jy>Sf0fMS$^ lUN 17 191P <^06'!CAL Sl^V .^vS BV 4900 .M26 1919 c.l McLeod, Malcolm James, b. 1S67. "Songs in the night," /^' N 17 IS "Songs in the Night" By MALCOLM JAMES McLEOD Minister of Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, New York City New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh i ALSy Copyright, 1919, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh : 75 frinces Street Dedicated to all my Comrades in the School of Sorrow Contents I. " We Smile at Pain While Thou Art Near " .... 9 II. " My Very Heart and Flesh Cry Out" 27 III. " Bread of the World in Mercy Broken" .... 45 IV. " We Turn Unfilled to Thee Again " 60 V. " Drop Thy Still Dews of Quiet- ness" 75 VI. «« E'en Though It Be a Cross That Raiseth Me " ... 90 VII. " Towering O'er the Wrecks of Time" 106 VIII. " We Will Be True to Thee Till Death" 120 IX. "I Yield My Flickering Torch TO Thee " . . . -135 X. " Awake My Soul, Stretch Every Nerve " 149 XI. " For Those in Peril on the Sea " 162 XII. '* Far, Far Away Like Bells at Evening Pealing ". . .176 7 "WE SMILE AT PAIN WHILE THOU ART NEAR" **Are the consolations of, God too small for thee?"— Sob 1^'. 11. WANT to say a word or two about the consolations of God. Sometimes we are tempted to think that God's consolations are very inadequate. In the passage before us Eliphaz is represented as asking the afflicted patriarch, "Are the consolations of God too small for thee?" Not are they small, as the old version puts it, but are they too small? Are they un- satisfying? Do they meet your need ? Far back in patriarchal days we read the story of Rachel. "Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted." And no doubt the reason why she refused to be comforted was because the con- solations offered seemed too small. They did not measure up to her sorrow. They did not really grapple with her grief. Whoever goes into houses of mourning, to-day, will find many distressed and desperate lives like that. They will find those who refuse to be comforted. 9 JO ''Songs in tbe -rHQbt" Nothing that you can say, seems to appeal to them. I do not mean to infer that they try to be unhappy; it is simply that everything you suggest appears inept and petty. Nothing seems comprehensive enough and big enough to meet their case. " Just to give up, and trust All to a fate unknown, Plodding along life's road in the dust, Bounded by walls of stone; Never to have a heart at peace. Never to see when care will cease; Just to be still when sorrows fall; — This is the bitterest lesson of all." And it is foolish to say to such people that they ought to be comforted. It is really not kind to tell them that they are committing a sin in re- fusing consolation, because consolation is too gentle an angel for any such cruel coercion as that. To blame a grief-stricken mother for con- tinuing to be depressed, vrould be as inconsiderate as to blame a sick man for continuing to be sick. The doctor does not say to his patient, **Now here are my medicines, take them and they will make you strong; if they do not make you strong it is your own fault." That is not how the wise physician talks. The wise physician studies the case from every angle. He seeks for adequate causes. If one diagnosis is incorrect, he tries another. If one antidote fails he experiments with a new one. He does not come into the sick "Me Smile at ipain" u room to play the piano or to read an essay on Thackeray. He does not come to tell the poor fellow in agony how critical his case is, or, what is almost as bad, that there is really nothing the matter with him. He comes to relieve the pain, to repair the ravages of disease, to mend the broken instrument. He comes to cheer, to radi- ate health and hope, to stir up the elemental forces of recovery. Many there are who find greater comfort in human friendship than in the great, divine Friend. When the blow comes and the spirit is bruised, they call in their dearest and closest con- fidants to see if they can help in making the pain endurable. I would not for a moment belittle that. It is a beautiful and gracious thing. The love and sympathy of earthly friends is strong, and sweet, and heartening. Poor indeed and pitiable is the child of sorrow who has no kind heart to turn to in the hour of loss and trial, but poorer far the soul that has no divine com- panion to whom they can go and with whom they can converse on intimate and familiar terms. Now, of course, there are many earnest people who do not need this message. I wish I could say that they never will need it, but I cannot say that. I cannot say it because it would not be true. Many of you are young and strong and happy. You do not need consolation, not as yet. Your time is coming, but the word has no meaning for you J2 **Sonos in tbe migbt*' just now. It belongs to a foreign language, a language you have never studied, a language you have never thus far had any cause for studying. As Edwin Booth once put it, "Life is a great big spelling book and on every page we turn, the words grow bigger and more difficult. ' ' We be- gin with the easy, then on to the less easy and then on to the hard and the harder. What you need now is work, duty, progress, courage, tasks, service, — something to call out your powers of strength and sacrifice and endurance. *'Ke- member now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleas- ure in them. ... In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened. ' ' It is to those who have been in the depths — to those who have been journeying through the valley that I speak. Ian McLaren said towards the close of his life that if he were beginning his ministry over again he would make it more a jninistry of comfort. A wise man once wrote a book upon the consolations of philosophy, but the trouble with his message was that only the philosophical were able to understand it, and anyway it was mostly conjectural. What we want is a voice that every man can hear, high «Me Smile at pain" J3 and low, learned and unlearned; what we want is certainty; what we want is demonstration. What we want is something that can be tested and tried in the thin and thick of things. It is all very well to tell us to be philosophical about our trouble, **to grin and bear it," as the saying is, but there is precious little comfort in that program. A book might be written, too, on the consolations of Science, but it certainly would not be a very bulky volume. For science is grandly and haughtily indifferent to the cry of human misery. The stars are cold, the cyclone is merciless, the earthquake has no pity. In the presence of death, science is dumb. Scientists talk of a Cosmical Phantom, or a stream of tend- ency, or a universal It. I hope they under- stand what they mean, but I must say I very much doubt it. And a book could easily be written on the consolations of Fatalism. It had to be, so why worry over it? Just be resigned. In the physical world things are where they were meant to be, and what is going to happen is go- ing to happen. And in human experience is not the same thing true? When the bullet is fired with our number on it then there's no use trying to dodge it. " The moving finger writes, and having writ Moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it." H ** Songs in tbe miobt** But all this is cold stuff to the man who wants to know and do the will of God, and it is to those who desire to know and do the will of God that I speak just now. There are several ways in which the consolations of God come to us. Think, in the first place, how God oftentimes consoles us by giving us Compensations. Samuel Rutherford once said: "Whenever I find myself in the cellar of affliction I always look about me for the wine." And no matter how sad and grievous our lot, there is always some gracious cheering indemnity. It is easy for us to linger upon our losses, but, then, we have gains and we ought to think more about what we have gained than what we have lost. We ought to meditate more on what has been left than on what has been taken. God sometimes takes one thing away to make room for another. There is a sermon by a great preacher on "the joys that are purchased by sorrow." Some of the sweetest joys in life are the joys that spring out of sorrow. Does not Browning say in Rabbi Ben Ezra that our joys are three parts pain ? An old saint once re- marked, "When I have most pain in my body, I have most comfort in my soul. ' * Indeed Brother Lawrence says, * ' God often sends diseases of the body to cure those of the soul." Alfred Russel Wallace argues in one of his books that the fertile portions of the earth depend upon the deserts. He says that if there were no Sahara, there "Me Smile at pain- J5 would not be a vineyard round it for a thousand miles. It is the dust particles flying in the air that make possible the clouds. Whether this be scientifically true or not, it is an undoubted fact that, sometimes, it is the desert tracts of life that prepare us for the richest harvests. One of John Wesley's earliest memories was the fire that destroyed his father's parsonage. He tells us how, after his own narrow escape, his father finding all the family safe called them in for family worship. And the old man knelt down and thanked his Heavenly Father for His preserving mercies. He had lost his home but his dear ones were spared, so he felt rich. And we all have something to be thankful for. If it isn't one thing it's another. There is always some levelling arrangement. Things are evened up more than we think they are. Never mind your list of negatives. Count up your column of positives. You say you were sick three weeks last year, but why not ponder over the forty-nine in which you were well? So count your bless- ings and be thankful. The back is always fitted for the burden. Oftentimes a darkening earth means a brightening heaven. In giving medicine, our Father never opens the wrong bottle. Many a dying saint has looked up in helpless weakness and has been strength- ened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. God does not always answer our prayers, but i6 '•Songs in tbe miobt" He does always pour strength into our souls. Spurgeon used to say that love letters from heaven are often mailed in black-edged envelopes. When Madame Guyon was imprisoned in the Castle of Vincennes she wrote these words: "It sometimes seems to me as if I were a little bird which the Lord had placed in a cage and that I had nothing to do now but to sing. The joy of my heart is full. The stones in my prison look like rubies." Another way in which God consoles us is by giving us a truer Sense of Vahies. He teaches us what is worth while and what is not. He enables us to realize how relatively insignificant and petty some of the things are that we con- sider urgent and supreme. What a wonderful lesson that man has learned who has been taught to recognize a big thing when he sees it, and a little thing when he sees it! How few of us are experts in this matter of appraisement! How few of us are living our lives with a true accurate sense of proportion ! How few are putting "first things first"! Some one has said that he who would speak to the times, must speak from eternity. That is to say the only interpretation of life that satisfies the heart of humanity is the one we get when we climb the mountain with God. Everybody admits we are not children of time. And this being acknowledged, does it not seem the sheerest folly devoting so much of our **'mc Smile at pain** M strength and energy into the amassing of treasure that cannot possibly be converted into the cur- rency of the place to which we are travelling? The greatest moment in a man's life is when he gets the right view-point, when he sees things as they really are. Indeed that is what conversion is; the man is bom again. There is a new orientation of life. Thomas Chalmers preached for years before he made the great blessed discovery. Then came a day when he was stricken down with a seri- ous illness. For months he never left his room. It was more than a year before he fully re- covered, but from these months of profound and solitary musing there came a spiritual revolu- tion. His whole past life looked like a feverish dream, the fruitless chasing of shadows. He found that his past could not stand the scrutiny of the sick room. A new ambition fired his breast. It was a spiritual epoch in his career. The whole man — ^body, soul and spirit — was transformed, and he went back into his pulpit and shook Scotland with a mighty passion for God. It was said of a certain famous painter that he was noted for the great pains he took in his work and when asked for the reason he an- swered, "Because I paint for Eternity." That was the key-note of all Chalmers* future ministry. He felt that he was henceforth preaching for eternity. He learned, too, that we cannot do J8 "Songs in tbe migbf good to others save at a cost to ourselves, that we cannot be real sympathizers until we are sufferers. How prone we are to forget that our life is related to two worlds. The great problem with us all is to learn how to live an eternal life in the midst of time, and how to surrender the lower values for the higher. We so easily lose our sense of proportion. We make the subordinate supreme. Putting the accent in the wrong place, is the cause of nearly all our failures. We turn the pages of history and the names of Csesar, and Napoleon, and Alexander, are written large. This type fills the foreground of the picture. The historian dismisses Shakespeare with a page, but to Bloody Mary he gives a chapter. Gutenberg gets a scanty line, but Guy Fawkes has a paragraph. The chief cause of the secta- rianism which is crippling the Church to-day is a false putting of emphasis. Men seize upon some little arc of truth and dwell on it until they lose sight of the circle. Perhaps the greatest lesson any of us can learn, is to learn where to place the emphasis. The true art of life is to know the things that matter. Everywhere we meet men in deadly earnest but how few are in earnest about the things that really count. In- deed this is the inexplicable irony of life that so much of our time and strength are spent on the things that do not really matter. **mc Smile at jpain" J9 Some years ago, a story appeared in one of our magazines. It was concerning an eminent sur- geon. I have forgotten many of the details, but I remember it made an impression on me at the time. One of the nurses in the hospital in describing him used these words: **He has few friends but a host of admirers. As an operator he has no superior on Manhattan Island. To watch his hands while working is a perfect de- light. They never stop, never fumble ; the man is a genius and yet there is something uncanny about him. " " What do you mean, Nurse ? " she was asked. * ' I mean, ' ' she answered, * * that pro- fessionalism seems to have atrophied his power of sympathy. For instance: an engineer was brought in the other day with his arm crushed. He examined it and told the man, bluntly, that he would have to have it amputated. Of course the poor fellow protested ; at which the surgeon lost his temper and went away coldly, saying as he slammed the door that he would leave him to come to his senses and decide whether he pre- ferred amputation or death." That evening at dinner, the surgeon was nar- rating the incident to his sister. The sister had a woman's heart. "Oh well, John, the poor fel- low has a family ; his arm is all he has. Did you explain the gravity ? Put yourself in his place. * * The words evidently struck home, for that evening he went back to the hospital and the 20 "Songs in tbe tMQbt** unfortunate engineer was wheeled into the operating room. But blood poisoning had al- ready set in, and in severing the limb, the surgeon cmt his own finger, and it became so badly infected that in a few weeks his skilled hand had lost its cunning. The great man was now in a kindred situation himself. Calling his sister he said: **Floy, it's the greatest game in the world. Nothing com- pares with it ; it beats war all hollow. To master your work and love it. Just to look about you and see your assistants every one in his place, every one with his part to play — like regulars in gun drill. Not a word, not a hitch, only the clip, clip of the forceps or the low call 'sponge.' To feel the ligatures tighten, to see the tied artery throb and to know it will never slip. And then to think that I can never operate again. Floy, it's hard." The nurse did not under- stand when she returned later, but in a few days she noticed a change in the great man. He seemed to have a new point of view. He in- quired every morning how the engineer was. He even shared his flowers with him. He was less of a surgeon, perhaps, but he was more of a man. The greatest lesson, after all, to learn is to look at one 's life from the view-point of immortality. To live now as we will wish we had lived when twilight falls — that is success. Jesus found men consuming all theii* energies in seeking the ex- **Me Smile at patn" 2J ternals, and so He endeavoured to recentralize their affections on a more lasting attainment. To Him character alone was supreme; the true wealth was spiritual. "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you." Then think of all the Promises. The Bible is largely a book of promises. The promises of God are not simply soft, sweet, soothing words. They are wholesome. They are healing. They cure the malady. They are wonderful sources of consolation. They not only eharm us with their beauty; they strengthen us with their power. They work. They are true, eternally true. "The promises of God are yea and amen in Christ Jesus our Lord." Think of the promise of pardon. You can wade through all your books of philosophy and you will never once find the word pardon ; it is not there. The very heart of Christianity is the cross of Calvar5\ And the great truth it pro- claims is that human pain and divine love can go arm in arm together. "Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow. ' ' The very fullness of these and such words is what oftentimes causes men to hesitate. They try to clog them with exacting conditions, but there are no conditions save those we formulate and erect ourselves. "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." God is willing to for- 22 ** Songs in tbe TFligbt" get. He is willing to forget the things that are behind, but it is a righteous forgetting. It is no mere wilful lapse of memory. It is a step to- wards a holier state and a higher ambition on our part. If we grieve over, and forsake, and are willing to make amends, when possible, for our sin, God is ready to forgive and forget. I remember going through the Roman Cata- combs, and I recall how strangely we all felt when we were given candles — in the glaring light of a cloudless Italian sky. But when we penetrated into the depths of these underground crypts, we soon realized what our little candles meant. And so is it with the promises of Scripture ; they are the candles of the Lord by which we thread our way when twilight falls, "and after that the dark." Or consider the consolation of Hope. Our God is a God of Hope, and by hope we mean a conviction in the heart that the future will be good. When the ship is aground hope points to the open sea. In the dead of winter, hope whis- pers of spring. On the bleakest day in January, when the snow-drifts are piled level with the fences, hope sees the golden harvest. Every- body knows what a comfort there is in hope if it is only a living hope. It makes for strength, and patience, and endurance. The sailor adrift on the ocean soon sinks into helpless despair if there be no vessel in sight, but let a sail appear on the ••XRIle Smile at ipatn" 23 horizon and how eager and alert he instantly be- comes. He tries in every way possible to at- tract attention. When an oarsman loses hope he soon gives up rowing, especially if the current is against him. Nothing steadies in a crisis like hope. The surgeon says that hope is half the battle. The pain is not nearly so sharp if there is a chance of getting well. They tell me there is not a despondent line in the whole New Testament. Christianity is a manifesto of hope. * * We are saved by hope. ' ' If a loved one has gone out of your life, be- yond the reach of your cry, think of your hopes. Your loss after all is a small matter relatively. It is easily met. Get the right point of view. Think of his gain. The promise is that your mourning shall be ended. No man will carry his mourning with him into heaven. "Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning." Most people dread death, but Paul regarded it as a blessing. "What do you know about death?" said a farmer once to Thomas Erskine; "you have never died." But it is the consolation of God that faith knows. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for." "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the 24 *• Songs in tbe IRtgbt " clouds to meet the Lord in the air ; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.'* Or, best of all, consider the consolation of His own blessed presence. God comes to the broken-hearted with His healing presence. "I will pray the Father and he shall give you an- other Comforter." A man in sorrow is nearer to God than a man in joy. Sorrow is the great doorkeeper to the Temple of Prayer. The happy child runs farther afield, the hurt child turns home. He wants his mother. There are griefs worse by far than death and much more difficult to comfort. But the presence of the Lord en- ables us to endure any pain which He sees fit to send. "Can you see the lake in the Park from your apartment?" a lady said the other day, and I answered her, "Not in summer, but I can in winter. In summer the thick foliage hides the water, but in winter when the trees are bare it sparkles and glitters like a jewel. I sit at my window by the hour and watch the children skating." And so is it with the eye of faith. Oftentimes the river clear as crystal is hidden from view by the rich shrubbery of our lives. We do not discern the shining shore and our distant home beyond, till our life is stripped and laid naked and bereft. The Bible says, "Cast your burden on the *'TRae Smile at ipain" 25 Lord.*' It does not say cast it anywhere. It never says, "Cast your burden into the sea or hurl your burden over the cliff." Nowhere in the Bible are we advised to toss our burdens away recklessly. I think it a very cowardly thing this trying to get rid of burdens. Our burdens, like the wings of the bird, were meant to make us mount. We can transform our bur- dens into blessings. God intends them for our good. I believe that the root weakness of the Church, to-day, is that we have so much to enjoy and so little to endure. **Cast your burden on the Lord. ' ' Remember He is always near. Re- member He is the great burden-bearer, the great burden-sharer. "I don't believe I can ever go into that room again," a mother said, speaking of a chamber in her home where there had been a tragedy. But as she thus spoke, a voice said, "But you could go if I were to go with you." And feeling an unseen presence by her side she opened the door and entered, when, lo, instead of its being a place of dread, she found it a gallery of glory. Do not run away from your troubles, dear friend. Take the Lord by the hand and go right out and face them. "Humbly I asked of God to give me joy. To crown my life with blossoms of delight; I prayed for happiness without alloy, Desiring that my pathway should be bright. 26 "Songs in tbc miabt" " I asked of God that He should give success To the high task I sought for Him to do; I asked that every hindrance might grow less, And that my hours of weakness might be few; I asked that far and lofty heights be scaled — And now I meekly thank Him that I failed. " For, with the pain and sorrow, came to me A dower of tenderness in act and thought; And with the failure came a sympathy, An insight which success had never brought. Father, I had been foolish and unblest, If Thou hadst granted me my blind request." II ••MY VERY HEART AND FLESH CRY OUT" "Out of the 'depths have I cried unto thee, O God.*'— Psalm 130:1. HIS psalm is a beautiful prayer. It soars from the depths to the heights. It begins in the darkness of night and seK- abasement, but it mounts to the rosy flush of the morning. The author is unknown. No one knows his name, nor his station, nor his fortune or rather mis- fortune. He is simply a comrade in trouble. His is the experience of a soul down and out. **0 my God, my soul is cast down within me." **Lord hear my voice, let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications." Here is a man faUen into a pit and sending up a feeble cry for help. **0 Lord, make haste to help me. ' ' Down in the deep black hole he lies "sick and helpless and ready to die" and with that smothering feeling that comes from poor ventila- tion. It is the sob of a desperate case. It is the cry of despair ready almost for any rash act. Then all at once he thinks of God. He re- 27 28 ''Songs in tbe migbt" calls the fact that many a time before has God's redeeming grace met him in the hour of his per- plexity. *' Man's extremity is God's oppor- tunity." Again and again has the vale of weep- ing become a place of springs, the Valley of Achor a door of Hope. So he turns his face to the heights. The great city of London we are told is built over a bed of chalk, and if a pipe be drilled any- where within its far-reaching limits there will shoot up a fountain of cool clear water. And this is the great truth in religion. * ' I believe in God" may seem a very simple creed, but it is not simple; it is the profoundest expression of the life of faith. That man has gone a long, long way in his search for truth who has come really to believe that underneath him are the everlasting arms, and that within him is the Eternal Spirit. Sink a shaft into the recesses of the human heart and you will find this foun- tain of all good; you will find God. "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." **Thou hast put eternity in the heart;" that is the deepest note of the Old Testament. The very moment you touch that spring why *' waters break out in the wilderness and streams in the desert. ' ' Have you ever noted how old people tend to migrate back to the scenes of their childhood? "/ID)? IDers Heart ant> iflesb Crs ©ut" 29 Tiplady in one of his books tells the story of the eel. He says that the eel is bom in the depths of the ocean hundreds of miles from shore, and that by a compelling instinct it begins to push itself almost from the moment of its birth to- wards the land. After a long journey it at last reaches our rivers and streams where it crawls through the marsh and the mud. Here it lives for years gorging its voracious appetite. Then the overmastering impulse that brought it in sends it out again, and it returns to the far-away ocean bed where it was born and where at last it dies. Something like this is the story of man. Wordsworth says, ''Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home," and an overpowering longing is in us all to return at the end of the pilgrimage to the cradle of our departure. Have you ever been in the depths, my friend? Have you ever gotten down so low that your feet touched bottom and it seemed as if your poor weak voice could not possibly reach the top ? I doubt if there was ever a saint on earth who was not at some time or other in the depths. Take the matter of Danger. Have you ever been in any impending peril? In the 107th Psalm we have a forceful picture of a storm at sea. The waves mount up to heaven, then they sink down to the depths ! The mariners reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man. They are at their 30 **QonQ3 in tbe migbt" wit's end. Then what do they do? Then they do what everybody always does. Then they cry to Jehovah in their trouble. The fact is we all look up when the crisis comes. **Did you run across any atheists in your regiment?" I said to Ralph Connor last winter. Quick as a report from a pistol, he answered, "Not one." One soldier writes, "The nearer we get to the front line trenches the better Christians we are. All the infidels are in the rear," Perhaps one of the greatest passages in literature is where Mrs. Quickly in describing the death of Sir John Falstaff tells how the sensual old knight fumbles the sheets and keeps calling out ''God, God, God.'* In the last great extremity all his vaunt- ing, all his jesting vanishes, and with serious countenance he looks into the face of his Maker mumbling the 23rd Psalm. "When the Devil was sick, the Devil a saint would be." Or take Anxiety. Have you ever been lost in the maze of some dark and staggering suspense? You are bewildered. You do not know which way to go, which corner to turn; you have lost your bearings. Everything is inexplicable and puzzling. Light is what you want and all is darkness. You wait for the word that never comes. You look for the letter that the postman never brings. Perhaps you are standing by the bedside of one you love and life is tilting in the balance. And the cruel anxiety drags on for **/»» Deri? Ibeart ant) jflesb Crg ©ut" 3J days, for weeks. Oh, it is terrible ! No anxiety- is so nerve-racking as the anxiety that is shrouded in mystery. When you can understand your trouble you are saved the torture of the imagina- tion, but when you cannot understand it, it acts like an infection in the wound. The saddest experience to-day is where a family learns that their lad is among the missing. What happened ? Nobody knows. Fancy plays terrible havoc with the heart and suggests all sorts of cruel pos- sibilities. Or take our need of Help and Guidance. Do we not often cry to God from the depths of our need? There is a verse in Genesis and this is how it reads, "Then began men to call on the name of the Lord. ' ' The race was emerging out of darkness into the dawnings of conscience and the first thing it realizes is a sense of need. Are there not times when some great responsibility is laid upon us and we feel utterly unequal to the task? Was it a strange thing that the pressing affairs of state should drive such men as Lin- coln and Gladstone and Oliver Cromwell to their knees? Has not many a famous surgeon asked for divine assistance as he stood perplexed by the operating table wondering what was the best thing to do ? When judgment wavers and cour- age fails, is it not natural to seek the counsel of the Most High? One could cite the names of a dozen of the world's greatest physicians with 32 "Sonos in tbe IRlgbt" whom dependence on a Higher Power was a prac- tical force. What is art but a search for beauty ? What is democracy but a search for justice? What is music but a search for harmony? What is society but a search for brotherhood? What is science but a search for truth? What is the home but a search for love? What is anything but a search for God ? Do you not see it is God the world is seeking? A flippant critic once said, "There is no God west of the Mississippi," but now we know that God fills every corner of space and every concern and function of life. Everything is a search for God. There is noth- ing true but God. There is no beauty but the beauty that is found in God. There is no jus- tice but the justice that is found in God. There is no love but the love that is found in God. As Mrs. Browning so beautifully expresses it : " I am near Thee and I love Thee, Were I loveless, were I gone. Love is round, beneath, above Thee, God, the omnipresent one." One of our great Naturalists in describing the ascent of man calls him a "climbing animal," but the phrase answers with equal truth the ques- tion of his moral and spiritual history. All the striving of humanity from age to age has been called by one of the Fathers "a sigh for God," a blind groping after Him who is our life and **Cfbv IDers meart anO jflesb drg ©ut" 33 our hope. There is a book by Benson called ' • The House of Quiet, ' ' and in it there is a para- graph where the life of Charles Darwin is thus portrayed : "What a wonderful book this is — from end to end nothing but a cry for the Nieene Creed. The man walks along doing his duty so splendidly and nobly, with such single- heartedness and simplicity and just misses the way all the time ; the gospel he wanted is just the other side of the wall." How true this is of many of our greatest names. They unveiled deep secrets. They were devoted to truth, but they failed to find the greatest truth. I love John Burroughs ; I think he is the best of all our nature-poets. I have read nearly all his books and they are exquisitely charming. But there is one sad lack in them. He leads me through the garden and I smell the honeysuckle, and the flowers he points out are so graceful and delicate, but as some one says, there is never a hint about the Lord of the garden. It is a case of "the garden without the Gardener.'* In many of the confessions of these men there is a wistful yearning. In their franker moments no doubt some of them would say that they felt no real need of divine help and comfort, but then it is possible to have needs though one is not conscious of them. The little baby needs its 34 **%onQs in tbe migbt" mother though it be so little that it feels no need of a mother. One might as weU try to find a resting place for the joint of the arm aside from the socket of the shoulder bone as to find a rest- ing place for the heart outside of God. Man is half a hinge and God is the other half, and as you cannot have the whole hinge until you put both parts together, so you cannot have the whole man until you put God and man together. "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole man. ' ' Or take our Sorrow. Sorrow is the appointed lot of all. There are depths we all must fathom. There are deep dark subways into which we all must pass. When the sun shines and the heart is glad we forget to look up. God is not very much in our thoughts; but in the dark and cloudy day we seek His face, if not in faith, in fear. Out of the depths of the soul there arises the voice of prayer. Two men were arguing about the stars and why they were never seen by day. One remarked that if he would go doAvn into a weU he would be able to see them, but the other laughed at the idea. *'A11 right," suggested the first, "suppose we test it." Ac- cordingly a windlass was arranged and several strong anns were drafted to lower doubting Thomas into the well. When half-way down they called to him: '*Do you see anything?** "Not a thing," came back the answer. "Down **/»» IDerg Heart an& jflesb Cv? ©ut** 35 further, boys, ' ' they said. Again the voice above called out : " Do you see them now ? ' ' Again the reply came, "I can see nothing." ** Still fur- ther down," urged the men. And down to the depths the fellow was lowered. When he touched bottom he fixed his gaze upon the open- ing above and shouted back : * * Yes, I can see the stars." Go down deep enough into a well at midday and you will see the stars. And it is when we find ourselves in the valley of weeping that we see most clearly the face of God. I think this is a very wonderful truth. How the spiritual world grows clearer as the physical world becomes dim! Is it not a very curious thing that the tendril of a vine does not turn to the light but to the shadow ? And why ? Simply because the shadow tells it, in some mysterious way, that there is a solid object near, round which it can twine. If there were no shadow there would be no object. And just so sorrow teaches the soul that there is some one near at hand to whom we can turn, round whom we can cling, on whom we can lean. I remember being told as a boy when climbing some ladder or scaling some height, *'Now don't you look down ; if you do you will get dizzy ; keep looking up and the giddiness will pass away." And just so the way to surmount every sorrow is to keep the face Godward. Oliver Wendell Holmes says, "Did you ever see that soft spoken velvet-handed 36 '♦Sonas in tbe -Ricbt" steam engine at the mint? The smooth piston slides back and forth as a lady might slip a deli- cate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of its fingers calmly but firmly upon a bit of metal; it is a coin now and will remember that touch and tell a new race about it when the date upon it is crusted over with the rust of twenty centuries." And even so it is that a great sorrow puts a new stamp on the soul in a day — a stamp as sharp and definite as if it had taken years to engrave it. There is, for instance, the stamp of sympathy. Many a man would never have tapped the springs of compassion in his own heart if it were not for the sharp drill of suffering. Darwin tells us about a tree in Chili that yields a syrup called palm honey. The peculiarity about the tree is that it does not yield the syrup until it is cut down. ''This honey," he says, *'is really the sap of the tree. A good tree will yield ninety gallons. The tree is felled, the crown of leaves lopped off, and then for months the veins pour forth their stores, and every fresh slice shaved off exposes a new surface and yields a fresh supply." And is not this very thing often- times witnessed in human experience? Have we not all met men cold and unflinching and unfeeling until they were struck down by some vital blow? Then they became almost tenderly womanly in their compassion. It often takes **/©S IDers Deart ant) J^lesb Crs ©ut" 37 the lance to pierce into the foundations of heal- ing sympathy. "Where grows the golden grain! Where faith? Where sympathy? In a furrow cut by pain." But it is the depths of Sin of which the Psalm- ist is particularly thinking. It was his sin that caused him such profound and painful distress. His conscience is stirred and the deeps are the deeps of penitence. Sin was the deep pit into which he was plunged. This is clear from the verses followng, "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities who could stand ? But there is forgive- ness with thee that thou mayest be feared. Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy and with him is plenteous redemp- tion and he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. ' ' A.e you in the depths of sin, my friend? Look up. It is not what man is that tests him but what he wants to be. We do not belong to the place where we are — else why do we hate it? We belong to the heights, else why do we seek them? Why am I not at peace in my sin? In the solitude of my shame I cry out to my Father. And if fathers hear their children will not God hear too? Blessed be His name it is possible to touch bottom and then with a Hallelujah shout begin to rise. 38 ♦'Songs in tbe IRiabt" Oscar Wilde was one of the most brilliant writers of comedy that the Victorian era pro- duced. He made a tour of the United States and lectured more than one hundred times on the philosophy of the aesthetic. But morally the man was a degenerate. He could write English of silken delicacy but he could also write the coarsest stuff. He sowed great fields of literary wild oats. He was sentenced at last to two years' imprisonment for the gravest moral offenses, and during his confinement he wrote a little book called "Out of the Depths." Let me give you the preface: "The Gods had given me everything, but I allowed myself to be lured into sensualism. I amused myself with being a fianeur, a dandy, a man of fashion. Then tired of the heights I deliberately went to the depths. Desire at last became a malady and a mad- ness. There is only one thing left for me now, absolute humility. I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come despair, scorn, bitterness, rage, anguish, sorrow. ' ' The man cried out to God in penitence. Whether his penitence was sincere or not is not clear. Judging from his behaviour in prison, according to the testimony of the warden, it was. Let us hope it was. */»^ Detp Ibeart anD jflesb Crp ©ut" 39 I recall a story that Dr. Jowett tells : "A dear friend came to me once," says Dr. Jowett, "filled with misery and unrest. After we talked together for a while, he re- turned home and that night prayed, 'Lord, wilt Thou reveal to me what there is amiss ? ' In a vision during the night, he said, ' I saw a range of mountains of great height and length, snow-clad, shining in the light of God. As I looked up, I said. Lord, that is where I should like to dwell, in the light and purity of Thy blessed presence. Then I heard a voice say, * ' He that ascended is He that also descended." Then I said, ''Lord, give me power to descend." As the vision was continued I saw that I was in a deep valley, surrounded by all manner of unclean beasts, showing their teeth at me. I saw they were incarnations of my past sins. I was overwhelmed with shame and mortifica- tion. Suddenly I heard a footfall. I turned and saw that it was Jesus. ** *I was so ashamed as He came nearer and nearer that I took the cloak I was wearing and threw it over my head. When He stood before me I could not look up, my guilt seemed so great. At last I threw the cloak off, and behold the unclean things were all on Him.* When the troubled dreamer awoke, his soul was full of joyful praises and shoutings. He was crying 'Hallelujah, what a Saviour! He bore my sins in His own body on the tree.' " And now one or two lessons suggest then^- 40 '*Son0S in tbe migbt" selves in the study of these words, for there are things to be learned in the depths that can be learned nowhere else. One is that it is a natural thing to turn to the Lord when we sink into the slough. God is the God of the valley as well as of the hilltop. To whom else indeed can we turn ? To whom shall we go ? When we are in trouble we cry out to God. That would seem to imply some connecting link between us. What we do by instinct must be the expression of some profound reality. Between the soul and God there must surely be a great deal in common. If there were not a bond of affinity between us would we so intuitively cry out for Him in the hours of our deepest concern? I can imagine the needle pointing to the North thinking it is the North that pulls it. But not so! It is the magnetic current which encircles the whole world that draws and binds the two together. It used to be believed that man had no real affinity for God. Total depravity was made so completely and exclusively and cruelly total as to leave no room for the divine at all. But this is gone by. We know that we have suppressed longings after the divine. We pine after God as an orphan does after his lost parents. We do not possess a single faculty that is not in some way related to Him. Even the thief has a sense of justice. What is that but the eternal in him? There may be a tender spot in the heart of an "Ob^g IDers Heart an& fflesb Cr» ©ut" 4i assassin. Nothing is more certain as we study man than that he is a religious creature. Jesus taught us that God was our Father and Fatherhood implies likeness. A son must be of the same nature as his father. If a son be not of the same nature as his father he is no son at all. Creation does not imply fatherhood. God has made a great many things that are not His children. "Behold the fowls of the air," said Jesus, *'they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet" — mark the next word, please — "and yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them." God is never called the father of birds. Man is the only creature that can go to God and say my Father, and he can say that because he was created in His image. That image has been defaced but it can never be effaced. A son may lose the actual privileges of sonship but he can never lose his extraction. The father can never cease to be a father; the son can never cease to be a son. A lad may go down into the slums of vice and prostitution. That will not sever the tie. He is his father's boy still. So with us all. We can neither destroy our divine lineage nor our divine likeness. We are a part of God; we are a finite part of God's infinite whole. Another lesson would seem to indicate that the reason for much of our religious indifference is because life with many of us is so superficial. A 42 **SonQs in tbe TRtobt" superficial life is a life that floats on the surface of things. A superficial knowledge of anything is a knowledge that does not go to the roots. It does not concern itself with the whys and the wherefores. It is a mere smattering acquaint- ance with the practical. A superficial char- acter is a vain frivolous character that lives for show and seeming, and such lives do not usually trouble themselves much about reality. Men do not cry out for God until the depths are stirred. How few of us reaUy know what is deep down below, but it is to what is deep down below that God always appeals. So long as we are satisfied with the surface view of things God will not interest us. The empty, frivolous, ^ashy life does not feel its need of God. It is only when the waves and billows roll over us that we seek the face of our Father. It is only the sur- face of our nature that nourishes the flowers of unbelief. When the deeps are ploughed the seed of faith begins to sprout and germinate. Still another lesson would seem to be that it is not enough to look up, we must go up. The Psalmist not only cried; he waited and hoped and trusted. And waiting does not simply mean being passive. It means that when a man calls he waits for the answer, waits sometimes a long time, and is ready to do what the answer bids him. **I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me, aud heard my cry. He brought **ab^ lt)er» Ibeart anC) iflesb Crs Qwt** « me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet on a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song into my mouth, even praise unto our God. Then said I, Lo, I come ; in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, my God." So the great truth for us to learn is to learn to do God's will. His grace does not come to us as a dead weight. It is not a mighty lever to lift us from without ; it enters into us and raises us from within. It comes like a heavenly breath to stir our own efforts and make us co-workers with Him in His gracious plans. We must not only live with our eyes turned upwards and our voices calling to the heights. We must do more. We must stretch out our feeble hands of faith and catch the help for which we so earnestly pray. Francis Thompson was perhaps the great- est mystical poet of modern times. Poor Thomp- son, what a genius he was, and what a life he lived ! The poor fellow literally died of starva- tion at the age of forty-seven. One of his great- est lyrics was found among his papers after his death. Hear him sing. What is the song but a sob for God? It is a cry in the night. O world invisible, we view thee, O world intangible, we touch thee, O world unknowable, we know thee. Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! 44 ** Songs in tbe tMQbt** " Does the fish soar to find the ocean. Does the eagle phinge to find the air — That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there? " Not where the wheeling systems darken. And our benumbed conceiving soars! The drift of pinions, would we hearken Beats at cur own clay-shuttered doors. " The angels keep their ancient places Turn but a stone, and start a wing; 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing. " But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry: — upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt heaven and Charing Cross. " Yea, in the night, my soul, my daughter, Cry, — clinging Heaven by the hems; And lo, Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesaret but Thames." Ill "BREAD OF THE WORLD IN MERCY BROKEN" *'l am the bread of life." — John 6: 35. HESE are the words of our Lord. He is not speaking about the wonderful miracle which He has just performed, nor about His doctrines, nor about His mission, but about Him- self. And He calls Himself the bread of life. Verily it is an astonishing announcement, one of those staggering claims that leave us awe- struck, dumb-struck in His presence. Mark you, there is no quibbling, no equivocating, no beating round the bush, just a clean, clear, colourless challenge made \nthout any flourish, without any call, without any warning. Like a shot from a cannon in the peaceful air, it startles us. **I am the bread of life." The words indeed are amazing. If they do not make us sit up and take notice, I rather infer that Cardinal Newman was right when he said, **You do not mediate and therefore you are not im- pressed." The bread of life. Every wor'd is monosyllabic, 45 46 **Sonfls in tbe IRiflbt" Anglo-Saxon. There are no long Latin deriva- tives, no bombastic high-faluting rhetoric, no adjectives full of melody and rich in colour, no twisted, tangled, knotty phrases to untie, then words to parse and analyze; not any, not one. "I am the bread of life." No syllables could be simpler. A little child can understand them. Not life's luxury, life's necessity; not pastry, bread ; not dainties, bread. Jesus nowhere calls Himself the dessert of life, the salad or the seasoning rendering things tasty. He nowhere calls Himself the wine of life or the liquor of life. He is not a stimulant ; He is a staple. He is a fundamental — bread, meat, flesh, food. We may get the flavourings of the table otherwhere, but the essence of the festival is Himself. Bread is not an ornamental thing; it is a substantial thing; it is the food of the body. And Jesus Christ is bread. "He is the bread of which if a man eat he shall never hunger, the water of which if a man drink he shall never thirst." Will you permit me to repeat that, please? One of the startling things about this man Jesus is His simplicity. Jesus rarely uses polysyllables. The words He wields are little words — light, life, love, truth, joy, rest, peace, work, hope, God, Father. These are the verbal weapons He handles and stamps with the imprint of eternity. Without such words indeed where would our language be? Can you make a sen- **JBreat) ot tbe Worlb" 47 tence out of polysyllables? Try it. How sim- ple nature is; the tree dies, the sun. shines, the rain falls, the bird sings, the grass grows, the fire burns, the water freezes, the wind blows, the dog barks, the baby cries, the boy laughs, the man dies. The great writers of the world are simple. Deep water is clear; only puddles are muddy. Usually our lack of clearness is due to shallow- ness or sediment. The great preachers, like the great poets, have always spoken to the common heart. Sometimes I pick up a magazine poem of the present day ; I read it over and over, and I say to myself, "I wonder what this thing means." The words are musical, the figures are flowery; yes, but what does the passage meant You never have any trouble in telling what Ruskin means, or Tennyson, or Wordsworth. Given the correct text, and there is hardly ever any doubt what Shakespeare means. And Jesus, too, is never cloudy. Mark says, "The common people heard him gladly," He is literature's supreme artist ; He rises like a great white shaft high up in the field of letters. Marvellous man, this man of Nazareth! He staggers me by His assumptions; they are so daring. And He never so staggers me as when He begins by saying, "I am," When Jesus be- gins by saying "I am," we know there is some- thing coming. **I am the light of the world." 48 "Songs in tbe IRiobt" *'I am the good shepherd." "I am the true vine." "I am the way." "I am the truth." **I am the resurrection." "I am the judge of all." "I am the beginning and the end." Jesus is never afraid to claim preeminence. He loves to make us open our eyes in fixed and holy wonder. *'He taught as one having authority and not as the scribes." Men received a spiri- tual shock in His presence. From the humblest fisherman in Galilee at the bottom, clear up to cultured Nicodemus at the top, — to everybody in fact — He was an amazing man. He is Him- self the greatest miracle of the Gospels. Grant- ing Him all other miracles follow. Now the first thought that meets us in this verse is the thought of Personality. **I," He says. Let us start out with that tiny, straight- up, perpendicular **I." Jesus always begins with Himself. He puts the emphasis on His own person, and invites men not to the truth He is proclaiming, but to Himself. The first funda- mental of the Christian religion is Christ Him- self. Let us drive that nail permanently home at the very outset. The first question He ever put to His disciples was, "Whom do men say that I, the son of man, am?" This is the more remarkable when we re- member that all other great teachers try to efface themselves. Jesus alone among seekers after truth thrusts Himself boldly and aggres- **mcab ot tbe •QClorlO*' 49 sively into the foreground. He says, "Follow me." "Come unto me." "Abide in me." "Believe in me." "Love me." So I repeat, the first thing that meets us is the fact of Christ. He asks acceptance not only for the truth He is proclaiming, but primarily for Himself. He makes Himself the centre of His message. His first recorded public utterance was spoken in the synagogue at Nazareth. "This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears." His last re- corded utterance was in the palace of the High Priest. "I am the Christ; hereafter ye shall see me coming in the clouds of heaven." So I repeat the first thing that confronts us is the fact of Christ. And He confronts us, mark you, not only as a fact but as a supernatural fact. He comes to us in the holy record as a strange being of mys- tery and wonder, claiming an other-world con- nection. He does not belong to the inventory of the usual. "Ye are from beneath, I am from above." You cannot make of Jesus a normal being unless you first rip and gash and slash the documents to your heart's reckless content. Some have not hesitated to do this. Indeed some theological surgeons have been so puzzled by the thread of the miraculous that so twines and intertwines itself through the New Testa- ment narratives, that they have decided the easiest thing to do is to cut the thread entirely, 50 **Bo\\Q8 in tbe migbt" which they straightway proceed to execute, and so deny that such a man as Jesus ever lived ; the portrait, say they, is unquestionably imaginary. Some scholars are willing to surrender all that is distinctive about the Christian faith in their passionate desire to be modern. Then they turn about and coolly inform us that Christianity re- mains unaffected even if the historical part of it is dismissed as symbolic, that our faith is secure even if there are no facts to confirm it, that Christ is simply a name for a religious experi- ence; in other words, that Christ did not make the Christian faith, that the Christian faith made Christ. But most of us are like little children listening to a story, and the first question we ask is, "Is this story true?" The creed of the Church has always been that the story is true, that God came down to earth in the life of a real man, and that the record of that life can be subjected to the laws of documentary evidence. The record can- not be rationalized. Every attempt to do so has failed. Scholars have tried to explain away the mysterious features of this life and still retain the faith, but the whole narrative is so strange, there is such an accumulation of the ultra sur- prising, the air is so heavily scented with per- fumes that are unfamiliar, that the only way to explain the story is to accept the supernatural in it, or give up the historicity altogether. **aBrea& of tbe MorlO'* 5i The next thought that meets us in this text is the thought of a Living Personality. He is not only a fact; He is a living fact. He not only says **I"; He says "I am." He is not simply a remarkable character of 1900 years ago ; He is a remarkable personage to-day. He is not merely a figure of the dim and distant bygone. Of what value to us religiously would such a figure be? He is not a great "I was," He is a great "lam." "I am the bread of life." "I am the living bread. ' ' No one can read the New Testa- ment seriously without noting how constantly the word **life" was on our Lord's lips. The young lawyer said to Him, "What shall I do to inherit eternal Ufe?" Peter said, "To whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life. ' ' Everybody felt that somehow Jesus had the strange secret of life. Some critics would make of God a dead name, a mere impersonal entity, a formula for the world's development, a cold bloodless abstraction. Or they would resolve Him into a great absentee soulless mechanic, gazing in unconcern, aloof and apart, at the amazing spectacle He has made and set in motion. He has created things and set them whirling and whizzing and buzzing through space, but He never interferes with their workings to-day. In fact it is quite possible that He cannot if He wanted to, which is the sad part of the astonishing arrangement. He has given 52 '*BonQB in tbe fRigbt" the whole system certain laws and wound it up just like a clock. At present He is away off watching the time. This is the theory that we call Deism. Down in Chinatown, San Francisco, the poor superstitious Oriental wiU go apart and ring a bell to call up the sleeping god. And some Chris- tians act that way ; they seem to think that God is absent or asleep. Maurice once said with a touch of irony, speaking of Carlyle, that he (Carlyle) believed in a God who lived until the death of Oliver Cromwell. But that will not suffice. Of what avail is our faith unless we believe God to be present in the life of to-day. We cannot be helped by a dead hero. We need a living power. The whole Christian faith is a protest against the idea of an absentee ruler. That conception leaves no standing room for Christianity at all. The teaching of Christ is that God has pitched His tent among us, that He lives with us, that He is our Father. He is not an antique. We do not have to sing, "In the sweet by and by;** He is with us now. He is a living God. It is Christ Himself, His very self, who is our life. The great characteristic feature of the Bible, I repeat, is not its acceptance of God, but its acceptance of Him as a living God. This is not simply the burden of the New Testament: it is the burden of the Old Testament too. It is the great bugle note of prophets and apostles. It **3Srca& ot tbeTimorl&*' 53 runs through every book, every chapter almost. It is the real and the only satisfactory explana- tion of the miraculous. The Bible is full of the miraculous. And what pray does the miraculous mean? It means, does it not, that this world of ours is a living world, that the Creator of it is a living Person. Every miracle assures us that God is alive and immanent and active and co- operative in the great scheme of things. I often think of that story told of Dr. Dale. He was in his study writing an Easter sermon when the thought gripped him that his Lord was living. He jumped up excitedly and paced the floor repeating to himself : *' Why, Christ is alive, Christ is alive. His ashes are warm. He is not a great *I was,' He is the great 'I am.' " Let us remember, too, that the Gospel story is not after all the supreme historical document. The Church is the supreme historical document. Christ lives to-day in the Church and in the Sacraments. We live as Christians through union with Him. How a dead Christ can ex- plain the Christian Church is a mighty difficult problem, for all agree that the Church is built not on the death of our Lord, nor on His life, nor on His teachings, but on His Resurrection. (**When you see a long train pushed backwards round a curve, you know there is something pushing it.") But even granting it possible, a more difficult problem arises, how can a dead 54 " Sottas in tbe "Bigbt " Christ explain a converted soul? This is the supreme inexplicable mystery. For it must ever be borne in mind that this living bread is a life- giving bread. It is a power not only to support life, but also to impart life. Natural bread put into a dead man's mouth will not make him live. But our Lord Jesus Christ is living bread, and when He touches the dead lips of a penitent sinner, life comes into them. He creates as well as sustains. He is life for the dead as well as food for the living. Oh, we cannot dismiss this man Jesus. He calmly and patiently refuses to be dismissed. Men say He is not real and never was. They say His story is an invention. Others mock Him, hate Him, crucify Him. They spit on Him and rail at Him. They say His Church is the hotbed of persecution and tyranny. They drive Him away from their presence with a sharp scourge of invectives, but He returns. Back He comes and stands and calls and beckons, so meek, so manly, so human, so divine; — a mighty love, a love **That will not let us go," " I fled Him down the nights and down the days, I fled Him down the arches of the years, I fled Him down the Labyrinthine ways of mine own mind And in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter Up vistaed hopes I sped, And shot, precipitated. **3Brea& of tbc TKaorlD" 55 Adown Titanic glooms and fears, From those strong feet that followed, followed after." But He is not only a personality and a living personality. The passage assures us that He is a Communicating Personality. He communicates Himself. If we give ourselves to Him He will give Himself to us. He is the bread of life. *'The bread which I give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world." Our God is always a giving God. The sun gives his light, the sky gives its rain, the earth gives its harvest. There is no chest for selfish hoarding in all the works of the good Lord anywhere. To be sure He is not here speaking of the Holy Sacrament. That came long after. The Holy Sacrament teaches in a graphic way what this sermon was meant to teach in a didactic way, viz., that the spiritual life, like the physical, must be nourished and fed. It must be min- istered to from without. Jesus Christ is bread. He is the * ' Bread of the world in mercy broken. ' ' Bread is the food of the world. The king eats it in his palace and the peasant in his hut. The President eats it at the banquet and the soldier in the trench. God makes no confectionery; He makes plain bread and He calls it the staff of life. This body of ours needs many ingredients. It needs oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, lime, soda, phosphorus. And they are all in bread. This 56 '•Songs in tbe tMQbt** loaf of bread contains them all. It is the pri- mary, the ultimate gift of God. You might put a man round a festal board with edibles and delicacies fit for a pampered belly-god, but if he does nothing but look on and admire the china he will starve despite the dainties. There is light all about us, but the only light that illumines our path is the light to which our optic nerve responds. There is an old proverb that "Truth is mighty and will prevail," but it is only a half-truth. It is true that truth is mighty, but it cannot prevail until it finds its way into the hearts and consciences of men. Truth on the mantelpiece covered with dust is a helpless, impotent thing. Truth on the mantel with a dry blanket of dust covering it, is as helpless as the average church with a wet blanket of worldliness. And the message that Jesus is constantly pro- claiming is that just as bread is the food of the body so He Himself is the nourishment of the soul. As we partake of Him our daily waste is repaired. In Him all our need is supplied ac- cording to His riches in glory. He not only communicates wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. He communi- cates Himself. He looked out upon the world and it was a living world to Him, because it was God's world. And He says I am the living bread for this livfhg world. The mind eats "BreaD of tbe morlb*' 57 this living bread by thinking about Him; the soul eats it by trusting Him and loving Him; the will eats it by surrendering to His will. We feed on Christ when in any way or through any experience we draw near to Him. It is a sym- bolic statement of the truth that the life and growth and health of the soul is as dependent upon the Lord Jesus Christ as the life and growth and health of the body are upon natural food. It is the great mystery of spiritual nutri- tion. Mystery, did I say ? Of course that is the right word to use. But let us not be too timorous of ap- proach. Is it any more mysterious than the mys- tery of natural nutrition? Who can explain the miracle of a healthy human appetite? Who can trace the hidden steps by which our daily bread is transformed into blood and bone and sinew? **How can the mute unconscious bread become the living tongue?" The corn eaten by the animal is transformed into flesh. Man takes that flesh and transmutes it into blood and brain and thought and psychology and poetry. Who can understand it? What hunger is, how food be- comes part of our bodies, what the laws of growth are is still as great a mystery to us as was the picture of the Cyclops at his meals to Ulysses. Two men for breakfast, two for dinner and two for supper, with large casks of milk and wine, made the bold Trojan hero open his eyes in 58 ''Sonas in tbe Tliabt" puzzling and bewildering wonder. Who can explain how the sap of the plant adds new tissue to its structure? Bear in mind that only each year 's growth is living ; the rest is all dead wood which would decay speedily were it not that it is protected by the living cells on the surface. The wood of the oak tree, for instance, grows from within outward ; but its bark grows from without inward, while its roots grow at their extrem- ities. The mystery of growth! Who can ex- plain it? Or who can follow and interpret the processes by which the mind of the thinker feeds upon truth? Scholars like Carlyle and Goethe have simply devoured books and made these books a part of their own mental furniture. Wordsworth on the other hand, like Augustus Comte, turned away from books, rarely indeed read a book, turned rather to the great out-of-doors for his refreshment. He drank in the secret of the sky, the lakes, the hills. This is the mark of all truly great men. Intellectual assimilation is the power to take in and absorb and make one's own, the wealth of the world. Everything has its food. We say grace before meat, but as Charles Lamb suggests, why should we not say grace before Milton? Is it because we value the body more than we do the mind? The thinker feeds upon truth, the artist feeds upon beauty, the lover feeds upon affection, the imagination feeds upon "BreaD ot tbe MorlO" 59 hope, ambition feeds upon power, the soul feeds upon God. One last word needs to be said and it is this : If one is to grow he must not only have food, but he must have the right kind of food, the food he can assimilate. Have you ever visited a babies' hospital and gone through the wards and studied the little pinched faces of half- starved children? They have no particular dis- ease. They are just weak from lack of the proper nourishment. The physician studies each case individually and at last works out the proper formula. And the spiritual problem is not only to find the food ; sometimes the real diffi- culty is to find the formula. Food means life, growth, strength ; but it must be food of the right kind. The Lord Jesus suits every ease, fulfills every need, meets every experience. As certain insects are coloured by the leaves on which they feed, just so if we feed on Christ, we will become like Him and our prayer will be answered. " Give me a faithful heart Likeness to Thee, That each departing day Henceforth may see Some work of love begim, Some deed of kindness done, Some wanderer sought and won. Something for Thee." IV "WE TURN UNFILLED TO THEE AGAIN »* "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled." — Matthew 5 : 6. HIS is a great saying. It is so great that we will never be able to grasp it in its rich and rounded completeness. It speaks of being satisfied; it speaks of the only thing that can satisfy — righteousness. And the article is used, the righteousness, the one real righteous- ness, the righteousness of the Kingdom of God. Let us not quibble over the word. Let us not give to it a theological twist or a legal signifi- cance remote from life. Moffat in his version translates the word Goodness. ** Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after goodness." Now to hunger and thirst after a thing is to feel that we need it and need it badly, need it so badly that we are determined to have it, whatever the cost. The Master takes the most familiar of physical cravings, the appetite for meat and drink, 60 '"mc Zwvn TantHle^ to Ubee Haain ** 6f and applies these cravings to the soul. He is not asserting the happiness of goodness in itself, but the happiness of those who hunger and thirst after goodness. The Lord looks upon the heart. It is not a question of what we are, but of what we want to be. He puts to our credit not what we have, but what we wish to have. Our desires become our deeds, our longings our possessions. It is an attitude He has in mind, an aspiration. Let me repeat that, please. The strange feature of the hunger and thirst that receives the blessing is that it is continuous. The crav- ing is never satisfied. Our physical desire does not die because we ate to-day; it comes again to-morrow. There is no blessing for those who have already attained. The hunger and thirst must last as long as life lasts. The longing is for the unreachable. This is the strange contra- diction of the beatitude. There is no room in the New Testament for a stationary religion. There are always heights above to be scaled. The : i jry is told of a man in the Patent Office