality. 
 His ascension, whithersoever He may have gone, was the true carrying of 
 a real humanity, complete in all its parts, Body, Soul, and Spirit, up to 
 the very Throne of God. 
 
 Where that locality is it is bootless to speculate. Scripture says that 
 He ascended up "far above all heavens"; or, as the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews has it, in the proper translation, the High Priest "is passed 
 through the her.vens," as if all this visible material creation was rent 
 asunder in order that lie might soar yet higher beyond its limits, wherein 
 reign mutation and decay. But wheresoever that place may be, there ts 
 a place in which now, with a human body as well as a human spirit, 
 Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. 
 
 328 
 
OUR BROTHER IN HEAVEN. 
 
 In My Father's House are many mansions ; if it were not so, I would 
 have told you ; for I go to prepare a place for you. — John xiv. 2. 
 
 Let us thankfully think how, in the profound language of 
 Novem'ber 24. ^ . ./ , x- • r im 1 
 
 bcnpture, 'the I'orerunner is for us entered ; how, m 
 
 some mysterious manner, of which we can but dimly conceive, that 
 
 entrance of Christ in His complete humanity into the highest heavens is 
 
 the preparation of a place for us. As if, vidthout His presence there, there 
 
 were no entrance for human nature within that state, and no power in a 
 
 human foot to tread upon the crystal pavements of the Celestial City, but as 
 
 if, where He is, there the path is permeable, and the place native to all 
 
 that love and trust Him. 
 
 Stand, therefore, with these disciples, as they gazed upon their ascended 
 Saviour, and looking upwards as the cloud receives Him out of our sight, 
 our faith follows Him, still our Brother, still clothed with humanity, still 
 wearing a bodily frame ; and we say, as we lose Him from our vision, 
 " What is man?" Capable of being lifted to the most intimate participa- 
 tion in the glories of Divinity, and thou^^h he be poor and weak and sinful 
 here, yet capable of union and assimilation with the Majesty that is on 
 high. For what Christ's body is, the bodies of them that love and serve 
 Him shall surely be, and He, the Forerunner, is entered there for us, that 
 we, too, in our turn, may pass into the light, and walk in the full blaze of 
 the Divine glory, as of old the children in the furnace, unconsumed, 
 because companioned by " One like unto the Son of man." 
 
 The exalted Christ, sitting at the right hand of God, is the pattern of 
 what is possible for humanity, and the prophecy and pledge of what will be 
 actual for all that love Him and bear the image of Him upon earth that 
 they may be conformed to the image of His glory, and be with Him where 
 He is. What firmness, what reality, what solidity this thought of the 
 bodily exalted Christ gives to the else ' dim and vague conceptions of a 
 heaven beyond the stars and beyond our present experience ! I believe 
 that no doctrine of a future life has strength and substance enough to survive 
 the agonies of our hearts when we part from our dear ones, the fears of 
 our spirits when we look into the unknown, inane future for ourselves, 
 except only this which says Heaven is Christ and Christ is Heaven, and 
 points to Him and says, "Where He is, there, and that, also shall His 
 servants be." 
 
 329 
 
THE RESTING SAVIOUR. 
 
 Looking unto Jesus, the Author attd Perfecter of our faith, who for the 
 joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shatne, and 
 hath sat doivn at the right hand of the throne of God. — Heb. xii. 2, 
 
 It is finished ! — John xix. 30. 
 
 , „, The disciples' vision of their ascended Lord expresses 
 absolute repose alter sore conflict. It is the same tnought 
 which is expressed in those solemn Egyptian colossal statues of deified 
 conquerors, elevated to mysterious union with the god, and yet men still, 
 sitting before their temples in perfect stillness, with the mighty hands lying 
 quiet on the restful limbs ; with calm, faces out of which toil and passion 
 and change seem to have melted, gazing out with open eyes as over a silent 
 prostrate world. So, with the Cross behind, with all the agony and weari- 
 ness of the arena, the dust and the blood of the struggle left beneath, He 
 "sittcth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty." The rest of the 
 Christ after His Cross is parallel with, and carries the same meaning as, the 
 rest of God after the Creation. Why do we read "He rested on the 
 seventh day from all His works"? Did the Creative Arm grow weary ? 
 Was there toil for the Divine nature in the making of a universe ? Doth 
 He not speak and it is done? Is not the calm, erlbrlless forth-putting of 
 Plis will the cause and the means of Creation? Does any shadow of 
 weariness steal over that life which lives and is not exhausted ? Does the 
 bush consume in burning ? Surely not. He rested from His works, not 
 because He needed to recuperate strength after action by repose, but 
 because the works were perfect ; and in sign and token that His ideal was 
 accomplished, and that no more was needed to be done. And, in like 
 manner, the Christ rests after His Cross, not because He needed repose 
 even after that terrible effort, and was panting after His race, and so had to 
 sit there to recover, but in token that His work was finished and perfected ; 
 that all which He had come to do was done ; and in token, likewise, that 
 the P'ather, too, beheld and accepted the finished work. Therefore, the 
 session of Christ at the right hand of God is the proclamation from the 
 Heaven of what He shouted with His last dying breath upon the Cross : 
 *' It is finished ! " It is the declaration that the world has had all done for 
 it that Heaven can do for it. It is the declaration that all which is needed 
 for the regeneration of humanity has been lodged in the very heart of the 
 race, and that henceforward all that is required is the evolving and the 
 development of the consequences of that perfect work which Christ offered 
 upon the Cross. So, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts the 
 priests who stood "daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same 
 sacrifices" which "can never take away sin," with the fact that "this 
 Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down at the 
 right hand of God " ; testifying thereby that His Cross is the complete, 
 sufficient, perpetual atonement and satisfaction for the sins of the whole 
 world. So we have to look back to that past as interpreted by this present, 
 to that Cross as commented upon by this Throne, and to see in it the 
 perfect work which any human soul may grasp, and which all human souls 
 need, for their acceptance and forgiveness. 
 
 330 
 
OUR INTERCEDING PRIEST. 
 
 Wherefore also He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near 
 unto God through Hun, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.. 
 For such a High Priest became us, holy, guileless, undefded, separate from. 
 sinners, and made higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily, like those 
 high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins, and then for the 
 sins of the people : for this He did once for all, when He offered up 
 Himself. — Heb. vii. 25-27. 
 
 So the Scripture declares. The Epistle to the Hebrews 
 over and over again reiterates that thought that we have a 
 Priest that has passed into the heavens, there to appear in the presence of 
 God for us. And the Apostle Paul, in that great linked climax in the 
 eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, has it, *' Christ that died, yea ! 
 rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also 
 maketh intercession for us." There are deep mysteries connected with that 
 thought of the intercession of Christ. It does not mean that the Divine 
 heart needs to be won to love and pity. It does not mean that in any mere 
 outward and formal fashion He pleads with God, and softens and placates 
 the Infinite and Eternal love of the Father in the heavens. It, at least, 
 plainly means this, that He, our Saviour and Sacrifice, is for ever in the 
 presence of God, presenting His own blood as an element in the Divine 
 dealing v/ith us, modifying the incidence of the Divine law, and securing, 
 through His own merits and intercession, the outflow of blessings upon our 
 heads and hearts. It is not a complete statement of Christ's work for us 
 that He died for us. He died that He might have somewhat to offer. He 
 lives that He may be our Advocate as well as our Propitiation with the 
 Father. And just as the high priest once a year passed within the curtain, 
 and there in the solemn silence and solitude of the holy place, sprinkled the 
 blood that he bore thither, not without trembling, and but for a moment 
 permitted to stay in the aAvfuI Presence, thus, but in reality and for ever, 
 with the joyful gladness of a Son in His " own calm home. His habitation 
 from eternity," Christ abides in the Holy Place ; and, at the right hand of 
 the Majesty of the Heavens, lifts up that prayer, so strangely compact of 
 authority and submission: "Father, I will that these whom Thou hast 
 given Me be with Me where I am." The Son of Man at the right hand of 
 God is our Intercessor with the Father. "Seeing, then, that we have a 
 great High Priest that is passed through the Heavens, let us come boldly to 
 the Throne of Grace." 
 
 331 
 
THE EVER-ACTIVE HELPER OF THE SAINTS. 
 
 Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led Thy captivity captive ; Thou 
 hast received gifts among men, yea, aniong the rebellious also, that the Lord 
 God might divcll "with them. — PsALM Ixviii. iS. 
 
 'N'ovember 27 '^-^^ *' right hand of God" is the Omnipotent energy of 
 God ; and howsoever certainly the language of Scripture 
 requires for its full interpretation that we should firmly hold that Christ's 
 glorified body dwells in a place, we are not to omit the other thought, that 
 to sit at the right hand also means to wield the immortal energy of that 
 Divine nature over all the field of the Creation and in every province of 
 His dominion. So that the ascended Christ is the ubiquitous Christ ; and 
 He who is "at the right hand of God" is wherever the power of God 
 reaches throughout His whole universe. 
 
 Remember that it was once given to a man to look through the opened 
 heavens (through which Christ had " passed ") and to " see tlie Son of man 
 standing (not sitting) at the right hand of God." V/hy to the dying proto- 
 martyr was there granted that vision thus varied? Wherefore was the 
 attitude changed but to express the swiftness, the certainty of His help, and 
 the eager readiness of the Lord, who starts to His feet, as it were, to succour 
 and to sustain His dying servant ? 
 
 And so we may take that great joyful truth that, both as receiving gifts 
 for man and bestowing gifts upon them, and as working by His providence 
 in the world, and on the wider scale for the well-being of His children and 
 of the Church, the Christ that sits at the right hand of God wields, ever 
 with eager cheerfulness, all the powers of omnipotence for our well-being, 
 if we love and trust Him. We may look quietly upon all perplexities and 
 compHcations, because the hands that were pierced for us hold the helm 
 and the reins, because the Christ who is our Brother is the King, and sits 
 supreme at the centre of the universe. Joseph's brethren that came up in 
 their hunger and their rags to the land, and found tlieir brother next the 
 throne, v/ere startled with a great joy of surprise, and fears were calmed 
 and confidence sprang in their hearts. Shall not we be restful and confident 
 when our Brother, the Son of man, sits ruling all things? "We see not 
 yet all things put under" us; "but we see Jesus," and that is enough. 
 Therefore, set your affections on things above. Our hearts travel where 
 our dear ones are. Oh, how strange and sad it is that professing Christians, 
 whose lives, if they are Christians at all, have their roots and are hid with 
 Christ in God, should turn so few, so cold thoughts and loves thither ! 
 Surely, "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Surely, if 
 Christ is your treasure, you will feel that with Plim is home, and that this is 
 a foreign land ! " Set your affections," then, "on things above," while life 
 lasts ; and when it is ebbing away, perhaps to our eyes, too. Heaven may be 
 opened, and the vision of the Son of man standing to receive and to 
 welcome us may be granted, and when it has ebbed away, His will be the 
 first voice to welcome us, and He will lift us to share in His glorious rest, 
 according to Ilis own wondrous promise, "To him that overcomcth will I 
 grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set 
 down with My Father in His throne." 
 
 332 
 
WHAT LASTS! 
 
 Whether there be prophecieSj they shall be done away ; whether there be 
 tongues, they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away. 
 . . . But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three. — i CoR. xiii. 8, 13. 
 
 November 28 ^^ discern the run of the Apostle's thought best by thus 
 omitting the intervening verses and connecting these two. 
 The part omitted is bat a buttress of what has been stated in the former 
 of our two verses ; and when we thus unite them, there is disclosed plainly 
 the Apostle's intention of contrasting two sets of things, three in each. 
 The one is prophecies, tongues, knowledge ; the other, faith, hope, charity. 
 There also comes out distinctly that the point mainly intended by the 
 contrast is the transiency of the one and the permanence of the other. I 
 ask this question: What will drop away? Paul answers, "Prophecies, 
 tongues, knowledge." Now these three were all extraordinary gifts be- 
 longing to the present phase of the Christian life. But inasmuch as these 
 gifts were the heightening of natural capacities and faculties, it is perfectly 
 legitimate to enlarge the declarations and to use these three words in their 
 widest signification. So understood they come to this, that all our present 
 modes of apprehension and of utterance are transient, and will be left behind. 
 
 "Knowledge, it shall cease," and it shall cease because the perfect 
 absorbs into itself the imperfect, as the inrushing tide will obliterate the 
 little pools in the rocks on the sea-shore. "We shall know face to face," 
 which is what philosophers call by intention. Here our knowledge creeps 
 from point to point, painfully amassing facts, and thence, with many 
 hesitations and errors, groping its way towards principles and laws. Here 
 it is imperfect, with many a gap in its circumference ; or like the thin red 
 line which shows the traveller's route across a boundless prairie, or like the 
 spiders thread in the telescope, stretched athwart the blazing disc of the 
 sun — "but then face to face." Incomplete knowledge shall be done away; 
 and so many of its objects will drop, so much of what makes the science of 
 earth will be antiquated and effete. What would the handloom weaver's 
 knowledge of how to throw his shuttle be worth in a weaving-shed with a 
 thousand looms ? Just so much will the knowledges of earth be when we 
 get yonder. 
 
 Modes of utterance will cease. With new experiences will come new 
 methods of communication ; as a man can speak and beasts can only growl 
 or bark, so a man in heaven, with new experiences, will have a new 
 method of communication. The comparison between that mode of 
 utterance which we now have and that which we then possess will be like 
 the difference between the old-fashioned semaphore, that used to wave about 
 clumsy wooden arms, in order to convey intelligence, and the telegraph. 
 Think, then, of a man going into that future life, and saying, " /knew more 
 about Sanscrit than anybody that ever lived in Europe" ; "/ sang sweet 
 song" ; "/was a past master in philology, grammars, and lexicons" ; "/ 
 was a great orator." "Tongues shall cease," and the modes of utterance 
 that belonged to earth will drop away and be of no more use. 
 
 If these things are true with regard even to the highest form of these high 
 and noble things, how much more and more solenmly true are they with 
 regard to the aims and objects which most of us have in view ! They will 
 all drop av/ay, and we shall be left, stripped of what, for most of us, has 
 made the whole interest and activity of our lives. 
 
 333 
 
THE LOVE OF THE DEPARTING CHPaST. 
 
 Jesus knozving that His hour was conie that He should depart out of this 
 world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He 
 loved them unto the end. — ^JOHN xiii. I. 
 
 Kovember 29. ^^^^ latter half of St. John's Gospel, which begins with 
 these words, is the Holy of HoMes of the New Testament. 
 Nowhere else do the blended lights of our Lord's superhuman dignity and 
 human tenderness shine with such lambent brightness. Nowhere else is 
 His speech at once so simple and so deep. Nowhere else have we the heart 
 of God so unveiled to us. On no other page, even of the Bible, have so 
 many eyes, glistening with tears, looked and had the tears dried. The 
 immortal words which Christ spoke in that upper chamber are His highest 
 self-revelation in speech, even as the Cross to which they led up is His most 
 perfect self-revelation in act. 
 
 Many good commentators prefer to read, *' He loved them unto the 
 uttermost,''^ rather than "unto the ettd^^ — so taking them to express the 
 depth and degree rather than the permanence and perpetuity of our Lord's 
 love. And that seems to me to be by far the worthier and the nobler 
 meaning, as well as the one which is borne out by the usual signification 
 of the expression in other Greek authors. It is much to know that the 
 emotions of these last moments did not interrupt Christ's love. It is even 
 more to know that in some sense they perfected it, giving even a greater 
 vitalit)' to its tenderness and amore precious sweetness to its manifestations. 
 So understood, the words explain for us why it was that in the sanctity of 
 the upper chamber there ensued the marvellous act of the foot-washing, 
 the marvellous discourses which follow, and, the climax of all, that High- 
 Priesily prayer. They give utterance to a love which Christ's consciousness 
 at that solemn hour tended to shapen and to deepen. " He knew that His 
 hour was come." All His life was passed under the consciousness of a Divine 
 necessity laid upon Him, to which He lovingly and cheerfully yielded 
 Himself. On His lips there are no words more significant, and few more 
 frequent, than that Divine "I must !" "It behoves the Son of man to 
 do" this, that, and the other — yielding to the necessity imposed by the 
 Father's will, and sealed by His own loving resolve to be the Saviour of 
 the world. And, in like manner, all through His life He declares Himself 
 conscious of the hours which mark the several crises and stages of His 
 mission. They come to Him and He discerns them. No external power 
 can coerce Him to any act till the hour come. No external power can hinder 
 Him from the act when it comes. When the hour strikes. He hears the 
 phantom sound of the bell, and, hearing. He obeys. And thus, at the last 
 and supreme moment, to Him it dawned unqucslionQ,ble and irrevocable. 
 How did He meet it? Whilst, on the one hand, there was the shrinking 
 of which we have such pathetic testimony in the broken prayer that He 
 Himself amended : " Father ! save Me from this hour. . . . Yet for this 
 cause came I unto this hour." There is a strange, triumphant joy that 
 blends with the shrinking that the decisive hour is at last come— not that 
 now the hour had come for suffering or death or bearing the sins of the 
 world — all v, hich aspects of it were, nevertheless, present to llim, as we 
 know, but that now He was soon to leave ail the wurid beneath Him and 
 to return to the Father. 
 
 334 
 
THE DIVINE-HUMAN SAVIOUR. 
 
 This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. — Luke xv. 2. 
 
 _ h 30 Does not the love of Jesus help us to realise how truly bone 
 of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and bearing a heart 
 thrilling with all innocent human emotions, that Divine Saviour was? We, 
 like Him, have known what it is to feel, because of approaching separation 
 from dear ones, the need for a tenderer tenderness. At such moments the 
 masks of use and wont drop away, and we are eager to find some word, to 
 put our whole souls into some look, our whole strength into one clinging 
 embrace that may express all our love, and may be a joy to two hearts for 
 ever after to remember. The Master knew that longing, and felt the pain 
 of separation : and He, too, yielded to the human impulse which makes 
 the thought of parting the key to unlock the hidden chambers of the most 
 jealously-guarded heart, and let the shyest of its emotions come out for 
 once into the daylight. But there is not only in this a wonderful expression 
 of the true humanity of the Christ, but along with that a suggestion of 
 something more sacred and deeper still. For surely, amidst all the parting 
 scenes that the world's literature has enshrined, amidst all the examples of 
 self-oblivion at the last moment, when a martyr has been the comforter of 
 his weeping friends, there are none that without degradation to this can be 
 set by the side of this supreme and unique instance of self-oblivion. Did 
 not Christ, for the sake of that handful of poor people, first and directly, 
 and for the rest of us afterwards, of course, secondarily and indirectly, so 
 suppress all the natural emotions of these last moments as that their 
 absolute absence is unique and singular, and points onwards to sometiiing 
 more — viz., that this Man, who was susceptible of all human affections, and 
 loved us with a love which is not merely high above our grasp, absolute, 
 perfect, changeless, and Divine, but with a love like our own human 
 affection, had also more than a man's heart to give us, and gave us more, 
 when, that He might comfort and sustain, He crushed down Himself and 
 went to the Cross with words of tenderness and consolation and encourage- 
 ment for others upon His lips. And if the prospect only sharpened and 
 perfected, nor interrupted for one instant the flow of His love, the reality 
 has no power to do aught else. In the glory, when He reached it, He 
 poured out the same loving heart ; and to-day He looks down upon us with 
 the same face that bent over the table in the upper room, and the same 
 tenderness flows to us. When John saw his Master next, after His 
 ascension, amidst the glories of vision in his rocky Patmos, though His 
 face was as the sun shineth in his strength, it was the old face. Though 
 His hand bare the stars in a cluster, it was the hand that had been pierced 
 with the nails. Though the breast was girded with the golden girdle of 
 sovereignty and of priesthood, it was the breast on which John's happy head 
 had lain; and though the "Voice was as the sound of many waters," it 
 soothed itself to a murmur, gentle as that with which the tideless sea about 
 Him rippled upon the silvery sand when He said, "Fear not ... I am 
 the First and the Last." " Knowing that He goes to the Father He loves 
 to the uttermost," and, being with the Father, He still so loves. 
 
 335 
 
THE FAITHFUL LOVE OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 Hereby know we love^ because He laid down His life for us, — 
 I John iii. i6. 
 
 I The love of Jesus Christ is a love which is faithful to the 
 
 obligations of its own past. Having loved, He loves. 
 Because He had been a certain thing, therefore He is and He shall be that 
 same. That is an argument that implies Divinity. About nothing human 
 can we say. Because it has been, therefore it sliall be. Alas ! about much 
 that is liuman we have to say the converse, Because it has been, therefore 
 it will cease to be. And though, blessed be God ! they are few and they 
 are poor who have had no experience in their lives of human hearts whose 
 love in the past has been such that it manifestly is for ever, yet we cannot 
 with the same absolute confidence say about one another, even about the 
 dearest, "Having loved, he loves." But we can about this Christ. There 
 is no exhaustion in that great stream that pours out from His heart ; no 
 diminution in its flow. 
 
 The terror, the agony, the shame, the mystetious burden of a world's 
 sins were to be laid upon Him. All these elements are submerged, as it 
 were, and become less conspicuous than the one thought of leaving behind 
 all the limitations and the humiliations and the compelled association 
 with evil which, like a burning brand laid upon a tender skin, was an 
 hourly and momentary agony to Him, and soaring above them all, unto 
 His own calm home, His habitation from eternity with the Father, as He 
 had been before th© world was. How strange this blending of shrinking 
 and of eagerness, of sorrow and of joy, of human trembling consciousness 
 of impending death and of triumi)hant consciousness of the approach of 
 the hour when the Son of man, even in His bitterest agony and deepest 
 humiliation, should, paradoxically, be glorified, and should leave the 
 world to go unto the Father ! 
 
 They tell us that the central light of our system, that great sun itself, 
 pouring out its rays exhausts its warmth ; and were it not continually 
 replenished must gradually, and even though continually replenished, will 
 one day cease to flame, and be a dead, cold mass of ashes. But this 
 central Light, this heart of Christ, which is the Sun of the World, shall 
 endure like the sun ; and after the sun is cold, His love shall last for ever. 
 He pours it out, and there is none the less to give. There is no bankruptcy 
 in His expenditure, no exhaustion in His effort, no diminution in His stores. 
 "Thy mercy endureth for ever" ; "Thou hast loved, therefore Thou wilt 
 love," is a syllogism for time and for eternity on which we may build and 
 rest secure. 
 
 336 
 
TO THE UTTERMOST. 
 In His love and in His pity He redeemed them. — Is A. Ixiii. 9. 
 
 The love of Christ is a love which has special tenderness 
 towards its own. *' Having loved His own, He loved them 
 to the uttermost." These poor men who, with all their errors, did cleave 
 to Ilim ; who, in some dim way, understood somewhat of His greatness 
 and His sweetness — and do you and I do more ? — who, with all their sins, 
 yet were true to Him in the main ; who had surrendered very much to 
 follow Him, and had identified themselves with Him — were they to have 
 no special place in His heart because in that heart the whole world lay ? 
 Is there any reason why we should be afraid of saying that the universal 
 love of Jesus Christ, which gathers into His bosom all mankind, does fall 
 with special tenderness and sweetness upon those who have made Him 
 theirs and have surrendered themselves to be His ? Surely it must be that 
 He has special nearness to those that love Him ; surely it is reasonable that 
 He should have special delight in those who try to remember Him ; surely it 
 is only what one might expect of Him that He sliould in a special manner 
 honour the drafts, so to speak, of those that have confidence in Him, and have 
 pinned their whole Hves upon Him! Surely, because the sun shines down 
 upon durghills and all impurities, that is no reason why it should not lie 
 with special brightness on the polished mirror that reflects its lustre ! Surely, 
 because Jesus Christ loves — blessed be His Name ! — the pubhcans and 
 the harlots, and the outcasts and the sinners, that is no reason why He 
 should not bend with special tenderness over those who, loving Him, try to 
 serve Him, and have set their whole hopes upon Him. The rainbow 
 strides across the sky, but there is a rainbow in every little dewdrop that 
 hangs glistening on the blades of grass. And there is nothing limited, 
 nothing sectional, nothing narrow in the proclamation of a special tender- 
 ness of Christ towards His own, when you accompany with that truth this 
 other, that all men are besought by Him to come into that circle of ** His 
 own," and that only they themselves shut any men out therefrom. Blessed 
 be His Name ! the whole world dwells in His love. But there is an inner 
 chamber in which He discovers all His heart to those who find in that 
 heart their Heaven and their all. *'He came to His own," in the wider 
 sense of the word, and "His own received Him not" ; but also, "having 
 loved His own. He loved them unto the end." There are textures and 
 lines which can only absorb some of the rays of light in the spectrum ; some 
 that are only capable of taking, so to speak, the violet rays of judgment and 
 of wrath, and some who open their hearts for the ruddy brightness at the 
 other end of the line. Do you see to it, brother, that you be of that 
 inner circle who receive the whole Christ into their hearts, and to whom 
 He can unfold the fulness of His love. 
 
 337 « 
 
THE SHEPHERD'S LOVE FOR THE SCATTERED FLOCK. 
 
 I pray not that Thou shouldest take them front the world, but that Thou 
 shouldtst keep them from the evil one. — John xvii. 15. 
 
 December 3 ^^^ necessities and dangers of the friends of Christ made 
 His love specially tender. "He loved His own which were 
 in the world." And so loving them, "loved them to the uttermost." 
 
 We have, running through these precious discourses recorded by 
 John, many allusions to the separation which was to ensue, and to His 
 leaving His followers in circumstances of pecuHar peril, defenceless and 
 solitary. " I come unto Thee, and am no more in the world," says He in 
 the final high-priestly prayer, "but these are in the world." "Holy 
 Father ! keep them through Thine own Name." The same contrast 
 between the certain security of the Shepherd and the troubled perils of the 
 scattered flock seems to be in the words just quoted (John xiii. i), and 
 suggests a sweet and blessed reason for the special tenderness with which 
 He looked upon them. As a dying father on his deathbed may yearn over 
 orphans that he is leaving defenceless, so Christ here is represented as 
 conscious of an accession even to the tender longings of Plis heart when He 
 thought of the loneliness and the dangers to which His followers were to 
 be exposed. 
 
 Ah ! it seems a strange contrast between the emperor sitting throned 
 there between the purple curtains and the poor athletes wrestling in the 
 arena below ; it seems strange to think that a loving Master has gone up 
 into the mountain, and has left His disciples to toil in rowing on the stormy 
 sea of life ; but the contrast is only apparent — for you and I, if we love 
 and trust Him, are with Him in the heavenly places even whilst we toil 
 here ; and He is with us, working with us, even whilst He sitteth at the 
 right hand of God. 
 
 We may be sure of this, that that love ever increases its manifestations 
 according to our deepening necessities. The darker the night the more 
 lustrous the stars. The deeper, the narrower, the savager the Alpine 
 gorge, usually the fuller and the swifter the stream that runs through it. 
 And the more enemies and fears gather round about us, the sweeter will be 
 the accents of our Comforter's voice, and the fuller will be the gifts of 
 tenderness and grace with which He draws near to us. Our sorrows, 
 dangers, necessities, are doors through which His love can come nigh. 
 
 So we have had experience of sweet and transient human love ; we have 
 had experience of changeful and ineffectual love. Turn away from them 
 all to this immortal deep heart of Christ's, welling over with a love which 
 no change can affect, which no separation can diminish, which no sin can 
 provoke, which becomes greater and tenderer as our necessities increase ; 
 and ask Him to fill your hearts with that, that you may know the length 
 and breadth and depth and height of that love which passeth knowledge, 
 and so be filled with all the fulness of God. 
 
 338 
 
THE POSSESSION OF THE SPIRIT OF MIGHT. 
 
 That He zvould grant you, according to the riches cf His glory, that ye 
 iruiy be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inward nian. — ■ 
 ErH. iii. i6. 
 
 _. . ^ It is a miserably inadequate conception of Christianity, and 
 ecsm er ^^^^ ^.^^.^ ^,^^^ .^ bestows, and the blessings that it intends for 
 men, when it is limited, as it practically is, by a large number — I might 
 almost say the majority — of professing Christians to a simple means of 
 altering their relation to the past and to the broken law of God and of 
 righteousness. Thanks be to His Name ! His great gift to the world begins 
 in each individual case with the assurance that all the past is cancelled, and 
 that He gives that great gift of forgiveness, which can never be too highly 
 estimated unless it is forced out of its true place as the introduction, and 
 made to be the climax and the end of His gifts. I do not know what 
 Christianity means, unless it means that you and I are forgiven for a 
 purpose ; that the purpose, if I may so say, is something in advance of the 
 means towards the purpose, the purpose being that we should be filled with 
 all the strength and righteousness and supernatural life granted to us by the 
 Spirit of God. 
 
 It is all well that we should enter into the vestibule : there is no other 
 path unto the Throne but through the vestibule ; but do not let us forget 
 that the good news of forgiveness, though we need it day by day, and per- 
 petually repeated, is but the introduction to, and porch of, the Temple, and 
 that beyond it there towers, if I cannot say a loftier, yet I may say a further, 
 gift, even the gift of a Divine hfe like His, from whom it comes, and of 
 which it is in reality an effluence and a spark. The true characteristic gift 
 of the Gospel is the gift of a new power to a sinful, weak world— a power 
 which makes the feeble strong, and the strongest as an angel of God. 
 
 Oh ! we who know how, "if any power we have, it is to ill" ; we who 
 understand the weakness, the unaptness, of our spirits to any good and 
 their strength to every vagrant evil that comes upon them to tempt them, 
 should surely recognise as a Gospel in very deed that which proclaims to us 
 that the " everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth," 
 who Himself "fainteth not, neither is weary," hath yet a loftier manifesta- 
 tion of His strength-giving power than that which is visible in the heavens 
 above; where, "because He is strong in might, not one faileth." That 
 Heaven, the region of calm completeness, of law unbroken, and therefore 
 of power undiminished, affords a lesser and dimmer manifestation of His 
 strength than the work that is done in the hell of a human heart that has 
 w^andered and is brought back, that is stricken with the weakness of the 
 fever of sin, and is drawn again into the strength of obedience and the 
 omnipotence of dependence. It is much to say, "For that He is strong in 
 might, not one of these faileth" ; it is more to say, " He giveth power to 
 them that have failed ; and to them that have no might Pie increaseth 
 strength." The Gospel is the gift of pardon for holiness, and its inmost 
 and most characteristic bestowment is the bestowment of a new power for 
 obedience and service. 
 
 339 
 
POWER FROM ON HIGH. 
 
 Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you. — Acts i. 8. 
 
 -. , , Power is given to us all through the eift of the Divine Spirit. 
 December &. ^^^ ^,^^.^ ^^^,^^^ ^^ ^^_^^ g^^j^.^^ -^ ^^^ ,, gp-^..^ ^^ niighl.'' Christ 
 
 spoke to us about being "endued with power from on high" ; the last of 
 Kis promises that dropped from His lips upon earth was the promise that 
 His followers should receive the power of the Spirit coming upon them. 
 Wheresoever in the early histories we read of a man that was full of the 
 Holy Ghost, we read that he was "fiill of power." God hath given 
 us the " spirit of power," which is also the spirit '' of love and of a sound 
 mind." So the strength that we must have, if we have strength at all, is 
 the strength of a Divine Spirit, not our own, that dwells in us, and works 
 through us. 
 
 And there is nothing in that which need startle or surprise any man 
 who believes in a living God at all, and in the possibility, therefore, of a 
 connection between the Great Spirit and all the human spirits which are 
 His children. I would maintain, in opposition to many modern concep- 
 tions, the actual supernatural character of the gift that is bestowed upon 
 every Christian soul. My reading of the New Testament is, that as dis- 
 tinctly above the order of material nature as is any miracle is the gift that 
 flows into a believing heart. There is a direct passage between God and 
 my spirit : it lies open to His touch ; all the paths of its deep things can 
 be trodden by Him. You and I act upon one another from without ; He 
 acts upon us within. We wish one another blessings ; He gives the 
 blessings. We try to train, to educate, to inchne, and dispose by the 
 presentation of motives and the urging of reasons ; He can plant in a heart 
 by His own Divine husbandry the seed that shall blossom into immortal 
 life. And so the Christian Church is a great, continual, supernatural 
 community in the midst of the material world ; and every believing soul, 
 because it possesses something of the life of Jesus Christ, has been the seat 
 of a miracle as real and true as when He said, " Lazarus, come forth !" 
 Precisely this teaching does our Lord Himself present for our acceptance 
 when He sets side by side, as mutually illustrative, as belonging to the 
 same order of supernatural phenomena, the hour cometh when the dead 
 shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall hve, which 
 is the supernatural resurrection of souls dead in sin, "and the hour cometh 
 when all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth," 
 which is the future resurrection of the body in obedience to His will. 
 
 So, Christian friend, do you set clearly before you this: that God's 
 purpose with you is only begun when He has forgiven you, that He 
 forgives you for a design, that it is a means to an end, and that you have 
 not reached the conception of the large things He intends for you unless 
 you have risen to this great thought — He means and wishes that you should 
 be strong with the strength of His own Divine Spirit. 
 
 340 
 
THE DIVINE INDWELLER. 
 He abiddh with you, and shall be in you. — ^JoHN xiv. 17. 
 
 December 6 '^"^ Divine strength has its seat in, and is intended 
 to influence the whole of, the inner life. " Strenfrthencd 
 with might by His Spirit in the inner man." That, I suppose, does not 
 mean the new creation througti faith in Jesus Christ — what the Apostle 
 calls "the new man" — but it means simply what another Apostle calls 
 "the hidden man of the heart," and only refers to the distinction which 
 we all draw between the outward, visible, material frame, and the unseen 
 self tliat animates and informs it. It is this inner self, then, in which the 
 Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which it is to breathe strength. Tiie 
 leaven is hid deep in three measures of meal until the whole be leavened. 
 
 And the point to mark is, that the whole inward region which makes 
 up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to work. It 
 is not a bit of your inward life that is to be hallowed ; it is not any one 
 aspect of it that is to be strengthened, — but it is the whole intellect, affections, 
 desires, tastes, powers of attention, combination, memory, will. The 
 whole inner man in all its corners is to be filled, and to come under the 
 influence of this power, " until there be no part dark, as when the bright 
 shining of a candle giveth thee light." 
 
 So for this Divine Indweller there is no part of my life that is not patent 
 to His tread. There are no rooms of the house of my spirit into which 
 He is not to go. Let Him come with the master-key in His hand into 
 all the dirn chambers of your feeble nature ; and as life is light in the eye, 
 and colour in the cheek, and deftness in the fingers, and strength in the 
 arm, and pulsation in the heart, so He will come and strengthen your 
 understandings, and make you able for loftier tasks of intellect and of 
 reason, than you can face in your unaided strength ; and He will dwell 
 in your affections, and make them vigorous to lay hold upon the holy things 
 that are above their natural inclination, and will make it certain that 
 " their reach shall not be beyond their grasp," as, alas ! it so often is in 
 the sadness and disappointments of human loves. And He will come into 
 that feeble, vacillating, wayward will of yours, that is only obstinate in its 
 adherence to the low and the evil, as some foul creature, that one may try 
 to wrench away, digs its claws into corruption and holds on by that ; He 
 will lift your will, and make it fix upon the good and abominate the evil, 
 and through the whole being He will pour a great tide of strength whicli 
 shall cover all the weakness. He will be like some subtle elixir which, 
 talzen in-u the lips, steals through a pallid and wasted frame, and brings 
 back a glow to the cheek and a lustre to the eye and a swiftness to the 
 brain, and power to the whole nature. Or as some plant, drooping and 
 flagging beneath the hot rays of the sun, when it has the scent of water 
 given to it, will, in all its parts, stiffen and erect itself, so this Divin" 
 Spirit will go searching every corner of the inner man, illuminating and 
 invigorating all. 
 
 341 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH ALL MIGHT. 
 
 Strengthened with all power, acccrding to the might of His glory, unto 
 all patience and longsufftring with joy, — COL. i. II. 
 
 December 7 ^^ ^° P^'^^ "^ Paul's letters does He rise to a higher level 
 than in his prayers, and none of his prayers are fuller of 
 fervour than this wonderful series of petitions. They open out one in'o 
 the other like some majestic suite of apartments in a great palace-temple, 
 each leading into a loiiier and more spacious hall, each drawing nearer 
 the presence-chamber, until at last we stand there. Take his prayer in 
 Ephesians. Roughly speaking, that prayer is divided into four petitions, 
 of which each is the cause of the following and the result of the preceding : 
 — " That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be 
 strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man." That is the 
 first. " In order that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." Such 
 is the second ; the result of the first and the preparation for the third. 
 *'That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to com];rehend 
 with all saints, . . . and to know the love of Christ which passeth know- 
 ledge." Such is the next ; and all lead up at last to that wonderful desire 
 beyond which nothing is possible — "that ye might be filled with all the 
 fulness of God." Consider that great thought of the Divine strength-giving 
 power which may be bestowed upon every Christian soul. God means 
 and wishes that all Christians should be strong by the possession of the 
 Spirit of might. 
 
 It will be a power for suffering. Ah ! unless this Divine Spirit were 
 a power for patience and endurance, it were no power suited to us poor 
 men. So dark at times is every life ; so full at times of discouragements, 
 of dreariness, of sadness, of loneliness, of bitter memories, and of fading 
 hopes does the human heart become, that if we are to be strong we must 
 have a strength that will manifest itself most chiefly in this, that it teaches 
 us how to bear, how to weep, how to submit. 
 
 And it will be a power for efi'"ort. We have all of us, in the discharge 
 of duty and the resistance of temptation, to face such tremendous antagonisms 
 that unless we have grace given to us which will enable us to resist, we 
 shall be overcome and swept away. God's grace from the Divine Spirit 
 within us does not absolve us from the fight, but it fits us for the fight. 
 It is not given in order that holiness may be won without a struggle, as 
 some people seem to think, but it is given to us in order that in the struggle 
 for holiness we may never lose "one jot of heart or hope," but may be 
 "able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand." 
 
 It is a power for service. " Tarry ye in Jerusalem till ye be endued 
 with power from on high." There is no such force for the spreading of 
 Christ's Kingdom and the witness-bearing work of His Church as the 
 possession of this Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the 
 selfishness and the sloth, which stand in the way of so many of us, are all 
 consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because the 
 bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace of His fiery 
 power. " Ye shall be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner 
 man." A power that will fill and flood all your nature if you will let it, 
 nnd will make you strong to suffer, strong to combat, strong to serve and 
 to witness for your Lord. 
 
 342 
 
GOD'S BOUNDLESS RICHES. 
 
 That in the ages to come He tntght show the exceeding riches of His grace 
 tn kindness toward us in Jesus Christ, — Eph. ii. 7. 
 
 -« , Q There is the measure. There is no limit except the 
 uncounted wealth of His own self-manifestation, the flashing 
 light of a revealed Divinity. Whatsoever there is of splendour in that, 
 whatsoever there is of power there, in these, and in nothing this side of 
 them, lies the limit of the possibilities of a Christian life. Of course, there 
 is a working limit at each moment, and that is our capacity to receive ; but 
 that capacity varies, may vary indefinitely, may become greater and greater 
 beyond our count or measurement. Our hearts may be made more and more 
 capable of God ; and in the measure in which they are capable of Him they 
 shall be filled by Him. A limit which is always shifting is no limit at all. 
 A kingdom the boundaries of which are not the same from one j^ear to 
 another, by reason of its own inherent expansive power, may be said 
 to have no fixed limits. And so we appropriate and enclose, as it were, 
 within our own little fence, a tiny portion of the great prairie that rolls 
 boundless to the horizon. But to-morrow we may enclose more, if we will, 
 and more and more ; and so ever onwards. For all that is God's is yours, 
 and He has given you His whole Self to use and to possess through your 
 faith in His Son. A thimble can only take up a thimbleful of the ocean, 
 but what if the thimble be endowed with a power of expansion which has 
 no term known to men? May it not, then, be that some time or other it 
 shall be able to hold so much of the infinite depth as now seems a dream too 
 audacious to be realised. So it is with us and God. He lets us come into 
 the vaults, as it were, where in piles and masses the ingots of uncoined and 
 uncounted gold are stored and stacked ; and He says, "Take as much as 
 you like to carry." There is no limit except the riches of His glory. 
 
 Oh ! when one contrasts the largeness of God's promises and the 
 miserable contradiction which the average Christian life of this generation 
 presents, what can we say ? " Hath His mercy clean gone for ever ? Doth 
 His promise fail for evermore ? " Ye weak Christian people, born weakling 
 and weak ever since, open your mouths wide ! Rise to the height of the 
 expectations and the desires which it is our sin not to cherish ; and be sure 
 of this, as we ask so shall we receive. " Ye are not straitened in God." 
 Alas ! alas ! "ye are straitened in yourselves." And there must be self- 
 suppression if there is to be the triumph of a Divine power in you. You 
 cannot fight with both classes of weapons. The human must die if the 
 Divine is to live. The life of nature, self-dependence on self, must be 
 weakened and subdued if the life of God is to overcome, to fill you. You 
 must be able to say " Not I ! " or you will never be able to say " Christ 
 liveth in me." The patriarch that overcame halted on his thigh ; and all 
 the life of nature was lamed and made impotent that the life of grace might 
 overcome. So crush self by the power and for the sake of the Christ, if you 
 would that the Spirit may bear rule over you. 
 
 343 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT OF PROMISE. 
 
 The Holy Spirit of pron^ise, which is the earnest of our inheritance^ unto 
 the redemption of God's own possession. — Eph. i. 14, 
 
 _ , ^- "The Ploly Spirit of promise," given to all who believe, is 
 here declared to dwell in and to seal believers as the 
 "earnest" of their "inheritance" ; whilst, on the other hand, that sealing 
 is declared to last until — or, as seems more probably the rendering of the 
 preposition here, to be done with a view unto — the full redemption of God's 
 purchased " possession." So that the two halves of the thought are inten- 
 tionally brought together in these words. And about both of them — God's 
 possession of us and our possession of God — it is asserted or implied, that 
 they are partially realised here, and are to be realised more fully in the future. 
 
 An "earnest" is a portion of the estate which is paid over to the 
 purchaser on the completion of the purchase, as the token that all is his and 
 that it will all come into his hands in due time. Like that part of a man's 
 wages given to him in advance when he is engaged ; like the shilling put 
 into the hand of a recruit ; like the half-crown given to the farm-servant at 
 the hiring-fair ; like the bit of turf that in some old ceremonials used to be 
 solemnly presented to the sovereign on his investiture, — it is a portion of the 
 whole possession, the same in kind, but a very tiny portion, which yet 
 carries with it the acknowledgment of ownership and the assurance of full 
 possession. 
 
 So the " Spirit of God is the earnest of the inheritance," a small portion 
 of it granted to us to-day, and the pledge that all shall be granted in the 
 future. And the same idea of present imperfection is suggested in the cor- 
 responding clause, which speaks about God's entire purchase (for there is 
 an emphasis in the Greek word in the original), His possession as also a 
 thing of the future. 
 
 We possess God in the measure in which we know Him, love Him, and 
 have communion and sympathy with Him. These things — knowledge, love, 
 communion, sympathy — make a very real and a very precious possession of 
 God ; and he who has God thus has Him as truly, though not as perfectly, 
 as the angels in heaven that burn before Plis throne. 
 
 But though that is true, there is yet another aspect of this possession of 
 God. The Holy Spirit of promise comes to every man that believes in 
 Jesus Christ, and enters into his heart and becomes his. That is the truest 
 way in which man possesses God. The greatest gift that my faith brings 
 down to me from heaven is the gift of an indwelling Spirit — of an indwelling 
 God. For the Spirit of God is God. He that has God in his heart by the 
 dwelling there, in mystic reality, of the Divine Spirit possesses Him as truly 
 as he possesses love or memory, imagination or hope. 
 
 There can be nothing deeper, nothing greater, nothing more real in the 
 manner of possession, than the possession which every one of us may have 
 of an indwelling God for our life and our peace. It passes all human 
 analogy. Love gives us the ownership, most really and most sweetly, of the 
 hearts that we love. But, after all the yearning desires for union, and 
 experience of oneness in sympathy, the awful wall of partition between 
 spirits remains ; and life may, and death must, separate — but he that has 
 God's Divine Spirit with him has God for the life of his life and the soul 
 of his soul. And we possess Him when, by faith in Jesus Christ, the Spirit 
 of God dwells in our hearts. 
 
 344 
 
OUR INCOMPLETE POSSESSION OF GOD. 
 
 Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye 
 ask aniiss, that ye tnay spend it in your pleasures. — James iv. 2, 3. 
 
 DecemTber 10 ^^^ ^^^'^ ^^ Infinite Spirit to dwell with us ; how finite and 
 little is our possession of it ! The Spirit of God is set forth 
 in Scripture under the symbol of " a rushing, mighty wind" ; and you and 
 I say that we are Christ's, and that we have Him — how does it come, 
 then, that our sails flap idly on the mast, and we lie becalmed, and making 
 next to no progress ? The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the 
 symbol of " flaming tongues of fire" ; and you and I say that we have it 
 — how is it, then, that this thick-ribbed ice is round our hearts, and our love 
 is all so tepid? The Spirit of God is set forth in Scripture under the 
 symbol of " rivers of water " ; and you and I say that we possess it — how 
 is it, then, that so much of our hearts and of our natures is given up to 
 barrenness and dryness and deadness ? The present possession of the 
 best of us is but a partial and incomplete possession. 
 
 And the same facts of wavering faith and cold affection, of imperfect 
 consecration, which show how little we have of God, show likewise how 
 little God has of us. We say that we are His, and live to please ourselves. 
 We profess to belong to another, and to that other we render fragments — 
 of ourselves, and scarcely even fragments of our time and of our efforts. 
 His ! and yet all day long never thinking of Him. His ! and yet from 
 morning till night never refraining from a thing because we know it is con- 
 trary to His will, or spurred to do a thing that is contrary to ours because 
 we know it is His. His ! and yet we wallow in selfishness. It is only a 
 little corner of our souls that really belongs to God. 
 
 I do not forget that this incompleteness of possession, looked at in both 
 aspects, is to a certain extent inevitable, and must go with us all through 
 life. And so do not let any of us rush precipitately to the conclusion that 
 we are not Christians because we find what poor Christians we are. Do 
 not let us say, " If there were any reality in my faith, it would be, not a 
 dotted line, but one continuous and unbroken." Do not let us write bitter 
 things against ourselves because we find that we have only got " the 
 earnest of the inheritance," and that the inheritance has not yet come. And, 
 on the other hand, do not you make a pillow of laziness of that most 
 certain truth ; nor because there must be imperfection always in the Christian 
 career here, apply that as an excuse for the individual instances of imper- 
 fection as they crop up. You know, when you are honest with yourself, 
 that each breach of continuity in your faith and obedience might have been 
 prevented ; you know that there was no reason that could not have been 
 overcome for any failure of consecration or wavering of faith or act of 
 disobedience and rebellion which has ever marked your course. Granted, 
 imperfection is the law, but also remember that the individual instances of 
 imperfection are to be debited not to lazu, but to tis, and are not to be 
 lamented over as inevitable, though painful, issues of our condition, but to 
 be confessed as sins. *' My fault, O Lord ! my fault, and mine only." 
 
 345 
 
THE IMPERFECT PRESENT. 
 
 Now we see in a mirror^ darkly ; but then face to face : now I know tn 
 part ; but tlien shall I know even as also I have been known. — i CoR. xiii. 12. 
 
 December 11. '^"^ ^^^^^ °^ Christian experience are such as that they in- 
 evitably point to the conclusion that there is a life beyond. 
 All that is good and blessed about religion, our faith, the joy that comes 
 from our faith, the sweetness of communion, the aspiration after the in- 
 crease of fellowship with Him, — all these, to the man that enjoys them, are 
 the best proof that they are going to last for ever, and that death can have 
 no power over them. " Like thoughts, their very sweetness yieldeth proof 
 that they are born for immortalit}'." 
 
 To love, to know, to reach the hands out through the shows of time and 
 sense, and to grasp an unseen reality that lies away beyond, is, to any man 
 that has ever experienced the emotion and done the thing, one of the 
 strongest of all demonstrations that nothing belonging to this dusty low 
 region of the physical can touch that immortal aspiration that knits him to 
 God ; but that whatsoever may befal the husk and shell of him, his faith, his 
 love, his obedience, his consecration, these at least are eternal, and may 
 laugh at death and the grave. And I believe that ever to the men that 
 have not the experience, the fact of religious emotion, the fact of worship, 
 ought to be one of the best demonstrations of a future life. 
 
 The very incompleteness of our possession of God and of God's 
 possession of us points onwards to, and, as it seems to me, demands, a 
 future. The imperfection, as well as the present attainments of our 
 Christian experience, proclaim a coming time. That we are no better than 
 we are, being as good as we are, seems to make it inconceivable that this 
 evidently half-done job is going to be broken oft' short at the side of the grave. 
 
 Here is a certain force at work in a man's nature, the power of God's 
 good Spirit, evidently capable of producing effects of entire transformation. 
 Such being the case, who, looking at the effects, can doubt that sometime 
 and somewhere there will be less disproportion between the two ? The 
 engine is evidently not working full power. The characters of Christians 
 at the best are so inconsistent and contradictory that they are evidently only 
 in the making. It is dear that we are looking at unfinished work ; and 
 surely the great Master Builder who has laid such a foundation-stone, tried 
 and precious, will not begin to build and not be able to finish ! Every 
 Christian life, at its best and noblest, shows, as it were, the ground plan of 
 a great structure partly carried out — a bit of walling up here, vacancy there, 
 girders spanning wide spaces, but gaping for a roof, a chaos and a con- 
 fusion. It may look a thing of shreds and patches, and they that pass by 
 the way begin to mock. But the very fact that it is incomplete prophesies, 
 to wise men, of the day when the headstone shall be brought with shouting, 
 and the flag hoisted on the roof-tree. Fools and children, says the proverb, 
 should not see half-done work— certainly they should not judge it. 
 
 Wait a bit. There comes a time when tendencies shall be facts, and 
 when influences shall have produced their appropriate effects, and when 
 alt that is partial and broken shall be consummate and entire in the king- 
 dom that is beyond the stars. 
 
 Wait ! and be sure that the good and the bad, so strangely blended in 
 Christian experience, are alike charged with the prophecy of a glorious and 
 perfect future. 
 
 346 
 
THE FUTURE THE PERFECTING OF THE PRESENT. 
 
 U^ho also sealed us, and gave us the earnest of the Spirit m our hearts,-— 
 2 Cor. i. 22. 
 
 December 12 T^E "earnest" points onwards to an inheritance the same 
 in kind, but immensely greater in degree. The " redemption 
 of the possession " is a somewhat singular expression ; for we are accustomed 
 to regard the great act of redemption as aheady passed in the sacrifice of 
 Christ upon the Cross. But the expression is employed here, as in several 
 other places, to express not so much the act of purchase, the paying of the 
 price of our salvation, which is done once for all and long ago, as the 
 historical working out of the results of that price paid in the entire deliver- 
 ance of the whole nature of man from every form of captivity to anytlmig 
 that would prevent his full possession by God. 
 
 *' We shall know even as we are known." ** Through a glass darkly ; 
 but then face to face," says Paul, suggesting great changes in the degree of 
 our knowledge of, and friendly communion with, God, but also seeming to 
 imply some unknown changes in the manner of our beholding, which may 
 be connected with the new powers of that " body of glory " like our Lord's 
 which will then be ours. It is quite conceivable that the physical universe 
 may have quaUties as real as light and heat, and scent and sound, which 
 we could appreciate if we had other senses appropriate, as we have sight 
 and touch, and smell and hearing". 
 
 And so it is quite conceivable that when clothed upon with our "house 
 which is from heaven," which will have a great many more windows in it 
 than the earthly house of this tabernacle, which is built for stormy weather, 
 there will be sides and aspects of the Divine nature that we do not know 
 anything about to-day which shall be communicable and communicated 
 to us. 
 
 But be that as it may, a deeper knowledge, a fixed love, an unbroken 
 communion, with all distractions and interruptions swept clean away for 
 ever, so that we shall dwell for evermore in the House of the Lord, — these 
 are the plain elements which make the very Heaven of heavens, and which 
 ought to make the joy of our hope. In the measure in which we know and 
 love Him, in that measure shall we be known and loved by H^im. He and 
 we shall be so interwoven as that we shall be inseparable. We shall cleave 
 to God and God shall cleave to us. 
 
 Oh, how small and insignificant all other notions of a future life are as 
 compared with that ! The accidents of locality and circumstance should 
 ever be kept subordinate in the pictures whicli imagination may draw of 
 what is beheld through the gates ajar by little pilgrims in the unseen. The 
 representations which seem to aim at making another world as like this 
 one as may be, dwarf its greatness, and tend to obscure the conditions of 
 entering into its rest. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be" is as 
 much a revelation as " when He shall appear we shall be like Him." As 
 a great painter concentrates finish and light on the face of his sitter, and 
 purposely keeps the rest of the picture slight, there is one face that should 
 fill the dim, dark curtain of the future — the face of Christ — and all else may 
 be thrown in in mere sketchy outline. We know that future chiefly by 
 negations and by symbols, and the one positive fact is that we shall have 
 Him and He will possess us. 
 
 347 
 
AS WE SOW, WE REAP. 
 
 They that plow iniquity ^ and sow trouble reap the same. — JOB iv. 8. 
 He that soweth iniquity shall reap calamity. — Proverbs xxii. 8. 
 
 Decembe 13 ^^ ^^ ^ solemn thought that the ultimate perfect possession of 
 and by God is evolved from a germ which must be planted 
 now if it is to flourish there. " The child is father of the man." Every 
 present is the result of all the past ; every future will be the result of the 
 past and the present. Everybody admits that about this life, but there are 
 some of us that seem to forget it with regard to another world. We know 
 too little of t>.e effect that is produced upon men by the change of death to 
 dogmatise ; but one may be quite sure that the law of continuity will go on 
 into the other world. Or, to put it into plainer English, a man on the 
 other side of the grave will be the same as he was on this side. The line 
 will run straight on ; it may be slightly refracted by passing from an 
 atmosphere of one density to another of a different, but it will be very 
 slightly. The main direction will be the same. 
 
 What is there in death that can change a man's will? I can fancy 
 death making an idiot wise, because idiocy conies from physical causes. 
 I can fancy death giving people altogether different notions of the folly 
 of sin ; but I do not know anything in the physical fact of death, or in the 
 accompanying alterations that it produces upon spiritual consciousness, in 
 so far as they are known to us, that can alter the dominant bias and set 
 of a man's nature. It seems to me more likely that it will intensify that 
 dominant bias, whatever it is ; that it will make good men better and bad 
 men worse v/hen the limitations of incomplete organs arc gone. At all 
 events, do not you run risks witti such a very shaky hypothesis as that : 
 but remember that what a man sows he shall reap ; that the present is the 
 parent of the future, and that unless we have the earnest of inheritance 
 here, and pass into the other world bearing that earnest in our hands, there 
 seems little reason why we should expect that, when we stand before Him 
 empty-handed, we can claim a portion therein. 
 
 I was passing a little town garden a day or two ago, and the man had 
 got a young v^^eeping willow that he had put in the plot in front of his 
 door, and he had bent down its branches and put them round the hoop of 
 an old wine-cask to teach them to droop. And after a bit, when they have 
 been set, he will take away the hoop, but the branches will never spring 
 upwards, though it be gone, wherever you transplant the tree. Are you 
 doing that with your souls ? If you give them the downward set, they will 
 keep it, though the earth to which you have fastened them be burnt up 
 with fervent heat, and the soul be transplanted into another region. 
 
 If you have life, you will grow. If there be any real possession of the 
 inheritance, it will be like the rolling fences that they used to have in 
 certain parts of the country, where a squatter settled himself down upon a 
 bit of ^ royal forest, and had a hedge that could be moved outAvards and 
 shifted on by degrees ; and from having begun with a little bit big enough 
 for a cabbage garden, ended with a piece big enough for a farm. And 
 that is what we are always to do, to be always acquiring, '* adding field to 
 field " in the great inheritance that is ours. 
 
 34 S 
 
"WHAT SHALL I RENDER?" 
 
 What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? — 
 Psalm cxvi. 12. 
 
 December 14 "WHAT shall I render? . . . Take!" Why! the whole 
 essence of Christianity is in that antithesis, if you think about 
 it. For what does the doctrine that a man is saved by faith mean if it 
 does not mean that the one thing that we all have to do is to accept what 
 God bestows ? And the same attitude of reception which we have to 
 assume at the beginning of our Chri.^tian life must be maintained all 
 through it. Depend upon it, we shall make far more progress in the 
 Divine life if we learn that each step of it must begin with the acceptance 
 of a gift from God, than if we toil and moil and wear ourselves with vain 
 efforts in our own strength. I do not mean that a Christian man is not 
 to put forth such ehcrts, but I do mean that the basis of all profitable 
 discipline and self-control and reaching out towards higher attainments, 
 either in knowledge or in practical conformity to Jesus Christ, which he 
 puts forth, must be laid in tuller acceptance of God's gift, on which must 
 follow building on the foundation, by resolute efforts to work God's gift 
 into our characters, and to work it out in our lives. 
 
 All around you, Christian friend, there lie infinite possibilities. God 
 does not wait to be asked to give ; He has given once for all, and 
 continuously as the result of that once-for-all giving, just as preservation is 
 but the prolongation of the act of creation. He has given once for all and 
 continuously all that every man, and all men, need for their being made 
 perfectly like Himself. We hear people praying for "larger bestowments 
 of grace." Let them take the bestowrncnls that they have^ and they will 
 find them enough for their need. God commv,nicated His whole fulness 
 to the Church for ever when He sent His Son, and when His Son sent His 
 Spirit. " Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it." Take what you have, 
 and you will find that you have all that you need. 
 
 What a sin it is that with such abundance lying close to us, we 
 Christian people should live such low and surface lives as we do ! The 
 whole fulness of ocean is pouring past us, and our lives are often chapped 
 with thirst. All God's grace is streaming out ever more around us, and 
 we are impoverished and crippled for want of it. A man plunged into 
 the sea of God, and j^et empty of God, is like a flask corked and waxed 
 and waterproofed, and sunk into the depths of ocean, with leagues of 
 water on either side, and fathoms below it, and yet dry within. 
 
 Remember the blessed transformation in the whole conceptions of our 
 relations to God, our obligations and duties, which this thought affects. 
 Away goes the religion of fear, away goes the religion of reluctant 
 obedience to duties, which we discern but dislike. Away goes the 
 religion of recompense and bartering and bargaining with God. Away 
 goes everything except the religion of a heart turned to love by the 
 reception of God's love. Such a heart is endowed with a kind of 
 shadowy resemblance to the Divine blessedness. Into it, too, though 
 it has nothing, can come the wish to give itself, to give God what He has 
 ]iot unless we give it. And so, with wonderful reciprocity, like the light 
 flashed back from one mirror to another, God — the &iving God — gives and 
 loves, and the recipient man receives and loves and gives. "What shall 
 I render? ... I will take." 
 
 349- 
 
THE CUP OF SALVATION. 
 
 / will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the Name of the Lord. — 
 Psalm cxvi. 13. 
 
 ^ , ,, Here is a guiding word about plain common duties. 
 December 15, ._ ^ ^ ^ *=" . ^, . . 
 
 hlovv lew 01 us recognise, and receive into our hearts, all 
 
 the lesser daily blessings which God pours down upon us ! How many of 
 us are like Hainan, to whom the Persian king's favour, and the real 
 sovereignty over his empire, and everything that gratified ambition could 
 expect, all turned to ashes in his mouth because one poor Jew sat there, 
 and would not get up when he passed. "All this availeth me nothing, as 
 long as Mordecai sits at the gate." Ah ! we all have our Mordecais, and 
 we say to ourselves, " God has given me this mercy, that blessing, and the 
 other one ; but it all turns to bitterness because I cannot get that other 
 thing that I want. It is a little one, but I want it, for without it every- 
 thing else is nothing." There are some of us who, if there is the faintest 
 suspicion of a cloud away down on the horizon shiver and complain as if 
 there were no sunshine. One sorrow can blot out a thousand joys. One 
 disappointment can more than cancel a whole series of fulfilled expectations, 
 Alas ! that it should be so. Brother, be sure that you take all the blessings 
 of your daily life that God bestows upon you, and do not be one of God's 
 fractious children, who care for none of His gifts because they are whimper- 
 ing for the moon, and nothing else will satisfy them. Take what is given, 
 and you will find that it is far more than you expected, and your hands and 
 your heart will be full. 
 
 And then there is another plain piece of practical wisdom, " I will take 
 the cup, . . . and call upon the Name of the Lord." Do not take any cup 
 in your hand that you cannot do that with. You remember the old stories 
 about the demon-prepared banquets spread in the desert to tempt the 
 knight from his quest. When the Name of God was pronounced over them, 
 they vanished, and instead of dainties and gold plate and a luxurious table, 
 there was only a heap of dry sticks and stones on the sand. Name the 
 Name of God over the cup before you put it to your lips ; and if you 
 cannot, dash it down. Be sure that it is no cup of salvation unless you do. 
 Unless we do thus associate thankful thoughts of the giving God with all 
 our common blessings, they are no blessings, and will draw us away from 
 Him. 
 
 But do not forget that we can render to God something which He does 
 not possess in such a manner as satisfies His heart, unless we give it Him. 
 We can give Him ourselves : and we shall be moved to such self- surrender 
 only when we have taken the full cup of full salvation which Christ has 
 made ours by His giving Himself for, and to, us all. " I beseech you, 
 brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice."' 
 
 350 
 
TRANSFORMATION THROUGH PRAYER. 
 
 As He was praying, the fashion of His countenance was altered, and 
 His raiment becatne white and dazzling. — LuKE ix. 29. 
 
 De b 16 ^^'^ if we have communion with God as deep and real as 
 Jesus Christ had, the fashion of our countenances will be 
 altered too. I do not mean, of course, that any physical change will occur, 
 thougli I wonder if there are any of us that cannot remember some one who, 
 at some time or other of deep emotion, and of high communion with God, 
 showed a face shining like Stephen's when the heavens were opened _: or 
 like Moses when he came down from the mount ! I wonder if there are any 
 of us that have not in our hearts the remembrances of, perhaps, very homely 
 features of some poor old man or woman, glorified and transfigured by the 
 love of Christ and faith in God ! Ah ! that miracle is being done all around 
 us every day. And there are people of whom it is true that "A beauty 
 born of" more than "murmuring sound" has passed into their faces, just 
 as there are, on the other hand, men and women who bear written on their 
 foreheads that they belong to the devil, and have the marks of their evil 
 passions, their bad tempers, their lusts, their cunning, stamped on their 
 faces so that nobody can mistake them. We are all ph} sicgnomists, and 
 we generally make a pretty correct estimate of a man's character by looking 
 at him. 
 
 If we are holding on by God, and if our days are passed in any real 
 sense in communion with Him, whether upon the mountain-top as Christ 
 and the three were, or down in the valley trying to cure demoniacs, as was 
 much more permanently the disciples' place and duty ; if we are, in any 
 real sense, in touch with God, we cannot but be made fair, noble, refined, 
 manifestly purified, and having an indwelling and out-saying light in and 
 from us. If there is nothing of the sort in our appearance, it is because 
 there is very little of the sort resident within us. For communion with 
 God always tells upon a life, and lifts a man above cares, and enables him 
 to put his heel upon his faults, and to master his devilries ; and refines him 
 by the presence of elevated and heaven-directed thoughts and aspirations. 
 Does your religion do anything of that sort for you, brother? If it does 
 not, you had better see whether it is real or not. 
 
 Of all the things that are given, in God's great mercy, to Christian 
 people, to change their characters and natures for the better, the most 
 powerful is the transforming power of communion with God. It is to that, 
 if you come to look into it, that the New Testament entrusts the almost 
 whole assimilation of men's characters to the image of Christ. Of course, 
 I know that the Divine Spirit comes to sanctify and to cleanse, but here 
 is the law of our being transformed : " We all, with unveiled face, reflect- 
 ing, as a mirror does, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same 
 image." Look at Him and you will be Hke Him. You can tell by the 
 flush that comes over a man's face whether he has it turned full to the 
 sunlight or not. And we ought to be able to tell by the very cut of a man, 
 certainly by the cast of his hfe and character, whether he knows what it is 
 to go up to the mountain-top, and within the cloud, to walk in the fire, and 
 catch its radiance and its wr.rmth. 
 
 351 
 
THE NEED OF A DEFINITE AIM IN LIFE.— I. 
 
 They went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of 
 Canaan they cante. — Gen. xii. 5. 
 
 December 17 '^^^ reference of these words, as we all know, is to Abraham's 
 £:;reat act of faith, when he left Haran and his native place 
 to begin the pilgrim-life which God had called him to undertake. It is a 
 strange description of a journey to leave out the journey altogether, and 
 only to mark two points — the beginning and the end. The keynotes of 
 the narrative are these two — " went forth" ; " came in." The only things 
 worth noticing about any life are whither it was directed and whether it 
 reached its aim. All the toilsomeness of the road, the privations, the 
 weary marches, the hunger and thirst, the perils and foes, are all dropped 
 out of sight. Never mind about these. They "went forth to go" ; — and 
 they came where they went to go. As one of our modern poets has it, 
 there are 
 
 "Two points in the adventure of the diver, 
 One when, a beggar, he p.epaies to plunge, 
 One when, a prince, he rises with his pearl." 
 
 *' They went forth " for one definite purpose, "to go into the land of 
 Canaan." Now, perhaps, you will remember that the New Testament lays 
 stress upon what might, at first sight, seem a contradiction ; and says that 
 Abraham went out, " not knowing whither he went." But there is no real 
 contradiction. Both statements are true. In Abraham's cr.se there was a 
 combination of knowledge and ignorance similar to that which we may all 
 have in our lives ; for he certainly knew that he was to be led at last to a 
 land which he should afterwards inherit, and he knew, when he crossed 
 Euphrates and set his face westwards, that Canaan was his immediate 
 "ol)jective point" (as soldiers say), but he did not know, till after his 
 departure from his first home, that Canaan was the promised land. Abraham 
 went forth, as it were, with sealed orders. He was bid to go to a certain 
 place, and, when there, he would get further instructions. He knew that 
 he was to go to Canaan, and beyond that point all was dark, except for the 
 sparkle of the great hope that gleamed on the horizon in front, as a simlit 
 summit rises above a sea of mist between it and the traveller. Like such a 
 traveller, Abraham could not accurately tell how far off the shining peak was, 
 nor where, in the intervening gorges full of mist, the path lay ; but he 
 plunged into the darkness with a good heart, because he had caught a 
 glimpse of his journey's end. So with us. We may have clear before us 
 the ultimate aim and goal of our lives, and also the step which we have to 
 take now, in pressing towards it ; while between these two there stretches a 
 valley full of mist, the breadth of which may be measured by years or by 
 hours, for all that we know, and the rough places and green pastures of 
 which are equally hidden from us. We have to make sure that the moun- 
 tain peak which we think we see, with the sunlight playing on its sides, is 
 not delusive cloud, but solid reality, and we have to be very certain that 
 God has bid us step out on the yard of ground in front of us which wc can 
 see ; and, having secured these certainties, we have to cast ourselves into 
 the obscurity before us, and to carry in our hearts the bright vision of the 
 end, to encourage us in the difliculties of the rond, 
 
 352 
 
THE NEED OF A DEFINITE AIM IN LIFE.— II 
 
 / hive choson the way of faithfulness : Thy judgments have I set before 
 me. — Psalm cxix. 30. 
 
 December 18. ^ANY will re'.iiember how strongly one of the great teachers 
 of the past generation laid hold of one of these two thoughts 
 (referred to in the previous day's note) — and, alas ! only of one of them — 
 when he insisted, with reiteration that would have been wearisome if it had 
 not been so earnest, on doing the duty that lies nearest us. Alas ! that he 
 did not, with equal decisiveness, insist on the reality of the Christian vision 
 of the ultimate goal, which glorifies the smallest proximate duties ! But we 
 should combine both in our view, that the sight of the land that is ver}' far 
 off may both hearten us for, and direct us to, the next step in our march. 
 Abraham "went out, not knowing whither he went"; but yet he knew 
 whither, in the first instance, to shape his course, for he *' went forth to go 
 into the land of Canaan." 
 
 One condition of a blessed life — certainly a condition of a strenuous, 
 fruitful, and noble one — is to make very clear to ourselves, and even to 
 reiterate to ourselves, what is the ultimate aim to which we are shaping our 
 conscious efforts. I beheve that nine-tenths of all the failures in this world 
 come from men not interrogating themselves and answering honestly and 
 thoroughly this question, "What am I living for?" Of course, all the 
 nearer aims which our physical necessities, our tastes, and our appetites, 
 prescribe to us are clear enough to everybody ; but back of them — suppose 
 I have made my fortune, won my wife, filled my home with blessings, 
 made my position as a student, an artist, a man of "commerce" ; behind 
 all these lies — What then ? What then ? These are not ends ; they are 
 means. What is the e7id that I am living for — back of all these and above 
 them all? Oh ! brother, if the average, unreflecting man, who lives from 
 hand to mouth, recognising only the aims for life which the necessities of 
 living impose upon him, would but wake up to ask himself, for one reflective 
 half-hour, "What is it all about? what does it all lead to? what am I 
 going to do after I have attained these nearer aims?" there would not 
 be so many wasted lives ; there would not be so many bitter old men 
 who look back upon a life in which failure has been at least as con- 
 spicuous as success. Let us be sure that we know where we are going, 
 and let our aim be the highest, noblest, ultimate aim, befitting creatures 
 with hearts, minds, consciences, and wills like ours. What that aim should 
 be is not doubtful. The only worthy aim is God. Canaan is usually 
 regarded as an emblem of heaven, and that is correct. But the land of our 
 inheritance is not wholly across the river, for " the Lord is the portion of 
 mine inheritance." God is Heaven. To dwell with Him and in Him, to 
 have all ihe current of our being setting towards Him, to remember Him 
 in the struggle and strenuous effort of life, and to look to Him in hours 
 of solitude and sadness, are the conditions of all blessedness, and of all 
 strength and peace. 
 
 353 A A 
 
DETACHMENT FROM OLD ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 By faith Abraham^ when he was called^ obeyed to go out unto a place 
 tiihic I he ivas to receive for an inheritance ; attd he went out, not knowing- 
 whither he went. — Heb. xi. 8. 
 
 V 19 Every great purpose requires restriction in other directions. 
 A man cannot learn to play the fiddle unless he will consent 
 to shear off a good many hours of leisure, and give them to it. There is 
 nothing worth doing to be done except upon condition of resolutely stopping 
 eyes and ears to attractions that lie round us. Jesus Christ demands no 
 more than the artist pays for success in his art, no more than the man 
 of business pays for making his wealth, no more than the student pays 
 for attaining the mastery of his science ; and that is, that everything else 
 shall be subordinated, and, if necessary, shall be thrown aside, in order 
 to secure the one aim. And when He said, " No man can follow Me that 
 does not take up his cross and deny himself," He was just putting into 
 language the experience that Abraham and his company had to go through 
 when, if ever they were to go into the land of Canaan, they had to go out 
 of the land of Haran. Always subordinated, and often cast aside, must 
 everything else be if Christian men are to make God what He ought to be 
 — their aim and end. The compass in an iron ship gets deflected by the 
 iron round it, and so the resolute pointing of our spirits towards God gets 
 drawn aside and warped by the many things that lie round us. Therefore 
 rigid self-control and the continual effort to regard all external things mainly 
 as means to an end, and possibly as hindrances thereto, are absolutely 
 essential for success in the Christian life. 
 
 There is no patent way of getting to God. There is no easier path 
 to be trodden to-day than of old. There are no rails laid to travel without 
 effort to heaven by. We have still to journey in the old pilgrim fashion 
 which Abraham set, and thereby became "the father of the faithful." "They 
 went forth "— and unless we are prepared to leave behind us native country 
 and companionship, such' as Abraham left behind him in Haran, and to 
 dwell, if needful, in a wilderness and a solitude, we shall never see " the 
 land that is very far off." It is near us if we will forsake self and the 
 things seen and temporal, but it moves away and recedes from us W'hen 
 we turn our hearts to these. 
 
 A mournfully large number of professing Christians have lost the very 
 notion of progress, and content themselves with saying, "Oh! we shall 
 always be imperfect ; as long as we are here in this world, we cannot make 
 it any different." No ! you cannot make it different in that respect ; but 
 if you are not growing at all, ask yourself if you are living at all. Do not 
 be content, as so many are, to be like invaders, who have pitched their 
 tents, and after years of occupation have been unable to advance beyond 
 the strip of shore which they seized at first, while all the interior lies 
 unconquered and in arms against them. 
 
 354 
 
THE CHRISTIAN AIM ULTIMATELY REALISED. 
 
 He led them also by a straight way, that they unght go to a city of 
 habitation. — Psalm cvii. 7. 
 
 _ . __ The man that has one definite purpose in view is the strong 
 man. Such distinction of aim gives what most of our lives 
 30 sadly lack — continuity right through them. There is only one aim so 
 great and so far that we never can reach it, and never outgrow it. And 
 IS not that a blessing ? Look back on your lives. Have they not been 
 like the course of a ship with a head-wind, tacking first in one direction 
 and then in another? Have they not been like the navigation of the 
 ancients, who could not push out to sea for fear of losing their landmarks ; 
 and so had fiist to make for one headland and then for another, and to 
 leave them one by one behind them as they sailed on their devious course ? 
 We too often live fragmentary lives. But if we have far before us, beyond 
 the furthest reach of thought, apprehension, or attainment, the one great 
 aim to be with God, to be in God, to be like God, to be flooded with God, 
 why, then, we can never need to substitute another purpose for that, or 
 say, "It has served its turn, and we can leave it behind." So the whole 
 life may be of a piece, strong, solid, continuously progressive and increasing ; 
 and everything that we do may be brought into harmony with and 
 subjection to this aim. There is only one purpose tliat lasts a lifetime, 
 there is only one that can be followed, amidst all the variety of occupations 
 which so often break up our lives into fragments. " This one thing I do," 
 is the secret of all blessedness. 
 
 No man honestly wants God and does not get Him. No man has less 
 of goodness and Christlikeness than he truly desires and earnestly seeks. 
 We all experience many failures in regard to the nearer aims of our lives. 
 Thank God for failures, for disappointments, for hopes unfulfilled, and 
 even for those which, when accomplished, turn out not to be worth fulfilling. 
 Thank God for all the times in which He has made the harvest from our 
 servings a very poor one, so that we have sown much and brought home 
 little ! It is His way of te^hing us to turn away from the paths in which 
 effort has no assurance of success, into the paths in which it cannot fail. 
 ** I have never said to any of the seed of Israel, Seek ye My face in vain." 
 We may not reach other lands which to us seem to be lands of promise ; or 
 when we get there we may find that the land is " evil and naughty." But 
 this land we shall reach if we desire it, and if, desiring it, we go forth from 
 the vain world. Canaan is the symbol of the rest that remains for the 
 people of God. No pilgrim with his face set Zionward ever perished in 
 the wilderness or lost his road. "They go from strength to strength; 
 every one of them in Zion appeareth before God." And when they 
 get there, nothing will be thought by them about the sandy deserts, the 
 salt wastes, and the waterless wildernesses ; nothing about the weariness 
 and the solitude and the dangers and the toils. This, and this alone, will 
 be worth recording as the summing up of the lives of the happy pilgrims 
 who have accomplished all at which they aimed, that they are at rest for 
 ever in the mother-country which they sought. 
 
 355 
 
A HOPE BORN IN THE DARKNESS. 
 
 That through patience and through comfort of the Scriptures, we tntgh 
 have hope. — Roji. xv. 4, 
 
 December 21. WHO can tell how many struggling souls have taken heart 
 again, as they pondered over the sweet stories of sorrow 
 subdued which stud the pages of Scripture like stars in its firmament? 
 The tears shed long ago which God has put "in His bottle," and recorded 
 in " His book," have truly been turned into pearls. That long gallery of 
 portraits of sufferers, who have all trodden the same rough road, and been 
 sustained by the same hand, and reached the same home, speaks cheer to 
 all who follow them. Hearts wrung by cruel partings from those dearer 
 to them than their own souls turn to the pages which tell how Abraham, 
 with calm sorrow, laid his Sarah in the cave of Machpelah ; or how, when 
 Jacob's eyes were dim that he could not see, his memory still turned to the 
 hour of agony when Rachel died by him, and he sees clear in its light her 
 lonely grave, where so much of himself was laid ; or to the more sacred pages 
 which record the struggle of grief and faith in the hearts of the sisters of 
 Bethany. All who are anyways afflicted in mind, body, or estate find in 
 the Psalms men speaking their deepest experiences before them ; and the 
 grand majesty of sorrow that marks " the patience of Job," and the flood 
 of sunshine that bathes him, revealing the " rod of the Lord," have 
 strengthened countless sufferers to bear and to hold fast and to hope. We 
 are all enough of children to be more aftected by living examples than by 
 dissertatioiis, however true ; and so Scripture is mainly history, revealing 
 God by the record of His acts, and disclosing the secret of human life by 
 telling us the experiences of living men. But Scripture has another method 
 of ministering encouragement to our often fainting and faithless hearts. It 
 cuts down through all the complications of human affairs, and lays bare the 
 innermost motive power. It not only shows us in its narratives the working 
 of sorrow and the power of faith, but it distinctly lays down the source and 
 the purpose, the whence and the whither, of all suffering. No man need 
 quail or faint before the most torturing pains, or most disastrous strokes of 
 evil, who holds firmly the plain teaching of Scripture on these two points : 
 they all come frofn my Father, and they all come for my good. It is a 
 short and simple creed, easily apprehended. It pretends to no recondite 
 wisdom. It is homely philosophy, which common intellects can grasp, 
 which children can understand, and hearts half-paralysed by sorrow can 
 take in. So much the better. Grief and pain are so common that their 
 cure had need to be easily obtained. Ignorant and stupid people have to 
 writhe in agony as well as wise and clever ones ; and till grief is the portion 
 only of the cultivated classes, its healing must come from something more 
 universal than philosophy, or else the nettle would be more plentiful than 
 the dock, and many a poor heart would be stung to death. Blessed be God ! 
 the Christian view of sorrow, while it leaves much unexplained, focuses a 
 steady light on these two points : its origin and its end. The slings and 
 arrows which strike are no more flung blindly by an "outrageous fortune," 
 but each bears an inscription, like the fabled bolts, which tells what hand 
 drew the bow, and they come with His love. 
 
 356 
 
A HOPE BORN OF THE DAY. 
 
 God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this 
 mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. — 
 Col. i. 27. 
 
 Se b 22 There is a river in Switzerland fed by two uniting streams 
 bearing the same name, one of them called the " white," one 
 of them the "grey," or dark. One comes down from the glaciers, and 
 bears the half-melted snow in its white ripple ; the other flows through a 
 lovely valley, and is discoloured by its eartli. They unite in one common 
 current. So in the two verses (Rom. xv. 4, 13) we have two streams, a 
 white and a black, and they both blend together and flow out into a 
 common hope. In the former of them we have the dark stream — "through 
 patience and comfort," which implies afiliction and effort. The issue and 
 outcome of all difficulty, trial, sorrow, ought to be hope. And in the other 
 verse we have the other valley, down which the light stream comes — " the 
 God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye m_ay abound 
 in hope." So both halves of the possible human experience are meant to 
 end in the same blessed result ; and whether you go round on the one side 
 of the sphere of human life, or whether you take the other hemisphere, you 
 come to the same point, if you have travelled with God's hand in yours, and 
 with Him for your Guide. 
 
 I have traced the genealogy of the hope which is the child of the night. 
 But we have also a hope that is born of the day, the child of sunshine and 
 gladness, and that is set before us in the second of the two verses I have 
 quoted. The darkness and the light are both alike to our hope, in so 
 far as each may become the occasion for its exercise. It is not only to 
 be the sweet juice pressed from our hearts by the winepress of calamities, 
 but that which flows of itself from hearts ripened and mellowed under the 
 sunshine of God-given blessedness. 
 
 We have seen that the bridge by which sorrow led to hope was perse- 
 verance and courage ; in this second analysis of the origin of hope, joy 
 and peace are the bridge by which faith passes over into it. Observe the 
 difference : There is no direct connection between affliction and hope, but 
 there is between joy and hope. We have no right to say, *' Because I suffer 
 I shall possess good in the future " ; but we have a right to say, " Because 
 I rejoice — of course with a joy in God — I shall never cease to rejoice in 
 Him." Such joy is the prophet of its own immortality and completion. 
 And, on the other hand, the joy and peace which are naturally the direct 
 progenitors of Christian hope are the children of faith. So that we have 
 here two generations, as it were, of hope's ancestors. Faith produces joy 
 and peace, and these again produce hope. 
 
 Faith leads to joy and peace. Paul has found — and if we only put it to 
 the proof, we shall also find — that the simple exercise of simple faith fills the 
 soul with "a// joy and peace." Gladness in all its variety, and in full 
 measure, calm repose in every kind, and abundant in its still depth, will 
 pour into my heart as water does into a vessel on condition of my taking away 
 the barrier and opening my heart through faith. Trust, and thou rhalt be 
 calm. In the measure of thy trust shall be the measure of thy joy and 
 peace. 
 
 357 
 
THE BELOVED SON. 
 
 This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. — Matt, iii. 17. 
 
 All Christ's work for us, and its sweetness and precious- 
 ness to us, all His power as the Revealer of God and of man, 
 all His power as Redeemer, Saviour, Sympathiser, Helper, Friend, Judge, 
 Recompense, Life, all depends on and stands or falls with this conception 
 of His birth into the world as the coming, by His voluntary act, of the 
 Eternal Word into the brotherhood of our humanity. *' Forasmuch as the 
 children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise," and 
 yet how differently, actively, " took part of the same." 
 
 And then from this flows the other great thought which our Lord 
 announces, that His birth is the assumption of a true and yet a unique 
 manhood. He is "Son of man," body, soul, and spirit, one of us ; "bone 
 of our bone, flesh of our flesh," knowing the aspirations of the spirit and 
 the limitations of the body ; proved to be the Son of David, and the 
 Brother of us all according to the flesh, in that He hungered and thirsted, 
 and wearied and wept, and suffered and died ; proved to be a man in 
 spirit and in heart like us all, in that He sorrowed and rejoiced, was 
 grieved and was angry, willed and purposed, thought and loved. 
 
 And not only is a perfect and a true manhood revealed to us in the 
 name by which He comes so near to us all, but a manhood which, in all its 
 reality, was yet singular and unique. Others are "sons of men" ; this is 
 ^^ the Son." In Him, as it were, is contained all which is proper to 
 humanity, and is scattered elsewhere through the race. He is the one 
 pearl of great price, the entire and perfect chrysolite. To Him all other 
 men are but as fragments. He alone is the full true Man, according to the 
 Divine ideal ; the secofid Man, the Man Christ Jesus. In Him all the 
 strengths, beauties, holinesses, proper to, or possible to, humanity are 
 gathered, and abide. Others, saints, sages, preachers, teachers, by the 
 side of Him are like a tiny cup of water by the side of the ever-flowing 
 fountain. You might take millions of l)locks to be fashioned into the fairest 
 forms of manly strength and womanly beauty, out of this great marble cliff, 
 in v.'hich everything that is lovely and of good report, all that is virtuous 
 and deserves praise, is found in stainless perfection. 
 
 In every religion is some tradition that "The gods are come down in 
 the likeness of men." Is this but one more dream like those others, 
 expressing unfulfilled longings and vain desires? Nay, this is the reality, 
 of which those are but confessions of the need. They are man's wistful and 
 half-despairing hopes. This is God's answer, meeting and surpassing all 
 their expectations, giving a real, perfect, and eternal incarnation, instead of 
 apparent partial and temporary assumptions of shadowy manhood. 
 
 358 
 
THE INCARNATION IN ORDER TO A LIFE OF SERVICE. 
 
 The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
 to give His life a ransom for many. — Matt. xx. 28. 
 
 December 2ft. ^^ ^ .^^^^ might enter poor men's huts, and learn their 
 condition, and live their hves, and share their squalor, and 
 weep their tears, and staunch their wounds, so Christ wills to be born that 
 He may help and serve us. He comes "not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister." The infinite condescension of the incarnation, looked at as I 
 have suggested it must be looked at, is the fit vestibule to a life hkewise 
 marked by infinite condescension and lowliness. He comes to serve. 
 Think of the outward circumstances of the life ; of how He stole into the 
 world, as it were, in lowly guise, and choosing the condition of poverty. 
 Think of how, all through His Ufe, you find unwearied diligence, readiness 
 to help everybody, whatsoever their weakness, their need, to turn away 
 from no vileness, to be disgusted by no profanity, to despair of no abject or 
 alienated heart. He ever recognises the claims of others upon Him, and 
 never thinks of His claims upon them except for their good. He requires 
 nothing, never for a moment shows that He thought of Himself, but for 
 ever devotes His loving heart and hand, His wise words. His miracle- 
 working power, to the blessing of men. 
 
 Such a Hfe stands absolutely alone. There is not a flaw in this marble, 
 not a black vein running through it that spoils the statue, not a speck. No 
 man can put his finger upon any action recorded of Jesus Christ, and say, 
 He did that for His own advantage. He did that from a motive that 
 centred upon self. 
 
 Do not let us forget that in this we have Christ's revelation of God. 
 The Highest of all is highest, in order that lie may stoop to the low.liest, 
 and being Lord of all serve the needs and supply the emptiness of every 
 creature that lives. 
 
 That revelation of the Master's relation to us is not antiquated by His 
 present exaltation. He is still your Servant and mine, ready to help and 
 to succour. And, more wonderful than all. He has given it us, as the 
 highest conception that we can form of the heavenly world, that He 
 Himself will come forth and gird Himself, and serve them who have been 
 His servants here. 
 
 That Hfe of service was also a true revelation of the law of His kingdom 
 and of the true greatness and blessedness of men. He proposes His own 
 utter self-suppression and devotion to our advantage, as the pattern to which 
 all professing Christians are to conform. In Him we learn the dignity of 
 service ; in Him we learn the obligations of superiors. This example is 
 meant to shame us out of our self-seeking, vulgar ambition, and misuse of 
 advantages which raise us above our fellows. It says to us all, "Do not 
 stand on your rights ; forget your claims ; consecrate your capacities to 
 your brethren's service, and learn that position means obligition, and that 
 the only true order of rank in Christ's kingdom is determined, not by what 
 we are, but by our use of what we are to help all who will accept our help." 
 Does the world believe that the servant of all is the chiefest of all ? Does 
 it believe that the chiefest of all should be servant of all ? Does the Church 
 believe it? Do we? Do we act as if we did, either in regard to our 
 judgment of others or to the regulation of our own lives ? 
 
 359 
 
 ^ 
 
CHRIST'S INCARNATION IN ORDER TO HIS VICARIOUS 
 AND REDEEMING DEATH. 
 
 / lay down My life for the sheep. . . . / have power to lay it down, and 
 J have power to take it again. — ^JOHN x. 15, 18. 
 
 Decemter 25. ^^^ ^^^ imitate Christ in His service, but not in His sacrifice ; 
 we can tread in His footsteps to the gate of Gethsemane, but 
 He has to wrestle in His agony alone ; alone has to stand before His judges, 
 and to die alone. He gives His life. As at its beginning He willed to be 
 born, so at the end He wills to die. He is the Lord of Life and the Lord 
 of Death; and never did He witness the completeness of His authority 
 over that awful form, which yet is His servant, more marvellously and entirely 
 than when He seemed to submit to its blow. 
 
 Like the King of Israel who bade his armour-bearer fall upon him and 
 slay him, so Christ commanded and Death obeyed. If you will read with 
 an eye to this thought the stories of the Crucifixion, you will see that all the 
 evangelists, as of set purpose, choose expressions which are at least con- 
 sistent with, and I think were selected on purpose to express, the thought 
 of the voluntariness of our Lord's death. " He yielded up the ghost," 
 *' He gave up the spirit," with a mighty cry which indicated unexhausted 
 strength, " Father ! into Thy hands I commend My Spirit !" 
 
 The same witness is borne, as I believe, by the remarkable language 
 employed in the account of the Transfiguration, when these three, each of 
 whom stood in a peculiar relation to death, Moses, Elias, and Christ, con- 
 versed in solemn words, "concerning the departtcre wj\nch He should 
 accomplish at Jerusalem " — by Himself willing to go, and therefore going. 
 You will not understand either birth or death unless you interpret them 
 both according to His own profound saying: "I came forth from the 
 Father, and am come into the world." Again, '* I leave the world and go 
 unto the Father." 
 
 And, still further, we have here set forth our Lord's voluntary death as 
 a ransom. A ransom is a price paid for the deliverance of a slave from 
 captivity. And Christ distinctly, beyond all cavil on the part of honest 
 interpretation, as it seems to me, sets forth His death here as the crown of 
 His service and the climax of His work, because in it there is the power by 
 which the bonds of sin and condemnation are broken, and liberty is pro- 
 claimed to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are 
 bound. He dies, not as the hero dies who closes his heroism by a brave 
 death. He dies, not as the martyr dies who seals his witness with his blood. 
 He dies, not as the saint dies, leaving behind him sweet and pathetic 
 memories that draw us onward upon a course like his own. Other men's 
 deaths are but the closing of their activity ; Christ's death is the climax of 
 His. It is not enough that He should serve in our stead ; He must die 
 our death if we are to be set free. Il is not enough that He should witness 
 of God by the wisdom of His Word, the purity of His life, the graciousness 
 of His deeds, the tenderness of His compassion, the pathos of His tears. 
 A nobler revelation of the love of God triumphing over man's sin ; of the 
 consistency of that life with perfect righteousness — a revelation, too, of 
 the darkness and the foulness of man's evil which nothing else could have 
 given, is given to us when, and only when, we recognise the voluntary death 
 of Jesus Christ as the ransom and propitiation for the sins of the world. 
 
 :56o 
 
WATCHFULNESS. 
 
 Blessed are those servants whom the lord when he covneth shall find 
 watching. Verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them 
 to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.. — LuKE xii. 37. 
 
 December 26. "^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ watchfulness is keeping awake, and the 
 second is looking out for something that is coming. Both 
 these conceptions are intertwined in both our Lord's use of the metaphor of 
 the watching servant and in the echoes of it which we find abundantly 
 in the Apostolic letters. The first thing is to keep ourselves awake all 
 through the soporific night, when everything tempts to slumber. Even the 
 wise virgins, with trimmed lamps and girt loins, do in some degree succumb 
 to the drowsy influences around them, and, like the foolish ones, slumber, 
 though the slumbers of the two classes be unlike. Christian people live in 
 the midst of an order of things which tempts them to close the eyes of their 
 hearts and minds to all the real and unseen glories above and around them 
 and that might be within them, and to live for the comparatively con- 
 temptible and trivial things of this present. Just as when a man sleeps he 
 loses his consciousness of the sohd external realities, and passes into a 
 fantastic world of his own imaginations, which have no correspondence in 
 external facts, and will vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision if but a 
 poor cock shall crow, so the men who are conscious only of this present 
 life and of the things that are seen, though they pride themselves on being 
 wide awake, are, in the deepest of their being, fixst asleep, and are dealing 
 with illusions which shall pass and leave nought behind, as really as are 
 men who lie upon dreaming couches and fancy themselves hard at work. 
 Keep awake ; that is the first thing, which, being translated into plain 
 English, points just to this, that, unless we make a dead lift of continuous 
 efiort to keep firm grasp of God and Christ, and of all the unseen magnifi- 
 cences that are included in these two words, as surely as we live we shall 
 lose our hold upon them, and fall into the drugged and diseased sleep in 
 which so many men around us are plunged. It sometimes seems to one as 
 if the sky above us were raining down narcotics upon us, so profoundly are the 
 bulk of men unconscious of realities and befooled by the illusions of a dream. 
 
 Many of us have to acknowledge that the fervour of early days has died 
 down into coldness. The river that leapt from its source rejoicing, and 
 bickered amongst the hills in such swift and musical descent, creeps sluggish 
 and almost stagnant amongst the flats of later life, or has been lost and 
 swallowed up altogether in the thirsty and encroaching sands of a barren 
 worldliness. Do not let your Christian life be like that snow that is on 
 the ground — when it first lights upon the earth, radiant and white, but day 
 by day more covered with a veil of sooty blackness until it becomes dark 
 and foul. Even early failures, recognised and repented of, may make a 
 man better fitted for the tasks which once he fled from. Just as they tell 
 us that a broken bone renewed is stronger at the point of fracture than it 
 ever was before, so the very sin that we commit, when once we know it 
 for a sin, and have brought it to Christ for forgiveness, may minister to our 
 future efficiency and strength. 
 
 The past is no specimen of what the future may be. The page that is 
 yet to be written need have none of the blots of the page that we have 
 turned over shining through it. The sin which we have learned to know 
 for a sin and to hate teaches us humility, dependence — shows us where the 
 weak places are ; sin which is forgiven knits us to Christ with deeper and 
 more fervid love, and results in a larger consecration. 
 
 361 
 
REMEMBER AND BE THANKFUL. 
 
 And thou sJialt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led 
 thee. — Deut. viii. 2. 
 
 jj T, 27 There are few of us who have much time for retrospect, and 
 there is a very deep sense in which it is wise to "forget the 
 things that are behind," for the remembrance of them may burden us with 
 a miserable entail of failure, may weaken us by vain regrets, may unfit us 
 for energetic action in the living and available present. But oblivion is 
 foolish if it is continual, and a remembered past has treasures in it which 
 we can little afford to lose. It is hard to recognise our Father God in the 
 bustle and hurry of our daily life, and the meaning of each event can only 
 be seen when it is seen in its relation to the rest of a life. Just as a land- 
 scape, which we may look at without the smallest perception of its beauty, 
 becomes another thing when the genius of a painter puts it on canvas, and 
 its symmetry and proportion become more manifest, and an ethereal clear- 
 ness broods over it, and its colours are seen to be deeper than our eyes had 
 discerned, so the common events of life, trivial and insignificant while they 
 are passing, become, when painted on the canvas of memory, nobler and 
 greater, and we understand them more completely than we can do whilst 
 they are passing. 
 
 We need to be at the goal in order to judge of the road. The parts are 
 only explicable when we see the whole. The full interpretation of to-day 
 is reserved for eternity. But, by combining and massing and presenting 
 the consequences of the apparently insignificant and isolated events of the 
 past, memory helps us to a clearer perception of God and a better under- 
 standing of our own lives. On the mountain summit a man can look down 
 all along the valley by which he has wearily plodded, and understand the 
 meaning of the divergences in the road, and the rough places do not look 
 quite so rough when their proportion to the whole is a little more clearly in 
 his view. 
 
 Only, if we are wisely to exercise remembrance, and to discover God 
 in the lives which, whilst they are passing, had no perception of Him, we 
 must take into account what the meaning of all life is — that is, to make 
 men of us after the pattern of His will. 
 
 "Not enjoyment, and not sorrow. 
 Is our destined end or way." 
 
 But the growth of Christ-like and God-pleasing character is the Divine 
 purpose, and should be the human aim of all lives. Our tasks, our joys, 
 our sorrows, our gains, our losses — these are all but the scaft'olding, and 
 the scaffolding is only there in order that course upon course may rise the 
 temple — palace of a spirit, devoted to, shaped and inhabited by, our Father, 
 God. 
 
 It is possible to remember vanished joys, and to confer upon them by 
 remembrance a kind of gentle immortality ; and, thus remembered, they 
 are ennobled, for all the gross material body of them, as it were, is got rid 
 of, and only the fine spirit is left. The roses bloom, and over bloom, and 
 drop, but a poignant perfume is distilled from the fallen petals. The 
 departed are grealened by distance ; when they are gone, we recognise the 
 angels that we entertained unawares : and that recognition is no illusion, 
 but it is the disclosure of the real character, to which they were sc«netimes 
 untrue and we were often blind. 
 
 362 
 
REMEMBER AND REPENT. 
 
 Remember, therefore, front whence thou artfalkn^ attd repent attd do the 
 first works. — Rev. ii. 5. 
 
 December 28 ^^ ^°°^ ^^'^^ upon a past, of which God gave us the warp, 
 and we had to put in the woof. The warp is all bright and 
 pure. The threads that have crossed it from our shuttles are many of them 
 very dark, and all of them stained in some part. So let us take the year 
 that has gone, and spread them out by the agency of this servant of the 
 court, Memory, before the supreme judge. Conscience. 
 
 Let us remember, that we may be warned and directed. We shall 
 understand the true moral character of our actions a great deal better when 
 we look back upon them calmly, and when all the rush of temptation and 
 the seducing whispers of our own weak wills are silenced. There is nothing 
 more terrible, in one aspect, there is nothing more salutary and blessed in 
 another, than the difference between the front view and the back of any 
 temptation to which we yield — all radiant and beautiful on the hither side, 
 and when we get past it and look back at it, all hideous. Like some of 
 those painted canvases upon the theatre stage : seen from the pit, with the 
 delusive brilliancy of the footlights thrown upon them, they look beautiful 
 works of art ; seen at the back, dirty and cobwebed canvas, all splashes 
 and spots and uglinesses. Let us be thankful if memory can show us the 
 reverse side of the temptations that on the near side were so seductive. 
 
 It is when you see a sketch of your life that you understand the 
 significance of the single deeds in them. We are so apt to isolate our 
 actions that we are startled, and it is a wholesome shock when we see how, 
 without knowing it, we have dropped into a habit. When each temptation 
 comes, as the moments are passing, we say, " Oh, just this once ! Just 
 this once ! " And the acts that we thought isolated we find out to our 
 horror — our wholesome horror — have become a chain that binds and holds 
 us. Look back over the year, and drag its events to the bar of Conscience, 
 and I shall be surprised if you do not find out that you have fallen into 
 wrong habits that you never dreamed had dominion over you. So I say, 
 Remember and repent. 
 
 I do not want to exaggerate, I do not want to urge upon you one-sided 
 views of your character or conduct. I give all credit to many excellences, 
 many acts of sacrifice, many acts of service ; and yet I say that the main 
 reason why any of us have a good opinion of ourselves is because we have 
 no knowledge of ourselves ; and that the safest attitude for all of us, in 
 looking back over what we have made of life, is, hands on mouths, and 
 mouths in dust, and the cry coming from them, " Unclean ! unclean ! " 
 
 A little mud in a stream may not be perceptible when you take a wine- 
 glassful of it and look at it, but if you take a riverful or a lakeful you will 
 soon see the taint. 
 
 The best use the memory can serve for us is that the remembrance 
 should drive us closer to Jesus Christ, and make us cling more closely to 
 Him. That past can be cancelled, these multitudinous sins can be forgiven. 
 Memory should be one of the strongest strands in the cord that binds our 
 helplessness to the all-forgiving and all-cleansing Christ. 
 
 363 
 
FUTURE ANTICIPATION. 
 
 Looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God. — • 
 2 Pet. iii. 12. 
 
 Keep yourself awake first, and then let the waking, wide- 
 December 29. J 1 , , • /- IT-, 
 
 opened eye, be looking forward. It is the very dtjjerentia, 
 
 so to speak, the characteristic mark and distinction of the Christian notion 
 
 of life, that it shifts the centre of gravity from the present into the future, 
 
 and makes that which is to come of far more importance than that which 
 
 is, or which has been. No man is living up to the height of his Christian 
 
 responsibilities or privileges unless there stands out before him, as the very 
 
 goal and aim of his whole life, what can never be realised until he has 
 
 passed within the veil, and is at rest in the " secret place of the Most 
 
 High." To live for the future is, in one aspect, the very definition of a 
 
 Christian. 
 
 It is not for us, as it is for men in the world, to fix our hopes for the 
 future on abstract laws of the progress of humanity, or the evolution of the 
 species, or the gradual betterment of the world, and the like, — all these 
 may be true ; I say nothing about them. But what we have to fill our 
 future with is that that same Jesus "shall so come in like manner as 
 ye have seen Him go." No man can rightly understand the whole contents 
 of the blessed proclamation, "Christ has come," unless he ends the 
 sentence with '* and Christ will come." Blessed is *' that servant whom 
 the lord, when he cometh, shall find watching." 
 
 Of course, I need not remind you that much for which that second 
 coming of the Lord is precious, and an object of hope to the world and the 
 Church, is realised by the individual in the article of Death. Whether 
 Christ comes to the world or I go to Christ, the important thing is that 
 there result union and communion, the reign of righteousness and peace, 
 the felicities of the heavenly state. 
 
 And so, dear brother, just because of the uncertainty that drapes the 
 future, and which we are often tempted to make a reason for dismissing the 
 anticipation of it from our minds, we ought the more earnestly to give heed 
 that we keep that end ever before us, and whether it is reached by His 
 coming to us, or our going to Him, anticipate, by the power of realising 
 faith grasping the firm words of Revelation, the unimaginable, and — until 
 it is experienced — the incommunicable blessedness revealed in these great, 
 simple words, "So shall we ever be with the Lord." 
 
 364 
 
OUR UNREVEALED FUTURE. 
 
 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy 
 to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to its-ward. — 
 Rom. viii. i8. 
 
 The fact of sonship makes us quite sure of the future. I am 
 not concerned to appraise the relative value of the various 
 arguments and proofs, or, it may be, presumptions, which may recommend 
 the doctrine of a future life to men, but it seems to me that the strongest 
 reasons for believing in another world are these two : first, that Jesus Christ 
 was raised from the dead and has gone up there ; and, second, that a man 
 here can pray and trust and love God, and feel that he is His child. We 
 are the children of God now, and if we are children now, we shall be 
 grown up some time. Childhood leads to maturity. The infant becornes 
 a man. 
 
 That is to say, he that here, in an infantile way, is stammering with his 
 poor unskilled lips the name "Abba ! Father ! " will one day come to speak 
 it fully. He that dimly trusts, he that partially loves, he that can lift up his 
 heart in some more or less unworthy prayer and aspiration after God, in all 
 these emotions and exercises, has the great proof in himself that such 
 emotions, such relationship, can never be put an end to. The roots have 
 gone down through the temporal, and have laid hold of the eternal. Any- 
 thing seems to me to be more credible than that a man who can look up 
 and say, " My Father ! " shall be crushed by what befals the mere outside of 
 him ; anything seems to me to be more believable than to suppose that the 
 nature which is capable of these elevating emotions and aspirations of 
 confidence and hope, which can know God and yearn after Him, and can 
 love Him, is going to be wiped out like a microscopic insect by the finger 
 of Death. The material has nothing to do with these feelings, and if I 
 know myself, in however feeble and imperfect a degree, to be the son of 
 God, I carry in the conviction the very pledge and seal of immortality, 
 ** That is a thought whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that it was bom 
 for immortality." "We are the sons of God," therefore we shall always 
 be so, in all worlds, and whatsoever may become of this poor wrappage in 
 which my soul dwells. 
 
 The consciousness of belonging to another order of things, because I am 
 God's child, will make me sure that when I have done with earth, the tie 
 that binds me to my Father will not be broken, but that I shall go home, 
 where I shall be fully and for ever all that I so imperfectly began to be here, 
 where all gaps in my character shall be filled up, and the half-completed 
 circle of my heavenly perfectness shall grow like the crescent moon into 
 full-orbed beauty. 
 
 365 
 
THE FUTURE UNKNOWN. 
 
 Ye know not what shall be on the morrow. — James iv. 14. 
 
 You can only know facts when the facts are communicated. 
 You may speculate and argue and guess as much as you 
 like, but that does not thin the darkness one bit. The unborn child has 
 no more faculty or opportunity for knowing what the life upon earth is like 
 than man here, in the world, has for knowing that life beyond. The 
 chrysalis's dreams about what it would be when it was a butterfly would be 
 as reliable as a man's imagination of what a future life will be. So let us 
 feel two things : — Let us be thankful that we do not know, for the ignorance 
 is a sign of the greatness ; and then, let us be sure that just the very 
 mixture of knowledge and ignorance which we have about another world 
 is precisely the food which is most fitted to nourish imagination and hope. 
 If we had more knowledge, supposing it could be given, of the conditions 
 of that future life, it would lose some of its power to attract. 
 
 Ignorance is not always repellent — blank ignorance is ; but ignorance 
 shot with knowledge like a tissue which, when you hold it one way seems 
 all black, and when you tilt it another, seems golden, stimulates men's 
 desires, hopes, and imagination. So let us thankfully acquiesce in the 
 limited knowledge. " Fools can ask questions which wise men cannot 
 answer, and will not ask." 
 
 There are questions which, sometimes, when we are thinking about our 
 own future, and sometimes when we see dear ones go away into the mist, 
 become to us almost torture. It is easy to put them ; it is not so easy to 
 say, "Thank God, we cannot answer them yet !" If we could it would 
 only be because the experience of earth was adequate to measure the ex- 
 perience of heaven ; and that would be to drop the future down to the low 
 levels of this present. Let us be thankful, then, that so long as we can only 
 speak in language derived from the experiences of earth, we have yet to 
 learn the vocabulary of heaven. Let us be thankful that our best help to 
 know what we shall be is to reverse much of what we are, and that the 
 loftiest and most positive declarations concerning the future lie in negatives 
 like these : *' I saw no temple therein." *' There shall be no night there." 
 *' There shall be no curse there." "There shall be no more sighing nor 
 weeping, for the former things are passed away.' 
 
 The white mountains keep their secret well ; not until we have passed 
 through the black rocks that make the throat of the pass on the summit, 
 shall we see the broad and shining plains beyond the hills. Let us be 
 thankful for, and own the attractions of, the knowledge that is wrapt in 
 ignorance, and thankfully say, " Now are we the sons of God, and it doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be." 
 
 366 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Better and an Enduring Substance 307 
 
 *' Abide in Me, and I in you " 70 
 
 Abiding Blessedness, The Christian Life one of .... 73 
 
 A Breviary of Christian Graces ....... 109 
 
 A Bright Assurance . . . . . . . . .94 
 
 A Call to Faith and Obedience ....... 204 
 
 Access to God, The Christian's Direct ...... 54 
 
 A Companionship that Cheers ........ 323 
 
 Acquaintance with God ......... 181 
 
 A Dark Chamber in every Heart ....... 36 
 
 A Dark Fear ........... 93 
 
 A Father's Discipline ..*...... 299 
 
 A Glorious Effort . . , . , . . . ... 47 
 
 A Hope born in the Darkness ........ 356 
 
 A Hope born of the Day ......... 357 
 
 Aim in Life, The Need of a Definite. — I. 352 
 
 Aim in Life, The Need of a Definite. — II 353 
 
 Aim, The, of all God's Corrections ....... 302 
 
 A Life-giving Word of Power . . . . . . . .318 
 
 All Christian Living a Showing Forth of Christ's Death ... 6 
 
 All-comprehensive Law, The ........ 142 
 
 All-granting Love of Christ, The 178 
 
 All have Sinned .......... 194 
 
 *'A11 shall know Me" 182 
 
 AH Strength in Christ 250 
 
 All Truth based upon Christianity ....... 106 
 
 Ally, Our, in our Warfare with Ourselves . . . . •193 
 
 A Love that shrinks from no Sacrifice . . . . . .104 
 
 Alternative, The Great , . . . . . . . •319 
 
 Amulet, The ........... 256 
 
 A Mutual Friendship ......... 243 
 
 A Mutual Indwelling ......••, 71 
 
 A New Name and a New Nature ....••. 233 
 
 Angel of the Lord, The • • . 189 
 
 Anticipation, Future ......... 364 
 
 Antidote of Care, Thanksgiving an , . . . , , . 298 
 
 Antidote, The, to all Despondency ..••••• 206 
 
 367 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Anxiety, The Cure for . 
 
 Arrested Development, Interrupted Lives 
 
 A Shelter from the Storm 
 
 Assurance, A Bright 
 
 Assurance, A Triumphant 
 
 A Sufficiency for all Need 
 
 As we Sow, we Reap 
 
 A Triumphant Assurance 
 
 A Worthy Calling . 
 
 Bearing Fruit . 
 
 Beast, The Mark of the 
 
 *' Be careful for Nothing " 
 
 Beggar's Petition, The 
 
 Beloved Son, The . 
 
 Blessedness, The, and Honour of Helping Jesus Christ 
 
 Blessedness, The Christian Life one of Abiding 
 
 Blessedness, The, of a Right Choice 
 
 Blessedness, The, of Contact with the Suffering Christ 
 
 Blessed Unconsciousness . 
 
 Blessing, Reciprocal . . 
 
 Blind Man, Jesus and the 
 
 Blind, The, Watchers at the Cross 
 
 Blind to our own Faults . 
 
 Blood of Christ, The Significance of the 
 
 Blood of the Lamb, Victory through the 
 
 Book of Life, Names in the 
 
 Book of Life, The . 
 
 Breviary, A, of Christian Graces 
 
 Breadth, The, of the Love of Christ 
 
 Brightness, Progressive . 
 
 Brother, Our, in Heaven . 
 
 Bruised Reed Restored, The , 
 
 Call, A, to Faith and Obedience 
 
 " Called to be Saints " . 
 
 Calling, A Worthy . 
 
 Call, The Master's . 
 
 Captain, Our .... 
 
 Captain, The, of the Lord's Host 
 
 Causes, The, of Secret Discipleship 
 
 Character, Strength of 
 
 Charge, The, to the Temple Watchers 
 
 Choice, The Blessedness of a Right 
 
 Choice, The Responsible Power of 
 
 Christ, All Strength in 
 
 Christ Glorified in His Saints . 
 
 Christian Gladness . 
 
 Christian Graces, A Breviary of 
 
 Christian Ideal, The 
 
 Christianity, All Truth based upon 
 
 36S 
 
 297 
 238 
 187 
 
 94 
 18s 
 
 314 
 348 
 185 
 140 
 
 63 
 
 18 
 
 295 
 
 174 
 
 358 
 
 89 
 
 73 
 
 30 
 
 91 
 
 321 
 
 305 
 176 
 294 
 
 143 
 119 
 
 26 
 226 
 228 
 109 
 280 
 237 
 329 
 
 33 
 
 204 
 141 
 140 
 177 
 
 125 
 
 191 
 
 14 
 
 65 
 
 303 
 
 30 
 
 219 
 
 250 
 
 221 
 
 80 
 
 109 
 
 138 
 106 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Chr 
 Clir 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr: 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr: 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr: 
 Chr: 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr: 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr: 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr: 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 Chr 
 
 ous and Redeemins: Death 
 
 stian Joy a Duty 
 
 stian Life, The, one of Abiding Blessedness 
 
 stian Life, The, one of Steadfast Persistence 
 
 stian Life, The Purity and Beauty of the 
 
 stian Service Rewarded, The Humblest 
 
 stian, The Permanent Life of the 
 
 stian Living, All, a Showing Forth of Christ's Death 
 
 stian Self-possession . 
 
 St, In Remembrance of 
 
 stian's. The, Aim Ultimately Reached 
 
 stian's, The, Character 
 
 stian's. The, Consecration. 
 
 stian's, The, Direct Access to God 
 
 st, Our Narrow Vision of . 
 
 st's Coming and Men's Coming . 
 
 st's Coming to the World. — L . 
 
 st's Coming to the World. — II. . 
 
 st's Conflict, The Reward of 
 
 st's Incarnation in order to His Vicar 
 
 st's Own Claim .... 
 
 st's Unsought Love . 
 
 st's Voluntary Sufferings . 
 
 st's Yearning Compassion . 
 
 st. The Companion of the Lonely 
 
 St, The Exalted 
 
 st, The Faithful Love of the 
 
 st the Fosterer of Incipient and Impe: 
 
 st, The Indwelling . 
 
 st. The Indwelling Life of 
 The Loneliness of 
 The Love of the Departing . 
 The Rest of Finding 
 
 st. The Rule of . . . 
 
 st. The Seeking 
 
 st the True Object of our Endeavour 
 Citizenship in the Heavens 
 Clinging, Fleeing and . . , 
 Comforting God, The . • . 
 Communion, Service and 
 Communion with God 
 Companionship that Cheers, A 
 Companion, The, of the Lonely Christ 
 Compassion, Christ's Yearning 
 Conduct, The One Rule of 
 Confidence, A Good Reason for 
 Confidence, Triumphant . 
 Conscience, The Voice of 
 Consciousness of God's Presence, The 
 Consciousness, Rest and . 
 Consecration, The Chris'aan's . 
 Contemplation of God's Love to us, The 
 
 369 
 
 rfect 
 
 st, 
 st, 
 st. 
 
 Good 
 
 S7 
 
 73 
 72 
 66 
 90 
 
 74 
 6 
 
 306 
 
 I 
 
 355 
 
 53 
 
 56 
 
 54 
 
 248 
 
 272 
 
 268 
 
 269 
 
 151 
 360 
 246 
 202 
 312 
 218 
 
 313 
 
 328 
 
 336 
 
 34 
 
 9 
 
 69 
 
 310 
 
 334 
 289 
 
 57 
 201 
 
 29 
 225 
 267 
 207 
 304 
 324 
 323 
 313 
 218 
 
 139 
 79 
 251 
 265 
 129 
 
 lOI 
 
 56 
 46 
 
 BB 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Continuous Strength 
 
 Cost of the World, The Heavy 
 
 Costly and Fatal Help . 
 
 Courage, The Highest Type of 
 
 Courage Unwavering and Immovable 
 
 Covenant, The New 
 
 Covering Wing, The 
 
 Cross, The Blind Watchers at the 
 
 Cross, The, the Proof of God's Love 
 
 Crown of Service, The . 
 
 Cry from the Depths, The 
 
 Cup of Salvation, The 
 
 Cure for Anxiety, The 
 
 Cure of Secret Discipleship, The 
 
 Dark, A, Chamber in every Heart 
 
 Dark Fear, A . 
 
 Darkness, A Hope born in the 
 
 David, The Son of . 
 
 Dawn to Noon, From 
 
 Day, A Hope born of the • 
 
 Death and Growth . 
 
 Death and Life 
 
 Death, Faith Triumphant in . 
 
 Death, The Sleep of 
 
 Death, The Voice which Softens the Grimness of 
 
 Delight in God's Will . 
 
 Deliverance for the Captives 
 
 Depths, The Cry from the 
 
 Depth, The Height and, of the Love of Christ 
 
 Desire for God 
 
 "Despising the Shame" . 
 
 Despondency, The Antidote to aU 
 
 Detachment from Old Associations 
 
 Dew of God's Grace, The 
 
 Direct Access to God, The Christian's 
 
 Disciple as his Lord, The 
 
 Discipleship, Secret 
 
 Discipleship, The Causes of Secret 
 
 Discipleship, The Cure of Secret 
 
 Discipleship, The Miseries of Secret 
 
 Discipline, A Father's 
 
 DiscipHne, The Guiding Principle of Christian 
 
 Divine Host, The, and the Human Guests 
 
 Divine-Human Saviour, The . 
 
 Divine Individualising Knowledge and Care 
 
 Divine Indweller, The 
 
 Divine Redeemer, The 
 
 Divine Warrant, Our 
 
 Divine Wisdom 
 
 Doing Nothing, Lost by 
 
 370 
 
 PAGE 
 
 210 
 
 286 
 112 
 III 
 167 
 186 
 294 
 42 
 
 52 
 92 
 
 297 
 17 
 
 36 
 
 93 
 35<3 
 175 
 239 
 357 
 283 
 116 
 260 
 103 
 
 3^7 
 169 
 123 
 92 
 282 
 130 
 158 
 206 
 
 354 
 
 63 
 
 54 
 
 231 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 17 
 
 16 
 
 299 
 
 301 
 
 309 
 
 335 
 
 227 
 
 341 
 107 
 188 
 127 
 60 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Do you know Jesus ? 
 Dwelling in God's House 
 
 Earthly Setting, The, the Brighter Rising 
 
 Efifort, A Glorious . 
 
 Empire of Fear, The 
 
 Endeavour, Christ the True Object of our 
 
 Enthusiasm for Righteousness 
 
 Evil Eye, The 
 
 Exaltation above Worldly Good 
 
 Expulsion of Fear, The . 
 
 Eye, The Evil 
 
 Faint, Power for the 
 
 Faith and Obedience, A Call to 
 
 Faithfulness, God's . 
 
 Faithfulness, Mercy and . 
 
 Faith, Joy the Result of . 
 
 Faith, Repentance and . 
 
 Faith's Vision . 
 
 Faith, The Attachments of 
 
 Faith, The Detachments of 
 
 Faith the Path to Glory . 
 
 Faith Triumphant in Death 
 
 False Worship 
 
 Familiarisation of Habit . 
 
 Fascinating Influences of the World, The 
 
 Fatherhood and Sonship . 
 
 Father's Discipline, A 
 
 Faults, Blind to our Own 
 
 Fear, A Dark . 
 
 Fear God 
 
 Fear, Hope and 
 
 " Fear not, only Believe " 
 
 Fear, The Empire of 
 
 Fear, The Expulsion of . 
 
 Fear, The Mission of 
 
 Finding, Seeking and 
 
 Fleeing and Clinging 
 
 Flesh, The Power of the 
 
 "Follow Me" 
 
 Following Afar Off . 
 
 Forgiveness, The Peace of 
 
 For His Sake 
 
 For His Sake 
 
 Forerunner, Jesus the 
 
 Freedom and Blessedness of Christ's Service, The 
 
 Friend of God, The 
 
 Friendship, A Mutual 
 
 Friendship, Mutual , 
 
 From Dawn to Noon 
 
 371 
 
 PAGE 
 249 
 
 240 
 
 47 
 148 
 
 29 
 114 
 25s 
 113 
 151 
 25s 
 
 208 
 
 204 
 
 20 
 
 21 
 
 82 
 
 ^73 
 
 258 
 
 257 
 259 
 224 
 260 
 
 38 
 
 144 
 
 253 
 43 
 299 
 143 
 93 
 149 
 316 
 
 315 
 
 148 
 
 151 
 
 150 
 200 
 267 
 
 254 
 203 
 
 325 
 122 
 
 98 
 
 215 
 126 
 
 171 
 
 241 
 
 243 
 120 
 
 239 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Fruit, Bearing .... 
 
 Fulness of God's Supply, The 
 
 Future Anticipation 
 
 Future, Our Unrevealed 
 
 Future, The Present the Prophecy of the 
 
 Future, The, the Perfecting of the Present 
 
 Future Unknown, The . 
 
 Gift of the Spirit, The . 
 
 Gift, The, which enhances Joy 
 
 "Gird up your Loins" . 
 
 Giving, God's Method of 
 
 Gladness, Chiistian 
 
 Glass, The Sea of . 
 
 Glory, Faith the Path to 
 
 God, Acquaintance with . 
 
 *' God Buries His Workmen, and carries on 
 
 God, Communion with 
 
 God, Desire for . . . 
 
 God, Fear .... 
 
 God, Guests of . . . 
 V-God guides His People into Work 
 
 God, Knowing 
 
 God leads His Sheep into Rest 
 
 God Manifest in the Flesh 
 
 God, Myself for . 
 
 God, Our Incomplete Possession of 
 
 God proves His own Love 
 
 God's Answer to the Soul's Cry 
 
 God's Boundless Riches . 
 
 God's Correction, The Aim of all 
 
 God's Faithfulness . 
 
 God's Familiarity with His Friends 
 
 God's Gift of Himself to us 
 
 God's Grace, The Dew of 
 
 God's Great Desire . 
 
 God, Sin and .... 
 
 God's Inexhaustible Mercy 
 
 God's Love deeper than our Sins 
 
 God's Love Demonstrated 
 
 God's Love, The Proof of 
 
 God's Love to us, The Contemplation of 
 
 God's Method of Giving . 
 v/ God's Presence, The Consciousness of 
 
 God's Promise of Grace . 
 
 God's Supply, The Fulness of . 
 
 God's Wing, Sheltering beneath 
 
 God's Writing on the Heart 
 
 God's Word, the Ultimate Purpose of 
 
 God, The (Comforting 
 
 God, The Friend of 
 
 H 
 
 Work " 
 
 63 
 
 276 
 
 364 
 
 365 
 2 
 
 347 
 366 
 
 153 
 
 ^3 
 
 59 
 
 244 
 
 80 
 
 22 
 
 224 
 
 181 
 
 284 
 
 324 
 130 
 
 149 
 133 
 292 
 180 
 
 291 
 
 245 
 165 
 
 345 
 108 
 
 327 
 343 
 302 
 20 
 242 
 
 163 
 68 
 
 145 
 
 135 
 
 95 
 
 216 
 
 105 
 97 
 46 
 
 2-14 
 129 
 
 67 
 276 
 
 2'; 
 16S 
 263 
 207 
 241 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 God, The Mercy of 19 
 
 God, The Righteousness of 23 
 
 God, The Soul longing for 273 
 
 God, The True Source of the Knowledge of 184 
 
 God, Union with .......... 132 
 
 God, Worship 39 
 
 Good Reason for Confidence, A 79 
 
 Government of Self, The 55 
 
 Grace, Miracles of ......... . 223 
 
 Grace, The Dew of God's ........ 68 
 
 Gratitude of Redeemed Souls, The ....... 78 
 
 Greatness of Trifles, The ........ 88 
 
 Greatness, True . . . . . . . . . .110 
 
 Growth, Death and 283 
 
 Guests of God. . • 133 
 
 Habit, Familiarisation of. . . . . . . . . 144 
 
 Healer and the Healed, The 179 
 
 Heaven, Our Brother in ........ . 329 
 
 Heavy Cost of the World, The ....... 5 
 
 " He endured the Cross" 156 
 
 Height and Depth of the Love of Christ, The 2S2 
 
 Help, Costly and Fatal 286 
 
 Helper of the Saints, The Ever-active 332 
 
 Helper, The One 96 
 
 Helping Jesus Christ, The Blessedness and Honour of . . .89 
 
 Hesitating to Follow Cririst ........ 205 
 
 He will never leave us ......... 61 
 
 Hidden from the Wise and Prudent . . . . . . .11 
 
 Hieroglyphics, Imperishable . . . . . . . "37 
 
 Holy Spirit of Promise, The ........ 344 
 
 Hope and Fear 316 
 
 Hope Born in the Darkness, A 356 
 
 Hope Born of the Day, A ....... . 357 
 
 Hope, Memory and ......... 163 
 
 Hope, The Discipline of. • . . . . . . .212 
 
 Hope, The Grace of ........ . 214 
 
 Hope, The Object of Christian ....... 213 
 
 Hope, The Perfection of . . . . • . . . .211 
 
 Host and Guest in One ......... 220 
 
 Host, The Divine, and the Human Guests ..... 309 
 
 House, Dwelling in God's ........ 131 
 
 How to get Wisdom ......... 12S 
 
 How to Obey an Apparently Impossible Injunction .... 296 
 
 Human Guests, The Divine Host and the ..... 309 
 
 Human Remedies for Sin Unavailing ...... 198 
 
 Humblest Christian Service Rewarded, The ..... 90 
 
 Ideal, The Christian ••......• 138 
 
 *' /have Sinned" ... ....•• 195 
 
 373 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Impassable Gulf, The, between Christianity and other Religious 
 
 Systems ..... 
 Imperishable Hieroglyphics . . 
 Incompleteness of Scripture, The . 
 Individual Responsibility . . • 
 Indwelling, A Mutual . . . 
 Indwelling Christ, The . , • 
 Indwelling Life of Christ, The . 
 In Remembrance of Christ 
 Interrupted Lives, Arrested Development 
 Invitation, The Wonderful 
 Is Christ's Death a Real Benefit to me ? 
 *' Is my Name Written There?" 
 Isolations, Life's .... 
 " It is the Lord " .... 
 *' It passeth Knowledge" . • 
 
 Ittai of Oath . . . • • 
 
 Jesus and the Blind Man . 
 
 Jesus Christ, Self-abnegation before . 
 
 Jesus Christ, The Blessedness and Honour of Helpin 
 
 Jesus Christ, The Ever-present Love of 
 
 Jesus ? Do you know 
 
 Jesus, Sleeping through . 
 
 Jesus the Forerunner 
 
 Joy, Christian, a Duty 
 
 Joy, The Gift which enhances 
 
 Joy, The Perfect, of a Present Salvation 
 
 Joy the Result of Faith . 
 
 Joy Unspeakable and Full of Glory . 
 
 Knowing God 
 
 Knowledge and Love 
 
 Knowledge, It passeth 
 
 Knowledge of God, The Source of the True 
 
 Law, The All-comprehensive . 
 
 Law of Life, The 
 
 Leader, Our, in the World's Warfare 
 
 Length of Christ's Love, The . 
 
 Life, Death and 
 
 Life-giving Word of Power, A . 
 
 Life of Christ, The Indwelling 
 
 Life's Isolations 
 
 Life, The Book of . 
 
 Life, The Law of . 
 
 Lifted to the High Level. 
 
 Loneliness of Christ, The 
 
 Longing for God, The Soul . 
 
 Lord that healeth thee, The 
 
 Lost by doing Nothing 
 
 374 
 
 170 
 
 262 
 
 183 
 
 71 
 
 9 
 
 69 
 
 I 
 
 238 
 
 270 
 
 99 
 229 
 
 311 
 232 
 
 32 
 
 31 
 
 176 
 
 115 
 89 
 
 75 
 249 
 
 ICX) 
 
 126 
 87 
 83 
 84 
 82 
 81 
 
 I So 
 
 7 
 
 32 
 
 184 
 
 142 
 
 137 
 192 
 281 
 116 
 318 
 69 
 
 3" 
 228 
 
 137 
 209 
 310 
 
 273 
 
 199 
 
 60 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Love, Christ's Unsought . 
 
 Love, God proves His own 
 
 Love, God's, Deeper than our Sins 
 
 Love, Knowledge and 
 
 Love of Christ, The All-granting 
 
 Love of Christ, The Breadth of the 
 
 Love of Christ, The Height and Depth of 
 
 Love of the Christ, The Faithful 
 
 Love of the Christ, The INIanifested 
 
 Love of the Christ, The Unchilled 
 
 Love of the Departing Christ, The 
 
 Love, Peter's Penitent. — L 
 
 Love, Peter's Penitent. — II. . 
 
 Love's Measure, The Paradox of 
 
 Love that is Given, The . 
 
 Love that Shrinks from no Sacrifice. 
 
 Love, The Cross the Proof of God's 
 
 Love, The Length of Christ's . 
 
 Love, The Proof of God's 
 
 Love, The Sanctity of 
 
 Love, The True Object of 
 
 Manhood, Our Lord's Perfect . 
 
 Manifested Love of the Christ, The 
 
 Mark of the Beast, The . 
 
 Master's Call, The . 
 
 Memorials of Victory . 
 
 Memory and Hope . . 
 
 Mercy, A Message of 
 
 Mercy and Faithfulness . 
 
 Mercy, God's Inexhaustible 
 
 Mercy of God, The 
 
 Message of Mercy, A 
 
 Might, Strengthened with all . 
 
 Miracles of Grace . 
 
 Misdirected Zeal 
 
 Miseries of Secret Discipleship, The, 
 
 Mission of Fear, The 
 
 Mission of Persecution, The 
 
 Mutual Friendship . 
 
 Mutual Friendship, A 
 
 Mutual Indwelling, A . , 
 
 Myself for God 
 
 Names in the Book of Life 
 
 Natural, The, a Type of the Spiritual 
 
 Need, A Sufficiency for all 
 
 Need of a Divine Revelation, The 
 
 New Covenant, The 
 
 New Name, A, and a New Nature 
 
 New Nature, A New Name and a 
 
 375 
 
 tne 
 
 PAGE 
 202 
 
 io8 
 
 2l6 
 
 7 
 178 
 280 
 282 
 
 336 
 12 
 76 
 
 334 
 48 
 
 49 
 279 
 
 41 
 104 
 
 42 
 281 
 
 97 
 
 8 
 
 24 
 
 35 
 
 12 
 
 18 
 
 177 
 
 235 
 
 162 
 
 146 
 
 21 
 
 95 
 
 19 
 
 146 
 
 242 
 
 223 
 
 27 
 
 16 
 
 150 
 308 
 120 
 243 
 71 
 165 
 
 226 
 
 45 
 314 
 147 
 167 
 
 233 
 233 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 New, The, and the Living Way 
 
 •* No Cross, No Crown " 
 
 *' Now is the Accepted Time " 
 
 Obedience, A Call to Faith and 
 
 Object of Love, the True 
 
 Object of our Endeavour, Christ the True 
 
 One Helper, The .... 
 
 One Rule of Conduct, The 
 
 Our Ally in our Warfsire with Ourselves 
 
 Our Brother in Heaven . 
 
 Our Captain ..... 
 
 Our Commander's and Our Triumph 
 
 Our Divine Warrant 
 
 Our God for Ever and Ever 
 
 Our Incomplete Possession of God . 
 
 Our Insignificant and Unfinished Work 
 
 Our Interceding Priest 
 
 Our Leader in the World's Warfare . 
 
 Our Lord's Divine Nature 
 
 Our Lord's Perfect Manhood 
 
 Our Narrow Vision of Christ 
 
 Our Relation to our Lord 
 
 Our Sonship no Pmipty Title 
 
 Our Unrevealed Future . 
 
 Paradox of Love's Measure, The 
 
 Pardon, Vengeance and , 
 
 Path of Suffering, The 
 
 Patient Teacher, The, and the Slow Scholars 
 
 Paul's Life's Work, The Spirit oi . 
 
 Peace of Forgiveness, The 
 
 Pentecost, The Promise of the . 
 
 Perfect Joy of a Present Salvation, The 
 
 Perfect Likeness, The Perlect Vision and the 
 
 Perfect Manhood, Our Lord's 
 
 Perfect Vision, The, and the Perfect Likeness 
 
 Permanent Life of the Christian, The 
 
 Persecution for Christ's Sake 
 
 Persecution, The Mission of 
 
 Peter's Love a Type of ours 
 
 Peter's Penitent Love. — I. 
 
 Peter's Peniient Love. — II. 
 
 Petition, The Beggar's 
 
 Power, A Life-giving Word of 
 
 Power for the Faint. 
 
 Power for Service, Unconscious 
 
 Power from on High 
 
 Prayer, Transformation through 
 
 Present Salvation, The Perfect Joy of a 
 
 Present, The Future the Perfecting of the 
 
 376 
 
 PAGE 
 124 
 
 320 
 
 204 
 
 24 
 29 
 96 
 
 193 
 329 
 125 
 
 188 
 164 
 
 345 
 285 
 
 331 
 192 
 
 85 
 
 35 
 248 
 
 4 
 
 44 
 
 365 
 
 279 
 117 
 
 155 
 247 
 236 
 122 
 152 
 84 
 121 
 
 35 
 121 
 
 74 
 230 
 
 308 
 
 50 
 
 48 
 
 49 
 
 174 
 
 318 
 
 208 
 
 28 
 
 340 
 
 351 
 
 84 
 
 347 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Present, The Imperfect .... 
 
 Present, The, the Prophecy of the Future 
 
 Priest, Our Interceding . 
 
 Progressive Brightness 
 
 Promise of Grace, God's . . , 
 
 Promise of the Pentecost, The . 
 
 Proof of God's Love, The 
 
 Proof of God's Love, The Cross the . 
 
 Pupilage, The Saints' 
 
 Purity and Beauty of the Christian Life, The 
 
 Reasons for Unfaithfulness 
 Reciprocal Blessing .... 
 Redeemed Souls, The Gratitude of . 
 Redeemed, The Royalty of the 
 Redeemer, The Divine . 
 Refuge of the Devout Soul, The 
 Refuge that you Need, The 
 Refuge, You Need a . , . 
 Relation to our Lord, Our , 
 Religion, Whole-hearted . 
 Remember and be Thankful . 
 Remember and Repent . . 
 Remembrance of Christ, In 
 Repentance and Faith 
 Responsibility, Individual . . 
 Rest and Consciousness . . 
 
 Rest and Rule 
 
 Rest, God leads His Sheep into , 
 
 Rest of Finding Christ, The 
 
 Revelation, The Need of a Divine . 
 
 Reward of Christ's Conflict, The 
 
 Riches, God's Boundless . 
 
 Right Choice, The Blessedness of a . 
 
 Righteousness, Enthusiasm for 
 
 Righteousness of God, The . , 
 
 Royalty of the Redeemed, The 
 
 Rule of Christ, The 
 
 Rule, Rest and .... 
 
 Saint's Gift to his Lord, The . 
 Saints, The Ever-active Helper of the 
 Saints' Pupilage, The 
 Salvation, The Cup of . 
 Salvation, The Perfect Joy of a Present 
 Sanctity of Love, The 
 Satisfied Soul still Seeking, The 
 Satisfied, The Longing Soul . 
 Saul and Paul ..... 
 Saviour, The Divine-Human • . 
 Saviour, The Resting . . 
 
 377 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2 
 340 
 
 67 
 
 97 
 
 42 
 
 300 
 
 66 
 
 15 
 
 305 
 78 
 
 58 
 107 
 326 
 266 
 264 
 
 4 
 287 
 362 
 
 363 
 I 
 
 173 
 
 1S3 
 
 lOI 
 
 161 
 
 291 
 
 289 
 
 147 
 
 154 
 
 343 
 
 30 
 
 114 
 
 23 
 
 58 
 
 57 
 
 161 
 
 166 
 
 332 
 
 300 
 
 350 
 84 
 8 
 277 
 27s 
 234 
 335 
 330 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Scripture, The Incompleteness of 
 
 Scripture, The Silence of 
 
 Sea of Glass, The . 
 
 Search that always Finds, The 
 
 Secret Uiscipleship . 
 
 Secret Discipleship, The Causes of 
 
 Secret Discipleship, The Cure of 
 
 Secret Discipleship, The Miseries of 
 
 Seeking and Finding 
 
 Seeking Christ, The 
 
 Self-abnegation before Jesus Christ 
 
 Self-possession, Christian 
 
 Self, The Government of. 
 
 Service and Communion . 
 
 Service, The Crown of . 
 
 Service, The Incarnation in order to a Life of 
 
 Service, Unconscious Power for 
 
 Service with which Love is Honoured, The 
 
 Shelter from the Storm, A 
 
 Sheltering beneath's God's Wing 
 
 Shepherd- King, The 
 
 Shepherd's Love for the Scattered Flock, The 
 
 Significance of the Blood of Christ, The 
 
 Silence of Scripture, The 
 
 Sin and God . 
 
 Sin of Sins, The 
 
 Sin, The Tyranny of 
 
 Sin, True and False Sorrow for 
 
 Sleeping through Jesus 
 
 Sleep of Death, The 
 
 Son of David, The 
 
 Sonship, Fatherhood and 
 
 Sonship, Our, no Empty Title 
 
 Son, The Beloved . 
 
 Sorrow according to God 
 
 Sorrow for Sin, True and False 
 
 Sorrow, The Path of 
 
 Souls, The Gratitude of Redeemed 
 
 Soul, The Habitual Desire of the 
 
 Soul, The, longing for God 
 
 Soul, The Longing, Satisfied . 
 
 Soul, The Satisfied, still Longing 
 
 Source of the True Knowledge of God, The 
 
 Spirit of Might, The Possession of the 
 
 Spirit of Paul's Life's Work, The 
 
 Spirit, The Gift of the . 
 
 S})irit, The Holy, of Promise . 
 
 Spiritual Declension and Change 
 
 Spiritual, The Natural a Type of the 
 
 Steadfast Persistence, The Christian Life one of 
 
 Strength, All, in Christ 
 
 378 
 
 PAGE 
 
 262 
 
 261 
 
 22 
 
 288 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 17 
 
 16 
 
 200 
 
 201 
 
 306 
 
 55 
 
 304 
 52 
 
 359 
 
 28 
 
 51 
 187 
 
 25 
 
 290 
 
 338 
 119 
 261 
 
 135 
 86 
 
 n 
 134 
 100 
 103 
 
 175 
 
 43 
 
 44 
 
 35^ 
 
 13'^ 
 
 ■)j 
 
 70 
 
 274 
 
 275 
 277 
 184 
 
 339 
 236 
 
 153 
 
 3!4 
 252 
 
 45 
 72 
 
 64 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Strength, Continuous 
 Strengthened with all Might . 
 Strength of Character 
 Substance, A Better and an Enduring 
 Sufferings, Christ's Voluntary . 
 Suffering, The Path of . 
 Sufficiency for all Need, A 
 
 Thanksgiving an Antidote of Care . 
 The Aim of all God's Correction 
 The All-comprehensive Law . 
 The All-granting Love of Christ 
 
 The Amulet 
 
 The Angel of the Lord . 
 
 The Antidote to all Despondency . 
 
 The Attachments of Faith 
 
 The Beggar's Petition 
 
 The Beloved Son .... 
 
 The Blessedness and Honour of Helping Jesus Christ 
 
 The Blessedness of a Right Choice 
 
 The Blessedness of Contact with the Suffering Christ 
 
 The Blind Watchers at the Cross 
 
 The Book of Life .... 
 
 The Breadth of the Love of Christ . 
 
 The Bruised Reed Restored 
 
 The Captain of the Lord's Host 
 
 The Causes of Secret Discipleship . 
 
 The Certainty of Victory . 
 
 The Charge to the Temple Watchers 
 
 The Christ at the Door . 
 
 The Christian Aim Ultimately Realised 
 
 The Christian Ideal 
 
 The Christian Life one of Abiding Blessedness 
 
 The Christian Life one of Steadfast Persistence 
 
 The Christian's Character 
 
 The Christian's Consecration . 
 
 The Christian's Direct Access to God 
 
 The Comforting God 
 
 The Companion of the Lonely Christ 
 
 The Consciousness of God's Presence 
 
 The Covering Wing 
 
 The Cross the Proof of God's Love . 
 
 The Crown of Service 
 
 The Cry from the Depths 
 
 The Cup of Salvation 
 
 The Cure for Anxiety 
 
 The Cure of Secret Discipleship 
 
 The Detachments of Faith 
 
 The Dew of God's Grace . 
 
 The Disciple as his Lord . 
 
 The Discipline of Plope . 
 
 ^70 
 
 PAGE 
 2IO 
 
 312 
 
 314 
 
 298 
 302 
 142 
 178 
 256 
 189 
 206 
 
 174 
 
 358 
 
 89 
 
 30 
 
 91 
 
 294 
 
 228 
 
 280 
 
 33 
 191 
 
 14 
 278 
 
 303 
 217 
 
 355 
 138 
 
 73 
 72 
 
 53 
 56 
 
 54 
 207 
 
 313 
 
 129 
 
 186 
 
 42 
 
 52 
 92 
 
 350 
 297 
 
 17 
 
 259 
 
 68 
 
 231 
 
 212 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 The Divine Host and the Human Guests 
 
 The Divine-Human Saviour 
 
 The Divine Indweller 
 
 The Divine Redeemer 
 
 The Earthly Setting, the Brighter Rising 
 
 The Empire of Fear 
 
 The Ever-active Helper of the Saints 
 
 The Ever-present Love of Jesus Christ 
 
 The Evil Eye 
 
 The Exalted Christ .... 
 
 The Expulsion of Fear 
 
 The Faithful Love of the Christ 
 
 The Fascinating Influences of the World 
 
 The Freedom and Blessedness of Christ's Service 
 
 The Friend of God 
 
 The Fulness of God's Supply . 
 
 The Future the Perfecting of the Present 
 
 The Future Unknown ..... 
 
 The Gift of the Spirit .... 
 
 The Gift which enhances Joy . , , 
 
 The Grace of Hope .... 
 
 The Gradual Extinction of God's Light in the Soul 
 
 The Gratitude of Redeemed Souls . 
 
 The Great Alternative .... 
 
 The Greatness of Trifles .... 
 
 The Guiding Principle of Christian Discipline 
 
 The Habitual Desire of the Soul 
 
 The Healer and the Healed 
 
 The Heavy Cost of the World 
 
 The Height and Depth of the Love of Christ 
 
 The Highest Type of Courage . 
 
 The Holy Spirit of Promise 
 
 The Humblest Christian Service Rewarded 
 
 The Impassable Gulf between Christianity and other Religious Systems 
 
 The Imperfect Present .... 
 
 The Incarnation in order to a Life of Service 
 
 The Incompleteness of Scripture 
 
 The Indwelling Christ . . . 
 
 The Indwelling Life of Christ . 
 
 The Law of Life .... 
 
 The Length of Christ's Love . • 
 
 The Loneliness of Christ • , 
 
 The Longing Soul Satisfied . . 
 
 The Lord that healeth thee 
 
 The Love of the Departing Christ . 
 
 The Love that is Given . 
 
 The Manifold Love of the Christ , 
 
 The Mark of the Beast . 
 
 The Master's Call .... 
 
 The Mercy of God .... 
 
 The Miseries of Secret Discipleship. 
 
 380 
 
 PAGE 
 
 335 
 341 
 107 
 
 240 
 148 
 332 
 75 
 255 
 328 
 151 
 336 
 253 
 171 
 241 
 276 
 
 347 
 366 
 
 153 
 
 ^3 
 214 
 
 62 
 
 78 
 319 
 
 88 
 301 
 274 
 179 
 
 5 
 
 282 
 112 
 
 344 
 
 90 
 
 170 
 
 346 
 
 359 
 262 
 
 9 
 
 69 
 
 137 
 281 
 
 310 
 
 275 
 199 
 
 334 
 41 
 12 
 iS 
 
 177 
 19 
 16 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 The Mission of Fear .... 
 
 The Mission of Persecution 
 
 "Them that Sleep" . . . 
 
 The Natural a Type of the Spiritual 
 
 The Need of a Definite Aim in Life. — I. 
 
 The Need of a Definite Aim in Life. — IL 
 
 The Need of a Divine Revelation 
 
 The New and the Living Way . 
 
 The New Covenant ..... 
 
 The Object of Christian Hope 
 
 The One Helper ..... 
 
 The One Rule of Conduct . . 
 
 The Paradox of Love's Measure 
 
 The Path of Sorrow .... 
 
 The Path of Suffering .... 
 
 The Patient Teacher and the Slow Scholars 
 
 The Peace of Forgiveness 
 
 The Perfect Joy of a Present Salvation . 
 
 The Perfection of Hope .... 
 
 The Perfect Vision and the Perfect Likeness 
 
 The Permanent Life of the Christian 
 
 The Possession of the Spirit of Might 
 
 The Power of the Flesh .... 
 
 The Present the Prophecy of the Future . 
 
 The Promise of the Pentecost . 
 
 The Proof of God's Love 
 
 The Purity and Beauty of the Christian Life 
 
 The Refuge of the Devout Soul 
 
 The Refuge that you Need . . 
 
 The Responsible Power of Choice . 
 
 The Resting Saviour 
 
 The Rest of Finding Christ 
 
 The Reward of Christ's Conflict 
 
 The Righteousness of God 
 
 The Royalty of the Redeemed , 
 
 The Rule of Christ . 
 
 The Saint's Gift to his Lord 
 
 The Saints' Pupilage 
 
 The Sanctity of Love 
 
 The Satisfied Soul still Seeking 
 
 The Sea of Glass 
 
 The Search that always Finds 
 
 The Seeking Christ . 
 
 The Service with which Love is Honoured 
 
 The Shepherd- King .... 
 
 The Shepherd's Love for the Scattered Flock 
 
 The Significance of the Blood of Christ . 
 
 The Silence of Scripture .... 
 
 The Sin of Sins . • . . . 
 
 The Sleep of Death «... 
 
 The Son of David 
 
 PAGE 
 
 150 
 
 308 
 102 
 
 45 
 352 
 353 
 147 
 124 
 167 
 213 
 
 96 
 
 139 
 279 
 
 293 
 155 
 247 
 122 
 
 84 
 211 
 121 
 
 74 
 
 339 
 
 254 
 
 2 
 
 152 
 97 
 66 
 326 
 266 
 219 
 330 
 289 
 
 154 
 
 23 
 
 58 
 
 57 
 
 166 
 
 300 
 
 8 
 
 277 
 
 22 
 
 288 
 
 201 
 
 51 
 
 290 
 
 338 
 119 
 261 
 86 
 103 
 
 175 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 The Soul Longing for God 
 
 The Source of the True Knowledge of God 
 
 The Spirit of Paul's Life's Work 
 
 The Three-headed Evil Thing. — I. . 
 
 The Three-headed Evil Thing. — IL 
 
 The True 01)ject of Love 
 
 The Two Voices ..... 
 
 The Tyranny of Sin .... 
 
 The Ultimate Purpose of God's Word 
 
 The Unchilled Love of the Christ . 
 
 The Voice of Conscience .... 
 
 The Voice which softens the Grimness of Deat 
 
 The Wonderful Invitation 
 
 The Word of the Lord 
 
 Thou God Seest Me 
 
 To-day . 
 
 To the Uttermost . 
 
 Tragic Unconsciousness 
 
 Transformation through Prayer 
 
 Trifles, The Greatness of . . . 
 
 Triumphant Confidence .... 
 
 Triumph, Our Commander's and our 
 
 True and False Sorrow for Sin 
 
 True Greatness ..... 
 
 Tyranny of Sin, The .... 
 
 Ultimate, The, Purpose of God's Word . 
 Unchilled Love of the Christ, The . 
 Unconsciousness, Blessed. 
 Unconsciousness, Tragic .... 
 Unconscious Pov/er for Service. 
 Unfaithfulness, Reasons for . 
 Union with God ..... 
 Uttermost, To the 
 
 Vengeance and Pardon .... 
 Victory, Memorials of ... . 
 Victory, The Certainty of . . . 
 
 Victory through the Blood of the Lamb . 
 Vision, Faith's ..... 
 
 Vision, The Perfect, and the Perfect Likeness 
 Voice of Conscience, The 
 Voices, The Two ..... 
 Voice, The, which softens the Grimness of De 
 
 Watchfulness .... 
 
 Watchfulness and Work . 
 
 Way, The New and the Living 
 
 What Laits ! . 
 
 "Whall shall I Render?" 
 
 " What wilt Thou have me to do ?" 
 
 th 
 
 273 
 184 
 236 
 196 
 197 
 24 
 118 
 
 77 
 263 
 
 76 
 
 265 
 
 317 
 
 270 
 
 190 
 
 40 
 
 3 
 
 337 
 322 
 
 351 
 
 88 
 
 251 
 159 
 134 
 no 
 
 77 
 
 263 
 
 76 
 
 321 
 
 322 
 
 28 
 
 IS 
 
 132 
 
 337 
 
 117 
 
 23s 
 
 278 
 
 26 
 
 258 
 121 
 265 
 118 
 
 3^7 
 
 361 
 160 
 124 
 333 
 3i9 
 172 
 
 38: 
 
SUBJECT INDEX 
 
 Whole-hearted Religion 
 
 Who is your King ? . 
 
 " Whosoever Will " 
 
 Wing, The Covering 
 
 Wisdom, Divine 
 
 Wisdom, How to get 
 
 Wise and Prudent, Hidden from the 
 
 Wonderful Invitation, The 
 
 Word of the Lord, The . 
 
 Word, The Ultimate Purpose of God's 
 
 Work, God guides His People into . 
 
 Work, Our Insignificant and Incomplete 
 
 Work, Watchfulness and . 
 
 World, Christ's Coming to the. — I. . 
 
 World, Christ's Coming to the.— II. 
 
 Worldly Good, Exaltation above 
 
 World, The Fascinating Influences of the 
 
 World, The Heavy Cost of the 
 
 Worship God 
 
 " Ye are My Witnesses " . • 
 You Need a Refuge . c . 
 
 
 Zeal, Misdirected 
 
 PAGE 
 
 287 
 
 10 
 
 271 
 
 1 86 
 127 
 128 
 II 
 270 
 190 
 263 
 
 2Q2 
 285 
 160 
 268 
 269 
 
 "3 
 
 253 
 
 5 
 
 39 
 
 222 
 264 
 
 27 
 
 ^^3 
 
TEXTUAL INDEX 
 
 Genesis. 
 
 IV. lO 
 
 xii. 2 
 
 xii. 5 
 
 xvi. 13 
 
 xviii. 17 
 
 xxvi. 24 
 
 Exodus. 
 
 i. 6, 7 
 
 X. 26 . 
 
 XV. 26 . 
 
 XXV. 22 . 
 
 xxxiii. II . 
 xxxiv. 29 . 
 
 Deuteronomy. 
 
 yii. 9 , 
 viii. 2 
 xxxii. 31 . 
 
 Joshua. 
 
 Y. 14 
 
 xxiv. 15 
 
 • • 
 
 Judges. 
 
 XVI. 20 , . • 
 
 2 Samuel. 
 
 xii. 5-7 . 
 
 xii. 13 . 
 
 XV. 21 . 
 
 I Kings. 
 xviii. 21 . . . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1x8 
 
 305 
 
 352 
 
 40 
 
 242 
 
 316 
 
 . 283 
 
 . 28 
 
 • 199 
 
 . 289 
 
 . 243 
 
 . 321 
 
 . 188 
 . 362 
 
 . 170 
 
 191 
 
 10 
 
 2 Kings. 
 
 322 
 
 . 143 
 . 136 
 
 . 31 
 
 319 
 
 xvu. 9 
 
 I Chronicles. 
 
 XVI. 29 
 xxix. 5 
 xxix. 28 
 
 2 Chronicles. 
 
 XV. 15 . 
 xxviii. 23 . 
 
 iv. 8 . 
 
 xi. 8, 9 
 
 xxii. 21 . 
 
 Job. 
 
 Psalms. 
 
 XVl. II 
 
 xvii. 15 
 xyii. 15 
 xxiii. 
 xxiii. 
 xxiii. 
 xxiii. 
 xxiii. 
 xxiii. 
 xxvii. 
 xxxiv. 
 xxxvi. 
 xxxvi. 
 xxxvi. 
 xxxvi. 8 
 xl. 8 
 xl. 17 
 xlvi. I 
 1. 23 
 
 PAGE 
 16 
 
 39 
 
 28s 
 
 287 
 286 
 
 . 348 
 
 12 
 
 . 181 
 
 84 
 
 lOI 
 
 121 
 290 
 291 
 292 
 293 
 309 
 129 
 
 133 
 189 
 
 19 
 20 
 
 25 
 
 276 
 169 
 
 314 
 
 96 
 
 304 
 
 384 
 
TEXTUAL INDEX 
 
 Isaiah. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 li. 4 . 
 
 
 
 . 195 
 
 ii. 8 . 
 
 
 
 
 38 
 
 li. 17 . 
 
 
 
 , 146 
 
 vii. 15 . 
 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 lii. 8 . 
 
 
 
 . 63 
 
 xii 3 . 
 
 
 
 
 80 
 
 Ixiii. I 
 
 
 
 . 273 
 
 XXV. 4 . 
 
 
 
 
 ► 266 
 
 Ixiii. 2 . 
 
 
 
 . 274 
 
 xxxii. 2 
 
 
 
 
 . 187 
 
 Ixiii. 3-5 . 
 
 
 
 . 275 
 
 xxxii. 17 , 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 Ixiii. 8 . 
 
 
 
 . 277 
 
 xxxiii. 21 . 
 
 
 
 
 . 280 
 
 Ixiii. 9- 1 1 
 
 
 
 . 278 
 
 XXXV. 6 . 
 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 Ixv. 4 . 
 
 
 
 . 130 
 
 xl. I . 
 
 
 
 
 . 207 
 
 Ixviii. 18 . 
 
 
 
 • 332 
 
 xl. 28 
 
 
 
 
 , 206 
 
 Ixxvii. 3 , 
 
 
 
 , 265 
 
 xl. 29-3 
 
 I . 
 
 
 
 208 
 
 Ixxxiv. 7 . 
 
 
 
 , 209 
 
 xlii. 3 . 
 
 
 
 
 33 
 
 xci. 4 . 
 
 
 
 . 186 
 
 xlii. 3 
 
 
 
 
 34 
 
 xci. 9 . 
 
 
 
 . 326 
 
 xlii. 4 , 
 
 
 
 
 . 35 
 
 xci. 9, 10 
 
 
 
 . 185 
 
 xliii. I . 
 
 
 
 
 , 227 
 
 xcii. 2 . 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 xlix. 4 , 
 
 
 
 
 . 284 
 
 ciii. 17 . 
 
 
 
 . 281 
 
 1. 10 
 
 
 
 
 . 148 
 
 cvii. 7 . 
 
 
 
 . 355 
 
 Iv. I 
 
 
 
 
 , 271 
 
 cxvi. 12 . 
 
 
 
 . 349 
 
 lix. 17 
 
 
 
 
 . 114 
 
 cxvi. 13 . 
 
 
 
 . 350 
 
 Ix. 16 
 
 
 
 
 . 180 
 
 cxix. 30 . 
 
 
 
 . 353 
 
 Ixi. I 
 
 
 
 
 . 123 
 
 cxxvii. 2 . 
 
 
 
 , 102 
 
 Ixiii. 3 
 
 
 
 
 . 311 
 
 cxxx. I, 2 
 
 
 
 . 92 
 
 Ixiii. 9 
 
 
 
 
 . 337 
 
 cxxx. 3 . , 
 
 
 
 93 
 
 Ixv. I 
 
 
 
 
 . 202 
 
 cxxx. 4 . 
 
 
 
 94 
 
 
 cxxx. 5, 6 
 
 
 
 122 
 
 Jeremiah. 
 
 cxxx. 7, 8 , 
 
 
 
 . 95 
 
 ii. 12, 13 . . . 252 
 
 cxxxii. 14 . 
 
 
 
 . 131 
 
 ii. 22 . 
 
 
 . 198 
 
 cxxxiv. 1-3 . , 
 
 
 
 . 303 
 
 xvii. I 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 cxxxviii. 8 . 
 cxlii. 4 . 
 
 
 
 . 231 
 > 264 
 
 xvii. I 
 xvii. 5 
 
 
 
 . 197 
 
 . 254 
 
 Proverbs. 
 
 xvii. 9 
 
 
 
 . 196 
 
 
 xxiii. 24 
 
 
 
 . 14 
 
 i. 33 . 
 
 
 
 . 132 
 
 xxix. 13 
 
 
 
 . 288 
 
 iv. 18 . 
 
 
 
 ► 237 
 
 xxxi. 3 
 
 
 
 . 216 
 
 ix. 9 . , 
 
 
 
 . 300 
 
 xxxi. 33 
 
 
 
 . 168 
 
 xvii. 17 . , 
 
 
 
 » 120 
 
 
 xix. 12 . , 
 
 
 
 . 67 
 
 Lamentations. 
 
 xxii. 8 . 
 
 
 
 . 348 
 
 iii. 6 . . . .36 
 
 ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 iii. 37 . . . . 144 
 
 xii. I . . . . 320 
 
 Ezekiel. 
 
 xii. 13 . . . .149 
 
 xxxiv. 16 . . • • 200 
 
 Song of Solomon. 
 
 xxxvi. 22 . . • ,98 
 xxxvi. 22 . • • • 215 
 
 ii. 4 . • . • 220 
 
 xxxix. 13 . . • • 223 
 
 ii. 16 . • • . 165 
 
 
 iii. 8 . . , . 150 
 
 Daniel. 
 
 V. 2 , 
 
 » 
 
 t 
 
 . 220 
 
 xii. 3 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 . 239 
 
 385 
 
 cc 
 
TEXTUAL INDEX 
 
 HOSEA. 
 
 Mark, 
 
 xiv. 5 . 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 65 
 
 viii. 18 . 
 
 xiv. 5 . . , 
 
 • 
 
 68 
 
 viii. 36 . 
 
 xiv. 5, 6 . . 
 
 • 
 
 66 
 
 X. 32 . 
 X. 46 . 
 
 Amos. 
 
 
 
 X. 47 . 
 
 iii. 3 • • • 
 
 • 
 
 323 
 
 X. 52 . 
 xiv. 9 
 
 Jonah. 
 
 
 
 XV. 21 . 
 
 ii. 7 . • ' • 
 
 • 
 
 162 
 
 xvi. 19 . 
 
 ii. 9 • 
 
 • 
 
 298 
 
 T 
 
 MiCAH. 
 
 
 
 ] 
 
 i. IS . 
 
 ii. 3 . 
 
 • 
 
 125 
 
 vii, 24 . 
 
 ii. 7 . 
 
 • 
 
 152 
 
 viii. 50 . 
 
 Habakkuk. 
 
 
 
 viii. 52 . 
 
 iii. 17, i8 . 
 
 • 
 
 ^7 
 
 viii. 54, 55 
 ix. II . 
 
 Zephaniah. 
 
 
 
 ix. 29 . 
 xii. 35 • 
 
 iii. 2 . 
 
 • 
 
 219 
 
 xii. 35 . 
 xii. 37 . 
 
 Zechariah. 
 
 
 
 XV. 2 . 
 
 viii. 8 . . , 
 
 • 
 
 163 
 
 xxii. 49, 51 
 xxiv. 26 . 
 
 Malachi. 
 
 
 
 
 iii. 16 . 
 
 • 
 
 228 
 
 J 
 
 iii. 17 . 
 
 • 
 
 166 
 
 i. 14 . 
 i. 16 . 
 
 Matthew. 
 
 
 
 i. 29 . 
 
 iii. 17 . 
 
 • 
 
 358 
 
 i. 43 • 
 
 iv. 19 . 
 
 
 • 
 
 203 
 
 iii. 16 . 
 
 V. 8 . 
 
 
 • 
 
 n 
 
 iii. 30 . 
 
 v. 20 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 142 
 
 iv. 42 . 
 
 vi. 23 . 
 
 
 • 
 
 255 
 
 V. 39 . 
 
 vi. 34 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 295 
 
 V. 39, 40 
 
 x. 25 . 
 
 
 • 
 
 231 
 
 vi. 68 . 
 
 xi. 25, 26 
 
 
 • 
 
 II 
 
 vii. Z7 . 
 
 xi. 27 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 246 
 
 viii. 16 . 
 
 xi. 30 . 
 
 
 • 
 
 57 
 
 viii. 34 . 
 
 xiii. 43 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 240 
 
 X. 10 . 
 
 xiii. 58 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 86 
 
 X. 15, 18 
 
 XX. 28 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 359 
 
 X. 17, 18 
 
 xxii. 42 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 175 
 
 xi. II . 
 
 xxiv. 46, 47 
 
 
 . 
 
 161 
 
 xi. 28 . 
 
 XXV. 8 . 
 
 
 , 
 
 60 
 
 xii. 26 . 
 
 XXV. 8 
 
 
 . 
 
 62 
 
 xiii. I 
 
 xxvi. 58 . 
 
 
 • 
 
 325 
 
 xiii. 35 . 
 
 xxvii. 36 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 294 
 
 xiv. 2 
 
 xxvii. 55 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 325 
 
 xiv. 9 
 
 Luke. 
 
 John. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 248 
 
 5 
 
 205 
 176 
 
 174 
 
 179 
 
 90 
 
 88 
 
 328 
 
 no 
 III 
 
 315 
 
 3i« 
 199 
 
 351 
 57 
 59 
 
 361 
 
 335 
 117 
 
 156 
 
 190 
 279 
 
 46 
 201 
 107 
 
 115 
 
 1 84 
 
 147 
 263 
 
 99 
 272 
 
 3^3 
 
 77 
 272 
 360 
 312 
 103 
 
 177 
 
 204 
 
 jj4 
 
 140 
 
 329 
 247 
 
 386 
 
TEXTUAL INDEX 
 
 xiv. 17 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 . 341 
 
 IV. 2 . 
 
 
 . 15 
 
 XV. 4 . 
 
 
 
 . 70 
 
 viii. 6 , 
 
 
 4 
 
 XV. 5 , 
 
 
 
 . 69 
 
 ix. 27 . 
 
 
 . 55 
 
 XV. 7 . 
 
 
 
 . 178 
 
 xi. 24 . 
 
 
 I 
 
 XV. 20 . 
 
 
 
 . 230 
 
 xiii. 2 . 
 
 
 7 
 
 xvi. 24 . 
 
 
 
 . 82 
 
 xiii. 8, 13 
 
 
 
 xvi. 32 . 
 
 
 
 . 310 
 
 xiii. 12 . 
 
 
 . 346 
 
 xvi. 33 . 
 
 
 
 . 192 
 
 XV. 57 . 
 
 
 . 26 
 
 xvii. 3 . 
 xvii. 15 . 
 
 
 
 . 249 
 . 338 
 
 2 Corinthians. 
 
 
 xvii. 19 . 
 
 
 
 . 222 
 
 i. 22 . 
 
 . 347 
 
 xix. 30 . 
 
 
 
 . 330 
 
 iv. ID . 
 
 6 
 
 xix. 38, 39 
 
 
 
 . 13 
 
 V. 17 . 
 
 . 233 
 
 XX. 30, 31 
 
 
 
 . 261 
 
 vii. 10 . 
 
 . 134 
 
 xxi. 7 
 xxi. 15 
 
 
 
 
 . 232 
 
 . 48 
 
 Galatians. 
 
 
 xxi. 16 
 
 
 
 
 . 49 
 
 ii. 20 . 
 
 . 71 
 
 xxi. 17 
 
 
 
 
 . SO 
 
 ii. 20 . 
 
 • • 
 
 . 76 
 
 xxi. 17 
 
 
 
 
 . 51 
 
 iii. I 
 
 • • 
 
 . 253 
 
 xxi. 18 
 
 
 
 
 . 52 
 
 vi. 7 . 
 
 ■ • 
 
 . 18 
 
 xxi. 25 
 
 
 
 
 . 262 
 
 vi. 14 . 
 
 • 
 
 , 256 
 
 Acts. 
 
 Ephesians. 
 
 
 i. 8 . . . . 340 
 
 i. 14 . 
 
 . 344 
 
 ii- 3 
 
 
 
 
 . 153 
 
 ii. 7 . 
 
 
 . 343 
 
 ii. 4 
 
 
 
 
 . 152 
 
 ii. 19 . 
 
 
 . 259 
 
 iv. 13 
 
 
 
 
 , 112 
 
 iii. 16 . 
 
 
 . 339 
 
 V. 41 , 
 
 
 
 
 158 
 
 iii. 17 . 
 
 
 9 
 
 xiii. 9 . 
 
 
 
 
 234 
 
 iii. 18, 19 
 
 
 8 
 
 XX. 21 
 
 
 
 
 . 173 
 
 V. I, 2 
 
 
 . 139 
 
 XX. 24 
 
 
 
 
 236 
 
 Philippians. 
 
 
 Romans. 
 
 i. 21 . 
 
 ► 29 
 
 i. 7 . 
 
 . 141 
 
 i. 27 . 
 
 
 138 
 
 iii. 22, 23 . 
 
 
 
 194 
 
 iii. 10 . 
 
 
 ► 91 
 
 V. 8 . 
 
 
 
 42 
 
 iii. 13, 14 , 
 
 
 2 
 
 V. 8 . 
 
 
 
 97 
 
 iii. 20 . 
 
 
 225 
 
 viii. 2 . 
 
 
 
 116 
 
 iv. 3 . 
 
 
 226 
 
 viii. 18 . 
 
 
 
 365 
 
 iv. 6 . 
 
 
 296 
 
 viii. 32 . 
 
 
 
 104 
 
 iv. 10, II 
 
 
 251 
 
 viii. 32 . 
 
 
 
 244 
 
 iv. 12, 13 , 
 
 
 113 
 
 X. 2 . 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 iv. 13 . 
 
 
 193 
 
 xi. 33 . 
 
 
 
 282 
 
 iv. 13 . 
 
 
 250 
 
 XV. 4 . 
 XV. 13 . 
 
 
 
 356 
 ^3 
 
 Colossians. 
 
 
 xvi. 3 . 
 
 
 
 89 
 
 i. II . . . • 
 
 342 
 
 I Corinthians. 
 
 i. 15 . 
 
 i. 27 . 
 
 • • 
 
 • • 
 
 245 
 357 
 
 ii. 2 . . . .47 
 
 ii. 2, 3 
 
 • • 
 
 32 
 
 li. 15 . 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 45 
 
 ii. 6 . • 
 
 • • 
 
 64 
 
 387 
 
TEXTUAL INDEX 
 
 I Thessalonians. page 
 
 James. 
 
 ii. 
 
 lO . 
 
 
 . 235 
 
 ii. 
 
 12 . 
 
 
 137 
 
 iv. 
 
 3,4 
 
 
 , 306 
 
 iv. 
 
 14 . 
 
 
 100 
 
 V. 
 
 23 . 
 
 
 53 
 
 
 2 Thessalonians. 
 
 
 i. 
 
 10 . 
 
 221 
 
 i. 
 
 10 . 
 
 , 224 
 
 ii. 
 
 16 . 
 
 I Timothy. 
 
 > 214 
 
 ii. 
 
 3, 4 
 
 . 145 
 
 iii. 
 
 16 . 
 
 > • 
 
 . 85 
 
 Titus. 
 
 11. 13 
 
 
 Hebrews 
 
 iii. 15 
 
 
 iv. 16 
 
 
 
 V. 12 
 
 
 
 vi. 18 
 
 
 
 vi. 20 
 
 
 
 vii. 25-27 
 
 
 viii. I 
 
 
 
 viii. 10 
 
 
 
 viii. 10 
 
 
 
 viii. II 
 
 
 
 viii. 12 
 
 
 
 X. 16 
 
 
 
 X. 20 
 
 
 
 X. 34 
 
 
 
 X. 34 
 
 
 
 X. 37 
 
 
 
 xi. I 
 
 
 
 xi. 8 
 
 
 
 xi. 10 
 
 
 
 xi. 13 
 
 
 
 xii. 2 
 
 
 
 xii. 2 
 
 
 
 xii. 6 
 
 
 
 xii. 10 
 
 
 
 xii. II 
 
 
 
 xii. 24 
 
 
 
 xii. 24 
 
 
 
 xiii. 5 
 
 
 
 213 
 
 3 
 
 54 
 238 
 267 
 126 
 331 
 
 159 
 164 
 
 168 
 
 182 
 
 135 
 167 
 
 124 
 
 307 
 308 
 269 
 258 
 
 354 
 260 
 
 257 
 155 
 330 
 302 
 
 299 
 301 
 118 
 119 
 61 
 
 1- 5 • 
 
 i. 6 . 
 
 i. 17 . 
 
 ii. 23 . 
 iv. 2, 3 
 
 iv. 6 . 
 
 iv. 14 . 
 
 iv. 17 . 
 
 I Peter. 
 
 i. 8, 9 
 
 i. 13 • 
 
 iii. 13 • 
 
 V. 7 . 
 
 2 Peter. 
 
 i. 5, 6, 7 
 iii. 12 . 
 
 I John. 
 
 i- 7 
 ii. 17 
 ii. 18 
 iii. I 
 iii. 2 
 iii. 3 
 iii. 16 
 iii. 18, 
 iv. 8 
 iv. 9 
 iv. 10 
 iv. 18 
 
 V. 3 
 
 19 
 
 Revelation 
 
 i. 5 . 
 
 i. 6 . 
 
 ii. 5 • 
 
 ii. 10 . 
 
 ii. 10 . 
 
 iii. 20 . 
 
 iv. 6 
 
 iv. II . 
 
 V. 12 . 
 
 xxii. 12 . 
 
 xxii. 17 . 
 
 xxii. 17 . 
 
 127 
 
 128 
 106 
 241 
 
 345 
 210 
 
 36C 
 
 183 
 
 81 
 212 
 327 
 297 
 
 109 
 364 
 
 324 
 74 
 79 
 41 
 43 
 
 211 
 
 336 
 
 44 
 24 
 
 105 
 
 108 
 
 151 
 171 
 
 75 
 58 
 
 363 
 
 72 
 
 157 
 
 217 
 
 22 
 
 78 
 
 7S 
 
 220 
 
 26S 
 
 270 
 
 388 
 

 Date Due 
 
 
 NU) 4V 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 iM