THE SEEN AND THE 
 
 UNSEEN 
 
 FROM THE RELIGIOUS WRITINGS OF 
 
 W. ROBERTSON NICOLL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
This book of extracts, made by wife and 
 daughter, contains matter from his books, from 
 "The British Weekly? and from stray 
 
 sources. 
 
 C. R. N. 
 
 G. M. 
 
 THE OLD MANSE 
 LUMSDEN. 
 
 Made and Printed in Great Britain. 
 Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
TO 
 
 HIS MANY SCOTTISH FRIENDS 
 
 6G5759 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 INFLUENCES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MY MASTERS ...... 3 
 
 MY FATHER ...... 9 
 
 GIFTED FOR FRIENDSHIP . . . .II 
 
 THE BIBLE ...... 14 
 
 ABOUT CERTAIN BOOKS . . . 2O 
 
 MY PUBLISHER ..... 32 
 
 WONDERFUL MEN ..... 34 
 
 COUNTRY MINISTERS ..... 45 
 
 REMEMBERED SERMONS .... 48 
 
 INNOCENT MEMORIES 55 
 
 II 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 WORK ....... 6l 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCE ..... 65 
 
 DELIGHT ....'. 73 
 
 DISCIPLINE ...... 75 
 
 PRAYER ....... 79 
 
 HYMNS ....... 9O 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SAINTS 93 
 
 SIN AND SALVATION . . . .98 
 
 1. THE ATONEMENT .... 98 
 
 2. THE BURDEN OF SIN . . . IOO 
 
 3. COMING TO CHRIST . . . IO2 
 
 4. KEPT IN THE FAITH . . 1 04 
 MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM . . . . IO8 
 THE HAPPY POSTURE . . . . Il6 
 
 III 
 
 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 THE CHURCH . . . . . .121 
 
 THE CURE OF SOULS . . . .137 
 
 IN THE PULPIT . . . . .152 
 
 GENERALS OF THE CHURCH . . .164 
 
 THE PREACHER'S READING . . .167 
 
 EMINENT PREACHERS . . . 174 
 
 IV 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 BEREAVEMENT . . . . . .183 
 
 DEATH ....... 195 
 
 THE NEW COUNTRY . . . . 2OI 
 
 . 215 
 
CONTENTS ix 
 
 V 
 
 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SHORT MEDITATIONS . . . 2IQ 
 
 A WORD TO THE OLD .... 226 
 
 A WORD TO THE MIDDLE-AGED . . . 228 
 
 A WORD TO THE YOUNG .... 230 
 
 GREAT WRITERS . . . . .23! 
 
 TWO CARDINALS ...'.. 236 
 
 MIGHTY WORKERS ..... 237 
 
 EASTER ....... 240 
 
 CHRISTMAS-TIDE ..... 242 
 
 VIGNETTES ...... 246 
 
 VISIONS ...... 253 
 
 GOOD CHEER ...... 258 
 
 VI 
 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 SOME RECOLLECTIONS .... 269 
 
 RAMBLING REMARKS .... 279 
 
 THE INNERMOST ROOM .... 288 
 A PAIR OF SPECTACLES . . . .291 
 
 A HUMBLE AND FERVENT WISH . . . 293 
 
 A SUMMING-UP ..... 294 
 

In Memory of W. Robertson Nicoll. 
 
 TT WRITING as I do from the shire of the home 
 and of the University which trained him for 
 his career, I think first of his strenuous life as a school- 
 boy and student in conditions which demanded faith, 
 courage, and a spirit of prayer and sacrifice, both from 
 the students themselves and from their families. And 
 these virtues characterised him to the end of his life. 
 But he had in addition a genius all his own. I 
 remember while he was still a young minister at 
 Dufftown hearing him preach in Free St. George's, 
 Edinburgh, and being struck, boy as I was, with the 
 originality of his sermon. This quality he has pre- 
 served throughout. But he combined that belief 
 in himself to which he had good right with what 
 does not always accompany it in men of originality 
 a most generous power of appreciating others, and not 
 only for their achievements, but also for their promise. 
 His wide versatility has already had full testimony 
 borne to it, but there were in him what do not always 
 go with such versatility, fundamental loyalties, both to 
 principle and practical aims for impressing these 
 principles upon the life of his people and carrying 
 them out in action. With him there dies a singular 
 
 xi 
 
xii W. ROBERTSON NICOLL 
 
 mass of knowledge, both literary and personal, and an 
 individuality without its exact match in our time. 
 I mourn besides the loss of one of the most just 
 and helpful friends I have ever had. 
 
 GEORGE ADAM SMITH. 
 From " The British Weekly" May loM, 1923. 
 
I. INFLUENCES 
 
 I 1 
 

 C c 
 
MY MASTERS 
 
 " That simplicity which is the last step of Art." 
 
 CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON 
 
 i 
 The Tower Falls. 
 
 T TE has fallen like a tower, and his removal means 
 * * for many a change in the whole landscape of 
 life. 
 
 Two orators of the first rank haVe appeared ,' iti 
 our time : Mr. Bright and Mr. Spurgeon. Spurgeon' s 
 marvellous voice, clear as a silver bell and winning 
 as a woman's, rose up against the surging multitude, 
 and without effort entered every ear. 
 
 Mr. Spurgeon's almost supernatural keenness of 
 observation was a great element of his influence. A 
 well-known neighbour of his has never been able to 
 recognise his members, because he cannot recall faces. 
 It is not a fault ; but it is a misfortune. Mr. Spurgeon 
 at one time, as he sat on his platform, could name 
 every one of his five thousand members. He also 
 remembered even visitors with whom he had a very 
 slight acquaintance ; and when they came to the 
 Tabernacle instantly detected them. He was pretty 
 sure to contrive some way of making signs to them 
 
 3 
 
4 INFLUENCES 
 
 before the service ended in manners sometimes 
 quaint enough. 
 
 His Triumphing Message. 
 
 1X/TR. SPURGEON always made salvation a 
 -L*A wonderful, a supernatural thing won 
 through battle and agony and garments rolled in 
 blood. That the blood of God should be one of the 
 ordinary forces of the universe was to him a thing 
 incredible. 
 
 This great and hard-won salvation was sure ; that 
 is, /*it;jdjd:not stand in the creature"; it rested 
 absolutely ''with God. It was not of man, nor of the 
 ' Witt pf iher.flesh. Mr. Spurgeon's hearers had many 
 of them missed all the prizes of life ; but God did not 
 choose them for the reasons that move man's prefer- 
 ence, else their case was hopeless. Their election was 
 of grace. And as He chose them, He would keep 
 them. The perseverance of the saints is a doctrine 
 without meaning to the majority of Christians. But 
 many a poor girl with the love of Christ and goodness 
 in her heart, working her fingers to the bone for a 
 pittance that just kept her alive, with the temptations 
 of the streets around her, and the river beside her, 
 listened with all her soul when she heard that Christ's 
 sheep could never perish. Many a struggling trades- 
 man tempted to dishonesty, many a widow with 
 penury and loneliness before her, were lifted above 
 all, taught to look through and over the years coming 
 
MY MASTERS 5 
 
 thick with sorrow and conflict, and anticipate a place 
 in the Church Triumphant. 
 
 DR. J. M. NEALE 
 A Gatherer of Pearls. 
 
 TO him it was given to know that the old books 
 are better than the new. He turned back to 
 times where thought was deeper, more believing, more 
 holy. He gathered the pearls buried in the field 
 which few feet but his own had trodden. In his 
 writings he was always forward to say that nothing 
 which he published was original. In a sense that was 
 no doubt true, but in another sense it was absolutely 
 untrue. For Dr. Neale had the magical art of taking 
 comparatively commonplace and lustreless matter 
 into his hands and passing it out ablaze. 
 
 A Darling Clearness. 
 
 IT is impossible to be too enthusiastic about his 
 style in prose and poetry. It was a style of 
 exquisite simplicity. It had all the appearance of 
 inevitableness. So lucid was it that readers are at 
 first tempted to believe that it came very easily, and 
 that it might be reproduced without trouble. Dr. 
 Neale's style, on the contrary, was the most difficult 
 style on earth to imitate. His simplicity was that 
 simplicity which is the last step of art, though it may 
 at times be the first step of nature. To put it differ- 
 
6 INFLUENCES 
 
 ently, he resembles Mark Rutherford in this respect, 
 that to change a word in almost any of his sentences 
 is to spoil everything. Again and again I have turned 
 over in my mind sentences of Neale with an uncom- 
 fortable sense that one word or two words have gone 
 wrong in my memory. Till I got them right the 
 sentence was not musical or satisfying, but on turning 
 to the original the solution was so plain that one was 
 amazed to have missed it. Dr. Neale used no out- 
 of-the-way expressions. The ordinary English tone 
 was enough with him to secure the most dazzling, 
 or rather I should say the most perfect, effects. 
 
 MARK RUTHERFORD 
 
 Preacher and Guide. 
 
 ALL through his books are little sermons and 
 reflections on texts, which show what a 
 preacher he would have made. 
 
 Is there more than this ? There was more. No 
 one knew better than he the world of forlorn hopes, 
 insatiable desires, and restless yearnings. But there 
 were signs that for him the discords were resolved into 
 harmonies of spiritual beatitude that he found the 
 path which the vulture's eye hath not seen, and 
 attained to the rest of faith. He writes at times as 
 one who has seen the Everlasting Rose, as one who 
 could say to a hostile world, " He whose name is 
 
MY MASTERS 7 
 
 Legion is at our doors deceiving our intellects with 
 subtlety, and flattering our hearts with beauty ; and 
 we have no trust but in Thee." 
 
 ii 
 
 The Unswerving Pencil. 
 
 T TIS achievement is after the manner of Giotto's O. 
 * *- There is little adornment or embroidery, 
 but the pencil never swerves, and the round is always 
 perfect. Only the careless will be deceived by the 
 apparent simplicity of the accomplishment ; it is the 
 simplicity which is the last result of art. It is with 
 nothing short of wonder that one finishes a book of 
 which almost every sentence is in its final form. The 
 style is capable in the author's hands of producing any 
 effect 5 fire and colour come when they are needed, 
 and with the utmost reserve, self-restraint, and 
 economy, Mark Rutherford everywhere shows himself 
 a magician. No one will think that we disparage our 
 younger stylists in saying that beside him they are 
 all children. In some of them the show of power is 
 greater ; there is more complexity, more enrichment, 
 and far more visible effort. Here, indeed, there is no 
 effort and no pretentiousness, yet whoever wishes to 
 understand the possibilities of the English tongue 
 should give his days and nights to the study of Mark 
 Rutherford. His secret, however, will not be dis- 
 covered in that way. For it is spiritual. Here is 
 one among us who, to use his own words, speaks the 
 
8 INFLUENCES 
 
 veritable reality. He has the power denied to so many 
 of at once clutching the heart. You feel as you go 
 on that you are reading with exposed nerves ; and 
 you lay down the book thrilled and shaken never 
 to be again quite what you were at its beginning. 
 
MY FATHER 
 
 " The mingled hope and awe which seemed to make up his 
 religion were always in evidence." 
 
 THE REV. HARRY NICOLL 
 
 (Lumsden, Aberdeenshire) 
 
 A Free Church Minister. 
 
 T TE judged his lot ideal, and all he asked from 
 * * Providence was that things should not grow 
 worse. Though he had few possessions, everything 
 was prized to the full. When he compared his 
 allotment with that of others he compassionated the 
 others. He had no envy, and no jealousy of men in 
 more prominent positions. Rather he was sorry for 
 them, because they could not possibly have time enough 
 for reading. He coveted nothing for his children but 
 that they should enjoy a life like his, and deeply 
 regretted their removal to more obtrusive activities. 
 His little manse, I see, he noted in his diary when 
 he entered it, as " a most comfortable and com- 
 modious residence. Thanks be to God." And this 
 was the constant temper of his mind. 
 
 The scholar was my father's hero, and when he 
 had a scholar in his company he unconsciously behaved 
 as one who had to make the very best of an oppor- 
 tunity that would soon pass, and learn as much as 
 
 9 
 
io INFLUENCES 
 
 possible. The other successes and dignities of life 
 hardly entered into his mind, and did not enter at all 
 into his manner. 
 
 My father, as far as I could ever see, had no literary 
 ambition whatever, except perhaps the ambition to 
 know. This marks him sharply off from almost 
 every other human being I have encountered. 
 
 He went twice a year to the Synod at Aberdeen, 
 had a round of his booksellers and invariably ordered 
 many duplicates, the carrier delivered the book parcels 
 on Thursday, and it was the rule that I should go up 
 for them, and bring them down and be present at 
 the opening. But on the Thursdays after the Synod, 
 my father went up a private lane with a wheelbarrow 
 and brought the books home with a guilty countenance. 
 
 It was etiquette that none of us should appear to 
 know anything about those proceedings. But at last 
 his conscience became easy. He said to me, " You 
 are never safe with only one copy of a good book." 
 
GIFTED FOR FRIENDSHIP 
 
 " In spite of all that has been written, friendship remains a 
 mystery. It is a real need, and rarely supplied." 
 
 PROFESSOR ELMSLIE 
 " Different to the Rest." 
 
 WHAT was said of Henri Perreyve is eminently 
 true of Elmslie : he was gifted for friendship 
 and for persuasion. There was about him the in- 
 definable charm of an atmosphere at once stimulating, 
 elevating, and composing. He had an inexplicable 
 personal attraction that drew to it whatever loving- 
 kindness there might be in the air. 
 
 In that delicate and watchful consideration for 
 others which has been called the most endearing of 
 human characteristics, he could hardly be surpassed. 
 He concerned himself with the whole life of his 
 friends, and especially with their trials and perplexities. 
 Dr. Elmslie was indeed one of the very few men to 
 whom one might go in an emergency, sure of a welcome 
 more kindly perhaps if possible than would have been 
 accorded in prosperity. His whole energies were 
 solicitously given to the task of comforting. If 
 things could be set right he delighted in applying his 
 singular nimbleness of mind to the situation. He 
 was adroit in action and almost amusingly fertile in 
 
 ii 
 
iz INFLUENCES 
 
 schemes and suggestions. He had a profound and 
 compassionate sense of the frailty of men, their sore 
 struggles and thick temptations ; he thought the 
 Christian Church sadly remiss in allowing so many 
 lives to be ruined by one great fault. 
 
 Latterly he could hardly listen without impatience 
 to gloomy forecasts of the future. He believed that 
 all was right with the world, that Christ was busy 
 saving it, and would see of the travail of His soul. 
 Men prone to darker thoughts loved him very much 
 for that. 
 
 We may apply to Dr. Elmslie words used, I think, 
 about an American writer : his charm was of the 
 kind that we fail to reduce to its grounds. It was 
 like that of the sweetness of a piece of music or the 
 softness of fine September weather. 
 
 PRINCIPAL MARCUS DODS 
 
 Faithful and True. 
 
 HE was the best friend and the most Christlike 
 man I have ever known. 
 
 There was a generous incredulity at his heart. 
 He was slow to wrath, and especially very slow to 
 believe anything against those whom he cared for. 
 He was not only willing, but even anxious to hear the 
 other side in every controversy, even when his own 
 mind had been resolutely made up. " Wait till you 
 are seventy," he would say with that unforgettable 
 smile. 
 
GIFTED FOR FRIENDSHIP 13 
 
 I have no hope of making up his loss or of finding 
 such another friend again. But when we see not 
 our tokens, and when the voices that helped and 
 cheered fall silent one by one, we think of what has 
 been and of what yet may be. 
 
THE BIBLE 
 
 There is peace in it, the deepest peace ; but struggle the most 
 terrible struggle, has gone before. There are flowers in it blooming 
 quietly and sweetly, but on the edge of the burnt-out crater. 
 
 The Picture of the Stainless. 
 
 HOW were these elements put together ? Who 
 breathed into the whole the breath of life so 
 that it became a living creature, as Luther says, with 
 eyes and hands and feet ? Take the problem of the 
 Gospels. One may say lazily that it is an insoluble 
 problem, and one may say it wisely. In any case, 
 how was it that these writers succeeded in drawing 
 the picture of the Stainless ? How was it that the 
 stream was never allowed to become turbid at any 
 moment ? One act, one word, one attitude, might 
 have been condemned by all generations of the faithful. 
 How were they kept from misunderstandings, these 
 men who were always misunderstanding, when the 
 story came to be written ? 
 
 The Precious Possession. 
 
 A DEEP and thorough familiarity with the text 
 of the English Bible is a rare and precious 
 attainment. To have one copy in large type in which 
 you mark passages and make annotations for a lifetime, 
 
THE BIBLE 15 
 
 which you peruse and reperuse by day and by night, 
 is an enriching thing. 
 
 The Constant Petition. 
 
 TT7"E return over the years to the time when 
 Robertson Smith taught Hebrew to his little 
 class of students in Aberdeen. The voice that never 
 faltered in any other form of utterance, sometimes 
 faltered in prayer. But one petition was never left 
 out of the supplication. It was this : " May we be 
 mighty in the Scriptures." 
 
 To be mighty in the Scriptures is to know the 
 spirit as well as the letter, to comprehend and to walk 
 by the Scriptures behind the Scriptures. 
 
 The Fires of the Great Sun. 
 
 ' I V HE fires of the great Sun are not dying. They 
 are lighting up the regions that are still under 
 the shadows of night and death, and the Bible will 
 shine on as the world's one book. 
 
 The Present Succour of Christ. 
 
 f I V HOSE who believe in the present succour of 
 - Christ find many things in the Bible and the 
 world grow plain and easy. 
 
 A Warning. 
 
 \ N the morning I can brace myself to most things 
 -* can and do even read commentaries on the Bible 
 books which often show the human intellect at its 
 very lowest. 
 
16 INFLUENCES 
 
 " Bright and Sun-beshone" 
 
 * I V HERE is nothing more fascinating in modern 
 -* religious writing than its note of melancholy. 
 Who among us has not owned the spell ? The books 
 that we take continually from the shelf and ponder, 
 over and over, are the books that strike this note. To 
 read and think of the dusky strand of death interwoven 
 in all love, seems to bring us to the heart of Christ 
 by a nearer way than any other. Think of the part 
 which Death plays in all the nobler literature of the 
 world ! And assuredly the moment of calamity is 
 the half-light in which much becomes visible that is 
 veiled by the full glare of prosperity. Yet we may 
 doubt very much, and we doubt increasingly, whether 
 this is perfectly Christian. There is no melancholy, 
 as moderns understand the word, in the New Testa- 
 ment. It is " bright, and sun-beshone." It passes 
 through earthquake and through heartquake with a 
 firm tread. 
 
 The Christ of the Gospels. 
 
 ' I V HE trouble is that many will not look straight 
 * at Jesus Christ. They turn their heads away. 
 Stopford Brooke very rightly points out that Burns, 
 like so many other literary men, deliberately refused 
 to look face to face at the Son of God. The active 
 scepticism of our day has largely gone with a profound 
 ignorance of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. 
 We have been told that a company of working men, 
 
THE BIBLE 17 
 
 aliens from the Church, and in the majority of cases 
 from faith, broke out into rapturous cheers after 
 hearing a vivid presentation of the Christ Who wrought 
 out in human life the creed of creeds. What is needed 
 is that we should find out, for ourselves, in patient 
 study, the Christ of the Gospels, not the Christ of the 
 Institutes, or of the Christ of the Imitation, or of the 
 Christ of modern biographies. It should be under- 
 stood that the utmost wealth of rhetoric employed 
 even by believers to describe Christ serves only but 
 to blanch the glowing colour of the original story. 
 
 The Trustful View. 
 
 * I V HE Christian people of this country ought to 
 -*- be told far more clearly than they have been 
 told by many of their accepted guides who know the 
 truth, that many of the results of criticism have been 
 established beyond controversy, that serious opposition 
 on the part of scholars has practically quite ceased, 
 and that for good or for evil the situation has to be 
 faced frankly. On the other hand, it is true that 
 criticism is establishing more and more clearly the 
 existence of a higher element than the merely natural 
 in the Old Testament history. With patience, with 
 faith, with wisdom, we may well hope to see, and 
 at no distant day, the authority of the Bible more 
 commanding than it has ever been. The humblest 
 believer will find that much has been given, and that 
 nothing has been taken away, that all the old uses 
 are still possible, and that the old faith is more than 
 I 2 
 
1 8 INFLUENCES 
 
 ever possible the faith of " an old woman who sits 
 reading her Bible, deeply trustful because of the world 
 
 Rest and Comfort. 
 
 TIME, in the poet's words, brings roses, and the 
 loveliest of them all is the white rose of death. 
 But our true, abiding rest, our unfailing comfort, is 
 to be found in the sacred Scriptures. Open them, and, 
 if we will, we may escape from the currents and 
 waves of the atmosphere around us, and be plunged 
 in the profoundest sense of the presence of God. 
 
 The Immortal Audience. 
 
 IT must be said, with all respect, that the practice 
 of the higher criticism induces men to lay an 
 impossible stress on expressions which are not really 
 misunderstood by ordinary people. Can we not say 
 that the night is coming, and say it with full hearts, 
 and yet be very sure of the dawn ? Immortality 
 cannot be secondary and inferential now. It is 
 primary, for Christ means immortality. His in- 
 carnation meant immortality. His every word meant 
 immortality, for what sentence in all His teaching is 
 intelligible if there is not behind it the assumption 
 that He was speaking to immortal beings ? His 
 dying meant immortality, for He did not die for 
 creatures that were in a little to be mere handfuls 
 of dust. 
 
THE BIBLE 19 
 
 Read it Again. 
 
 IT is almost an insult to question whether your 
 friend has read the Bible, but, as a matter of fact, 
 how very few people read the Bible through ! There 
 is a way of reading it chapter by chapter, but the 
 Bible does not yield its secrets to any perfunctory 
 method. 
 
 I believe in a new fresh reading of the Bible without 
 note or comment, page by page, till the last prayer in 
 the sacred record is sighed out, and the end comes. 
 
 In the Pages of the Gospel. 
 
 WE find Christ directly in the pages of the 
 Gospel, as the Church will find Him to the 
 end of time, for the Church receives the things of the 
 Spirit of God, while outsiders count them foolishness. 
 To deny this is to call the long story of God's grace a 
 dream, and to contest the incontestable sign. 
 
ABOUT CERTAIN BOOKS 
 
 " If I have read attentively the Confessions of St. Augustine, 
 I may find myself, after ten years, unable to quote a single sen- 
 tence, and yet I may be the better and the wiser for my pains." 
 
 Special Treasures. 
 
 RACE Abounding " is, without doubt, the 
 most exquisite specimen of English prose 
 style that exists. 
 
 St. Teresa. 
 
 / I V HERE are few finer letters in existence than 
 - those of St. Teresa to the leading ecclesiastics 
 of her time. 
 
 Dr. Parker's Sermons. 
 
 * I V HE true miracle of inspiration is once more 
 * illustrated in these books. They will live, 
 
 because they are filled with the strong wine of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Perreyve. 
 
 * I V HE religious biography which has most impressed 
 -* me is Father Gratry's Life of Henri Perreyve^ 
 
 which can be had in an English translation for half a 
 crown. 
 
 20 
 
ABOUT CERTAIN BOOKS 21 
 
 Mr. Foster Mrs. Gilbert. 
 
 OF special Nonconformist biographies there are 
 two which should be in every library The 
 Life of John Foster and The Autobiography of Mrs. 
 Gilbert^ edited and completed by her son, a book in 
 which the sweetest fragrance of Nonconformist piety 
 diffuses itself. 
 
 A Trio. 
 
 IN three little books, published about the same time 
 and under the same influence, there is, we believe, 
 more genuine Christian passion than will be found 
 in equal compass through the whole range of the 
 Victorian literature. These three little books are 
 Dora GreenwelPs The Patience of Hope^ F. W. H. 
 Myers' St. Paul, and Goldwin Smith's Does the Bible 
 sanction American Slavery ? All three books were 
 written under the inspiration of Josephine Butler. 
 
 Spirited. 
 
 MATTHEW BROWN'S Life in a Puritan 
 Colony we never weary of reading. It is 
 full of salt, which will not lose its savour. 
 
 Fine Religious Poetry. 
 
 MISS GUINEY has written the best religious 
 poetry that has appeared since Miss Rossetti 
 died. 
 
22 INFLUENCES 
 
 A Book to be Written. 
 
 THE venerable J. E. Cabot, author of the admir- 
 able biography of Emerson, once told me that 
 nothing worthy of the subject had been written on 
 the New England transcendentalism and other phases 
 of thought. 
 
 Fast if Necessary. 
 
 I SHOULD say that all the books a country minister 
 really needs may be had for 40 or 50. They 
 need not and should not be bought all at once, and 
 for the sake of them it will often be worth while 
 to forgo a meal. 
 
 On Liking Browning. 
 
 OF English poets, Browning is pre-eminently the 
 Nonconformist preacher's poet, but if you 
 have almost to burst blood-vessels trying to admire 
 him, leave him alone. 
 
 Anglican Biographies. 
 
 TN most Anglican biographies you can say of the 
 -* hero first, that he was a gentleman ; next that 
 he desired the office of a Bishop. 
 
 The Novels of the Time. 
 
 PERHAPS the majority of recent novels have been 
 written by people who more or less rebelled 
 against the Christian law. We cannot call to mind 
 
ABOUT CERTAIN BOOKS 23 
 
 a single instance in which these writers tell us that 
 happiness was the result. 
 
 A Word to Preachers. 
 
 OF Scott, ministers should have at least Old Mor- 
 tality and The Heart of Midlothian ; of George 
 Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life, especially Janet's Re- 
 pentance and Silas Marner ; of Thackeray, Vanity 
 Fair and The Newcomes ; of Dickens, any belonging 
 to the earlier period, and of the later period Great 
 Expectations ; of Charlotte Bronte, Shirley ; of 
 Mark Rutherford, The Deliverance. Mrs. Gaskell 
 is a writer eminently suitable to religious readers for 
 her high feeling and her pure and exquisite style. 
 Of Lord Lytton, The Caxtons and The Last Days of 
 Pompeii should be read ; and of George Macdonald, 
 as much as the preacher is willing to receive. 
 
 A Book for the Discouraged. 
 
 IN this book The Early Letters of Marcus 
 which has been most carefully and skilfully 
 edited by his son, we have a revelation. Not, let me 
 hasten to say, a revelation of weakness. Very far 
 from that. But we have the disclosure of a mind 
 far more sensitive than one imagined it to be, con- 
 fronting a succession of mortifications and disappoint- 
 ments which, surely, never came before or since to a 
 man so gifted. It is thus pre-eminently a book for 
 the discouraged. This means that it is a book for a 
 
24 INFLUENCES 
 
 very large public. For most people one finds, when 
 one gets near to them, are discouraged, and often very 
 deeply discouraged. It is a book especially for 
 discouraged ministers for those who have no popular 
 recognition, for those who are often tempted to think 
 that they have wandered from the path assigned to 
 them, and are trying to fulfil duties for which they 
 were never meant. 
 
 ^ Fervour, and Flight. 
 
 T^OR anything great in life or literature there is 
 -* needed some hope, some fervour, some power 
 of flight. The admitted dearth of notable books at 
 present is due to the cynicism which at regular periods 
 infects the British literary mind, and is now almost 
 universal. How many of our ablest pens are given 
 up at present to the splenetic service of small sarcasm, 
 to heartless pecking at great ideas, to sneering at the 
 march of progress ! This shrivelling and withering 
 of the mind comes from the failure of belief in God. 
 Without that, it is to this we must sink, for there is 
 nothing to serve or redeem in the faith that sees God 
 everywhere in nature, and in nature only. 
 
 The Evangelicals. 
 
 THERE are many books that deal with the early 
 Evangelicals. There is, notably, the Edin- 
 burgh Review article on " The Clapham Sect," by 
 Sir James Stephen. There is an excellent little 
 
ABOUT CERTAIN BOOKS 25 
 
 volume on the theme, for which the writer took pains 
 to read all the volumes of the Christian Observer^ 
 which was edited by Zachary Macaulay, and in which 
 Lord Macaulay published some of his earliest produc- 
 tions. Above all, there is an anonymous book, 
 Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling^ by the author of 
 Visiting my Relations^ which was published by Picker- 
 ing in 1852. It is a strange book, but graphic and 
 picturesque in many passages, and devoting much 
 attention to the Evangelical leader at Cambridge, 
 Charles Simeon. With these books we may place 
 Mr. Russell's Memoir of Lady Victoria Buxton. 
 
 The Life of Dr. Pusey. 
 
 DR. LIDDON regards with profound disapproval 
 Dr. Pusey' s early flirtations with the Germans, 
 his Byronism and sentimentalism. But when Pusey 
 passes into the man we all knew, the biographer is at 
 home, and writes with all his characteristic force. The 
 distinctive value of this book is that it helps us, as no 
 other, to understand the theological value, such as it 
 was, of the High Church movement. Dr. Liddon's 
 fierce lunges at his opponents, Arnold, Whately, and 
 the rest, effectually exorcise the demon of dulness. 
 
 Findlay on Galatians. 
 
 DR. FINDLAY was not a mere scholar, but had 
 the inestimable gift of style. Two Wesleyans 
 at least have commanded the grand style the style 
 
26 INFLUENCES 
 
 of Bunyan, Dale, and Dean Church. I mean W. B. 
 Pope and G. G. Findlay. It was a positive pleasure 
 to read Dr. Findlay, for the sheer beauty and dignity 
 of his English. He wrote no book which was not 
 worthy of him, but to my mind the deepest, the most 
 characteristic, the most precious of his commentaries 
 is that on Galatians, which he contributed to the 
 Expositor's Bible. I have thought many times that he 
 found himself there, as nowhere else, and this was 
 the judgment of men like Dr. Dale and Dr. Marcus 
 Dods. To study Dr. Findlay's book was to have a 
 new window opened in the mind. 
 
 George Macdonald's Novels. 
 
 / "T -V HE impression these books made on many 
 -* young minds could never be exaggerated. 
 How wonderful it was to see the young genius come 
 forth to the fight against the time-honoured dogmas, 
 with his dazzling spear of youthful scorn and beautiful 
 indignation ! The diamond point of his virgin 
 weapons, the figure of the preacher, all glowing and 
 poetic in a region of ultra prose these were enough 
 to fascinate youth, and the heart was cold that did not 
 fall in love with his generous and tender dreams. I 
 say the books were constructive. They were alto- 
 gether noble in their tone and feeling. No one 
 could lay them down without thrilling to the thought 
 that truth and goodness and God are alone worth 
 living for. Even though it might be impossible to 
 accept their full teaching, they throbbed with a spiritual 
 
ABOUT CERTAIN BOOKS 27 
 
 life which could not but communicate itself. They 
 are books of the true prophetic quality, and ought not 
 to be forgotten. 
 
 In the best of all Macdonald's books, Robert Fal- 
 coner^ we have the largest autobiographical element. 
 That fine character, Mrs. Falconer, in whom we see 
 the grander type of character which Calvinism has 
 produced in Scotland, a character in which a flame of 
 true religion burned under a thick and hard crust, 
 was his own grandmother, upright, just, severe, and 
 yet at heart loving, with nothing mean about her. 
 The boy's soul and hers came into contact, and he saw 
 her when he wrote Robert Falconer in the tender 
 light of holy memories. 
 
 As for Robertson, he scarcely believed in the 
 recognition of friends in eternity. Macdonald, on the 
 contrary, was vehemently persuaded of the sanctity 
 and permanence of love, and to him a heaven was a 
 home heaven. Only those who have read his books 
 through can understand the strong invigorating note 
 of faith which runs through them. And all of them 
 are in unison with the first chords he struck. 
 
 Paton's Story. 
 
 T T 7"E cannot imagine the time when believing hearts 
 will not glow over the story of Paton's work 
 in the New Hebrides. The book has signal literary 
 merit. Dr. John Paton was one of the very few 
 men who did not need to acquire the power of expres- 
 sion by toil and painstaking. Whenever he set his 
 
28 INFLUENCES 
 
 pen to work the result was fresh, spontaneous, vivid, 
 and arresting. The emotion that pulses through 
 every page, the noble passion for Christ and the souls 
 for whom Christ died, set the heart on fire. 
 
 Do you know Mr. Fearing ? 
 
 NEARLY all believe that they have read The 
 Pilgrim's Progress. They know something 
 about it, for they have read about the fight with 
 Apollyon, about the Slough of Despond and Vanity 
 Fair, and they think they have done enough. But 
 if they are candid, they will confess on reflection that 
 they don't know Mr. Fearing, Bunyan's favourite 
 and most beautiful character. Missing that, they 
 have missed a great deal. They go back, if they are 
 wise. 
 
 " The Scarlet Letter." 
 
 TF there is any reader whom these words have 
 -* fired with any ambition to know the best, I 
 advise him to procure straight away the first volume 
 of the lovely edition of Hawthorne, just published by 
 Messrs. Service and Paton, and containing The Scarlet 
 Letter. Now for the first time so far as I know in 
 England, Hawthorne is presented in a worthy form, 
 where one can read him with a true satisfaction. The 
 book is cheap, the story is enthralling, the style shows 
 such mastery of the English language as is possible 
 only to a very few in any century. There are deep 
 
ABOUT CERTAIN BOOKS 29 
 
 lessons of life in the book, lessons that are of more 
 value than many sermons, lessons that, even to unsuscep- 
 tible readers, give a permanent bent to the mind. 
 
 " Just a Young Girl." 
 
 THE objection is that Tennyson's " May Queen " 
 was silly. She had but a few simple thoughts 
 in her mind Robin, the lover ; little Effie, the sister ; 
 the triumph of her brief queenhood, the flowers and 
 birds, her mother, her clergyman, and, at last, her 
 Saviour. She was not a Girton girl. She could not 
 address a public meeting. I daresay she took her 
 political views from her father. She was not a great 
 reader, I suppose ; she had no literary talent, and 
 could never have written a popular realistic novel or 
 a study of heredity. She lived before the times of 
 evolution and the higher criticism, and I fancy she 
 would have known nothing of them, even if she were 
 living now. She was just a young girl in a Lincoln- 
 shire farmhouse, and, if she had lived, she would have 
 married a young farmer, and have made him very 
 happy. Nothing in her ? Nothing except good- 
 ness, innocence, love, and faith. Nothing more worth 
 talking about. 
 
 A Statesman's Writings. 
 
 ]\/TR. GLADSTONE'S truly detestable style seems 
 WA to have been his from the beginning, and he 
 never got rid of it. It must be owned also that the 
 
30 INFLUENCES 
 
 value of his theological opinions is exceedingly small. 
 Mr. Gladstone pottered at theology all his life, and a 
 man of his gifts could not fail sometimes to say good 
 things. But the truth is that he rarely understood 
 the nature of any great theological question he ever 
 handled. 
 
 His piece on " Robert Elsmere," along with his 
 criticism of Macaulay, may be described as the best 
 of his writings. But he was most unhappy when he 
 ventured on the ground of the critics. 
 
 What remains to us is the memory of that venerable 
 head, humbly bowed in prayer, of the grand and 
 constant fidelity to duty, of that marvellous radiance 
 of faith which transfigured and ennobled the most 
 potent career of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Gethsemane Books. 
 
 / T A HERE are a few books peculiarly dear to the 
 - heart of the Church, which I may call Geth- 
 semane books. The chief are the lives of Brainerd, 
 Martyn, and McCheyne. All of these died young, 
 not without signs of the Divine blessing but pre- 
 maturely rich and fervid natures exhausted and burnt 
 out. I do not overlook physical causes and reasons, 
 but in each case there was a Gethsemane. Read 
 the memoir of Brainerd, which Wesley published in 
 an abridged form. It was written by Jonathan 
 Edwards, the greatest intellect of America. Mark its 
 reserved passion, its austere tenderness. Read the 
 story of young Jerusha Edwards, who followed her 
 
ABOUT CERTAIN BOOKS 31 
 
 betrothed so soon, and you feel that you have done 
 business in great waters. Read Brainerd's aspirations 
 " Oh ! that I might be a flaming fire in the service 
 of my God. Here I am ; Lord, send me ; send me 
 to the ends of the earth ; send me to the rough, the 
 savage pagans of the wilderness ! " 
 
 " Rabbom" by Canon Anthony Deane. 
 
 T TIS chapters and paragraphs move on in masterly 
 -* * sequence. The style is lucid, forcible and 
 felicitous, lit up with brilliant epigrams. In these 
 days of hurried and slovenly writing, how we respect 
 the author who never descends into a sentence which 
 is either otiose or obscure ! 
 
 The book represents clarified and condensed think- 
 ing of no common order. Even though you may 
 hesitate to adopt all its positions, you are constrained 
 to admire the sweet and reverent spirit, the deep-hearted 
 faith, which breathe throughout this Study of Jesus 
 Christ as Teacher. 
 
MY PUBLISHER 
 
 " I have ever had experience of your enterprise, liberality, and 
 confidence." 
 
 The Friend of the Distressed. 
 
 "JV/TR. HODDER was consulted in many delicate 
 **>* and anxious affairs. Parents whose children 
 had gone wrong, young men who had fallen, religious 
 workers who had been wrecked all came to him, 
 and all received the best help he could give them. I 
 think he rose to his greatest in those negotiations where 
 tact and fineness of feeling are supremely necessary. 
 No word of the many secrets disclosed to him ever 
 passed his lips. He was a man absolutely to be trusted, 
 and not even in the most confidential conversation 
 did he ever betray a trust or say a word that might 
 lead to its betrayal. Once, I remember, he came into 
 my room and threw himself listlessly into a chair. 
 This was so different from his ordinary ways that I 
 said, " What is the matter ? " He answered, "It is 
 impossible to get another chance for a man who has 
 broken down." Compassion was, I think, his most 
 distinctive quality. He was a barometer, not at all 
 in the sense that he flattered and fawned upon the 
 successful, but in the sense that when he sought you 
 out, you might know that he believed you to be in 
 need. He could talk about the evils of indiscriminate 
 
 32 
 
MY PUBLISHER 33 
 
 charity, but if ever a man remembered the maxim : 
 " Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that 
 would borrow of thee turn thou not away," that man 
 was Matthew Hodder. Latterly he never went out 
 without a stock of half-crowns, and any suppliant 
 might be sure of half a crown at least, no matter how 
 often he had been found out. 
 
WONDERFUL MEN 
 
 " It is not with mere misery that we think of Dr. Denney. We 
 are happy in the remembrance of a man in whose presence we felt 
 that God and goodness could not be doubted. But the news of 
 his death was a blow on the heart. Alas, my brother, very pleasant 
 wast thou to me." 
 
 DR. ALEXANDER WHYTE 
 The Devout. 
 
 ON thinking over our long association, it becomes 
 clear to me that his main characteristic was his 
 intense humility. 
 
 Evangelical humility is the note of all he preached 
 and wrote. This was never a base humility. It 
 never passed into a painful and haunting sense of 
 inferiority. That feeling is the ruin of true humility, 
 and Whyte, who was in all ways a just and faithful 
 knight of God, had none of it. One thing for which 
 he ardently prayed has been denied him. He longed 
 with the whole passion of his powerful nature for a 
 reunited Scottish Church. His death should lead to 
 a greater visible earnestness in this vital matter. " The 
 King's business requireth haste." What a gift he was 
 to his Church, to his nation ! How wide were the 
 irradiations of faith and love and hope and repentance 
 that came from his intense and prayerful life ! And 
 
 34 
 
WONDERFUL MEN 35 
 
 he died as we should have wished him to die. Liter- 
 ally, he fell asleep in Jesus. 
 
 BISHOP WALSHAM HOW 
 
 His Contentment. 
 
 1T\R. HOW from the beginning of his labour was 
 **J a signal example of diligence and content. He 
 was for nearly thirty of his best years rector of a 
 comparatively small country parish. Yet from 
 morning service at eight o'clock, till he laid down his 
 pen about midnight, every day was fully occupied, 
 and when he took up larger responsibilities he could 
 say that no man can do more than work his whole 
 time. It was said of him by a friend, and everything 
 bears it out, that he was perfectly and absolutely 
 content to live and die in his little parish. This is 
 monitory and suggestive. It may be doubted whether 
 Christians have taken fully to heart the parable of 
 the talents, whether they clearly realise that our 
 talents may be and must be doubled wherever we are 
 placed, and that in every sphere, no matter how 
 humble, there is always the opportunity and the call 
 for unrelaxed diligence. There are Christians who 
 are amiable and slothful, of whom their friends say 
 that they have great talents, which have never yet 
 found full development ; Christians who salve their 
 consciences by always talking about some great work 
 they mean to do before they die. So far as we have 
 noticed these people are looked upon affectionately, 
 
36 INFLUENCES 
 
 without any passion of moral reprobation. Yet surely 
 there can be no sin greater than this, no guilt heavier 
 or more damning than that of the unlit lamp and the 
 ungirt loin. 
 
 His Industry. 
 
 OUIET spheres seem to give excuse for large 
 intervals of leisure, but the Christian has no 
 right to any leisure, beyond the necessary rest. How 
 found that he had more than enough to do. He 
 would not even waste a few odd minutes. He would 
 go to his writing-table and add a few lines to the book 
 he was engaged upon. He ruled his life, as life can 
 only be ruled, by being most absolute and rigid in 
 method. When he knew that a letter had to be 
 written, he would go and address the envelope so that 
 it might serve as a reminder. And all this work was 
 done with the most unbroken and steady content. 
 In one Church ministers are asked at their ordina- 
 tion whether they will " faithfully, diligently, and 
 cheerfully " do their work. It is in the cheerfulness 
 that most of them fail. 
 
 His Modesty. 
 
 HOW had his trials, like every man. He says 
 that the only people with whom he was very 
 successful were old women, but he was patient with 
 the strange vacillations of morning and night that 
 come to every Christian toiler. However narrow any 
 
WONDERFUL MEN 37 
 
 man's allotted space of dominion may be, it is enough 
 enough for all his time and for all his energy. 
 
 ii 
 
 Facing Death. 
 
 'TpHERE is something very admonishing in the 
 manner in which the old man faced death. 
 He saw it coming long before, but said little. He 
 made all the preparations he could, wrote the fullest 
 and clearest directions to his children on every matter, 
 and even such small things as instructions to his 
 successor with respect to ventilators and other details. 
 He continued in excellent spirits, enjoying everything, 
 and went on preaching. He arranged a fishing holiday 
 in Ireland, and had some good sport. He was glad 
 in the scenes of the beautiful world he was soon to 
 leave. He had none of the morbid feeling that these 
 things were shadows soon to pass. 
 There was nothing of the craving : 
 
 11 O Paradise ! O Paradise ! who would not long for rest ? " 
 
 He was in the strait, no doubt, which St. Paul of 
 old was in. He was willing to depart and be with 
 Christ, which is very far better, and yet willing to 
 remain in the flesh as long as that was expedient for 
 any. Again, we ask, is not this in the full sense 
 Christian, the thankful acceptance of all the blessings 
 of earth ? All of them were lightly held, and though 
 he said little, there lay, no doubt, on all that last year 
 of waiting, the foreglow of the coming Angel. 
 
38 INFLUENCES 
 
 JAMES MARTINEAU 
 A Noble Obscurity. 
 
 \T7HAT is most admirable in Martineau's life is 
 its lofty and serene dignity. " A great soul 
 in a small house " was the spectacle that fixed Lacor- 
 daire's admiration. If the great soul dwells contentedly, 
 nobly, in the narrow surroundings, then he deserves 
 reverence. As Hutton said, Martineau would have 
 drawn thinkers from all parts of the world if he had 
 lectured in any great university, but, as a matter of 
 fact, he was engaged in discoursing to " two or three 
 boys in a corner." What he did for these " boys " 
 is shown in the fact that the great books of his last 
 years were mainly recasts and digests of the lectures 
 he prepared for them. There is something very 
 noble also in the patience with which Martineau 
 worked without recognition. Up to his sixty- fifth 
 year he attracted very little attention. 
 
 PROFESSOR HENRY DRUMMOND 
 
 i 
 Naturally Virtuous. 
 
 ID ORN in a Christian home, ever under the influ- 
 -*~* ence of the most earnest and loving Christianity, 
 he was himself not only naturally good, but naturally 
 virtuous, to use the subtle French distinction. His 
 tall, athletic form, his beautiful face, his rare union 
 of strength and gentleness, of courage and tenderness, 
 of boldness and sanity, gave him a charm which can 
 
WONDERFUL MEN 39 
 
 be partly accounted for, but which in the end of the 
 day we must call magnetic, for it could never be 
 completely reduced to its grounds. He never showed 
 that he had himself experienced the agonies and travails 
 of religious conflict. But no man was more familiar 
 with the battles and the defeats of his fellows. Humble 
 and simple, always at the furthest remove from self- 
 sufficiency, he was yet self-sufficing. The incalculable 
 work he did as a father confessor of multitudes was 
 apparently accomplished with triumphant ease. He 
 was always willing to hear, to help, and to give, but 
 he himself never asked anything, never seemed to need 
 anything, and so far as one could see, had nothing to 
 grieve over in the past, nothing to fear in the future, 
 nothing to turn for to any friend save to his Saviour 
 Christ. Though he well knew the sorrowful side of 
 life, he himself never seemed till the last to be entangled 
 in the coils of pain. His temperament was joyous, 
 and he lived life with unfailing zest from sunrise to 
 sunset. Such natures are so rare and separate that 
 they cannot fail to be influential. 
 
 ii 
 
 The Student's Guide. 
 
 TT 71TH the largest breath of sympathy, he yet 
 held a faith which never seemed to be shaken 
 or even clouded. In addition, he had very unusual 
 endowments as an orator and as a writer. No one 
 we have ever listened to impressed us quite in the same 
 way. His words were the effortless utterance of a 
 man with a message, a man who could clothe his 
 
40 INFLUENCES 
 
 thoughts in the simplest and at the same time the most 
 shining vesture. 
 
 Without a very strictly defined theology, he preached 
 Christ as a potent influence whereby we can become 
 what we are not, through intimate communion with 
 perfect love and perfect holiness. Thus he won his 
 immense success with the most difficult classes especi- 
 ally with students. They saw in him the likeness of 
 Christ, and they gave him earnest heed. 
 
 DR. JOHN CAIRNS 
 A Generous Nature. 
 
 DR. CAIRNS was enthusiastically human, full of 
 the sympathies which are at the basis of human 
 character. He was naturally drawn to men and 
 women, aware of the richness of the common vital 
 stock, sure about any stranger that if he knew him 
 he would find much to love. If there is any natural 
 gift that Christ takes under His protection, it is this. 
 
 DR. R. W. DALE 
 
 Living Christianity. 
 
 * I ^O Dr. Dale came, later than to most of us, the 
 -*- experiences of bereavement, sickness, and 
 weariness, which test the reality of faith and the power 
 of endurance. He encountered them bravely and 
 tenderly. He was refined, ennobled, and taught by 
 pain. It opened up to him such new reaches and 
 depths of experience that he wittingly turned aside 
 
WONDERFUL MEN 41 
 
 from many things that had claimed his care in order 
 to develop the positive argument for Christianity, on 
 which he had all his life relied. And so in him was 
 fulfilled the great word that the men of sorrows are 
 the men of influence in every walk of life. Not 
 without tears was the New Testament written, not 
 without tears can it be understood. In his earlier 
 works Dr. Dale had consistently made his ultimate 
 appeal to the experiences of penitents and saints. He 
 came to see in his last years that he had been wiser 
 than he knew. He came to see, and he was able to 
 show, that the true verifying of Scripture lies in its 
 application from point to point in life. This is the 
 highest criticism, and it is a criticism which is inde- 
 pendent of every other. 
 
 DR. ROBERTSON SMITH 
 A Great and Simple Scholar. 
 
 IT was to the Church and to Scotland that he 
 belonged so we shall always think. Whatever 
 he accomplished as investigator, or teacher in other 
 fields, it was not by his own choice. He would fain 
 have been in the Church sharing its work of lifting 
 the world to higher levels than those of time and 
 nature. Like the Scottish metaphysician, Dr. Thomas 
 Brown, in the words so beautifully commented on 
 by Mackintosh, he chose to be buried with his kindred. 
 The mind that soared and roamed over every region 
 of knowledge, that measured itself unvanquished with 
 the strongest of its time, turned back to the scenes 
 
42 INFLUENCES 
 
 and the friends of youth. He has been laid to rest 
 in the Keig churchyard by the graves of his father, 
 his brother, and his brilliant and beautiful sister. 
 
 DR. GEORGE MATHESON 
 
 i 
 The Blind Preacher. 
 
 TT was a Pauline life, as Dr. Macmillan with real 
 -* insight points out. Matheson, like St. Paul, 
 had his thorn in the flesh, but like St. Paul he allowed 
 nothing to foil the energy of his spirit. He believed, 
 like St. Paul, that in each condition there is a divine 
 spring of help, and that, however calamitous one's 
 circumstances may be, it is possible so to alter oneself 
 as to make them an aid and not a hindrance in the 
 progress of the spirit. His content was not a poor 
 passive acquiescence. Matheson found a clear call 
 to exertion, and the call was obeyed. He was called 
 to patience and fortitude ; none was more patient 
 and more brave. He was called to joy, and his heart 
 flowed out in gratitude and praise. So he grandly 
 transformed what seemed to others mere wounds and 
 pangs and fetters into strength and gladness and 
 freedom. This was the glory of George Matheson. 
 
 ii 
 
 The Kindly Light. 
 
 T TE proved, and proved again, the reality of the 
 - * spiritual light. To him the East was not 
 silent and relentless. The Dayspring from on high 
 
WONDERFUL MEN 43 
 
 visited him more and more gloriously, and the finest 
 book he ever wrote is his Studies of the Portrait of 
 Christ. Even in the darkness of this world the kindly 
 light was about his feet and on his face. He was 
 strengthened to the end, and strengthened many by 
 the ancient succours of the soul. 
 
 He was indeed one of the most brotherly and 
 generous of men. " Might we meet when twilight 
 has become day ! " 
 
 DR. BARNARDO 
 
 The Lover of Children. 
 
 ATTERLY he became somewhat deaf, and was 
 * ' wont to carry a fearful and wonderful instrument 
 which he described as an ear-trumpet. I never saw 
 him use it for the purpose of hearing, but he employed 
 it freely in thumping the back of his companion, 
 whether to enforce the point of a joke or of an argu- 
 ment. He would run round the table pouring 
 himself out, and then as his climax approached, he 
 seized his ear-trumpet firmly. But one soon noticed 
 that this great effervescence was not first or last 
 among his qualities. He had that strange tenacity 
 possessed by a few, to which it seems as if almost 
 everything yields at last. Dr. Barnardo had taken 
 up his work in life and he clung to it all the time. 
 
 The children from whom others would turn away 
 went straight into his heart as through an open door. 
 He seemed to know every child of his multitude, or 
 
44 INFLUENCES 
 
 at least to know something of every one. He loved 
 them and yearned over them as if they had been his 
 own dear children. For nearly all his time I imagine 
 that his working day was sixteen hours, and he seemed 
 to hate the thought of a complete holiday. 
 
 If the mystical saying is true, that all love is returned, 
 he must have had much of that. Anyhow, he never 
 complained and he never boasted. He belonged to 
 the small transfigured band whose reward is with them 
 and their work before them. 
 
COUNTRY MINISTERS 
 
 " These are men to whom Scotland owes an incalculable debt 
 men who take the highest place at college, and thereafter con- 
 tentedly settle in remote parishes, where they live, labour, and, 
 for the most part, die. I bless God I have known such." 
 
 Bell of Midmar. 
 
 WE remember vividly John Peden Bell of Midmar, 
 a man venerated over the whole countryside 
 as a saint and a thinker. When he came to preach 
 for his brethren the hearer felt himself honoured, 
 and did his best to understand the profound arguments 
 by which the preacher tried to vindicate the greater 
 doctrines of the Christian faith. It was enough to 
 see the true kingly character of the Christian in 
 Mr. Bell's face. Many country ministers have been 
 Moderators of the Synod, and others have taken a 
 leading part in its guidance. Alexander Young of 
 Logiealmond, at an incredible age, preached to the 
 Synod with amazing energy from a text which might 
 almost be called a United Presbyterian text : " I 
 will make Him my Firstborn, higher than the kings 
 of the earth." Who that ever read it can forget 
 George Gilfillan's beautiful paper on Jamieson of 
 Methven, the poet preacher ? Gilfillan heard him 
 as a boy, when he took for his text the words in Micah, 
 " Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine 
 
 45 
 
46 INFLUENCES 
 
 heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood, in the 
 midst of Carmel ; let them feed in Bashan and 
 Gilead as in the days of old," and never forgot the 
 lingering emphasis with which he repeated the words 
 " solitarily in the wood," words which seemed to him 
 unspeakably dear and suggestive. Jamieson's little 
 book of letters contains things as good as any in 
 Cowper's. Speaking of a young girl, who died 
 suddenly in the very springtide of her early promise, 
 he says : " It seems she was at the class on Monday ; 
 how would her youthful spirit be surprised ere Thursday 
 to find herself in a land of light and brilliancy, where 
 she had only to open her eyes to read of knowledge, 
 and to take her place among the accomplished spirits 
 of the just made perfect ! " But time and space 
 would utterly fail us if we tried to illustrate the richness 
 and occasional splendour of the gifts that were un- 
 grudgingly devoted to the service of Christ and His 
 Church by United Presbyterian ministers in obscure 
 corners of the land. 
 
 Robertson of Irvine. 
 
 WHO can ever forget an evening with him his 
 unbounded discourse, his vivacity, his speaking 
 face, and above all his unfeigned humility, openness of 
 heart, and desire to help and cheer ? 
 
 A hearer remembers how he gave out the softly 
 musical words : 
 
 " As streams of water in the south, 
 Our bondage, Lord, recall." 
 
COUNTRY MINISTERS 47 
 
 To hear Robertson reading that must have been like 
 hearing Newman reading in St. Mary's the text : 
 " For Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which is the 
 mother of us all " a thing which, as John Shairp 
 tells us, was never to be forgotten. 
 
 When he was called to Glasgow Robertson made 
 a long and highly characteristic speech. Here is his 
 idea of a country minister : " Child of those childless 
 father of their orphans brother of them all ; 
 entering into all their household joys and griefs in the 
 most homely and familiar way ; interested in the 
 father's work and wages, in the children's education, 
 in the son's going to sea." 
 
REMEMBERED SERMONS 
 
 " My own view Is that what people go to church to hear about 
 is religion, and by religion I mean Christianity, and by Christianity 
 I mean the truths that are inseparable from the Cross. The 
 ablest, the freshest, the most impressive sermon I heard in Chag- 
 ford was that preached by a layman in the Bible Christian Chapel." 
 
 The Faith of Robertson Smith. 
 
 PROFESSOR ROBERTSON SMITH added in 
 
 Aberdeen the accomplishment of preaching to 
 his many other accomplishments. It was he, who, 
 addressing an evangelical meeting in the North 
 Church, gave out for his text, " Come unto Me, all 
 ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest," and began : " He who spoke these words 
 is present at our meeting to-night." 
 
 Dr. MartmeaiUs Best. 
 
 " / "T A HE Spirit of the Lord is upon Me." No one 
 -1 who has read Dr. Martineau's wonderful 
 sermon on the passage perhaps the most magnificent 
 of all his sermons, one in which that great master of 
 religious language has used, without straining, his 
 utmost resources will ever hear the words without 
 remembering it. 
 
 4 8 
 
REMEMBERED SERMONS 49 
 
 James Reid of Eastbourne. 
 
 * I S HE stillness and eagerness of the listeners were 
 - extraordinary. The prophetic passages about 
 China, also the certain failure of civilisation apart 
 from Christianity, will be remembered by those who 
 heard them not for the skill with which they were 
 phrased, though that was not small, but for their 
 intrinsic force. I desire and expect for Mr. Reid a 
 great future. 
 
 A Man with One Talent. 
 
 TT7HEN I was a boy of fifteen, I went to the 
 East Church, to hear Professor Flint, then of 
 St. Andrew's. I had never been in an Established 
 Church before, and had some feeling of guilt. But 
 soon the passionate eloquence of the preacher, the 
 rush of his words, and his intense, pallid face, lighted 
 up by genuine enthusiasm, moved me. He was the 
 first preacher I ever heard who spoke to students in 
 the sense that he made them feel that he understood 
 them. I cannot recollect the text, but the drift of 
 the sermon went to show that a man with one talent 
 might be as happy as a man with ten, if only he made 
 the best use of what he had received. 
 
 Dr. John Watson. 
 
 TT7HEN I first heard him, he preached on the 
 
 character of Jacob ; he stated the case for 
 
 and against like an accomplished lawyer, and then 
 
50 INFLUENCES 
 
 summed up like an impartial judge. It was intensely 
 interesting, but the real effect was produced by a few 
 electric sentences at the end. 
 
 The dangers and the sorrows of his people were 
 ever in his mind. More than once after his death 
 he was called an interpreter. He knew men so well 
 that he spoke home to them ; he knew life so well 
 that he understood the Bible and could make it a 
 living book. His familiarity with life's comedy and 
 tragedy saved him from cynicism and caricature, and 
 kept him sound and sweet at heart. 
 
 Climax upon Climax. 
 
 THE most popular preacher, beyond comparison, 
 was Arthur Mursell, who used to come to 
 lecture, and who could crowd the largest churches in 
 Aberdeen to the roof. Only once in my life 
 although I have heard Mr. Gladstone's finest efforts 
 have I seen an audience fairly set ablaze, and that was 
 in Mr. Arthur's church, under a sermon by Mr. 
 Mursell. The text was, " For her sins have gone 
 up unto heaven, and God hath remembered her 
 iniquities." The sermon was a terrific arraignment 
 of the Church of Rome, and climax was piled on 
 climax, till, in the end, the preacher burst out with 
 an anticipation of Rome's destruction, and people 
 turned round and gazed on one another in their pews. 
 I saw the sermon in print and was not struck by it, 
 but the impression of the hour was never to be for- 
 gotten ; one of the select experiences of life. 
 
REMEMBERED SERMONS 51 
 
 Jowett Seizes and Holds. 
 
 1P\R. JOWETT took for his text the passage in 
 -*^ Romans : " For scarcely for a righteous man 
 will one die ; yet peradventure for a good man some 
 would even dare to die. But God commendeth His 
 love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
 Christ died for us." 
 
 In Dr. Jowett everything preaches. The voice 
 preaches, and it is a voice of great range and compass, 
 always sweet and clear through every variety of 
 intonation. The eyes preach, for though Dr. Jowett 
 apparently writes every word of his sermons, he is 
 extraordinarily independent of his manuscript. The 
 body preaches, for Dr. Jowett has many gestures, 
 and not one ungraceful. But, above all, the heart 
 preaches. I have heard many great sermons, but 
 never one at any time which so completely seized and 
 held from start to finish a great audience. I had in 
 my view quite a long row of people, and, so far as 
 I could see, not one ever turned away from the 
 preacher. 
 
 I am not a very good listener. Sometimes a name 
 or a phrase sets me off wool-gathering, and I confess 
 that when Dr. Jowett referred to Casaubon as an 
 example of the righteous man, I began to think how 
 unjust George Eliot had been to Casaubon, how 
 ridiculous it was to call him an old fossil, when he 
 was a little over forty ; how absurd it was to say that 
 his work was worthless because he did not read 
 German ; and, above all, how cruel it was in George 
 
52 INFLUENCES 
 
 Eliot to put Mark Pattison and his wife in her novel. 
 But, with that exception, I did not wander an instant. 
 
 The True Path. 
 
 DR. JOHN KER was the great sermon-writer 
 of the United Presbyterian Church. 
 
 But Dr. Ker was much more than a sermon-writer. 
 He was a noble preacher. Though his health was 
 always feeble, and he was incapable of " oratory " in 
 the popular sense, he was among the most impressive 
 and fascinating speakers I have ever heard. One 
 week-night service he conducted in a country church 
 it is impossible to forget. 
 
 The text chosen was, " Go thou thy way till the 
 end be, for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the 
 end of the days." I do not remember the formal 
 division, but the three words dwelt on were Way, 
 End, Rest. First there was an End ; things were 
 not always to be perplexed and troubled. 
 
 If there was wisdom at all, the world must end, and 
 give way to a new and higher sphere to them that 
 trust God. There was a way to that end ; secure, 
 clear to all who trust the promises, even though 
 striking sometimes through the sand, or by a path 
 beset with thorns. Each had his own way 5 an 
 influence within his reach which could be exerted 
 by none other. Take the true path, and rest would 
 come at the end, and the final appointed place for 
 which the soul was fitted : " Thou shalt stand in thy 
 lot." Heaven was human and homelike. Those 
 
REMEMBERED SERMONS 53 
 
 who lived with us and cheered us would surround us 
 there. It would be good to meet Moses and Paul 
 and the saints, but better to meet the longed-for and 
 the lost, in the day when God healed the breach of 
 His people and bound the stroke of their wound. 
 
 ii 
 
 Consoled and Refreshed. 
 
 "EVERYONE went away comforted. All the 
 * ' aim of the sermon was to turn away the hearers 
 from the preacher's personality 5 but if any thought 
 of it, they must have felt that they were addressed 
 from a singular altitude of experience, and knowledge, 
 and power. 
 
 The more one saw of him, the more astonishing 
 did the width of his culture seem. He seemed to 
 know more than anyone else about everything literary ; 
 talk about the Turkish Spy, or Mrs. Browning's 
 early poetry, or the folklore of Brittany, and he could 
 give you points in all. 
 
 It is something to be a person of wide miscellaneous 
 reading ; if there are many, I have not met them. 
 But it is not much, after all, to have read voraciously. 
 Dr. Ker had done a great deal more ; he was a finished 
 scholar, who never dropped the student's habit for all 
 his love of literature. 
 
 Dr. Pulsford says " Luminous." 
 
 THE best thing in Pulsford's appearance in New 
 College Chapel was the sight of the great 
 teacher himself. He spoke with his old vehement 
 
54 INFLUENCES 
 
 impatience of this imprisoning clay, with his old 
 rapture of the luminous body which is to be the 
 vehicle of the freed spirit. It was worth while to 
 go there simply to hear him pronounce the word 
 " luminous." Surely no one, since St. Paul, has so 
 earnestly desired to be clothed upon with the house 
 which is from heaven. 
 
 A Missionary Sermon. 
 
 I RECALL vividly the late Dr. Archibald Watson 
 of Dundee, who was the companion of Dr. 
 Norman Macleod in an Indian mission tour. He 
 preached very sensibly and quietly for half an hour 
 on Indian missions, and then he raised the dread 
 question as to the fate of the heathen. After picturing 
 with rising emotion the many virtues and the sore 
 oppressions of the people, he said, " I cannot bring 
 myself to believe that such men are lost, and " (catching 
 his breath with a heart-sob, and speaking with great 
 intensity), " I know that the Judge of all the earth 
 will do right." 
 
INNOCENT MEMORIES 
 
 " Life, as it goes on, tends to become so sordid, that the heart 
 grows hard, if it ceases to converse with the past." 
 
 MR. DEWAR OF FOCHABERS 
 
 Filled with Chanty. 
 
 IV/fR. DEWAR of Fochabers' innocent memory 
 -^ -* must long linger in the region where he 
 lived and loved so long. In his early days Mr. 
 Dewar was an intrepid champion of the Free Church. 
 He took a prominent part in its fiercest controversies, 
 and always bore himself well. But when I knew 
 him he was an old man, and to me he stands out 
 as the one perfect embodiment I have ever seen of 
 the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians, a chapter 
 which, it is worth remembering, was written not by 
 St. John, but by St. Paul. Indeed, I never read or 
 hear that chapter without thinking about Mr. Dewar. 
 It was not that his powers or faculties or memories 
 were gone. It was other than that. Everything 
 was fused in love. Even when speaking of his 
 bitterest adversaries (and in the Disruption his adver- 
 saries were very bitter), he spoke with a large and pitiful 
 charity. To one cast in such gentle mould, no doubt 
 the world came gently ; but he, too, had his trials, 
 and they were taken very calmly and quietly, though 
 
 55 
 
5 6 INFLUENCES 
 
 it was but too easy to wound a heart so kind. Mr. 
 Dewar, too, received young ministers with ardent 
 affection. He foresaw the brightest things from their 
 beginnings. It was no pain for him to be eclipsed 
 in popularity by a younger preacher. His heart was 
 in the cause, and his joy in the thought that the banner 
 would still be carried when his hands had relaxed its 
 hold. 
 
 MR. M OF SPEYSIDE 
 
 i 
 The Majesty of an Old Minister. 
 
 A MORE ardent, fiery, courageous spirit I have 
 never known. He had been struck by para- 
 lysis, and thus his youthful force was much abated. 
 Yet you could see even then what it must have been. 
 Impulsive, vehement, fearless, he was a true soldier 
 of the Cross. Like his brethren of the same period, 
 he had much of the majesty of the old parish minister. 
 From his beautiful manse, which overlooked the Spey, 
 you could see a great tract of country, and you could 
 see that he regarded himself as the one minister of the 
 region. I used to spend a day and night at his house 
 every six months at least. He had much to say, and 
 much that was well worth hearing, but invariably he 
 had to tell you about two things. They have been 
 so impressed upon my mind that in the total ruin of 
 memory I think I shall keep them. One was a long 
 story about a call which he received many years before 
 from Paisley. He did not accept it, and did not 
 encourage the overtures made to him j but sweet in 
 
INNOCENT MEMORIES 57 
 
 the old man's mind was the remembrance of how he 
 had been unsuccessfully wooed. Another great event 
 in his life was his preaching one Sunday in Regent 
 Square, London, when Dr. Hamilton was minister. 
 There was a good congregation in the morning, but 
 he was told by the anxious elder who was his host 
 that he must expect very few in the evening. Re- 
 membering the clannishness of the Morayshire loons 
 
 in London, Mr. M thought differently. He did 
 
 not contradict his host, however, but listened in 
 silence while he explained. When they got to the 
 church they were told that the building was crowded. 
 I forget what the collection for the day was, but I am 
 tolerably sure it was more than 100. With what 
 delight this story was told ! Out of the old man's 
 past these two events stood vividly. 
 
 n 
 
 Bathed in Light. 
 
 1\ /TR. M was a true old Highland gentle- 
 
 *-* * man, who never on any occasion offered 
 advice. But when he was asked for it, it was good 
 to see the serious earnestness with which he went into 
 the case, how anxiously he made himself acquainted 
 with every circumstance, and how eager he was to 
 do his very best. You saw him then to be a wise 
 and experienced man, and you saw, too, how little 
 personal interest counted with him when the cause of 
 Christ was concerned. It was much to see him on 
 the evening of a Communion Sunday after he had 
 
5 8 INFLUENCES 
 
 preached, in spite of fears and infirmities, with the 
 utmost earnestness and copiousness. He was quiet 
 and gentle ; his mind evidently still lingering on the 
 high themes of which he had spoken. I see him now 
 as he looked on one of those evenings worn and 
 weary, yet on fire ; as one who had been caught up 
 to the third heaven and had but newly descended. 
 
II. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
WORK 
 
 " We were born to suffer as well as to work, and the better we 
 work, the better we shall suffer." 
 
 ^ labour on" 
 
 THE great safeguard for nearly all of us is to be 
 found in almost unrelaxed industry. It is 
 pernicious also to despise certain forms of labour. 
 Utopia itself will need scavengers. But " I will make 
 thee ruler over leisure," is a great promise to be 
 perfectly fulfilled on high, where endless service means 
 endless rest. 
 
 Common Sense. 
 
 IT is never pleasant to say " no," and yet humanity 
 is not easily succoured, and it is only now and 
 then that efficient and timely help can be given. 
 
 ' Too Busy." 
 
 A PHRASE I once heard rings in my ears " The 
 man who was too busy to do his duty." It is 
 no excuse for a business man that he serves his church 
 well, if he serves his employer ill. 
 
 61 
 
62 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 The Need for Endurance. 
 
 LET us hope not to escape lawfully from law. 
 Irksomeness, strain and struggle are the notes 
 of every true and valiant life. We must bear burdens 
 and face difficulties while we may, with that courage 
 that is the root of all virtue. We are right when we 
 claim the work that fits us best ; we are right when 
 we protest against cramping and stifling conventionali- 
 ties. But we are wrong wrong to the centre 
 when we rebel against toil, against difficulty, against 
 disappointment, against wholesome pressure. It has 
 been said well that " the deepest root of moral disorder 
 lies in an immoderate expectation of happiness." Nor 
 does happiness dwell with lawlessness. Though we 
 sold our clocks and watches, and broke both the tables 
 of stone, we should still be miserable. For the law 
 is written in our hearts. 
 
 The Peace of the Labourer. 
 
 f I ^HE best day, the happiest day, is the day when 
 * every hour is estimated with a most scrupulous 
 care until all the programme of work is accomplished, 
 and it is marvellous how in labour the torments of 
 the spirit are scattered. " My Father worketh 
 hitherto, and I work," said Christ, and the labourer 
 understands the union. 
 
 Persevering. 
 
 FT has been proved true over and over again that 
 -* those who were firm of purpose, and set their 
 faces to the north wind and the winter, were rewarded 
 
WORK 63 
 
 by the falling down of the walls that held them in, 
 and became free men. 
 
 On Encouraging the Worker. 
 
 ' I V HERE is no time at which a word of kindness 
 -* is so sweet as in the early years. Many men^ 
 middle-aged or old, could still repeat to you the 
 scanty words of praise which they heard from their 
 teachers and professors at a time when the heart was 
 sensitive and warm. 
 
 The boy who has been working well at school 
 ought to be told of it by those he loves best. It will 
 nerve his heart for the struggle, and it will strengthen 
 those ties the firmness of which we are all apt to take 
 too much for granted. 
 
 Kindness to the Stupid. 
 
 A S you thank God humbly for His gifts and mercies, 
 * * you will dedicate them to the service of those 
 slow, stupid people who are blind and deaf to so much 
 that makes your own life worth living. 
 
 On Spending One's Leisure. 
 
 T HAVE always found that the happiest people are 
 -* those who give part of their leisure to altruistic 
 work, who go out in the evenings and teach in schools, 
 or speak in working men's institutes, or work for 
 their churches, or serve some great and difficult cause. 
 There is something in labour of that kind which makes 
 
64 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 life sweet. I know many hardworking and successful 
 business men who do this, and who care more about 
 that part of their lives than about the money- making 
 part. They always speak about the work as if there 
 were no other. And yet some of us who do nothing 
 of that kind are very happy in our chosen labour, and 
 long for the leisure hours to come. Is this wrong ? 
 I do not know. " Whither shall I go from Thy 
 Spirit ? " 
 
CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
 " Childhood and youth should be made happy as far as possible.'* 
 
 Thinking It Over : a Duty. 
 
 AM convinced that multitudes have yielded too 
 * soon. In the lives of great men we may read 
 that the tide often turned just when they were on the 
 point of despair. I call to mind Carlyle, Napoleon, 
 Cromwell, and many others. In the same way, the 
 surroundings which are hostile to the life and peace 
 of the spirit may be escaped from, and, if the door 
 can be forced open, they ought to be escaped from. 
 
 The Divine Drift. 
 
 T7OLLOW no advice unless you are personally 
 * convinced that it is right. If you have decided 
 a matter after full consideration, do not imagine 
 afterwards that your choice was wrong. Wait, and 
 you will see that you did the right thing. Most of 
 us in the course of our lives have come to a fork in 
 the road. We did not know along which direction 
 we should proceed, but after a time we made a selec- 
 tion. Now we think it would have been well if we 
 had made another. Two situations were offered to 
 us at one time, and we chose, let us say the humbler, 
 and have been allowed to remain in it. We think 
 i 5 65 
 
66 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 to ourselves, " If I had taken the higher place I should 
 have done better." No, not better, and if you wait 
 long enough you will see a light will fall upon the past, 
 and you will find that your own will had much less 
 to do with your choice than you imagined, that there 
 was a deep divine drift which has vindicated itself. 
 
 God Knows. 
 
 SOME may read these lines who keep wondering all 
 the time why they ever took up the work they are 
 doing, why they ever came to live where they are 
 living. If they had chosen another way, the whole 
 world would have been different. Let such take heart. 
 To-morrow they may meet the friend whose friend- 
 ship will be the best blessing of the years, the friend 
 whom they never could have met on any other path. 
 Some are faithfully drudging in poorly requited toil 
 with hardly a hope beyond it. To-morrow they may 
 discover that keen eyes have been watching them, and 
 silently marking their fidelity and patience. They 
 may be suddenly raised beyond their utmost dreams. 
 It is well to cherish no illusions, to go on diligently 
 with the appointed task, making the best of what comes, 
 and with the full resolution not to flinch, though no 
 sudden brightness fall upon the life. 
 
 Stones into Pillows. 
 
 TT 7"E are afraid there are very many who openly 
 
 or secretly are at war with their circumstances. 
 
 There are those who have had a choice, and who 
 
CIRCUMSTANCE 67 
 
 believe that they chose wrongly. This must be very 
 bitter. It must be hard to think " Once the door 
 opened : it will never open any more for me. I 
 thought I was in a home, free to go out and to come 
 in, and now I discover that I am in prison, with no 
 escape save in death. The walls are built round me 
 and I cannot scale them." We have known men in 
 remote places who could not help talking of the 
 opportunity they had missed long, long ago : who 
 could not help repining because they refused to avail 
 themselves of it. Perhaps those of us are happier 
 who never have much choice in our lives, who seem 
 at one crisis after another to have only one road at 
 our feet, who have no repinings as to mistaken prefer- 
 ences and misguided elections. But it does not follow 
 that we are where we might wish to be. We had no 
 choice indeed ; but if the choice had been ours, we 
 would not have chosen the place in which we are 
 living now, the work which we are dully and wearily 
 performing, the companionships in which we must 
 acquiesce. 
 
 But the manly, Christian way out of all this is the 
 way of Jacob. He took the stones of that place and 
 made them into a pillow. He accepted the place as 
 the scene of a heavenly vision. Like the Apostle in 
 the dungeon, the other Apostle in the midst of the 
 Lake of Galilee, Cleopas on the road to Emmaus, 
 John in the isle which is called Patmos he beheld 
 the vision of God, and he took of the stones of that 
 place and made them a pillow. That is, it is just 
 possible to convert the very disadvantages and hard- 
 
68 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 nesses of any place into blessings, into rests for the weary 
 head and heart. How often this has come to pass ! 
 The monotony, the loneliness, the great leisure of a 
 lonely island, may turn a happy soul grey. On the 
 other hand, they may be used for study, for labour, 
 for the gradual mastery of some rich domain of thought. 
 A man may go into such a place ignorant and power- 
 less. He may turn himself in such a place into a 
 scholar and a master. 
 
 Kindling Faith in Others. 
 
 A MAN may find his place barren of spiritual 
 "*- * companionship, and if he has come from a 
 warm, believing air, he may be chilled to the very 
 bone by the frost around him. But how if he sets 
 himself through the fire of his own faith to kindle the 
 hearts of others ? What is a greater joy than that ? 
 What is a greater joy than the joy of imparting light 
 in that manner ? He may isolate himself 5 he may 
 stand apart in a sombre indifference ; but he may be 
 wiser. He may set himself to communicate his own 
 life, and that life will blaze up in its turn. So it is 
 that men turn stones into pillows. 
 
 A. C. Benson, who is very teachable, has some hard 
 things to learn, for he says : " No one ever gives a 
 thought, except a grateful one, to past suffering. If 
 it leaves its handwriting on brow and cheek, it leaves 
 no shadow on the spirit within. It is so easy to see 
 this in the lives of others, however hard it is to realise 
 it for oneself." Rather, it is true that when night 
 
CIRCUMSTANCE 69 
 
 enters into the human soul it never leaves it, though 
 the stars may rise. And yet our light affliction, 
 which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more 
 exceeding and eternal weight of glory. For no 
 Christian can think of pain without thinking of 
 heaven. Jacob dreamed on the stony pillow, and saw 
 the ladder reaching to heaven. So Christians dream. 
 " My father's life," said Hazlitt, " was a dream, but 
 it was a dream of infinity and eternity, of death, the 
 resurrection, and judgment to come ! " The earthly 
 allotment matters less than we think. At the best 
 we are conscious of ideas that we cannot utter and 
 purposes that we cannot achieve here. It is in 
 another world that the soul within us may hope to 
 dilate and act. 
 
 All In Vain. 
 
 THING is more natural to us than to hover 
 round the strait gate trying whether we 
 cannot argue it a little wider. 
 
 Useful Comparison. 
 
 BELIEVE that a great deal of the mists and 
 -* shadows of life would be dispelled at once if only 
 we had someone to discuss them with. The grievances 
 of one man would be swept away by the grievances of 
 another 
 
yo THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 Listen, Brother ! 
 
 / TT V HE first thing to do is to make the best of what 
 -* you possess, to cultivate a knowledge and a 
 love of your surroundings. Imagine, if you can, 
 that the axis of the earth projects from the centre of 
 your village square. 
 
 By taking thought, each may find his home richer 
 in beauty than he had thought it. 
 
 It is still more necessary to cultivate a kindly 
 interest in your kind. Kindly gossip is the salt of 
 conversation. It is inhuman to live in the country 
 and to care nothing for the joys and sorrows of your 
 neighbours. People love and prize sympathy more 
 than anything else, and they will forgive much to a 
 sympathetic gossip. 
 
 It is necessary to be in contact with a broader life 
 than that of the country parish or the little town. 
 Well, there is always the escape of books. The mind 
 in a quiet and leisurely life must be able to a large 
 extent to feed, not upon itself, but upon its own 
 possessions, and to furnish its own delights. The 
 chief misery of an isolated life is that in many cases 
 it dwarfs and stunts the intellect. It may even kill 
 all intellectual curiosity, and that is death indeed. In 
 order to prevent this, it is wise to carry on a course 
 of reading or study. I know a country gentleman 
 who many years ago took up Egyptology. He has 
 pursued it with great diligence,, and has now so good 
 a knowledge of the subject that he is able to meet 
 on fairly equal terms the best experts. It has been a 
 
CIRCUMSTANCE 71 
 
 wonderful thing for him in many ways, chiefly because 
 it has kept the current of his mind clear, and has 
 given him a new interest in life. It has also been 
 the means of winning some valuable friendships. Be 
 it observed that the study would have been com- 
 paratively useless if it had been languidly pursued ; but 
 it was carried out with earnest perseverance. I should 
 not greatly pity any friend in his loneliness, if I knew 
 that he had an interest of this kind. 
 
 One ought to have certain things to look forward to 
 every day, and the chief thing no doubt will be as a 
 rule the letters. You cannot get good letters unless 
 you write them. Your post will be pretty much what 
 you make it. 
 
 Looking Back. 
 
 THE road has wound uphill all the way. It has 
 been stony and sore for the feet, but one day it 
 ends in a fountain of refreshment. The lonely months 
 and years are suddenly closed in a sweet and sufficient 
 experience of companionship. The heart that has 
 been kept from love so long finds at last a truer, 
 tenderer love than any that has passed it and missed 
 it in the bygone days. Then the path of tears takes 
 another aspect. It was the path that led to this, and 
 so it was right, it was good, it was blessed. How 
 transforming is the knowledge that one has not been 
 left to stumble uncared for and unheeded, but that the 
 kindly Light was leading, and that the end is not 
 among the dismal swamps, but in the region of peace 
 and rest. 
 
72 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 Necessary Effort. 
 
 WE must arrange to see our friends as often as we 
 can manage it, and correspondence must not 
 be wholly neglected, even in the years when life is 
 most crowded and burdensome. I have seen strange 
 desolations settling down upon the closing years of 
 life, when friendship is most needed, due to the 
 criminal neglect with which true friends were treated 
 at a time when it seemed as if they could be dispensed 
 with. 
 
 Remembering the Best 
 
 THERE is a way of training memory so that it 
 shall cast out much at least of what is little 
 and what is unclean. Alas ! when we think of all 
 that memory loses, so much of the flower of thought 
 and wit, so many words, sweet, solemn, and nobly 
 ordered, that have passed away, while they were still 
 ringing in our ears, and when we think of the poor 
 dregs it holds against our will we may well bemoan 
 ourselves. But the true tragedy is to allow hard 
 experiences to root themselves in our souls. 
 
DELIGHT 
 
 " Crowned with the memory and experience of happy years." 
 
 Christ in All. 
 
 IT has been miserably objected that, even if He was 
 sinless. He did nothing for the intellectual or 
 artistic progress of the world. Well, He did not come 
 to be the drawing-master or the scientific tutor of 
 mankind. His name was called Jesus because He 
 was to save His people from their sins, and He has 
 been, and is to-day, mighty to save able to save to 
 the uttermost all that come unto God by Him. Yet 
 art and science and philosophy have received a new 
 life from Him. With the risen Saviour, all things rise. 
 
 ^ the Teacher. 
 
 THE call of affection, and that only, awakens the 
 soul. No man knows what he can do till he 
 has learned to love. Love blows the trumpet of 
 resurrection over the graves where his faculties are 
 buried, and wakens them into energy and fruitfulness. 
 Love teaches him how he can work, and think, and 
 feel. But in the full sense, we have no friend but our 
 Saviour. He, and He only, touches our natures at 
 every point. Else why the deep craving for sympathy 
 
 73 
 
74 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 of which the world is full ? Why are the closest 
 ties so sharply sundered ? These needs and pangs 
 turn us to Christ. 
 
 Joy in Small Things. 
 
 LONG ago I read of a Scottish minister who had 
 an ugly little church. The church, however, 
 boasted a beautiful Norman door. The minister took 
 such pride in the door that he came to believe all the 
 building as fair as the entrance, and to consider 
 himself more highly favoured than his brethren in 
 city cathedrals. 
 
DISCIPLINE 
 
 " We may beat to windward in poverty. When we no longer 
 go with a fair wind and have to tack constantly against a foul 
 one, we may cease to be spoiled children." 
 
 Consecration. 
 
 A LOVING parent will not merely save money 
 * * for his children ; he will sanctify himself for 
 their sakes. He will remember that he stands to them 
 as the ideal of goodness and truth ; he will realise 
 the awful obligations implied in their pure belief 
 about him ; he will remember that he cannot take his 
 own life without taking theirs. What unutterable 
 loss if Christ had even for one moment failed to 
 sanctify Himself ! 
 
 Following Christ. 
 
 THE most absolute self-forgetfulness and self- 
 devotion can hide in a palace as well as in a 
 cottage. The print of the nails may not always be 
 obvious underneath kid gloves and silver slippers, 
 although God sees it is really there. Well for us if 
 He, at least, does see it. But woe unto us if we 
 shrink back and refuse that hard, sharp self-denial, 
 whatever it be, which Christ is pressing home upon 
 our consciences. 
 
 75 
 
76 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 The Haunting Call. 
 
 WHEN all the interpreters have said their most 
 and best, the Sermon on the Mount keeps 
 looking at us, haunting us, trying us, calling us, 
 stirring our hearts and consciences, summoning us 
 upward and still upward. There are signs that the 
 deeper Christian thought of our time is beginning to 
 think of the old way in which many followed 
 Christ. What if after all He really means that 
 many of us should sell all we have for the treasure 
 and the pearl ? 
 
 Rebuffs and Refusals. 
 
 GREAT deliverances come to believers when hope 
 is almost dead, when the doors are so many 
 and so fast, and the enemies so strong and so wakeful 
 that it seems as if the way were quite closed. The 
 days when we have been rebuffed in every quarter 
 and know not what further we can do ! The time 
 when it seems as if every effort has been foiled and 
 there is none other we can make ! The day when 
 we catch at the last chance ! When we think of 
 one more succour that may be available, of one heart 
 left in the world that may yet pity and try and fail. 
 The day when no answer comes to the last imploring 
 appeal, or an answer which is a cold and cruel 
 refusal ! We are happy if in such an hour we 
 can still trust and wait patiently for the interposition 
 of God. 
 
DISCIPLINE 77 
 
 Looking Forward. 
 
 THE future is His, not ours. We have no 
 concern with one day of it. 
 
 The times, the seasons, the circumstances these 
 things should not load us with the lightest burden. 
 Nor are we to be overmuch concerned about outward 
 activities. There be those who make themselves 
 miserable when they do not write a book every year, 
 or when they do not fill up a long calendar of engage- 
 ments. When it is the will of Christ we must hold 
 ourselves ready to speak, to act, to fight. When it 
 is not, we please Him by retiring into that recollection 
 within the central source of light in which so many 
 were once wisely content to spend their lives. Their 
 activities might be rare, but their force will tell on the 
 universe for ever. 
 
 Bread eaten in Tears. 
 
 fT is through suffering and renunciations and 
 -* privation and weariness that all the finer qualities 
 of the soul are evoked. We know the heavenly 
 powers only when we know what it is to have eaten 
 our bread in tears. Sorrow, faithfully and humbly 
 endured, is what makes the soul. 
 
 The Call to Rest. 
 
 fT may be, and it sometimes is, just as much the 
 -** work of the Lord to rest as to labour. What is 
 constant is our obligation to abound in the work of 
 
78 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 the Lord, to toil and to cease from toiling in His 
 presence, by His strength, under His eye. 
 
 In the Lengthening Shadows. 
 
 RIST would not be taken down from the cross 
 till the evening, and we must not be weary of 
 bearing the cross till the evening of our lives. 
 
 Day by Day. 
 
 CONTINUANCE in well-doing is a rare and 
 ^^ wonderful thing. That a man should continue 
 even in depressing circumstances, to do his very best, 
 year in and year out, shows real decision of character, 
 and invariably makes a deep impression sooner or 
 later. The rule is to live by days, and to do your best 
 in each day. When you waken, you realise that this 
 day is before you, and no more. Get through it well, 
 and the next day will meet you with a more cheerful 
 front. Go on in this way, and at last you will rear a 
 stable edifice wherein you may dwell in peace. 
 
PRAYER 
 
 " Some people seem to think that our Blessed Lord left a 
 promise, ' Where two or three thousand are gathered together, 
 there am I in the midst of them.' He did no such thing. He was 
 much too kind. He knew that prayer-meetings were going to be 
 so small." 
 
 " Into Glory Peep." 
 
 1\ /TANY, we are sure, count as among the highest 
 -*** and most luminous hours of life the little 
 prayer-meetings they have attended in humble places 
 in kitchens and barns. It all comes before them so 
 vividly that they are tempted to think that no experi- 
 ences have been graven so deep as these. They recall 
 the walk to the meeting-place, perhaps on a moonlit 
 night of snow, the long shadows, the " holier day," 
 the hopeful loneliness, the sense that they were on 
 the road to Christ, to a full manifestation of His 
 presence. Thus we come to the low doorway through 
 which love, and grief, and patience, and hope approach 
 Him, and enter the little room where we mark His 
 blest abode, and into glory peep. The little company 
 of grave, subdued worshippers gradually take their 
 places, and one is aware of the deep, still current 
 of thought flowing towards the present Christ, the 
 growing sense of His mastery over us. 
 
 79 
 
8o THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 Non-moral Prayers. 
 
 TT7"E doubt whether there are non-moral prayers. 
 For, as we are always drawn out in tenderness 
 for anyone who we see is looking to us in great expecta- 
 tion and tenderly confiding in us, this must also be true 
 of God. 
 
 Books. 
 
 TN this department our devotional literature is weak. 
 -* We have the prayers of Lynch in his Sermons 
 for my Curates, and they are the most beautiful we 
 know. We have the prayers of Henry Ward Beecher, 
 and they are remarkable for their wistful tenderness. 
 We have a noble volume of prayers from Dr. Maclaren. 
 But there is that in Dr. Dods' prayers which we do 
 not find elsewhere, and we are convinced that those 
 who study them will be strengthened and calmed and 
 inspired as they see a devout and reverent nature 
 rising into obvious communion with the Father of 
 Spirits. The Master had taught him " how to pray." 
 
 The Prayers of Jesus. 
 
 THE Church has told us that in hours of high 
 communion the presence of brethren with 
 whom we hold intercourse in articulate speech is 
 not more but less real to the soul than that Infinite 
 Mind Whose language they have heard by inward 
 listening. They cannot tell us more, but they assure 
 
PRAYER 8 1 
 
 us that they feel One near at hand, within, without, 
 and around, not as an unknown power, but as the central 
 life and light and joy of all. If this is true of the 
 saints, how much more true must it be of Christ ! 
 For in His holy soul there was nothing that could 
 misunderstand or oppose the divine revelation. No 
 darkness, no sin, no encrustation barred the way. 
 His whole nature lay open to God, as a river to the 
 shining of the moon. The Gospels bear witness 
 with one voice to His continual intercourse with the 
 Father. They tell us how He went out, when the 
 dawn was scarcely grey, to hold communion with 
 God, how wondrous evenings of miracle were followed 
 by still more wondrous mornings of prayer, how He 
 betook Himself to solitude to converse, which was 
 broken by no word of penitence or doubt. They 
 tell us how, as the weight of His trial grew, He engaged 
 Himself more and more earnestly in prayer, and 
 understood that the Father was husbanding the True 
 Vine. 
 
 The Hour of Deep Consent. 
 
 PRAYER is at once the easiest and the hardest of 
 spiritual exercises. At the beginning the path 
 is straight and clear. Even then we ask for words, 
 and they are given us. As the soul lifts itself to the 
 Eternal, it craves for the subtle and unsleeping ministry 
 of the Holy Ghost. It seeks an atmosphere in which 
 prayer may utter itself. At last such is the marvel 
 and mystery of supplication it seeks that God should 
 16 
 
82 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 speak to God. It is not satisfied any more with being 
 taught to pray. It asks to be the shrine in which 
 prayer is presented, rather than the priest who pleads. 
 More than the presence of the Son of God praying by 
 our side is the presence of the Holy Spirit praying 
 within. ' The Spirit maketh intercession for us with 
 groanings that cannot be uttered." As Christ stood 
 for us, our substitute in death, so the Holy Spirit 
 stands for us, our substitute in prayer. The heart is 
 quiet in that hour of deep consent with the peace 
 of the river that has found the sea, of the bird homed 
 in the nest with tired wings folded. It shares the 
 secret of the divine purpose, and is one in every point 
 with the holy and prevailing Will. The redeemed 
 heart moves forward like the first of all days, from 
 the evening to the morning from the Old Covenant 
 to the New till it touches, in the intercession of the 
 Holy Ghost within the believer, that moment of 
 intense yearning which signs and crowns the last 
 experience of grace. 
 
 Offerer and Answer. 
 
 / I V HE unutterable groanings of the Holy Ghost 
 -* mean that the heart craves for the unutterable. 
 Our desires go forward above every earthly good. 
 Struggle, pain, weariness, darkness we pass through 
 them knowing they are but for a little time. We are 
 helped in our infirmity by the clasping, supporting 
 hand of the Spirit. But immunity from sorrow will 
 not suffice us. Our Divine Friend has prayed for 
 
PRAYER 83 
 
 us the unutterable prayer and stirred within us the 
 unspeakable desire, and the finite seeks the Infinite. 
 The meaning of our true end comes breaking through 
 the years. The believing heart even now plunges 
 into the depths of the Divine, where the reason cannot 
 follow. As God is the Offerer of Prayer, so must 
 God be the Answer to Prayer. 
 
 The First Duty. 
 
 TT is not the will of Christ that we should depend 
 -** merely on the hope of the future. It is not His 
 will that any part of life should be a blank space an 
 uncomforted stretch of desert through which we 
 march to the Promised Land. The remedy for care 
 is to realise the love of God in Christ moment by 
 moment, touching all existence, and glorifying it if 
 we will with peace and joy. That can only be if 
 we abide in Him by that continual exercise of prayer 
 which to Christians must more and more appear the 
 supremely reasonable thing in the business of existence. 
 
 The Return of Spring. 
 
 " TN the midst of the years make known " is a prayer 
 -** not for a change of surroundings, but for lordship 
 over them. And this mastery comes to us only in 
 one way. God in Christ must disclose Himself. 
 We must return to the Lord, and receive from Him 
 the deep and vital power we have lost. 
 
 More than the vanished splendour of the heavenly 
 
84 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 vision which quickened our youth comes back to us, 
 and with it the spring returns. 
 
 By this revival we are brought into tune with 
 circumstance. We cease to be rebellious, or chilled, 
 or even resigned. We mourn no more that we have 
 so little, can do so little. We enter into a deep 
 and settled reconciliation with our surroundings, and 
 so life becomes at last harmonious, and strong, and 
 precious. So precious, as we think of the past and 
 the future, that the prayer is last on our lips as we 
 fall asleep, first in our thoughts as we awake with God 
 In the midst of the years make known. " Christ, 
 gather up my life's poor hoard ! " 
 
 In Agony and Loneliness. 
 
 OUR hope, our only hope from first to last, is in 
 the retentiveness of the divine love in 
 Christ's resolute hold. " We will come unto him 
 and make our abode with him," is a promise great 
 enough to meet the last extremity of our need, to 
 encounter the most formidable enmity of circumstances. 
 Our Lord has not forgotten how, as He moved towards 
 the Father, He had at last to leave behind Him all 
 human companionship. " Sit ye here while I go 
 and pray yonder." It may come to each of us to have 
 at last to " pray yonder." And that is the ultimate 
 experience of life. Thence we may come back to the 
 world and to our task, assured that we are safe, knowing 
 that it is towards Christ that our deepest thought and 
 will and love have been tending all the while. 
 
PRAYER 85 
 
 Prayer and its Answer. 
 
 OW shall we pass from these nights into morn- 
 
 H 
 
 ings ? By prayer. The humble and lonely 
 and feeble supplication, in which we seem to speak to 
 iron and unreplying heavens that prayer will speed. 
 The answer may come late, but it may come. It 
 may come to the soldier wounded, bleeding, and 
 dying ; but, when it comes, his peace will be like a 
 river and his righteousness as the waves of the sea. 
 
 By abiding under the Cross and entering into the 
 fellowship of the Saviour's sufferings. It is as we hear 
 the pleadings and the groanings of the eternal High 
 Priest that we are delivered and made conformable 
 to His death. 
 
 By working and waiting. " Play the man," was 
 the word that came to a sorely tried spirit. It is as 
 we persevere without illumination in the discharge of 
 duty that we gradually discover how, in spite of all 
 we have lost for the time, a deep support remains. 
 While working and waiting, we are to watch for the 
 light which is surely coming, for the fulfilment of that 
 which is written, " While quiet silence contained all 
 things, and the night was in the midway of her course, 
 Thy omnipotent Word sallied out of heaven from the 
 royal seats." 
 
 In the School of Christ. 
 
 STUDY and prayer must go on together. Many 
 pray who are content with the teaching they 
 have received, and never seek to enlarge or deepen it. 
 
86 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 Many study in absolute neglect of the means by which 
 alone Christian knowledge can burst in upon the soul. 
 Both are ignorant that the Holy Spirit teaches now and 
 immediately every loyal, prayerful student in the 
 school of Christ. 
 
 " Pray without Ceasing" 
 
 WE complain of the decline in candidates for the 
 ministry, and remedies are suggested. But I 
 have not seen it stated that Christ faced the same 
 difficulty, and met it in His own way. Said He, 
 " The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are 
 few." There is a decline of candidates for the 
 ministry. What then ? " Pray ye, therefore, the 
 Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers 
 into His harvest." What would be thought if you 
 had a week of prayer-meetings to plead with God on 
 this subject ? Would anyone attend ? More than 
 you think would attend. More will be done in that 
 way than by giving better salaries and better education. 
 But prayer is no easy thing j prevailing prayer. We 
 must waken the Lord. For this He will be inquired 
 of. He says, " Awake, awake, put on strength, O 
 arm of the Lord ; awake as in the ancient days." Nor 
 will He awake at once. He will refuse till we ask 
 Him more earnestly. He says, " Let me go," that 
 we may answer, " I will not let Thee go except 
 Thou bless me." He says, " It is not meet to take 
 the children's bread and cast it to dogs," that we may 
 
PRAYER 87 
 
 reply, " Truth, Lord ; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs 
 which fall from their master's table." 
 
 " Oh ! how strangely Thou eludest 
 
 Those, dear Lord, that have believed ! 
 Yet, eluding, ne'er deludest, 
 
 Nor deceiv'st, nor art deceived ! " 
 
 We must waken God before we waken the dim 
 sunken masses. What Savonarola cried in the crisis 
 of his Church I would repeat, " Wake Christ ! Wake 
 Christ ! " 
 
 Lumsden of Aberdeen. 
 
 T TE studied his students closely, and delighted to 
 -* - mark and elicit any sign of promise in them. 
 He would occasionally, but rarely, show his pleasure 
 by signs of affection, but we came to understand him 
 best by his prayers. I have never heard any prayers 
 which moved me so much, never any so full of fervour, 
 of humility, of reverence. You saw then that, what 
 the man taught, he believed humbly, passionately, 
 completely. What a joy and strength it would be 
 to hear him pray again ! 
 
 Books to be Written. 
 
 T DO not know in the English language a single 
 -* great or complete book on prayer, a book dealing 
 frankly with the teaching of Scripture. Nor do I 
 know any work in which the significance of forgive- 
 ness is at all adequately discussed. 
 
88 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 The Shield of Prayer. 
 
 TO keep the Fair Deposit, to bring the precious 
 treasure to Jerusalem, means hard fighting, 
 constant watching. The power of evil is always 
 eminent in the midst of us. Against it religion finds 
 that all her efforts have to be kept in perpetual strain. 
 There is the tyranny of the visible, and there is the 
 slowness of our hearts to believe in the unseen. 
 
 Though it is true that the world passeth away, 
 and the lust thereof, while they that do the will of 
 God abide for ever, yet it is the world that seems often 
 real and stable, and the saints before the Throne 
 invisible or dim. 
 
 We hope we are wrong, but it seems to us that many 
 Christians imagine that they can keep the faith of 
 childhood while neglecting those opportunities of 
 converse with God that must be used, if the spiritual 
 life is not to wither away. 
 
 No really great theologian, no really great believer, 
 has ever lived, to whom prayer was not infinitely 
 more important than any mere exercise of the intellect. 
 
 Pray Once More. 
 
 I SHOULD like, for my part, to see great public 
 meetings of Free Churchmen held, not for the 
 purpose of passing resolutions, but of offering prayer. 
 I do not understand why any prayer-meeting should 
 cease or die so long as there are two or three to join 
 in pleading. It is to two or three that the promise 
 
PRAYER 89 
 
 is given. But it is our own particular and individual 
 duty that we must think of, and so I say, give Him 
 no rest. You seek conversions in your own classes, 
 in your meetings, in your visitations give Him no 
 rest. Plead the needs of souls, plead your own 
 helplessness, plead your own misery, plead your own 
 defeat, plead the Precious Blood, plead the Five Wounds, 
 which are the fortresses of our love, plead the 
 promise of the Holy Ghost j give Him no rest. 
 
 Christ's Prayer for us. 
 
 "IY/T ANY of us had once those who prayed for us, 
 -**-* who remembered us before the Throne. 
 What a joy and strength it was to know it ! But 
 perhaps those who prayed for you have been long 
 since gathered to their rest. Perhaps you are not 
 sure that anyone in all the world prays now for you 
 by name. But, blessed be God, the great Intercessor 
 never pauses. One sweet, clear, prevailing voice is 
 heard before the Throne, and when we do not pray 
 for ourselves, and when no fellow-being prays for us, 
 Christ does not forget to pray. 
 
HYMNS 
 
 " Always, on taking up a new hymnal, I look first to see 
 whether the hymn ' Rock of Ages ' is included or not." 
 
 A Glorious Beginning. 
 
 " Little travellers Zionward, 
 Each one entering into rest." 
 
 The two stanzas seem to me to make the finest 
 opening of a child's hymn in existence. 
 
 Scott's Hymn. 
 
 A CORRESPONDENT of The Scotsman put the 
 ^ * reasonable question why Sir Walter Scott's 
 " When Israel, of the Lord beloved " was not in- 
 cluded in the Scottish Hymnal, whereto A. K. H. B., 
 who, it seems, was the editor of that work, replied with 
 adorable frankness that the lines were not up to the 
 mark of the Scottish Hymnal, being lumbering and 
 ungraceful. There has been nothing equal to this 
 since the editor of a Greenock newspaper declined 
 Campbell's " On Linden when the sun was low." 
 The story goes that he inserted in his notices to corre- 
 spondents something like this : " T. C. Your lines 
 ' On Linden when the sun was low ' are not up to 
 our mark. Try again." 
 
 90 
 
HYMNS 91 
 
 Most readers of poetry will place these lines of Scott 
 among their three favourite pieces of that author. 
 For companions I name : 
 
 " There is mist on the mountain and night on the brae, 
 But the clan has a name that is nameless by day, 
 Then gather, gather, gather Glengarach ; " 
 
 and the wonderful lines : 
 
 " Yet the lark's shrill fife may come 
 
 At the daybreak from the fallow : 
 And the bittern sound his drum, 
 Booming from the sedgy shallow." 
 
 Music. 
 
 FOR passion I turn to Paxton Hood's little hymn- 
 book, and read the exquisite lines : 
 
 " How sweet the child rests, 
 Whom nothing molests, 
 Received in mercy among the Lamb's guests ! " 
 
 Are there more musical words than these in our 
 English tongue ? I do not forget the Laureate's 
 favourite among his own numbers : 
 
 " By the long wash of Australasian seas." 
 
 or Thomson's consummate : 
 
 " And Mecca saddens at the long delay." 
 
 Dr. Horatius Bonar. 
 
 i 
 
 f I V HE literary productions he thought least of were 
 
 -* by far the most popular. These hymns were 
 
 ushered into the world in the most unpretending 
 
92 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 manner. Some of them were printed as leaflets, to 
 be sung by the Sunday-school scholars in Kelso ; 
 others were used to fill up vacant spaces in The Quarterly 
 Journal of Prophecy. He wrote some of the best- 
 known in railway carriages, and some when sitting 
 for a brief rest by the fireside after a day's work. They 
 have gone round the world, have been sung in churches 
 of all communions, have been learned by little children, 
 and hung as lights over the thickly closing waters of 
 death. 
 
 ii 
 
 EVEN the brightness of his verses has something 
 sombre in it, like the red flashing of a November 
 sky. In a world where death and change will not 
 suffer us to love in peace, and where the most faithful 
 workers often sow in tears, such strains will always be 
 caught up hungrily. 
 
SAINTS 
 
 " Many, alas ! have never known a saint, save through books. 
 
 " But in truth the saints are still to be found ; and found often 
 in the lowest spheres. The man is to be deeply pitied who has 
 never known a great saint." 
 
 Paul. 
 
 I 
 
 TO the eye of the world his career ended in 
 desertion, failure, collapse. But as the old 
 man was led along the Ostian Way to die, his mother 
 Jerusalem bent over him with rapturous welcome. He 
 saw those who had gone before, the martyrs in their 
 robes of crimson and the saints in white. Life behind 
 him was like a far-off storm at sea. He was filled 
 with a sense of everlasting triumph as he neared the 
 high world he had longed to dwell in, that world 
 whose air was home. The city of God is glad, and 
 her gladness transfigured him. He saw the earthly 
 vanish and himself entering into the fellowship 
 whereof all the love we know is but a trembling 
 shadow, that city where all we love is restored. To 
 the eye of sense, his career ended as forlornly and 
 lovelessly as might be. To the eye of faith, his death 
 was the rising of his mother, to take her wearied child 
 to her breast. 
 
 93 
 
94 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 ii 
 
 ' I V HAT this grand and passionate nature should 
 -* be turned into a loving, working, quiet power ; 
 that through the years he did not yield to dismay or 
 bitterness ; was not tempted by base compliances ; 
 was not elated by passing victories ; that, having done 
 all, he stood such was the triumph of St. Paul. It 
 is the triumph of all saints. We glory most not 
 in their brilliant and victorious hours, but in their 
 steadfast perseverance through light and shadow to the 
 end. Remembering that, we bless God " for their 
 faith, their hope, their labour, their truth, their 
 blood, their zeal, their diligence, their tears, their 
 purity, their beauty." 
 
 Duty without Pride. 
 
 WE may surely adapt words used long ago of 
 another, to General Gordon. He was one 
 who lived his life, who passed through sorrow without 
 bitterness, who did his duty without pride, who 
 hoped without conceit of favour, who heard the voice 
 of God saying, " This is the way." But the saints 
 do not need our compliments. 
 
 Wesley and Bonar. 
 
 MAY we not come to be above law, above plans, 
 and above rules, and bring forth fruit naturally 
 and unconsciously and in due season ? In other 
 
SAINTS 95 
 
 words, may we not cease from our own works, as 
 God did from His, and as Christ did from His, when 
 He fell asleep on the cross ? 
 
 I think that there is much in the recorded experience 
 of believers which encourages this hope. Was it not 
 true of John Wesley that for many years he abode 
 in this Sabbath of the Son ? As I read his Journals^ 
 and especially the later volumes, I seem to see that 
 he was not any longer a worker, but simply a fruit- 
 bearer. From all his many journeys he carried and 
 wore the white rose of rest. Nothing irked him, 
 nothing disturbed him ; he was at peace. Even here 
 he had entered the Sabbath Rest that remaineth for 
 the people of God. And I may venture to say that 
 Dr. Andrew Bonar, both in his life and in his printed 
 words, left on my mind the same impression. He 
 was dead to the solicitations, and even to the weariness, 
 of the flesh. He had ceased from his own works, 
 and men gazed on him and marvelled at the fruit- 
 bearing Tree of God. 
 
 Dr. Pusey. 
 
 TTTHAT remains to us, and it is much, is the 
 memory of a saint. When the wood, hay^ 
 and stubble are burned up, sainthood and the super- 
 natural truth and grace which alone could produce 
 it or account for it will survive. Much has been 
 said of the imperfect literary form of Dr. Pusey's 
 work too much, for is it so certain that literary 
 form is necessary to immortality ? But reading with 
 
96 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 his eyes, we always see Eternity looking through 
 Time. This will keep his comments on Holy 
 Scripture alive when the work of far better critics 
 and scholars is forgotten. There was such an ardour 
 for goodness, for pity, for self-sacrifice in Dr. Pusey 
 that every just and humble soul must see in him 
 " one of those to whom, under ruder or purer form, 
 the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest 
 itself ; and shine through ... in unspeakable Awful- 
 ness, unspeakable Beauty, in their souls ; who therefore 
 are rightly accounted Prophets." 
 
 In Our Street. 
 
 f I V HE sweet odours of their life may lie quiet and 
 -* still till, on some day of storm, the flower- 
 bells in God's garden are shaken and their fragrance 
 flows forth. Then is known the faith that can live 
 through any trial and be brave through any death. 
 Sometimes in a little hamlet, sometimes in a great 
 city, some dear head is laid in the dust, and all the 
 people gather round, weeping. Sometimes there are 
 only one or two to mourn, but these know that the 
 aspect of life and death has been changed for them, 
 and that the personal presence of Christ with a soul 
 is no delusion, no dream. 
 
 The Beloved Son. 
 
 WHO of the saints delighted in the law of the 
 Lord as did the Saint of Saints ? It was of 
 Him alone that it could be said that He was utterly 
 
SAINTS 97 
 
 obedient. Moment by moment, day and night. His 
 soul stood by its arms. He slept, but His heart 
 wakened. He looked into the Old Testament and 
 saw His own image, as the stars might see theirs in a 
 glassy lake. 
 
 The Saints' Witness. 
 
 TTTHEN the saints speak, they always say that the 
 hiding-place of their life is Christ. They 
 will tell you that they knew Christ on the cross as 
 their sacrifice ; that they knew Him next as their 
 loving Friend ; that, last of all, they knew the mystery 
 of union with Him. 
 
 The Religion of Redemption. 
 
 /CHRISTIANITY begins with the regeneration 
 of the individual, and has no belief in any 
 regeneration of society apart from that. 
 
 Christianity is either a religion of redemption or 
 a dead and powerless nothing. 
 
SIN AND SALVATION 
 
 " A democracy without religion is the most awful vision of the 
 future. Nothing can save such a society from perishing in a 
 Lake of Fire." 
 
 " Men know God irrevocably, if they know Him at all, in the 
 Cross of Jesus Christ. The common people still hear gladly one 
 Voice, only, . . . the Voice that was softly lifted up in Palestine 
 eighteen hundred years ago." 
 
 i. THE ATONEMENT 
 Explaining and Understanding. 
 
 THE desire to explain the Atonement may go too 
 far. All help is welcome, but the fact itself 
 is much more easily understood than many explanations 
 of it. Its " Onlyness " is the main thing. 
 
 The Full Oblation. 
 
 WE admit that some who are puzzled as to certain 
 intellectual aspects of the Atonement do 
 nevertheless receive it, and that the evangelical love 
 for Christ burns on almost unchecked at the centre 
 of their thought. But it is the grasp of the full 
 oblation, sacrifice, and substitution on the cross, 
 which creates that intense and personal love for the 
 Redeemer which is the essence and the core of faith. 
 
 98 
 
SIN AND SALVATION 99 
 
 His Atoning Death. 
 
 TT7HENEVER the heart is most kindled it is by 
 the thought of the well of God dug by the 
 soldiers' spear, of the cross, the sponge, the vinegar, 
 the nails, of the red wine of love that flowed when He 
 trod the winepress alone, and of the people there was 
 none with Him ; of the sweet and dreadful cry, " Eli, 
 Eli, lama sabachthani ? " 
 
 He was slain, and we slew Him. We can never 
 make it up. The thorns of the thorn-crowned head 
 pierced the heart, the fever of His death wakes the 
 fever of our passion, till all the loves that once strayed 
 abroad gather to a burning centre, and the fountain of 
 our affections has but one channel, and that is He. 
 
 The Mystery of Redemption. 
 
 THE offering of the Lord Jesus will be compre- 
 hended by the saints more fully as the years 
 advance. Since the awful day on which He died, it 
 has opened before each generation new abysses of 
 significance. 
 
 The One Thing Needful. 
 
 RELIGIOUS teachers may say they do not 
 understand the Atonement ; but their hearers 
 understand it well enough, and give God thanks. 
 
 Preachers may speak of aspirings and followings 
 after the ideal, while they keep a vow of more than 
 Trappist severity of spiritual silence towards the Son 
 of God ; but their hearers will not surrender the 
 
ioo THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 present love of Christ, the one abiding good that has 
 come to them through the frustrated and broken years. 
 
 Two Vast Words. 
 
 A DEEP religion concerns itself mainly with the 
 ** two vast words " Sin and Grace." 
 
 2. THE BURDEN OF SIN 
 Free Grace. 
 
 MORE and more, as life unfolds itself to you, 
 you will know that your primary need is to 
 be loosed from your sins, loosed from the past sins 
 which follow you, trouble you, haunt you, wear you 
 out, loosed from the nature that ever bends you 
 towards sin, which finds temptations so fierce, so 
 irresistible. This is what the Supreme Love has done 
 for as many as have received Him. He loved us and 
 loosed us from our sins in His own Blood, and made 
 us kings and priests unto God. 
 
 So it comes to pass that the characteristic word of 
 Christianity is " grace," as the characteristic word of 
 Buddhism is " Karma." Grace is the bending love 
 and the stooping pity which looses us from our past, 
 which delivers us from our burden and our weakness. 
 
 " We Wrestled 
 
 NO conviction is burned more deeply into the 
 inner heart of the world than this, that sin is 
 not done with us when we have done with sin. There 
 
SIN AND SALVATION 101 
 
 are men and women by the hundred thousand who 
 would gladly give all they possess if they could but 
 lay their hands upon one hour of madness, and pluck 
 it from the past. : : 
 
 The Dark Soul. 
 
 /CHRISTIANITY, of all religions, is the only one 
 ^^ which has a message to the man who has become 
 a beast. It speaks to him and sets before him the 
 loftiest ideal, as not too high for his striving. Once 
 the window is opened in the dark soul, through which 
 God is seen in Christ, a beginning is made which ends 
 in coronation. 
 
 Christianity transforms the root of the soul, blots 
 out past transgression, and briiigs to bear the fostering 
 powers of the world to come, in hastening the con- 
 summate flower. 
 
 Christ our Ransom and Recall. 
 
 TT7RITERS like Dr. Harnack and Dr. Davidson 
 do not recognise the sense of guilt. They 
 speak as if we had no relation to our past. But in the 
 deep heart of man the sense of guilt is permanent, not 
 destroyed by time, or culture, or the enlargement of 
 vision, or even by the apparent deadness and oppression 
 of the spiritual nature. " It has us, and not we it 
 It pursues us flying, and holds us rebelling." It is 
 in Christ, our Ransom and Recall, that the soul finds 
 all it craves for : pardon, rest, power. How wonderful 
 
102 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 it is to pass from the chill and darkness of this story 
 of a dying faith to the magical sun-soaked air of the 
 New Testament ! 
 
 The Call. . , 
 
 THE "injunction of the Gospel is not Love, nor even 
 Pray 5 it is Repent and Believe. 
 
 3. COMING TO CHRIST 
 Here and Now. 
 
 PLEASE God," said an old Irishwoman in New 
 * York, " we'll have easy times when Tillden's 
 elected." This is how we speak. When some party 
 comes into power, when some new legislation is 
 enacted, when some tangled problem is solved, there 
 will be for us a new heaven and a new earth. But 
 now is the day of salvation. Here, at this moment, 
 any soul looking to Christ, and trusting in Christ, may 
 receive the Bread that God the Father has sealed, 
 and be satisfied. Every soul may take that peace 
 which the world cannot give and cannot take away. 
 
 The Glory to be Revealed. 
 
 TRUST Him. Try Him. To those who keep 
 away from Him He is like the stained windows 
 of a great cathedral seen from the outside. There is 
 no beauty to be discerned or desired. But come into 
 the cathedral, and lift up your eyes and witness all 
 
SIN AND SALVATION 103 
 
 around you the miracle and splendour of fire. You 
 know the glory which the passer-by can never conceive. 
 This knowledge, I believe, has been granted to very 
 many among you, and it is a knowledge that will 
 grow, just in proportion as you use it. 
 
 How Differently ! 
 
 TS not the coming of the soul to Christ a meeting 
 -* of souls P The sinful soul rises j the sinless 
 descends. Thus does the Son of Man become the 
 Saviour. And is it not by a movement of faith that 
 we enter the Door ? Faith, we have sometimes 
 thought, is the door-latch ; and how many have 
 believed, and how differently they have believed, and 
 how sweetly they have entered into rest ! 
 
 Friend of Friends. 
 
 PERHAPS the day of days in life is when we 
 discover the Unseen Friend at our side on the 
 way to Jerusalem. Some of us are much clearer on 
 that day than on the day of our conversion. 
 
 Taking Refuge. 
 
 "OUNYAN tells us how the conviction possessed 
 *-* him, " I must go to Jesus." It is this going to 
 Jesus which is the beginning of salvation. 
 
io 4 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 4. KEPT IN THE FAITH 
 Redeemed and Restored. 
 
 * I V HE apostles never, so far as we can remember, 
 -* try to deepen the sense of indwelling corrup- 
 tion in their converts. They never once fasten on 
 them names of humiliation. 
 
 Even when they sin, the way to recovery is to 
 remember that their roots have pierced through to the 
 living water, that their life is hid with Christ in God. 
 Our danger is rather that we shrink faithlessly from 
 the language which it becomes the redeemed of the 
 Lord to use, and which they can only use as they are 
 clothed in the robe of His righteousness, and looking 
 to His cross. For in looking to the cross, we do not 
 lose sight of our sin. It is graven there. But if we 
 look at our sins we may lose sight of Christ, for His 
 image is not in them. " It is not in our own wounds," 
 says Vinet, " but in the wounds of Jesus that we must 
 put our hands." 
 
 Christian Example. 
 
 * I V HE great token and witness of Christ on earth 
 - is the life kindled by Him in the beginning 
 and burning on steadily to the end. Perhaps none of 
 us know what such lives have been and are to us ; 
 how our faith and hope hang on them. They always 
 burn on the altar of Christ's death, and may we not 
 say on an altar of their own self-sacrifice ? The 
 innocent secret kept simply and bravely through the 
 
SIN AND SALVATION 105 
 
 years often comes out at death. It turns out that the 
 life silently and cheerfully embraced, the work pur- 
 sued with unfailing zest and courage, were the last 
 that Nature would have chosen. But they were 
 joyfully accepted as from Christ, and on the altar the 
 fire burned brighter and brighter. 
 
 The Victorious Christian. 
 
 IT is good to die to the world, good to have the 
 fierce fires of pride subdued, good to cease from 
 all secular ambition ; but only if there is a resurrection 
 from death to life, and if the Holy Spirit fills us when 
 we rise again. By tribulation our life is healed of its 
 rebellion ; but that is not enough. The goal is to 
 be able to say with St. Paul, " None of these things 
 move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself." 
 The fear that once turned one's heart into a handful 
 of dust is gone ; but that is not enough. We must 
 be able to say and perhaps this is the last word that 
 can be said " I am crucified with Christ. Neverthe- 
 less, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." The 
 mind of Christ has taken possession so utterly that it 
 is hardly possible to distinguish between it and the 
 nature and operations of what we used to call our own 
 minds. Then comes the uplift of the soul, its abode 
 in the second rest, its zeal, its self-forgetfulness, its 
 conscious life in God, its peace like a river, its right- 
 eousness like the waves of the sea. Yet of those who 
 have attained that stillness, it may be said that though 
 now they be quiet, they have done business in great 
 
io6 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 waters, " seen the white teeth of the storm furies 
 and sailed through the very throat of death." 
 
 Saved by Grace. 
 
 /^\FTEN, when men taunt us with the charge 
 ^-J that our lives have been failures, that our 
 efforts have come to nothing, we may feel that we have 
 not much to say. Indeed, it often seems as if it were 
 so. We have hardly gathered one rose from the 
 wilderness one token of the coming joy and bloom. 
 But, after all, the true evidence of success is inward, 
 not outward. It is written on the deepest part of 
 the soul by the ringer of God. It is like the seal of 
 the Spirit set on these dim, infirm, half-blinded natures, 
 the pledge that they shall be conformed at last to 
 the image of the Son. 
 
 The Power of the Spirit. 
 
 TN many of us faith is very dim, though not quite 
 quenched. Something has been kept, but it is 
 very little 5 enough for bare existence, not enough for 
 happiness or for power. It may be nearly lost alto- 
 gether, in the study of grammars and dictionaries and 
 books of criticism, in the bitter discussion of ecclesi- 
 astical affairs, even in much serving and skilful organis- 
 ing. What right have we to think we can keep it, 
 if we do not live in communion with God, His Word, 
 and His saints ? What right have we to think that 
 we can keep it, if the heart is suffered to become a 
 
SIN AND SALVATION 107 
 
 high road, trampled by the cares of this life, by the 
 ambitions of time, by the passion for intellectual 
 distinction ? The saddest thing in all the world is 
 to see the young men, who once were all aflame for 
 God, faint and grow weary, perchance utterly fall. 
 Of how many it has to be said in these days that they 
 once burned and shone, and, in the end, grew cold J 
 But through the Holy Ghost it is possible to keep the 
 faith, to end in more than the passion of youth, to die 
 testifying, and not, as Voltaire reports of Cavalier, 
 " much failed of his first enthusiasm." 
 
 " With a Full Heart^ silently." 
 
 / T A O trust Christ is not merely to believe with the 
 -*- intellect the truth about Him, but to commit 
 our hearts to His keeping. 
 
MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM 
 
 The Mystic Teaming * 
 
 "Now I hear it not, but loiter 
 Gaily as before. 
 
 Yet sometimes I think, and thinking 
 Makes the heart so sore 
 Just a few steps more 
 And there might have dawned for me 
 Blue and infinite, the sea." 
 
 Powerful through Detachment. 
 
 T T 7"E have heard much of late about the practical 
 mystic, and the mystic is great and powerful 
 in practical affairs for various reasons, and not least 
 for this, that he never stakes his all. 
 
 The Mystic. 
 
 T TE believes intensely that more and more light 
 -* * is ever breaking from the Word. He believes 
 that it should never be opened save by hands that 
 tremble with reverence. He receives it into his arms 
 as the aged Simeon received the Holy Child. He 
 goes on to study it wistfully, hopefully, till death, or 
 the Lamb of God loses the seals of the Book. 
 
 The Second Sense. 
 
 T N the view of the mystic, great divine words are 
 
 -* not the prize of the toiling intellect of mortality ; 
 
 they are the gift of the Eternal Love. What concerns 
 
 * Favourite lines. 
 
 108 
 
MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM 109 
 
 him is not what the human authors who were the 
 organs of the revelation more or less dimly conceive 
 to be its meaning. He goes behind all that to the 
 intention of the Holy Spirit. This the reader may 
 find more truly than the original writer. This idea 
 is most familiar in the literature of mysticism. Thus 
 St. Martin came to see that there were greater depths 
 in his Ecce Homo than he was aware of until he 
 was acquainted with the writings of Jacob Boehme. 
 The author of John Inglesant, a good mystic of the 
 second order, read a sermon preached on the meaning 
 of one of his minor books. He wrote to the preacher 
 that his meaning was different ; but he afterwards 
 wrote that he now saw that the preacher's meaning 
 was the true meaning. All mystics believe that beyond 
 the obvious sense of the Scripture there is often a second 
 sense. 
 
 Mystical Holy Church. 
 
 FT is one of the chief alleviations of the sorrow of 
 -1 earthly disunion that we may ever and anon 
 come to the surprised and joyful consciousness that 
 the brother who is bearing another name and is 
 fighting in another army is, in reality, at one with us 
 in the Mystical Holy Church. Those who seem 
 spectral and far off, if not positively alien and hostile, 
 are discerned as the true brothers of our hearts. Where- 
 fore it is the wont of mystics to claim this friendship, 
 and to exact recognition " in all houses, temples, and 
 tarrying places of the fraternity." In the fellowship 
 
no THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 of the Holy Assembly is peace. There we escape the 
 boundless weariness of the spirit of the world. There 
 we may win and wear that Rose, which is the symbol 
 of the joy of the two Jerusalems. 
 
 An Authority. 
 
 TT7"HAT was the use of talking about mysticism 
 to a man who, in almost the first thing he 
 published, had discussed the relations between Clement 
 and Dionysius and the French Quietists ? Dr. Dods 
 was familiar with the doctrines of Ammonius Saccas, 
 and could lay his finger on the weaknesses of Kingsley, 
 and mark the limits of R. A. Vaughan. How did he 
 come to be so wise ? By the long labours of a life- 
 time. The late High Master of St. Paul's School 
 used to say, " Give four hours a day to any subject, 
 and you will find by the time you are getting to forty 
 that you are the chief authority on it." 
 
 A Book to Cherish. 
 
 M 
 
 ISS UNDERHILL has given us, on the whole, 
 the best English work on Mysticism. 
 
 Charles H. Spurgeon. 
 
 READ him when he enters the spiritual region, 
 and you feel that you are with one of the great 
 mystics of the world. 
 
MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM in 
 
 Breathless Realities. 
 
 THE Bible is not anywhere to us what it was 
 twenty years ago. Passages we then passed 
 over as meaningless now take hold of us as with 
 living hands. One may doubt whether the highest 
 spiritual truth will ever go into words. The most 
 poetical region of all, says a living mystic, is that 
 which is incapable of taking the form of poetry. The 
 realities take away the breath that would, if it could, 
 give them forth in song. Some things are impossible 
 to utter, and other things it is unlawful to utter. Over 
 such truths the spirit wanders, brooding, till it be- 
 comes vocal, and that is the utterance we have 
 from mystics. 
 
 Mystic Faith. 
 
 TV/TANY humble believers, nourished with the 
 * -" sincere milk of the Word, mighty in the 
 Scriptures, have been unconsciously great theologians, 
 though often so hard pressed that they could only say, 
 in the words over the grave of Heinrich Jung Stilling 
 at Carlsruhe : " Lord, Thou knowest all things, 
 Thou knowest that I love Thee." 
 
 The Scottish Mystic. 
 
 fT is not so difficult to define mysticism in Scotland. 
 -* The Christian mystic is " far ben." 
 
ii2 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 A Sign of the My site. 
 
 "j^/TOTHING is more strange and affecting, and yet 
 ** ^ nothing is more true, than that those who take 
 the most vehement part in the conflicts of this world 
 and the keenest interest in its affairs are nevertheless 
 detached from it. They are all the while sons of the 
 high mother city which is free. It is this which 
 makes them magnanimous, patient, resolute ; it is 
 this which makes them willing to leave the struggle 
 before victory is proclaimed, and even when it seems 
 as if the infantry of trust were being repulsed. They 
 have achieved a great liberty. While they live they 
 dwell with God ; when they die they depart in 
 peace, because their eyes have seen His salvation. 
 
 Prayers Perpetual Made and Answered. 
 
 IT is by the strengthening of the bond with God, 
 and by earnest supplication, that the den of thieves 
 within us is at last changed into the house of prayer. 
 When that is done, the mystic, by the fact of his con- 
 viction, is sure of his life entering more and more 
 into the world where petition is ever fulfilling itself. 
 Answers to prayer startd continually round him, and 
 that much more closely than the hills around Jerusalem. 
 
 One in Christ. 
 
 A MONG the few precious scraps which Dr. 
 ** Parker kept in his great Bible was a cheque 
 from Father Stanton in aid of one of his City Temple 
 
MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM 113 
 
 missions. Dr. Parker had paid the money and kept 
 the cheque as a precious treasure. When Dr. Parker 
 was dying, his mind turned to his friend, and he said, 
 " Father Stanton is praying for me." We have no 
 desire to attenuate in any manner the grave and 
 serious differences which separated the school of the 
 one preacher from the school of the other, and yet 
 who that knew them both can fail to say with a joyous 
 confidence that they were one in Christ Jesus ? 
 
 An Achievement. 
 
 FEW things give me more satisfaction than the 
 reflection that I got Martensen's book on Jacob 
 Boehme translated for English readers. 
 
 Andrew Jukes. 
 
 WE have seen a two-line paragraph announcing 
 the death of the Rev. Andrew Jukes, in the 
 eighty-sixth year of his age. It came as a surprise to 
 us, for we thought that Mr. Jukes had passed from 
 earth and time long ago. Indeed, he never seemed 
 much to belong to them, and all we know of his out- 
 ward career is that for a long time he preached to a 
 congregation in Hull. His writings, however, survive 
 him, and they will live, for they are the work of a 
 true and original mystic and a deep student of Holy 
 Scripture. There are signs that the higher criticism 
 itself is beginning to discern that there are other modes 
 of approach to the Bible than the critical mode ; that 
 Christian criticism itself, followed out wisely, justifies 
 
ii4 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 much which in the past it condemned. Mr. Jukes 
 was nothing of a critic. He was a student and a 
 believer, but his books on the Pentateuch, on the 
 Gospels, and on the Restitution of All Things , whether 
 their conclusions be accepted or not, will remain a 
 possession of the Church, for the writer was a seer. 
 He did not think it needful to march round the 
 tabernacle guarding it from foes. It was a good 
 work, but not his work. Nor did he remain between 
 the porch and the altar seeking wistfully for a gleam of 
 the hidden glory. He was of those who had found 
 an entrance into the holiest of all. 
 
 The Author of " Robert Falconer." 
 
 THERE is no difficulty in discovering our author's 
 spiritual whereabouts. He is a mystic in the 
 fullest sense. He apprehends God in Christ by direct 
 vision, and thereafter his longing is not to grasp and 
 possess, but more and more to be grasped and possessed. 
 
 The Pure of Heart. 
 
 AFTER all, one thing, and only one, is needful. 
 How have you been led in life ? Who are 
 the people who have most profoundly influenced you ? 
 For whom has your reverence been deepest, most 
 bending ? They have not been, I venture to say, 
 the clever, the brilliant, the accomplished. They 
 have been the wise wise with a wisdom that cometh 
 only from the Lord, and only to the children of the 
 kingdom. It is they who are always right, who 
 
MYSTICS AND MYSTICISM 115 
 
 always seem to know what we should do, who enter 
 the sheepfold by the door, while others climb up their 
 own way. They do not reach their end through 
 long and toilsome reasonings. They have the power 
 of strange, straight vision, which sees right through 
 all mystery and bewilderment to truth as it really is. 
 They are children to the last, whether they be old or 
 young. 
 
THE HAPPY POSTURE 
 
 " Accept the will of God, and all the bitterness goes." 
 
 On Acceptance. 
 
 IN every profession there are comparatively few whose 
 early dreams come to fulfilment. The vast 
 majority have to content themselves with humble 
 aims, slow advancement, an uninteresting career, 
 and a nameless memory. We can bear but little 
 success, and little is given to us, and the day comes 
 but too early when we know that the ascent of life 
 has ceased, and that henceforth we must decrease. 
 
 Such defeat, if trustfully accepted, brings its own 
 peace. There is an end of the long, lonely misgivings, 
 of the ambition which has drawn such hard breath 
 under the weight of self-distrust. If we will but 
 cease ! Few things are more tragical and forlorn than 
 attempts made to recall the irrevocable to pretend 
 to a youth that is past to make vain appeals against 
 an irreversible judgment. It is well to struggle on 
 while hope remains. But let us be wise as we grow 
 older, and accept the award. 
 
 " Thy mil be Done." 
 
 HE did not merely accept the will of God when 
 it was brought to Him and laid upon Him. 
 Rather He went out to meet that loving will, and fell 
 upon its neck and kissed it. 
 
 116 
 
THE HAPPY POSTURE 117 
 
 Power in Ourselves 
 
 NOT in surroundings, but in ourselves, is the 
 true power over nature to be found. By faith 
 we understand that to those in union with the will of 
 God sorrow and frustration may be but other names 
 for joy and triumph. So we say, " If the Lord will, 
 we shall live and do this or that," not as shirkers, not 
 as fearful, not as unbelieving, but as those who are 
 safe, as those who know that all things are well if 
 they put us on the way to God. . . . Let us ask God 
 so to order the great and manifold and terrible changes 
 of life, that they may bring us nearer to Him and to 
 Home. 
 
 Full of Faith. 
 
 * I V HERE is peace of God which passeth under- 
 -* standing. There is none that may not 
 know it that strange buoyancy, that inexplicable 
 tranquillity, that daring hope ; in the midst of anguish, 
 tumult and wreck. It comes to those who gaze on 
 the amazing continent of things unseen who are 
 the children of God by faith. 
 
Ill, PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
THE CHURCH 
 
 " Men return again and again to the few who have mastered 
 the spiritual secret, whose life has been hid with Christ in God. 
 These are of the same religion." 
 
 i. INVISIBLE 
 Pilgrims of Eternity. 
 
 IT is our happiness, in this land, to begin our journey 
 to God in the name of Christ, to start from the 
 prayers of childhood ; but there are pilgrims of 
 eternity whose start is more distant from the goal, 
 and they care for their souls, and their souls are 
 cared for, though they do not name the Name that is 
 above every name. 
 
 On Roman Catholics. 
 
 THAT true believers, who have no other means 
 of instruction than those afforded in the 
 Church of Rome, are to be found in that communion, 
 can be denied only by the most crazy bigots, and 
 wherever the fruits of the Spirit are, there is the Spirit, 
 and wherever the Spirit is, there is still the Church. 
 
 The Noble and Perplexed. 
 
 TEACHING that will influence men now must 
 be open-eyed, and brave, ready to modify what 
 should be modified, and surrender what should be 
 
 121 
 
122 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 surrendered. But it must be the teaching in which 
 the heart of the Church of Christ pours itself out. 
 " When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man 
 Thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb. When 
 Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death Thou 
 didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. 
 Thou sittest at the right hand of God in the glory 
 of the Father. We believe that Thou shalt come to 
 be our Judge. We therefore pray Thee help Thy 
 servants whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy 
 precious blood." We do not forget that there may 
 be some cases in which there is perplexity as to words 
 when there is no wandering of the heart, and that 
 noble spirits who could not express themselves so, have 
 been not far from the kingdom of God, nay, rather 
 in its deepest bosom. 
 
 2. VISIBLE 
 The Only Dread 
 
 OUR only fear for Nonconformity in this country 
 is that it may gradually lose its hold on the 
 supernatural, clinging at first to fragments, and then 
 rejecting these. 
 
 Its Charm and Glory. 
 
 XTONCONFORMITY is a perpetual discipline 
 -^ ^ of faith in the supernatural. This to many of 
 us is its chief charm, 
 
THE CHURCH 123 
 
 Honoured Already. 
 
 MOST certainly no one can confer any honour 
 on Nonconformity. 
 
 The Child In the Pew. 
 
 IT is the thoughts of childhood that are the long, 
 long thoughts, and it is in the sanctuary, and 
 only in the sanctuary, that they can fully learn the 
 message of the Eternal Love. 
 
 Broken Up. 
 
 ONE often wonders why the Broad Church has 
 perished in England, and why the High 
 Churchmen have prospered so exceedingly. The 
 Broad Church perished simply because it ceased to be 
 a Church. 
 
 Foes. 
 
 THE worst enemies of the old Evangelicalism are 
 those who do not argue, but rebuke, denounce, 
 calumniate, who identify the essential with the non- 
 essential, who cherish the spirit of hate and vengeance. 
 Christ and His Gospel are not served in this fashion. 
 All the windows of the redeemed soul must be kept 
 open to every breath that blows from heaven. 
 
 The Best Way. 
 
 I SHOULD wish Disestablishment to come not as 
 a triumph of one church or part over another. 
 I should like that we should understand each other 
 better, and ripen towards a mutual agreement. 
 
i2 4 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 The Unity of the Churchyard. 
 
 THE enthusiasm of many good men for amal- 
 gamating all our denominations, Methodists, 
 Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and the rest, 
 puzzles me. The day will come when a truly catholic 
 creed will be wrought out, and then will the true unity 
 of life be achieved. But if convictions are laid aside 
 for the sake of union, we have not the unity of the 
 Church, but the unity of the churchyard. 
 
 On Counting Souls. 
 
 THE revival of interest in missions is an object 
 on which many Christian hearts are most 
 lawfully set. But let no one fancy that the Church 
 will be lashed into missionary zeal by statistics. Calcu- 
 lations go a very small way in the kingdom of grace, 
 and even if evangelical arithmeticians knew more 
 than they do, hearts are not set on fire by figures. 
 
 Impracticable Men. 
 
 TT 7" HAT would become of the churches if it 
 were not for impracticable men ? They 
 are actually saved by such. Men who cannot be 
 " managed " or got round, who insist on speaking 
 when the prudent fathers pray for silence, who fear 
 no abuse and covet no preferment, who conceive 
 deep purposes, and, at the risk of overturning the 
 official coach, carry them through to the end. They 
 appear in organisations when corruption is nearing 
 
THE CHURCH 125 
 
 the core, and the death-rot is at hand, to apply the 
 healing knife. 
 
 Church Union. 
 
 TRUE union between the churches can only 
 come from fresh discoveries of the way and 
 power of faith. The churches must be fellow- 
 students of the divine relation, and while they are, 
 there should be between them the most perfect and 
 cordial charity. As preventing this, Establishment is 
 a great evil, and must be removed before any effective 
 step towards union can be taken, partly because its 
 existence prevents the Free Churches from frankly 
 and properly discussing and settling their own problems, 
 partly because the church established is hindered by 
 privilege from taking a sisterly part in the common 
 counsel-taking. 
 
 The Churches of the Poor. 
 
 IT may be doubted whether the poorer classes will 
 ever be won by ordinary church methods. The 
 great successes among the poor are in the Wesleyan 
 Methodist mission-halls and in Baptist Tabernacles. 
 The poor attend a hall much more readily than a 
 Gothic church. They will not come where seats 
 are not free. They prefer a great building to a small 
 building. They love a bright, hearty service, but in 
 the end they will not long go anywhere unless the 
 preaching is strong, sympathetic, and Christian. The 
 churches may very well consider if it is worth while, 
 
126 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 except in well-to-do neighbourhoods, to build churches 
 and chapels of small size. Among the poor the work 
 will not be done in this way. 
 
 Shadow and Light. 
 
 THE internal strife in the Church increases. 
 Not only is there the battle that must be with 
 us till it is decided ; but Churchmen fight with Church- 
 men ; Nonconformists with Nonconformists. The 
 wisdom and beauty of tolerance are recognised less 
 and less, and while the awful shadow lies on all the 
 churches, their energies are mostly consumed in waging 
 civil war. Yet the Church of Christ is one, and 
 will yet be aware of its unity. Meanwhile we come 
 to wrong conclusions about each other ; we utterly 
 misconstrue and lose one another. 
 
 Little Chapels. 
 
 NOTHING puzzles us more than the agony with 
 which the maintenance of little churches is 
 regarded by many religious minds. You will never 
 hear a testimony against the waste that goes on in 
 other directions. The luxury of the rich who has 
 anything to say about that ? The extravagance and 
 meanness of many professing Christians who ventures 
 to denounce them ? But that there should be two 
 chapels in a place where one might suffice seems to 
 wring the very heart of reunionists. Is the evil 
 done so terrible ? What harm have those chapels 
 done ? Is the presence of another Gospel minister 
 
THE CHURCH 127 
 
 in a little community so unmitigated and black a curse ? 
 May it not be that the vindication of many labourers 
 in such places will come through Christ Himself, 
 on Whom they have wrought a good work ? 
 
 The Dissenter's Heritage. 
 
 IN literature, in politics, in every field, we occupy 
 a greater and greater place. Have you con- 
 sidered that all the recent pictures of religious life 
 which have carried the country by storm are pictures 
 of Dissent ? Have you considered that among the 
 younger leaders in literature nearly all the most 
 prominent are more or less closely allied with us ? 
 Those who think that our political influence has 
 diminished, should look back to the day when there 
 was in Parliament but one representative of Dissent. 
 Our business is to claim our heritage boldly, hopefully, 
 with ceaseless energy and unflinching resolution, to 
 claim it in the spirit of those who have believed the 
 assurance, " All things are yours," and to whom in 
 poverty, and obscurity, and limitation have been given 
 Paul and Apollos and Cephas, and life and death, and 
 the present and future, and Christ and God. 
 
 Charles Stanford : a Great Dissenter. 
 
 TT 7" AS there a more truly heroic life than this ? 
 Take the most sensitive of natures, house 
 it in the most delicate of frames. Fill it with a 
 passion (of all things) for the Dissenting ministry. 
 Multiply trials at home till everything but love is out 
 
iz8 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 at the window, while the student pursues his task ; 
 empty his pocket till he resolves to give all up, and 
 gets respite only by a five-pound note sent by some 
 friend the next morning. Sharpen the wits by poverty 
 till one glove (the second is the property of another 
 student) is carried " most effectively " in the slender 
 hand. When the studies are completed, send the 
 young man to a little fractious dying church, and let 
 him be tormented, till he says of his trials, " The saw 
 may be useful for the wood, but not for me." Put 
 him in another church where he has some experience 
 of litigation, and is sent out " in the ignoble capacity 
 of a beggar." Let the wife of his youth fade before 
 his eyes in her very springtide. Visit him with pain 
 till he rocks himself to and fro in his pulpit, struggling 
 with neuralgia. Transport him to London in due 
 time, and see that he goes as a colleague. Let sharper 
 pain assail him ; angina pectoris through long years, 
 during which he " rallies from death-like faintnesses," 
 and is " familiar with the sensation of dying." And 
 if all this is not enough, visit him with blindness ; 
 take his beloved books away. Is the spirit broken 
 now ? Nay, in all these things he is more than 
 conqueror ; unsubduable and sweet ; preaching, and 
 busy with his own typewriter on new books ; toiling 
 up the hill through the snowy winds. Verily in his 
 case the words of Thomas Lynch were fulfilled : 
 " the good fight was fought to music." 
 
 When Dissent is no more when its sweetness and 
 its bitterness are things of the past someone will 
 perchance be raised up fit to write its history. We 
 
THE CHURCH 129 
 
 Can wish him nothing better than a double portion of 
 the spirit of Charles Stanford. He knew what it 
 was to be pricked by its ten thousand nettles ; his 
 unclothed spirit felt the stings as hardly any other 
 could. He knew how men live for their chapel 
 and die for it ; for that was his own experience. The 
 " cause " was his thought by day, his dream by night, 
 the theme of his last incoherent words at death. 
 
 The Salvation Army. 
 
 IT is a strange and sinister sign of the times that 
 many people have encouraged General Booth 
 who hold him in the utmost contempt, who hate his 
 methods, who class his theology lower than that of 
 Mohammedans and Buddhists, who would not 
 willingly touch him or any of his army with their 
 little finger. They hope that he will make their 
 thrones and thronelets somewhat firmer. They are 
 willing to give him a trifle if he will master and tame 
 the forces they dread. Well, it is no new thing. 
 History tells us how wealth, in its hour of danger, has 
 enlisted and exalted the priest, has made haste to 
 shuffle on the cloak of hypocrisy. But no man can 
 in any degree contribute to the salvation of society 
 who does not purify himself. The gift is nothing 
 without the giver. 
 
 3. ITS WORK AND FAITH 
 
 T THINK young men and women in the Christian 
 -* Church are beginning to seek not the great 
 places, not the easy places, not the coveted places, 
 
i3o PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 but the places where they most firmly tread in the 
 footsteps of their Master. It will be a proof that 
 the secret seeds of fire are still burning in the heart 
 of the Church if this indeed be so. 
 
 Frost. 
 
 * I V HERE is a point and it is not difficult to 
 recognise it when the service ceases to be 
 worship. It is not any longer impressed with a touch 
 of eternity. 
 
 The mil to Believe. 
 
 A SSUREDLY the Church is too ready to find 
 T ^ heroism only in the past. There is a dis- 
 position to question whether there be faith enough 
 on the earth to achieve the great tasks of cleansing 
 and adjustment which lie straight before us. But if 
 there is no human goodness, there is no divine love, 
 and we cannot cease to trust men and women without 
 ceasing to trust God. 
 
 If we drive reverence and love to a distance we 
 shall miss the inspiration by which the kingdom of 
 God advances. The golden year itself can only come 
 to those who have learned to know it. 
 
 The Rose of Christ 
 
 NOTHING in St. Paul's conception of the 
 wonderful Church of Christ is more startling 
 than his undoubting faith in the work she was to do, 
 
THE CHURCH 131 
 
 and in the tender, unslumbering love that would for 
 ever guard her. Even now, after some two thousand 
 years of Christian history, we hardly dare to take such 
 assurances in all their splendour. Is the Church the 
 Body of Christ the Fulness of Him that filleth all 
 in all ? Does the Lord indeed nourish and cherish 
 the Church watch her every moment ; lest any 
 hurt her, keep her night and day ? To this hour the 
 Church is among us as one that is wounded, and when 
 St. Paul wrote she was outwardly weak, obscure, 
 distracted, untutored. Yet to him she was beautiful 
 as the Rose of Christ, though buried under the snow. 
 
 Saints and Heroes. 
 
 TT 7" HEN all the nondescript bands that are seeking 
 and many of them seeking with a true 
 nobility of spirit the redemption of the world, are 
 scattered, dead, and forgotten, the ransomed Church 
 of Christ will live to meet Him, when the Last 
 Advent shines from east to west, and the fire is kindled 
 that will try every man's work of what sort it is. After 
 all, the Church of God is not a new thing in the 
 world. We have the record of its heroes and its 
 saints, and we know that many of them, trusting in 
 the Cross, have lived and laboured through the long- 
 tried day, and have been filled at the last with an 
 eminent calm, and an inexpressible hope and courage. 
 And yet when all was over, all that they had to say 
 was, " Lord Jesus, receive a sinner, a poor sinner 
 still, yea, the chief of sinners." So have dear lips 
 
132 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 spoken that were never to speak any more till the 
 Resurrection Day. 
 
 Christian Love and Suffering. 
 
 f i N HERE is on earth the vividness of first love, the 
 * fervour of early passion, and this finds its like- 
 ness in the Christian's love for Christ. But there is 
 on earth a love nobler than that, a love that glows 
 with a great, steady ardour, with a still, intense, 
 vehement flame, and that is the Christian ideal. This 
 is the love that labours when all labour without it 
 would be hard and heavy. This is the love that fights 
 when all seems dead against it. This is the love that 
 lifts up its spear against ten thousand, and turns the 
 strength of the foemen at the gates. This is the love 
 that welcomes suffering for the beloved's sake. Sacri- 
 fice is continually changing its form, but it is always 
 present in the life of the Christian. Where it is most 
 present, there is love warmest and kindest. When 
 Ignatius was led to his martyrdom, and thought of the 
 nearness of his death and pain, he said, " Now I begin 
 to be a Christian." Well has it been said that wherever 
 the Church goes the thick smoke of her suffering 
 ascends to Heaven. " We are always delivered to 
 death for Jesus' sake." 
 
 At Long Last. 
 
 AT evening time there shall be light. Our direct 
 concern for the Church of Christ will soon 
 end, and it will end in light and peace. Now, said 
 
THE CHURCH 133 
 
 the Apostle, is our salvation nearer than when we first 
 believed. St. Paul sailed over a rough sea, knowing 
 little of blue sky or calm water. But he knew that 
 he and his were not drifting before the tempest. Their 
 vessel was directed. The unseen Captain was on 
 board ; the close would be in the haven so long 
 desired, and every day that haven was nearer, every 
 day some part of the rough way had been accom- 
 plished for ever. Come what might, certain victories 
 had been won and were secure, and the end was not 
 to be a wreck on an unknown coast. God has a safe 
 harbour for His troubled people, and while the waves 
 toss, we travel. We must somehow possess our past 
 and our future in this way. We are on a voyage the 
 days of which are numbered, the days of which are 
 growing fewer. There will be light at evening-time 
 whatever may befall us in the day. 
 
 " If my barque sink, 'tis to another sea." 
 And, when we reach the shore, we shall look back and 
 recall our voyage its storms, its sunshine, but above 
 all, its Captain ; recall 
 
 " The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet, 
 Heart-shattering secret of His way with us." 
 
 The Deeper Secret. 
 
 TO one brought face to face with life, the preaching 
 of Socialism and material comfort seems very 
 idle. The human heart asks as passionately as ever 
 after a deeper secret. The Church can disclose it 
 if she will but rise from her sleep with the New 
 Testament in her hands. 
 
i 3 4 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 The Deep Church. 
 
 THE Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep 
 things of God. They are revealed by the 
 same Spirit, through His inward discipline of the soul. 
 You learn them in the depths of bitterness and deser- 
 tion, when your only psalm is De profundis clamavi, 
 and your only confession, " All Thy waves and Thy 
 billows are gone over me." Or you learn them when 
 you have sunk into some horrible iniquity, and discover 
 there, underneath the very depths of Satan, un- 
 fathomable depths of grace. The New Testament 
 hardly appeals to a superficial experience. It stands 
 strangely aloof from " the shallow heavens and the 
 shallow hells of the feebly good and the feebly wicked." 
 But it brings us face to face with the redeeming 
 passion of One who is at home in our uttermost 
 human exultations and agonies. Among all His 
 mighty sayings, perhaps none pierces deeper than 
 this : " Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for 
 she loved much." 
 
 Sometimes we grow weary of the threadbare titles 
 which are supposed to distinguish different schools of 
 Christian thought. People chatter idly about the 
 High Church and the Broad Church and the Low 
 Church. Mr. R. H. Hutton wrote a memorable 
 essay upon what he called the Hard Church. The 
 type of experience and character which we most need 
 to-day might be described as the Deep Church. It is 
 the fellowship of disciples whose hearts are enlarged 
 to apprehend the deep things of God. 
 
THE CHURCH 135 
 
 4. METHODISTS 
 
 " I have used every opportunity that has ever come in my way 
 of getting to know the people called Methodists." 
 
 The Inspired. 
 
 IT is precisely the sayings of the early Methodists 
 that were most challenged by their critics, 
 that established their share in the experiences of 
 saintly spirits, in the awful history and mystery of 
 redeemed souls. It is not a narrow literalism that 
 can read such words as these : " At London I met the 
 wild, staring, loving society." " The saints of God 
 never suffer." '* All love is returned." 
 
 Their Strength and Passion. 
 
 IT is in proportion as the Primitive Methodists 
 retain their passion for the conversion of souls 
 that they will live and grow in England and in the 
 world. So long as the grand old hymns are sung 
 from the heart : 
 
 " The voice of free grace cries, Escape to the mountain, 
 For Adam's lost race He has opened a fountain," 
 
 and 
 
 " Stop, poor sinner, stop and think, 
 Before you further go," 
 
 so long will the heritage so hardly won by the founders 
 be kept and extended by their children. 
 
136 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 John Wesley. 
 
 THERE was and there is something in the vitality 
 of Methodism which is mysterious. Wesley 
 was no ordinary fanatic, for his brain was strong, 
 and his judgment calm. Yet there was that in the 
 man which cut through like a flaming sword, and he 
 remains greater than any book that has been written 
 about him. As for the true signs and wonders 
 wrought by him when he preached they may be 
 wrought again. 
 
THE CURE OF SOULS 
 
 " The preacher can do no greater thing for us than to make life 
 grow more beautiful as it grows more severe. Faith is never 
 grander than when it strengthens, as experience becomes harder 
 and more grave. The endurance of personal trial gives a preacher 
 power. If he can say, ' Is any man weak ? I am weak also, 
 and weary and footsore like you,' he has the key of men's hearts." 
 
 i. IN QUIET PLACES 
 On Accepting Destiny. 
 
 TT7HAT shall we say to the " buried alive " ? 
 * * This : you need not die in your graves. 
 If a minister feels himself unsuited to his position he 
 should do what an honourable man may to escape 
 from it. This is a duty to his people as much as to 
 himself. But we are thinking rather of those who are 
 providentially hemmed in, who see that it is the will 
 of Christ that they should labour where they are till 
 the end. That should bring serenity and keep away 
 death. If the work is accepted as from Him it is 
 magnified. To the sentinel, says the poet, the hour 
 is regal when he mounts on guard, and that plot 
 given over by the Master to the tiller's care should 
 be engrossing and sacred for him. Let the mind be 
 busy and the heart be busy, and over the familiar land- 
 scape of which the preacher has been so weary, over 
 the little cottages he has so often entered in vain, over 
 
138 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 the weather-beaten and unresponsive countenances 
 which have so stolidly faced him, comes a radiance 
 from One by his side. 
 
 Better Men than You. 
 
 9 I V HE hero of the most beautiful dedication in 
 -* literature " To my dear and much admired 
 Isaac Williams, the sight of whom carried back his 
 friends to ancient, holy, and happy times," never got 
 beyond a curacy. 
 
 The Thing that's Nearest. 
 
 TT7HEN we are overwhelmed with a sense of the 
 complexities and perplexities through which 
 the Church of Christ is travelling, let us address our- 
 selves to our own little village, our own remote parish, 
 if such be our place of work, and attend to that. For 
 ourselves, we are not going to rest quiet while four 
 children at least out of every five educated in our 
 Sunday-school are lost to the Church and pass away 
 unheeded into the world. The fact should burn into 
 every Christian soul. 
 
 A Corner of the Vineyard. 
 
 T DO believe that the remedy for the ever-growing 
 -* pressure of the world is a limitation of effort to 
 some definite purpose. I believe that the best work in 
 the Kingdom will now be done by men who devote 
 
THE CURE OF SOULS 139 
 
 their main energy to making safe and sweet and 
 blessed their own corner of the vineyard. I believe 
 that the expenditure of force over many fields tends 
 to impotence and to paralysis, and that the day has 
 come when Christian ministers must choose their 
 own sphere of activity in thought and action, and 
 abide therein with God. 
 
 His Own Kingdom. 
 
 VER yet was the religious work of any city 
 or any place done except by the men labour- 
 ing there. Great impulses have been given by 
 visiting ministers and by evangelists, but if those who 
 have taken up a ministry in a place do not adequately 
 discharge it, nothing will arrest the decay of the 
 Church. 
 
 Rewards. 
 
 DO not labour for success or happiness. Concern 
 yourself only with your duty, and the happiness 
 will come. There is the success that is followed after 
 and the success that overtakes. The success that 
 overtakes comes to men often in the poor grey room 
 where they sit too busy to think of anything but 
 their work, and shines on them as an angel. I will 
 not believe that some success and some fruitfulness 
 have been denied to any life that has been lived under 
 these conditions through the heat by day and the frost 
 by night, and often with " close-lipped patience for 
 its only friend," 
 
140 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 Winning Souls. 
 
 'HAT the golden and wooden chest was to the 
 
 Israelite, that is Christ to us. He is our Ark 
 of the Covenant. He says to us, " Whither I go ye 
 know, and the Way ye know." He has gone before 
 us in our quest for the wanderers. Who will bring 
 me into the strong city, who will bring me into Edom ? 
 That is the question that comes to us as we sit down 
 before the fastness of a human heart. It is Christ 
 who brings us in ... none but Christ. 
 
 Discoveries. 
 
 LET us be exceedingly careful before we call any 
 one destitute of backbone. It is a grave accusa- 
 tion, and it is often made on plausible grounds, and yet 
 quite falsely. There are those who come very slowly 
 to a conclusion, and are yet the most immovable and 
 staunch of all once they have reached it. They are 
 inaccessible to sneers and threats. They are not 
 touched by blandishment. They may even be some- 
 what dull in the apprehension of argument. But they 
 seek to know their duty, and once they know it they 
 do it at all costs. Nunc demum redit animus. They 
 pass into the safest of all forms of enthusiasm, the 
 enthusiasm that reposes on underlying sanity and 
 moderation. They say to themselves with Hamlet, 
 that in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of 
 their passion they must acquire and beget a temper- 
 ance, for only thus can perfect and enduring deeds 
 be done. 
 
THE CURE OF SOULS 141 
 
 We find out what iron there is in the blood of many 
 who were contented to remain quiet and obscure till 
 they saw that their help was needed. How often even 
 on this earth the first are shown to be the last, and the 
 last first ! 
 
 2. YOUNG AND OLD 
 The Pastor's Holiday. 
 
 WE have been told, by a very acute observer, that 
 no minister, however popular, can absent 
 himself four months from his congregation and find 
 things as they were. It takes two years to win back 
 the lost ground. Obviously if the sermons are to be 
 worth hearing, if the organisations of the Church are 
 to be attended to, above all, if the people are to be 
 faithfully visited, there cannot be many days in the 
 week to spare for travelling. Let the minister have 
 his good and regular holiday where it is possible. He 
 is entitled to it, and he will work better for it. But 
 let every minister ask what holidays his people have. 
 What holidays can a medical man allow himself, or 
 a business man, or a journalist ? It is not too much 
 to say that any business would crumble to pieces if it 
 was attended to as the business of a particular congre- 
 gation is often attended to by prominent ministers. 
 What is still worse, the bloom of the spirit is destroyed 
 by continual haranguing. The grace, the freshness, 
 the winsomeness of the preacher are often replaced by 
 the screaming voice, the poor tags of claptrap, the worn- 
 out cliches of the indefatigable traveller and speechifier. 
 
142 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 Hurrying About : A Temptation. 
 
 I QUESTION very much whether any of the 
 younger preachers attain to the height of a few 
 still happily with us, though too soon they must leave 
 us. What is the reason ? The reason is, I am 
 firmly convinced, that they are being led away by the 
 tempter in the form of a railway train. Most of us 
 know it takes place. Whenever a man's head is 
 clearly lifted above the crowd everyone writes to him 
 to take this service or that, to address this meeting or 
 that. He is at first inclined to say no, but he yields. 
 After a while he finds it very pleasant. Railway 
 travelling is now most comfortable when you can get 
 your meals in a train and read with your book on a 
 little table j beside you. Then it is gratifying to go 
 into a strange place and receive the welcome of the 
 citizens. Sometimes the Mayor will be there to greet 
 you, sometimes the clergy, even of the High Church 
 party. Then there is a great crowd in a large build- 
 ing, many friends at the end to express their gratitude, 
 and an enthusiastic host waiting patiently to drive you 
 away to the best he has. Yes, it is very pleasant, and 
 the taste for it grows. A man says, " After all, I am 
 the servant not of one particular congregation, but 
 of the whole Church, and I am doing more good in 
 this way than if I were staying at home." Then he 
 becomes very bold and tells you that he finds that rail- 
 way carriages are excellent places for study. He 
 invariably takes with him some standard work, and 
 even writes a little in the train, so that by the time he 
 
THE CURE OF SOULS 143 
 
 gets home on Saturday his two Sunday sermons for his 
 own people are practically completed. So it happens, 
 and it happens more and more, that the best of our 
 younger men are all over the country all winter and 
 all spring and sometimes all summer too. They will 
 tell you that they are fully engaged for the next two 
 years. They have little fat black note-books crowded 
 with the faithful entries, and of course, before the two 
 years are ended they have made plenty more engage- 
 ments. I am quite certain that if this goes on the 
 power of the pulpit in the Free Churches will steadily 
 wane, and wane at a time when there is a greater 
 demand for good preaching than there ever was, when 
 people are touchingly grateful for a living message, 
 but when they are also able to see with terrible clear- 
 ness just how much work, how much strength, how 
 much thought have been given to the sermon. 
 
 Trials of the Preacher. 
 
 TF the old friends could remain round a preacher, 
 -* he would court no man's pulpit or fame. But 
 how often have we stood by venerable men in little 
 country churches, and heard them tell how here sat 
 father, mother, brave sons and fair daughters, now 
 beyond the sea ; and there the gracious helper and 
 friend of every good word and work ; and in this 
 place the patient, gentle, noble Dorcas. All gone, 
 and none to take their places ! The tide of life flows 
 to the great cities, the farms are being thrown together. 
 The best thing is to lean back upon God, and to 
 
144 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 go on resolutely putting all the forces of life into the 
 essential work, and thinking not so much of results 
 and rewards as of duties. Those, it has been said, are 
 first in reward who have been first in service : not 
 thinking of reward, hardly ever straightening their 
 backs from toil, and passing as humble a judgment on 
 their work as the last and least of their fellow-labourer 
 upon theirs. Such lives must draw, not from the shal- 
 low streams of earth, but from the deep fountains that 
 flow out of the throne. 
 
 Nor will they be without gladness and peace. 
 There are, it has been said, two kinds of joy the 
 joy that is pursued after, and the joy that overtakes. 
 There is the joy for which the house is swept and 
 garnished, and which so often disappoints or fails to 
 come ; and there is the joy that comes to the poor 
 home where we sit at work, too busy to think of it, 
 and brightens the commonplace surroundings and the 
 grey colourless life. The soul that is dutiful always 
 and in all things, is not left without such visitants. 
 
 Lift up Tour Hearts. 
 
 A MINISTER who has toiled unsuccessfully for 
 *- ^ twenty, thirty, forty years may be filled with 
 the Spirit, and find that when he is old and nearing 
 the end he is for the first time really young and blessed 
 and victorious. If we will lift our hearts for the rain, 
 the autumn days, if it must be autumn, may rise with 
 more than the vanished splendour of old mornings, 
 and there will be no winter in our year. 
 
THE CURE OF SOULS 145 
 
 3. TROUBLES AND REMEDIES 
 The Duty of the Pulpit. 
 
 is impossible not to see that many ministers, in 
 an age when good preaching is perhaps more 
 needed and more prized than in any other, are losing 
 the golden hour and their hearers know it. Because 
 the results are not immediately apparent ; because a 
 sermon thoroughly thought out seems to tell less for 
 the moment than an impromptu effusion, they fail to 
 put heart and conscience into their ministrations. And 
 because Christian people are still very patient, very 
 slow to wound the feelings of their pastors, the truth 
 may never come out. But all the more it is bitterly 
 felt that the preacher is a trifler. Those who know 
 the light and strength which may be imparted by a 
 strong and true ministry, and the dull weariness and 
 disappointment with which many a busy and tempted 
 man thinks of his Sunday, will never admit that any 
 part of a minister's duty is to be compared with his 
 duty to his pulpit. And if this duty is faithfully done, 
 complaints of shortcoming elsewhere will at least 
 be much assuaged. It is possible in pastoral visitation 
 to make up for quantity by quality. The rare visits 
 of the helpful and honoured teacher are more than the 
 constant calls of the idle busy-body. 
 
 Narrowing the Life. 
 
 * I V HE great teacher in these days must have the 
 -*- dew upon his thoughts. This can only come 
 from long, quiet meditation, solitary contemplation. 
 i 10 
 
146 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 We know very well how Newman, Robertson, Phillips 
 Brooks, Spurgeon, Parker, Maclaren and their like 
 became great preachers : it was because they did not 
 fear to narrow their lives, really to cut off a great deal 
 that was seductive and pleasant enough. They con- 
 centrated themselves fearlessly on their own task ; 
 they lived in their studies. They were not merely 
 reading there, they were thinking, praying, adoring. 
 So they accomplished a permanent work. Nobody 
 need suppose that he can really think out a sermon 
 worth listening to in a railway train. 
 
 Silence and Observation. 
 
 TV/T ANY things are said foolishly about preparation. 
 *-** Individuality must have its scope there as 
 much as in work. Sir Walter Scott " made " himself 
 among the Dandie Dinmonts in Liddesdale. When 
 everyone thought he was wasting his time, he was 
 gathering the stores from which the Waverley novels 
 flowed swift and clear like running water. But 
 preparation of some kind there must be for any worthy 
 achievement, the preparation of thought and silence, 
 as well as of observation and life. In proportion as 
 a preacher seems to have neglected this, in that pro- 
 portion his influence is weakened morally and spiritu- 
 ally, as well as intellectually. 
 
 A Word to the Idle. 
 
 f I ^HERE is no hope for those who systematically 
 
 * preach old sermons. Language alters, the 
 
 situation alters, the preacher's mind alters, and the 
 
THE CURE OF SOULS 147 
 
 sermon remains a useless relic. There are many 
 preachers who have been years intellectually dead, 
 adding nothing to their vocabularies, to their ideas, to 
 their knowledge. These have no right to expect 
 success. We do not mean that intellectual toil is 
 sufficient. Happy is he whom the Truth by itself 
 doth teach, not by figures and words that pass away, 
 but as it is in itself. This must be often the preacher's 
 prayer, " Let all the learned hold their peace ; let all 
 creatures be silent in Thy sight ; speak Thou alone 
 
 The Strange Young People. 
 
 TT7"E are afraid that many ministers do not know 
 the young people of their flocks as the old 
 ministers used to know them. Grant that it is not 
 easy to become acquainted with the young. Hardly 
 anything that is easy is worth doing. The young 
 rarely make approaches. They have to be approached, 
 and if they are approached in the right way they will 
 respond. It is a difficult thing to win a young heart, 
 but it may be done. The power exerted by a preacher 
 whose people know him and love him and honour 
 him is as great to-day as ever it was. Nothing will 
 take the place of personal intercourse, and the more 
 the nature is enriched by communion with God, the 
 more gentle, gracious, and supreme will be the 
 influence which consciously or unconsciously it 
 wields. 
 
148 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 A Delicate Task. 
 
 T7ERY few people have any qualification for 
 visiting the sick. 
 
 When Winter Comes. 
 
 'T^HROUGH the Holy Spirit is derived all the 
 * power of preaching, all its saving power. It 
 is this which may best solve the sad problem of declin- 
 ing years. However lonely and cheerless circum- 
 stances may be. He is all-sufficient. Preachers may 
 often wish they were working like Andrea Del Sarto 
 at Florence : 
 
 " In such a fire of souls 
 Profuse, my hand kept playing by those hearts." 
 
 But how often the wish is denied, and how often they 
 are stripped one by one of almost every sympathiser. 
 Yet even then there is no need that their work should 
 end in a long drift of gloom. T^ey are called to press 
 through the crowd of creatures to the living Lord 
 Himself, and find that the light of Christ is the light 
 of seven days. So may come to pass the saying, that 
 " the wisest men are wise to the full in death." 
 
 4. CONSIDERATIONS 
 The Pastoral Duty. 
 
 TO save a life from failure may be almost as much 
 as to save a soul from death. 
 
THE CURE OF SOULS 149 
 
 Burning Zeal. 
 
 O highest work is ever done without passion. 
 
 N' 
 
 No great movement has ever swept a nation 
 apart from it. Give us that, and the light that never 
 was on sea or land will fall on the pulpit once again. 
 
 The Weary and the Sad. 
 
 * I V HE craving for pastoral visitation proves the deep 
 * and universal need of sympathy. The true 
 preacher is not deceived by appearances. He is alive 
 s to the growing weariness of the world. He knows 
 that the most envied among his hearers may be those 
 who wish themselves well out of it, at the bottom of a 
 quiet grave. He knows that others are devoured by 
 anxiety ; every knock at the door means a knock at the 
 heart. For others the summer is over, and they are 
 left to scanty and foggy winter lights. These care 
 for nothing but the full gospel of deliverance the 
 gospel of Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection. 
 
 The Longing for Guidance. 
 
 WHATEVER may seem, the world is longing 
 for true Christian preachers. When one 
 such comes to a city he sheds a brightness which by 
 and by extends to its boundaries. When he departs 
 from the city it is as if a shadow had fallen upon it. 
 The land and the world are full of longings and wel- 
 comes to those who are sent of God with the message 
 of the Gospel. To preach that message with faith 
 
150 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 and power till all the years are full, you must remain 
 students of divinity. Long after you have passed 
 through the gates of your college, long after your 
 teachers have passed away, you must still be diligent 
 in the holy task which brings with it strength and joy. 
 We must be students of divinity till the time when we 
 go where the divinity is clearer where the light of 
 the Face of God is the light of His people. 
 
 The True Pastor. 
 
 EVERY minister has much to suffer. The finest 
 natures are often, alas ! the most sensitive, and 
 a word of discouragement will do more to cast them 
 down than many expressions of love will to cheer. 
 Then the true pastor has a share in every bitter cup put 
 to the lips of his people. Then there is the labour 
 of preaching great and difficult as it is noble 
 pastoral oversight, which must not be neglected ; and 
 a share in the work of the manifold societies and 
 agencies, etc., that spring up in every vigorous church. 
 Many a man goes on taking his share of all these with 
 hardly a word of recognition, till at last he succumbs, 
 and blind eyes are opened for an instant. 
 
 Taking Part. 
 
 ADVISING is very thankless work. It is so 
 thankless that one of the wisest men I ever 
 knew told me once that he had come to the conclusion 
 that it was quite useless, and that the best thing to do 
 was to leave people to take their own way. 
 
THE CURE OF SOULS 151 
 
 A Loving Imagination. 
 
 N order to love mankind, you must expect much 
 
 i 
 
 from them ; in order to love a soul, you must 
 imagine it as it will be, without spot or wrinkle or any 
 such thing, the heir of eternal life, the conquering son 
 of God. 
 
IN THE PULPIT 
 
 " It is not often that one hears a sermon obviously spoken with 
 gladness." 
 
 i. PREPARATION 
 
 " Simpering." 
 
 IF you know that something has to be done at a cer- 
 tain time, you cannot begin the preparation too 
 soon. I remember a country minister who rendered 
 some words remarkably. He said, " I like to find the 
 text of my Sunday sermon on Monday, and keep it 
 simpering up and down in my mind all the week." 
 I suspect he meant simmering. There is no doubt 
 that the longer a subject is thought over the more 
 adequately it is treated when the time comes for treat- 
 ment. 
 
 The Word of Life. 
 
 FOR the understanding of all the great truths which 
 must constitute the strength of the Christian 
 ministry, there must be an immediate and super- 
 natural illumination. There is no need to deny the 
 value of speech. It will do much. There are runes 
 and spellwords by which marvels are wrought in the 
 poet's heaven of invention. But what is needed is 
 that your hearers should feel the shock of a vital 
 
 152 
 
IN THE PULPIT 153 
 
 battery, and such a battery is neither to be filled nor 
 discharged by words. No learning and no power 
 of intellect can by itself increase the substance of your 
 knowledge of divine and eternal truths. And those 
 who possess no learning, but who have studied the 
 mind of the Spirit, those in whom Christ survives, are 
 able to judge you and your sermons, to recognise the 
 field which the Lord hath blessed, and the streams that 
 make glad the tabernacles of the Most High. 
 
 2. POINTS ABOUT METHOD 
 A Warning. 
 
 IN the pulpit every style is good except the tiresome 
 style. 
 
 Spiritual Energy. 
 
 UNLESS the preacher interests people in what 
 God has said, he has done nothing. Unless 
 he impresses his hearers by what God has said, he has 
 not begun his work. 
 
 The Missionary Address. 
 
 1TF such meetings are to be successful, an address 
 -* ought to be limited to about a quarter of an hour. 
 It is astonishing how difficult it is to deliver a brief, 
 well-proportioned, impressive missionary address. 
 
154 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 Young Faces, 
 
 THE sermon to children is not enough. They 
 have to be remembered all through the worship. 
 They have been gathered in pastoral care and pains, 
 and if their young faces are before him and in his heart, 
 we believe that a minister will find it very easy to say 
 a word here and there which will make them feel that 
 their presence is valued and sought for. Here, again, 
 we come back to the old requisite the revival of the 
 pastoral heart. 
 
 An Ordered March. 
 
 AS for sermons, I could never listen comfortably 
 to any that were not clearly divided. If you 
 know that the preacher has a beginning, a middle, and 
 an end, you may walk alongside of him. But if there 
 is no continuity in the discourse, if there is no reason 
 why it should end at one point rather than another, 
 if there is no recognisable march of thought, the 
 dreariness of the whole is intolerable to me. I can 
 remember listening to such a preacher in old days, and 
 resolving firmly not to look at the clock till a respect- 
 able period had passed. When I did look at the clock, 
 after what seemed hours of agony, less than five 
 minutes had passed. 
 
 Do they Listen? 
 
 SPEAKERS, and especially preachers, are almost 
 always firmly persuaded that they have the 
 power of commanding an audience. Who has not 
 
IN THE PULPIT 155 
 
 known dull preachers who tell you with much com- 
 placency that whatever faults their congregations may 
 have they are singularly attentive ? And now that 
 I think of it I have heard congregations blamed for 
 many things by their ministers, blamed for stinginess, 
 blamed for irregularity in attendance, and the like. 
 But I never heard them blamed for not listening. And 
 yet, as a matter of fact, a congregation that can listen 
 is quite the exception. You may go from church to 
 church, and you will not see once in a hundred times 
 a congregation quite mastered, quite still and eager. 
 
 The Useful Element of Surprise. 
 
 IF you think of it, everybody becomes wearisome 
 when you always know just what they will say 
 and do in all circumstances. Many people listen 
 without hope to their preachers. Experienced 
 hearers can often tell you, when a text is announced, 
 practically all that will be said upon it. I lay stress 
 upon the element of surprise, surprise in diction, 
 surprise in thought. 
 
 The Building. 
 
 THE sanctuary should be a place to which men 
 may flee in times of darkness and bewilderment 
 and care ; a place where Christ is ; where God bends 
 over the worshippers, not as a dark Fate, but as a living 
 Father. 
 
156 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 3. THE HUNGRY SHEEP 
 The Great Responsibility. 
 
 O far as our experience goes. Evangelical preachers 
 in the Free Churches have practically ceased 
 to pray for the unconverted or to plead with them. 
 There are many exceptions, no doubt, but for five 
 years at least we have not met with one. This is a 
 terrible thing to say. If there is anything that the 
 growing apocalypse of life, as found in literature, 
 proves, it is that life may be, and often is, suddenly 
 changed. It may be a thought, it may be a face 
 that enters into it, and it is never more the same. 
 Every preacher has in his congregation young souls 
 waiting for the seal on the very threshold of the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 A Preacher's Chance. 
 
 FT is this great hope of glory that needs to be 
 -* preached if Christianity is to recover its life and 
 glow. There are not many would care to live end- 
 lessly such a life as they have lived here. They can 
 do their work, and fight their fight, if they hear the 
 old ringing trumpet notes, if they are stirred by the 
 ancient promise. They know that we never attain 
 here. They have watched the failures, they have 
 seen that high genius just falls short of expressing it- 
 self permanently, that fortune is miserly when the one 
 little thing is in sight which would make life rich with 
 
IN THE PULPIT 157 
 
 a long happiness. And even when the cup of joy is 
 drained, there is often a mysterious disappointment, 
 or, it may be, a recoil of feeling, and the heart is left 
 hungry and full of wishes. To say that this is to 
 continue is to embarrass, depress, and even paralyse 
 the life. The spirit dwindles and fades if the hope of 
 glory, of perfection, of vision, of inviolable security, 
 is taken from it. But we, according to His promise, 
 look for a new heaven and a new earth, wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness. We have not been deluded 
 by an unreal vision and an imaginary hope. Not 
 far away is that inheritance, the thought of which kills 
 the petty fears of life, and changes the face of death. 
 The soul that struggles and strives the appointed time 
 shall in no wise lose its reward, or be baulked of its 
 long desire. 
 
 Sermon ! Sermon ! 
 
 I HA VE been made increasingly to feel that ministers 
 do not sufficiently believe in the power of preach- 
 ing. So little is said about sermons. A man may 
 pour out his heart's blood for years and practically 
 hear nothing of it. He is tempted to conclude that 
 he will do his best work in visitation and in organising. 
 It is not so : believe me. Though hearers say little, 
 they feel much. Those who have to fight a hard 
 battle through the week come to church on Sunday 
 starving for the Bread of Life. It affects all the week 
 to come if they miss it. If they are fed they do their 
 work more easily, more happily, more bravely. Not- 
 
158 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 withstanding the multitudes of societies, it may safely 
 be affirmed that such organisations do little or nothing 
 if the preaching is not the life of all the church. 
 That must be the fountain. If it is dried up, 
 everything will fail. 
 
 If this be so, you must preach your very best ! The 
 sermon must be the result and efflux of your best 
 thoughts and feelings during the week. You must 
 live, as someone has said, for your sermon and in your 
 sermon. Get some starling to cry " Sermon, sermon, 
 sermon ! " I have heard it said that commonplace 
 ministers should not spend too much time in preparing 
 for the pulpit, because the result will be much the same 
 whether they take two or ten hours to prepare. It is 
 a deadly fallacy. You will not preach in the humblest 
 chapel without it being known by the people perfectly 
 well whether you are or are not doing your best. 
 There is no grander sight in the world than that of a 
 man honestly doing his utmost. He commands the 
 respect of everyone, whether he succeeds or not, and 
 he is very apt to succeed. 
 
 A Preacher* s Resources. 
 
 TT^TOULD God that all the Lord's people were 
 prophets ! They are listened to because 
 they are speaking from the heart. If we speak from 
 the heart we shall also be heard. It is not our business 
 to wait in dead stupidity, like logs by the side of a 
 river, till a revival freshlet comes and floats us away 
 to the other shore. The Spirit of God is working 
 
IN THE PULPIT 159 
 
 when we yearn and pray, and His deliverance will 
 burst upon those who seek it like sudden light from 
 the sky. 
 
 The Hungry Sheep. 
 
 THOSE whom you preach to, here and elsewhere, 
 cannot wait. The burden of life is heavy 
 upon them ; their years are too few, they need to have 
 their lives filled with a satisfying joy, and it is only 
 God that can fill them. For these the message is 
 " Now is the day of Salvation." The Apostles 
 preached the Gospel to those whose circumstances 
 were more intolerable than would be borne now, to 
 slaves who had before them, perhaps, the dreadful 
 plunge into the lampreys' pool. Christ Himself 
 stood up in the midst of a little knot of forgotten Jews, 
 at a time when the weight of life was heaviest, and 
 said, " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest." If you go to 
 tell men that you will teach them, that you will help 
 them to bring in Socialism, that you will fight for this 
 reform and that, perhaps they may laugh in your face, 
 for they know that for bread you are giving them a 
 stone. But you can feed them with the Bread of 
 Life. Let us see whether there need be a suspension 
 of the Gospel. Sorrow is not suspended, sin is not 
 suspended, death is not suspended. Is the Gospel of 
 Christ suspended ? Has Christ ceased to draw the 
 human soul ? Has the Holy Ghost ceased to bless 
 Christ's Gospel ? Do not believe this, till you have 
 
ifo PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 proved it by many painful and costly experiences. 
 You will never prove it if the Gospel is preached with 
 the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. 
 
 4, STRAY THOUGHTS 
 Faithful Office-bearers. 
 
 TTOW interesting it would be to know something 
 --* of the deacons who served under Dr. Stough- 
 ton, their names reaching back to the time of William 
 IV. ! There are no shrines more precious than the 
 graves, scattered here and there in country places, of 
 the men who made Nonconformity what it is to-day. 
 They are our possession, and not ours only ; they are 
 a national heirloom, as sacred as those tombs in the 
 Temple Church of the knights who went long ago to 
 the Holy Wars. 
 
 A Word to the Congregation. 
 
 * I V HE intellect is the very last thing which many a 
 * good man lays upon the altar of Christ. 
 He may show the keenest and finest powers in his 
 profession or in business, but, when he stands up to 
 address his fellow- Christians, the humblest of them 
 see that he has nothing to say which deserves to be 
 listened to ; and this is why the burden falls always 
 on the pastor. Now, why should not the officers and 
 members of churches make themselves acquainted with 
 
IN THE PULPIT 161 
 
 theology ? Why should they not be able to read at 
 least the New Testament in the original ? 
 
 The Labourer's Hire. 
 
 I SPOKE once with an old Baptist minister about a 
 sentence of Dickens, in which he speaks of a man 
 ending miserably, who might have had the happiness 
 of dying with children's faces round his bed. He said, 
 " My friend, that might be the worst of dying, if one 
 did not know how the children were to be provided 
 for." The Lord will provide 5 but He provides 
 through us. Let us see to it that our country ministers 
 shall not be afraid to die with children's faces round 
 their bed. 
 
 A Glance from the Pew. 
 
 * I V HERE is something that touches one, seeing 
 -* an old friend after a lapse of years. More 
 particularly if you have the chance of prolonged obser- 
 vation such as comes as when he is in the pulpit and 
 you are in the pew. No matter how eloquently or 
 freshly he speaks spite of yourself and him, thoughts 
 will wander to other scenes and other days. What 
 have the years that conquer us done to him ? How 
 has he borne up under their strain and toil ? What 
 has been his schooling ? What new tones and thoughts 
 and visions have come to him in the day and night ? 
 Or is he of those who have learned nothing, and 
 forgotten nothing ? 
 i II 
 
1 62 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 A Mystery of Numbers. 
 
 THERE are some five million people in London, 
 many of them Wesleyans, many Presbyterians, 
 many readers of Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush. Great 
 Queen Street Chapel holds, say, two thousand people 
 when crowded. What I want to know is, by what 
 mysterious contrivance just that number of people 
 came to the service ? Why should not four thousand 
 have come, or one thousand ? The place was full, 
 and everyone knew it would be full. The upper 
 galleries, even, were gradually occupied. But every- 
 one got in, though if another hundred had attended 
 there might have been much difficulty. The same 
 problem has confronted me more or less all my life, 
 for though very familiar with religious services, I 
 hardly recollect a single instance when people were 
 turned from the doors. 
 
 The Men with Experience. 
 
 OTHER things being equal, I prefer ministers 
 tolerably advanced in life. When poor W. B. 
 Rands was writing against Cardinal Newman, he said : 
 " I ask pardon of your sacred office, of your spotless 
 life, of your grey hairs, of your transcendent genius." 
 Young men have more fire, more hopefulness, more 
 energy, and (though not in this case) more Tennyson. 
 But after the Lord has given and has taken away, 
 a man is deeper. Actual contact with the Eternal 
 touch on touch makes the true teacher. 
 
IN THE PULPIT 163 
 
 Hope for All. 
 
 TT must be remembered that the man who can write 
 -* one good sermon can write a thousand, and that 
 the man who can write one good novel can generally 
 write at least a dozen. 
 
 Think Happily. 
 
 TF the minister thinks unfavourably of his people, 
 -" his people are sure to think unfavourably of him. 
 
GENERALS OF THE CHURCH 
 
 " For the leaders in all spheres the first requirement is an 
 indomitable hope. To have that is more than ability ; more than 
 genius." 
 
 JOHN WESLEY 
 
 ' I V HE bloom of life should come out of death. 
 - The resurrection life should pour into the 
 depleted veins, and fill them with strength and peace. 
 That was eminently the experience of John Wesley. 
 Branch after branch was withered, but every time the 
 new life rushed through all the arid fibres, and they 
 bloomed again. There is no book, I humbly think, 
 in all the world like John Wesley's Journal. It is 
 pre-eminently the book of the resurrection life lived 
 in this world. It has very few companions. In- 
 deed, it stands out solitary in all Christian literature, 
 clear, detached, columnar. It is a tree that is ever 
 green before the Lord. It tells us of a heart that 
 kept to the last its innocent pleasures and interests, 
 but held them all looselyand lightly, while its Christian, 
 passionate peace grew and grew to the end. To the 
 last there are, not diminishing, but increasing, the old 
 zeal, the old wistfulness, the calm but fiery and reveal- 
 ing eloquence. John Wesley was, indeed, one of 
 those who had attained the inward stillness, who had 
 entered the Second Rest of those who, to use his 
 
 164 
 
GENERALS OF THE CHURCH 165 
 
 own fine words, are " at rest before they go home ; 
 possessors of that rest which remaineth even here for 
 the people of God." It is with peculiar love and 
 reverence that one comes to his closing days, and 
 follows him to his last sermon at Leatherhead, on the 
 words, " Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, 
 call ye upon Him while He is near " ; and watches 
 by his triumphant death-bed, and hears him say, " The 
 clouds drop fatness." 
 
 PRINCIPAL RAINY 
 Rare and Wise. 
 
 T~"\R. RAINY was one of the greatest of Church- 
 -*~^ men, and the name of his Church was deeply 
 graven upon his heart. Her solicitudes occupied his 
 last waking moments. He, we may be sure, was not 
 one of the exiles who needed Jeremiah's precept, 
 " Let Jerusalem come into your mind." Jerusalem 
 had been in his mind, his thought by day, his dream 
 by night this many a long year. But to those who 
 saw him of late years it was evident that he who had 
 carried the cross of the earthly Jerusalem, prayed for 
 her peace, toiled for her triumph, had let the heavenly 
 Jerusalem come much into his mind. He was watch- 
 ing for the great door to open and the welcoming 
 angels beckon. The nearest and the dearest had gone 
 first. The fourscore years were over 5 life was by 
 the day and hour, and the mother city was smiling down 
 on the old pilgrim. 
 
 He gave an extraordinary impression of wisdom 
 
166 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 Here was a wise man ; take heed of him. Nor can 
 it be doubted that he was a wise man, and wise not 
 only as a great man of the world is wise, but with a 
 wisdom that was rooted very deep. He was more 
 than adequate for all the work of a leader. When he 
 saw it to be safe he could laugh away a matter of 
 threatening aspect. 
 
 HUGH PRICE HUGHES 
 
 PERHAPS his conversation was more remarkable 
 * even than his public speaking. We remember 
 no conversationalist quite like him. He was a care- 
 ful and accurate listener, and at the same time a most 
 copious and eager talker. In this, as in other things, 
 he seemed always to be parting with vitality. 
 
 A Born Soldier. 
 
 HE was practically sagacious in the highest degree. 
 He knew what he longed for, what he wished 
 to do. He had the gift of getting things done. He 
 often appeared to be intemperate in expression, but this 
 was not really so. He had an exaggerated way of 
 speaking. Every hour was regal to him. But his 
 nature was cautious and conservative, and he had all 
 the attributes of a great general. He did not know 
 how to take care of himself, and so to-day multitudes 
 mourn and miss him, and will continue to miss him all 
 the time between the digging of his grave and theirs. 
 
THE PREACHER'S READING 
 
 " Comes the afternoon, when Mr. Fritterday is not to be found 
 fault with if he indulges in desultory reading. But there are 
 two ways of reading. Mr. Fullday makes the discovery that all 
 books are commentaries on Holy Scripture. When the minister 
 does that, when he cuts a channel between his general reading 
 and his sermons, he has achieved a notable victory." 
 
 Why he Quailed. 
 
 T MET a minister not very long ago who actually 
 -* told me that he had read in his railway journeys 
 Macleod Campbell on the Atonement. To do him 
 justice, he quailed before my silent and prolonged 
 contemplation of his face. Of course, Macleod Camp- 
 bell cannot be read in a railway train. The thing is 
 utterly inconceivable. You might as well say that 
 you had read " Sordello " while crossing Piccadilly 
 Circus. 
 
 Reading Printed Sermons. 
 
 TT is tempting to think that the hours largely spent 
 -* in silent fuming might introduce us to Taylor 
 and Newman. Surely their words would fall on many 
 parched congregations like summer rain. But the 
 suggestion is an old one, and, so far as we know, it 
 has never been successfully tried. 
 
 167 
 
1 68 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 The Death of the Mind. 
 
 X/'OUR great danger is that your minds may die 
 -- long before your bodies. The preacher who 
 is put down by the cry that congregations will have 
 young men is not much to be sympathised with. 
 Congregations will have young men, and they are 
 right in this, but they must not reckon youth by years. 
 Try to make every year a year of growth for mind 
 and heart. There is one way worth trying. Take 
 one great teacher and give him the best part of your 
 winter. Have a Wesley winter, a Maurice winter, 
 a Wordsworth winter, a Jonathan Edwards winter, 
 and you will find that the company of great men is 
 adding cubits to your stature. We are dead when 
 we cease to grow. We cease to be ministers of Christ 
 when we cease to be students of divinity 
 
 How to Use Books 
 
 GET your thought from the fountain, from the 
 New Testament. When you have arranged 
 it in divisions it does not matter what book you read, 
 if you read a good book. Any good book read long 
 enough will furnish you illustrations, illustrations 
 infinitely more real, fresh and brightening than those 
 you will get out of any encyclopaedia, because you 
 have found them yourself. That is the way in which 
 the preacher should use books. 
 
THE PREACHER'S READING 169 
 
 Power of Certain Books 
 
 * I V HE most graphic pictures of the marvellous 
 * shows of time will fail to touch, if they do not 
 show the Master Who moves behind them. Books 
 as books can do something, but nothing equal to the 
 needs j books that are preachers may beat down the 
 worst in us, inspire the best, answer the questions that 
 tire us with their importunity, and help us to make our 
 lives not a rubbish-heap, but a temple. 
 
 Growing Wise. 
 
 JOHNSON was right when he said that if a man 
 would read anything four hours a day, he would 
 by and by grow wise. Books will fit a man for 
 his work ; they will teach him large, noble, merciful 
 thoughts ; they will widen the horizon about him ; 
 will help him to understand the spirit of the days ; 
 and they will enrich his preaching in proportion as he 
 learns to group all knowledge round the Name which 
 is highest in earth and heaven. 
 
 On Finding One's Own. 
 
 T ONLY ask you to find one great writer whom you 
 "* love, and with whom you keep company. I do 
 not care who it is. It may be Shakespeare, Meredith, 
 George Eliot, Browning, Tolstoi I might add many 
 names. If you choose an opulent, sincere, and 
 governing mind, and if you are thoroughly impreg- 
 nated and saturated with his thoughts and words, a 
 
i yo PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 portion of his spirit will pass to yours. I may add that 
 men not known to the public are often the chief 
 authorities on certain authors and subjects. The 
 chief authority on Christian mysticism is a Baptist 
 minister, who has never published any book on the 
 subject. 
 
 An Appearing of God. 
 
 A BEGINNING of days to many preachers 
 would be to take possession of some new pro- 
 vince of literature, as Robert Hall did when, after 
 sixty, he studied Italian to read Dante ; as Arnold 
 did when, two years before his death, he began San- 
 skrit, pleading that " he was not so old as Cato when he 
 learned Greek." How many weary and starved 
 congregations listen hopelessly to a dejected preacher 
 who will never give them a word, or phrase, a thought 
 they have not heard hundreds of times. An appearing 
 of God to such a man would send him to his desk, and 
 keep him there. 
 
 Two Persons not to be Found. 
 
 HOW many ministers are there who have a pas- 
 sion for reading ? It is perhaps not fair to 
 appeal to the size of their libraries, for the owners 
 are as a rule poor, and have not many opportunities 
 of getting books. Yet in this, too, the adage holds 
 that where there is a will there is a way. In the 
 course of my life I do not think I have met with half 
 
THE PREACHER'S READING 171 
 
 a dozen persons whose reading could be said to be very 
 wide or various. Further, of these there was not 
 one who had not greatly benefited by his reading, and 
 was not enabled through his knowledge of books to 
 exercise an influence which he would not otherwise 
 have possessed. I am looking in vain for two persons 
 whom one frequently hears denounced in sermons 
 and in addresses the man who wastes his time in 
 omnivorous reading, and the Christian who needs 
 to be warned against expecting too much in the way 
 of answer to prayer. 
 
 To be Pitied. 
 
 1 T NEVER read anything," said a clergyman the 
 -* other day ; " I have no time for books." 
 Said another man : " I could never read Scott ; I was 
 never able to get beyond the first chapter of any of his 
 books." Well, I can conceive these statements being 
 made humbly, honestly, and inoffensively. It is 
 quite true that there are worthy people who can see 
 nothing in Scott. They are much to be pitied, and 
 they ought to pity themselves, as their failure to 
 appreciate Scott means a strange mental incapacity. 
 They would act wisely in saying little about it. 
 
 Exhortation. 
 
 XT'OU will discover that the great danger before 
 
 you is not that you will turn into criminals or 
 
 blackguards, not that you will wreck your life and 
 
 shame your kindred. Happily there are not many 
 
172 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 black sheep in the flock. The danger is that you 
 become respectable, decent, commonplace, uninter- 
 esting mediocrities. 
 
 One Way of Marking. 
 
 TT 7" HEN I see anything interesting in a book I 
 turn down the page, making no mark of any 
 kind. As a rule I can discover the passage or phrase 
 which interested me at an interval of years. 
 
 A Word to the Wise. 
 
 T TOW little originality there is in most men's 
 * * reading ! We would not disparage the peru- 
 sal of the books, the newspapers, the religious news- 
 papers of the day. It is essential to understand the 
 spirit of the time. But how few are at pains to enter 
 into the thoughts of Butler, or Dante, or Jonathan 
 Edwards, or the mystics, or the great French Ro- 
 man Catholic writers. Yet it is certain that minds 
 naturally sterile and anaemic have been permanently 
 enriched and vitalised by some such companionship. 
 
 To be Faced. 
 
 IT is unquestionable that the poor speaker may be 
 taught to be a very fair speaker, and that a fair 
 speaker may become a good speaker, and the good 
 speaker very good. What is doubtful is whether the 
 good speaker can become excellent 
 
THE PREACHER'S READING 173 
 
 Our Magazines. 
 
 YOUR library should reflect simply your own 
 taste. You are not bound to get Kinglake's 
 History of the Crimean War to please anybody. You 
 are not bound to exclude volumes of the Earthen Vessel 
 if they please you. ... I venture to say that there are 
 few better additions to a collection of books than 
 good sets of magazines. In these are stored up much 
 of the best thought and the best writing of the time. 
 
 What to Buy. 
 
 A WELL-USED encyclopaedia will change the 
 whole mental attitude. One of the best 
 things ever said about self-culture was that the 
 greatest change that ever occurs to anybody pur- 
 suing knowledge is the change from an ignoramus 
 to a fairly well-informed person. " You cannot 
 swim ten yards, but you can swim, and it is not the 
 distance in yards, but the distance between wading and 
 swimming which it is so difficult to get over." A new 
 power has been acquired, though its development to 
 any respectable extent may still be a difficulty of the 
 future. 
 
EMINENT PREACHERS 
 
 " The mysteries of God are revealed only to humble souls on 
 bended knees." 
 
 DR. PARKER 
 
 i 
 The Cry to Christ. 
 
 T?OR multitudes there was no preacher like him. 
 He showed power from the first, but he took 
 bad models, and his taste was imperfect. It is won- 
 derful to trace his progress, to see how he toiled and 
 how he ascended. To other preachers he owed 
 almost nothing. The one preacher whose influence 
 is traceable in his later work is Newman, and Newman 
 was almost the only sermon-writer whom he read for 
 many years. I make no attempt to analyse his preach- 
 ing, or to discover the secret of his power. It was a 
 spiritual wonder. There was about it the touch of 
 miracle. Apparently free from rule, it was uncon- 
 sciously obedient to the great principles of art. As 
 you listened you saw deeper meanings. The horizon 
 lifted, widened, broadened the preacher had thrust 
 his hand among your heart strings. You heard the 
 cry of life, and the Christ preached as the answer to 
 that cry. The preacher had every gift. He was 
 mystical, poetical, ironical, consoling, rebuking by 
 turns 
 
EMINENT PREACHERS 175 
 
 ii 
 
 His Humility. 
 
 TT\R. PARKER was extremely sensitive. Per- 
 -*^ haps sensitiveness goes much more often with 
 genius than with talent. He greatly lacked self- 
 confidence, and lived in the constant need of encour- 
 agement. 
 
 He never forgot to be grateful. His was a nature 
 that had much need of brightness, and he would often 
 pray for some visible sign or token that he was doing 
 good. 
 
 in 
 
 His Genius. 
 
 T>ETWEEN his congregation and his home his 
 -"-* life was practically lived until his wife died. 
 After that he turned very strongly to two or three 
 friends who visited him every week. In general com- 
 pany he had little to say, but among his own, and 
 especially in dialogue, he was at his very best. As 
 a rule he wakened up slowly, but once embarked in 
 the full stream of conversation, he was vivacious and 
 brilliant to an extraordinary degree. He then showed 
 himself a man of genius. I have met men cleverer, 
 and more accomplished, and even men more alert, 
 but never a man, with perhaps one exception, more 
 plainly possessed of the indefinable quality called 
 genius. In conversation he could adapt himself to 
 his companion, but, latterly at least, he liked nothing 
 so well as to discuss his texts with a sympathetic hearer, 
 or to recall his memories of the past. He would 
 
176 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 often speak with the utmost finish, precision, and 
 beauty. 
 
 DR. ALEXANDER M'LAREN 
 
 Highland Chieftain. 
 
 T7ROM his youth he looked like a Highland chief- 
 * tain born to command. In any company 
 where he sat was the head of the table. Before you 
 knew he was a prophet you were sure he was a king. 
 Who can forget that wonderful face, tender and stern, 
 more beautiful and more saintly as the years went on, 
 with the lights and shadows sweeping over it ? Who 
 can forget the flash of those magnetic, dominating eyes ? 
 There was a kind of regal effulgence about him in 
 his great moments. He might have been anything 
 soldier, politician, man of letters, man of science, and 
 in any profession he would have taken the head. He 
 was gifted with a swift and clear-cutting intellect. 
 He had also a true vein of poetry and genius. He 
 could master any subject, and he had an all-sided 
 strength and capacity. These gifts were early brought 
 into captivity to the obedience of Christ. 
 
 ii 
 Emperor and Magician 
 
 HE had the temperament of an orator, and he 
 acquired the rare faculty of speaking better 
 English than he could write. It was amazing to see 
 him in the pulpit, absorbed by the passion of the 
 moment, and yet summoning and dismissing his 
 
EMINENT PREACHERS 177 
 
 phrases. You could see the double process going on, 
 the mind shaping the consummate sentence behind 
 the act and ardour of utterance. At last words came 
 at his call, or without being called. He commanded 
 words as an Emperor and as a magician. In his very 
 loftiest flights one hardly knew whether he spoke 
 or sang ; it was " Speech half asleep or song half 
 awake." 
 
 "MR. JULIUS" 
 i 
 
 " We Flash and Fade." 
 
 f KNOW of some who will be found on the right 
 -^ hand whatever the priests and doctors say, be- 
 cause they have seen Christ an-hungered, and have 
 given Him meat. 
 
 You cannot hear Mr. Julius pray without knowing 
 that you are in the presence of a devout and spiritual, 
 if perplexed nature. " Thou art the Infinite One ; 
 we are the finite many. We flash and fade ; Thou 
 abidest. Our thought fails like a spent bird before 
 Thee." He clings to the great certainties ; " What- 
 ever secrets the silence may hide, may we ever say * I 
 must do my duty.' " " Be gracious to those to whom 
 Thou hast come bereavingly. In Christ the living 
 and the dead meet, though they cannot now speak or 
 clasp hands and they are one in the faith of His 
 Eternal Kingdom." 
 
 I never cease to wonder at the exquisite lucidity and 
 beauty of his style never a word failing or out of 
 place. Not perhaps a strong man for great public 
 I 12 
 
1 78 PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 tasks rather silent, sensitive, and courting the shade ; 
 he is, nevertheless, a finely tempered instrument, if 
 ever one was. I have left the little place sometimes 
 feeling that nowhere perhaps in Britain had there 
 been that day a more lavish expenditure of thought 
 and imagination. 
 
 ii 
 The Dire Offence. 
 
 'T^HE great offence in Blossoming Lane Chapel 
 -* is to cough. Mr. Julius shows great lenity 
 to other offenders, but to those who cough, none. 
 He considers coughing a voluntary act of the evil 
 will, and the greatest injury a man can do his fellows. 
 Any hearty, healthy stranger who has been accus- 
 tomed to take his cough in his church stands a good 
 chance of being withered by one of Mr. Julius's 
 glances, if he is not even publicly rebuked. I have 
 resolved on my own line of action if I am rebuked. 
 I mean to rise and deliver a brief Vindication of 
 Coughing, which I have composed on the basis of 
 Mr. Pickwick's advice to Mr. Peter Magnus. I 
 shall first glance briefly at the universality of the 
 practice, as proved by history and the enormous 
 number of patent medicines. 
 
 PRINCIPAL CHARLES EDWARDS 
 
 i 
 
 A Great Personality. 
 
 rp VERYONE who had the friendship of Dr. Ed- 
 *-' wards must feel that such a friendship was in 
 itself a very great distinction. Of all the men we have 
 
EMINENT PREACHERS 179 
 
 ever known he was in many ways the most remark- 
 able, the most individual. Were we compelled to 
 put our impression of him into one sentence we should 
 say he is the only man known to us, since Spurgeon 
 died, who might have been the founder of a great 
 sect. 
 
 No one who ever heard Dr. Edwards preach will 
 forget the experience. He began with his little Bible 
 in his hand, speaking slowly in a low voice, and gradu- 
 ally rose to the height of eloquence and passion. He 
 never lowered his preaching, but, like Mr. Spurgeon, 
 brought his hearers face to face with the most august 
 themes. When Spurgeon, as a youth, came to Lon- 
 don, he did not preach about the anecdotes of the 
 Bible, but took for texts : " Accepted in the beloved," 
 " No man can come unto Me except the Father which 
 hath sent Me draw him," and so plunged into the 
 deep sea. In the same way, Dr. Edwards from 
 the first asked his hearers to think, and to think 
 profoundly ; but his thoughts were all of them fused 
 in passion. 
 
 ii 
 
 His Detachment. 
 
 /"T^HERE was about Dr. Edwards most noticeably 
 -* that " solemn scorn of ills " which seals the 
 great saint. He was very sensitive, very modest, 
 easily wounded, yet with a certain high disdain of life's 
 dangers and evils. 
 
i8o PREACHERS AND PREACHING 
 
 DR. LIDDON 
 
 A Gleam of the Spirit. 
 
 /CONSTRAINING is the charm exercised by 
 ^^ those who can lead us, every time they preach, 
 by untravelled lanes into unvisited nooks, who can 
 show us some hidden spot in the mountains of truth 
 that front us. But to many it is a greater thing when 
 they see a new beam of light gild the solemn array. 
 This his words did at times. In a sermon of which 
 all the rest might seem ordinary there would be a 
 sentence which woke the responses of the diviner 
 mind, which revealed all the kingdoms of the spirit 
 and the glory of them, which opened the eyes for ever. 
 
 HUGH BLACK 
 
 A Preacher with Reserve. 
 
 feel, in listening to Mr. Black, that he gives 
 you from time to time indications of power 
 and passion carefully kept under restraint. The 
 note of frugality so much praised by our mo re judicious 
 critics is in his work, but it is not the frugality of a 
 poor man. 
 
IF. IMMORTALITY 
 
" I believe everything that I have written about immor- 
 tality." 
 
 Said by W.R.N. a few days before his passing. 
 
BEREAVEMENT 
 
 " Our dead have not forsaken us. However it may seem some- 
 times, we do not want for friends." 
 
 Cry of the Pilgrim. 
 
 WHAT if this life is our Exile and Captivity, 
 and Death our Return ? 
 
 The Blessed Hope. 
 
 TO those who have lived much in the life of the 
 affections there comes a time when the memory 
 of loss is little more than a promise of more perfect 
 gain. 
 
 Courage ! 
 
 THE first thing I should say to anyone in the 
 dust of a sudden blow is, " Hope on." I am 
 content to say that we should resolve to wait and see 
 what time will do for us. Of course in a certain 
 sense time does nothing at all. It is what takes place 
 in time that helps us, that soothes the pain, that heals 
 the wound. 
 
 A Haunted House. 
 
 THAT this life is a haunted house built on the 
 very confines of the land of darkness and the 
 shadow of death, that we are united by a thousand 
 
 183 
 
1 84 IMMORTALITY 
 
 fibres with the other world, is denied by few. The 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in his undis- 
 mayed way, infinitely extends this truth for all who 
 hold his faith. 
 
 Looking Beyond 
 
 WHEN we do our best, the ideal is still beyond us 
 to chill and dishearten. Yet not beyond us, 
 if we look to the other life, to our breaking through 
 this thraldom of the flesh, and the coming to pass of 
 the strange great words, " We shall be like Him, for 
 we shall see Him as He is." 
 
 Consolations drawn from this life do not touch what 
 is deepest in sorrow. Time can heal much, but there 
 are troubles beyond its skill. For these we must call 
 in eternity. There are empty places which must be 
 empty till the angels' faces "smile with the morn." 
 There are agonies in the presence of which we can 
 only say that all sorrow is short-lived enough. It is 
 but a little while. Those on whom life and death 
 have wreaked their worst are not defeated if they can 
 look beyond to their " triumph o'er grey time." 
 
 Meredith on Immortality. 
 
 " XT'OU believe in it ? " he said. " But for my part 
 * I cannot conceive it. Which personality is 
 it which endures ? I was one man in youth and 
 another man in middle age." He then moved his 
 stick in the ground and said, " I have been this and this 
 
BEREAVEMENT 185 
 
 and this and this. Which is it that is immortal ? " 
 I ventured to remind him of what John Stuart Mill said 
 about the persistence of the ego. He said, with some 
 vehemence, " I do not feel it. I have never felt it. 
 I have never felt the unity of personality running 
 through my life. I have been " this with a smile 
 '' I have been six different men : six at least. No,'' 
 he said, cc I cannot conceive personal immortality." 
 This is the teaching of his writings, though I think 
 there are hints in them of " a morn beyond mornings." 
 
 In the Dark Room. 
 
 IN the heaviest day of daze and death there is for 
 believers a fellowship with Christ in agony. 
 Before any secret of providence is disclosed ; when 
 the softest words are harsh ; when the heart is sealed 
 and inaccessible to any earthly comfort ; when even 
 prayer for the moment is impossible, Christ is in the 
 dark room with the soul which He redeemed, and 
 which He keeps alive. There is not happiness ; 
 there is not the hope of happiness ; but there is the 
 assurance of the righteousness, the pity, the pardon 
 of the Eternal Love. That the bleeding heart needs 
 this, and is content with this, is a thought and emotion 
 so exalted that it proves itself divine. It is not any 
 poor, earthly cowardly desire for happiness and ease. 
 We think it is Elizabeth Stuart Phelps who says that 
 the ultimate religious tenderness of man towards God, 
 so high, so pure, so reasonable, could only have come 
 from God. Whoever said it, it is true. A believing 
 
1 86 IMMORTALITY 
 
 pauper, quite solitary on earth after a life that has 
 stripped her bare, kneeling in peaceful affection before 
 Him Whose outward gifts have been so few, is a wit- 
 ness to the victory of faith over the world. The 
 vestibule may be strait and lampless, but her hand is 
 on the door. 
 
 The Help of Saints. 
 
 T ALWAYS picture Christ standing between us 
 -* and holding with His right hand so many of His 
 believers and with His left hand so many. He 
 merges us with them. They are in the full light, and 
 we are in the twilight. But we both hold the hand 
 of Christ, and constantly from the left hand to the 
 right hand new souls are passing. Have the trium- 
 phant saints forgotten those who are still fighting the 
 fight of faith ? Are they not permitted to speak to 
 them and to help them when they need it ? We 
 cannot answer the question definitely, but surely it is 
 right to believe that for the joy of the dead they are 
 sometimes permitted to hearten and succour those 
 whom they leave unwillingly to the toil and moil of 
 the common day. 
 
 There is often a true brotherhood between the 
 faithful living and the faithful dead, and it is never 
 understood so completely as when we sit at the 
 Lord's Table and hear Him say, "This is My 
 Body ; this is My Blood." We are one then in the 
 communion which is based on the Redeemer's atoning 
 sacrifice. We lay our sins on Jesus, the spotless Lamb 
 of God. 
 
BEREAVEMENT 187 
 
 The Sunshine of Heaven. 
 
 TO resist temptation is to choose a portion with 
 the pure, who, as in our inmost hearts we know, 
 must in the end triumph openly. All that is sacred 
 in memory and in affection draws us from pollution 
 to their side. How many has the thought saved : 
 cc If I am to spend eternity with her, I must spend it 
 in the presence of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Yes ; the further pier of the bridge that spans 
 life rests on the unseen shore. This life is much as 
 the time for discipline, for preparation, for hearing and 
 obeying the Spirit and the Bride. But it is little as the 
 time for happiness, for success, even for achievement. 
 It is the porch dismantled and wind-blown, yet not 
 uncheerful if there falls on it the steady sunshine of the 
 other world. Only thus shall we touch and lift the 
 life of the millions who say with the factory-girl 
 quoted by Dr. Newman : " I think if this should be 
 the end of all ; and if all I have been born for is just 
 to work my heart and life away in this dull place, with 
 those mill-stones in my ears for ever, until I could 
 scream out for them to stop and let me have a little 
 quiet : with my mother gone, and I never able to tell 
 her again how I loved her, and of all my troubles 
 I think if this life is the end and there is no God to 
 wipe away all tears from all eyes I could go mad." 
 
 The Old Light. 
 
 TT7HAT touched our souls to eternal issues is 
 
 itself eternal. In the vast realm of spirits 
 
 none can be to us what these are that came nearest 
 
1 88 IMMORTALITY 
 
 us in time. The very thought of such a possibility 
 is profanation. The faded sunsets, the dead roses, 
 we forget. New lights and new flowers repeat for 
 us the past. But the light of souls cannot be borrowed 
 or repeated. The deep heart closes over its grief, and 
 though the grave be green and smooth, it holds the 
 dead 
 
 The Precious Promise. 
 
 T TE repeats His promise. He says it to a world of 
 * partings : " I will never leave thee nor for- 
 sake thee." He says it to a world of heart-break : 
 " I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." He says 
 it to a world of need : " I will never leave thee nor 
 forsake thee." He says it to a world of weakness and 
 weariness and fear : " I will never, never leave thee ; 
 I will never, no never, forsake thee." 
 
 At the End of the Road. 
 
 TT is possible to see that our business is to live, that 
 -*- God has work for us, even if, for the time to come, 
 we are only able to keep pace with the wounded. If 
 death were robbed of its terrors if it were, as it might 
 have been, the crowning joy of life how could men 
 go on living, working, waiting ? It is good for us that 
 Paradise, according to the deep Eastern saying, should 
 still lie under the shadow of swords. 
 
 And if the communion could be resumed, the 
 whole heart would be drawn away from the present 
 
BEREAVEMENT 189 
 
 life and its duties. Because He means us to abide for 
 a season, the sweet voices are still. Yet He remains, 
 and in Him there is union with those lost awhile. 
 The more truly our fellowhsip is with the Father and 
 the Son, the more truly is it with them. Who shall 
 say that through Him new currents of covenanting 
 love may not even yet pass between us ? 
 
 " I know Whom I have believed, and am per- 
 suaded that He is able to keep that which I committed 
 unto Him." That which I have committed unto 
 Him. Who can read the secrets of the Apostle's 
 soul ? How much is coming into the words as these 
 mortal years run out ! But we know the end. " Do 
 we sink," said Carlyle, " in these swamps, amidst the 
 dance of dying dreams ? " No ; we have before us 
 no treacherous morass, no infinite inane, no vague 
 and formless mist, but at the end of a short road 
 the light, the warmth, the love, the welcome of 
 Home. 
 
 For Peace In Love. 
 
 LIFE is a continual bereavement, and the best 
 treasures and the best affections go down one 
 by one into the grave. Is that the end of them ? Are 
 we never to find them again ? Are we always to be 
 at the mercy of the scent of a flower, or the sound of 
 a bell, or a fading picture ? True love, as St. Ber- 
 nard says, very deeply, gathers not strength from hope. 
 But for peace in love there must be hope of a meeting 
 beyond the sea. 
 
190 IMMORTALITY 
 
 Favourite Lines. 
 
 WE believe these lines that follow are undoubtedly 
 the finest Mrs. Clive ever wrote, perhaps 
 the most poetical rendering of the great Resurrection 
 fact anywhere to be found though this is saying 
 much. 
 
 " One place alone had ceas'd to hold its prey ; 
 
 A form had press' d it, and was there no more ; 
 The garments of the grave beside it lay, 
 
 Where once they wrapp'd Him on the rocky floor. 
 
 He only with returning footsteps broke 
 Th' eternal calm wherewith the tomb was bound ; 
 
 Among the sleeping dead alone He woke, 
 
 And bless'd with outstretch'd hands the host around." 
 
 The Promise of May. 
 
 THE companionship that made life a holy and 
 happy thing was cut short just at the opening. 
 The plans with which the eager heart teemed all came 
 to nothing. What forces of thought and love we have 
 seemed to spend in vain ! Are there wounds that 
 cannot be healed, losses that cannot be made good, 
 griefs that cannot be forgotten ? The answer is in 
 the prophecy of May of everlasting spring and un- 
 withering flowers. 
 
 Here the winter comes back after the spring, and 
 we tremble lest we be too happy. The envious 
 heavens, we think, will be tempted to strike down upon 
 our bliss, and over the whole world lies the shadow 
 of turning. But God meant us to be happy, perfectly 
 
BEREAVEMENT 191 
 
 blessed to all eternity. The ransomed of the Lord 
 shall return and come to Zion, with songs and ever- 
 lasting joy on their heads. Joy and gladness that 
 have flown so high above, so far in front we shall 
 come up with them at last and hold them in our hands, 
 " their wings covered with silver and their feathers 
 with yellow gold," and sorrow and sighing shall flee 
 away the night birds down the night. 
 
 How to Endure. 
 
 * I V HE anguish of bereavement, the profound stir- 
 -* ring of the emotions when we think of the life 
 into which has already passed so much that was very 
 part of our own being, lies in the fact that we are 
 parted, though it is but for a time. 
 
 The compensation is that we see and hear Jesus, 
 that we can speak to Him and receive his reply, that 
 He will fill our weak and restless hearts, if we ask Him, 
 with His own strength and peace. 
 
 The Most Lonely. 
 
 FT is a consolation that God takes for His peculiar 
 * charge those who are left most lonely and help- 
 less, and a little experience of life will show that His 
 Providence is a living fact. But Jesus knows all that 
 the bereaved have to suffer. He comprehends the 
 longings of the famished heart. He knows what it 
 is to feel as if life must henceforth be endured, not 
 
1 92 IMMORTALITY 
 
 any longer lived. He knows the first fever of feeling, 
 and the terrible reaction when the stricken souls long 
 for the duties from which they are now so sadly free. 
 He knows how often when work begins the sense of 
 desolation increases, till nothing is left for weary weeks 
 but the grey comfort of thinking that the end is not 
 so very far away. But He knows also that all is not 
 told when the outward circumstances are known or 
 guessed at. We never know till we know Himself. 
 Then we understand how in the darkest hour the 
 path may open like a shaft of light to the Heart of all 
 Comfort. Christ knew that God had to be trusted, 
 and that His soft hand would draw together the edges 
 of the wound. 
 
 Courage y Poor Heart of Stone ! 
 
 ET troubled and lonely hearts take fresh courage. 
 
 L 
 
 They may have to go softly all their years. The 
 voices that once thrilled them are for the moment 
 past hearing. But when death brings us closer to God 
 we shall know that He has been in all ways just and 
 faithful and loving to us. With what a rush our 
 spirits will run to reunite themselves with the beloved ! 
 They, too, will make haste to meet us, and in utter 
 thankfulness and humility we with them shall claim 
 the Redeemer as our Lord and Friend, and fall at the 
 feet of perfect Goodness, perfect Purity, and perfect 
 Love. 
 
BEREAVEMENT 193 
 
 After AIL 
 
 TT 7"E know how in the heaviest afflictions there 
 is almost always something left to hold by, 
 something to live for. Yet there may be a desolation 
 which is humanly complete. Even then a spring of 
 joy remains. " I am with you all the days," and the 
 joy in Christ is to persist, though all the other lights 
 are blown out. So it may be, so it has been. This 
 is not a dream, however it may seem to be one. 
 
 " In Memoriam " 
 
 IT is worth noting, that Tennyson, so far as the 
 record goes, had no supreme friend after A. H. 
 Hallam. I doubt whether he had any woman friend 
 even. a In Memoriam" was, in the full sense of the 
 word, a sincere book, for it commemorated an affec- 
 tion for which the writer never found any substitute. 
 By the way, has it been sufficiently remarked that 
 " In Memoriam " makes but a limited appeal to the 
 bereaved ? Its intensity has carried it through ; but 
 when we think of it, we shall see that the bereavements 
 in life that leave aching, unhealed wounds are not of 
 the type Tennyson commemorates. 
 
 What must be Faced. 
 
 T T is not true that people get over everything. Many 
 -*- die of grief, but the greater number of those who 
 are not cured are altered. Mrs. Oliphant expresses 
 it best. She says that after the loss of her little 
 
i 9 4 IMMORTALITY 
 
 daughter she became another being better, perhaps, 
 in some ways than she had been, but different. All of 
 life is set to a lower key ; the mind takes a darker 
 colour. Work remains, and, it may be, pleasure, and 
 success, and friendship, and love, but it is never as it 
 has been. One day cuts through life like a plough- 
 share. Grief, like love, is apt to go on. 
 
DEATH 
 
 " Though it seems for the time as if the whole story of life, 
 embroider and adorn it as we may, is love, loss, and grief, yet 
 at the deathbed there is oftentimes a ' wind-warm ' space of 
 love, during which the soul knows that things are not what they 
 seem, and that though bond after bond is apparently being broken, 
 the ties of the everlasting union are tested and hold. Words of 
 love spring up from the deep and secret wells of the spirit. Christ 
 is made known to His people, and they confess that His right 
 hand, through which the great nails went, doeth valiantly, and 
 is exalted in the waste and wreck of death." 
 
 The Thief and the Dawn 
 
 longer an outcast of Gehenna, no longer 
 racked and forlorn, the thief drank of the 
 spiritual Rock beside him, and that Rock was Christ. 
 Already he had burst the shell of the mortal, and was 
 of those over whom the second death hath no power. 
 Before Christ lay the morning of the eternal open 
 world, and the shadows of this narrow life had vanished 
 too from the heart that nestled in His promise. Ere 
 night, Jesus, and the child God gave Him, had entered 
 on that Day, fresh as morning, tender as eve, " which 
 hours no more offend." 
 
 The Power of Jesus. 
 
 T TE came and laid His hand on the bier, and the 
 * -* dead wood thrilled and quivered at the touch. 
 That Hand ! The Father loveth the Son, and hath 
 
 195 
 
196 IMMORTALITY 
 
 given all things into His Hand. That Hand, the Hand 
 that was to be wounded for our transgressions and 
 bruised for our iniquities. That Hand not yet nailed ! 
 And He said : " Young man, I say unto thee, arise. 
 Arise." And he that was dead sat up, and began to 
 speak. Is not this the Saviour we need ? The 
 Saviour Who is a barrier against the drift of death. 
 Shall we not say : cc Lo, this is our God. We have 
 waited for Him, and He will save us." His compas- 
 sions fail not. He tarrieth not for man, nor waits 
 for the son of man. He speaks and it is done. 
 He commands and it stands fast. The mother 
 made only the mute appeal of her sorrow, but 
 He needed no more. The fulness of His life 
 streamed out for a moment, and the young man rose 
 and spoke. 
 
 The Christian Jetton 
 
 /CHRISTIANITY will help us to meet enforced 
 ^^ inaction. It will help us more easily, no doubt, 
 if we have laboured while we could. Then we can 
 reflect in the long, passive hours that " of toil and 
 moil the day was full." Even if the cherished work 
 has been forbidden, if it has been hardly begun, or not 
 begun at all, the depression of failure may very well be 
 banished by the thought of an undying life in God. 
 After all, we are never old till we feel old, and no- 
 body feels old until he feels that his work is done. So 
 long as there is in us some faculty hidden from day- 
 light, some capacity still unrevealed, some work still 
 
DEATH 197 
 
 to accomplish, we are young, and faith looks to the 
 future life as the development and completion of this. 
 The night taper, says one, burns long enough if it 
 lets in the Eternal Day. There may be, there doubt- 
 less is, a momentary pang in surrendering some kinds 
 of work to which we thought ourselves specially 
 elected, and yet in these things also God is worthy of 
 our trust. Perhaps there is no such unspeakably 
 pathetic resignation as that of a mother parting from 
 her children. And yet every day with what victorious 
 faith is this care cast upon God ! Schiller, on his 
 premature deathbed, kissed and blessed his youngest 
 child of seven months old, and gazed at the helpless 
 creature with yearning tenderness. Yet a little while 
 later, when they asked him how he felt, he said, 
 " Calmer and calmer." Is there any better prepara- 
 tion for life and death than that of the girded loins 
 and the burning lamp ? 
 
 The Death of the Lord. 
 
 T TE was unconquered by death. His death was 
 
 * * the Lord's death and the Lord's doing. He 
 foresaw and meant it from the first. When it came 
 He went to meet it not as a Stoic with iron will refusing 
 to wince, nor as one superior in all but power, and yet 
 giving power its due. Death met Him at the trysting- 
 place He, and not death, had chosen. It had no power 
 at all over His soul, and none over His body save what 
 He gave it. None could tear away the garment of 
 His mortality j but when the hour struck, He folded 
 
198 IMMORTALITY 
 
 up His life like a vesture, and it was changed The 
 Holy Thing that slept in Joseph's grave held the 
 myriad forces of corruption at bay till the soul re- 
 turned. Then He awakened, and lifted up His 
 pierced Hands and blessed the sleepers at His side 
 whose sleep was to be so long whose waking was so 
 sure 
 
 No Make-believe. 
 
 T TOPE in the Old Testament often means simply 
 *--- a fixed gaze. There comes an hour when all 
 striving is idle, when we must simply look up at the 
 sky, now pitiless, clear, cloudless, but near changing. 
 When our wills lie bowed like reeds in the river, the 
 strongest current will not break them even the 
 current that would snap opposing bands of iron. We 
 have no make-believe about death. Christianity has 
 nothing to do with illusions. It is always thankful. 
 Faith sees all the hard things of life as good and accept- 
 able and perfect in the Will of God. Through the 
 dullest web of existence it can shoot the shining 
 strands that make it triumphant, peaceful, strong. 
 It knows that there is a soul of sweetness in all the 
 bitter things whereby God prepares His children for 
 their great Passover. It fortifies itself meanwhile 
 by continually ascending to the Source of Sacrificial 
 Life. La force est aux sources the strength of our 
 cause is at the Fountain-head, and we go there 
 to seek it 
 
DEATH 199 
 
 Its Suddenness. 
 
 WE are from time to time made to realise that 
 the ground beneath us which seems so solid 
 and substantial is as unstable as any gossamer. 
 
 At the Worst Moment. 
 
 WE know that the Father has sanctioned the very 
 blow we find it so hard to bear. By faith we 
 are able to give thanks on our Calvary, in the misery 
 of lonely tears, watching by the dearest asleep in 
 their deep sleep. To say then. Magnificat anima 
 mea^ is to be under the benediction of the Cross, to 
 offer in very truth the sacrifice of praise. 
 
 Death a Sleep. 
 
 OT. PAUL himself recognised that death was the 
 ^ last enemy to meet Christ in the field and to be 
 destroyed. And yet so absolute was Christ's victory 
 over death that in the New Testament it is spoken of as 
 sleep. 
 
 The Little Hills in the Churchyard. 
 
 WE know that for the Christian there is no death ; 
 that Christ by rising again, the firstfruits of 
 His sleeping people, has plucked the sting from death 
 and spoiled the victory of the grave ; and so we can 
 look calmly at it, and have peace peace by the death- 
 beds of our dear ones, peace when our own life is 
 slipping away from us, peace as we stand by the grave 
 
200 IMMORTALITY 
 
 where already we have two or three gathered together 
 in His name, peace in the thought that they all live 
 to God, peace in the hope of the day to be when the 
 little hills in the churchyard shall rejoice on every side 
 at the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. 
 For Christ has abolished death. 
 
 The Church in the Churchyard 
 
 WHERE two or three are gathered together in 
 His Name under the sod, there is Christ in 
 the midst of them. 
 
THE NEW COUNTRY 
 
 " We are come to Zion, the city of the living God. I do not 
 know who may be praying for me in the General Assembly and 
 Church of the first-born. I think there are some. I am sure I 
 am not too bold in saying I know there is One, the Intercessor 
 Whose pleadings know no pause." 
 
 Life there More Real. 
 
 TTENRY DRUMMOND'S departure for the new 
 * -* country has made the other life for many, in 
 an unspeakable degree, more real and more winsome. 
 
 The Fortress-home. 
 
 T7RIENDS fail us, death takes our truest, and yet 
 * we can count on that love which is constant in all 
 worlds, through all years, that love in which the dead 
 are living and the lost are found, that love which does 
 not die when we die, that does not cease to care when 
 we can care no longer, that love in which we and our 
 beloved dwell as in a fortress-home. 
 
 The Christian Journey. 
 
 WHAT a story the life of every Christian here 
 has been ! Shall we in heaven be able to 
 look back on the steps of the way ? The Welsh 
 hymn has it : 
 
 " From Salem's high walls we shall witness 
 The windings of life's river through." 
 
 201 
 
202 IMMORTALITY 
 
 Shall we see the journey in all its stages, and say to 
 ourselves, " At this point I very nearly gave up, at 
 this point I very nearly went astray, at this point I was 
 very weary in well-doing, at this point that night was 
 black over my head ? " Yet all that is over and told 
 for ever. 
 
 In the City of Peace. 
 
 / I V O the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of peace, 
 * the redeemed of the Lord go up from all the 
 lands of life. And if we are Christ's, received into the 
 communion of the Redeemer and His righteousness, 
 we shall feel that this and this only is our true home, 
 and we shall draw near to it, not timidly, not shrink- 
 ingly, but with eager desire, as those who are no more 
 strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the 
 saints and of the household of God. As we under- 
 stand the depth of the final rest, we grow reconciled 
 to our bereavements. It seems indeed more natural 
 that the beloved should be withdrawn from us than that 
 they should ever have been at our side. 
 
 Expected Guests. 
 
 THE home to which He brings them is prepared, 
 and by His own hands. To die is not to pass 
 into the wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled dark- 
 ness. When a child is born on earth into a loving 
 home, how much thought and affection have gone 
 into preparation for its coming ? It enters feeble and 
 
THE NEW COUNTRY 203 
 
 ignorant into an unknown world. But for every want 
 there has been already a provident care. So, but far 
 more abundantly, is there a preparation made for us 
 in the other life. They are waiting for us there. 
 We are ushered with the divinest tenderness into our 
 own place. What welcome is too rapturous for the 
 soul that has trusted Christ, and has been carried to 
 God in His arms ? 
 
 Ever since Jesus left this world, He has been pre- 
 paring and receiving in the other. 
 
 The Care of God. 
 
 I BELIEVE that the souls of the righteous are in 
 the hands of God, and that there shall no torment 
 touch them. I believe that our care was ungentle, 
 and our love untender, and our sympathy imperfect, 
 compared to that which they have in His keeping who 
 is their God and our God. If it were otherwise, I 
 should find no refuge in earth or in heaven. 
 
 Who shall go over the sea for us ? We do not need 
 to put the question. There is One who has gone 
 over the sea for us, and returned. Read the holy 
 history of Jesus Christ of His life, His passion, His 
 Death, His Resurrection, His return to earth, His 
 Ascension to the right hand of the Father. Here we 
 have our all-sufficing answer. He went over the sea 
 for us, over the waves and billows of death, and re- 
 turned returned to Mary, to Peter, to Thomas, to 
 five hundred brethren long asleep. 
 
204 IMMORTALITY 
 
 Visible and Invisible. 
 
 WE have our place in the world that can never 
 crumble to dust. The kingdom which 
 cannot be moved is about us now. It glimmers 
 through the show of things. We have been trans- 
 lated into the kingdom of God's dear Son, and the 
 importunate and ever-shifting objects of sense do not 
 blind us to its glories. It is written and we know it 
 that even here and now we are come to the living 
 God, His City, His angels, and His people, to 
 Jesus, the Mediator of a fresh covenant, and the 
 blood of sprinkling which speaketh better than Abel. 
 Nay, the visible shrinks and pales for the enrichment 
 of the invisible, and the departed are no more silent 
 at our feet, but singing overhead. But ere we inherit 
 all things this mortal must put on immortality, and the 
 thin veil through which shines the light of the seven 
 lamps of fire must be taken away. 
 
 Our Dearest and Best. 
 
 THERE is nothing Christian in the view that we 
 ought to have no special love for any human 
 being, but love all in God and God in all. The Divine 
 Heart, in Whose affections none were crowded or 
 jostled, " loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus." 
 Yet it is by virtue of the spiritual bond that love 
 endures. When our thoughts pass beyond the veil, 
 we realise that the true union is harmony of feeling ; 
 that we have our meeting in the common love of 
 Christ. We are nearest our dead when our thoughts 
 
THE NEW COUNTRY 205 
 
 take the unchangeable direction of theirs. Then, in 
 a true communion, we come to the perfect in their 
 perfection, to an intercourse which is all Christian, 
 to where our loved ones, in Fletcher of Madeley's 
 words, " blossom and shine in the primeval excellence 
 allotted to them by their gracious Creator." Between 
 our love for them and our love for Christ there is no 
 disharmony. If the Saviour said in dying, " And now 
 I come to Thee " ; if His strong Apostle desired " to 
 depart and to be with Christ, which is very far better " ; 
 it is no sin in weaker souls if they anticipate the wel- 
 come of the gentle and familiar faces whose radiance 
 will shine on them always. For it is the golden 
 threads of love which gleam through the mingled 
 texture of our human life, that sign in it the name of 
 God. 
 
 They Remember and Wait. 
 
 without us shall not be made perfect " ; 
 they without us " could not, if we might 
 dare to say it, be made perfect even by the love of God. 
 The perfection of the blessed dead cannot be achieved 
 till the living they wait for come. We feel that we 
 are not worthy now to loose their shoe-latchet, or to 
 touch their garments' hem ; but since love is love, 
 that must not trouble us. While they complete them- 
 selves in regions beyond our view, we are to remember 
 them, to look for them, to prepare for them. We 
 must try to keep the straight path, so far as we can 
 see it, to seek that we may reach the spirit-land unsoiled 
 
206 IMMORTALITY 
 
 and noble. They remember us, they wait for us, they 
 will welcome us. They are saying, if we had ears to 
 hear, " Dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and 
 crown ; so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved." 
 
 Joy of the Blessed Dead. 
 
 TP\O we remember that women in heaven are 
 -*^ always receiving their dead ? They are ex- 
 pecting them, and they are welcoming them. The 
 happiness of the blessed is buoyant and elastic, not 
 passionless, dreamless, changeless. 
 
 We have all felt when some died that it was only 
 as it should be, that they were more needed in the 
 other world even than they could be in this, that some 
 heart had a greater claim upon them, and could not be 
 content without them, and it has seemed as if their 
 welcome must not be delayed any longer, and as if it 
 were left to us simply for the future to make sure that 
 we are come to the innumerable company of angels, 
 and the spirits of the just made perfect. The joys of 
 the angels we know are made more poignant and keen 
 by the repentance of souls. The joys of the blessed 
 dead are immeasurably heightened by the receiving 
 of their own. 
 
 " Smiling in the old forms" 
 
 IT is in his interpretation of the closing lines that 
 we really differ from Dr. Zelie. He says : 
 " What were the angel faces which he had loved long 
 since and lost awhile ? " He replies that they were the 
 
THE NEW COUNTRY 207 
 
 earliest and best of his first purposes and ambitions 
 and visions. " Reunion with faded interests and lost 
 ideals and possibilities, of which we sometimes have 
 hardly the heart to think, is the reunion to which the 
 hymn seems to point, and with that every other re- 
 covery seems both sure and possible." Dr. Zelie is 
 eloquent in his exposition of this view, but we cannot 
 accept it. Say rather that the lines mean what they 
 seem to mean. The brighter ideals of early life are 
 poor and narrow and dim. As we pass on out of the 
 gloom and into the day we see them tarnished and 
 faded. Higher ideals will meet us on the holy hill of 
 God. But there are the beloved who belonged to our 
 youth and are now out of reach, and the pilgrims, if 
 left lonely, crave to behold them again. One chief 
 solace of the journey is that with each step we are 
 nearing them. So many whom we love are there, 
 the nearest and the dearest, fathers, mothers, brothers, 
 sisters, friends, and perhaps strangest of all, the chil- 
 dren who, as we hoped, would take our places and bear 
 our names on earth. The pilgrimage is towards them 
 and Christ and the morning. We look to see them 
 smiling in the old forms, touched with an immortal 
 brightness in the presence of the Redeemer, when we 
 have taken leave of death and darkness for good and 
 all. 
 
 Very Far Better 
 
 WE shall see Him as He is, and we shall be 
 like Him. Disclosures incomparably more 
 vivid and more potent than we have ever dreamed of 
 
2o8 IMMORTALITY 
 
 will be granted us when the earthly house of this 
 Tabernacle is dissolved. The soul will be encircled 
 and absorbed in the consciousness of God. " With 
 Christ " is the one piercing word that tears clear the 
 whole clouded heaven to the Apostle " With Christ, 
 which is very far better." Who shall tell what is 
 covered by the word " very far " ? Whatever it is, 
 it is enough. " With great mercies will I gather 
 thee," is the divine sentence whispered to the soul. 
 A spiritual operation, it is said, demands a spiritual 
 energy. Yes, but this spiritual energy is exerted on 
 certain conditions, and these conditions are realised 
 in dying. There is then the entire union of the human 
 and the divine. For our part, we take no interest 
 in the speculations as to the rationale of this transfor- 
 mation. We may say with Delitzsch that the sancti- 
 fying power of faith bursts forth at death, and that the 
 sight of the reality of what is believed will wipe out all 
 sin. We may add with Phillippi that a creative, 
 miraculous act of God always coincides in the death 
 of true believers. But the air is too rarefied. It is 
 wise rather to raise our thoughts to the few illuminated 
 points in the mysterious region, the suns and planets 
 which light up the darkness, and for the rest to lean 
 upon God, and look with calmness into the mysteries 
 which He still leaves so deep around us. These 
 untravelled worlds are more immediately than this 
 within the region of God's rule, and we shall find 
 within them when the time comes the fullness of 
 content. 
 
THE NEW COUNTRY 209 
 
 With Open Eyes. 
 
 7 I V HERE is another experience which can never 
 * be forgotten. The veil of night is suddenly 
 lifted, and all the wild longings of unavailing years are 
 in a moment stilled. Some of us can remember the 
 day when the steady, silent heartache of disappoint- 
 ment vanished, and we looked on the past with peace, 
 and the sore heart was healed. There are fairer 
 lands than Bithynia, and God may bring us in and 
 fill our mouth with laughter and our tongue with 
 singing. 
 
 But we must be in Jerusalem, in our Mother's 
 arms, before we see all, before we see that in all 
 points God was just and faithful and loving. " Most 
 of our prayers," said Thomas Boston, " are 
 answered in the other world, and they are answered 
 all at once." 
 
 We " shall wake and remember and understand." 
 
 The Supreme Moment. 
 
 THE threshold has been crossed, the soul that 
 has entered into the city is beholding the Won- 
 der of its wonders. The Stone which the builders 
 refused is become the Head Stone of the corner. 
 " I will praise Thee, for Thou hast heard me, and art 
 become my salvation." The spirit catches at broken 
 reeds no more. It sees the lilies that flower above 
 them. It lets the world go, and takes love. 
 114 
 
210 IMMORTALITY 
 
 The Lord and the Thief. 
 
 * I N HE Lord's ear was very heavy, but not heavy 
 -* that it could not hear the thief. His arm was 
 shortened, nailed to the wood, but not shortened that 
 it could not save. That day the Lord and the 
 thief were together in the new country. If thou seek 
 Him He will be found of thee. Before we speak He 
 calls, that we may turn round to Him and say, " When 
 Thou saidst, Seek ye My Face, my heart said unto 
 Thee, Thy Face, Lord, will I seek." 
 
 Together 
 
 IN our harsh, fighting, earthly days, love was much 
 to us, but it was limited. It struggled often for 
 expression. It was frequently darkened by misunder- 
 standing, and only now and then did it attain a heavenly 
 completeness. Those times we all look back upon as 
 the only times when we really lived fully, and drew 
 the breath of the eternal world. Our beloved dead are 
 waiting as eagerly to tell us their story as we are to 
 tell them ours. We shall be together in days of loyal 
 life when all failures of the past may be forgotten, just 
 as though no break had been at all. How well it is 
 with the dead ! How happy we should be if they 
 " look us through and through " ! They are not 
 to be sought in unshared deeps through which their 
 spirits wander fatigued. The companions of the 
 devout life are but removed, as it were, a hand's- 
 breadth from us, but they without us shall not be made 
 perfect. We cannot think of them as they were 
 
THE NEW COUNTRY 211 
 
 when sinking under the weight of illness and broken 
 with the burden of the years. Nay, we think of them 
 as satisfied with good things and crowned with loving- 
 kindness, so that their youth is renewed like the eagle's. 
 
 Healed and Nourished. 
 
 TT will be a life of joy. The blessed dead have had 
 -* too many failures, too many wounds. Heaven 
 will be a place of healing where God keeps all the 
 treasures that He gave and that we let fall. The 
 spirit will be nourished with constant influxes of divine 
 blessedness and constant new visions of God. The 
 body will know no weariness, will need no repose, 
 will have impressed on it no necessity of dying. All 
 these things are left behind. Most of the saints were 
 very weary when they sank into their last sleep, but 
 they will never know weariness in the eternity to 
 come. 
 
 Unchanged. 
 
 TT is certain that we shall know them in the world 
 * of Eternity as we knew them and far better 
 than we knew them in the world of Time. What 
 endures is the love and trust that bound us. 
 
 " Them that are asleep" 
 
 /CONCERNING them that are awake . . the 
 ^^ enterprising Press will collect all the informa- 
 tion that is possible and supply all the comment that is 
 
2i2 IMMORTALITY 
 
 needful. " Concerning them that are asleep " ... no 
 one can speak with authority, save from the Book of 
 God. If the preacher only knew it, his hearers care 
 most to know about those who are beyond their ken, 
 to see the open vista of eternity, to have revealed the 
 wonder and the bloom of another world than this, 
 to follow the white sails rounding the white misty 
 capes of death. 
 
 Sweet Certainty. 
 
 TF we open the windows of the heart towards the 
 -** Heavenly Jerusalem we shall hear the song on the 
 crystal sea. We shall behold the walls and towers 
 bright with perpetual sunshine. We shall know the 
 city for our own true home and mother, and antici- 
 pate with an interior sweetness of certainty the New 
 Year of the Resurrection. 
 
 " // is not so sad" 
 
 THE dead have left us ; but they have not for- 
 saken us. They have left us, and we thrill 
 to the heart of hearts with the memory of their going. 
 
 " Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand 
 And the sound of a voice that is still ! " 
 
 and the unreturning grace of a dead day ! There is 
 nothing in life quite so hard to bear as the silence of 
 the departed. But we know that they are with 
 
 
THE NEW COUNTRY 213 
 
 Christ in Paradise, and we look to join them there. 
 " They without us." How is it with them now in 
 that happy land of souls, where they are waiting for us 
 and helping to prepare our place ? Our own poet, 
 George Macdonald, makes the dying son say . 
 
 " I'm gaun hame to see my mither, 
 She'll be weel acquant or this, 
 Sair we'll gaze at ane anither, 
 
 'Tween the auld word and new kiss." 
 
 But is this all ? Have we no communication 
 from them ? I remember the saying of Eugenie de 
 Guerin : " If I lived near a king and you were in 
 prison, assuredly I should send you everything I could 
 from the court." 
 
 And I recall the lines of George Wither : 
 
 " For it is not time nor place 
 That can much divide us two, 
 Though it part us or a space ; 
 Neither shall be left alone 
 When asunder we are gone ; 
 I in thee, and thou in me, 
 Shall for ever dwelling be." 
 
 We have a higher word than any of these. 
 " Whether we wake or sleep, we should live together 
 with Him ! " I can see that thus the blessed dead 
 hold the right hand of Christ and walk in the light with 
 Him. We have His left hand and are in twilight, 
 but He is between us holding both, and may it not 
 be that through Him new currents of covenanting love 
 secretly pass between the companies of the one 
 family who dwell in Him ? I believe it, and life would 
 
214 IMMORTALITY 
 
 be a very poor thing for many a bereaved soul if it 
 had only the memories of those who have gone and 
 taken half the heart with them. It is not so sad, not 
 near so sad, if we realise our oneness in the ever-present 
 Redeemer 
 
"DIED IN THE WAR" 
 
 The Dear Expected* 
 
 * I A HESE dear lads, struck to the ground, came into 
 -* a world where a place was prepared for them. 
 Before they entered it many a loving thought had been 
 given to making ready for them. The garments in 
 which they were first arrayed were the handiwork of 
 their mothers. 
 
 " Little caps in secret sewn, 
 And hid in many a quiet nook." 
 
 They were received, most of them, with the gladdest 
 and most loving welcome. So when they pass to the 
 other side, to the new country, they are waited for. 
 They are expected. All the things they need are 
 ready. Their needs are anticipated and supplied, 
 and the home of each differs from the home of every 
 other. Nothing is too good for them. Everything 
 must be the best. Our Lord is engaged in preparing 
 and in interceding. He does not take any of His 
 redeemed till the fruits are all mellow and the flowers 
 are all full blown. 
 
 * Written in war-time. 
 
 215 
 
V COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
SHORT MEDITATIONS 
 
 " How is our work being done ? Patiently, faithfully, diligently ? 
 Has that long restlessness been tamed at last ? " 
 
 His Poverty. 
 
 THERE is something suggestive in His request, 
 " Show me a penny." Evidently He did not 
 possess one, and when He died He left nothing behind 
 Him but the garment for which they threw dice 
 beneath the tree. 
 
 Alive and Aware. 
 
 IT was said of Christ Himself that He was obedient 
 unto death in other words, a listener unto death. 
 From the first to the last Our Lord was listening, 
 always listening for the still, small voice of God. If 
 you listen, you will hear that voice everywhere. 
 
 Walking in a wood this afternoon, I thought of 
 Balzac's words on the subduing and mysterious in- 
 fluence of a forest, which he ascribes to the sublime 
 and subtle effect of the presence of so many creatures, 
 all obedient to their destinies, immovable in submission. 
 Christ was always listening to the voice of nature, to 
 the voice of men, to the multitude on whom he had 
 compassion. And God spoke through them to His 
 soul. 
 
 219 
 
220 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 Without Rest or Haste. 
 
 HOW old was He when He said, " It is finished " ? 
 No one can tell to a year, though we all know 
 He was young ; but He had had the twelve hours of 
 His day measured out to Him, and when the night 
 came His work was done. He wished no more. 
 Without rest He lived, but without haste ; no one 
 ever did so much, and no one was ever so free from the 
 timorous hurry of unbelief. Time is always long 
 enough, when we are sure that our times are in God's 
 hand. 
 
 The Disciple meditates. 
 
 HAVE we not promised to follow Him ? Did 
 we not say " Where Thou lodgest I will 
 lodge " ? Not in the great house of splendour, but 
 beneath the humble roof, or under the stars. Said I 
 not, " Where Thou diest I will die ? " and as Thou 
 didst die on the cross, let me die on mine. 
 
 The Secret Cross. 
 
 NO Christian has the right to say to another, 
 What is your cross ? What seems to be the 
 cross in many cases is no cross at all. There are 
 multitudes to whom it would be no cross to give up 
 what they possess. Their Master knows that they 
 should carry a cross, and He has appointed it, and 
 it is being carried. But that cross is no more known 
 
SHORT MEDITATIONS 221 
 
 to the world than is the new name on the white stone. 
 Therefore, judgment of one another as concerns the 
 cross is one of the most dangerous and presumptuous 
 ventures that can be imagined. Young people, and 
 older people too, for that matter, may be prescribing 
 for others a cross which would be light as air in com- 
 parison with the secret burdens they are bearing. In 
 the wonderful history of Xavier there is one passage 
 which has struck us as the most significant of all in 
 his life. We are told that this high-hearted and 
 triumphant missionary once found the saying " Who- 
 soever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever 
 will lose his life for My sake shall find it " very hard to 
 believe. Is it too much to say that this momentary 
 unbelief may have been in reality the loftiest mood of 
 this mighty spirit ? May it not be an echo of that 
 word of Christ in the hour of His nearing Passion, 
 " Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I say ? " 
 
 Stars and Spring Winds. 
 
 THERE is something that touches the heart in 
 the home-sickness of the greater mediaeval 
 writers. The appellation of man, Viator the Travel- 
 ler, the application of the word Patria as a technical 
 name for heaven, the use of such words as illic and ibi 
 without any other explanation, as if there could be 
 but one there to a Christian, are very notable. But 
 life outside of Bithynia is full of merciful wonders, of 
 gladdening surprises. Even here those who stand 
 still may see the salvation of the Lord. You behold 
 
222 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 new lights replacing those that have died out from the 
 sky. The bare and barren land is as meadows that 
 are waiting for the spring winds. 
 
 Where Rest is to be found. 
 
 * I A HE whole object of the Redeemer's work. His 
 - dying, His rising, His ascension, His inter- 
 cession, is to bring men to God the Father. It is 
 when we are brought to God that the fever leaves us, 
 and we are at rest. Too much have we preached, 
 many of us, not the Giver but the gifts. The soul 
 cries out " Not Thine, but Thee." 
 
 The Deafness of Christ. 
 
 IT was He who heard so well the lightest whisper 
 of God. " I delight to do Thy will, O my God ; 
 yea, Thy law is within my heart." What response 
 ever came so quickly as our Lord's, " Lo, I come " ? 
 To be obedient means to listen, and He was a listener 
 unto death. But how deaf He was sometimes ; deaf 
 to Satan, deaf to his friends, deaf to His human 
 enemies ! How deaf when Satan tempted Him in the 
 wilderness ; how deaf to His friends when they 
 sought to alter His course ; how deaf to Peter when 
 he said, " This shall not be unto Thee " ; how deaf 
 in the Judgment Hall when they asked Him, Whence 
 art Thou ? " Hearest Thou not how many things 
 they witness against Thee ? " The Incarnate Word 
 stood with locked lips before Pilate, and answered 
 
SHORT MEDITATIONS 223 
 
 only with a boding, fateful silence to questions such 
 as these. And how supremely deaf when they called 
 to Him, " If Thou be the Son of God, come down 
 from the Cross ! " 
 
 But in the same way He was deaf not only to coun- 
 sels of evil, but to much that seemed legitimate. Here, 
 also, it appears as if many pleasant voices that spoke 
 to Him might have been heeded without sin, and to 
 His happiness. There are voices we think ourselves 
 right in heeding which He might have heeded too. 
 His life might have been richer, easier, more solaced, 
 but He made sharp choices and stern renunciations and 
 swift decisions, and so the fullness of life was not for 
 Him, and the allurement and appeal were in vain. 
 
 The Voice of the Fountain. 
 
 HE has leisure to mark the pain of the body : " I 
 thirst." The voice of the Fountain 1 It was 
 He who had made the land alive with the ripple of 
 sweet water : the Creator of cool wells, of running 
 brooks, of broad rivers. He thirsted ! 
 
 Walking with Christ. 
 
 TF we walk with thoughts and words of Christ, He 
 - will join us in our journey. He will open our 
 ears and seal our instruction. It is His manner to 
 join those who walk. It is His manner not to give 
 knowledge to His disciples that they may walk, but 
 to give it as they walk. When Christ reads His word 
 
224 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 with us the letters are legible only to those who run. 
 In his company, travelling by His side, we know what 
 it is to live by every word that proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of God. 
 
 The Divine Voice 
 
 WE are near the truth when our hearts are dis- 
 posed to the mind of the Spirit and yielded 
 up to His guidance, and only then. We are of those 
 whom Christ loves best when we sit at His feet and hear 
 His words, fresh and new in His gospels. It is when 
 we die to our own proud and idle dreams, and hearken 
 to the Beloved Son in whom God is well pleased, that 
 the unfathomed secrets disclose their deep significance 
 to the true and pure-hearted searcher. This is the 
 way to Divine knowledge, and there is no other. 
 
 The Successful Search. 
 
 TT7HEN one comes to think, there must be many 
 households where one is recognised as the 
 best seeker, and is thereby endeared. The best 
 seeker is not merely the most earnest seeker, but the 
 most successful. What is needed for a good seeker ? 
 Mind, for one thing. Carlyle speaks of his wife's 
 sense and wisdom, of her intellect, shining luminous 
 in every direction, the highest and the lowest. He 
 pays tribute to her just discernment and her swiftness 
 of decision. It is not easy to draw a sharp line between 
 the mind and the heart. The one acts with the other, 
 and neither by itself suffices. For the true seeker 
 
SHORT MEDITATIONS 225 
 
 there must be sympathy with the loser. It is this 
 sympathy that gives the key to much that may have 
 happened, and that prompts the continuance of search 
 after long and frequent discouragements. Is there 
 such a thing as sympathy with what is lost ? In the 
 old books about animal magnetism we used to find 
 stories about what was called " trace." The idea was 
 that objects bore a trace left upon them by their owners 
 or previous owners, and not only by the owners but by 
 the persons closely connected with the owners, and by 
 other objects closely connected with the subjects under 
 investigation. We will not attempt to give illustra- 
 tions. Suffice it to say that for seeking there seems 
 to be necessary a form of mystical understanding which 
 it is not easy to express in words. 
 
 We are on surer and simpler ground when we say 
 that, for successful seeking, there must be concentra- 
 tion and patience. 
 
 115 
 
A WORD TO THE OLD 
 
 " A man should be content if he has had his day, and a day does 
 not stretch over all the years of a long lifetime." 
 
 As the Tears pass. 
 
 THOSE who have lost hold of the living Truth, 
 and have been content with lower aims, may 
 grow sadder every year. Not so those who have a 
 clear and calm reply to the deep questions of the 
 spirit, and whose own salvation is nearer so much 
 nearer than when they first believed. 
 
 Never forsaken 
 
 THE servants of Christ mourn in decaying years 
 how strangely little they have ever done, and 
 they sorrow most of all because they can do no more. 
 And they are about to grasp the sceptre of dominion ! 
 They are appointed to a kingdom which has no seeds 
 of dissolution or decay but which must move with the 
 rest ever nearer to the Sun of suns, till every kingdom 
 is merged in one, and God is all in all. 
 
 The Inner Life. 
 
 XT^OUTH demands victory and cannot wait. It 
 
 * grows weary in a long and losing fight. But 
 
 if we have learned to offer the sacrifice of praise upon 
 
 226 
 
A WORD TO THE OLD 227 
 
 the altar, we need not covet youth, God has provided 
 some better thing for us. We know it, even when 
 we see ourselves grey-headed and wrinkled in the 
 mirror and feel that the battle is as much as ever we 
 can fight, and the race as much as ever we can run. 
 We have learned to give thanks as the tide of battle 
 rolls this way and that. The inner life wells up as 
 the outer sinks into the ground. There is within us 
 something better than the light-heartedness of youth : 
 a joy, a buoyancy, a confidence, which the world 
 cannot give and cannot take away. 
 
A WORD TO THE MIDDLE-AGED 
 
 " Let everybody who is dissatisfied with the shape his existence 
 is taking, look into his heart and ask whether the secret is not in 
 the commonplace and vulgar vice of laziness. It is so, for the 
 main part." 
 
 "And yet I should like " 
 
 WHAT dreams we had of devoutness, of holiness, 
 of success, of perfect unity, love and con- 
 cord ! What dreams we had of our own ascending, 
 and oh, how far short we are of what we looked to be 
 and might have been ! It seems now as if a stern and 
 grey day of the Lord had come down upon the once 
 roseate life, and made it poor and cold. This is the 
 true crisis in the life of the Christian servant, none the 
 less real because it is so little spoken of. 
 
 We are not allowed to die, and we must not give 
 up. We are not allowed to die, although it is always 
 better in a sense for the Christian to die than to live. 
 Yet it is always better to live so long as we can do God's 
 will and God's work, and we can do it, though in 
 another fashion. It is not as it was with us at the 
 beginning. Dreams may be dispersed, hopes may 
 have grown chill, efforts may have failed, love may 
 have been lost, and goodness may have been trodden 
 down. No longer do we walk on the green paths, 
 no longer are we admired or applauded. At the best 
 
 228 
 
A WORD TO THE MIDDLE-AGED 229 
 
 there is before us the dusty road of common duty, and 
 it may be that the burning sand of the desert is beneath 
 our feet. And yet we are not going to give up. 
 There is something in the Christian heart that silently 
 protests. " I think I have done enough, and yet I 
 
 should like " "And yet I should like " 
 
 That is the undertone that will save us. It is with that 
 feeling, by God's grace, that we may be able to turn the 
 battle at the gates. Forts which temptation never 
 reached before are now attacked, but we will not suffer 
 them to be carried. And if we understood it, this is 
 just the point when the nobler life begins 
 
A WORD TO THE YOUNG 
 
 " I cannot pray, would that I could," is surely a prayer which 
 will reach its destination, though the sender knows it not. 
 
 To the Heavy-hearted. 
 
 T TE has promised to be with us to the end of the 
 - world, and He will winter with us through 
 the dark, cold years until the winter ends, until we pass 
 from the turmoil of this world to the peace of that. 
 And for you who are not yet clothed in sackcloth, 
 for you whose peace has not yet been broken by the 
 dark sorrows of life, He is the Friend of friends. I 
 know that a young heart may be very heavy. I 
 know that the ancient thirst of humanity is in the most 
 joyous spirit and will crave for satisfaction. This 
 morning your hopes may be high, but in your souls 
 there is always that low cry for rest, that low cry 
 which swells at last into passionate weeping if the rest 
 is not given. You have the hard things of life before 
 you, but you need not fear them if you win the hope 
 that is in Jesus Christ, or rather if you win Him, for 
 He is the hope. " Unto Him that loved us and loosed 
 us from our sins in His own blood, and made us a 
 kingdom of priests unto God, even the Father, to Him 
 be glory and dominion for ever and ever." Might we 
 all join at last in that triumphal cry ! 
 
 230 
 
GREAT WRITERS 
 
 " In the matter of reading, I have long found it supremely useful 
 to read everything twice over if I wished to retain it, and to read 
 it a second time with increased solicitude." 
 
 HENRIK IBSEN 
 The Unfaltering. 
 
 THE business of Ibsen has been to tear off the last 
 mask from the unbearable face of truth. Be- 
 cause he has done so, his writings have been received 
 with howls of execration. 
 
 BALZAC 
 
 i 
 A Christian Novelist. 
 
 ALZAC, whatever else may be said about him, 
 is assuredly the greatest of Christian novelists, 
 by far the most profound interpreter of that mystery 
 of expiation and redemption which is at the heart of 
 Christianity. 
 
 ii 
 " The Country Pastor " 
 
 TT7HERE in the literature of fiction can one find 
 
 so complete an exposition on remorse and 
 
 expiation as that, for example, in his book, The 
 
 231 
 
2 3 2 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 Country Pastor ? His great intellect and noble heart 
 rested devoutly on the experience of the saints. He 
 found no difficulty in the humble acceptance of the 
 Christian creed and one can imagine what scorn would 
 have been awakened in him by the gaunt and forlorn 
 structure which is dressed out and set forth among us 
 anew as the Christian faith. How often, even in his 
 least congenial writing, when he seems abandoned to 
 the spirit of cynicism, does his faith flash up and drive 
 it out of sight ? There be those who, with Matthew 
 Arnold, still hear the melancholy, long-withdrawing 
 roar of the sea of faith as it steadily retreats and leaves 
 the barren shingles naked. Others, more wise, hear 
 the wave of joy and hope that is to lift the world, 
 coming nearer and nearer. 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 Of "Rab and his Friends.'" 
 
 TT has been said that no man gained a literary repu- 
 -* tation so easily as Dr. John Brown did. He wrote 
 no sustained work ; the fragments he collected repre- 
 sent practically all his output. They are of very 
 unequal value. They are full of repetitions and 
 quotations. If all the quoted matter were struck out, 
 not much would be left. Yet they live, and may very 
 well survive much that is more ambitious. They are 
 all tinged by an exquisite individuality. Perhaps 
 their chief characteristic is their benignity, and be- 
 nignity joined to power is the rarest quality in the 
 
GREAT WRITERS 233 
 
 world. Let anyone try to pick out in a great audi- 
 ence the faces that are at once benignant and strong, 
 and he will understand what I mean. 
 
 When all is said and done, it is the benignity that 
 looked from Dr. Brown's face and looks from his 
 writings which is his passport to immortality. He 
 was " determined not to execute a large order," 
 and he did not ; but much will perish ere he be 
 forgotten. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 The Preacher's Poet. 
 
 NO one has preached so powerfully the shallow- 
 ness of unbelief, the corruption of man's heart, 
 the superiority of religion over morality, the doctrine 
 of a special providence, the fulfilment of God's will in 
 history, and other things hard to be understood. But 
 among all his religious writings we question whether 
 there is any more precious, more profound, more 
 satisfying than that found in his last book, Asolando. 
 It is the poem cc Reverie " beginning : 
 
 " I know there shall dawn a day 
 
 Is it here on homely earth ? 
 Is it yonder, worlds away, 
 
 Where the strange and new have birth, 
 That Power comes full in play ? " 
 
 In it Calvinists will find the soul of their philosophy, 
 their theology, and their dreams. 
 
2 3 4 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 NEW ENGLANDERS 
 A Notable School. 
 
 * I X HE Puritanism of New England created a school 
 -* to which the only affinities I can think of 
 are to be found among the Swiss Protestants. The 
 Warners, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Julia Ward Howe, 
 Mrs. Whitney, and a few others are comparable with 
 Godet and Vinet and Amiel. There is about them a 
 kind of frosty purity, with an edge of fire. 
 
 The Authoress of " Uncle Tom." 
 
 MRS. BEECHER STOWE had her share of 
 those trials that search the heart and reins, and 
 she knew we shall never be rid of them. She recog- 
 nised that the most awful and appalling words of 
 Scripture were uttered by Christ himself. She took 
 refuge in Him, the Lord of all worlds with all power 
 given to Him. He would hide her till the storm of 
 life was past, and then 
 
 " One view of Jesus as He is 
 Will strike all sin for ever dead." 
 
 This faith shines out clearly from all that she has 
 written. In all her perplexities she never ceased to 
 love Christ, and to believe that He came out from 
 God. 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY 
 The Hero. 
 
 17" INGSLE Y remains to us one of the men who are 
 -*-^- more and greater than their books. His bio- 
 graphy may be read when his novels are forgotten. It 
 
GREAT WRITERS 235 
 
 is the picture of strong nature ennobled by self-con- 
 quest. Bunyan says of one among his friends that he 
 was "a stranger to much conflict with the devil." 
 He would never have said that about Kingsley. 
 Kingsley was led into temptation and delivered from 
 evil. He was to those in his home a hero. His 
 naturally hot temper was strictly under control, and 
 his constant tenderness and unselfish affection endeared 
 him to all. He took pupils, and one of them thinks 
 that even his biography does not do full justice to his 
 wit, his vitality, his fun. But we can picture to our- 
 selves, and always with delight, that swarthy, bright- 
 eyed, eager man, always indignant at oppression, 
 always helpful to weakness, noble and ennobling, 
 whatever his mistakes might have been. 
 
 It is pleasant to read recollections of Eversley 
 Rectory in Kingsley's time. His wife, most tenderly 
 loved, was the companion of all his interests. She 
 was described by Mrs. Beecher Stowe as " a real 
 Spanish beauty." 
 
TWO CARDINALS 
 
 " There is no need to lose heart amid the mists and vapours that 
 sometimes shroud the City of God." 
 
 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 
 A Great Spirit. 
 
 T TE was a most gracious and assiduous correspond- 
 -- * ent, and a proper selection from the immense 
 mass of his letters should be an English classic. When 
 strangers of other Churches sent him their books, he 
 did not put them off with formal acknowledgments, 
 but found time to read the volumes, and commend 
 them if he could. But of his countless deeds of 
 charity volumes might be written. Of the spirit of 
 his life and thought sensitive, yearning, lifted up to 
 God a picture hung in his room at the Oratory 
 impressively spoke. It was a view of Oxford, on which 
 he had written, Fill homtnts, putasne vivent ossa ista ? 
 Doming DeuSy tu nosti ? Son of man, can these bones 
 live ? O, Lord God, Thou knowest. 
 
 MANNING 
 The Cardinal who cared. 
 
 WE are certain that in much he showed ministers 
 of other Churches an example which must 
 be taken, if the Church and the labouring classes are 
 not to part company for ever. 
 
 236 
 
MIGHTY WORKERS 
 
 " They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." 
 Is that true ? If it is, then nothing else matters much any more. 
 
 DR. MARCUS DODS 
 
 i 
 
 His Concentration. 
 
 WHEN I first knew him he would not read the 
 newspaper in the morning until the task of 
 the day had been fulfilled, and so it was with him 
 always. He was not to be turned aside, and he knew 
 that achievement must come through the constant 
 accumulation of self-limitings, self-sacrifices, reser- 
 vations, denials. All his years on to the very last he 
 acted out this belief. Nothing slovenly, nothing per- 
 functory, ever came from his hand. He was as 
 exacting with himself when he had risen to fame and 
 position, as in the days when he was an obscure and 
 disappointed probationer. Underlying all was a 
 certain modest consciousness of power. He knew 
 that it was in him if he only had the chance. 
 
 ii 
 
 His Four Qualifications. 
 
 success in life be commanded ? Not quite. 
 There are walls that cannot be scaled, but upon 
 the whole a certain measure of victory may be reached 
 
 237 
 
2 3 8 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 by any man with four special qualifications. These 
 qualifications are (i) a definite object in view ; (2) a 
 determination not to be defeated 5 (3) the capacity 
 of exercising continual self-denial 5 and (4) a certain 
 belief in one's powers. Marcus Dods had all these 
 qualities. In spite of the discouragements heaped 
 upon him, he had a certain quiet confidence that 
 the work of the ministry was that to which he 
 was called, also that his sphere of work lay in this 
 land and not outside. 
 
 BENJAMIN JOWETT 
 A Spur to his Friends. 
 
 MANY who lived outside the sphere of his in- 
 fluence must have been somewhat puzzled 
 at the great place Dr. Jowett filled in life, and the sense 
 of loss caused by his death. It is not accounted for 
 by his eloquence, or his scholarship, least of all by 
 his witticisms. Jowett urged upon his friends, old and 
 young, the paramount duty of work, setting the 
 example himself to the very end. After the unrest- 
 ing labours of his college, he would devote himself 
 during vacation to the dull drudgery of teaching. 
 As a friend he showed himself friendly by ever inciting 
 to further attempts. He pressed Lord Tennyson, 
 after the Idylls were completed, to do something 
 equally great. So fully was his time occupied that, 
 
MIGHTY WORKERS 239 
 
 when trying to find place for some duty of benevo- 
 lence, he discovered that his only vacant hour was 
 between one and two in the morning. There is 
 much in this to ponder deeply. More lives, perhaps, 
 are wrecked by sloth than by any other vice. 
 
EASTER 
 
 " Let us be sure that Christ is in the dark room, keeping the 
 soul that is dear to Him alive." 
 
 Loving Themselves. 
 
 'HAT anguished hearts need is the Easter 
 
 w 
 
 assurance of life. For we cannot, try as we 
 may, love the dead as dead. We may, and we do, 
 love their memories ; but if we love themselves, then 
 they are living. Love is for life ; it cannot dwell 
 with death. 
 
 The Resurrection Faith. 
 
 CHRIST is risen ! The smitten soul holds by 
 its anchored trust, through the open resurrec- 
 tion gate. He looks back upon us, and we know that 
 there is a heart in the world, a reward for toil, a reason 
 for suffering, a great gathering together of life and 
 thought and love to Him who will interpret to us the 
 purpose of our days, crown in them what was begun 
 worthily, and give back to our sight the vanished faces 
 loved long and tenderly. . . . The Resurrection faith 
 will save us from the desolate unbelief which thinks 
 that all the messages of the living Christ have been 
 
 240 
 
EASTER 241 
 
 spoken to the dead, and that for us there is no 
 word. He speaks, not to contradict any word that 
 ever proceeded from His mouth, but to enlarge, 
 to interpret, reconcile. He still leads the genera- 
 tions on. 
 
 i 1 6 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 
 
 A child appeals to us specially because it so much needs us ; 
 and the Eternal Child, too, casts Himself upon us, in love and hope." 
 
 A Yule-tide Homily. 
 
 / ~T A HERE are those who encourage and exhilarate 
 * by their very presence, who bring warmth and 
 light into every place they enter. " I shall never 
 forget the smile with which he greeted me the first 
 time I ever spoke to him, more than six-and-twenty 
 years ago, in the library at Ladywood. I have no 
 doubt that numbers will say the same thing. It seems 
 to me, as I look back upon those days, that the life to 
 every one of us was changed and exalted by an ac- 
 quaintance with him. Always and everywhere he 
 was himself, and what a self it was ! " Such was the 
 testimony borne by the author of "John Inglesant" 
 to an early friend. Then how much a word will do. 
 Over thirty years one man recollects how another 
 said to him in a crowded street, " That is very striking. 
 I am very much obliged to you for telling me that." 
 
 The Value of a Word. 
 
 \ WORD of heartening from a schoolmaster in 
 ** childhood will be remembered when a thousand 
 things apparently much more important are lost in the 
 
 242 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 243 
 
 azure. A word how much it may mean ! Bishop 
 Fraser, of Manchester, was one of the most radiant 
 natures in the world. When he died his friend Lord 
 Lingen bore this testimony : " Both before and after 
 he became a Bishop he not unfrequently stayed at my 
 house ; and I really can say without exaggeration that 
 the very sight of him had the effect of sunshine both 
 on the servants and ourselves. If ever there was a 
 sociable and sympathetic man he was one, pleasantly 
 inquisitive, and ready to talk to anyone. ' Which 
 was the maid who cooked that nice dish ? ' said he 
 one morning, after he had read prayers to us all, 
 referring to something he had praised at dinner the 
 day before." I might pursue this train indefinitely, 
 but I turn to a practical suggestion. 
 
 The Fine Gift of a Letter. 
 
 WHEN Christmas approaches we all think about 
 presents. Many of us have not very much 
 to give. Many do not care for presents of the ordinary 
 kind. We are satisfied with our possessions. What 
 everyone values in a present is its fitness, the kind 
 thought of remembrance which it embodies. Why 
 should we not this Christmas send out a batch of kind, 
 affectionate, and encouraging letters ? This at least 
 is within the power of us all, and who knows what 
 happiness we might give, what cheer, what strength, 
 what hope ? We can call to mind by a little thinking 
 friends and acquaintances with whom life had passed 
 roughly during the year. Write to the friend far 
 
244 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 away who is fighting a hard battle, and tell him what 
 you think of his constancy. Write to the sick friend 
 who fancies herself of no use in the world, and tell 
 her that her life matters much to you. Write to the 
 author whose book you have liked. Send no advice 
 there is a great deal too much advice in the world 
 send encouragement, words of recognition, of gratitude, 
 of affection, of admiration, and send such words 
 especially to those who are living through a time of 
 great stress and trial. Your letter may decide the 
 issue of the conflict. 
 
 A Thought for the Faithful. 
 
 A T Christmas the heart should be subdued and 
 4* softened. The divine hope that is as dew on 
 the thoughts of youth should be revived and the old 
 tenderness restored. There may be no other Christ- 
 mas for us in this world. We are nearer the end of 
 all things. Here we have no continuing city, but at 
 Christmas we recall that through Christ the new world 
 is ours, and our life is but beginning. Now is our 
 salvation nearer at hand than when we first believed. 
 We go forth to meet it, and the still lights of the New 
 Jerusalem burn and shine in welcome. 
 
 The Coming of the Child. 
 
 OVE waited on Him when He came. True, He 
 was laid in a manger, but he was laid there 
 tenderly. He was trustful as children are trustful, 
 
CHRISTMAS-TIDE 245 
 
 and there is nothing softens the heart more than a 
 child's faith. Most of us grow world-weary. The 
 time comes when we expect danger at every step, when 
 the grey sisters enter our house and threaten to abide, 
 when our idols turn to clay, and our eagerly sought 
 prizes drop dead from our grasp. But we are healed 
 from the disease of hardness by a little child who re- 
 calls the old time when we thought all men noble and 
 all women faithful. Nothing, we repeat, is more 
 beautiful than to be trusted once more, to be trusted 
 as only a child will trust us. Now it is a true and 
 salutary thought for Christmas that Christ needs us 
 even as we need Him. It was love of us that brought 
 Him here. It was to win us that the travail of His 
 soul was passed through, and now, when the days of 
 His flesh are over, now that He is ascended, we can 
 look at Him in a new light. We remember what our 
 earthly love was to Him ; how when childhood was 
 over He was left alone and desolate in a darkened 
 world ; how when He was yet young He suffered the 
 pain which goes down to the very springs of life ; 
 how His heart was not light though His step was 
 bold ; how He was tempted and scourged, and rent 
 at last by evil. And the thought that we slew Him 
 should act on our unbelief and sloth and hardness of 
 heart like fire, till the foremost passion of life should 
 be to make the great reparation, and give ourselves to 
 Him Who gave Himself for us. 
 
 The Eternal Child, like all children, came seeking 
 for love. 
 
VIGNETTES 
 
 " Some apparently enter life with recollection, as they might 
 enter a place of prayer." 
 
 DEAN CHURCH 
 
 i 
 A Watcher of the Skies. 
 
 one ever mistook him for a careless Broad 
 Churchman. There are really religious men 
 whose tone is not religious ; but his theology had 
 unmistakably the ideal element. And he had, withal, 
 the rare and commanding prophetic quality. He 
 watched the far-off horizon of thought, and was con- 
 scious of the coming clouds and the still more distant 
 sunshine. 
 
 n 
 
 Single-hearted. 
 
 THE Deanery of St. Paul's was literally forced 
 upon him. For one thing, he loved the quiet, 
 simple, homely life. Like his dear friend Mozley, 
 he was very much at home with rustics. Both of 
 them greatly admired the Rev. Samuel Richards, of 
 Stowlangtoft, a perfect type of a country pastor, shed- 
 ding the light of an equable and happy mind on his 
 
 246 
 
VIGNETTES 247 
 
 neighbourhood, entering with whole-hearted sym- 
 pathy into the life of his people, writing epitaphs for 
 them in the village churchyard, and lying down by 
 their side at last. 
 
 SAMUEL WILBERFORCE 
 
 TTE was a delightful companion and a frank and 
 -*- * simple host ; a good Yorkshire pie sat at all 
 times invitingly on his table, and his melodious voice 
 would often summon a neighbouring chum to his 
 fire-side for a chat through half the nighti I do not 
 know anything in the whole range of biography which 
 gives a better account of the essence of popularity. 
 Wilberforce made it good to the very end of his long, 
 strenuous, and happy life. 
 
 BISHOP LIGHTFOOT 
 A Dedicated Life. 
 
 WE are most attracted by the signs of a lofty and 
 austere piety which mark his episcopate as 
 they did that of Joseph Butler. Many viewed with 
 misgiving the ascetic life of the author of the Analogy ', 
 his melancholy forebodings, his solitary habits, the 
 ornate chapel where he bowed before a silver cross. 
 Lightfoot's piety found, perhaps, more legitimate 
 channels of expression, but it was of the same type 
 lonely, intense, and pale. In this lies his chief, his 
 true greatness ; that Ad Te (juacunque yocas was his 
 guiding rule of life. 
 
248 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 SIR WALTER BESANT 
 Tender of Heart. 
 
 HE was a very busy man, very systematic in his 
 habits. He lived very quietly, and did not 
 care to be disturbed. He was always ready for a 
 fight and did his best to win, though I suspect he was 
 at bottom a sensitive man and disliked controversy. 
 But when a forlorn creature with no claim upon him 
 sought his aid, everything was put aside. He would 
 do anything, he would endure anything, he would 
 forgive anything. 
 
 No one will ever know all that Sir Walter Besant 
 did as a helper, but if we are to believe Christ, he was 
 a Christian indeed, a Christian tried by the most 
 exacting of tests, one who had that in him which will 
 place him at the Right Hand when men who profess 
 much more may be missing. This is what I should 
 single out as the great characteristic of Sir Walter 
 Besant, and if earth has anything fairer to show I 
 do not know it. 
 
 THE ARCHBISHOP 
 Randall Davidson. 
 
 f I V HE portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 -" by Mr. Sargent, attracted me very much. 
 They say that Mr. Sargent is extremely successful in 
 getting at the inner soul of his subjects. If that be 
 so, and if he has done so in the case of the Archbishop, 
 
VIGNETTES 249 
 
 he reveals to us a grave and anxious prince of the 
 Church with a heavy weight of care and responsibility, 
 borne as best may be. It is not a good likeness of the 
 Archbishop as he appears to the public. The fresh 
 rosy face, and the smiling gracious manner with which 
 the public is familiar, are not represented here. Some- 
 times the excellent Archbishop's face and demeanour 
 suggest the lines : 
 
 " Then let come what come may, 
 I shall have had my day." 
 
 I do not use these words in any disparaging way. It 
 is not the worst mood of mind. It is the mood of those 
 who do their best and think of what they have done, 
 and leave the future to God and to those who come 
 after them. But Mr. Sargent gives us a man on whom 
 the weight of the present and the future is pressing. 
 
 CANON BENHAM 
 In Switzerland. 
 
 THERE is a pretty little English church in Murren. 
 When we went the first Sunday morning we 
 did not know the preacher's name. I was sure he 
 was somebody ; the sensitive, mobile, wistful face 
 said as much, even before the sermon had been reached. 
 When it came, we found it packed full of brilliant 
 things, and not without audacities like these : " The 
 most contemptible figures in literature are minor 
 poets " (this is my way of putting the sentiment 
 no doubt it was more decently veiled). It turned out 
 that the chaplain was the genial Canon Benham, the 
 
2 5 o COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 biographer of Archbishop Tait and the editor of 
 Cowper 
 
 PRINCIPAL MARCUS DODS 
 A Haunting Influence. 
 
 r\R. DODS was, in fact, unconscious of his own 
 *^ greatness. He was the humblest of men, and 
 he never offered counsel unless it was asked for. But 
 unconsciously he had a haunting influence on those 
 who knew him. Unconsciously he prompted them to 
 do right. 
 
 THE GREAT DR. CHALMERS 
 A Talk Worth While. 
 
 /CHALMERS was apt to be somewhat silent in 
 ^^ conversation, but at times he would become 
 vehemently excited, and he never said anything com- 
 monplace. Once, conversing with Isaac Taylor, he 
 brought his chair nearer and nearer, till Taylor found 
 himself with his back to the wall. 
 
 DR. RICHARD GARNETT 
 The Gentleman. 
 
 day I happened to be with him in his own 
 room at the Museum. A poor lady came in 
 with a pitiful and embarrassing story. It was almost 
 impossible to avoid a smile at the way in which she told 
 it Dr, Garnett listened with the utmost courtesy, 
 
VIGNETTES 251 
 
 promised to do what he could, and showed her out. 
 Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would at least have 
 exchanged a friendly smile over the interview. Dr. 
 Garnett carefully looked elsewhere, and turned the 
 conversation on to something else. She was a woman, 
 and she was destitute it was enough. 
 
 Dr. Black of Inverness. 
 
 DR. BLACK was the greatest guest I have ever 
 known. He never entered any house but he 
 captivated all who were in it. He comprehended the 
 entire situation. If there was trouble he went to 
 meet it. If there was joy he gave it a new brightness. 
 In a day he was free of all rooms and all hearts. The 
 dreaded stranger of Saturday was the beloved friend 
 of Monday and Dr. Black's friendships were not 
 apt to lapse. 
 
 Lady Victoria Buxton. 
 
 HILE it can scarcely be said that Lady Victoria 
 
 w 
 
 Buxton's letters are characterised by the 
 distinction which belongs to some who have lived the 
 religious life, there was an unmistakable sweetness, 
 kindness, and patience about her nature. She could 
 not forgive herself for being angry, whatever the 
 reason was. Even when she was right she made haste 
 to apologise. She was always the first to apologise. 
 She left behind her a trail of light 
 
252 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 A MERICA condemned him ; he lived in obscure 
 * * poverty, accepting with dignity whatever his 
 admirers here have sent him. But he did not die 
 friendless, he did not die wretched, and what is best, 
 he did not die sour, or bitter, or foiled, and those for 
 whom his writings had a message, knew that he 
 would not. 
 
VISIONS 
 
 " The path of dust and dead leaves brings us to the Fountain." 
 
 A Religious Daily. 
 
 THE great enterprise one of the certainties, one, 
 I hope, of the certain successes of the future, 
 is a London religious daily which will circulate all 
 over the country. That this is practicable I have no 
 doubt. 
 
 Life Less Burdensome. 
 
 / TT N HE time will come, and it is not far off, when the 
 * greater evils of society will vanish. We shall 
 extinguish pauperism, and wonder how we ever 
 suffered it to exist. We shall somehow solve on 
 Christian principles the discord between labour and 
 capital. We shall prevail over the men who would 
 have stood at the foot end of the Cross and chaffered 
 for the coat without the seam. We shall vindicate 
 the supremacy of conscience, and make life more 
 equal, more just, less burdensome. " The poor shall 
 not always be forgotten, the patient obedience of the 
 meek shall not perish for ever." In the day to be 
 the liberated victims of civilisation will see that every- 
 thing good in their lot has come to them because 
 
 253 
 
254 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 Christ descended. Mighty as is the lust for gold, there 
 is one thing mightier, and that is the passion for right- 
 eousness. 
 
 " Better Days " 
 
 T HAVE a vision of better days, of days when that 
 -* abomination of desolation, a childless Church, 
 will be a monstrous impossibility, of days when each 
 Sabbath morning the people will gather in our chapels 
 to welcome the hopeful stir of fresh young life and the 
 promise of its future and its endless possibilities, and 
 when, instead of disheartened ministers, and diminish- 
 ing companies of depressed worshippers, we shall have 
 children and young men and maidens to bring their 
 joy and their thanksgiving and their devotion to Him 
 Who loved us and loosed us from our sins in His own 
 blood, and made us kings and priests unto God. Then 
 will be blessedly fulfilled the great prophetic word, 
 " All thy children shall be taught of the Lord ; and 
 great shall be the peace of thy children ! " 
 
 The Undying Gospel. 
 
 /CHRIST came nearly two thousand years ago to 
 ^^ set the world on fire has He done it ? He 
 has kindled a fire ; that cannot be denied. The years 
 are years of the Lord. But will it go out ? Many 
 hope that it will. They do their best to extinguish it. 
 First put it out, some of them are telling us, and you 
 will see what our science and politics will do for you. 
 Many fear it. They give heed to despairing voices 
 
VISIONS 255 
 
 at home and abroad and see the fire languishing and 
 dying. But it shall never go out. It is burning, and 
 it will spread till the whole world is caught and 
 wrapped in its flames 
 
 Christ Eternal. 
 
 THERE is no future for Christianity, as there 
 would be no past and no present, unless the 
 living Lord Himself is united to every soul that trusts 
 Him, and unless, through His Spirit, He ministers 
 grace to each, day by day. It is because the living 
 union of the soul with Christ is no dead bygone thing, 
 but a thing in which we may share, that the Church 
 survives. It is because Christ is the Lord of the 
 present and the future that He continues to fill the past. 
 The other personalities of history come and go, but 
 He remains and will remain in the evening of the 
 world the One Solitary Figure against the daffodil 
 sky. 
 
 " Refuge ! " 
 
 HOW the world may end, none of us knows. The 
 close may be in a great Armageddon, but 
 Christ and His brotherhood those who embrace 
 Him by faith, those who have taken the Bread and 
 Wine believingly they are saved. If the world is 
 to go on in the hope of progress and love, and of all 
 those things that make life fair, Christ is the only 
 leader, and there is no Christ but the Christ Who said, 
 " Take, eat ; this is My Body broken for you." Yes, 
 
256 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 we must expect a time of keen controversy and heart- 
 searching trouble. So far as it is settled, it will only 
 be settled by Christian influence. There is little 
 present prospect, but we must hope. We may be sure 
 that in our lifetime at least there will be troubles 
 manifold. We are not to wonder at this. " Arise 
 ye and depart, for this is not your rest " are words that 
 still hold good, but from the community of the Church 
 Militant there go over continually the troubled and 
 weary souls that are to be welcomed to the Church 
 Triumphant. 
 
 In my boyhood there was a revival in our village, 
 and I remember, still, snatches of the spiritual songs 
 which were favourites at that time. One of them 
 had words like this : 
 
 " On the other side of Jordan, 
 In the sweet fields of Eden, 
 Where the tree of life is blooming, 
 There is rest for the weary, 
 There is rest for you." 
 
 Mortals and Immortals. 
 
 TAR. WILLIAM BARRY prophesied some years 
 *-^ ago that all parties, governments, and even 
 religions, will be divided by one clear line between the 
 Mortals and the Immortals between those who 
 measure values by their relation to death which cuts 
 off hope, and those who believe in the life everlasting. 
 The victory of faith is sure. Unbelief, in whatever 
 form it clothes itself, ends at the hateful cypresses 
 which lift themselves above a vanishing world. 
 
VISIONS 257 
 
 England and America. 
 
 TT7E look forward to a day when, in a great federa- 
 tion of peace and amity, the English-speaking 
 lands will be united when there will be two ruling 
 Christian nations to secure and guard the peaceful 
 progress of the world. This is the consummation most 
 devoutly to be wished for, and those who believe in it 
 and long for and work for it are not mere dreamers. 
 They dream of that which is to come. 
 
 117 
 
GOOD CHEER 
 
 " Narrow ways are well to tread 
 When there's moss beneath the footsteps, 
 Honeysuckle overhead." 
 
 From a favourite quotation. 
 
 The Comforter. 
 
 / I V HAT so many a lonely heart is kept in perfect 
 -* peace, that the hope of the future is still so 
 fresh and sure, is proof that Christ has redeemed His 
 word. He has not left us comfortless j He has come 
 to us. 
 
 Our Hope for the Future. 
 
 THAT the Christian possession of peace is not 
 strikingly evident to the world is unquestion- 
 able. That many who should have it miss it, is equally 
 plain. But the tendency at present is to forget that 
 the deepest part of the Christian life must on earth 
 be hidden. Its light must be pale in the lamp of clay. 
 The doors of expression are too narrow for its sights 
 and sounds ; and even if they were not, the eye sees 
 what it has the capacity of seeing and no more. If 
 Christ returned and lived thirty years as in Nazareth, 
 at the house next us, would we, would the neighbours, 
 take Him for anything wonderful ? Let the reader 
 think, how little anyone knows the deepest things 
 
 258 
 
GOOD CHEER 259 
 
 in his own life. The day of manifestation will come, 
 when the Sun of Righteousness will shine forth, and 
 the Christian life be laid bare from its roots upward. 
 Till then it is all the years a mystery, and at death 
 it is only hidden a little deeper with Christ in God. 
 
 Joy Out of Thanks. 
 
 OF worldly reverses, as of all clouds, we may say 
 that it is down their dim and misty slopes that 
 the angels of purity and peace often draw near. 
 
 In His Hands. 
 
 A HOLY Power is at the roots of life measur- 
 ing itself with flesh and blood and the rulers 
 of darkness. God is not a mere spectator : He is 
 present in this clash of spiritual armies, His life is 
 everywhere at work, counteracting death. His minis- 
 try in the deepest places of the redeemed soul goes 
 ceaselessly forward, and thereby He revives within 
 His people the ever-fading sense of His kingdom and 
 power and glory. 
 
 The Certainties of Hope. 
 
 'TT V HE death of romance is the worst death of all, 
 J- but those who are filled with the certainties 
 of a noble faith, who always have in their ears the 
 words of Jesus, " Lo, I am with you all the days," 
 have an enthusiasm that remains. It does not need 
 
260 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 to be fed by men's praises. When the freshness of 
 youth has gone it abides : wearing still the many- 
 coloured robe ; the old sunshine falling on it, and the 
 old charm remaining. 
 
 Life till the End. 
 
 IN Christ our youth is renewed like the eagle's. 
 Time flows on, bringing his appointed signs. 
 But grey hairs and diminished strength bear false 
 witness against us if we are filled with the Holy Ghost. 
 Whatever the past has been, the future may be better. 
 If it has been barren and faithless, there is time to repair 
 it ; if it has been full of trust and labour, the time to 
 come may be marked by faith more peaceful and 
 labour more abundant. Age need touch our spirits 
 as little as it touched the young angels in the holy 
 grave, and life before God may be an ascent from height 
 to height till we appear at last in Zion. 
 
 To those who Faint. 
 
 /COMPASSION is the first word which describes 
 >-* the spirit of Christ. It is a deep word deeper 
 almost than love, as the mother knows who has seen 
 her child in the delirium of fever. 
 
 Condemning None. 
 
 TS the truth about a man simply the truth about his 
 -*- present failures and sins ? Suppose all these are 
 known at their worst, is this a complete knowledge of 
 the man ? No. Knowing a man thus we may know 
 
GOOD CHEER 261 
 
 him as little as the dogs that licked the sores of Lazarus 
 knew of the sweet soul that was carried by the angels 
 into Abraham's bosom. 
 
 Believers. 
 
 A S the natural force abates, we shall be reinforced 
 ** with life from its Prince and Fountain, and 
 when we are called to take the great journey, another 
 will go with us One who knows the way. 
 
 The Christian Ecstasy. 
 
 GRACE is the New Testament word for force ; 
 and there are hours in every Christian life when 
 the power of the Risen Christ is manifestly victorious 
 over suffering and weakness. His love is shed abroad 
 in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. Against the most 
 terrible antagonists faith makes her triumph good. 
 When the fiery pillar of hope, followed through eager 
 years, turns its dark side ; a strange buoyancy fills the 
 spirit ; we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We 
 stand by the fresh grave, and look up to see a deeper 
 rift in heaven. When it seems as if the earthly life 
 with its strength and courage were slipping away from 
 us, we look into the air, not empty of light, and see the 
 descending city of God. 
 
 What is Possible. 
 
 TT is by saving ourselves that we save others, and 
 -* only so. Work out your own salvation : that is 
 our first business. It is indeed the one business of 
 
262 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 life which is ours, our own. Nor could anything be 
 shallower than the notion that this is selfish work. 
 
 To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be filled with 
 power. It is to be uplifted, relieved, vitalised, so that 
 all life and every word becomes an effectual ministry 
 of the Gospel. We all know it. 
 
 Strength and Safety. 
 
 THAT He is able to keep not that we are able 
 is the secret of Christianity. 
 
 "Nearer than Breathing" 
 
 THAT so many a lonely heart is kept in perfect 
 peace, that the hope of the future is still so 
 fresh and sure, is proof that Christ has redeemed His 
 word. The narrow room is filled with the fragrance 
 of the Tree of Life. He has not left us comfortless ; 
 He has come to us. 
 
 The Smoking Flax. 
 
 TT would be very hard to construct an apology for 
 -* Christianity out of the conduct of average Chris- 
 tians. There are multitudes who are good and 
 lovable, but spiritually commonplace. There are 
 many who are good in a hard, dry way, but not lovable. 
 There are many who are effusive in spiritual things, 
 but who have a poor standard of life. Sometimes they 
 are avaricious and mean, sometimes they are narrow 
 
GOOD CHEER 263 
 
 and uncharitable. Sometimes they seem to be with- 
 out that high sense of honour which often characterises 
 the natural man. What can be said about them is 
 that the eternal life is within them in germ. It has 
 much to fight with, but it will not yield. God has 
 revealed Himself in these still dark and struggling 
 souls. Their faces are set towards Him, and the 
 spark will one day be a great light. 
 
 yesus y still lead on. 
 
 LET us have all the more confidence in the end, 
 if we must have less in the way. The ap- 
 pointed end is sure, though the time and track of 
 progress may be and will be at variance with our hopes 
 and dreams. Jesus has yet many things to say to us \ 
 we could not bear them now. 
 
 The Sacred Colours Luminous. 
 
 f I V O the faithful, Christ vouchsafes glimpses of 
 sunshine in the grey weather ; when all is 
 done there is often the lustre of a great light. St. 
 Paul forgot the weary march, and the cold bivouac, and 
 the frequent repulse, as his days of ceaseless, earnest, 
 serious zeal gathered themselves together to be poured 
 out as a drink-offering before God. Life had come 
 to its holy Saturday the eve of the resurrection 
 and the glory of the Lord shone round about him. 
 He even he saw the sacred colours luminous 
 through age and death. 
 
264 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 Wild dark Sorrows. 
 
 T TOW often wild dark sorrows show themselves 
 -*- A at i ast t h e f^ enlightened work of God ! The 
 heart may be wondrously revived and quieted, and a 
 new happiness may link itself with the old. 
 
 As Poor^ yet Rich. 
 
 " T TE is never so completely victorious over the 
 
 * -* world as when He bows His head to the 
 world, and takes the worst that it can do ! " 
 
 Such is His death. Resting in it as an atonement, 
 we become conformed to its spirit which is the spirit 
 of patience, love, and trust. " The greatest of these is 
 love." " Trust in God is the last of all things, and the 
 whole of all things." 
 
 The Christian " No More" 
 
 WE do not hesitate to say that willingness to be 
 ministered to may in certain cases be the most 
 touching and perfect form of self-abnegation. 
 
 Nor do Christians fear to recall the joys behind 
 them. They shut the door softly on the gladness 
 that is over, and look forward. No chill need fall on 
 the happy hours they will be our own again. Christ 
 Himself had his " No more," but all the sadness went 
 as He thought of reunion. " I will not drink hence- 
 forth of this fruit of the vine till I drink it new with 
 you in My Father's kingdom." So the Christian 
 " No more " is only till " the day in the Kingdom of 
 God." 
 
GOOD CHEER 265 
 
 St. Paul's Triumph. 
 
 HAVE kept the faith." Not as a treasure out- 
 
 i 
 
 side of himself, not as a jewel in a casket. He 
 kept the faith as myrrh in his bosom, as a joy within his 
 heart. Thus the things of time had no power to 
 chill his soul or damp his hope. He was never at the 
 mercy of the winds ; his courage did not rise or fall 
 with the thermometer. Below all traces of age and 
 weariness up sprang the inexhaustible fountains of 
 life. 
 
 Good Folk Everywhere. 
 
 T TOW much worth, fidelity, and purity may live 
 * J. i n the human heart ! Have I not known it 
 even from the beginning ? Wherever you live, if 
 you have open eyes, you may see it in the stillness and 
 in the " loud stunning tide." I have looked deep 
 into the hearts of some men and women, and found 
 them pure to the last recesses. 
 
 When Some Men Succeed. 
 
 T HAVE witnessed repeatedly and near at hand 
 -* the fortunes of young men who became famous 
 almost as suddenly as Byron did. It might well raise 
 one's whole estimate of human nature to witness the 
 genuine modesty, simplicity, humility, and kindness 
 which were carried unaltered through the novel and 
 testing strain. I have seen such success make men 
 more humble and more anxious to do the best that ever 
 they could. 
 
266 COMFORT AND HOPE 
 
 Our Country. 
 
 THE British nation, we are inclined to believe, 
 is a great deal better and sounder than many 
 of its shrillest censors of the moment. And for our 
 part we find among our patient, brave, and silent 
 people great seed-beds of trust and hope. 
 
 Old Acquaintance. 
 
 I CAN call up one venerable figure after another of 
 whom I could say with assurance, " He never 
 did naething that wasna' well intended." To know 
 the higher natures of the world, the students of my time 
 did not need to go beyond their own parishes. 
 
VI. THINKING IT OVER. 
 
SOME RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 I have had endkss orrasion to be grateful to tboie wbo bare 
 
 " They have never reminded me of that Undoes! by a word, or 
 even a look." 
 
 / <z Northern KUage. 
 
 ONE man is able to remember die way of his 
 definite conversion at eight years of age. He 
 was born in a deeply Christian home, and subject to 
 all its influences. When the revival swept the 
 country, the child attended the meetings, and learned 
 the hymns. One evening there came home to him 
 distinctly the words of one hymn : 
 
 " He is my Prophet, Priest, and King, 
 
 Vvho did to me salvation l^^gj 
 And while I five IH always sing. 
 
 At that moment Christ suddenly seemed alive, ready 
 to take the young life into His keeping, and it was 
 given. What could the child know of the offices 
 of the Redeemer ? He could not tell how Christ 
 executes His offices as a Prophet, a Priest, and a King, 
 He simply knew in the divine way that Christ was his 
 Lord and Friend. There was no excitement, no keen 
 feeling, but the quiet and peaceful recognition of a 
 feet. 
 
2 7 o THINKING IT OVER 
 
 The Discoverer of Heaven. 
 
 f KNEW an old minister who had great happiness 
 * in his later years after reading Ruskin. He said 
 Ruskin had enabled him to discover the sky, and so 
 his life was doubled. 
 
 College Days in Aberdeen. 
 
 FT was strange and pleasant to see the strong affec- 
 *- tion between Dr. Lumsden and his young col- 
 league, Robertson Smith. Smith was then a mere 
 youth, twenty-four or twenty- five. Lumsden per- 
 ceived at once his great qualities, his loyalty to the 
 Free Church, and the immense potencies lodged in 
 him. Smith responded to the old man's affection with 
 warm and eager tenderness. They had many things 
 in common both were vehement Calvinists and 
 equally vehement in their Free Churchism. It was 
 a real pleasure to see the two drifting amicably down 
 Union-street. 
 
 Dr. Alexander Bain of Aberdeen. 
 
 FN appearance he recalled Democritus in Burton's 
 ** jfnatomy of Melancholy, though he was not old 
 at the time, " a little wearish old man, somewhat 
 melancholy by nature, averse to company in his latter 
 days, and much given to solitude." His scanty locks 
 of hair were thriftily spread over his bald cranium. 
 He wore no moustache, his chin was shaven, and his 
 
SOME RECOLLECTIONS 271 
 
 face was surrounded with thick black hair. Thus 
 his mouth was clear. His eyes and his mouth gave 
 a certain impression of weariness and disenchantment. 
 The face was not sad, either tragically or poetically. 
 Its expression seemed to say : " Most things in life 
 are irksome, teaching is irksome to me and learning 
 to you. But we have to do our work without whining. 
 I shall do mine, and I shall see that you do yours." 
 
 Assembly Clerks. 
 
 THE two most prominent figures in the Assembly 
 after the Moderator were the clerks, who sat 
 at a table in front of the chair, facing one another. 
 They were in my time Sir Henry Wellwood Mon- 
 crieff and Dr. William Wilson. Sir Henry was the 
 minister of a comparatively small and obscure congre- 
 gation in Edinburgh : Dr. Wilson was the leading 
 minister, perhaps the leading citizen, in Dundee. 
 They were both portly and genial in appearance j 
 excellent business men and without question the 
 ablest ecclesiastical lawyers in Scotland. They were 
 entitled to take part in the business of the house ; in 
 fact, they managed it, and with consummate skill. 
 Sometimes they made speeches which were always 
 listened to with profound attention. But the mere 
 sight of them was best of all. It was better to watch 
 them than to mind a dull speech. They both took 
 snuff, and had large coloured silk handkerchiefs where- 
 with to meet the consequences. As a rule they kept 
 writing their minutes diligently, except when some 
 
2 7 z THINKING IT OVER 
 
 great speech was going on or some beginner was get- 
 ting through his maiden " effort," when (for they were 
 the kindest of men) they would lift up broad, encour- 
 aging countenances. But when a man was making 
 an ass of himself, they would sometimes look at each 
 other with an expression which if I could render it 
 on canvas would put me in easy circumstances for 
 life. Once I saw their eyes meet when something 
 particularly absurd was going on, and immediately 
 after their coloured handkerchiefs appeared, and were 
 used to cover their faces. It was not snuff, that time. 
 
 "But Mr. Chairman " 
 
 WE cannot help thinking that Dr. Glover's well- 
 known perseverance in debates and com- 
 mittees was partly due to his training in Presbyteri- 
 anism, where men were accustomed to rise to a point 
 of order. One of the most brilliant of Baptists, after 
 referring affectionately to Dr. Glover, mentioned this 
 characteristic, and said that the words " But, Mr. 
 Chairman " should be inscribed on his tomb- 
 stone. The last time we saw Dr. Glover was in the 
 waiting-room at the Albert Hall when the great 
 Baptist demonstration was held on the attainment 
 of the quarter of a million fund. He came up with a 
 smile on his face and said, "What are you doing here ? " 
 The reply was from the metrical psalms used in 
 Scotland : 
 
 " That I thy chosen's good may see 
 
 And in their joy rejoice, 
 And may with thine inheritance 
 Triumph with cheerful voice." 
 
SOME RECOLLECTIONS 273 
 
 He smiled all over his face. "I know that/' he said ; 
 " you have given a very good reason." 
 
 The Church and Labouchere. 
 
 LABOUCHERE had a real interest in the Churches 
 and was friendly to them. I ought to know, 
 for I wrote many of the Truth paragraphs. 
 
 Dr. Marcus Dods. 
 
 THE mere sight of an envelope with his clear, 
 firm writing on it sent a happy thrill through 
 one. 
 
 Dr. Pulsford's Look. 
 
 'VT'OU might have met him not long ago in his 
 walks on Hampstead Heath, straight as a dart, 
 with the fresh colour of health, with the burden of 
 his many years pressing upon him lightly, and yet 
 somehow unmistakably of those " who declare 
 plainly that they seek a country." 
 
 A Stout Fellow. 
 
 ONE of our earliest recollections is of an old work- 
 ing man, who belonged to a little congregation 
 which had a hard fight. He wore his Sunday coat 
 year after year till it changed from black to green, 
 and each week he went to his beloved sanctuary a 
 i 1 8 
 
274 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 patient, devout toiler, with wages that one might 
 suppose would do little more than keep body and soul 
 together. Yet somehow he managed to subscribe 
 5 every year. How he brought the shillings to- 
 gether one can hardly imagine, but he went on in this 
 way till perforce he had to give up his toil. " I'm as 
 wullin' to work as ever I was, but I'm no' sae able." 
 
 COLLIER OF MANCHESTER 
 A Deep Heart. 
 
 AS one came to know him better his gifts grew 
 more visible, and they were certainly of a most 
 notable kind. He had a deep religious faith and a 
 heart for evangelical piety. His life was drawn from 
 deep wells. It was an education to see him, as I have 
 seen him, for hours at his headquarters, receiving and 
 dealing with the incessant troop of callers who wanted 
 from him guidance and aid. He caught up the mean- 
 ing of their requests in a trice, and what he could do 
 to fulfil them that he did. He must often have been 
 burdened by the sad need which confronted him, but 
 of this I never saw him show a sign except that some- 
 times he would say that he had had a long day. He 
 was not distracted by the calls made upon him. He 
 knew what he could do and what he could not do. 
 He was eminently sagacious in his judgments, no 
 party man in any fanatical sense, ripe, wise, controlled, 
 and with a deep affectionateness at the bottom of his 
 nature. The mere sight of him was a means of grace. 
 
SOME RECOLLECTIONS 27$ 
 
 A Man with Eyes. 
 
 MET the other day an old college companion 
 * whom I had not seen for many years. He used 
 to be a country minister, but has long preached in 
 Melbourne. We talked about the difference between 
 the country and the city, and the desire of many men 
 to get away from the one into the other. I remarked 
 that the isolation of the country, the want of congenial 
 fellowship, was deeply felt by many who had been 
 used to the most perfect of friendships those between 
 fellow students. He replied that he had never ex- 
 perienced this. In his country charge there were two 
 men who satisfied his desire for society. One was the 
 miller and one was the schoolmaster. Both were 
 gifted and educated men, and the miller especially 
 had a mind and a way in which Carlyle would have 
 delighted. It is the old story. We crane our necks 
 and look to the ends of the earth for that which is 
 beside us. 
 
 In a Hampstead Garden. 
 
 TT7HEN Henry Ward Beecher was on his last 
 visit to England he stayed with Dr. Parker 
 at Hampstead. Mrs. O'Connor went up to read 
 to Beecher Nelson Page's story, Marse Chan. She 
 tells us that Dr. Parker objected. " Beecher," he 
 said, " you are not going to listen to a whole story this 
 hot afternoon." " Parker," Mr. Beecher said, " I 
 am ! This is my tea-party, and I am going to sit on 
 
276 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 the floor with my head on mother's knee (' Mother ' 
 was his wife) and I am going to have a good cry. If 
 you don't want to listen, go out in the garden." Dr. 
 Parker stationed himself by the door ready to flee into 
 the garden, but he never stirred until the story was 
 finished, and even then he was unable to speak his 
 thanks for a few moments, while his beautiful wife, 
 in tears, was as deeply moved as Mr. Beecher himself. 
 
 About Matthew Arnold. 
 
 T HAVE had occasion to see at one time or another 
 -* many letters written by Arnold to very humble 
 authors long letters too answering with delicate 
 courtesy the questions put to him, and criticising care- 
 fully. For this one cannot help loving Arnold. 
 
 An Italian Trip. 
 
 / ~|~ A HE journey to Florence was wearisome, though 
 * it was a compensation to see Pisa with its tower 
 leaning hard. It is pleasant to see anything living up 
 to its reputation. I remembered Ruskin's striking 
 passage on Pisa in his Pr&terita^ where he gives his 
 remarkable, and so far as I know, unnoticed definition 
 of Christianity. 
 
 A Visit to Baring-Gould. 
 
 T?ROM Launceston we drove eight miles to Lew 
 -* Trenchard, the residence of the Rev. S. Baring- 
 Gould. Mr. Gould is a striking instance of a man 
 
SOME RECOLLECTIONS 277 
 
 finding out late in life, and almost by accident, what he 
 is best fitted for. He had been known as the author 
 of innumerable religious, semi-religious, historical, 
 biographical, and geographical works before he pub- 
 lished his novel Mehalah, but that gave him a place in 
 literature he had not previously attained. 
 
 Mehalah is a book which could not have been 
 prophesied from any of its predecessors. The idea 
 of it occurred to him when he was rector of East 
 Mersea, near Colchester. He could not sleep one 
 night as he lay listening to the weird sounds in the 
 Essex Marshes ; the story shaped itself and was 
 rapidly written. It was refused by several publishers ; 
 at last it was accepted and bought for 50. It was a 
 great success, and deservedly so, for it is a book fit to 
 stand beside Wuthering Heights. Since then Mr. 
 Gould has gone on writing novels ; but he does not 
 care for the business. It is, in fact, very irksome 
 to him, although when he fairly gets into the story 
 he is interested in his characters. He believes in local 
 colour, and meditates a novel for every county in 
 England. 
 
 On being asked how he got through so much work, 
 Mr. Baring-Gould said that system and regular hours 
 explained all. He has a beautiful study with a large 
 collection of books, and his task is punctually accom- 
 plished each day. At present he is finishing a novel 
 which is to appear in Good Words next year, and writ- 
 ing a book on the Deserts of Central France. I 
 should be afraid to say in what time these tasks were 
 to be performed. I should not be believed if I did. 
 
278 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 In Spurge on" 3 Study. 
 
 TT was wonderful to see how much stillness there 
 -* was in Mr. Spurgeon's full and eager life. It was 
 impressive beyond words to observe him in his room 
 of commentaries, all arranged in order, and to know 
 how every commentary was consulted for his text, 
 and how constantly he replenished his great mental 
 and spiritual wealth. 
 
 Discovery of Ian Maclaren. 
 
 T TE came up to London and stayed for a few days 
 * A at my house. ... I was so much struck with 
 the racy stories and the character sketches with which 
 Watson regaled us that I suggested that he should 
 make some articles out of them. The idea had never 
 struck him, and was at first unwelcome. But I kept 
 on persuading him. I had no success till I was accom- 
 panying him to the station. Just before he said good- 
 bye, he promised to try, and in a few days the sketch 
 arrived. It was clever, but disappointing. I returned 
 it to Watson, stating objections. He sent a second 
 sketch also more or less unsatisfactory. Then he 
 sent the first four chapters of what is now known as 
 the Bonnie Briar Bush complete, and I knew on read- 
 ing them that his popularity was assured. 
 
 He was amazed by the success of the Bonnie Briar 
 Bush. " A cheerful blaze," he once remarked, and 
 added quietly, " while it lasts." 
 
RAMBLING REMARKS 
 
 " We are never wise, and we never grow unless we are more 
 interested in the people we meet and see and hear than in our- 
 selves. What does it matter what happens to us ? " 
 
 A Fancy about Carlyle. 
 
 T TOW would it have been with us if Thomas 
 * -* Carlyle had become a minister of the Church 
 of Scotland, as he once purposed ? It was remarked 
 to me the other day by a distinguished theological 
 professor that while the Scottish genius had been 
 active and original in philosophy, it had been singu- 
 larly undeveloped in theology. He attributed this to 
 the yoke of the Confession of Faith. I do not know 
 how that may be, but I do know that the country 
 parish has apparently extinguished many a bright life 
 of the University. Would Carlyle' s light have been 
 extinguished ? I think not. What a preacher the 
 man would have been ! What would have happened 
 to the Scottish Church Universities if Carlyle had 
 brought into it his German notions ? Imagine him 
 in the General Assembly ! 
 
 College Days in Aberdeen. 
 
 * I V HE time which, when we look back, seems 
 made up of diamond mornings and opal even- 
 ings, but which, while it passed, was grey and grave 
 enough. 
 
 279 
 
280 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 Dean Farrar. 
 
 T TE fought clericalism at a cost which few can 
 - adequately estimate. Indeed, to our mind, 
 Dean Farrar was simply the bravest man we ever knew. 
 
 About Gladstone. 
 
 * I V HE problem is perhaps whether Gladstone was 
 
 -* ethically a Jesuit. 
 
 Evangelical Peers. 
 
 T HAVE known two or three peers who gave evan- 
 -* gelical addresses, and had a deep respect for 
 every one of them. More than that, I have known 
 them to do much good which they never knew of. 
 They were neither snobs nor fools, nor did they show 
 any particular liking for snobs or fools. 
 
 Origin of Mansfield. 
 
 TAR. FAIRBAIRN was in existence, and there- 
 -*^ fore Mansfield College had to be built in 
 Oxford. In other words, Dr. Fairbairn was the final 
 cause of the College. Every explanation that comes 
 short of this is to be pronounced shallow and super- 
 ficial. 
 
 Glimpses of the Unseen. 
 
 ORGE MACDONALD'S faults are essen- 
 
 tially those of a visionary. His work is often 
 blurred and hazy. It is seldom clear and firm for 
 
RAMBLING REMARKS 281 
 
 many pages. Ere he has quite caught it and traced 
 it, the dream is gone. 
 
 The Happiness of Robertson of Irvine. 
 
 HE drank from so many sources of delight that 
 perhaps few earthly lives more refreshed and 
 comforted ever passed into the world of spirits. 
 
 BISHOP WILLIAM WILBERFORCE 
 
 No Store of Wisdom. 
 
 TT7ILBERFORCE was an early riser, he was 
 always writing, always preaching, always 
 travelling, and being a man of fine gifts, he won 
 a great position. Yet his life on the whole was im- 
 paired and disappointed. He never succeeded in 
 achieving the place of his ambition. He saw over and 
 over again men preferred to him who were con- 
 spicuously his inferiors. He came under a general 
 suspicion of insincerity. The Queen suspected him, 
 and so did many of her subjects. Yet I think unpre- 
 judiced readers of his letters and journals will see that 
 in intention he was always honest. What injured 
 him was that he knew nothing. He read practically 
 nothing, he was not in any sense a scholar ; he thought 
 the time spent in study was wasted time. 
 
 He made a furious onslaught on Darwin. It is 
 safe to say that Wilberforce had given moments to 
 science where Darwin had given days, and his article 
 is simply presumptuous nonsense. He rushed into a 
 
282 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 fray about Bishop Hampden, and it turned out in the 
 end that he had not read Hampden's books. 
 
 A Task that waits. 
 
 TF ever the life of Fox is to be written in a really 
 -* satisfactory manner it must be by a woman of 
 spiritual genius. 
 
 Certain. 
 
 PEOPLE make no excuses whatever for those who 
 -* are fertile in making excuses for themselves. 
 
 Initiate. 
 
 WHOEVER knows that Jesus Christ has opened 
 his eyes has a message for all the blind. 
 
 The Innocent Author. 
 
 GEORGE MACDONALD is one of the children 
 who laugh and play in their Father's House. 
 
 Spiritual Currents. 
 
 OOMETIMES an event befalls very quietly with 
 ^ little interruption to the conversation, with little 
 perceptible disturbance on the part of those who are 
 concerned, and yet there is the consciousness that 
 something for ever memorable has taken place. 
 Some cord has snapped that we thought would hold 
 for ever, the gulf has opened which can never be closed 
 
RAMBLING REMARKS 283 
 
 and never be bridged, and yet the evening wears through 
 peacefully, and we say good night to one another as 
 if nothing had happened. 
 
 Catching up Hints. 
 
 E wisdom o 
 
 hints and make the best of them. 
 
 ' I V HE wisdom of life is to know how to catch up 
 
 Day by Day. 
 
 IT is a secret which we learn slowly the secret of 
 living by days. I am convinced that there are 
 very few so precious. 
 
 The Grumbler. 
 
 THE querulous man is the most intolerable of 
 associates. 
 
 One eminent writer whom I knew destroyed his 
 career by his fretfulness. 
 
 Real Lives. 
 
 T WAS glad to see the big books. As one grows 
 - older, life and biography become more interesting, 
 and I had rather read the story of a good man's struggle 
 and victory than any novel. 
 
 After Long Experience. 
 
 is a rare thing 
 " Thank you " pleasantly and gracefully. 
 
 TT is a rare thing to find anyone who can say 
 
284 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 On Courage. 
 
 TTTHAT is the highest form of courage ? It is 
 to be found, I think, not in the entrance into 
 a sudden charge, but in the deliberate volunteering 
 for a long, it may be a lifelong, campaign. 
 
 By the Goodness of God. 
 
 T ET us make the most of the little we have, be 
 - ' happy as soon, as much, and as long as pos- 
 sible. Let us begin to play when three stars come out. 
 
 The Long Search. 
 
 HAVE never known any man of whom I could 
 -* say he read too widely. I have been looking out 
 for that man all my life, and have failed to find him. 
 
 Advice to All. 
 
 JT is well to spend much time in youth reading the 
 * best with no ulterior view. All comes to its use 
 in the end. 
 
 Four Evils. 
 
 1X/TY experience and observation, such as they are, 
 -L -* have taught me that four things cannot go 
 on carelessness, idleness, extravagance, and headi- 
 ness. 
 
RAMBLING REMARKS 285 
 
 Is Life a Test of Power ? 
 
 f I V HE real question is whether life is a test of power. 
 I cannot believe it. Nothing that has hap- 
 pened has ever altered in the least my conviction that 
 the ablest man in my class, and the ablest man I have 
 ever known, was one whose name, if I were to print 
 it, not a hundred of your readers would recognise. 
 Some who have little do much with it ; others 
 never speak out, never speak at all. The University 
 may have been more nearly right in its estimate than 
 life ; and both may be wrong. We are not yet come 
 to the last tribunal. 
 
 Sheer Laziness. 
 
 TT would be very uncomfortable to walk sixty feet on 
 * a narrow plank. Yet this is what many people 
 are doing. There is no margin in their knowledge. 
 
 Retrospect. 
 
 THE sources of failure are, I think, mainly 
 timidity, temper, vanity, indolence, and want 
 of adaptability, and these are so subtly intermingled 
 that it is often difficult to distinguish between them. 
 
 Be Scrupulous. 
 
 JUDGE a man by what he does, and not by the 
 way in which he does it. The latter is his 
 business ; it is not yours. We shall always 
 want people like John Stuart Mill to write books 
 about liberty. 
 
286 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 Failure. 
 
 "|\/TORALISTS, so far as I remember, have hardly 
 -*-*-* studied sufficiently the effect of prolonged 
 discouragement on the human spirit. It acts upon 
 some natures like poison. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant. 
 
 * I S O one faith she was unswervingly true the 
 * faith that it is better to live in the full sense 
 than to vegetate. Sorrow, pain, conflict, labour she 
 understood what these things were, but she deliberately 
 elected to have them instead of a monotonous, unper- 
 turbed, solitary existence. For to suffer was to live. 
 We hope that someone fit for the task will collect and 
 digest from her books her excellent wisdom upon the 
 conduct of life. 
 
 When Offended. 
 
 TF we have taken what we think reasonable offence 
 -** at the doings of a friend, we ought not to show it 
 by an icy manner. It is our business to explain to 
 our friend where he has apparently come short, and to 
 hear what he says about it. In all probability with 
 his explanation the misunderstanding will pass like a 
 summer cloud. 
 
 The Mystery of the Unsuccessful. 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT said once, very patheti- 
 cally, that no one flourished under his shadow. 
 There are those whose shadow seems to carry fortune 
 
RAMBLING REMARKS 287 
 
 with it. They may not be particularly successful 
 themselves, but everyone who is associated with them 
 profits by the association. Such things cannot be 
 explained. I am convinced that about a great many 
 comparative failures in life we can only say that some- 
 how things have always been against them. 
 
THE INNERMOST ROOM 
 
 " The religion that we need is a religion that will lay all the 
 ghosts, that will cast the instruments of torture from the inner- 
 most room, that will divide the great glooms, and make it a place 
 of repair. 
 
 " I love to think of the solitude of the soul. There is no char- 
 acterisation of human beings that is more hateful and more false 
 than the common saying that there is nothing in them. There is 
 the innermost room. Every human soul is a mystery to the soul 
 that knows it best, and should, therefore, be held sacred. 
 Clouds and darkness are round about it." 
 
 The Duty of Life. 
 
 * I V HE first thing is to be true, to labour with a 
 * sweet, composed, invincible energy till you 
 love your work and rejoice in your work. That, no 
 doubt, is the true path to what people call success ; 
 but I should much rather say that it is in itself success. 
 
 i 
 
 The Hidden Self. 
 
 T BELIEVE that every human being has an inner- 
 -* most room in his soul, into which he never 
 admits anyone perhaps because he cannot. When a 
 boy, I was deeply impressed by a passage in John 
 Foster's Journal in which he says that when he 
 entered a company he was often shy at first, but was 
 reassured when he bethought himself that, after all, 
 no eyes could see what was passing within his soul. 
 
 288 
 
THE INNERMOST ROOM 289 
 
 It is true we are not known even when we are well 
 known, by those who live with us, by those who are 
 bound to us by the firmest ties, or by those who have 
 shared with us the closest intimacies of friendship. 
 We have deep secrets, all of us, even though there is 
 nothing in our lives over which we try to cast a veil. 
 We are not known even when we die, and all that 
 can be revealed is revealed, when the secret drawer in 
 our desk is opened, and the lock of the child's hair, 
 " hair that drained the sun for gold," the two or three 
 faded letters, the ring, the photograph, have all been 
 looked upon reverently or irreverently. Our secret 
 has died with us. They have not spared Charlotte 
 Bronte. They have published almost every scrap of 
 her handwriting, and sold almost every one of her 
 few possessions, and criticised her, and theorised upon 
 her without stint. But her secret went with her, I 
 have no manner of doubt. 
 
 ii 
 
 Its Furnishings. 
 
 T OOK around the innermost room, and you cannot 
 -* ' explain how it has been built and furnished. 
 It has built and furnished itself. You gaze at its 
 pictures, its trinkets, its stains of blood, with a dull 
 wonder at the sight of them. These, you think, 
 should not be there. Other things should be there 
 that have been of more consequence. There have 
 been days in your life, apparently much more important 
 days, that all may know of, when you were crowned 
 119 
 
2 9 o THINKING IT OVER 
 
 in the eyes of men, or visibly struck to the earth in 
 humiliation or woe. How has it come to pass that 
 these days are not recorded in the innermost room ? 
 There are faces that you have gazed into for years and 
 years, and these have vanished ; but on the walls of 
 the innermost room other faces are hanging. The 
 stress is not laid where observers might think it should 
 be laid, where you think yourself it should lie. Life, 
 as it shapes itself to you in the innermost room, has 
 its days, its ghosts, its treasures, but how they have 
 ranked and ranged themselves there you do not know, 
 and therefore can never tell. That is why you can- 
 not admit others into the innermost room, though 
 you were ever so willing to bring them. There may 
 be nothing to hide, but somehow no one can enter, 
 because the door will open to none but yourself. You 
 know that none may enter it now, and yet fancy that 
 once there were those who entered it with you, and 
 sigh for their presence. 
 
 It is a dream. The door was as fast to the dead as 
 it is to the living. 
 
A PAIR OF SPECTACLES 
 
 Their Many Uses. 
 
 i 
 
 ON the eyes of the soul we must put the spectacles 
 of charity to use a word which has a wide 
 stretch of meaning. To begin with its full sense of 
 love. There is nothing more derided than the rap- 
 tures of a young affection. But it may be doubted 
 whether any people in the world are so wise as young, 
 true lovers. They see the best in each other, that 
 best which may in the end be victorious over all that 
 mars and flaws it, and outlast every evil element. 
 For love not only sees, but draws out. It brings into 
 action the highest energies of the soul, and calls forth 
 its deep and shrouded beauties. They are happy 
 indeed who maintain that vision through the tests and 
 trials of life. You will remember Emerson's signi- 
 ficant parable, Each and All. 
 
 " The lover watched his graceful maid, 
 As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, 
 Nor knew her beauty's best attire 
 Was woven still by the snow-white choir. 
 At last she came to his hermitage, 
 Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage : 
 The gay enchantment was undone, 
 A gentle wife, but fairy none." 
 
 That is not the end of the story if it is a story of true 
 love. " Love is believing, and the best is truest." 
 i 19* 291 
 
292 THINKING IT OVER 
 
 II 
 
 TO look aright on human beings we must wear 
 the spectacles of an indulgent kindliness. It 
 is in this way we shall get the best and the most out 
 of the world. There is a mawkish, silly, and indecent 
 charity, but there are those who, without folly and 
 without untruth, can think of what may be pleaded in 
 mitigation of the worst of offenders. 
 
 in 
 
 T HAVE always liked very much the Spaniard who 
 -^ was partial to cherries, and put on spectacles to 
 eat them in order that they might look bigger. 
 
 IV 
 
 I AM certain that there is no more fruitful cause 
 of misery and mischief and injustice than pre- 
 judice. We need to have a special fear of ourselves 
 when we come to speak or write of those who have 
 opposed us, and perhaps injured us. Then the spec- 
 tacles of fear that are always looking into the future 
 and seeing a lion in every mouse should be smashed in 
 pieces. We cannot see into the future, and the best 
 provision we can make for it is to live the days wisely 
 as they pass. 
 
A HUMBLE AND FERVENT WISH 
 
 T T T HEN we die I suppose most of us will be found 
 to have cherished a very few things. When 
 the desk is opened the possessions that have perhaps 
 mattered most will be discovered. Then there will 
 be surprises. In the life of Hugh Price Hughes we 
 are told that he kept very few letters, but in searching 
 through his desk his wife came upon one from Dr. 
 Jenkins. Mr. Hughes after a fierce controversy 
 sent in his resignation to the President of his Church. 
 Dr. Jenkins wrote an affectionate and earnest dissua- 
 sion, beseeching him not to take that step. Very 
 likely this letter meant more to Mr. Hughes than 
 any of the costly gifts he received and deserved. If 
 I were to covet any honour of authorship it would be 
 this that some letters of mine might be found in the 
 desks of my friends when their life struggle is ended. 
 
 293 
 
A SUMMING-UP 
 
 Who shall Separate Us? 
 
 MAY we not find comfort in the thought that the 
 suffering about which we cannot talk to any 
 human being is not only known by Christ, but it is 
 also felt by Christ ? Is there not comfort also in the 
 thought that, in Christ, we are joined to the great 
 mystical body, and things are rough with us that they 
 may be lighter for others ? Every Christian sorrow, 
 however dumb and obscure, wins something, or carries 
 something away from another. 
 
 Make room for Christ. The true union is when He 
 takes the place of us, when He is within us, as a second 
 self, a second heart, a second conscience. That is 
 the realisation of the union. But often we are not 
 conscious that the union exists, though it is there. 
 Christ lives within us, waking or sleeping, living or 
 dying. Let us make room for Christ, that we may 
 be counted worthy to obtain the resurrection from the 
 dead. 
 
 294 
 
J.J. 
 I 
 
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