THE UNIVERSITY
OF ILLINOIS
LIBRARY
From the collection of
Julius Doerner, Chicago
inn-chased, 1918.

252

M225

5 3 *

T H E S E C R E T OF

POWER,

AND

OTHER

SERMONS.

THE

S E C R E T O F POWER,
AND

OTHER

SERMONS.

BIT

ALEXANDER

MACLAREN, D.D.

MACMILLAN
1882

A N D CO.

dfOST O F 7 ^ SERMONS IN THIS VOLUME HAVE
ALREADY

APPEARED

IN LESS

FORMS.

469104

PERMANENT

CONTENTS.
SERMON
I.

THE

SECRET

II.

THE

PATTERN

III.

THE

AWAKING

IV.

"TIME

V.
VI.
VII.
nil.

THE

OF ZION

.
•

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

GLORY

.

TO W O R K "

EXHORTATION

MEASURELESS

•

OF SERVICE

FOR T H E E

OF BARNABAS

POWER

AND

.

ENDLESS

LOVE'S T R I U M P H
THE

GRAVE
GRAVE

IX,

OF POWER

THE

OF

THE

OF T H E

DEAD

TRANSLATION
ASCENSION
MAKE

JOHN

AND

LIVING JESUS
OF

.

ELIJAH

THE

.

.

AND

.

THE

OF CHRIST

X.

CAN

WE

SURE

XL

THE

SOLITARINESS

OF TO-MORROW ? .

OF

CHRIST

IN

.

HIS

.

TEMP­

TATIONS
XII.

THE

WELLS

OF SALVATION

.

.

.

.

.

.

CONTENTS.

viii

XIII.

SEEKING

XIV.

CITIZENS

XV.

THE

222

OF H E A V E N

MOSES A N D

237

HOBAB

XVI.

THE

OBSCURE

XVII.

THE

SOUL'S

XVIII.

THE

FIRST

XIX.

THE

MASTER

XX.

FACE OF GOD

25

APOSTLES

265

PERFECTION

280

PREACHING

A PRISONER'S

AND

HIS

DYING

AT

ANTIOCII

SLAVES .

THOUGHTS

.

.

.

294

.

.

.

.

304

.

•

.

.

31

SERMON

I.*

T H E SECRET OF POWER.
ST. MATTHEW

xvii.

19,

20.

Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not
we cast him out ? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your
unbelief.

" A N D when H e had called unto Him His twelve dis• ciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits
to cast them o u t " That same power was bestowed, too, on
the wider circle of the seventy who returned again with
joy, saying, " Lord, even the devils are subject unto us
through Thy name." The ground of it was laid in the
solemn words with which Christ met their wonder at
their own strength, and told how H e " beheld Satan as
lightning fall from heaven."
Therefore had they
triumphed, showing the fruits of their Master's victory ;
and therefore had H e a right to renew the gift, in the
still more comprehensive promise, " I give unto you
power—over all the power of the enemy."
What a commentary on such words this story affords !
What has become of their supernatural might ? Has it
1

* Preached before the Directors and Friends of the London
Missionary Society.
B

ebbed away as suddenly as it flowed ? Is their Lord's
endowment a shadow—His assurances delusion ? Has He
taken back what H e gave? Not so. And yet His
servants are ignominiously beaten. One poor devilridden boy brings all their resources to nothing. He
stands before them writhing in the gripe of his tormentor,
but they cannot set him free. The importunity of the
father's prayers is vain, and the tension of expectancy in
his eager face relaxes into the old hopeless languor as he
slowly droops to the conviction that they could not cast
him out. The malicious scorn in the eyes of the Scribes,
those hostile critics who " knew that it would be so,"
helps to produce the failure which they anticipated. The
curious crowd buzz about them—and in the midst of it
all the little knot of baffled disciples, possessors of power
which seems to leave them when they need it most, with
the unavailing spells dying half spoken on their lips, and
their faint hearts longing that their Master would come
down from the mount, and cover their weakness with His
own great strength.
No wonder that, as soon as Christ and they are
alone, they want to know how their mortifying defeat
has come about.
And they get an answer which
they little expected, for the last place where men
look for the explanation of their failures is within;
and they will ascend into the heavens, and descend into
the deeps for remote and recondite reasons, before they
listen to the voice which says, " The fault is nigh thee—in thy heart." Christ's reply distinctly implies that the
cause of their impotence lay wholly in themselves, not in

any defect or withdrawal of power, but solely in that in
them which grasped the power. They little expected, too,
to be told that they had failed because they had not been
sure they would succeed. They had thought they believed
in their ability to cast out the demon. They had tried
with some kind of anticipation that they could. They
had been surprised when they found they could not.
They had wonderingly asked why. And now Christ tells
them that all along they had had no real faith in Him
and in the reality of His gift. So subtly may unbelief
steal into the heart, even while we fancy that we are
working in faith. And a further portion of our Lord's
reply points them to the great means by which this
conquering faith can be maintained—namely, prayer and
fasting. If, then, we put all these things together, we
get a series of considerations, very simple and common­
place indeed, but all the better and truer therefore, which
I venture to submit to you, as having a very important
bearing on all our Christian work, and especially on the
missionary work of the Church. The principles which the
text suggests touch the perpetual possession of the power
which conquers; the condition of its victorious exercise by
us, as being our faith; the subtle danger of unsuspected
unbelief to which we are exposed; and the great means
of preserving our faith pure and strong. I ask your
attention to a few considerations on these points in their
order.
But first, let me say very briefly, that I would not be
understood as, by the selection of such a text, desiring to
suggest that we have failed in our work. Thank God I
£

2

we can point to results far, far greater-than we have
deserved, far greater than we have expected, however
they may be beneath our desires, and still further below
what the gospel was meant to accomplish. It may suit
observers who have never done anything themselves, and
have not particularly clear eyes for appreciating spiritual
work, to talk of Christian missions as failures; but it
would ill become us to assent to the lie. Failures
indeed! with half a million of converts, with new forms
of Christian life budding in all the wilderness of the
peoples, with the consciousness of coming doom creep­
ing about the heart of every system of idolatry ! Is the
green life in the hedges and in the sweet pastures starred
with rathe primroses, and in the hidden copses blue with
hyacinths a failure, because the east wind bites shrewdly,
and " the tender ash delays to clothe herself with green " ?
N o ! no we have not failed. Enough has been done to
vindicate the enterprise, more than enough to fill our
lips with thanksgiving, enough to entitle us to say to
all would-be critics—-Do you the same with your enchant­
ments. But, on the other hand, we have to confess
that the success has been slow and small, chequered and
interrupted, that often we have been foiledf*that we have
confronted many a demon whom we could not cast out,
and that at home and abroad the masses of evil seem to
close in around us, and we make but little impression
on their serried ranks. We have had success enough to
assure us that we possess the treasure, and failures
enough to make us feel how weak are the earthen vessels
which hold it.

And now let us turn to the principles which flow from
this text.
I. We have an unvarying power.
No doubt the explanation of their defeat which most
naturally suggested itself to these disciples would be that
somehow or other—perhaps because of Christ's absence
— they had lost the gift which they knew they once had.
And the same way of accounting for later want of success
lingers among Christian people still. You will sometimes
hear it said :—" God sends forth His Spirit in special ful­
ness at special times, according to His own sovereign
will; and rill then we can only wait and pray."
Or
" The miraculous powers which dwelt in the early Church
have been withdrawn, and therefore the progress is slow."
The strong imaginative tendency to make an ideal perfect
in the past leads us to think of the primitive age of the
Church as golden, in opposition to the plain facts of the
case. We fancy that because apostles were its teachers,
and the Cross within its memory, the infant society was
stronger, wiser, better than any age since, and had gifts
which we have lost. What had it which we do not
possess? The power of working miracles. What have
we which it did not possess ? A completed Bible, and
the experience of eighteen centuries to teach us to under­
stand it, and to confirm by facts our confidence that
Christ's gospel is for all time and every land. What
have we in common with it? The same mission to fulfil,
the same wants in our brethren to meet, the same gospel,
the same spirit, the same immortal Lord. All that any

age has possessed to fit it for the task of witnessing for
Christ we too possess. The Church has in it a power
which is ever adequate to the conquest of the world; and
that power is constant through all time, whether we con­
sider it as recorded in an unvarying gospel, or as energized
by an abiding spirit, or as flowing from and centred in an
unchangeable Lord.
We have a gospel which never can grow old. Its adap­
tation to the deepest needs of men's souls remains con­
stant with these needs. These vary not from age to age.
No matter what may be the superficial differences of dress
the same human heart beats beneath every robe. The
great primal wants of men's spirits abide as the great
primal wants of their bodily life abide. Food and shelter
for the one,—a loving, pardoning God, to know and love,
for the other—else they perish. Wherever men go they
carry with • them a conscience which needs cleansing, a
sense of separation from God joined with a dim know­
ledge that union with Him is life, a will which is burdened
with its own self-hood, an imagination which paints the
misty walls of this earthly prison with awful shapes that
terrify and faint hopes that mock, a heart that hungers
for love, and a reason which pines in atrophy without
light. And all these the gospel which is lodged in our
hands meets. It addresses itself to nothing in men that
is not in Man. Surface differences of position, culture,
clime, age, and the like, it brushes aside as unimportant
and it goes straight to the universal wants. People tell
us it has done its work, and much confident dogmatism
proclaims that the world has outgrown it. We have a

right to be confident also, with a confidence born of our
knowledge, that it has met and satisfied for us the wants
which are ours and every man's, and to believe that as
long as men live by bread, so long will this word which
proceedeth out of the mouth of God be the food of their
souls. Areopagus and Piccadilly, Benares and Oxford,
need the same message and will find the same response
to all their wants in the same word.
Much of the institutions in which Christendom has
embodied its conceptions of God's truth will crumble
away. Many of the conceptions will have to be modi­
fied, neglected truths will grow, to the dislocation of
much systematic theology, and the Word better under­
stood will clear away many a portentous error with which
the Church has darkened the word. Be it so. Let us
be glad when " the things which can be shaken are re­
moved," like mean huts built against the wall of some
cathedral, masking and marring the completeness of its
beauty; "that the things which cannot be shaken may
remain," and all the clustered shafts, and deep-arched
recesses, and sweet tracery may stand forth freed from
the excrescences which hid them. - " The grass withereth,
and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the
Lord endureth for ever."
We have an abiding Spirit, the Giver to us of a power
without variableness or the shadow of turning, " I will
pray the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete,
that He may abide with you for ever." The manner of
His operations may vary, but the reality of His energy
abides. The " works" of wonder which Jesus did on

earth may no more be done, but the greater works than
these are still the sign of His presence, without whom no
spiritual life is possible. Prophecies may fail, tongues
may cease, but the more excellent gifts are poured out
now as richly as ever. We are apt to look back to
Pentecost and think that that marked a height to which
the tide has never reached since, and therefore we are
stranded amidst the ooze and mud. But the river which
proceeds from the throne of God and of the Lamb is not
like one of our streams on earth, that leaps to the light
and dashes rejoicingly down the hillside, but creeps
along sluggish in its level course, and dies away at last in
the sands. It pours along the ages the same full volume
with which it gushed forth at first. Rather, the source
goes with the Church in all ages, and we drink not of
water that came forth long ago in the history of the
world, and has reached us through the centuries, but of
that which wells out fresh every moment from the Rock
that follows us. The Giver of all power is with us.
We have a Lord, the same yesterday, and to-day, and
for ever. " Lo, I am with you always, even to the end
of the world." We have not merely to look back to the
life and death of Christ in history, and recognise there
the work, the efficacy of which shall endure for ever.
But whilst we do this, we have also to think of the Christ
" that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God,
who also maketh intercession for us." And the one
thought, as the other, should strengthen our confidence
in our possession of all the might that we need for bring­
ing the world back to our Lord,

A work in the past which can never be exhausted or
lose its power is the theme of our message. The mists of
gathering ages wrap in slowly thickening folds of forgetfulness all other men and events in history, and make them
ghostlike and shadowy; but no distance has yet dimmed
or will ever dim that human form divine. Other names
are like those stars that blaze out for a while, and then
smoulder down into almost complete invisibility; but He
is the very Light itself, that burns and is not consumed.
Other landmarks sink below the horizon as the tribes of
men pursue their solemn march through the centuries,
but the Cross on Calvary " shall stand for an ensign of
the people, and to it shall the Gentiles seek." To pro­
claim that accomplished salvation, once for all lodged in
the heart of the world's history, and henceforth for ever
valid, is our unalterable duty. The message carries in
itself its own immortal strength.
A living Saviour in the present, who works with us,
confirming the word with signs following, is the source of
our power. Not till He is impotent shall we be weak.
The unmeasurable measure of the gift of Christ defines
the degree, and the unending duration of His life who
continueth for ever sets the period, of our possession of
the grace which is given to every one of us. H e is ever
bestowing. He never withdraws what H e once gives.
The fountain sinks not a hair's breadth, though eighteen
centuries have drawn from it. Modern astronomy begins
to believe that the sun itself by long expense of light will
be shorn of its beams and wander darkling in space,
circled no more by its daughter planets. But this Sun of

our souls rays out for ever the energies of life and light
and love, and after all communication possesses the in­
finite fulness of them all. " His name shall be continued
as long as the sun, all nations shall call Him blessed."
Here then, brethren, are the perpetual elements of out
constant power, an eternal Word, an abiding Spirit, an
unchanging Lord.
II. The condition of exercising this power is Faith.
With such a force at our command—a force that could
shake the mountains and break the rocks—how come we
ever to fail ? So the disciples asked, and Christ's answer
cuts to the very heart of the matter. Why could you not
cast him out ? For one reason only, because you had
lost your hold of My strength, and therefore had lost
your confidence in your own derived power, or had
forgotten that it was derived, and essayed to wield it as
if it were your own. You did not trust Me, so you did not
believe that you could cast him out; or you believed that
you could by your own might, therefore you failed. He
throws them back decisively on themselves as solely
responsible. Nowhere else, in heaven or in earth or
hell, but only in us, does the reason lie for our break­
down, if we have broken down. Not in God, who is ever
with us, ready to make all grace abound in us, whose
will is that all men should be saved and come to the
knowledge of the truth; not in the gospel which we
preach, for " it is the power of God unto salvation; " n o t
in the demon might which has overcome us, for " greater
is H e that is in us than he that is in the world." We are

driven from all other explanations to the bitterest and
yet the most hopeful of all, that we only are to blame.
And what in us is to blame ? Some of us will answer
—Our modes of working; they have not been free
enough, or not orderly enough, or in some way or other
not wisely adapted to our ends. Some will answer—Our
forms of presenting the truth ; they have not been flexible
enough, or not fixed enough; they have been too much a
reproduction of the old; they kave been too licentious a
departure from the old. Some will answer—Our eccle­
siastical arrangements; they have been too democratic ;
they have been too priestly. Some will answer—Our
intellectual culture ; it has been too great, obscuring the
simplicity that is in Christ; it has been too small, sending
poorly furnished men into the field to fight with ordered
systems of idolatry which rest upon a philosophical basis
and can only be overturned by undermining that. It is
no part of my present duty to discuss these varying answers.
No doubt there is room for improvement in all the fields
which they indicate. But does not the spirit of our Lord's
words here beckon us away from these purely secondary
subjects to fix our self-examination on the depth and
strength of our faith, as incomparably the most important
element in the conditions which determine our success or
our failure? I do not undervalue the worth of wise
methods of action, but the history of the Church tells us
that pretty nearly any methods of action are fruitful in
the right hands, and that without living faith the best of
them become like the heavy armour which half-smothered
a feeble man. I do not pretend to that sublime indifr

ference to dogma which is the modern form of supreme
devotion to truth, but experience has taught us that
wherever the name of Christ, as the Saviour of the world,
has been lovingly proclaimed, there devils hav.i been cast
out, whatever private and sectional doctrines the exorciser has added to it. I do not disparage organization,
but courage is more than drill; and there is such a thing
as the very perfection of arrangement without life, like
cabinets in a museum, where all the specimens are duly
classified, and dead. I believe, with the old preacher,
that if God can do without our learning, He needs our
ignorance still less, but it is of comparatively little
importance whether the draught of living water be brought
to thirsty lips in an earthen cup or a golden vase.
" The main thing is, does it hold good measure ?
Heaven soon sets right all other matters."

And therefore, while leaving full scope for all im­
provements in these subordinate conditions, let me urge
upon you that the main thing which makes us strong for
our Christian work is the grasp of living faith, which holds
fast the strength of God. There is no need to plunge
into the jungle of metaphysical theology here. Is it not
a fact that the might with which the power of God has
wrought for men's salvation has corresponded with the
strength of the Church's desire and the purity of its trust
in His power ? Is it not a truth plainly spoken in Scrip­
ture and confirmed by experience, that we have the
awful prerogative of limiting the Holy One of Israel, and
quenching the Spirit ? Was there not a time in Christ's

life on earth when He could do no mighty works because
of their unbelief? We receive all spiritual gifts in
proportion to our capacity, and the chief factor in settling
the measure of our capacity is our faith. Here on the
one hand is the boundless ocean of the Divine strength,
unfathomable in its depth, full after all draughts, tideless
and calm, in all its movement never troubled, in all its
repose never stagnating; and on the other side is the
empty aridity of our poor weak natures. Faith opens
these to the influx of that great sea, and " according to
our faith," in the exact measure of our receptivity, does it
enter our hearts. In itself the gift is boundless. It has
no limit except the infinite fulness, of the power which
worketh in us. But in reference to our possession it is
bounded by our capacity, and though that capacity en­
larges by the very fact of being filled, and so every
moment becomes greater through fruition, yet at each
moment it is the measure of our possession, and our faith
is the measure of our capacity. Our power is God's
power in us, and our faith is the power with which we
grasp God's power and make it ours. So then, in regard
to God, our faith is the condition of our being strengthened
with might by His Spirit.
Consider, too, how the same faith has a natural opera
Hon on ourselves which tends to fit us for casting out the
evil spirits. Given a man full of faith, you will have a
man tenacious in purpose, absorbed in one grand object,
simple in his motives, in whom selfishness has been
driven out by the power of a mightier love, and indolence
stirred into unwearied energy. Such a man will be made

wise to devise, gentle to attract, bold to rebuke, fertile
in expedients, and ready to be anything that may help
the aim of his life. Fear will be dead in him, for faith
is the true anaesthesia of the soul; and the knife may
cut into the quivering flesh, and the spirit be scarce
conscious of a pang. Love, ambition, and all the
swarm of distracting desires will be driven from the soul
in which the lamp of faith burns bright. Ordinary
human motives will appeal in vain to the ears which have
heard the tones of the heavenly music, and all the pomps
of life will show poor' and tawdry to the sight 'that has
gazed on the vision of the great white throne and the
crystal sea. The most ignorant and erroneous " religious
sentiment"—to use a modern phrase—is mightier than
all other forces in the world's history. It is like some
of those terrible compounds of modern chemistry, an
inert, innocuous-looking drop of liquid. Shake it, and
it flames heaven high, shattering the rocks and ploughing
up the soil. Put even an adulterated and carnalised
faith into the hearts of a mob of wild Arabs, and in a
century they will stream from their deserts, and blaze
from the mountains of Spain to the plains of Bengal.
Put a living faith in Christ and a heroic confidence in the
power of His gospel to reclaim the worst sinners into a
man's heart, and he will out of weakness be made strong,
and plough his way through obstacles with the compact
force and crashing directness of lightning. There have
been men of all sorts who have been honoured to do
much in this world for Christ. Wise and foolish, learned
and ignorant, differing in tone, temper, creed, forms of

thought, and manner of working, in every conceivable
degree;—but one thing, and perhaps one thing only,
they have all had—a passion of enthusiastic personal •
devotion to their Lord, a profound and living faith in
Him and in His salvation. All in which they differed
is but the gay gilding on the soldier's coat. That in
which they were alike is as the strong arm which grasps
the sword, and has its muscles braced by the very clutch.
Faith is itself a source of strength, as well as the condition
of drawing might from heaven.
Consider, too, how faith has power over men who see
it The exhibition of our own personal convictions has
more to do in spreading them than all the arguments
which we use. There is a magnetism and a contagious
energy in the sight of a brother's faith which few men
can wholly resist. If you wish me to weep, your own
tears must flow; and if you would have me believe, let
me see your soul heaving under the emotion which you
desire me to feel. The arrow may be keen and true, the
shaft rounded and straight, the bow strong, and the arm
sinewy; but unless the steel be winged it will fall to the
ground long before it strikes the butt. Your arrows
must be winged with faith, else orthodoxy, and wise
arrangements, and force and zeal, will avail nothing.
No man will believe in, and no demon will obey, spells
which the would-be exorcist only half believes himself.
Even if he speak the name of Christ, unless he speak it
with unfaltering confidence, all the answer he will get
will only be the fierce and taunting question, " Jesus I
know, and Paul I know, but who are ye ?" Brethren,

let us give heed to the solemn rebuke which our Master
lovingly reads to us in these words, and while we aim at
. the utmost possible perfection in all subordinate matters,
let us remember that they all without faith are weak,
as an empty suit of armour with no life beneath the
corslet; and that faith without them all is strong, like
the knight of old, who rode into the bloody field in
simple silken vest, and conquered. That which deter­
mines our success or failure in the work of our Lord
is our faith.
III. Our faith is ever threatened by subtle unbelief
It would appear that the disciples were ignorant of the
unbelief that had made them weak. They fancied that
they had confidence in their Christ-given power, and
they certainly had in some dull kind of fashion expected
to succeed in their attempt. But He who sees the heart
knew that there was no real living confidence in their
souls; and His words are a solemn warning to us all,
of how possible it is for us to have our faith all honey­
combed by gnawing doubt while we suspect it not,
like some piece of wood apparently sound, the whole
substance of which has been eaten away by hidden
worms. We may be going on with Christian work,
and may even be looking for spiritual results. We may
fancy ourselves faithful stewards of the gospel, and all
the while there may be an utter absence of the one thing
which makes our words more than so much wind whist­
ling through an archway. The shorn Samson went out
'* to shake himself as at other times," and knew not that

the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. Who
among us is not exposed to the assaults of that pestilence
that walketh in darkness ? and, alas ! who among us can
say that he has repelled the contagion ? Subtly it creeps
over us all, the stealthy intangible vapour, unfelt till it
has quenched the lamp which alone lights the darkness
of the mine, and clogged to suffocation the labouring
lungs.
Our time, and the object in view, preclude my speaking
of the general sources of danger to our faith, which are
always in operation with a retarding force as constant as
friction, as certain as the gravitation which pulls the
pendulum to rest at its lowest point. But I may very
briefly particularize two of the enemies of that faith,
which have a special bearing on our missionary work,
and may be illustrated from the narrative before us.
First, all our activity in spreading the gospel, whether
by personal effort or by our gifts, like every form of
outward action, tends to become mechanical, and to lose
its connection with the motive which originated it. Of
course it is also true, on the other side, that all outward
action also tends to strengthen the motive from which it
flows. But our Christian work will not do so, unless it
be carefully watched, and pains be taken to keep it
from slipping off its original foundation, and so altering
its whole character. We may very easily become so
occupied with the mere external occupation as to be
quite unconscious that it has ceased to be faithful work,
and has become routine, dull mechanism, or the result
of confidence, not in Christ, whose power once flowed
c

through us, but in ourselves the doers. So these dis­
ciples may have thought, " We can cast out this devil,
for we have done the like already," and have forgotten that
it was not they, but Christ in them, who had done it.
How widely this foe to our faith operates amid the
multiplied activities of this busy age one trembles to think.
We see all around us a Church toiling with unexampled
expenditure of wealth, and effort, and time. It is diffi­
cult to repress the suspicion that the work is out of
proportion to the life. Ah, brethren, how much of all
this energy of effort, so admirable in many respects, will
H e whose fan is in His hand accept as true service—
how much of it will be wheat for the garner, how much
chaff for the fire? It is not for us to divide between the
two, but it is for us to remember that it is not impossible to
make of our labours the most dangerous enemy to the
depth of our still life hidden with Christ in God, and
that every deed of apparent service which is not the real
issue of living faith is powerless for good to others, and
heavy with hurt to ourselves. Brethren and fathers in
the ministry ! how many of us know what it is to talk
and toil away our early devotion; and all at once to
discover that for years perhaps we have been preaching
and labouring from mere habit and routine, like corpses
galvanised into some ghastly and transient caricature of
life. Christian men and women, beware lest this great
enterprise of missions, which our fathers began from the
holiest motives and in the simplest faith, should in our
hand, be wrenched away from its only true basis, and be
done with languid expectation and more languid desires of

success, from no higher motive than that we found it in
existence, and have become accustomed to carry it on.
If that be our reason, then we harm ourselves, and
mask from our own sight our own unbelief. If that
be the case the work may go on for a while, like a
clock ticking with fainter and fainter beats for a minute
after it has run down; but it will soon cease, and
neither heaven nor earth will be much the poorer for its
ending.
Again, the atmosphere of scornful disbelief which sur­
rounded the. disciples made their faith falter.
It was too
weak to sustain itself in the face of the consciousness
that not a man in all that crowd believed in their power;
and it melted away before the contempt of the scribes
and the incredulous curiosity of the bystanders, without
any reason except the subtle influence which the opinions
and characters of those around us have on us all.
And, brethren, are not we in danger to-day of losing
the firmness of our grasp on Christ, as our Saviour and
the world's, from a precisely similar cause ? We live in
an atmosphere of hesitancy and doubt, of scornful rejec­
tion of His claims, of contemptuous disbelief in anything
which a scalpel cannot cut. We cannot but be conscious
that to hold by Jesus Christ as the Incarnate God, the
supernatural Beginning of a new life, the sole Hope of
the world, is to expose ourselves to the contempt of socalled advanced and liberal thinkers, and to be out of
harmony with the prevailing set of opinions.
The
current of educated thought runs strongly against such
beliefs, and I suppose that every thoughtful man
c 2

among us feels that a great danger to our faith to-day
comes from the force with which that current swings
us round, and threatens to make some of us drag
our anchors, and drift, and strike and go to pieces
on the sands. For one man who is led by the sheer
force of reason to yield to the intellectual grounds
on which modern unbelief reposes, there are twenty
who simply catch the infection in the atmosphere. They
find that their early convictions have evaporated,
they know not how; only that once the fleece was wet
with dew and now it is dry. For unbelief has a conta­
gious energy wholly independent of reason, no less than
has faith, and affects multitudes who know nothing of
its grounds, as the iceberg chills the summer air for
leagues, and makes the sailors shiver long before they see
its barren peaks.
T

Therefore, brethren, let us all take heed to ourselves,
lest we suffer our grasp of our dear Lord's hand to relix
for no better reason than because so many have left His
side. To us all His pleading love, which knows how
much we are moulded by the example of others, is
saying, in view of the fashion of unbelief, " Will ye also
go away?" Let us answer, with a clasp that clings the
tighter for our danger of being sucked in by the strong
current, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the
words of eternal life." We cannot help seeing that the
creeping paralysis of hesitancy and doubt about even the
power of Christ's name is stealing over portions ot the
Church, and stiffening the arm of its activity. Lips that
once spoke with full confidence the words that cast out

devils, mutter them now languidly with half belief.
Hearts that were once full of sympathy with the great
purpose for which Christ died are growing cold to the work
of preaching the gospel to the heathen, because they are
growing to doubt whether, after all, there is any gospel
at all. This icy breath, dear brethren, is blowing over
our Churches and over our hearts. And wherever it
reaches, there labour for Jesus and for men languishes,
and we recoil baffled with unavailing exorcisms dying in
our throats, and the rod of our power broken in our
hands. " Why could not we cast him out ? Because of
your unbelief."
IV. Our faith can only be maintained by constant devo­
tion and rigid self-denial.
I have already detained you far too long, and can
touch but very lightly on that solemn thought in which
our Lord sets forth the condition of our faith, and there­
fore of our power. This kind goeth not out but by prayer
and fasting. The discipline then which nurtures faith is
mainly moral and spiritual—not as a substitute for, or to
the exclusion of, the intellectual discipline, which is pre­
supposed, not neglected, in these words.
The first condition of the freshness and energy of faith
is constant devotion. The attrition of the world wears
it thin, the distractions of life draw it from its clinging
hold on Christ, the very toil for Him is apt to entice
our thoughts from out of the secret place of the most
High into the busy arena of our strife. Therefore we
have ever need to refresh the drooping flowers of the

chaplet by bathing them in the Fountain of Life, to rise
above all the fevered toil of earth to the calm heights
where God dwells, and in still communion with Him to
replenish our emptied vessels and fill our dimly burning
lamps with His golden oil. The sister of the cumbered
Martha is the contemplative Mary, who sits in silence at
the Master's feet and lets His words sink into her soul:
the closest friend of Peter the apostle of action is John
the Apostle of love. If our work is to be worthy, it
must ever be freshened anew by our gaze into His face;
if our communion with Him is to be deep, it must never
be parted from outward service. Our Master has left us
the example, in that, when the night fell and every man
went to his own home, Jesus went to the Mount of
Olives ; and thence, after His night of prayer, came very
early in the morning, to the temple, and taught. The
stream that is to flow broad and life-giving through many
lands must have its hidden source high among the pure
snows that cap the mount of God. The man that would
work for God must live with God. It was from the
height of transfiguration that He came, before whom
the demon that baffled the disciples quailed and slunk
away like a whipped hound. This kind goeth not out
but by prayer.
The second condition is rigid self-denial. Fasting is
the expression of the purpose to control the lower life,
and to abstain from its delights in order that the life of
the spirit may be strengthened. As to the outward fact,
it is nothing—it may be practised or not. If it be, it
will be valuable only in so far as it flows from and

strengthens that purpose. And such vigorous subordi­
nation of all the lower powers, and abstinence from many
an inferior good, both material and immaterial, is abso­
lutely necessary if we are to have any wholesome
strength of faith in our souls. In the recoil from the false
asceticism of Roman Catholicism and Puritanism,
has not this generation of the Church gone too far in
the opposite direction ? and in the true belief that
Christianity can sanctify all joys, and ensure the har­
monious development of all our powers, have we not
been forgetting that hand and foot may cause us to
stumble, and that we had better live maimed than die
with all our limbs ? There is a true asceticism, a disci­
pline—a "gymnastic unto godliness," as Paul calls it.
And if our faith is to grow high and bear rich clusters
on the topmost boughs that look up to the sky, we
must keep the wild lower shoots close nipped. Without
rigid self-control and self-limitation, no vigorous faith.
And without them no effectual work! It is no holi­
day task to cast out devils. Self-indulgent men will
never do it. Loose-braced, easy souls, that lie open to
all the pleasurable influences of ordinary life, are no more
fit for God's weapons than a reed for a lance, or a bit
of flexible lead for a spear-point. The wood must be
tough and compact, the metal hard and close-grained,
out of which God makes His shafts. The brand that is
to guide men through the darkness to their Father's home
must glow with a pallor of consuming flame that purges
its whole substance into light. This kind goeth not out
but by prayer and fasting.

Dear brethren, what solemn rebuke these words have
for us all to-day! How they winnow these works of
Christian activity which bring us here this morning 1
How they show us the hollowness of our services, the selfindulgence of our lives, the coldness of our devotion, the
cowardice of our faith ! How marvellous they make the
fruits which God's great goodness has permitted us to see
even from our doubting service ! Let us turn to Him
with fresh thankfulness that unto us, who are " less than
the least of all saints, is this grace given, that we
should preach among the nations the unsearchable riches
of Christ." Let us not be driven from our confidence
that we have a gospel to preach for all the world; but
strong in the faith which rests on impregnable historical
grounds, on our own experience of what Christ has done
for us, and on eighteen centuries of growing power and
unfolding wisdom, let us thankfully welcome all that
modern thought may supply for the correction of errors in
belief, in organization, and in life, that may have gathered
round His perfect and eternal gospel—being assured, as
we have a right to be, that all will but lift higher the Name
which is above every name, and set forth more plainly
that Cross which is the true tree of life to all the
families of men. Let us cast ourselves before Him with
penitent confession, and say,—O Lord, our strength ! we
have not wrought any deliverance on earth; we have
been weak when all Thy power was at our command ; we
have spoken Thy word as if it were an experiment and a
peradventure whether it had might; we have let go Thy
hand and lost Thy garment's hem from our slack grasp ;

we have been prayerless and self-indulgent. Therefore
Thou hast put us to shame before our foes, and " our
enemies laugh among themselves. Thou that dwellest
between the cherubim shine forth; stir up Thy
strength and come and save us !" Then will the last
words that He spoke on earth ring out again from the
throne : " All power is given unto Me in heaven and in
- earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations ; and lo, I
am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

SERMON

II.*

T H E P A T T E R N OF SERVICE.
ST.

MARK

vii.

33,

34.

He touched his tongue ; and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and
saith, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.

T ^ O R what reason was there this unwonted slowness
in Christ's healing works ? For what reason was
there this unusual emotion ere H e spoke the word which
cleansed.
As to the former question, a partial answer may
perhaps be that our Lord is here on half-heathen ground,
where aids to faith were much needed, and His power had
to be veiled that it might be beheld. Hence the miracle
is a process rather than an a c t ; and, advancing as it does
by distinct stages, is conformed in appearance to men's
works of mercy, which have to adapt means to ends, and
creep to their goal by persevering toil. As to the latter
we know not why the sight of this one poor sufferer
should have struck so strongly on the ever-tremulous
chords of Christ's pitying heart; but we do know that it
was the vision brought before His spirit by this single
* Preached before the Wesleyan Missionary Society.

instance of the world's griefs and sicknesses, in which
mass, however, the special case before Him was by no
means lost, that raised His eyes to heaven in mute
appeal, and forced the groan from His breast.
The "Missionary spirit" is but one aspect of the Chris­
tian spirit. We shall only strengthen the former as we
invigorate the latter. Harm has been done, both to our­
selves and to this great cause, by seeking to stimulate
compassion and efforts for heathen lands by the use of
other excitements, which have tended .to vitiate even the
emotions they have aroused, and are apt to fail us when
we need them most. It may therefore be profitable if we
turn to Christ's own manner of working, and His own
emotions in his merciful deeds, set forth in this remark­
able narrative, as containing lessons for us in our
missionary and evangelistic work. I must necessarily
omit more than a passing reference to the slow process of
healing which this miracle exhibits. But that, too, has its
teaching for us, who are so often tempted to think our­
selves badly used, unless the fruit of our toil grows up,
like Jonah's gourd, before our eyes. If our Lord was
content to reach His end of blessing step by step, we may
well accept patient continuance in well-doing as the con­
dition indispensable to reaping in due season.
But there are other thoughts still more needful which
suggest themselves. Those minute .details which this
evangelist ever delights to give of our Lord's gestures,
words, looks, and emotions, not only add graphic force
to the narrative but are precious glimpses of the very
heart of Christ That fixed gaze into heaven, that groan

28

THE PATTERN

OF SERVICE.

[SERM.

which neither the glories seen above nor the conscious
power to heal could stifle, that most gentle touch, as if
removing material obstacles from the deaf ears, and
moistening the stiff tongue that it might move more
freely in the parched mouth, that word of authority
which could not be wanting even when His working
seemed likest a servant's, do surely carry large lessons fox
us. The condition of all service, the cost of feeling at
which our work must be done, the need that the helpers
should identify themselves with the sufferers, and the
victorious power of Christ's word over all deaf ears—
these are the thoughts which I desire to connect with our
text, and to commend to your meditation to-day.
I. We have here set forth the foundation and condition
of all true work for God in the Lord's heavenward look.
The profound questions which are involved in the fact
that, as man, Christ held communion with God in the
exercise of faith and aspiration, the same in kind as ours,
do not concern us here. I speak to those who believe
that Jesus is for us* the perfect example of complete man­
hood, and who therefore believe that H e is " the leader
of faith," the head of the long procession of those who in
every age have trusted in God and been lightened. But,
perhaps, though that conviction holds its place in our
creeds, it has not been as completely incorporated with
our thoughts as it should have been. There has, no
doubt, been a tendency, operating in much of our evan­
gelical teaching, and in the common stream of orthodox
opinion, to except, half unconsciously, the exercises of

the religious life from the sphere of Christ's example, and
we need to be reminded that Scripture presents His vow,
" I will put my trust in Him," as the crowning proof of
His brotherhood, and that the prints of His kneeling
limbs have left their impressions where we kneel before
the throne. True, the relation of the Son to the Father
involves more than communion—namely, unity. But if
we follow the teaching of the Bible, we shall not presume
that the latter excludes the former, but understand that
the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the
communion the manifestation, so far as it can be mani­
fested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words
which shine like stars—starlike in that their height above
us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and
in that they are points of radiance partially disclosing,
and separated by, abysses of unlighted infinitude—tell us
that in the order of eternity, before creatures were, there
was communion, for " the Word was with God," and there
was unity, for " the Word was God." And in the records
of the life manifested on earth the consciousness of unity
loftily utters itself in. the unfathomable declaration, " I
and my Father are one ;" whilst the consciousness of
communion, dependent like ours on harmony of will and
true obedience, breathes peacefully in the witness which
He leaves to Himself: " The Father has not left Me alone
for I do always the things that please Him."
We are fully warranted, then, in supposing that that
wistful gaze to heaven meails, and may be taken to sym­
bolize, our Lord's conscious direction of thought and
spirit to God as He wrought His work of mercy. There

are two distinctions to be noted between His communion
with God and ours before we can apply the lesson to our­
selves. His heavenward look was not the renewal of
interrupted fellowship, but rather, as a man standing
firmly on firm rock may yet lift his foot to plant it again
where it was before, and settle himself in his attitude
before he strikes with all his might; so we may say
Christ fixes Himself where He always stood, and grasps
anew the hand that He always held, before He does the
deed of power. The communion that had never been
broken was renewed ; how much more the need that in
our work for God the renewal of the—alas! too sadly
sundered—fellowship should ever precede and always
accompany our efforts ! And again, Christ's fellowship
was with the Father. Ours must be with the Father
through the Son. The communion to which we are called
is with Jesus Christ, in whom we find God.
The manner of that intercourse, and the various disci­
pline of ourselves with a view to its perfecting, which
Christian prudence prescribes, need not concern us here.
As for the latter^ let us not forget that a wholesome
and wide-reaching self-denial cannot be dispensed with.
Hands that are full of gilded toys and glass beads cannot
grasp durable riches, and eyes that have been accustomed
to glaring lights see only darkness when they look up to
the violet heaven with all its stars. As to the former,
every part of our nature above the simply animal is
capable of God, and the communion ought to include
our whole being.
Christ is truth for the understanding, authority for the

will, love for the heart, certainty for the hope, fruition for
all the desires, and for the conscience at once cleansing
and law. Fellowship with Him is no indolent passiveness, nor the luxurious exercise of certain emotions, but
the contact of the whole nature with its sole adequate
object and rightful Lord.
Such intercourse, brethren, lies at the foundation of
all work for God. It is the condition of all our power.
It is the measure of all our success. Without it we may
seem to realize the externals of prosperity, but it will be
all illusion. With it we may perchance seem to spend
our strength for naught; but heaven has its surprises; and
those who toiled, nor left their hold of their Lord in all
their work, will have to say at last with wonder, as they
see the results of their poor efforts, Who hath begotten
me these ? behold, I was left alone; these, where had
they been ? "
Consider in few words the manifold ways in which the
indispensable pre-requisite of all right effort for.Christ
may be shown to be communion with Christ.
The heavenward look is the renewal of our own vision
of the calm verities in which we trust, the recourse for
ourselves to the realities which we desire that others
should see. And what is equal in persuasive power to
the simple utterance of your own intense conviction?
He only will infuse his own religion into other minds,
whose religion is not a set of hard dogmas, but is fused
by the heat of personal experience into a river of living
fire. It will flow then, not otherwise. The only claim
which the hearts of men will listen to, in those who would
ii

win them to spiritual beliefs, is that ancient one : " That
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked
upon, declare we unto you." Mightier than all argu­
ments, than all " proofs of the truth of the Christian re­
ligion," and penetrating into a sphere deeper than that
of the understanding, is the simple proclamation, " We
have found the Messias." If we would give sight to the
blind, we must ourselves be gazing into heaven. Only
when we/testify of that which we see, as one might who,
standing in a beleaguered city, discerned on the horizon
the filmy dust-cloud through which the spearheads of the
deliverers flashed at intervals, shall we win any to gaze
with us till they too behold and know themselves set
free.
The heavenward look draws new strength from the
source of all our might. In our work, dear brethren,
contemplating as it ought to do exclusively spiritual
results, what we do depends largely on what we are, and
what we are depends on what we receive, and what we
receive depends on the depth and constancy of our com­
munion with God. " The help which is done upon earth
He doeth it all Himself." We and our organisations are
but the channels through which this might is poured ;
and if we choke the bed with turbid masses of drift and
heavy rocks of earthly thoughts, or build from bank to
bank thick dams of worldliness compact with slime of sin,
how shall the full tide flow through us for the healing of
the salt and barren places ? Will it not leave its former
course silted up with sand, and cut for itself new outlets,
while the useless quays that once rang with busy life

stand silent, and " the cities are solitary that were full of
people " ? We are
" The trumpet at thy lips, the clarion
Full of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath."

Let us see to it that by fellowship with Christ we keep
the passage clear, and become recipients of the inspiration
which shall thrill our else-silent spirits into the blast of
loud alarum and the ringing proclamation of the true King.
The heavenward look will guard us from the tempta­
tions which surround all our service, and the distractions
which lay waste our lives. It is habitual communion
with Christ alone that will give the persistency that
makes systematic, continuous efforts for Him possible, and
yet will keep systematic work from degenerating,' as it
ever tends to do, into mechanical work. There is no
greater virtue in irregular desultory service than in syste­
matized labour. The one is not freer from besetting tempta­
tions than the other, only the temptations are of different
sorts. Machinery saves manual toil, and multiplies force.
But we may have too heavy machinery for what engineers
call the boiler power,—too many wheels and shafts for
the steam we have to drive them with. What we want is
not less organisation, or other sorts of it, but more force.
Any organisation will do if we have God's Spirit breath­
ing through it. ' None will be better than so much old
iron if we have not.
We are ever apt to trust to our work, to do it without
a distinct recurrence at each moment to the principles on
which it re^ts, and the motives by which it should be\
D

actuated,—to become so absorbed in details that we
forget the purpose which alone gives them meaning, to
over-estimate the external aspects of it, to lose sight of
the solemn truths which make it so grand, and to think
of it as common-place because it is common, as ordinary
because it is familiar. And from these most real dangers,
which beset us all, there is no refuge but the frequent, the
habitual, gaze into the open heavens, which will show us
again the realities of things, and bring to our spirits,
dwarfed even by habits of goodness, the freshening of
former motives by the vision of Jesus Christ.
Sucji constant communion will further surround us
with an atmosphere through which none of the many
influences which threaten our Christian life and our
Christian work can penetrate. As the diver in his bell
sits dry at the bottom of the sea, and draws a pure air
from the free heavens far above him, and is parted from
that murderous waste of green death that clings so closely
round the translucent crystal walls which keep him safe;
so we, enclosed in God, shall repel from ourselves all
that would overflow to destroy us and our work, and may
by His grace lay deeper than the waters some courses in
the great building that shall one day rise, stately and
many-mansioned, from out of the conquered waves. For
ourselves, and for all that we do for Him, living com­
munion with God is the means of power and peace, of
security and success.
It was never more needful than now. Feverish activ­
ity rules in all spheres of life. The iron wheels of the
car which bears the modern idol of material progress

whirl fast, and crush remorselessly all who cannot keep
up the pace. Christian effort is multiplied and systerna
tized beyond all precedent. And all these things make
calm fellowship with God hard to compass. The measure
of the difficulty is the measure of the need. I, for my
part, believe that there are few Christian duties more
neglected than that of meditation, the very name of
which has fallen of late into comparative disuse,—that
augurs ill for the frequency of the thing. We are so busy
thinking, discussing, defending, inquiring; or preaching,
and teaching, and working, that we have no time and no
leisure of heart for quiet contemplation, without which
the exercise of the intellect upon Christ's truth will not
feed, and busy activity in Christ's cause may starve the
soul. There are few things which the Church of this day
in all its parts needs more than to obey the invitation,
" Come ye yourselves apart into a lonely place, and rest
awhile."
Christ has set us the example. Let our prayers ascend
as His did, and in our measure the answers which came
to Him will not fail us. For us, too, " praying, the
heavens" shall be " opened," and the peace-bringing
spirit fall dove-like on our meek hearts. For us, too,
when the shadow of our cross lies black and gaunt upon
our paths, and our souls are troubled, communion with
heaven will bring the assurance, audible to our ears at
least, that God will glorify Himself even in us. If, after
many a weary day, we seek to hold fellowship with God
as. He sought it on the Mount of Olives, or among the
solitudes of the midnight hills, or out in the morning
D

2

freshness of ihe silent wilderness, like Him we shall have
men gathering around us to bear us speak when we come
forth from the secret place of the Most High. If our
prayer, like His, goes before our mighty deeds, the voice
that first pierced the skies will penetrate the tomb, and
make the dead stir in their grave-clothes. If our longing
trustful look is turned to the heavens, we shall not speak
in vain on earth when we say, " Be opened."
Brethren, we cannot do without the communion which
our Master needed. Do we delight in what strengthened
Him ? Does our work rest upon the basis of inward
fellowship with God which underlay His ? Alas ! that
our Pattern should be our Rebuke, and the readiest way
to force home our faults on our consciences should be
the contemplation of the life which we say that we try
to copy !
II. We have here pity for the evils we would remove
set forth by the Lord's sigh.
The frequency with which this Evangelist records our
Lord's emotions on* the sight of sin and sorrow has been
often noticed. In his pages we read of Christ's grief at
the hardness of men's hearts, of His marvelling because
of their unbelief, of His being moved with compassion for
an outcast leper and a hungry multitude, of His sighing
deeply in His spirit when.prejudiced hostility, assuming
the appearance of candid inquiry, asked of Him a sign
from heaven. All these instances of true human feeling,
like His tears at the grave of Lazarus, and His weari­
ness as H e sat on the well, and His tired sleep in the

stern of the little fishing-boat, and His hunger and His
thirst, are very precious as aids in realizing His perfect
manhood ; but they have a worth beyond even that.
They show us how the manifold ills and evils of man's
fate and conduct appealed to the only pure heart that
ever beat, and how quickly and warmly^it, by reason of
its purity, throbbed in sympathy with all the woe. One
might have thought that in the present case the conscious­
ness that His help was so near would have been sufficient
to repress the sigh. One might have thought that the
heavenward look would have stayed the tears. But
neither the happiness of active beneficence, nor the
knowledge of immediate cure, nor the glories above
flooding His vision, could lift the burden from the
labouring breast. And surely in this, too, we may discern
a law for all our efforts, that their worth shall be in pro­
portion to the expense of feeling at which they are done.
They predict the harvests in Egypt by the height which
the river marks on the gauge of the inundation. So
many feet there represents so much fertility. Tell me
the depth of a Christian man's compassion, and I will tell
you the measure of his fruitfulness.
What was it that drew that sigh from the heart of
Jesus ? One poor man stood before him, by no means
the most sorely afflicted of the many wretched ones
whom He healed. But He saw in him more than a
solitary instance of physical infirmities. Did there not
roll darkly before His thoughts that whole weltering sea
of sorrow that moans round the world, of which here is
but one drop that He could dry up ? Did there not rise

black and solid against the clear blue to which H e had
been looking, the mass of man's sin, of which these bodily
infirmities were but a poor symbol as well as a conse­
quence ! He saw as none but He could bear to see, the
miserable realities of human life. His knowledge of all
that man might be, of all that the most of men were
becoming, His power of contemplating in one awful
aggregate the entire sum of sorrows and sins, laid upon
His heart a burden which none but He have ever endured.
His communion with Heaven deepened the dark
shadow on earth, and the eyes that looked up to God
and saw Him, could not but see foulness where others sus­
pected none, and murderous messengers of hell walking
in darkness impenetrated by mortal sight. And all that
pain of cleaver knowledge of the sorrowfulness of sorrow,
and the sinfulness of sin, was laid upon a heart in which
was no selfishness to blunt the sharp edge of the pain nor
any sin to stagnate the pity that flowed from the wound.
To J esus Christ, life was a daily martyrdom before death
had ' " made the sacrifice complete," and He bore our
griefs, and carried*our sorrows through many aweary
hour before He "bare them in His own body on the tree "
Therefore, " Bear ye one another's burden, and so fulfil
the law" which Christ obeyed, becomes a command for
all who Wv,uld draw, men to Him. And true sorrow, a
sharp and real sense of pain, becomes indispensable as
preparation for, and accompaniment to, our work.
Mark how in us, as in our Lord, the sigh of compassion
is connected with the look to heaven. It follows upon
that gaze. The evils are more real, more terrible, by

their startling contrast with the unshadowed light which
lives above cloudracks and mists. It is a sharp shock
to turn from the free sweep of the heavens, starry and
radiant, to the sights that meet us in " this dim spot
which men call earth." Thus habitual communion with
God is the root of the truest and purest compassion. It
does not withdraw us from our fellow feeling with our
brethren, it cultivates no isolation for undisturbed be­
holding of God. It at once supplies a standard by which
to measure the greatness of man's godlessness, and theref jre of his gloom, and a motive for laying the pain of
these upon our hearts, as if they were our own. H e has
looked into the heavens to little purpose who has not
learned how bad and how sad the world now is, and
how God bends over it in pitying love.
And that same fellowship which will clear our eyes and
soften our hearts, is also the one consolation which we
have when our sense of all the ills that flesh is heir to
becomes deep to near despair. When one thinks of the
real facts of human life, and tries to conceive of the
frightful meanness and passion and hate and wretched­
ness that has been howling and shrieking and gibbering
and groaning through dreary millenniums, one's brain
reels, and hope seems to be absurdity, and joy a sin
against our fellows, as a feast would be in a house next
door to where was a funeral. I do not wonder at settled
sorrow falling upon men of vivid imagination, keen moral
sense, and ordinary sensitiveness, when they brood long
on the world as it is. But I do wonder at the superficial
optimism which goes on with its little prophecies about

human progress, and its rose-coloured pictures of human
life, and sees nothing to strike it dumb for ever in men's
writhing miseries, blank failures, and hopeless end.
Ah ! brethren, if it were not for the heavenward look, how
could we bear the sight of earth ! " We see not yet all
things put under Him." No, God knows, far enough
off from that. Man's folly, man's submission to the
creatures he should rule, man's agonies, and man's trans­
gression, are a grim contrast to the Psalmist's vision.
If we had only earth to look to, despair of the race, ex­
pressed in settled melancholy apathy, or in fierce cynicism,
were the wisest attitude. But there is more within our
view than earth; " we see Jesus; " we look to the heaven,
and as we behold the true man, we see more than ever,
indeed, how far from that pattern we all are ; but we can
bear the thought of what men as yet have been, when we
see that perfect example of what men shall be. The
root and the consolation of our sorrow for men's evils is
communion with God.
Let me remind you, too, that still more dangerous than
the pity which is not based upon, and corrected by, the
look to heaven, is the pity which does not issue in
strenuous work. It is easy to excite people's emotions;
but it is perilous for both the operator and the subject,
unless they be excited through the understanding, and
pass on the impulse to the will and the practical powers.
The surest way to petrify a heart is to stimulate the
feelings, and give them nothing to do. They will never
recover their original elasticity if they have been wantonly
drawn forth thus.
Coldness, hypocrisy, spurious sen-

timentalism, and a whole train of affectations and false­
hoods follow the steps of an emotional religion, which
divorces itself from active work. Pity is meant to impel
to help. Let us not be content with painting sad and
true pictures of men's woes,—of the gloomy hopelessness
of idolatry, for instance,—but let us remember that every
time our compassion is stirred, and no action ensues, our
hearts are in some measure indurated, and the sincerity
of our religion in some degree impaired. The white-robed
Pity is meant to guide the strong powers of practical help
to their work. She is to them as eyes to go before them
and point their tasks. They are to her as hands to
execute her gentle will. Let us see to it that we rend
them not apart; for idle pity is unblessed and fruitless
as a sigh cast into the fragrant air, and unpitying work is
more unblessed and fruitless still. Let us remember, too,
that Christlike and indispensable as Pity is, she is second,
and not first. Let us take heed that we preserve that order
in our own minds, and in our endeavours to stimulate one
another. For if we reverse it, we shall surely find the foun­
tains of compassion drying up long before the wide stretches
of thirsty land are watered, and the enterprises which we
have sought to carry on by appealing to a secondary motive,
languishing when there is most need for vigour. Here is the
true sequence which must be observed in our missionary
and evangelistic work, " Looking up to heaven He sighed."
Dear brethren! must we not all acknowledge woful
failures in this regard? How much of our service, our
giving, our preaching, our planning, has been carried on
without one thought of the ills and godlessness we profess

to be seeking to cure ! If some angel's touch could
annihilate all that portion of our activity, what gaps would
be left in all our subscription lists, our sermons, and our
labours both at home and abroad ! Annihilate, do I say ?
It is done already. Such work is nothing, and comes to
nothing. " Yea, it shall not be planted ; yea, it shall not
be sown; and H e shall also blow upon it, and it shall
wither."
The hindrances to such abiding consciousness of and
pity for the world's woes run all down to the one tap-root
of all sin, selfishness. The remedies run all up to the
common form of all goodness, the self-absorbing com­
munion with Jesus Christ. And besides that mothertincture of everything wrong, subsidiary impediments may
be found in the small amount of time and effort which
any of us give to bring the facts of the world's condition
vividly before our minds. The destruction of all emotion
is the indolent acquiescence in general statements which
we are too lazy or busy to break up into individual cases.
To talk about hundreds of millions of idolaters leaves
the heart untouched. But take one soul out of all that
mass, and try to feel what his life is in its pitchy darkness,
broken only by lurid lights of fear and sickly gleams of
hope, in its passions ungoverned by love, its remorse
uncalmed by pardon, its affections feeling like the tendrils
of some climbing plant for the stay they cannot find, and
in the cruel blackness that swallows it up irrevocable at
last. Follow him from the childhood that knows no
discipline to the grave that knows no waking, and will
not the solitary instance come nearer our hearts than the

millions ? But however that may be, the sluggishness of
our imaginations, the very familiarity with the awful facts,
our own feeble hold on Christ, our absorption in personal
interests, the incompleteness and desultoriness of our
communion with our Lord, do all concur with our natural
selfishness to make a sadly large proportion of our
apparent labours for God and men utterly cold and
unfeeling, and therefore utterly worthless.
Has the
benighted world ever caused us as much pain as some
trivial pecuniary loss has done ? Have we ever felt the
smart of the gaping wounds through which our brothers'
blood is pouring forth as much as we do the tiniest
scratch on our own fingers ? Does it sound to us like
exaggerated rhetoric when a prophet breaks out, " Oh
that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of
tears, that I might weep night and day !" or when an
apostle in calmer tones declares, " I have great heaviness
and continual sorrow of heart" ? Some seeds are put to
steep and swell in water, that they may be tested before
sowing. The seed which we sow will not germinate
unless it be saturated with our tears. And yet the sorrow
must be blended with joy; for it is glad labour which is
ordinarily productive labour—just as the growing time is
the changeful April, and one knows not whether the
/promise of harvest is most sure in the clouds that drop
fatness, or in the sunshine that makes their depths throb
with whitest light, and touches the moist-springing blades
into emeralds and diamonds. The gladness comes from
the heavenward look, the pain is breathed in the deepdrawn sigh; both must be united in us if we would

44

THE PATTERN

OF

SERVICE.

" approve ourselves as the servants of God—as sorrowful,
yet always rejoicing."
III. We have here loving contact with those whom
we would help set forth in the Lord's touch.
The reasons for the variety observable in Christ's
method of communicating supernatural bl«ssing were,
probably, too closely connected with unrecorded differ­
ences in the spiritual conditions of the recipients to
be distinctly traceable by us. But though we cannot
tell why a particular method was employed in a given
case, why now a word, and now a symbolic action,
now the touch of His hand, and now the hem of His
garment, appeared to be the vehicles of His power we
can discern the significance of these divers ways, and
learn great lessons from them all.
His touch was sometimes obviously the result of
what one may venture to call instinctive tenderness,
as when He lifted the little children in His arms and
laid His hands upon their heads. It was, I suppose,
always the spontaneous expression of love and com­
passion, even when it was something more.
The touch of His hand on the ghastly glossiness
of the leper's skin was, no doubt, His assertion of
priestly functions, and of elevation above all laws of
defilement: but what was it to the poor outcast, who
for years had never felt the warm contact of flesh
and blood? It always indicated that He Himself was
the source of healing and life. It always expressed
His identification of Himself with sorrow and sick-

ness. So that it is in principle analogous to, and
may be taken as illustrative of, that transcendent act
whereby H e became flesh, and dwelt among us. In­
deed, the very word by which our Lord's taking the
blind man by the hand is described in the chapter
following our text, is that employed in the Epistle to the
Hebrews when, dealing with the true brotherhood of
Jesus, the writer says, " He took not hold of angels, but
of the seed of Abraham H e taketh hold." Christ's
touch is His willing contact with man's infirmities and
sins, that He may strengthen and hallow.
And the lesson is one of universal application.
Wherever men would help their fellows, this is a
prime requisite, that the would-be helper should come
down to the level of those whom he desires to aid. If
we wish to teach, we must stoop to think the scholar's
thoughts. The master who has forgotten his boyhood will
have poor success. If we would lead to purer emotions,
we must try to enter into the lower feelings which we
labour to elevate. It is of no use to stand at the mouth
of the alleys we wish to cleanse, with our skirts daintily
gathered about us, and smelling-bottle in hand, to preach
homilies on the virtues of cleanliness. We must go in
among the filth, and handle it, if we want to have it
cleared away. The degraded must feel that we do not
shrink from them, or we shall do them no good. The
leper, shunned by all, and ashamed of himself because
everybody loathes him, hungers in his hovel for the grasp
of a hand that does not care for defilement, if it can
bring cleansing. Even in regard to common material

helps the principle holds good. We are too apt to cast
our doles to the poor like the bones to a dog, and then
to wonder at what we are pleased to think men's ingrati­
tude. A benefit may be so conferred as to hurt more than
a blow; and we cannot be surprised if so-called charity
which is given with contempt and a sense of superiority,
should be received with a scowl, and chafe a man's spirit
like a fetter. Such gifts bless neither him who gives nor
him who takes. We must put our hearts into them, if
we would win hearts by them. We must be ready, like
our Master, to take blind beggars by the hand, if we
would bless or help them. The despair and opprobrium
of our modern civilization, the gulf growing wider and
deeper between Dives and Lazarus, between Belgravia
and Whitechapel, the mournful failure of legalized help,
and of delegated efforts to bridge it over, the darkening
ignorance, the animal sensuousness, the utter heathenism
that lives in every town of England, within a stone's
throw of Christian houses, and near enough to hear the
sound of public worship, will yield to nothing but that
sadly forgotten law which enjoins personal contact with
the sinful and the suffering, as one chief condition of
rasing them from the. black mire in which they welter.
But the same law has its special application in regard
to the enterprise which summons us together to-day.
It defines the spirit in which Christian men should
proclaim the Gospel. The effect of much well-meant
Christian effort is simply to irritate. People are very
quick to catch delicate intonations which reveal a secret
sense, " how much better, wiser, more devout I am than

these people !" and wherever a trace of that appears in
our work, the good of it is apt to be marred. We all
know how hackneyed the charge of spiritual pride and
Pharisaic self-complacency is, and, thank God, how
unjust it often is. But averse as men may be to the
truths which humble, and willing as they may be to
assume that the very effort to present these to others on
our parts implies a claim which mortifies, we may at least
learn from the threadbare calumny, what strikes men
about our position, and what rouses their antagonism to
us. It is allowable to be taught by our enemies,
especially when it is such a lesson as this, that we must
carefully divest our evangelistic work of apparent pre­
tensions to superiority, and take our stand by the side of
those to whom we speak. We cannot lecture men into
the love of Christ. We can but win them to it by show­
ing Christ's love to them; and not the least important
element in that process is the exhibition of our own love.
We have a Gospel to speak of which the very heart is,
that the Son of God stooped to become one with the
lowliest and most sinful; and how can that Gospel be
spoken with power unless we, too, stoop like Him ?
We have to echo the invitation, " Learn of me, for
I am lowly in h e a r t ; " and how can such divine words
flow from lips into which like grace has not been poured ?
Our theme is a Saviour who shrunk from no sinner, who
gladly consorted with publicans and harlots, who laid His
hand on pollution, and His heart, full of God and of love,
on hearts reeking with sin, and how can our message
correspond with our theme if, even in delivering it, we

are saying to ourselves, " The Temple of the Lord are
we : this people which knoweth not the law is cursed " ?
Let us beware of the very real danger which besets us in
this matter, and earnestly seek to make ourselves one with
those whom we would gather into Christ, by actual
familiarity with their condition, and by identification of
ourselves in feeling with them, after the example of that
greatest of Christian teachers who became "all things to
all men, that by all means he might gain s o m e ; " after
the higher example, which Paul followed, of that dear
Lord who, being highest, descended to the lowest, and in
the days of his humiliation was not content with speaking
words of power from afar, nor abhorred the contact of
mortality and disease and loathsome corruption ; but laid
His hands upon death, and it lived ; upon sickness, audit
was whole; on rotting leprosy, and it was sweet as the
flesh of a little child.
The same principle might be further applied to but
Christian work, as affecting the form in which we should
present the truth. The sympathetic identification of our­
selves with those to-whom we try to carry the Gospel will
certainly make us wise to know how to shape our message.
Seeing with their eyes, we shall be able to graduate the
light.
Thinking their thoughts, and having in some
measure succeeded, by force of sheer community of feeling,
in having as it were got inside their minds, we shall
unconsciously, and without effort, be led to such aspects
of Christ's all-comprehensive truth as they most need.
There will be no shooting over people's heads, if we love
them well enough to understand them. There will be no

toothless generalities, when our interest in men keeps their
actual condition and temptations clear before us. There
will be no flinging fossil doctrines at them from a height,
as if Christ's blessed Gospel were, in another than the
literal sense, " a stone of offence," if we have taken our
place on their level. And without such sympathy, these
and a thousand other weaknesses and faults will certainly
vitiate much of our Christian effort.
Let me not be misunderstood when I speak of adapting
our presentation of the Gospel to the wants of those to
whom we carry it. That general statement may express
the plainest dictate of Christian prudence or the most
dangerous practical error. The one great truth of the
Gospel wants no adaptation by our handling to any soul
of man. It is fitted for all, and demands only plain, loving,
earnest statement. There must be no tampering with cen­
tral verities, nor any diplomatic reserve on the plea of
consulting the needs of the men whom we address. Every
sinful spirit needs the simple Gospel of salvation by Jesus
Christ more than it needs anything else. Nor does adap­
tation mean deferential stretching a point to meet man's
wishes in our presentation of the truth. Their wishes have
to be contravened, that their wants may be met. The
truth which a man or a generation requires most is the
truth which he or they like least; and the true Christian
teacher's adaptation of his message will consist quite as
much in opposing the desires and contradicting the lies, as
in seeking to meet the felt wants of the world. Nauseous
medicines or sharp lancets are adapted to the sick man,
quite as truly as pleasant food and soothing ointment.

50

THE PA TTERN

OF SEP VICE.

[SERM.

But remembering all this, we still have a wide field for
the operation of practical wisdom and loving common
sense, in determining the form of our message and the
manner of our action. And not the least important of
qualifications for solving the problems connected there­
with is cheerful identification of ourselves with the
thoughts and feelings of those whom we would fain draw
to the love of God. Such contact with men will win
their hearts, as well as soften ours. It will make them
willing to hear, as well as us wise to speak. It will enrich
our own lives with wide experience and multiplied interests.
It will lift us out of the enchanted circle which selfishness
draws around us. It will silently proclaim the Lord from
whom we have learnt it. The clasp of the hand will be
precious, even apart from the virtue that may flow from
it, and may be to many a soul burdened with a con­
sciousness of corruption, the dawning of belief in a love
that does not shrink even from its foulness. Let us
preach the Lord's touch as the source of all cleans­
ing. Let us imitate it in our lives, that " if any will
not hear the word, they may without the word be
won."
IV. We have here the true healing power and the
consciousness of wielding it set forth in the Lords
authoritative word.
All the rest of His action was either the spontaneous
expression of His true participation in human sorrow,
or a merciful veiling of His glory that sense-bound eyes
might see it the better. But the word was the utterance

of His will, and that was omnipotent. The hand laid on
the sick, the blind or the deaf was not even the channel
of His power. The bare putting forth of His energywas all-sufficient. In these we see the loving, pitying
man. In this blazes forth, yet more loving, yet more
compassionate, the effulgence of manifest God. There­
fore so often do we read the very syllables with which
His " voice then shook the earth," vibrating through all
the framework of the material universe. Therefore do
the Gospels bid us listen when He rebukes the fever,
and it departs; when He says to the demons, " Go," and
they g o ; when one word louder in its human articulation
than the howling wind hushes the surges ; when " Talitha
cumi" brings back the fair young spirit from dreary
wanderings among the shades of death. Therefore was
it a height of faith not found in Israel when the Gentile
soldier, whose training had taught him the power of
absolute authority, as heathenism had driven him to long
for a man who should speak with the imperial sway of a
god, recognised in His voice an all-commanding power.
From of old,, the very signature of divinity has been
declared to be, " He spake, and it was done; " and He,
the breath of whose lips could set in motion material
changes, is that Eternal Word, by whom all things were
made.
What unlimited consciousness of sovereign dominion
sounds in that imperative from His autocratic lips! It
is spoken in deaf ears, but He knows that it will be
heard. He speaks as the fontal source, not as the
recipient channel of healing. He anticipates no delay,
E

2

52

THE PA TTERN

OF SEP VICE.

[SERM.

no resistance. There is neither effort nor uncertainty
in the curt command. H e is sure that He has power,
and He is sure that the power is His own.
There is no analogy here between us and Him. Alone,
fronting the whole race of man, H e stands—utterer of
a word which none can say after Him, possessor of
unshared might, " and of His fulness do all we receive."
But even from that Divine authority and solitary sovereign
consciousness we may gather lessons not altogether aside
from the purpose of our meeting here to-day. Of His
fulness we have received, and the power of the word on
His lips may teach us that of His word even on ours, as
the victorious certainty with which He spake His will of
healing may remind us of the confidence with which it
becomes us to proclaim His name.
His will was almighty then. It is less mighty or less
loving now ? Does it not gather all the world in the
sweep of its mighty purpose of mercy ? His voice
pierced then into the dull cold ear of death, and has
it become weaker since? His word spoken by Him
was enough to banish the foul spirits that run riot, swine­
like, in the garden of God in man's soul, trampling down
and eating up its flowers and fruitage ; is the word spoken
of Him less potent to cast them out? Were not all the
mighty deeds which He wrought by the breath of His
lips on men's bodies prophecies of the yet mightier which
His Will of love, and the utterance of that Will by
stammering lips, may work on men's souls. Let us not
in our laintheartedness number up our failures, the deaf
that will not hear, the dumb that vyill not speak His

praise, nor unbelievingly say Christ's own word was
mighty, but the word concerning Christ is weak on our
lips. Not s o ; our lips are unclean, and our words are
weak, but His word—the utterance of His loving Will
that men should be saved—is what it always was and
always will be. We have it, brethren, to proclaim. Did
our Master countenance the faithless contrast between
the living force of His word when He dwelt on earth,
and the feebleness of it as He speiks through his
servant? If He did, what did He. mean when He said,
" He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he
do also, and greater works than these shall he do,
because I go unto the Father" ?
And the reflection of Christ's triumphant consciousness
of power should irradiate our spirits as we do His work,
like the gleam from gazing on God's glory which shone
on the lawgiver's stern face while he talked with men.
We have everything to assure us that we cannot fail.
The manifest fitness of the Gospel to be the food of all
souls; the victories of eighteen centuries, which at least
prove that all conditions of society, all classes of civiliza­
tion, all varieties of race, all peculiarities of individual
temperament, all depths of degradation and distances of
alienation, are capable of receiving the word, which, like
corn, can grow in every latitude, and though it be an
exotic everywhere, can everywhere be naturalized ; the
firm promises of unchanging faithfulness, the universalaspect of Christ's work, the prevalence of His continual
intercession, the indwelling of His abiding Spirit, and,
not least, the unerring voice of our own experience of

the power of the truth to bless and save,—all these are
ours. In view of these, what have we to doubt?
Un­
wavering confidence is the only attitude that corresponds
to such certainties. We have a rock to build on ; let us
build on it with rock. Putting fear and hesitancy far
from us, let us gird ourselves with the joyful strength of
assured victory, striking as those who know that conquest
is bound to their standard, and through all the dust of
the field seeing the fair vision of the final triumph. The
work is done before we begin it. " It is finished," was a
clarion blast proclaiming that all was won when all
seemed lost. Weary ages have indeed to roll away
before the great voice from heaven shall declare " I t is
done ;" but all that lies between the two is but the
gradual unfolding and appropriating of the results which
are already secured. The strong man is bound; what
remains is but the spoiling of his house. The head is
bruised ; what remains is but the dying lashing of the
snaky horror's powerless coils. " I send you to reap
that whereon ye bestowed no labour." The tearful
sowing in the stormy winter's day has been done by the
Son of man. For us there remains the joy of harvest—
hot and hard work, indeed, but gladsome too.
Then, however languor and despondency may some­
times tempt us, thinking of slow advancement, and dying
men who fade from the place of the living before the
gradual light has reached their eyes, our duty is plain—
to be sure that the word we carry cannot fail. You
remember the old story, how when Jerusalem was in her
hour of direst need, and the army of Babylon lay around

her battered walls, the prophet was bid to buy " the field
that is in Anathoth, in the country of Benjamin," for a
sign that the transient fury of the invader would be
beaten back, that Israel might again dwell safely in the
land. So with us, the hosts of our king's enemies come
up like a river strong and mighty; but all this world,
held though it be by the usurper, is still " Thy land, O
Immanuel," and over it all Thy peaceful rule shall be
established !
Many things in this day tempt the .witnesses of God to
speak with doubting voice. Angry opposition, contemp­
tuous denial, complacent assumption that a belief in
old-fashioned evangelical truth is, ipso facto, a proof of
mental weakness, abound. Let them not rob us of our
confidence. Shame on us if we let ourselves be frightened
from it by a sarcasm or a laugh ! Do you fall back on
all these grounds for assured reliance to which I have
referred, and make. the good old answer, yours, " Why,
herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence
H e is, and yet—He hath opened mine eyes ? "
Trust the word you have to speak. Speak it and work
for its diffusion as if you did trust it. Do not preach it
as if it were a notion of your own. In so far as it is, it will
share the fate of all human conceptions of Divine realities
—"will have its day, and cease to be." Do not speak
it as if it were some new nostrum for curing the ills of
humanity, which might answer or might not. Speak it as
if it were what it is—the word of God, which liveth and
abideth for ever. Speak it as if you were what you are*
neither its inventors nor its discoverers, but only its mes-

sengers, who have but to " preach the preaching which
He bids " you. And to all the wide-spread questionings
of this day, filmy and air-filling as the gossamers of an
autumn evening, to all the theories of speculation, and
all the panaceas of unbelieving philanthropy, present the
solid certainties of our inmost experience, the yet more
solid certainty of that all-loving name and all-sufficient
work on which these repose. " We know that we are of
God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we
know that the Son of God is come." Then our pro­
clamation, " This is the true God and eternal life," will
not be in vain; and our loving entreaty, " Keep your­
selves from idols," will be heard and yielded to in many
a land.
. The sum of the whole matter is briefly this. The root
of all our efficiency in this great task to which we, un­
worthy, have been called, is in fellowship with Jesus
Christ. " The branch cannot bear fruit of itself; with­
out me ye are nothing." Living near Him, and growing
like Hirn by gazing upon him, His beauty shall pass into
our faces, His tender pity into our hearts, his loving
identification of Himself with men's pains and sins will
fashion our lives; and the word which H e spoke with
authority and assured confidence will be strong when we
speak it with like calmness of certain victory. If the
Charch of Christ will but draw close to its Lord till the
fulness of His life and the gentleness of His pity flow into
heart and limbs, she will then be able to breathe the
life which she has received into the prostrate bulk of a
dead world. Only she must do,- as the meekest of the

prophets did in a like miracle, she must not shrink from
the touch of the cold clay, nor the odour of incipient
corruption, but, lip to lip, and heart to heart, must lay
herself upon the dead, and he will live.
The pattern for our work, dear brethren, is before us
in the Lord's look, His sigh, His touch, His word. If we
take Him for trie example, and Him for the motive, Him
for the strength, Him for the theme, Him for the reward of
our service, we may venture to look to Him as the pro­
phecy of our success, and to be sure, that when our own
faint hearts or an unbelieving world question the wisdom
of our enterprise, or the worth of our efforts, we may answer
as He did, " Go and show again those things which ye do
hear and s e e ; the blind receive their sight, and the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead
are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached
unto them."

SERMON

III.

T H E AWAKING OF ZION*
ISAIAH li. 9.

Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord ; awake, as in
the ancient days, in the generations of old.
ISAIAH lii. 1 .

A w a k e , awake ; p u t on thy strength, O Zion.

" D O T H these verses are, I think,to be regarded as spoken
by one voice, that of the servant of the Lord. His
majestic figure, wrapped in a light veil of obscurity, fills
the eye in all these latter prophecies of Isaiah. It is some­
times clothed with divine power, sometimes girded with
the towel of human weakness, sometimes appearing like
the collective Israel, sometimes plainly a single person.
We have no difficulty in solving the riddle of the
prophecy by the light of history. Our faith knows One
who unites these diverse characteristics, being God and
man, being the Saviour of the body, which is part of
Himself and instinct with His life. If we may suppose
that H e speaks in both verses, then, in the one, as priest
* Preached before the Baptist Missionary Society.

and intercessor, He lifts the prayers of earth to heaven
in His own holy hands—and in the other, as messenger
and Word of God, He brings the answer and command
of heaven to earth on His own authoritative lips—thus
setting forth the deep mystery of His person and double
office as mediator between man and God. But even if we
set aside that thought, the correspondence and relation of
the two passages remain the same. In any case they are
intentionally parallel in form and connected in substance.
The latter is the answer to the former. . The cry of Zion
is responded to by the call of God. The awaking of the
arm of the Lord is followed by the awaking of the
Church. He puts on strength in clothing us with His
might, which becomes ours.
The mere juxtaposition of these verses suggests the
point of view from which I wish to treat them on this
occasion. I hope that the thoughts to which they lead may
help to further that quickened earnestness and expectancy
of blessing, without which Christian work is a toil and a
failure.
We have here a common principle underlying both the
clauses of our text, to which I must first briefly ask your
attention, namely—
I. The occurrence in the Church's history of successive
periods of energy and of languor.
It is freely admitted that such alternation is not the
highest ideal of growth, either in the individual or in the
community. Our Lord's own parables set forth a more
excellent way—the way of uninterrupted increase, whereof

the type is the springing corn, which puts forth " first the
blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear,"
and passes through all the stages from the tender green
spikelets that gle^m over the fields in the spring-tide
to the yellow abundance of autumn, in one unbroken
season of genial months. So would our growth be
best, healthiest, happiest. So might our growth be, if
the mysterious life in the seed met no checks. But, as
a matter of fact, the Church has not thus grown. Rather
at the best, its emblem is to be looked for, not in corn,
but in the forest tree—the very rings in whose trunk tell
of recurring seasons when the sap has risen at the call of
spring, and sunk again before the frowns of winter. I have
not to do now with the causes of this. These will fall to
be considered presently. Nor am I saying that such a
manner of growth is inevitable. I am only pointing out a
fact, capable of easy verification and familiar to us all.
Our years have had summerand winter. The evening and
the morning have completed all the days since the first.
We all know it only too well. In our own hearts we
have known such" times, when some cold clinging mist
wrapped us round and hid all the heaven of God's love
and the starry lights of His truth; when the visible was
the only real, and H e seemed far away and shadowy;
when there was neither confidence in our belief, nor heat
in our love, nor enthusiasm in our service; when the
shackles of conventionalism bound our souls, and the
fetters of the frost imprisoned all their springs. And we
have seen a like palsy smite whole regions and ages of the
Church of God, so that even the sensation of impotence

was dead like all the rest, and the very tradition of
spiritual power had faded away. I need not point to the
signal historical examples of such times in the past.
Remember England a hundred years ago—but what need
to travel so far. May I venture to draw my example
from nearer home, and ask, have we not been in such
an epoch ? I beseech you, think whether the power
which the Gospel preached by us wields on ourselves,
on our churches, on the world, is what Christ meant it
and fitted to exercise.
Why, if we* hold our own in
respect to the material growth of our population, it is
as much as we do. Where is the joyful buoyancy and
expansive power with which the Gospel burst into the
world ? It looks like some stream that leaps from the
hills, and at first hurries from cliff to cliff full of light
and music, but flows slower and more sluggish as it
advances, and at last almost stagnates in its flat marshes.
Here we are with all our machinery, our culture, money,
organizations—and the net result of it all at the year's end
is but a poor handful of ears. " Ye sow much and bring
home little." Well may we take up the wail of the old
Psalm, " We see not our signs. There is no more any
prophet; neither is- there any among us that knoweth
how long—arise, O Lord, plead Thine own cause."
If then there be such recurring seasons of languor, they
must either go on deepening till sleep becomes death, or
they must be broken by a new outburst of vigorous life.
It would be better if we did not need the latter. The
uninterrupted growth would be best; but if that has not
been, then the ending of winter by spring, and the

suppling of the dry branches, and the resumption of the
arrested growth is the next best, and the only alternative
to rotting away.
And it is by such times that the Kingdom of Christ
always has grown. Its history has been one of successive
impulses gradually exhausted, as by friction and gravity,
and mercifully repeated just at the moment when it was
ceasing to advance and had begun to slide downwards.
And in such a manner of progress, the Church's historyhas been in full analogy with that of all other forms of
human association and activity. It is not in religion
alone that there are ''revivals," to use the word of which
some people have such a dread. You see analogous
phenomena in the field of literature, arts, social and
political life. In them all there come times of awak­
ened' interest in long-neglected principles. Truths which
for many years had been left to burn unheeded, save by
a faithful few watchers of the beacon, flame up all at once
the guiding pillars of a nation's march, and a whole
people strike their tents and follow where they lead. A
mysterious quickening thrills through society. A con­
tagion of enthusiasm spreads like fire, fusing all hearts in
one. The air is electric with change. Some great ad­
vance is secured at a stride ; and before and after that
supreme effort are years of comparative quiescence; on
the farther side perhaps of preparation, on the nearer
side possibly of fruition and exhaustion—but slow and
languid compared with the joyous energy of that moment.
One day may be as a thousand years in the history of a
people, and a nation may be born in a day.

So also is the history of the Church. And thank God
it is so, for if it had not been for the dawning of these
times of refreshing, the steady operation of the Church's
worldliness would have killed it long ago.
Surely, dear brethren, we ought to desire such a merci­
ful interruption of the sad continuity of our languor and
decay. The surest sign of its coming would be a wide­
spread desire and expectation of its coming, joined with
a penitent consciousness of our heavy and sinful slumber.
For we believe in a God who never sends mouths but
He sends meat to fill them, and in whose merciful provi­
dence every desire is a prophecy of its own fruition.
This attitude of quickened anticipation, diffusing itself
silently through many hearts, is like the light air that
springs up before sunrise, or like the solemn hush that
holds all nature listening before the voice of the Lord in
the thunder.
And another sign of its approach is the extremity of the
need. " If winter come, can spring be far behind ? " For
He who is always with Zion strikes in with His help when
the want is at its highest. His "right early" is often the
latest moment before destruction. And though we are
all apt to exaggerate the need of the moment and the
severity of our conflict, it certainly does seem that, whether
we regard the languor of the Church or the strength of
our adversaries, succour delayed a little longer would
be succour too late. " The tumult of those that rise up
against Thee increaseth continually. It is time for Thee
to work."
The juxtaposition of these passages suggests for us—

IT. The twofold explanation of these variations.
That bold metaphor of God sleeping and waking is
often found in Scripture, and generally expresses the
contrast between the long years of patient forbearance,
during which evil things and evil men go. on their rebel­
lious road unchecked but by Love, and the dread, moment
when some throne of iniquity, some Babylon cemented by
blood, is smitten to the dust. Such is the original ap­
plication of the expression here. But the contrast may
fairly be widened beyond that specific form of it, and
taken to express any apparent variations in the forthputting of His power The prophet carefully avoids
seeming to suggest that there are changes in God Him­
self. It is not He but His arm, that is to say, His active
energy, that is invoked to awake. The captive Church
prays that the dormant might which could so easily shiver
Her prison house would flame forth into action.
We may, then, see here implied the cause of these
alternations of which we have been speaking on its Divine
side, and then, in the corresponding verse addressed to
the Church, the cause on the human side.
As to the former. It is true that God's arm slumbers,
and is not clothed with power. There are, as a fact,
apparent variations in the energy with which He works
in the Church and in the world. And they are real
variations, not merely apparent. But we have to dis­
tinguish between the power, and what Paul calls " the
might of the power." The one is final, constant, un­
changeable. It does not necessarily follow that the other
is. The rate of operation, so to speak, and the amount

of energy actually brought into play may vary, though the
force remains the same.
It is clear from experience that there are these varia­
tions; and the only question with which we are con­
cerned is, are they mere arbitrary jets and spurts of a
Divine power, sometimes gushing out in full flood, some­
times trickling in painful drops, at the unknown will
of the unseen hand which controls the flow? Is the
" law of the Spirit of Life " at all revealed to us ; or are
the reasons occult, if there be any reasons at all other
than a mere will that it shall be so ? Surely, whilst we
never can know all the depths of His counsels and all the
solemn concourse of reasons which, to speak in man's
language, determine the energy of His manifested power,
H e has left us in no doubt that this is the weightiest
part of the law which it follows—the might with which
God works on the world through His Church varies
according to the Church's receptiveness and faithfulness.
Our second text tells us that if God's arm seems to
slumber, and really does so, it is because Zion sleeps. In
itself that immortal energy knows no variableness. " H e
fainteth not, neither is weary." " The Lord's arm is not
shortened that H e cannot save." " He that keepeth
Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." But H e works
through us ; and we have the solemn and awful power
of checking the might which would flow through u s ; of
restraining and limiting the Holy One of Israel. It
avails nothing that the ocean stretches shoreless to the
horizon; a jar can only hold a jarful.
The receiver's
capacity determines the amount received, and the

receiver's desire determines his capacity. The law has
ever been, " according to your faith be it unto you." God
gives as much as we will, as much as we can hold, as
much as we use, and far more than we deserve. As
long as we will bring our vessels the golden oil will flow,
and after the last is filled, there yet remains more that we
might have had, if we could have held it, and might
have held if we would. " y e are not straitened in Me,
ye are straitened in yourselves."
So, dear brethren, if we have to lament times of torpor
and small success, let us be honest with ourselves, and
recognise that all the blame lies with us. If God's arm
seems to slumber it is because we are asleep. His power
is invariable, and the gospel which is committed to our
trust has lost none of its ancient power, whatsoever men
may say. If there be variations, they cannot be traced to
the Divine element in the Church, which in itself is con­
stant, but altogether to the human, which shifts and fluc­
tuates, as we only too sadly know. The light in the
beacon tower is steady, and the same; but the beam it
throws across the waters sometimes fades to a speck, and
sometimes flames out clear and far across the heaving
waves, according to the position of the glasses and shades
around it. The sun pours out heat as profusely and as
long on the 22nd of December as on Midsummer-day, and
all the difference between the frost and darkness and
glowing brightness and flowering life, is simply owing to
the earth's place in its orbit and angle at which the
unalterable rays fall upon it. The changes are in the ter­
restrial sphere; the heavenly is fixed for ever the same.

May I not venture to point an earnest and solemn
appeal with these truths ? Has there not been poured
over us the spirit of slumber ? Does it not seem as if
an opium sky had been raining soporifics on our heads ?
We have had but little experience of the might of God
amongst us of late years, and we need not wonder at it.
There is no occasion to look far for the reason. You
have only to regard the low ebb to which religious life
has been reduced amongst us to have it all and more
than all accounted for. I fully admit that there has been
plenty of activity, perhaps more than the amount of real
life warrants, not a little liberality, and many virtues.
But how languid and torpid the true Christian life has
been ! how little enthusiasm ! how little depth of com­
munion with God ! how little unworldly elevation of soul!
how little glow of love ! An improvement in social posi­
tion and circumstances, a freer blending with the national
life, a full share of civic and political honours, a higher
culture in our pulpits, fine chapels, and applauding con­
gregations^—are but poor substitutes for what many of us
have lost in racing after them. We have the departed
prophets' mantle, the outward resemblance to the fathers
who have gone, but their fiery zeal has passed to heaven
with them; and softer, weaker men, we stand timidly on
the river's brink, invoking .the Lord God of Elijah, and
too often the flood that obeyed them has no ear for our
feebler voice.
I speak to you, brethren, who are in some sort repre­
sentatives of our churches throughout the land, and you
can tell whether my words are on the whole true or overF

2

68

TITE AWAKING

OF

ZION

[SERM.

strained. We who labour in our great cities, what say
we ? If one of the number may speak for the rest, we
have to acknowledge that commercial prosperity and
business cares, the eagerness after pleasure and the exi­
gencies of political strife, diffusred doubt and wide-spread
artistic and literary culture, are eating the very life out of
thousands in our churches, and lowering their fervour till,
like molten iron cooling in the air, what was once all
glowing with ruddy heat is crusted over with foul black
scoriae ever encroaching on the tiny central warmth.
You from our rural churches, what say you? Have
you not to speak of deepening torpor settling down on
quiet corners, of the passing away of grey heads leav­
ing no successors, of growing difficulties and lessened
power to meet them, that make you sometimes all but
despair ?
I am not flinging indiscriminate censures. I know
there are lights as well as shades in the picture. I am
not flinging censures at all. But I am giving voice to
the confessions of many hearts, that our consciousness
of our blame may be deepened, and we may hasten back
to that dear Lord whom we have left to serve alone, as
His first disciples left Him once to agonise alone under
the gnarled olives in Gethsemane, while they lay sleeping
in the moonlight. Listen to His gentle rebuke, full of
pain and surprised love, " What, could ye not watch with
Me one hour ?" Listen to His warning call, loving as
the kiss with which a mother wakes her child, "Arise, let
us be going"—and let us shake the spirit of slumber
from our limbs, and serve Him as those unsleeping spirits

do, who 1 est not day nor night from vision, and work,
and praise.
III. The beginning of all awaking is the Church's earnest
cry to God.
It is with us as with infants, the first sign of whose
awaking is a cry. The mother's quick ear hears it through
all the household noises, and the poor little troubled
life that woke to a scared consciousness of loneliness and
darkness, is taken up into tender arms, and comforted
and calmed. So, when we dimly perceive how torpid we
have been, and start to find that we have lost our
Father's hand, the first instinct of that waking, which must
needs be partly painful, is to call to Him, whose ear
hears our feeble cry amid the sound of praise like the
voice of many waters, that billows round His throne, *and
whose folding arms keep us as one whom his mother
comforteth. The beginning of all true awaking must
needs be prayer.
For every such stirring of quickened religious life must
needs have in it bitter penitence and pain at the discovery
flashed upon us of the wretched deadness of our past—and, as we gaze like some wakened sleep-walker into the
abyss where another step might have smashed us to atoms,
a shuddering terror seizes us that must cry, " Hold Thou
me up, and I shall be safe." And every such stirring of
quickened life will have in it, too, desire for more of His
grace, and confidence in His sure bestowal of it, which
cannot but breathe itself in prayer.
Nor is Zion's cry to God only the beginning and sign

of all true awaking ; it is also the condition and indis
pensable precursor of all perfecting of recovery frons
spiritual languor.
I have already pointed out 'the relation between the
waking of God and the waking of His Church, from
wh ch that necessarily follows. God's power flows into out
weakness in the measure and on condition of our desires.
We are sometimes told that we err in praying for the
outpouring of His Holy Spirit, because ever since Pente­
cost His Church has had the gift. The objection alleges
an unquestioned fact, but the conclusion drawn from it
rests on an altogether false conception of the manner
of that abiding gift. The Spirit of God, and the power
which comes from Him, are not given as a purse of money
might be put into a man's hand once and for all, but they
are given in a continuous impartation and communication
and are received and retained moment by moment,
according to the energy of our desires and the faithfulness
of our use. As well might we say, Why should I ask for
natural life, I received it half a century ago ? Yes, and
at every moment of that half-century I have continued
to live, not because of a past gift, but because at each
moment God is breathing into my nostrils the breath of
life. So is it with the life which comes from His Spirit.
It is maintained by constant efflux from the fountain of
Life, by constant impartation of His quickening breath.
And as He must continually impart, so must we con­
tinually receive, else we perish. Therefore, brethren,
the first step towards awaking, and the condition of all
true revival in our own souls and in our churches, is this

earnest cry, " Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of
the Lord."
Thank God for the outpouring of a long unwonted
spirit of prayer in many places. It isdike the melting of
the snows in the high Alps, at once the sign of spring
and the cause of filling the stony river beds with flashing
waters, that bring verdure and growth wherever they
come. The winter has been long and hard. We have
all to confess that we have been restraining prayer before
God. Our work has been done with but little sense of
our need of His blessing, with but little ardour of desire
for His power. We have prayed lazily, scarcely believing
that answers would come; we have not watched for the
reply, but have been like some heartless marksman who
draws his bow and does not care to look whether his
arrow strikes the target. These mechanical words, these
conventional petitions, these syllables winged by no real
desire, inspired by no faith, these expressions of devotion,
far too wide for their real contents, which rattle in them
like a dried kernel in a nut, are these prayers ? Is there
any wonder that they have been dispersed in empty air,
and that we have been put to shame before our enemies ?
Brethren in the ministry, do we need to be surprised at
our fruitless work, when we think of our prayerless studies
and of our faithless prayers? Let us remember that
solemn word, " T h e pastors have become brutish, and
have not sought the Lord, therefore they shah not prosper,
and all their flocks shall be scattered." And let us all,
brethren, betake ourselves, with penitence and lowly
consciousness of our sore need, to prayer, earnest and

importunate, believing and persistent, like this heavenpiercing cry which captive Israel sent up from her wearybondage.
Look at the passionate earnestness of it—expressed in
the short, sharp cry, thrice repeated, as from one in
mortal need; and see to it that our drowsy prayers be
like it. Look at the grand confidence with which it
founds itself on the past, recounting the mighty deeds of
ancient days, and looking back, not for despair, but for
joyful confidence on the generations of old; and let our
faint-hearted faith be quickened by the example, to expect
great things of God. The age of miracles is not gone.
The mightiest manifestations of God's power in the spread
of the Gospel in the past remain as patterns for His
future. We have not to look back as from low-lying
plains to the blue peaks on the horizon, across which the
Church's path once lay, and sigh over changed conditions
of the journey. The highest water-mark that the river
in flood has ever reached will be reached and over­
passed again, though to-day the waters may seem to have
hopelessly subsided. Greater triumphs and deliverances
shall crown the future than have signalised the past. Let
our faithful prayer base itself on the prophecies of history
and on the unchangeableness of God.
Think, brethren, of the prayers of Christ. Even He,
whose spirit needed not to be purged from stains or
calmed from excitement, who was ever in His Father's
house w hilst H e was about His Father's business, blend­
ing in one, action and contemplation, had need to pray.
The moments of His life thus marked are very signifir

cant. When He began His ministry, the close of the
first day of toil and wonders saw Him, far from gratitude
and from want, in a desert place in prayer. When He
would send forth His apostles, that great step in advance,
in which lay the germ of so much, was preceded by
solitary prayer. When the fickle crowd desired to make
Him the centre of political revolution, He passed from
their hands and beat back that earliest attempt to
secularize His work, by prayer. When the seventy
brought the first tidinss of mighty works done in His
name, He showed us how to repel the dangers of success,
in that He thanked the Lord of heaven and earth who
had revealed these things to babes. When He stood by
the grave of Lazarus, the voice that waked the dead was
preceded by the voice of prayer, as it ever must be.
When He had said all that He could say to His disciples,
He crowned sll with His wonderful prayer for Himself,
for them, and for us all. When the horror of great
darkness fell upon His soul, the growing agony is marked
by His more fervent prayer, so wondrously compact of
shrinking fear and filial submission. When the cross was
hid in the darkness of eclipse, the only words from the
gloom were words of prayer. When, Godlike, H e dis­
missed His spirit, manlike He commended it to His
Father, and sent the prayer from His dying lips before
Him to herald His coming into the unseen world.
One instance remains, even mere to our presen
purpose than all these—" It came to pass, that Jesu
also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened,
and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like

a dove upon Him." Mighty mystery ! In Him, too,
the Son's desire is connected with the Father's gift, and
the unmeasured possession of the Spirit was an answer
to His prayer.
Then, brethren, let us lift our voices and our hearts.
That which ascends as prayer descends as blessing, like
the vapour that is drawn up by the kiss of the sun to fall
in freshening rain. " Call upon Me, and I will answer
thee, and show thee great and hidden things which
thou knowest not."
IV. The answering callfrom God to Zion.
Our truest prayers are but the echo of God's pro­
mises. God's best answers are the echo of our prayers.
As in two mirrors set opposite to each other, the same
image is repeated over and over again, the reflection of
a reflection, so here, within the prayer, gleams an earlier
promise, within the answer is mirrored the prayer.
And in that reverberation, and giving back to us of our
petition transformed into a command, we are not to see
a dismissal of it as if we had misapprehended our true want.
It is not tantamount to, Do not ask me to put on my
strength, but array yourselves in your own. The very
opposite interpretation is the true one. The prayer of
Zion is heard and answered. God awakes, and clothes
Himself with might. Then, as some warrior king, him­
self roused from sleep and girded with flashing steel, bids
the clarion sound through the grey twilight to summon
the prostrate ranks that lie round his tent, so the sign of
God's awaking and the first act of His conquering might

is this trumpet call—" The night is far spent, the day is
at hand "—" put off the works of darkness," the night gear
that was fit for slumber—"and put on the armour of
light," the mail of purity that gleams and glitters even in
the dim dawn. God's awaking is our awaking. He puts
on strength by making us strong; for His arm works
through us, clothing itself, as it were, with our arm of
flesh, and perfecting itself even in our weakness.
Nor is it to be forgotten that this, like all God's
commands, carries in its heart a promise. That earliest
word of God's is the type of all His latter behests—"Let
there be light"—and the mighty syllables were creative and
self-fulfilling. So ever with Him, to enjoin and to bestow
are one and the same, and His command is His con­
veyance of power. He rouses us by "His summons, He
clothes us with power in the very act of bidding us put
it on. So He answers the Church's cry by stimulating us
to quickened zeal, and making us more conscious of, and
confident in, the strength which, in answer to our cry, He
pours into our limbs.
But the main point which I would insist on for the few
moments that remain to me is the practical discipline
which this Divine summons requires from us.
And first, let us remember that the chief means of
quickened life and strength is deepened communion with
Christ.
As we have been saying, our strength is ours by con­
tinual derivation from Him. It has no independent
existence, any more than a sunbeam could have, severed
from the sun. It is ours only in the sense that it flows

through us, as a river through the land which it enriches.
It is His whilst it is ours, it is ours when we know it to
be His. Then, clearly, the first thing to do must be to
keep the channels free by which it flows into our souls,
and to maintain the connection with the great Fountain
Head unimpaired. Put a dam across the stream, and
the effect will be like the drying up of Jordan before
Israel. " The waters that were above rose up upon an
heap, and the waters that were beneath failed and were
cut off," and the foul oozy bed was disclosed to the
light of day. It is only by constant contact with Christ
that we have any strength to put on.
That communion with Him is no mere idle or passive
thing, but the active employment of our whole nature
with His truth, and with Him whom the truth reveals.
The understanding must be brought into contact with
the principles of His word, the heart must touch and
beat against His heart, the will meekly lay the hand in
His, the conscience ever draw at once its anodyne and
its stimulus from His sacrifice, the passions know His
finger on the reins, and follow led in the silken leash of
love. Then, if I may so say, the prophet's miracle will
be repeated in nobler form, and from Himself, the Life,
thus touching all our being, life will flow into our deadness. " He put his mouth upon his mouth, and his
eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands, and
he stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of
the child waxed warm."
So, dear brethren, all our practical duty is summed up
in that one word, the measure of our obedience to which

is the measure of all our strength—•" Abide in Me, and I
in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,
except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye
abide in Me."
Again, this summons calls us to the faithful use of the
power which, on condition of that communion, we have.
There is no doubt a temptation, in all times like the
present, to look for some new and extraordinary forms of
blessing, and to substitute such expectation for present
work with our present strength. There is nothing new
to look for. There is no need to wait for anything more
than we possess. Remember the homely old proverb,
"You never know what you can do till you try," and
though we are conscious of much unfitness, and would
sometimes gladly wait till our limbs are stronger, let us
brace ourselves for the work, assured that in it strength
will be given to us that equals our desire. There is a
wonderful power in honest work to develop latent
energies and reveal a man to himself. I suppose, in
most cases, nobody is half so much surprised at a great
man's greatest deeds as he is himself. They say that
there is dormant electric energy enough to make a
thunderstorm in a few raindrops, and there is dormant
spiritual force enough in the weakest of us to flash into
beneficent light, and peal notes of awaking into
many a deaf ear. The effort to serve your Lord will
reveal to you strength that you know not.
And it will increase the strength which it brings into
play, as the used muscles grow like whipcord, and the
practised fingers become deft at their task, and every

faculty employed is increased, and every gift wrapped in
a napkin melts like ice folded in a cloth, according to
that solemn law, " To him that hath shall be given, and
from him that hath not shall be taken away even that
which he hath."
Then be sure that to its last particle you are using
the strength you have, ere you complain of not having
enough for your tasks. Take heed of the vagrant expec­
tations that wait for they know not what, and the apparent
prayers that are really substitutes for possible service.
" Why liest thou on thy face ? Speak unto the children
of Israel that they go forward."
The Church's resources are sufficient for the Church's
work, if the resources were used. We are tempted to
doubt it, by reason of our experience of failure and our
consciousness of weakness. We are more than ever
tempted to doubt it to-day, when so many wise men are
telling us that our Christ is a phantom, our God a stream
of tendency, our Gospel a decaying error, our hope for
the world a dream, and our work in the world done. We
stand before our Master with doubtful hearts, and, as
we look along the ranks sitting there on the green grass,
and then at the poor provisions which make all our store,
we are sometimes tempted almost to think that He errs
when He says with that strange calmness of His, " They
need not depart, give ye them to eat."
But go out among the crowds and give confidently
what you have, and you will find that you have enough
and to spare. If ever our stores seem inadequate, it is
because they are reckoned up by sense, which takes

cognizance of the visible, instead of faith which beholds
the real. Certainly five loaves and two small fishes are
not enough, but are not five loaves and two small fishes
and a miracle-working hand behind them, enough ? It
is poor calculation that leaves out Christ from the estimate
of our forces. The weakest man and Jesus to back
him are more than all antagonism, more than sufficient
for all duty. Be not seduced into doubt of your power,
or of your success, by others' sneers, or by your own
faint-heartedness. The confidence of ability is ability.
" Screw your courage to the sticking place, and you will
not fail"—and see to it that you use the resources you
have, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
" Put on thy strength, O Zion."
So, dear brethren, to gather all up in a sentence, let us
confidently look for times of blessing, penitently acknow­
ledge that our own faithlessness has hindered the arm of
the Lord, earnestly beseech Him to come in His rejoicing
strength, and, drawing ever fresh power from constant
communion with our dear Lord, use it to its last drop for
Him.
Then, like the mortal leader of Israel, as he pondered
doubtingly with sunken eyes on the hard task before his
untrained host, we shall look up and be aware of the
presence of the sworded angel, the immortal Captain of
the host of the Lord standing ready to save, " putting on
righteousness as a breastplate, an helmet of salvation
on His head, and clad with zeal as a cloak." From his
lips, which give what they command, comes the call,
" Take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may

8o

THE A WAKING

OF ZION

[SERM. H I .

be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done
all, to stand." Hearkening to His voice, the city of the
strong ones shall be made an heap before our wondering
ranks, and the land open to our conquering march.
Wheresoever we lift up the cry, " Awake, awake, put
on strength, O arm of the Lord," there follows, swift
as the thunderclap on the lightning flash, the rousing
summons, " Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion ;
put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem !" Where­
soever it is obeyed there will follow in due time the
joyful chorus, as in this context, " Sing together, ye waste
places of Jerusalem; the Lord hath made bare His
holy arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends
of the earth have seen the salvation of our God."

SERMON IV.
" T I M E FOR T H E E TO

WORK.*'*

PSALM cxix. 1 2 6 - 8 .
I t is time for Thee, Lord, to work : for they have made void T h y
Law. Therefore I love T h y commandments above gold ; yea,
above fine gold. Therefore I esteem all T h y precepts concerning
all things to be r i g h t ; and I hate every false way.

T F much that we hear be true, a society to circulate Bibles
is a most irrational and wasteful expenditure of energy
and money. We cannot ignore the extent and severity
of the opposition to the very idea of Revelation even if
we would ; we should not if we could. We are told with
some exaggeration—the wish being father to the thought
—that the educated mind of the country has broken with
Christianity,—a statement which is equally remarkable
for its accuracy and for its modesty. But it has a basis
of truth in the widespread disbelief diffused through the
literary and so-called cultivated classes. There is no
need to spend your time in referring at length to facts
which are only too familiar to most of us. Every
sphere of knowledge, every form of literature, is enlisted
* Preached before the National Bible Society of Scotland.
G

in the crusade. Periodicals that lie on all our tables, works
of imagination that your daughters read, newspapers that
go everywhere, are full of it. Poetry, forgetting her
lineage and her sweetness, strains her voice in rhapsodies
of hostility. Science, leaping the hedge beyond which she
at all events is a trespasser,—or, in finer language, " pro­
longing its gaze backwards beyond the boundary of ex­
perimental evidence,"—or, in still plainer terms, guessing,
—affirms that she discerns in matter the promise and
potency of every form of life; or presently, in a devouter
mood, looking on the budding glories of the spring,
declines to profess the creed of Atheism. Learned
criticism demonstrates the impossibility of supernatural
religion. The leader of an influential school leaves behind
him a voice hollow and sad, as from the great darkness,
in which we seem to hear the echoes of a life baffled in
the attempt to harmonize the logical and the spiritual
elements of a large soul : " There may be a God. The
evidence is insufficient for proof. It only amounts to one
of the lower degrees of probability. H e may have given
a revelation of His will. There are grounds sufficient to
remove all antecedent improbability. The question is
wholly one of evidence; but the evidence required has
not been, and cannot be, forthcoming. There is room
to hope for a future life, but theie is no assurance what­
ever. Therefore cultivate in the region of the imagina­
tion merely those hopes which can never become certain­
ties, for they are infinitely precious to mankind."
Ah, brethren, do we not hear in these dreary words the
cry of the immortal hunger of the soul for God, for the

living God? The concessions they make to Christian
apologists are noteworthy, but that unconscious con­
fession of need is the most noteworthy. Surely, as the eye
prophesies light, so the longing of the soul and the
capacity for forming such ideals is the token that He is
for whom heart and flesh do thus yearn. And how
blessed is it to set over against these dreary ghosts that
call themselves hopes, and that pathetic vain attempt to
find refuge in the green fields of the imagination from
the choking dust of the logical arena, the old faithful
words: " This is the record, that God hath given to us
eternal life, and that this life is in His Son " !
But my object in referring to these forms of opinion
was merely to prepare the way for my subsequent obser­
vations ; I have no intention of dealing with any of them
by way of criticism or refutation. This is not the place
nor the audience, nor am I the person, for that task.
But I have thought that it might not be inappropriate to
this occasion if I were to ask you to consider with me,
from these words, the attitude of mind and heart to God's
word which becomes Christian in times of opposition.
The Psalmist was surrounded, as would appear, by
widespread defection from God's law. But instead of
trembling as if the sun were about to expire, he turns
himself to God, and in fellowship with Him sees in all the
antagonism but the premonition that He is about to act
for the vindication of His own work. That confidence
finds expression in the sublime invocation of our text.
Then, with another movement of thought, the contempla­
tion of the departures makes him tighten his own hold
G

2

on the law of the Lord, and the contempt of the gainsayers quicken his love : " Therefore I love," etc. And, as
must needs be the case, that love is the measure of his
abhorrence of the opposite : and because God's command­
ments are so dear to him, therefore he recoils with healthy
hatred from false ways. So, I think, we have a fourfold
representation here of our true attitude in the face of
existing antagonism,—calm confidence in God's work
for His law; earnest prayer, which secures the forthputting of the divine energy : an increased intensity of
cleaving to the word; and a decisive opposition to the
ways which make it void.
I ask your attention to some remarks on each of these
in their order. So, then, we have—

I. Calm confidence that times of antagonism evoke Gods
workfor His word.
Now I daresay that some of you feel that is not the
first thought that should be excited by the opposition
aroundus. " We have no sort of doubt," you may say,
" that God will take care of His own word, if there be
such a thing; but the question that presses is, Have we
it in this book ? Answer that for us, and we will thank
you ; but platitudes about God watching over His truth
are naught. The first thing to do is to meet these argu­
ments and establish the origin of Scripture. Then it will
follow of itself that it will not perish."
But I take leave to think we, as Christians, are not
bound to revise the foundation belief of our lives at the
call of every new antagonist. Life is too short for that.

There is too much work waiting, to suspend our activity
till we have answered each denier. We do not hold our
faith in the word of God, as the winners at a match do
their cups and belts, o 1 condition of wrestling for them
with any challenger. It is a perfectly legitimate position
to say, We hold a ground of certitude, from which none
of this strife of tongues is able to dislodge us. We have
heard Him ourselves, and know that this is the Christ.
The Scriptures which we have received, not without
knowledge of the grounds on which controversialists
defend them, have proved themselves to us by their own
witness. The light is its own proof. We have the experience
of Christ and His law. He has saved our souls; He has
changed our lives. We know in whom we have believed;
and we are neither irrational nor obstinate when we avow
that we will not pretend to suspend these convictions on
the issue of any debate. We decline to dig up the piles
of the bridge that carries us over the abyss because voices
tell us that is rotten. It is shorter and perfectly reason­
able to answer : " Rotten, did you say ? Well, we have tried
it, and it b e a r s ; " which, being translated into less simple
language, is just the assertion of certitude built on facts
and experience which leaves no place for doubt. All the
opposition will be broken into spray against that rock
bulwark: " Thy words were found, and I did eat them,
and they are the joy and rejoicing of my heart."
So I venture to think that, speaking to Christian men
and women, I have a right to speak on the basis of our
common belief, and to encourage them to cherish it not­
withstanding gainsayers. I am not counselling stolid

indifference to the course of modern thought, nor desertion
of the duty of defence. We are not to say, " God will
interfere ; I need do nothing." But the task of con­
troversy is not for all Christians, nor the duty of follow­
ing the flow of opinion. There is plenty of more profit­
able work than that for most of us. The temper which
our text enjoins is for us all; and this calm confidence,
that at the right time God will work for His word, is its
first element.
This confidence rests upon our belief in a divine Provi­
dence that governs the world, and on the observed laws
of its working. It is ever His method to send His suc­
cour after the evil has been developed, and before it has
triumphed. Had it come sooner, the priceless benefits of
struggle, the new perceptions won in controversy of the
many-sided meaning and value of His truth, the vigour
from conflict, the wholesome sense of our weakness, had
all been lost. Had it come later, it had come too late.
So He times His help, in order that we may derive the
greatest possible benefit from both the trial and the aid.
We have all been dealt with so in our personal histories,
whereof the very motto might be, " When I said my foot
slippeth, Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up." The same
law works on the wider platform. The enemy shall be
allowed to pass through the breadth of the land, to
spread dread and sorrow through village and hamlet, to
draw his ranks round Jerusalem, as a man closes his hand
on some insect he would crush. To-morrow, and the as­
sault will be made ; but to-night " the angel of the Lord
went forth and smote the camp ; and when they arose in

the morning," expecting to heir the wild war-cry of the
conquerors as they stormed across the undefended walls,
" they were all dead corpses. " Then, as it would appear,
a psalmist, moved by that mighty victory, cast it into
words, which remain for all generations the law of the di­
vine aid, and imply all that I am urging now : " The Lord
is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; the Lord
shall help her at the dawning of the morning. " True,
we are no judges of the time. Our impatience is ever
outrunning His calm deliberation. An illusion besets us
all that our conflicts with unbelief are the severest the
world has ever seen; and there is a great deal of exag­
geration on both sides at present as to the real extent
and importance of existing antagonism to God's reve
lation. A widespread literature provides so many—I
would not say empty—spaces for any voice to reverbe­
rate in, that both the shouters and the listeners are apt to
fancy the assailants are an army, when they are only
a handful, armed mainly with trumpets and pitchers.
There have been darker days of antagonism than these.
He that believeth shall not make haste. This confidence
in the punctual wisdom of His working involves the other
belief, that if He does not " work," it is because the time
is not yet ripe ; the negations and contradictions have
still an office to fulfil, and no hurt that cannot be repaired
has been done to the faith of the Church or the power of
the word.
Nor can we forecast the manner of His workjng. H e
can call forth from the solitary sheepfolds the defenders
of His word, as has ever been His wont, raising the man

when the hour had come, even as H e sent His Son in the
fulness of time. He can lead science on to deeper truth;
He can quicken His Church into new life; He can guide
the spirit of an age. We believe that the history of the
world is the unfolding of His will, and the course of
opinion guided in its channel by the Voice which the
depths have obeyed from of old. Therefore we wait for
His working, expecting no miracle, prescribing no time,
hurried by no impatience, avoiding no task of defence
or confession; but knowing that, unhasting and unresting
H e will arise when the storm is loudest, and somehow
will say, Peace ! be still. ". Then they who had not
cast away their confidence for any fashion of unbelief that
passeth away will rejoice as they sing, " Lo ! this is our
God ; we have waited for Him, and H e will save us."
This, confidence is confirmed by the history of all the
past assaults on Scripture.
The whole history of the origin, collection, preservation,
transmission, diffusion, and present influence of the Bible
involves so much that is surprising and unique, as to
amount to at least a strong presumption of a divine care.
Among all the remarkable things about the Book, nothing
is more remarkable than that there it is, after all that has
happened. When we think of the gaps and losses in
ancient literature, and the long stormy centuries that lie
between us and its earlier pages, we can faintly estimate
the chances against their preservation. It is strange that
the Jewish race should have so jealously preserved books
which certainly did not flatter national pride, which put
a mortifying explanation on national disasters, which
u

painted them and their fathers in dark colours, which
proclaimed truths they never loved, and breathed a spirit
they never caught. It is stranger still, that in the long
years of dispersion the very vices and limitations of the
people subserved the same end, and that stiff pedantry
and laborious trifling—the poorest form of intellectual
activity—should have guarded the letter of the word, as
the coral insects painfully build up their walls round some
fair island of the Southern Sea. When one thinks of the
great gulf of language between the Old and New Testa­
ments, of the variety of authors, periods, subjects, literary
form, the animosities of Christian and Jew, it is strange
that we have the Book here one, and that all these parts
should blend into unity, unless the source and theme
were one, and One Hand had shaped each, and cared for
the gathering together of all.
It has been demonstrated over and over again to have
no pretensions to a divine revelation ; and yet here it is,
believed by millions, and rooted so firmly in European
language and thought, that no revolution short of a return
to barbarism can abolish it. It has been proved to be a
careless, unauthenticated collection of works of different
periods, styles, and schools of thought, having no unity
but what is given by the bookbinder : and lo ! here it is
still, not disintegrated, much less dissolved. Each age
brings its own destructive criticism to play on it, confess­
ing thereby that its predecessors have effected nothing ;
for, as the Bible says about sacrifices, so we may say about
assaults on Scripture, " If they had done their work, would
they not have ceased to be offered ? " And the effect of

the heaviest artillery that can be brought into position is
as transient as the boom of their report and the puff of
their smoke. Why, who knows anything about the
world's wonders of books that a hundred years ago made
good men's hearts tremble for the ark of God ? You may
find them in dusty rows on the top shelves of great
libraries. But if their names had not occurred in the
pages of Christian apologists, flies in amber, nobody in
this generation would ever have heard of them. And
still more conspicuously is it so with earlier examples of
the same kind. Their work is as hopelessly dead as
they. And the Book seems none the worse for all the
shot—like the rock that a ship fired at all night, taking
it for an enemy, and could not provoke to answer nor
succeed in sinking. Surely some dim suspicion of the
hopelessness of the attempt might creep into the hearts
of men who know what has been. Surely the signal
failure and swift fading away of all former efforts to de­
throne the Bible might lead to the question, " Does it not
lay its deep foundations in the heart of man and the
purpose of God, too deep to be reached by the short
tools of mere criticism, too massive to be overthrown by
all the weight of materialistic science ? " It is with the
Bible as' it was with the apostle, on whose hand, as he
crouched over the newly-lit flame, the viper fastened,
" and he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no
harm." The barbarous people, who changed their
minds after they had looked a great while and saw no
harm come to him, were not altogether wrong, and might
teach a lesson to some modern wise men, if, among

the other facts which they deal with, they would try to
estimate this fact of the continued existence and influence
of Scripture, and the failure thus far of all attempts to
shake its throne or break the sweet influences of its
bands.
Brethren, we, at all events, should learn the lesson of
historical experience. The gospel, and the Book which
is its record, have met with eager, eloquent, learned
antagonists before to-day, and they have passed. Little
more than a generation has sufficed to sweep them to
oblivion. So it will be again. The forms of opinion, the
tendencies of thought, which now seem to some of its
enemies so certain to conquer, will follow these forgotten
precursors into the dim land. May we not see them—
these ancient discrowned kings that ruled over men and
rebelled against Christ, these beliefs that no man now
believes—rising from their shadowy thrones in the under­
world to meet the now living and ruling unbelief, when it,
too, shall have gone down to them ? " All they shall
speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak
as we ? art thou become like unto us ?" Yes, each in
its turn " becomes but a noise " when he " passes the time
appointed"—the time when God arises to do His act
and vindicate His word.
We have here, secondly, Earnest prayer which brings
that divine energy.
The confidence that God will work underlies and gives
energy to the prayer that God would work. The belief
that a given thing is in the' line of the divine purpose

is not a reason for saying, " W e need not pray; God
means to do it," but is a reason for saying on the contrary,
" God means to do i t ; let us pray for it." And this
prayer, based upon the confidence that it is His will, is
the best service that any of us can render to the gospel
in troublous times.
I shall have a word to say presently on the sort of out­
flow of the divine energy which we should principally
expect and desire; but let me first remind you, very
briefly, how the prayers of Christian men do condition—
I had almost said regulate —that outflow.
I need not put this matter on its abstract and metaphy­
sical side. Two facts are enough for my present purpose
—one, a truth of faith, that the actual power wherewith
God works for His word remains ever the same; one, a
truth of observation and experience, that there are
variations in the intensity of its operations and effects in
the world. Wherefore? Surely because of the variations
in the human recipients and organs of the power. Here
at one end is the great fountain, ever brimming. Draw
from it ever so much, it sinks not one hair's-breadth in
its pure basin. Here, on the other side, is an intermittent
flow, sometimes in scanty driblets, sometimes in painful
drops, sometimes more full and free on the pastures of
the wilderness. Wherefore these jerks and spasms ? It
must be something stopping the pipe. Yes, of course.
God's might is ever the same, but our capacity of receiv­
ing and transmitting that might varies, and with it varies
the energy with which that unchanging power is exerted
in the world. Our faith, our earnestness of desire, our

ardour and confidence of prayer, our faithfulness of stew­
ardship and strenuousness of use, measure the amount of
the unmeasured grace which we can receive. So long as
our vessels are brought, the golden oil does not cease to
flow. When they are full, it stays. The principle of
the variation in actual manifestation of the unvarying
might of God is found in the Lord's words : "According
to your faith be it unto you." So, then, we may expect
periods of quickened energy in the forth-putting of the
divine power. And these will correspond to, and be con­
sequent on, the faithful prayers of Christian men. See
to it, brethren, that you keep the channels clear, that the
flow may continue full and increase. Let no mud and
ooze of the world, no big blocks of sin nor subtler ac­
cumulations of small negligences, choke them again.
Above all, by simple, earnest prayer keep your hearts, as
it were wide open to the Sun, and His light will shine on
you, and His grace fructify through you, and His Spirit
will work in you mightily.
The tenor of these remarks presupposes a point on
which I wish to make one or two observations now, viz.
that the manner of the divine working which we should
most earnestly desire in a time of diffused unbelief is the
elevation of Christian souls to a higher spiritual life.
I do not wish to exclude other things, but I believe
that the true antidote to a widespread scepticism is a
quickened Church. We may indeed desire that in other
ways the enemy should be met. We ought to pray that
God would work by sending forth defenders of the truth,
by establishing His Church in the firm faith of disputed

verities, and by all the multitude of ways in which He
can sway the thoughts and tendencies of men. But I
honestly confess that I, for my part, attach but second­
ary importance to controversial defences of the faith.
No doubt they have their office : they may confirm a
waverer; they may establish a believer ; they may show
onlookers that the Christian position is tenable; they
may, in some rare cases of transcendent power, prevent
a heresy from spreading and from descending to another
generation. But often est they are barren of result; and
where they do their work, it is not to be forgotten there
may remain as true a making void of Go i's law by an
evil heart of unbelief as by an understanding cased in the
mail of denial. You may hammer ice on an anvil, or
bray it in a mortar. What then ? It is pounded ice still,
except for the little portion melted by heat of percussion,
and it will soon all congeal again. Melt it in the sun,
and it flows down in sweet water, which mirrors that light
which loosed its bonds of cold. So hammer away at
unbelief with your logical sledge-hammers, and you will
change its shape, perhaps ; but it is none the less unbelief
because you have ground it to powder. It is a mightier
agent that must melt it,—the fire' of God's love, brought
close by a will itself ablaze with the sacred glow.
Therefore, while giving all due honour to other forms
of Christian opposition to the prevailing unbelief, I urge
the cultivation of a quickened spiritual life as by far the
most potent. Does not history bear me out in that view ?
What, for instance, was it that finished the infidelity of
last century ? Whether had Butler's " Analogy " or Chaisles

Wesley's hymns, Paley's " Evidences" or Whitefield's
sermons, most to do with it ? A languid Church breeds
unbelief as surely as a decaying oak fungus. In a condi­
tion of depressed vitality, the seeds of disease, which a
full vigour would shake off, are fatal. Raise the temper­
ature, and you kill the insect germs. A warmer tone of
spiritual life would change the atmosphere which unbelief
needs for its growth. It belongs to the fauna of the
glacial epoch, and when the rigours of that wintry time
begin to melt, and warmer days to set in, the creatures of
the ice have to retreat to arctic wildernesses, and leave a
land no longer suited for their life. A diffused unbelief,
such as we see around us to-day, does not really arise
from the logical basis on which it seems to repose. It
comes from something much deeper,—a certain habit
and set of mind which gives these arguments their force.
For want of a better name, we call it the spirit of the age.
It is the result of very subtle and complicated forces,
which I do not pretend to analyze. It spreads through
society, and forms the congenial soil in which these seeds
of evil, as we believe them to be, take root. Does any­
body suppose that the growth of popular unbelief is owing
to the logical force of certain arguments ? It is in the.
air; a wave of it is passing over us. We are in a condi­
tion in which it becomes epidemic. That is a doctrine
which one influential school of modern disbelievers, at
all events, cannot but admit. What then ? Why, this
—that to change the opinions you must change the at­
mosphere ; or, in other words, the true antagonist of
a diffused scepticism is a quickened Christian life.

Brethren^ if we had been what we ought, would such an
environment have ever been possible as that which pro­
duces this modern unbelief ? Even now, depend upon
it, we shall do more for Christ by catching and exhibiting
more of His spirit than by many arguments—more by
words of prayer to God than by words of reasoning to
men. A higher tone of spiritual life would prove that
the gospel was mighty to mould and ennoble character.
If our own souls were gleaming with the glory of God,
men would believe that we had met more than the
shadow of our own personality in the secret place. If
the fire of faith were bright in us, it would communicate
itself to others, for nothing is so contagious as earnest­
ness. If we believed, and therefore spoke, the accent
of conviction in our tones would carry them deep into
some hearts. If we would trust Christ's cross to stand
firm without our stays, and, arguing less about it, would
seldomer try to prop it, and oftener to point to it, it would
draw men to it. When the power and reality of Scripture
as the revelation of God are questioned, the best answer
in the long-run will be a Church which can adduce itself
as the witness, and can say to the gainsayers : " Why,
herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from
whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes."
Brethren, do you see to it that your life be thus a witness
that you have heard His voice; and make it your con­
tribution to the warfare of this day, that if you do not
bear a weapon, you lift your hands and heart to God.
Moses on the mount helped the struggling ranks below
in their hand-to-hand combat with Amalek. Hezekiah's

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prayer, when he spread the letter of the invader before
the Lord, was more to the purpose than all his munitions
of war. Let your voice rise to heaven like a fountain.
Blessings will fall on earth. " Arise, O Lord, plead
Thine own cause. The tumult of those that rise up
against Thee increaseth continually."
III. We have here, thirdly, as the fitting attitude in
times of widespread unbelief, a love to Gods word made
more fervid by antagonism.
There may be a question what reason for the Psalmist's
love is pointed at in this " therefore." We shall hardly
be satisfied with the slovenly and not very reverent ex­
planation, that the word is introduced, without any par­
ticular meaning, because it begins with the initial letter
proper to this section; nor does it seem enough to
suppose a mere general reference to the excellences of
the law of the Lord, which are the theme of the whole
psalm. Such an interpretation blunts the sharp edge of
the thought, and has nothing in its favour but the general
want of connection between the separate verses. There
are, however, one or two other instances where a thought
is pursued through more than one verse, and the usual
mere juxtaposition gives place to an interlocking, so that
the construction is not unexampled. It is most natural
to take the plain meaning of the words, and to suppose
that when the Psalmist said, " They have made void Thy
law, therefore I love Thy commandments," he meant,
" The prevailing oppo>ition is the reason why I, for mv
part, grasp Thy law more strongly." The hostility of
u

others evokes my warmer love. The thought, so under­
stood, is definite, true, and important, and so I venture
to construe it, and enforce it as containing a lesson for
the day.
And here I would first observe, that I desire not to be
understood as urging the substitution of feeling for reason,
nor as trying to enlist passion in a crusade against the
opponent's logic. Still less do I desire to counsel the
exaggeration of opinions because they are denied—that
besetting danger of all controversy.
But, surely, the emotions have a place and an office, if
not indeed in the search for, and the submission to, the
truth of God, yet in the defence and adherence to that
truth when found. The heart may not be the organ for
the investigation and apprehension of truth, though it has
a part to play even there ; but the tenacity with which I
cleave to it, when apprehended, is far more an affair of the
will than of the understanding—it is the heart's love
steadying the mind, and holding it fixed to the rock. And
love has a place in the defence of the truth. It gives
weight to blows, and wings to the arrows. It makes
arguments to be wrought in fire rather than in frost. It
lights the enthusiasm which cannot despair, the diligence
that will not weary, the fervour that often goes farther to
sway other minds than the sharpest dialectics-of a pas­
sionless understanding. There are causes in which an
unimpassioned advocacy is worse than silence; and this
is one of them. The word of the living God, which has
saved our souls and brought to us all that makes our
natures rich and strong, and all that peoples the great

darkness with fair hopes solid as certainties, demands and
deserves fervour in its soldiers, and loyal love in its
subjects.
And while it is weakness to over-emphasise our beliefs
merely because they are denied, and one of the saddest
issues of controversy, that both sides are apt to be hurried
into exaggerated statements which calmer thoughts would
repudiate; on the other hand, there is a legitimate pro­
minence which ought to be given to a truth precisely
because it is denied. The time to underline and accen­
tuate strongly our convictions is, when society is slipping
away from them, provided it be done without petulance,
passion, or the falsehood of extremes.
If ever there was a period when such general consider­
ations as these had a practical application, this is the time.
Would that all such as my voice reaches now would take
these grand words for theirs : " They make void Thy law,
therefore I love Thy commandments above gold; yea,
above fine gold ! "
Such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the
natural instinct oj loyal and chivalrous love. If your
mother's name were defiled, would not your heart bound
to her defence ? When a prince is a dethroned exile, his
throne is fixed deeper in the hearts of his adherents
" though his back be at the wall" and common souls
become heroes because their devotion has been height­
ened to sublimity of self-sacrifice by a nation's rebellion.
And when so many voices are proclaiming that God has
never spoken to men, that our thoughts of His Book are
dreams, and its long empire over men's spirits a waning
H

2

tyranny, does cool indifference become us ? Will not
fervour be sobriety, and the glowing emotion of our whole
nature our reasonable service ?
Such increase of affection because of gainsayers is the
fitting end and main blessing of the controversy which
is being waged. We never fully hold our treasures till
we have grasi e 1 them hard, lest they should be plucked
from us. No truth is established till it has been denied
and has survived. Antagonism to the word of God
should have, and will have, to those who use it rightly, a:
blessing in its train, in bringing out yet more of the preciousness and manyfoldness, the all-sufficiency and the
universality of the Book. " The more 'tis shook, the more
it shines." The fiercer the blast, the firmer our confidence
in the inexpugnable solidity of that tower of strength
that stands four square to every wind that blows. " The
word of the Lord is tried, therefore Thy servant loveth it."
Such increase of attachment to the word of God
because of gainsayers, is the instinct of self-preservation.
The sight of so many making void the law makes a man
bethink himself of what his own standing is. We, as they,
are the children of the age. The tendencies to which they
have yielded operate on us, too, and our only strength is,
" Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe." The present
condition of opinion remands us-all to our foundations,
and should teach us that nothing but firm adherence to
God revealed in His word, and to the word which reveals
God, will prevent us, too, from drifting away to shoreless,
solitary seas of doubt, barren as the foam, and changeful
as the crumbling, restless wave.

Such strength of affection in the presence of diffused
doubt is not to be won without an effort. All our
Churches afford us but too many examples of men and
women who have lost the warmth of their first love, if not
their love itself, for no better reason than because so
many others have lost it. The effect of popular unbelief
stretches far beyond those who are directly affected by its
arguments, or avowedly adopt its conclusions. It is hard
to hold by a creed which so many influential voices tell
you it is a sign of folly, and being behind the age to
believe.
The consciousness that Christian truth is
denied, makes some of you falter in its profession, and
fancy that it is less certain simply because it is gainsaid.
The mist wraps you in its folds, and it is difficult to keep
warm in it, or to believe that love and sunshine are above
it all the same. " Because iniquity shall abound, the love
of many shall wax cold."
Therefore, brethren, do you consciously endeavour that
the tempest shall make you tighten your hold on Christ
and His word. He appeals to us, too, with that most
pathetic question, in which yearning for our love and
sorrow over the departed disciples blend so wondrously,
as if He cast Himself on our loyalty: " Will ye also go
away?" Let us answer, not with the self-confidence
that was so signally put to shame : " Though all should
forsake Thee, yet will not I " ; but with the resolve that
draws its firmness from His fulness and from our know­
ledge of the power of His truth : " Lord, to whom shall
we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

IV. And, lastly, we have here, as the final trait in the
temper which becomes such times, healthy opposition to
the ways which make void the word of the Lord.
That is the Psalmist's last movement of feeling, and
you see that it comes second, not first, in the order of his
emotions. It is the consequence of his love, the recoil of
his heart from the practices and theories which contra­
dicted God's law.
Now, far be it from me to say a word which should fan
the embers of the odium theologicum into a blaze against
either men or opinions. But there is a truth involved
which seems to be in danger of being forgotten at present,
and that to the detriment of large interests as well as of
the forgetters. The correlative of a hearty love for any
principle or belief is—we may as well use the obnoxious
word—a healthy hatred for its denial and contradiction.
They are but two aspects of one thing, like that pillar of
old which, in its single substance, was a cloud and dark­
ness to the foes, and gave light by night to the friends,
of Him who dwelt in it. Nay, they are but two names
for the very same thing viewed in the very same motion,
which is love as it yearns towards and cleaves to its
treasure; and hatred, as by the identical same act it
recoils and withdraws from the opposite: " He will
hold to the one, and therefore and therein despise the
other."
Much popular teaching as to Christian truth seems to
me to ignore this plain principle, and to be working harm,
especially among our younger cultivated men and women,
whom it charms by an appearance of liberality, which, in

their view, contrasts very favourably with the narrowness
of us sectarians. I am free to admit that in our zeal
about small matters (and in a certain " provincialism,", so
to speak, which characterised the type of English Christi­
anity till within a recent period) we needed, and still
need, the lesson, and I will thankfully accept the rebuke
that reminds me of what I ever tend to forget, that the
golden rod, wherewith the divine Builder measures from
jewel to jewel in the walls of the New Jerusalem, takes
in wider spaces than we have meted with our lines. But
that is a very different matter from the tone which
vitiates and weakens so much modern adherence to
Christ's Gospel and Christ's Church. The old principle,
" i n essential unity, in non-essential liberty," made no
attempt to determine what belonged to these two classes,
and in practice their bounds may often have been
wrongly set, so as to include many of the latter among
the former ; but it at all events recognised the distinction
as the basis of its next clause, " in all things charity."
But now-a-days, to listen to some liberal teachers, one
would think that nothing was necessary, except the great
sacred principle, that nothing is necessary; and that
charity could not exist, unless that distinction were
effaced.
I pray you, and if I may venture so far, I would
especially pray my younger hearers, to take note, that
however fair this way of looking at varying forms of
Christian opinion may be, it really reposes on a basis
which they will surely think twice before accepting, the
denial that there is such a thing as intellectual certitude

in religion which can be cast into definite propositions.
If there be any truth at all, to confess it is to den)'* its
opposite, to cleave to this is to reject that, to love the
one is to hate the other. I fear, I know, that there are
many minds among us who began with simply catching
this tone of toleiance, and who have been insensibly
borne along to an enfeebled belief that there is such a
thing as religious truth at all, and that that truth lies in
the word of God. Dear friends, let me beseech you to
take heed le*t, while you are only conscious of your
hearts expanding with the genial glow of liberality, by
little and little you lose your power of discerning between
things that differ, your sense of the worth of the Scrip­
ture as the depository of divine truth, and from your
slack hand the hem of the vesture in which is healing
should fall away.
As broad a liberality as you please within the limits
that are laid down by the very nature of the case.
" These things are written that ye might believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye
might have life through His name." Wheresoever that
record is accepted, that divine name confessed, that faith
exercised, and that life possessed, there, with all diver­
sities, own a brother. Wheresoever these things are not,
loyalty to your Lord demands that the strength of your
love for His word should be manifested in the strength of
your- recoil from that which makes it void. " I love Thy
commandments, and I hate every false way."
I am much mistaken if times are not rapidly coming
on us when a decisive election of His side will be forced

on every man. The old antagonists will be face to face
once more. Compromises and hesitations will not serve.
The country between the opposing forces will be stript of
every spot that might serve as cover for neutrals. On the
one side a mighty host, its right the Pharisees of
ecclesiasticism and ritual, with their banner of authority,
making void the law of God by their tradition; its left,
and never far away from their opposites on the right,
with whom they are strangely leagued, working into each
other's hands, the Sadducees denying angel and spirit,
with their war-cry of unfettered freedom and scientific
evidence; and in the centre, far rolling, innumerable, the
dusky hosts of mere animalism, and worldliness, and self,
making void the law by their sheer godlessness. And on
the other side, " He was clothed with a vesture dipped in
blood, and His name is called The Word of God, and
they th;;t were with Him were called, and chosen, and
faithful." The issue is certain from of old. Do you see
to it that you are of those who were valiant for the truth
upon the earth.
Let not the contradiction of many move you from your
faith; let it lift your eyes to the hills from whence cometh
our help. Let it open your desires in prayer to Him who
keeps His own word, that it may keep His Church and
bless the world. Let it kindle into fervent enthusiasm,
which is calm sobriety, your love for that wore}. Let it
make decisive your rejection of all that opposes. Drift­
wood may swim with the stream; the ship that holds to
her anchor swings the other way. Send that word far
and wide. It is its ow n best evidence. 'It will correct
r

all the misrepresentation of its foes, and supplement the
inadequate defences of its friends. Amid all the changes
of attacks that have their day and cease to be, amid all
the changes of our representations of its endless fulness, it
will live. Schools of thought that assail and defend it pass,
but it abides. Of both enemy and friend it is true, " The
grass withereth, and the flower thereof passeth away."
How antique and ineffectual the pages of the past gene­
rations of either are, compared with the ever-fresh youth
of the Bible, which, like the angels, is the youngest and
is the oldest of books. The worl 1 can never lose i t ;
and notwithstanding all assaults, we may rest upon His
assurance, whose command is prophecy, when He says,
" Write it before them in a table, and note it in a book,
that it may be for the time to comefor ever and ever?

SERMON V.
THE

EXHORTATION

OF

BARNABAS *

A C T S xi. 2 3 .

W h o , when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and
exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart' they would cleave
unto the Lord.

" O E F O R E coming to the mere immediate consideration
of these words, I may be allowed a brief reference
to the innovation on the customary arrangements of your
meetings, which gives me the honour of addressing you
here. This is, I believe, the first occasion on which a
member of another communion has preached before the
Congregational Union. And though I unfeignedly wish
that the task had fallen to some more worthy representa­
tive of other Churches, I rejoice that you have set us all
the example of thus recognising, in your most denomina­
tional gatherings, your nearest ecclesiastical kindred. In
our several localities and labour side by side, and on the
whole, shoulder to shoulder, why should we ignore one
another in our respective theories, conferences, and
* Preached before the Congregational Union of England and
Wales.

general assemblies, even if for the present we may not
add " convocations," to the list? May your example be
imitated ! It does not become me to speak here of my
own sense of the honour which you have done me, or of
the extreme gratification with which I accept the re­
sponsible duty of addressing an audience, including many
from whom I would more gladly learn—a gratification
shaded only by the feeling of my inability to speak words
level with the occasion. And, now, let me turn to my text.
The first purely heathen converts had been brought into
the Church by the nameless men cf Cyprus and Cyrene,
private persons with no office or commission to preach,
who, in simple obedience to the instincts of a Christian
heart, leaped the barrier which seemed impassable to the
Church in Jerusalem, and solved the problem over which
apostles were hesitating. Barnabas is sent down to see
into this surprising new phenomenon, and his mission,
though, probably, not hostile, was, at all events, one of
inquiry and doubt. But like a true man, he yielded to
fact, and widened his theory to suit them. He saw the
token of Christian life in these Gentile converts, and
that compelled him to admit that the Church was wider
than some of his friends in Jerusalem thought. A preg­
nant lesson for modern theorists who, on one ground or
another of doctrine or of orders, narrow the great con­
ception of Christ's Church ! Can you see " t h e grace of
God in the people"? Then they are in the Church, what
ever becomes of your theories, and the sooner you let them
out so as to fit the facts, the better for you and for them.
Satisfied as to their true Christian character, he sets

himself to help them to grow. Now, remember how
recently they had been converted; how. from their Gentile
origin, they can have had next to no systematic instruction,
how the taint of heathen morals, such as were common in
that luxurious corrupt Antioch, must have clung to them;
how unformed must have been their loose Church organi­
sation—and remembering all this, think of this one
exhortation as summing up all what Barnabas had to
say to them. H e does not say, Do this, or Believe that,
or Organise the other; but he says, Stick to Jesus Christ
the Lord. On this commandment hangs all the law; it
is the one all-inclusive summary of the duties of the
Christian life.
So, brethren and fathers, I venture to take these words
now, as containing large lessons for us all, appropriate at
all times, and especially in a sermon on such an occasion
as the present.
We may deal with the thoughts suggested by these
words very simply, just looking at the points as they lie
—what he saw, what he felt, what he said.

I. What He saw.
The grace of God here has very probably the specific
meaning of the miracle-working gift of the Holy Spirit.
That is rendered probable by the analogy of other in­
stances recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, such as
Peter's experience at Caesarea, where all his hesitations
and reluctance were swept away when " the Holy Ghost
fell on them as on us at the beginning, and they spake
with tongues." So, what convinced Barnabas that these

uncircumcised Gentiles were Christians like himself, mayhave been their equal possession of the visible and audible
effects of that gift of God. But the language does not
compel this interpretation; and the absence of all dis­
tinct reference to these extraordinary powers as existing,
there, among the new converts at Antioch may be intended
to mark a difference in the nature of the evidence. At
any rate, the possibly intentional generality of the expres­
sion is significant and fairly points to an extension of the
principle involved much beyond the limits of miraculous
powers. There are other ways by which the grace of
God may be seen and heard, thank God ! than by speak­
ing with tongues and working miracles; and the first
lesson of our text is that wherever that grace is made
visible by its appropriate manifestations there we are to
recognise a brother.
Augustine said, " where Christ is there is the Church,"
and that is true, but vague; for the question still remains,
" and where is Christ?" The only satisfying answer is,
Christ is wherever Christlike men manifest a life drawn
from, and kindred with, His life. And so the true form of
the dictum for practical purposes comes to be : Where
the grace of Christ is visible, there is the Church.
That great truth is sinned against and denied in many
ways. Most chiefly, perhaps, by the successors in modern
garb of the more Jewish portion of that Church at
Jerusalem who sent Barnabas to Antioch. They had no
objection to Gentiles entering the Church, but they must
come in by the way of circumcision ; they quite believed
that it was Christ who saved, and His grace which

sanctified, but they thought that His grace would only
flow in a given channel; and so their modern repre­
sentatives, who exalt sacraments, and consequently priests,
to the same place as the Judaizers in the early Church
did the rite of the old Covenant. Such teachers have
much to say about the notes of the Church, and have
elaborated a complicated system of identification by
which you may know the genuine article, and unmask
impostors. The attempt is about as wise as to try to
measure a network fine enough to keep back a stream.
The water will flow through the closest meshes, and when
Christ pours out the Spirit He is apt to do it in utter
disregard of notes of the Church, and of channels of
sacramental grace.
We Congregationalists, who have no orders, no sacra­
ments, no apostolic succession; who in order not to break
loose from Christ and conscience have had to break
loose from " Catholic tradition," and have been driven to
separation by the true schismatics, who have insisted on
another bond of Church unity than union to Christ, are
denied now-a-days a place in His Church.
The true answers to all that arrogant assumption and
narrow pedantry which confines the free flow of the
water of life to the conduits of sacraments and orders,
and will only allow the wind that bloweth where it listeth
to make music in the pipes of their organs, is simply the
homely one which shivered a corresponding theory to
atone in the fair open mind of Barnabas.
The Spirit of Christ at work in men's hearts, making
them pure and gentle, simple and unworldly, refining

their characters, elevating their aims, toning their whole
being into accord with the music of His life, is the true
proof that men are Christians, and that communities of
such men are Churches of His. Mysterious efficacy
is claimed for Christian ordinances. Well, the ques­
tion is a fair one. Is the type of Christian character
produced within these sacred limits which we are hope
lessly outside conspicuously higher and' more manifestly
Christlike than that nourished by no sacraments, and
grown not under glass, but in the unsheltered open ?
Has not God set His seal on these communities, to which
we belong? With many faults for which we have to be,
and are, humble before Him, we can point to the
lineaments of the family likeness, and say " Are they
Hebrews? so are we. Are they Israelites? so are we.
Are they the seed of Abraham ? so are we."
Once get that truth wrought into men's minds that the
true test of Christianity is the visible presence of a grace
in character which is evidently God's, and whole moun­
tains of prejudice and error melt away. We are just as
much in danger of narrowing the Church in accordance
with our narrowness as any " sacramentarian " of them all.
We are tempted to think that no good thing can grow up
under the baleful shadow of that tree, a sacerdotal Christi-"
anity. We are tempted to think that all the good people
are dissenters, just as Churchmen are to think that nobody
can be a Christian who prays, without a prayer-book.
Our own type of denominational character—and there is
such a thing—comes to be accepted by us as the all but
exclusive ideal of a devout m a n ; and we have not

imagination enough to conceive, nor charity enough to
believe in, the goodness which does not speak our dialect,
nor see with our eyes. Dogmatical narrowness has
built as high walls as ceremonial Christianity round the
fold of Christ. And the one deliverance for us all from
the transformed selfishness, which has so much to do
with shaping all these wretched narrow theories of the
Church, is to do as this man did—open our eyes with
sympathetic eagerness to see God's grace in many an
unexpected place, and square our theories with His
dealings.
It used to be an axiom that there was no life in the
sea beyond a certain limit of a few hundred feet. It was
learnedly and conclusively demonstrated that pressure
and absence of light, and I know not what beside, made
life at greater depths impossible. It was proved that in
such conditions creatures could not live. And then
when that was settled, " The Challenger " put down her
dredge five miles, and brought up healthy and goodsiztd living things, with eyes in their heads, from that
enormous depth. So, then, the savant had to ask, how
can there be life ? instead of asserting there cannot
b e ; and, no doubt, the answer will be forthcoming
some day.
We have all been too much accustomed to draw arbitrary
limits to the diffusion of the life of Christ among men.
Let us rather rejoice when we see forms of beauty, which
bear the mark of His hand, drawn from depths that we
deemed waste, and thankfully confess that the bounds of
our expectation, and the framework of our institutions,
I

do not confine the breadth of His working, nor the
sweep of His grace.

II. What he felt—he " was glad?
It was a triumph of Christian principle to recognise the
grace of God under new forms, and in so strange a
place. It was a still greater triumph to hail it with re­
joicing. One need not have wondered if the acknow­
ledgement of a fact, dead in the teeth of all his prejudices,
and seemingly destructive of some profound convictions,
had been somewhat grudging. Even a good, true man
might have been bewildered and reluctant to let go so
much as was involved in the admission—" Then hath God
granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto life,"—and
might have been pardoned if he had not been able to do
more than acquiesce and hold his peace. We are scarcely
just to these early Jewish Christians when we wonder at
their hesitation on this matter, and are apt to forget the
enormous strength of the prejudices and sacred con­
viction which they had to overcome. Hence the context
seems to consider that the quick recognition of their
Christian character on the part of Barnabas, and his glad­
ness at the discovery, need explanation, and so it adds,
with special reference to these, as it would seem, "for he
was a good man full of the Holy Ghost and of faith," as if
nothing short of such characteristics could have sufficiently
emancipated him from the narrowness that would have
refused to discern the good, or the bitterness that would
have been offended at it.
So, dear brethren, we may well test ourselves with this

question : Does the discovery of the working of the grace
of God outside the limits of our own Churches and com­
munions excite a quick spontaneous emotion of gladness
in our hearts ? It may upset some of our theories; it
may teach us that things which we thought very impor­
tant, distinctive principles and the like, are not altogether
as precious as we thought them; it may require us to give
up some pleasant ideas of our superiority, and of the
necessary conformity of all good people to our type. Are
we willing to let them all go, and without a twinge of
envy or a hanging back from prejudice, to welcome the
discovery that God fulfils Himself in many ways ? Have
we schooled ourselves to say honestly, " Therein I do
rejoice, yea, and will rejoice " ?
There is much to overcome if we would know this
Christlike gladness. The good and the bad in us may
both oppose it. The natural deeper interest in the wellbeing of the Churches of our own faith and order, the
legitimate ties which unite us with these, our conscientious
convictions, our friendships, the esprit de corps born of
fighting shoulder to shoulder, will, of course, make our
sympathies flow most quickly and deeply in denomina­
tional channels. And then come in abundance of
less worthy motives, some altogether bad and some
the exaggeration of what is good, and we get swallowed
up in our own individual work, or in that of our " denomi­
nation/' and have but a very tepid joy in anybody else's
prosperity.
In almost every town of England, your Churches, and
those to which I belong, with Presbyterians and Wesleyans,
1

2

stand side by side. . The conditions of our work make
some rivalry inevitable, and none of us, I suppose, object
to that. It helps to keep us all diligent: a sturdy adherence
to our several ''distinctive principles, and an occasional
hard blow in fair fight on their behalf we shall all insist
upon. Our brotherhood is all the more real for frank
speech, and " the animated no " is an essential in all inter­
course which is not stagnant or mawkish. There is much
true fellowship and much good feeling among all these.
But we want far more of an honest rejoicing in each
other's success, a quicker and truer manly sympathy with
each other's work, a fuller consciousness of our solidarity
in Christ, and a clearer exhibition of it before the
world.
And on a wider view, as our eyes travel over the wide
field of Christendom, and our memories go back over
the long ages of the story of the Church, let gladness,
and not wonder or reluctance, be the temper with which
we see the graces of Christian character lifting their
meek blossoms in corners strange to us, and breathing
their fragrance over the pastures of the wilderness. In
many a cloister, in many a hermit's cell, from amidst the
smoke of incense, through the dust of controversies, we
should see, and be glad to see, faces bright with the
radiance caught from Christ. Let us set a jealous watch
over our hearts that self-absorption, or denominationalism, or envy do not make the sight a pain instead of
a joy; and let us remember that the eye salve which
will purge our dim sight to behold the grace of God in
all its forms is that grace itself, which ever recognises its
,,

own kindred, and lives in the gladness of charity, and
the joy of beholding a brother's good. If we are to have
eyes to know the grace of God when we see it, and a
heart to rejoice when we know it, we must get them
as Barnabas got his, and be good men, because we are
full of the Holy Ghost, and full of the Holy Ghost be­
cause we are full of faith.

III. What he said: he exhortei them all, that with
purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.
The first thing that strikes one about this all-sufficient
directory for Christian life is the emphasis with which
it sets forth " the Lord " as the one object to be grasped
and held. The sum of all objective Religion is Christ—
the sum of all subjective Religion is cleaving to Him. A
living person to be laid hold of, and a personal relation to
that person, such is the conception of Religion, whether
considered as revelation or as inward life, which under­
lies this exhortation. Whether we listen to His own
words about Himself, and mark the altogether unpre­
cedented way in which He was His own theme, and the
unique decisiveness and plainness with which He puts His
own personality before us as the Incarnate Truth, the
pattern for all human conduct, the refuge and the rest for
the world of weary ones; or whether we give ear to the
teaching of His apostles; from whatever point of view we
approach Christianity, it all resolves itself into the person
of Jesus Christ. He is the Revelation of God ; theology
properly so called is but the formulating of the facts
which He gives u s ; and for the modern world the alter-

native is, Christ the manifested God, or no God at all,
other than the shadow of. a name. He is the perfect
exemplar-'of humanity! The law of life and the power
to fulfil the law are both in H i m ; and the superiority of
Christian morality consists not in this or that isolated
precept, but in the embodiment of all goodness in His
life, and in the new motive which He supplies for keep­
ing the commandment. Wrenched away from Him,
Christian morality has no being. He is the sacrifice for
the world, the salvation of which flows from what He
does, and not merely from what H e taught, or was. His
personality is the foundation of His work, and the gospel
of forgiveness and reconciliation is all contained in the
name of Jesus.
There is a constant tendency to separate the results of
Christ's life and death, whether considered as revelation,
ethics, or atonement, from Him, and unconsciously to
make these the sum of our Religion, and the object of our
faith. Especially is this the case in times of restless
thought and eager canvassing of the very foundations of re­
ligious belief like the present. Therefore it is wholesome
for us all to be brought back to the pregnant simplicity of
the thought which underlies this text, and to mark how
vividly these early Christians apprehended a living Lord
as the sum and substance of all which they had to grasp.
There is a whole world between the man to whom
God's revelation consists in certain doctrines given to us
by Jesus Christ, and the man to whom it consists in that
Christ Himself. Grasping a living person is not the
same as accepting a proposition. True, the propositions

are about Him, and we do not know Him without them.
But equally true, we need to be reminded that He is our
Saviour and not they, and that God has revealed Himself
to us not in words and sentences but in a life.
For, alas ! the doctrinal element has overborne the
personal among all Churches and all schools of thought,
and in the necessary process of formulating and systematising the riches which are in Jesus, we are all apt to
confound the creeds with the Christ, and so to manipulate
Christianity until, instead of being the revelation of a
person and a gospel, it has become a system of divinity.
Simple, devout souls have to complain that they cannot
find even a dead Christ, to say nothing of a living one,
for the theologians have taken away their Lord, and they
know not where they have laid Him.
It is, therefore, to be reckoned as a distinct gain that
one result of the course of the more recent thought, both
among friends and foes, has been to make all men feel
more than before, that all revelation is contained in the
living person of Jesus Christ. So did the Church believe
before creeds were. So it is coming to feel again with a
consciousness enriched and defined by the whole body of
doctrine, which has flowed from Him during all the ages.
That solemn, gracious figure rises day by day more clearly
before men, whether they love Him or no, as the vital
centre of this great whole of doctrines, laws, institutions,
which we call Christianity. Round the story of His life the
final struggle is to be waged. The foe feels that, so long as
that remains, all other victories count for nothing. We
feel that if that goes, there is nothing to keep. The

principles and the precepts will perish alike, as the fair
palace of the old legend, that crumbled to dust when its
builder died. But so long as H e stands before mankind
as H e is painted in the Gospel, it will endure. If all
else were annihilated, Churches, creeds and all, leave us
these four gospels, and all else would be evolved again.
The world knows now, and the Church has always known,
though it has not always been true to the significance of
the fact, that Jesus Christ is Christianity, and that because
H e lives, it will live also.
And consequently the sum of all personal religion is
this simple act described here as cleaving to Him.
Need I do more than refer to the rich variety of symbols
and forms of expression under which that thought is put
alike by the Master and by ftis servants ? Deepest of all
are His own great words, of which our text is but a feeble
echo, " Abide in Me, and I in you." Fairest of all is this
lovely emblem of the vine, setting forth the sweet mystery
of our union with Him. Far as it is from the outmost
pliant tendril to the root, one life passes to the very ex­
tremities, and every cluster swells and reddens and
mellows because of its mysterious flow. So also is Christ.
We remember how often the invitation flowed from His
lips, Come unto M e ; how He was wont to beckon men
away from self and the world with the great command,
Follow M e ; how H e explained the secret of all true life to
consist in eating Him. We may recall, too, the emphasis
and perpetual reiteration with which Paul speaks of being
" in Jesus " as the condition of all blessedness, power, and
righteousness; and the emblems which he so often

employs of the building bound into a whole on the
foundation from which it derives its stability, of the body
compacted and organised into a whole by the head from
which it derives its life.
We begin to be Christians, as this context tells us,
when we " turn to the Lord." We continue to be Chris­
tians, as Barnabas reminded these ignorant beginners,
by " cleaving to the Lord." Seeing, then, that our great
task is to preserve that which we have as the very founda­
tion of our Christian life, clearly the truest method of so
keeping it will be the constant repetition of the act by
which we got it at first. In other words, faith joined us
to Christ, and continuously reiterated acts of faith keep
us united to Him. So, if I may venture, fathers and
brethren, to cast my words into the form of exhortation,
even to such an audience as the present, I would earnestly

say, Let us cleave to Christ by continual renewal of our
first faith in Him.
The longest line may be conceived of as produced
simply by the motion of its initial point. So should our
lives be, our progress not consisting in leaving our early
acts of faith behind us, but in repeating them over and
over again till the points coalesce in one unbroken line
which goes straight to the Throne and Heart of Jesus.
True, the repetition should be accompanied with fuller
knowledge, with calmer certitude, and should come from
a heart ennobled and encircled by a Christ-possessing
past. As in some great symphony the theme which was
given out in low notes on one poor instrument recurs
over and over again embroidered with varying harmonies,

and unfolding a richer music till it swells into all the
grandeur of the triumphant close, so our lives should be
bound into a unity, and in their unity bound to Christ by
the constant renewal of our early faith, and the fathers
come round again to the place which they occupied when
as children they first knew Him that is from the Begin­
ning to the End one and the same. Such constant
reiteration is needed, too, because yesterday's trust has no
more power to secure to-day's union than the shreds of
cloth and nails which hold last year's growth to the wall
will fasten this year's shoots. Each moment must be
united to Christ by its own act of faith, or it will be
separated from Him. So living in the Lord we shall be
strong and wise, happy and holy. So dying in the Lord
we shall be of the dead who are blessed. So sleeping in
/esus, we shall at the last be found in Him at that day,
and shall be raised up together, and made to sit together
in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
But more specially let us cleave to Christ by habitual
contemplation. There can be no real continuous closeness
of intercourse with Him, except by thought ever recurring
to Him amidst all the tumult of our busy days. I do not
mean professional thinking, or controversial thinking, of
which we ministers have more than enough.
There is another mood of mind in which to approach
our Lord than these, a mood sadly unfamiliar, I am afraid,
in these days: when poor Mary has hardly a chance of a
reputation for " usefulness " by the side of busy bustling
Martha—that still contemplation of the truth which we
possess, not with the view of discovering its foundations,

or investigating its applications, or even of increasing oui
knowledge of its contents, but of bringing our own souls
more completely under its influence, and saturating our .
being with its fragrance. The Church has forgotten how
to meditate. We are all so occupied arguing and dedu­
cing and elaborating, that we have no time for retired still
contemplation and, therefore, lose the finest aroma of the
truth we profess to believe. Many of us are so busy
thinking about Christianity that we have lost our hold of
Christ. Sure I am that there are few things more needed
by our modern Religion than the old exhortation, " Come,
My people, enter into thy chambers and shut thy doors
about thee," Cleave to the Lord by habitual play of
meditative thought on the treasures hidden in His name,
and waiting like gold in the quartz, to be the prize of our
patient sifting and close gaze.
And when the great truths embodied in Him stand
clear before us, then let us remember that we have not
done with them when we have seen them. Next must
come into exercise the moral side of faith, the voluntary
act of trust, the casting ourselves on Him whom we be­
hold, the making our own of the blessings which H e
holds out to us. Flee to Christ as to our strong habita­
tion to which we may continually resort. Hold tightly
by Christ with a grasp which nothing can slacken (that
whitens your very knuckles as you clutch Him), lean on
Christ all your weight and all your burdens. Cleave to
the Lord with full purpose of heart.
Let us cleave to the Lord by constant outgoings of our
love to Him.
That is the bond which unites human

a'pir/its together in the only real union, and Scripture
teaches us to see in the sweetest sacredest closest tie
that men and women can know, a real though faint
shadow of the far deeper and truer union between Christ
and us. The same love which is the bond of perfectness
between man and man, is the bond between us and
Christ. In no dreamy semi-pantheistic fusion of the
believer with His Lord do we find the true conception of
the unity of Christ and His Church, but in a union which
preserves the individualities lest it should slay the love.
Faith knits us to Christ, and faith is the mother of love,
which maintains the blessed union. So let us not be
ashamed of the emotional side of our religion, nor deem
that we can cleave to Christ unless our hearts twine their
tendrils round Him, and our love pours its odorous
treasures on His sacred feet, not without weeping nor em­
braces. Cold natures may carp, but Love is justified of
her children, and .Christ accepts the homage that has a
heart in it. Cleaving to the Lord is not merely love,
but it is impossible without it. The order is Faith,
Love, Obedience, that threefold cord knits men to Christ,
and Christ to men. For the understanding a continuous
grasp of Him as the object of thought. For the heart
a continuous out-going to Him as the object of our love.
For the will a continuous submission to Him as the
Lord of our Obedience.
For the whole nature a
continuous cleaving to Him as the object of our faith
and worship.
Such is the true discipline of the Christian life. Such is
the all-sufficient command; as for the newest convert

from heathenism, with little knowledge and the taint of
his old vices in his soul, so for the saint fullest of wisdom
and nearest the Light.
It is all-sufficient. If Barnabas had been like some of
us, he would have had a very different style of exhorta­
tion. He would have said, This irregular work has been
well done, but there are no authorised teachers here, and
no provision has been made for the due administration of
the sacraments of the Church. The very first thing of all
is to give these people the blessing of bishops and priests.
Some of us would have said, A good work has been done,
but these good people are terribly ignorant. The best
thing would be to get ready as soon as possible some
manual of Christian doctrine, and in the meantime pro­
vide for their systematic instruction in at least the
elements of the faith. Some of us would have said, No
doubt they have been converted, but we fear there has
been too much of the emotional in the preaching. The
moral side of Christianity has not been pressed home,
and what they chiefly need is to be taught that it is not
feeling but righteousness. Plain practical instruction in
Christian duty is the one thing they want.
Barnabas knew better. He did not despise organi­
sation, nor orthodoxy, nor practical righteousness, but he
knew that all three, and everything else that any man
needed for his perfecting, would come, if only they kept
near to Christ, and that nothing else was of any use if
they did not. That same conviction should for us
settle the relative importance which we attach to these
subordinate and derivative things, and to the primary

and primitive duty. Obedience to it will secure them.
They, without it, are not worth securing.
We spend much pains and effort now-a-days in perfect­
ing our organisations and consolidating our resources;
and I have not a word to say against that. But heavier
machinery needs more power in the engine, and that
means greater capacity in your boilers and more fire in
your furnace. The more complete our organisation, the
more do we need a firm hold of Christ, or we shall be
overweighted by it, shall be in danger of burning incense
to our own net, shall be tempted to trust in drill rather
than in courage, in mechanism rather than in the life
drawn from Christ. On the other hand, putting as our
first care the preservation of the closeness of our union
with Christ, that life will shape a body for itself, and to
every seed its own body.
True conceftio7is of Him, and a definite theology, are good
and needful. Let us cleave to Him with mind and heart,
and we shall receive all the knowledge we need, and be
guided into the deep things of God. In Him are hid all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and the basis of
all theology is the personal possession of Him who is the
wisdom of God, and the light of the world. Every one
that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Pectus

facit Theologum.
Plain straightforward morality, and every-day right­
eousness are better than all emotion and all dogmatism
and all churchism, says the world, and Christianity says
much the same ; but plain straightforward righteousness
and every-day morality come most surely when a man is

keeping close to Christ. In a word, everything that can
adorn the character with beauty, and clothe the Church
with glorious apparel, whatsoever things are lovely and of
good report, all that the world or God call virtue and
crown with praise, they are all in their fulness in Him,
and all are most surely derived from Him by keeping
fast hold of His hand, and preserving the channels clear
through which His manifold grace may flow into our
souls. The same life is strength in the arm, pliancy in the
fingers, swiftness in the foot, light in the eye, music on
the lips ; so the same grace is Protean in its forms, and to
His servants who trust Him Christ ever says, " What would
ye that I should do unto you ? Be it even as thou wilt."
The same mysterious power lives in the swaying branch,
and in the veined leaf, and in the blushing clusters.' With
like wondrous transformations of the one grace, the Lord
pours Himself into our spirits, rilling all needs and fitting
for all circumstances. Therefore for us all, individuals
and Churches, this remains the prime command, With
purpose of heart cleave unto the Lord. Dear brethren,
in the ministry how sorely we need this exhortation ! Our
very professional occupation with Christ and His truth is
full of danger for us, we are so accustomed to handle
these sacred themes as a means of instructing or impres­
sing others that we get to regard them as our weapons,
even if we do not degrade them still further by thinking of
them as our stock-in-trade and means of oratorical effect.
We must keep very firm hold of Christ for ourselves by
much solitary communion, and so retranslating into the
nutriment of our own souls the message we bring to men,

else when we have preached to others we ourselves may
be cast away. All the ordinary tendencies which draw
men from Him work on us, and a host of others peculiar
to ourselves, and all around us run strong currents of
thought which threaten to sweep many away. Let us
tighten our grasp of Him in the face of modern doubt;
and take heed to ourselves that neither vanity, nor worldliness, nor sloth; neither the gravitation earthward com­
mon to all, nor the temptations proper to our office;
neither unbelieving voices without nor voices within
seduce us from His side. There only is our peace, there
our wisdom, there our power.
Subtly and silently the separating forces are ever at
work upon us, and all unconsciously to ourselves our
hold may relax, and the flow of this grace into our spirits
may cease, while yet we mechanically keep up the round of
outward service, nor even suspect that our strength is
departed from us. Many a stately elm that seems full of
vigorous life, for all its spreading boughs and clouds of
dancing leaves is hollow at the heart, and when the storm
comes goes down with a crash, and men wonder as they
look at the ruin, how such a mere shell of life with a core
of corruption could stand so long. It rotted within, and
fell at last because its roots did not go deep down to
the rich soil, where they would have found nourishment,
but ran along near the surface among gravel and stones.
If we would stand firm, be sound within, and bring forth
much fruit, we must strike our roots deep in Him Who
is the anchorage of our souls, and the nourisher of all
our being.

Hearken, beloved brethren, in this great work of the
ministry, not to the exhortation of the servant, but to the
solemn command of the Master, " Abide in Me, and I
in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except
it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in
Me." And let us, knowing our own weakness, take heed
of the self-confidence that answers, "Though all should
forsake Thee, yet will not I," and turn the vows, which
spring to our lips into the lowly prayer '* My soul cleaveth
unto the dust, quicken Thou me according to Thy word."
Then, thinking rather of His cleaving to us, than of ours
cleaving to Him, let us, resolutely, take as the motto of our
lives the grand words : " I follow after it that I may lay
hold of that, for which also I am laid hold of by Christ
Jesus/'

K

SERMON VI.
MEASURELESS

POWER

AND

ENDLESS

GLORV.

EPHESIANS iii. 20, 2 1 .

N o w unto H i m that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all
that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
Unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout
all ages, world without end. Amen.

/ ~ \ N E purpose and blessing of faithful prayer is to eularge the desires which it expresses, and to make
us think more loftily of the grace to which we appeal So
the apostle, in the wonderful series of supplications which
precedes the text, has found his thought of what he may
hope for his brethren at Ephesus grow greater with every
clause. His prayer rises like some songbird, in ever
widening sweeps, each higher in the blue, and nearer the
throne; and at each a sweeter, fuller note.
" Strengthened with might by His Spirit"; " that Christ
may dwell in your hearts by faith " ; " that ye may be
able to know the love of Christ" ; that ye might be filled
with all the fulness of God. " Here he touches the very
throne. Beyond that nothing can be conceived. But
though that sublime petition may be the end of thought,
it is not the end of faith. Though God can give us
u

nothing more than it is, He can give us more than we
think it to be, and more than we ask, when we ask this.
Therefore the grand doxology of our text crowns and
surpasses even this great prayer. The higher true prayer
climbs, the wider is its view; and the wider is its view,
the more conscious is it that the horizon of its vision is
far within the borders of the goodly land. And as we
gaze into what we can discern of the fulness of God,
prayer will melt into thanksgiving and the doxology for
the swift answer will follow close upon the last words of
supplication. So is it here : so it may be always.
The form of our text, then, marks the confidence of
Paul's prayer. The exuberant fervour of his faith, as
well as his natural impetuosity and ardour, comes out
in the heaped-up words expressive of immensity and
duration. He is like some archer watching, with parted
lips, the flight of his arrow to the mark. He is gazing on
God confident that he has-not asked in vain. Let us
look with him, that we, too, may be heartened to expect
great things of God. Notice, then—
L The Measure of the Power to which we trust.
This Epistle is remarkable for its frequent references
to the Divine rule, or standard, or measure, in accor­
dance with which the great facts of redemption take place.
The "things on the earth"—the historical processes by
which salvation is brought to men and works in men
—are ever traced up to the "things in heaven;" the
Divine counsels from which they have come forth.
That phrase, " according to," is perpetually occurring in
K

2

this connection in .the Epistle. It is applied mainly in
two directions. It serves sometimes to bring into view
the ground, or reason, of the redemptive facts^ as, for
instance, in. the expression that these tike place " a c ­
cording to His good pleasure which H e hath purposed
in Himself. If serves sometimes to bring into view
the measure by which the working of these redemptive
facts is determined ; as in our text, and in many other
places.
Now there are three main forms under which this
standard, or measure, of the Redeeming Power is set forth
in this Epistle, and it will help us to grasp the greatness
of the apostle's thought if we consider these.
Take, then,'first, that clause in the earlier portion of
the preceding prayer, "that H e would grant you accor­
ding to the riches of His glory? The measure, then, of
the gift that we may hope to receive is the measure of
God's own fulness. The "riches of His glory " can be
nothing less than the whole uncounted abundance of that
majestic and far-shining Nature, as it pours itself forth in
the dazzling perfectnesses of its own Self-manifestation.
And nothing less than this great treasure is to be the
limit and standard of His gift to us. We are the sons of
the King, and the allowance which H e makes us even
before we come to our inheritance is proportionate to
our Father's wealth. The same stupendous thought is
given us in that prayer, heavy with the blessed weight
of unspeakable gifts, " that ye might be filled with all the
fulness of G o d " ; this, then, is the measure of the grace
that we may possess. This limitless limit alone bounds

the possibilities for every man, the certainties for every
Christian.
The effect must be proportioned to the cause. And
what effect will be adequate as the outcome of such a
cause as " the riches of His glory" ? Nothing short of
absolute perfectness, the full* transmutation of our dark,
cohl being into the reflected image of His own burning
brightness, the ceaseless replenishing of our own spirits with
all graces and gladnesses akin to His, the eternal growthof the soul upward and Godward. Perfection is the signmanual of God in all His works, just as imperfection and
the falling below our thought and wish is our " token in
every Epistle " and deed of ours. Take the finest needle,
and put it below a microscope, and it will be all ragged
and irregular, the fine, tapering lines will be broken by
m my a bulge and bend, and the point blunt and clumsy.
Put the blade of grass to the same test, and see how true
its outline, how delicate and true the spear-head of its
point. God's work is perfect, man's is clumsy and in­
complete. God does not leave off till He has finished.
When He rests, it is because, looking on His work, He
sees it all " very good." His Sabbath is the Sabbath of
an achieved purpose, of a fulfilled counsel. The palaces
which we build are ever like that in the story, where one
window remains dark and unjewelled, while the rest blaze
in beauty. But when God builds, none can say, " H e
was not able to finish." In His great palace He makes
her " windows of agates " and all her " borders of pleasant
stones."
So we have a right to enlarge our desires and stretch

our confidence of what we may possess and become to
this, His boundless bound : " The riches of glory."
But another form in which the standard, or measure,
is stated in this letter is : " T h e working of His mighty
Power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised
Him from the dead " (i. 1 9 , 2 0 ) ; or, as it is put with a
modification, " grace according to the measure of the gift
of Christ" (iv. 7 ) . That is to say, we have not only the
whole riches of the Divine glory as the measure to which
we may lift our hopes, but lest that celestial brightness
should seem too high above us, and too far from us, we
have Christ in His Human-Divine manifestation, and
especially in the great fact of the resurrection, set before
us, that by Him we may learn what God wills we should
become. The former phase of the standard may sound
abstract, cloudy, hard to connect with any definite antici­
pations ; and so this form of it is concrete, historical, and
gives human features to the fair ideal. His resurrection
is the high-water-mark of the Divine power, and to the
same level it will rise again in regard to every Christian.
That Lord, in the glory of His risen life, and in the
riches of the gifts which He received when He ascended
up on high, is the pattern for us, and the power which
fulfils its own pattern. In Him we see what man may
become, and what His followers must become. The
limits of that power will not be reached until every
Christian soul is perfectly assimilated to that likeness,
and bears all its beauty in his face, nor till every Chris­
tian soul is raised to participation in Christ's dignity and
sits on His throne. Then, and not till then, shall the

purpose of God be fulfilled and the gift which is measured
by the riches of the Father's glory, and the fulness of the
Son's grace, be possessed or conceived in its measureless
measure.
But there is a third form in which this same standard
is represented. That is the form which is found in our
text, and in other places of the Epistle : " According to

the Power that worketh in us?
What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God
dwelling in us ? And thus we have the measure, or stand­
ard, set forth in terms respectively applying to the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For the first, the riches
of His glory; for the sec. nd, His resurrection and ascen­
sion ; for the third, His energy working in Christian souls.
The first, carries us up into the mysteries of God, where
the air is almost too subtle for our gross lungs; the second
draws nearer to earth and points us to an historical
fact that happened in this every-day world; the third,
comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see
wheiher what we are conscious of there, if we interpret
it by the light of these other measures, will not yield
results as great as theirs, and open before us the same
fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity to the
Divine nature.
There is already a Power at work within us, if we be
Christians, of whose workings we may be aware, and from
them forecast the measure of the gifts which it can be­
stow upon us. We may estimate what will be by what
we know has been, and by what we feel is. That is to
say, in other words, the effects already produced, and the

experiences we have already had, carry in them the
pledge of completeness.
I suppose that if the mediaeval dream had ever come
true, and an alchemist had ever turned a grain of lead
into gold, he could have turned all the lead in the world
in time, and with crucibles and furnaces enough. The
first step is all the difficulty, and if you and I have been
changed from enemies into sons, and had one spark of
love to God kindled in our hearts, that is a mightier
change than any that remains to be effected in order to
make us perfect. One grain has been changed, the
whole mass will be in due time.
The present operations of that power carry in them the
pledge of their own completion. The strange mingling
of good and evil in our present nature, our aspirations so
crossed and contradicted, our resolution so broken and
falsified, the gleams of light, and the eclipses that follow
—all these, in their opposition to each other, are plainly
transitory, and the workings of that Power within us,
though they be often overborne, are as plainly the stronger
in their nature, and meant to conquer and to endure.
Like some half-hewn block, such as travellers find in long
abandoned quarries whence Egyptian temples that were
destined never to be completed, were built, our spirits are
but partly " polished after the similitude of a palace, "
while much remains in the rough. The builders of these
temples have mouldered away, and their unfinished handi­
work will lie as it was when the last chisel touched it
centuries ago, till the crack of doom ; but stones for God's
temple will be wrought to completeness and set in their

places. The whole threefold Divine cause of our sal­
vation supplies the measure, and lays the foundation for
our hopes, in the glory of the Father, the grace of the
Son, the power of the Holy Ghost. *Let us lift up our
cry: "Perfect that which concerneth me, forsake not
the works of Thine own hands," and we shall have for
answer the ancient word, fresh as when it sounded long
ago from among the stars to the sleeper at the ladder's
foot," I will not leave thee, until I have done that which
I have spoken to thee of."
II. Notice the relation of the Divine Working to our

thoughts and desires.
The apostle in his fervid way strains language to ex­
press how far the possibility of the Divine working ex­
tends. H e is able, not only to do all things, b u t " beyond
all things"—a vehement way of putting the boundless
reach of that gracious power. And what he means by
this " beyond all things" is more fully expressed in
the next words, in which he labours by accumulating
synonyms to convey his sense of the transcendent energy
which waits to bless : " exceeding abundantly above what
we ask." And as, alas! our desires are but shrunken
and narrow beside our thoughts, he sweeps a wider orbit
when he adds " above what we think. " He has been
asking wonderful things, and yet even his farthest-reach­
ing petitions fall far on this side of the greatness of God's
power. One might think that even it could go no further
than filling us "with all the fulness of God." Nor can
i t ; but it may far transcend our conceptions of what

that is, and astonish us by its surpassing our thoughts, no
less than it shames us by exceeding our prayers.
Of course, all this is true, and is meant to apply, only
about the inward gifts of God's grace. I need not re­
mind you that, in the outer world of Providence and
earthly gifts, prayers and wishes often surpass the answers;
that there a deeper wisdom often contradicts our thoughts
and a truer kindness refuses our petitions, and that so the
rapturous words of our text are only true in a very modi­
fied and partial sense about God's working for us in the
world. It is His work in us concerning which they are
absolutely true.
Of course, we know that in all regions of His working
He is able to surpass our poor human conceptions, and
that, properly speaking, the most familiar, and, as we
insolently call them, " smallest" of His works holds in it
a mystery—were it none other than the mystery of Being
—against which Thought has been breaking its teeth ever
since men began to think at all.
But as regards the working of God on our spiritual
lives, this passing beyond the bounds of thought and
desire is but the necessary result of the fact already dealt
with, that the only measure of the power is God Himself,
in that Threefold Being. That being so, no plummet of
our making can reach to the bottom of the abyss, no
strong-winged thought can fly to the outermost bound of
the encircling heaven. Widely as we stretch our reverent
conceptions, there is ever something beyond. After we
have resolved many a dim white cloud in the starry sky,
and found it all ablaze with suns and worlds, there will

still hang, faint and far before us, hazy magnificences
which we have not apprehended. Confidently and boldly
as we may offer our prayers and largely as we may expect,
the answer is ever more than the petition. For in­
deed, in every act of His quickening grace, in every Godgiven increase of our knowledge of God, in every bestowment of His fulness, there is always more bestowed than
we receive, more than we know even whi e we possess it.
Like some gift given in the dark, its true preciousness is
not discerned when it is first received. The gleam of the
gold does not strike our eye all at once. There is ever
an unknown margin felt by us to be over after our capa­
city of receiving is exhausted. " And they took up of
the fragments that remained, twelve baskets full."
So, then, let us remember that while our thoughts and
prayers can never reach to the full perception, or recep­
tion either, of the gift, the exuberant amplitude with which
it reaches far beyond both is meant to draw both after it.
And let us not forget either that, while the grace which
we receive has no limit or measure but the fulness of God,
the working limit, which determines what we receive of
the grace, is these very thoughts and wishes which it sur­
passes. We may have as much of God as we can hold,
as much as we wish. All Niagara may roar past a man's
door, but only as much as he diverts through his own
sluice will drive his mill, or quench his thirst. That grace
- is like the figures in the Eastern tales, that will creep into
a narrow room no bigger than a nutshell, or will tower
heaven high. Our spirits are like the magic tent whose
walls expanded or contracted at the owner's wish—we

may enlarge them to enclose far more of the grace than
we have ever possessed. We are not straitened in God,
but in ourselves. He is " able to do exceeding abun­
dantly above what we ask or think." Therefore let us
stretch desires and thoughts to their utmost, remember­
ing that while they can never reach the measure of His
grace in itself, they make the practical measure of our
possession of it. " According to thy faith," is a real
measure of the gift received, even though " according to
the riches of His glory" be the measure of the gift
bestow ed. Note, again.

III. The Glory that springs from the Divine Work.
" The glory of God " is the lustre of His own perfect
character the bright sum total of all the blended brilliancies
that compose His name. When that light is welcomed
and adored by men, they are said to "give glory to God"
and this doxology is at once a prophecy that the work­
ing of God's power on His redeemed children will issue
in setting forth the radiance of His name yet more, and a
prayer that it may. So we have here the great thought
expressed in many places of Scripture, that the highest
exhibition of the Divine character for the reverence and
love—of the whole universe, shall we say ?—lies in His
work on Christian souls, and the effect produced thereby
on them. God takes His stand, so to speak, on this
great fact in His dealings, and will have His creatures
estimate Him by it. He reckons it His highest praise
that He has redeemed men, and by His dwelling in them,
fills them w.th His own fulness. And this chiefest praise

and brightest glory accrues to Him " in the Church in
Christ Jesus." The weakening of the latter words into
" b y Christ Jesus, " a s in the English version, is to be
regretted, as substituting another thought, Scriptural no
doubt and precious, for the precise shade of meaning in
the apostle's mind here. As has been well said, " the first
words denote the outward province; the second;the in­
ward and spiritual sphere in which God was to be praised."
His glory is to shine in the Church, the theatre of His
power, the standing demonstration of the might of re­
deeming love. By this H e will be judged, and this H e
will point to if any ask what is His Divinest work, which
bears the clearest imprint of His Divinest self. His gloryis to be set forth by men on condition that they are " in
Christ," living and moving in Him, in that mysterious
but most real union without which no fruit grows on the
dead branches, nor any music of praise breaks from dead
lips.
So, then, think of that wonder that God sets His glory
in His dealings with us. Amid all the majesty of His
Works and all the blaze of His creation, this is what H e
presents as the highest specimen of His power—the
Church of Jesus Christ, the company of poor men, wearied
and conscious of many evils, who follow afar off the foot­
steps of their Lord. How dusty and toil-worn the little
group of Christians that landed at Puteoli must have
looked as they toiled along the Appian Way and entered
Rome ! How contemptuously emperor and philosopher
and priest and patrician would have curled their lips,
if they had been told that in that little knot of Jewish

prisoners lay a power before which theirs would cower and
finally fade ! Even so is it still. Among all the splend­
ours of this great universe, and the mere obtrusive taw
drinesses of earth, men look upon us Christians as poor
enough; and yet it is to His redeemed children that God
has entrusted His praise, and in their hands He has
lodged the sacred deposit of His own glory. •
Think loftily of that office and honour, lowly of your­
selves who have it laid upon you as a crown.
His
honour is in our hands. We are the " secretaries of His
praise." This is the highest function that any creature
can discharge. The Rabbis have a beautiful bit of
teaching buried among their rubbish about angels. They,
say that there are two kinds of angels: the angels of
service and the angels of praise, of which two orders the
latter is the higher, and that no angel in it praises God
twice, but having once lifted up his Voice in the psalm of
heaven, then perishes and ceases to be. He lias per­
fected his being, he has reached the height of his great­
ness, he has done what he was made for, let him fade
away.
The garb of legend is mean enough, but the
thought it embodies is that ever true and solemn one,
without which life is nought: " Man's chief end is to
glorify God."
And we can only fulfil that high purpose in the
measure of our union with Christ. " In H i m " abiding,
we manifest God's glory, for in Him abiding we receive
God's grace. So long as we are joined to Him, we
partake of His life, and our lives become music and
praise. The electric current flows from Him through all

souls that are " in Him," and they glow with fair colours
which they owe to their contact with Jesus. Interrupt
the communication, and all is darkness. So, brethren,
let us seek to abide in Him, severed from Whom we are
nothing. Then shall we fulfil the purpose of His love,
Who " hath shined in our hearts," that we might give to
others " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ." Notice, lastly,

IV. The Eternity of the Work and of the Praise.
As in the former clauses, the idea of the transcendent
greatness of the power of God was expressed by accu­
mulated synonyms, so here the kindred thought of its
eternity, and consequently of the ceaseless duration of
the resulting glory, is sought to be set forth by a similar
aggregation. The language creaks and labours, as it
were, under the weight of the great conception. Lite­
rally rendered, the words are—"to all generations of the
age of the ages "—a remarkable fusing together of two
expressions for unbounded duration, which are scarcely
congruous. We can understand " to all generations" as
expressive of duration as long as birth and death shall
last. We can understand " t h e age of the ages" as
pointing to that endless epoch whose moments are
" ages"; but the blending of the two is but an uncon­
scious acknowledgment that the speech of earth, saturated,
as it is, with the colouring of time, breaks down in the
attempt to express the thought of eternity. Undoubtedly
that solemn conception is the one intended by this
strange phrase.

144

MEASURELESS

POWER.

[SERM. VI.

The work is to go on for ever and ever, and with it
the praise.
As the- ages which are the beats of the
pendulum of eternity come and go, more and more of
God's power will flow out to us, and more and more of
God's glory will be manifested in us. It must be so.
For God's gift is infinite, and man's capacity of reception
is indefinitely capable of increase.
Therefore eternity
will be needful in order that redeemed souls may absorb
all of God which He can give or they can take. The
process has no limits, for there is no bound to be set to
the possible approaches of the human spirit to the Divine,
and none to the exuberant abundance of the beauty and
glory which God will give to His child. Therefore we
shall live for ever : and for ever show forth His praise and
blaze out like the sun with the irradiation of His glory.
We cannot die till we have exhausted God. Till we
comprehend all His nature in our thoughts, and reflect all
His beauty in our character; till we have attained all the
bliss that we can think, and received all the good that
we can ask; till Hope has nothing before her to reach
towards, and Cod is left behind: we "shall not die, but
live, and declare the works of the Lord."
Let His grace work on you, and yield yourselves to
Him, that His fulness may fill your emptiness. So on
earth we shall be delivered from hopes which mock, and
wishes that are never fulfilled.
So in heaven, after
" ages of ages " of growing glory, we shall have to say, as
each new wave of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us
onward, " It doth not yet appear what we shall be."

SERMON
L O V E ' S

VII.

T R I U M P H .

ROMANS viii. 38, 39.
Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love
of God.

n ^ H E S E rapturous words are the climax of the apostle's
long demonstration that the Gospel is the revela­
tion of " the righteousness of God from faith to faith,"
and is thereby " the power of God unto salvation." What
a contrast there is between the beginning and the end of
his argument ! It started with sombre, sad words about
man's sinfulness and aversion from the knowledge of God.
It closes with this sunny outburst of triumph; like some
stream rising among black and barren cliffs or melancholy
moorlands, and foaming through narrow rifts in gloomy
ravines, it reaches at last fertile lands, and flows calm, the
sunlight dancing on its broad surface, till it loses itself at
last in the unfathomable ocean of the love of God.
We are told that the Biblical view of human nature is
too dark. Well, the important question is not whether it
be dark, but whether it be true. But, apart from that,
L

the doctrine of Scripture about man's moral condition is
not dark, if you will take the whole of it together.
Certainly, a part of it is very dark. The picture, for
instance, of what men are, painted at the beginning of
this Epistle, is black like a canvas of Rembrandt's. The
Bible is " Nature's sternest painter but her best." But
to get the whole doctrine of Scripture on the subject, we
have to take its confidence as to what men may become,
as well as its portrait of what they are—and then who
will say that the anthropology of Scripture is gloomy ?
To me it seems that the unrelieved blackness of the view
which, because it admits no fall, can imagine no rise,
which sees in all man's sins and sorrows no token of the
dominion of an alien power, and has, therefore, no reason
to believe that they can be separated from humanity, is
the true " Gospel of despair," and that the system which
looks steadily at all the misery and all the wickedness,
and calmly proposes to cast it all out, is really the only
doctrine of human nature which throws any gleam of
light on the darkness. Christianity begins indeed with,
" There is none that doeth good, no, not one," but it
ends with this victorious paean of our text.
And what a majestic close it is to the great words that
have gone before, fitly crowning even their lofty height!
One might well shrink from presuming to take such words
as a text, with any idea of exhausting or of enhancing
them. My object is very much more humble. I simply
wish to bring out the remarkable order, in which Paul
here marshals, in his passionate, rhetorical amplification,
all the enemies that can be supposed to seek to wrench

us away from the love of God; and triumphs over them
all. We shall best measure the fulness of the words by
simply taking these clauses as they stand in the text.
I. The love of God is unaffected by the extremest

changes of our condition.
T h e apostle begins his fervid catalogue of vanquished
foes by a pair of opposites which might seem to cover
the whole ground—" neither death nor life." What more
can be said? Surely, these two include everything.
From one point of view they do. But yet, as we shall
see, there is more to be said. And the special reason for
beginning with this pair of possible enemies is probably
to be found by remembering that they are a pair, that
between them they do cover the whole ground, and
represent the extremes of change which can befall us.
The one stands at the one pole, the other at the other.
If these two stations, so far from each other, are equally
near to God's love, then no intermediate point can be far
from it. If the most violent change which we can ex­
perience does not in the least matter to the grasp which
the love of God has on us, or to the grasp which we
may have on it, then no less violent a change can be of
any consequence. It is the same thought in a somewhat
modified form, as we find in another word of Paul's
" Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether
we die, we die unto the Lord" Our subordination to
Him is the same, and our consecration should be the
same in all varieties of condition, even in that greatest
of all variations. His love to us makes no account of
2

L

that mightiest of changes. How should it be affected by
slighter ones ?
The distance of a star is measured by the apparent
change in its position, as seen from different points of the
earth's surface or orbit. But this great Light stands
steadfast in our heaven, nor moves a hair's breadth, nor
pours a feebler ray on us, whether we look up to it from
the midsummer day of busy life, or from the midwinter
of death. These opposites are* parted by a distance to
which the millions of miles of the world's path among the
stars are but a point, and yet the love of God streams
down on them alike.
Of course, the confidence of immortality is implied in
this thought. Death does not, in the slightest degree,
affect the essential vitality of the soul; so it does not, in
the slightest degree, affect the outflow of God's love to
that soul. It is a change of condition and circumstance,
and no more. He does not lose us in the dust of death.
The withered leaves on the pathway are trampled into
mud, and indistinguishable to human eyes; but He sees
them even as when they hung green and sunlit on the
mystic tree of life.
How beautifully this thought contrasts with the saddest
aspect of the power of death in our human experience !
He is Death the Separater, who unclasps our hands from
the closest, dearest grasp, and divides asunder joints and
marrow, and parts soul and body, and withdraws us from
all our habitude and associations and occupations, and
loosens every bond of society and concord, and hales us
away into a lonely land. But there is one bond which

his " abhorred shears " cannot cut. Their edge is turned
on //. One Hand holds us in a grasp which the fleshless
fingers of Death in vain strive to loosen. The separater
becomes the uniter; he rends us apart from the world
that he may " bring us to God." The love filtered by
drops on us in life is poured upon us in a flood in death ;
" for I am persuaded, that neither de\th nor life shall be
able to separate us from the love of God."

II. The love of God is undiverted from us by any other
order of beings.
" Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers," says Paul.
Here we pass from conditions affecting ourselves to living
beings beyond ourselves. Now, it is important for'under*
standing the precise thought of the apostle to observe that
this expression, when used without any qualifying adjec­
tive, seems uniformly to mean -good angels, the hierarchy
of blessed spirits before the throne. So that there is no
reference to " spiritual wickedness in high places " striving
to draw men away from God. The supposition which
the apostle makes is, indeed, an impossible one, that
these ministering spirits, who are sent forth to minister
to them who shall be heirs of salvation, should so forget
their mission and contradict their nature as to seek to bar
us out from the love which it is their chiefest joy to bring
to us. H e knows it to be an impossible supposition, and
its very impossibility gives energy to his conclusion, just
as when in the same fashion he makes the other equally
impossible supposition about an angel from heaven

preaching another gospel than that which he had
preached to them.
So we may turn the general thought of this second
category of impotent efforts in two different ways, and
suggest, first, that it implies the utter powerlessness of
any third party in regard to the relations between our
souls and God.
We alone have to do with Him alone. The awful fact
of individuality, that solemn mystery of our personal
Being, has its most blessed or its most dread manifes­
tation in our relation to God. There no other Being has
any power. Counsel and stimulus, suggestion or tempt­
ation, instruction or lies, which may tend to lead us
nearer to Him or away from Him, they may indeed give
us : but after they have done their best or their worst, all
depends on the personal act of our own innermost being.
Man nor angel can affect that, but from without. The
old mystics called prayer " the flight of the lonely soul to
the only God." It is the name for all religion. These
two, God and the soul, have to "transact," as our
Puritan forefathers used to say, as if there were no
other beings in the universe but only they two. Angels
and principalities and powers may stand beholding
with sympathetic joy; they may minister blessing and
guardianship in many ways; but the decisive act of
union between God and the soul they can neither effect
nor prevent.
And as for them, so for men around u s ; the limits of
their power to harm us are soon set. They may shut us
out from human love by calumnies, and dig deep gulfs of

alienation between us and dear ones ; they may hurt and
annoy us in a thousand ways with slanderous tongues,
and arrows dipped in poisonous hatred. But one thing
they cannot do. They may build a wall around us, and
imprison us from many a joy and many a fair prospect.
But they cannot put a roof on it to keep out the sweet
influences from above, or hinder us from looking up to
the heavens. Nobody can come between us and God
but ourselves.
Or, we may turn this general thought in another
direction, and say, These blessed spirits around the throne
do not absorb and intercept His love. They gather
about its steps in their" solemn troops and sweet
s o c i e t i e s b u t close as are their ranks, and innumerable
as is their multitude, they do not prevent that love from
passing beyond them to us on the outskirts of the crowd.
The planet nearest the sun is drenched and saturated with
fiery brightness, but the rays from the centre of life pass
on to each of the sister spheres in its turn, and travel
away outwards to where the remotest of them all rolls in
its far-off orbit, unknown for millenniums to dwellers closer
to the sun, but through all the ages visite'd by warmth and
light according to its needs. Like that poor sickly
woman who could lay her wasted fingers on the hem of
Christ's garment, notwithstanding the thronging multitude,
we can reach our hands through all the crowd, or rather
He reaches His strong hand to us and heals and blesses us.
All the guests are fed full at that great table. One's gain
is not another's loss. The multitudes sit on the green
grass, and the last man of the last fifty gets as much as

the first: " They did all eat, and were filled " ; and more
remains than fed them all.
So all beings are " nourished from the King's country,"
and none jostle others out of their share. This healing
fountain is not exhausted of its curative power by the
early comers. " I will give unto this last, even as unto
thee." " Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, shall
be able to separate us from the love of God."

III. The love of God is raised above the power of Time.
" N o r things present, nor things to come," is the
apostle's next class of powers impotent to disunite us
from the love of God. The rhythmical arrangement of
the text deserves to be noticed, as bearing not only on
its music and rhetorical flow, but as affecting its force.
We had first a pair of opposites, and then a triplet; " death
and life : angels, principalities, and powers.' We have
again a pair of opposites; " things present, things to
come," again followed by a triplet, " height nor depth,
nor any other creature." The effect of this is to divide
the whole into two, and to throw the first and second
classes more closely together, as also the third and fourth.
Time and Space, these two mysterious ideas, which work
so fatally on all human love, are powerless here.
The great Revelation of God, on which the whole of
Judaism was built, was that made to Moses of the name
" I Am that I Am." And parallel to the verbal revela­
tion was that symbol of the Bush, burning and unconsumed, which is so often misunderstood. It appears
wholly contrary to the usage of Scriptural visions, which

are ever wont to express in material form the same truth
which accompanies them in words, that the meaning of
that vision should be, as it frequently taken as being, the
continuance of Israel, unharmed by the fiery furnace of
persecution. Not the continuance of Israel, but the
eternity of Israel's God is the teaching of that flaming
wonder. The burning Bush and the Name of the Lord
proclaimed the same great truth of self-derived, self-deter­
mined, timeless, undecaying Being. And what better sym­
bol than the bush burning, and yet not burning out, could
be found of that God in Whose life there is no tendency
to death, Whose work digs no pit of weariness into which
it falls, Who gives and is none the poorer, Who fears no
exhaustion in His spending, no extinction in His continual
shining ?
And this eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical
abstraction. It is eternity of love, for God is love. That
great stream, the pouring out of His own very inmost
Being, knows no pause, nor does the deep fountain from
which it flows ever sink one hair's breadth in its pure basin.
We know of earthly loves which cannot die. They
have entered so deeply into the very fabric of the soul,
that like some cloth dyed in grain, as long as two threads
hold together they will retain the tint. We have to
thank God for such instances of love stronger than death,
which make it easier for us to believe in the unchanging
duration of His. But we know, too, of love that can
change, and we know that all love must part. Few of us
have reached middle life, who do not, looking back, see
our track strewed with the gaunt skeletons of dead friend-

ships, and dotted with "oaks of weeping," waving green
and mournful over graves, and saddened by footprints
striking away from the line of march, and leaving us the
more solitary for their departure.
How blessed then to know of a love which cannot
change or die ! The past, the present and the future
are all the same to Him, to Whom " a thousand years,"
that can corrode so much of earthly love, are in their
power to change " as one day," and " one day," which can
hold so few of the expressions of our love, may be " as a
thousand years " in the multitude and richness of the gifts
which it can be expanded to contain. The whole of
what He has been to any past, He is to us to-day. " The
God of Jacob is our refuge." All these old-world stories
of loving care and guidance may be repeated in our lives.
So we may bring the blessedness of all the past into
the present, and calmly face the misty future, sure that
it cannot rob us of His love.
" D o whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, ,
T o this wide world and all her fading sweets,"

it matters not, if only our hearts are stayed on His love,
which neither things present, nor things to come, can alter
or remove. Looking on all the flow of ceaseless change,
the waste and fading, the alienation and cooling, the de­
crepitude and decay of earthly affection, we can lift up
with gladness, heightened by the contrast, the triumphant
song of the ancient Church : " Oh, give thanks unto the
Lord : for He is good: because His mercy endureth for

ever / *

IV. The love of God isfirese?iteverywhere.
The apostle ends his catalogue with a singular trio of
antagonists ; " n o r height, nor depth, nor any other crea­
ture," as if he had got impatient of the enumeration of
impotencies, and having named the outside boundaries in
space of the created universe, flings, as it were, with one
rapid toss, into that large room the whole that it can
contain, and triumphs over it all.
As the former clause proclaimed the powerlessness of
Time, so this proclaims the powerlessness of that other
great mystery of creatural life which we call Space.
Height or depth, it matters not. That diffusive love
diffuses itself equally in all directions. Up or down, it
is all the same. The distance from the centre is equal to
Zenith or to Nadir.
Here, we have the same process applied to that idea of
Omnipresence as was applied in the former clause to
the idea of Eternity. That thought, so hard to grasp
with vividness, and not altogether a glad one to a sinful
soul, is all softened and glorified, as some solemn Alpine
cliff of bare rock is when the tender morning light glows
on it, when it is thought of as the Omnipresence of Love.
" T h o u , God, seest me," may be a stern word, if the God
Who sees be but a mighty Maker or a righteous Judge.
As reasonably might we expect a prisoner in his solitary
cell to be glad when he thinks that the jailer's eye is on
him from some unseen spy-hole in the wall, as expect
any thought of God but one to make a man read that
grand one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm with j o y : " If

I ascend into heaven, Thou art there ; if I make my bed
in Sheol, behold, Thou art there." So may a man say
shudderingly to himself, and tremble as he asks in vain,
" Whither shall I flee from Thy Presence ? " But howdifferent it all is when we can cast over the marble white­
ness of that solemn thought the warm hue of life, and
change the form of our words into this of our text: " Nor
height, nor depth, shall be able to separate us from the
love of God."
In that great ocean of the Divine love we live and
move and have our being, floating in it like some sea
flower which spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long
tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The sound of its
waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around
us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not
cower before the fixed gaze of some stony god, looking
on us unmoved like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless
with idle hands on their laps, and wide-open lidless eyes
gazing out across the sands. We need not fear the
Omnipresence of Love, nor the Omniscience which
knows us altogether, and loves us even as it knows.
Rather we shall be glad that we are ever in His
Presence, and desire, as the height of all felicity and the
power for all goodness, to walk all the day long in the
light of His countenance, till the day come when we
shall receive the crown of out perfecting in that we shall
be " ever with the Lord."
The recognition of this triumphant sovereignty of love
over all these real and supposed antagonists makes us,
too, lords over them, and delivers us from the tempta-

tions which some of them present us to separate our­
selves from the love of God. They all become our
servants and helpers, uniting us to that love. So we are
set free from the dread of death and from the distrac­
tions incident to life. So we are delivered from super­
stitious dread of an unseen world, and from craven fear
of men. So we are emancipated from absorption in the
present and from careful thought for the future. So we
are at home everywhere, and every corner of the universe
is to us one of the many mansions of our Father's house.
" All things are yours, . . . and ye are Christ's; and
Christ is God's."
I do not forget the closing words of this great text. I
have not ventured to include them in our present
subject, because they would have introduced another
wide region of thought to be laid down on our already
too narrow canvas.
But remember, I beseech you, that this love of God is
explained by our apostle to be " in Christ Jesus our
Lord." Love illimitable, all-pervasive, eternal; yes, but
a love which has a channel and a course; love which
has a method and a process by which it pours itself over
the world. It is not, as some representations would
make it, a vague, nebulous light diffused through space
as in a chaotic, half-made universe, but all gathered in
that great Light which rules the day—even in Him Who
said : " I am the Light of the World." In Christ the
love of God is all centred and embodied, that it may be
imparted to all sinful and hungry hearts, even as burning
coals are gathered on a hearth that they may give warmth

i 8
5

LOVE'S

TRIUMPH.

[SERM. VII.

to all that are in the house. " God so loved the world"
- - n o t merely so much, but in such a fashion—" that "—
that what ? Many people would leap at once from the
first to the last clause of the verse, and regard eternal
life for all and sundry as the only adequate expression of
the universal love of God. Not so does Christ speak.
Between that universal love and its ultimate purpose and
desire for every man He inserts two conditions, one on
God's part, one on man's. God's love reaches its end,
namely, the bestowal of eternal life, by means of a Divine
act and a human response. " G o d so loved the world,
that H e gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever
btlieveth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life." So all the universal love of God for you and me
and for all our brethren is " i n Christ Jesus our Lord,"
and faith in Him unites us to it by bonds which no foe
can break, no shock of change can snap, no time can
rot, no distance can stretch to breaking. " For I am
persuaded, that neither death, nor* life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

SERMON VIII.
T H E GRAVE OF T H E D E A D JOHN A N D T H E GRAVE
OF T H E LIVING JESUS.
ST. MATTHEW xiv. 1 2 .

And John's disciples came, and took up the body, and btried
it, and went and told Jesus.
ST. MATTHEW xxviii. 8.
And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with
fear and great joy.

' " T H E R E is a remarkable parallel and still more remarkable contrast between these two groups of
disciples at the graves of their respective masters. John
the Baptist's followers venture into the very jaws ol tne
lion to rescue the headless corse of their martyred teacher
from a prison grave. They bear it away and lay it
reverently in its unknown sepulchre, and when they have
done these last offices of love they feel that all is over.
They have no longer a centre, and they disintegrate.
There was nothing to hold them together any more.
The shepherd had been smitten, and the flock were
scattered. As a " school" or a distinct community they
cease to be, and are mostly absorbed into the ranks of
A

Christ's followers. That sorrowful little company that
turned from John's grave, perhaps amidst the grim rocks
of Moab, perhaps in his native city amongst the hills of
Judah, parted, then, to meet no more, and to bear away
only a common sorrow that time would comfort, and a
common memory that time would dim.
The other group laid their martyred Master in his
grave with as tender hands and as little hope as did
John's disciples. The bond that held them .together was
gone too, and the disintegrating process began at once.
We see them breaking up into little knots, and soon they,
too, will be scattered. The women come to the grave to
perform the woman's office of anointing, and they are left
to go alone. Other slight hints are given which show
how much the ties of companionship had been relaxed,
even in a day, and how certainly and quickly they would
have fallen asunder. But all at once a new element
comes in, all is changed. The earliest visitors to the
sepulchre leave it, not with the lingering sorrow of those
who have no more that they can do, but with the quick
buoyant step of people charged with great and glad
tidings. They come to it wrapped in grief—they leave
it with great joy. They come to it, feeling that all was
over, and their union with the rest who had loved Him
was little more than a remembrance. They go away
feeling that they are bound together more closely than
ever.
The grave of John was the end of a " school. " The
grave of Jesus was the beginning of a Church. Why ?
The only answer is the message which the women

brought back from the empty sepulchre on that Easter
day: " T h e Lord is risen," The whole history of the
Christian Church, and even its very existence, is unintel­
ligible, except on the supposition of the resurrection.
But for that, the fate of John's disciples would have been
the fate of Christ's—they would have melted away into
the mass of the nation, and at most there would have
been one more petty Galilean sect, that would have lived
on for a generation and died out when the last of his
companions died.
So from these two contrasted groups we may fairly
gather some thoughts as to the Resurrection of Christ, as
attested by the very existence of a Christian Church,
and as to the joy of that resurrection.
I. Now the first point to be considered is, That the
conduct of Christ's disciples after His death was exactly
the opposite of what might have been expected.
They held together. The natural thing for them to do
would have been to disband; for the one bond was gone ;
and if they had acted according to the ordinary laws of
human conduct they would have said to themselves, Let
us go back to our fishing-boats and our tax-gathering, and
seek safety in separation, and nurse our sorrow apart.
A few lingering days might have been given to weep to­
gether at His grave, and to assuage the first bitterness
of grief and disappointment; but when these were ovei*,
nothing could have prevented Christianity and the Church
from being buried in the same sepulchre as Jesus. As
certainly as the stopping up of the fountain would empty
M

the river's bed, so surely would Christ's death have
scattered His disciples. And that strange fact, that it did
not scatter them, needs to be looked well into and fairly
accounted for in some plausible manner. The end of
John's school gives a parallel which brings the singularity
of the fact into stronger relief; and looking at these two
groups as they stand before us in these two texts, the
question is irresistibly suggested, Why did not the one
fall away into its separate elements, as the other did?
The keystone of the arch was in both cases withdrawn
—why did the one structure topple into ruin while the
other stood firm ?
Not only did the disciples of Christ keep united, but
their conceptions of Jesus underwent a remarkable
change, on His death. We might have expected indeed
that, when memory began to work, and the disturbing
influence of daily association was withdrawn, the same
idealising process would have begun on their image of
Him, which reveals and ennobles the characters of our
dear ones who have gone away from us. Most men have
to die before
eir true beauty is discerned. But no
process of that sort will suffice to account for the change
and heightening of the disciples' thoughts about their
dead Lord. It was not merely that, as they remembered,
they said, Did not our hearts burn within us by the way
while He talked with us ?—but that His death wrought
exactly the opposite effect from what it might have been
expected to do. It ought to have ended their hope that
H e was the Messiah, and we know that within forty-eight
hours it was beginning to do so, as we learn from the

plaintive words of disappointed and fading hope: " We
trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed
Israel." If, so early, the cold conviction was stealing
over their hearts that their dearest expectation was
proved by His death to have been a dream, what could •
have prevented its entire dominion over them, as the days
grew into months and years ? But somehow or other that
process was arrested, and the opposite one set in. The
death that should have shattered Messianic dreams con­
firmed them. The death that should have cast a deeper
shadow of incomprehensibleness over His strange and
lofty claims poured a new light upon them, which made
them all plain and clear. The very parts of His teaching
which His death would have made those who loved Him
wish to forget, became the centre of His followers' faith.
His cross became His throne. Whilst He lived with
them they knew not what H e said in His deepest words,
but, by a strange paradox, His death convinced them that
He was the Son of God, and that that which they had
seen with their eyes, and the irhands had handled, was
the Eternal Life. The cross alone could never have
done that. Something else there must have been, if the
men were sane, to account for this paradox
Nor is this all. Another equally unlikely sequel of the
death of Jesus is the unmistakable moral transformation
effected on the disciples. Timorous and tremulous before,
something or other touched them into altogether new bold­
ness and self-possession. Dependent on His presence
before, and helpless when He was away from them for an
hour, they become all at once strong and calm; they stand
M

2

before the fury of a Jewish mob and the threatenings of
the Sanhedrim, unmoved and victorious. And these brave
confessors and saintly heroes are the men who, a few
weeks before, had been petulant, self-willed, jealous,
cowardly. What had lifted them suddenly so far above
themselves? Their Master's death? That would more
naturally have taken any heart or courage out of them,
and left them indeed as sheep in the midst of wolves.
Why, then, do they thus strangely blaze up into grandeur
and heroism ? Can any reasonable account be given of
these paradoxes ? Surely it is not too much to ask of
people who profess to explain Christianity on naturalistic
principles, that they shall make the process clear to us
by which, Christ being dead and buried, His disciples
were kept together, learned to think more loftily of Him
and sprang at once to a new grandeur of character.
Why did not they do as John's disciples did, and dis­
appear ? Why was not the stream lost in the sand, when
the head-waters were cut off.
II, Notice then, next, that the disciples' immediate
belief in the Resurrection furnishes a reasonable, and the
only reasonable, explanation of the facts. There is no
better historical evidence of a fact than the existence
of an institution built upon it, and coeval with it. The
Christian Church is such evidence for the fact of the
resurrection ; or, to put the conclusion in the most mod­
erate fashion, for the belief in the resurrection. For, as
we have shown, the natural effect of our Lord's death
would have been to shatter the whole fabric : and if that

effect were not produced, the only reasonable account of
the force that hindered it is, that His followers believed
that He rose again. Since that was their faith, one can
understand how they were banded more closely together
than ever. One can understand how their eyes were
opened to know Him who was " declared to be the Son of
God with power by the resurrection from the dead."
One can understand how, in the enthusiasm of these new
thoughts of their Lord, and in the strength of His victory
over death, they put aside their old fears and littlenesses
and clothed themselves in armour of light. " The Lord
is risen indeed " was the belief which made the continuous
existence of the Church possible. Any other explanation
of that great outstanding fact is lame and hopelessly in­
sufficient.
We know that that belief was the belief of the early
Church. Even if one waived all reference to the gospels
we have the means of demonstrating that in Paul's undis­
puted epistles. Nobody has questioned that he wrote
the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The date most
generally assumed to that letter brings it within about
five and-twenty years of the crucifixion. In that letter,
in addition to a multitude of incidental references to the
Lord as risen, we have the great passage in the fifteenth
chapter, where the apostle not only declares that the
Resurrection was oae of the two facts which made his
" gospel," but solemnly enumerates the witnesses of the
risen Lord, and alleges that this gospel of the resurrection
was common to him and to all the Church. He tells us
of Christ's appearance to himself at his conversion, which

must have taken place within six or seven years of the
crucifixion, and assures us that at that early period he
found the whole Church believing and preaching Christ's
resurrection. Their belief rested on their alleged inter­
course with Him a few days after his death, and it is in­
conceivable that within so short a period such a belief
should have sprung up and been universally received if
it had not begun when and as they said it did.
But we are not left even to inferences of this kind to
show that from the beginning the Church witnessed to
the resurrection of Jesus. Its own existence is the great
witness to its faith. And it is important to observe that,
even if we had not the documentary evidence of the
Pauline epistles as the earliest records of the gospels, and
of the Acts of the Apostles, we should still have sufficient
proof that the belief in the resurrection is as old as the
Church. For the continuance of the Church cannot be
explained without it. If that faith had not dawned on
their slow sad hearts on that Easter morning, a few weeks
would have seen them scattered : and if once they had
been scattered, as they inevitably would have been, no
power could have reunited them, any more than a
diamond once shattered can be pieced together again.
There would have been no motive and no actors to frame
a story of resurrection when once the little company had
melted away. The existence of the Church depended on
their belief that the Lord was risen. In the nature of
the case that belief must have followed immediately on
his death. It, and it only, reasonably accounts for the
facts. And so, over and above apostles, and gospels,

and epistles, the Church is the great witness, by its very
being, to its own immediate and continuous belief in the
resurrection of our Lord.
III. Again, we may remark that such a belief could
not have originated or maintained itself unless it had
been true.
Our previous remarks have gone no farther than to
establish the belief in the resurrection of Christ, as the
basis of primitive Christianity. It is vehemently alleged,
and we may freely admit, that the step is a long one
from subjective belief to objective reality. But still it is
surely perfectly fair to argue that a given belief is of such
a nature that it cannot be supposed to rest on anything
less solid than a fact; and this is eminently the case in
regard to the belief in Christ's resurrection. There have
been many attempts on the part of those who reject that
belief to account for its existence, and each of them in
succession has " had its day, and ceased to be." Un­
belief devours its own children remorselessly, and the
succession to the throne of anti-christian scepticism is
won, as in some barbarous tribes, by slaying the reigning
sovereign. The armies of the aliens turn their weapons
against one another, and each new assailant of the
historical veracity of the gospels commences operations
by showing that all previous assailants have been
wrong, and that none of their explanations will hold
water.
For instance, we hear nothing now of the coarse old
explanation that the story of the resurrection was a lie,

and became current through the conscious imposture of
the leaders of the Church. And it was high time that
such a solution should be laid aside. Who, with half an
eye for character, could study the deeds and the writings
of the apostles, and not feel that, whatever else they
were, they were profoundly honest, and as convinced as
of their own existence, that they had seen Christ " alive
after His passion, by many infallible proofs " ? If Paul
and Peter and John were conspirators in a trick, then
their lives and their words were the most astounding
anomaly. Who, either, that had the faintest perception
of the forces that sway opinion and frame systems, could
believe that the fair fabric of Christian morality was built
on the sand of a lie, and cemented by the slime of deceit
bubbling up from the very pit of hell ? Do men gather
grapes, of thorns, or figs of thistles? That insolent
hypothesis has had its day.
Then when it was discredited, we were told the myth­
ical tendency would explain everything. It showed us
how good men could tell lies without knowing it, and
how the religious value of an alleged fact in an alleged
historical revelation did not in the least depend on its
being a fact. And that great discovery, which first con­
verted solid historical Christianity into a gaseous condi­
tion, and then caught the fumes in some kind of retort,
and professed to hand us them back again improved by
the sublimation, has pretty well gone the way of all hy­
potheses. Myths are not made in three days, or in three
years, and no more time can be allowed for the formation
of the myth of the resurrection. What was the Church

to feed on while the myth was growing ? It would have
been starved to death long before.
Then, the last new explanation which is gravely put
forward, and is the prevailing one now, sustains itself by
reference to undeniable facts in the history of religious
movements, and of such abnormal attitudes of the mind
as modern spiritualism. On the strength of which ana­
logy we are invited to see in the faith of the early Chris­
tians in the resurrection of the Lord a gigantic instance of
"hallucination." No doubt there have been, and still
are, extraordinary instances of its power, especially in
minds excited by religious ideas. But we have only to
consider the details of the facts in hand to feel that they
cannot be accounted for on such a ground. Do halluci­
nations lay hold on five hundred people at once ? Does a
hallucination last for a long country walk, and give rise
to protracted conversation ? Does hallucination explain
the story of Christ eating and drinking before His dis­
ciples ? The uncertain twilight of the garden might have
begotten such an airy phantom in the brain of a single
sobbing woman; but the appearances to be explained
are so numerous, so varied in character, embrace so
many details, appeal to so many of the senses—to the ear
and hand as well as to the eye—were spread over so
long a period, and were simultaneously shared by so large
a number, that no theory of such a sort can account for
them, unless by impugning the veracity of the records.
And then we are back again on the old abandoned
ground of deceit and imposture. It sounds plausible to
say, Hallucination is a proved cause of many a supposed

supernatural event—why not of this? But the plausi­
bility of the solution ceases as soon as you try it on the
actual facts in their variety and completeness. It has
to be eked out with a length of the fox's skin of deceit
before it covers them ; and we may confidently assert
that such a belief as the belief of the early Church in the
resurrection of the Lord was never the product either of
deceit or of illusion, or of any amalgam of the two.
What new solutions the fertility of unbelief may yet
bring forth, and the credulity of unbelief may yet accept,
we know n o t : but we may firmly hold by the faith which
breathed new hope and strange joy into that sad band
on the first Easter morning, and rejoice with them in
the glad wonderful fact that He is risen from the dead.
IV. For that message is a message to us as truly as to
the heavy-hearted unbelieving men that first received i t
We may think for a moment of the joy with which we
should return from the sepulchre of the risen Saviour.
How little these women knew that, as they went back
from the grave in the morning twilight, they were the
bearers of "great joy which should be to all people!"
To them and to the first hearers of their message there
would be little clear in the rush of glad surprise, beyond
the blessed though!, Then He is not gone from us alto­
gether. Sweet visions of the resumption of happy com­
panionship would fill their minds, and it would not be
until calmer moments that the stupendous significance
of the fact would reveal itself.
Mary's rapturous gesture to clasp Him by the feet,

when the certainty that it was in very deed He, flooded
her soul with dazzling light, reveals her first emotion,
which no doubt was also the first with them all, " Then
we shall have Him with us again, and all the old joy of
companionship will be ours once more." Nor were they
wrong in thinking so, however little they as yet under­
stood the future manner of their fellowship, or antici­
pated His leaving them so soon. Nor are we without a
share even in that phase of their joy; for the resurrec­
tion of Jesus Christ gives us a living Lord for our love,
an ever present Companion and Brother for our hearts
to hold, even if our hands cannot clasp Him by the feet.
A dead Christ might have been the object of faint his­
torical admiration, and the fair statue might have stood
amidst others in the halls of the world; but the risen,
living Christ can love and be loved, and we too may
be glad with the joy of those who have found a heart to
rest their hearts upon, and a companionship that can
never fail.
As the early disciples learned to reflect upon the fact
of Christ's resurrection, its riches unfolded themselves by
degrees, and the earliest aspect of its " power" was the
hhgt it shed on His person and work. Taught by it, as
we .have seen, they recognised Him for the Messiah
whom they had long expected, and for something more
—the Incarnate Son of God. That phase of their joy
belongs to us too. If Christ, who made such avowals of
His nature as we know He did, and hazarded such
assertions of His claims, His personality and His office,
as fill the gospels, were really laid in the grave and saw

172

THE GRA VE OF THE DEAD JOHN

[s ERM.

corruption, then the assertions are disproved, the claims
unwarranted, the office a figment of His imagination.
He may still remain a great teacher, with a tremendous
deduction to be made from the worth of His teaching.
But all that is deepest in His own words about Himself,
and His relation to men, must be sorrowfully put on one
side. But if He, after such assertions and claims, rose
from the dead, and rising, dieth no more, then for the
last time, and in the mightiest tones, the voice that rent
the heavens at His baptism and His transfiguration
proclaims: " T h i s is My beloved Son; hear ye Him."
Our joy in His resurrection is the joy of those to whom
H e is therein declared to be the Son of God, and who
see in Christ risen their accepted Sacrifice, and their
ever-living Redeemer.
Such was the earliest effect of the resurrection of
Jesus, if we trust the records of apostolic preaching.
Then, by degrees the joyful thought took shape in the
Church's consciousness that their Shepherd had gone
before them into the dark pen where Death pastured his
flocks, and had taken it for His own, for the quiet restingplace where He would make them lie down by still
waters, and whence H e would lead them out to the lofty
mountains where- His fold should be. The power of
Christ's resurrection as the pattern and pledge of ours is
the final source of the joy which may fill our hearts as
we turn away from that empty sepulchre.
The world has guessed and feared, or guessed and
hoped, but always guessed and doubted the life beyond.
Analogies, poetic adumbrations, probabilities drawn from

consciousness and from conscience, from intuition and
from anticipation, are but poor foundations on which to
build a solid faith. But to those to whom the resurrec­
tion of Christ is a fact their own future life is a fact.
Here we have a solid certainty, and here alone. The
heart says as we lay our dear ones in the grave, " Surely
we part not for ever." The conscience says, as it points
us to our own evil deeds, " After death the judgment."
A deep indestructible instinct prophesies in every breast
of a future. But all is vague and doubtful. The one
proof of a life beyond the grave is the resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Therefore let us be glad with the gladness
of men plucked from a dark abyss of doubt and un­
certainty, and planted on the rock of solid certainty;
and let us rejoice with joy unspeakable, and laden with
a prophetic weight of glory, as we ring out the ancient
Easter morning's greeting, " The Lord is risen indeed !"

SERMON IX.
THE

TRANSLATION
ASCENSION

OF
OF

2 K I N G S ii.

ELIJAH

AND

THE

CHRIST.

n.

And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold,
there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted
them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into
heaven.
S T . LUKE xxiv. 5 1 .
And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted
from them, and carried up into heaven.

HESE two events, the Translation of Elijah and the
Ascension of our Lord, have sometimes been put
side by side in order to show that the latter narrative is
nothing but a " variant" of the former. See, it is said,
the source of your New Testament story is only the old
legend shaped anew by the wistful regrets of the early
disciples. But to me it seems that the simple comparison
of the two narratives is sufficient to bring out such funda­
mental difference in the ideas which they respectively em­
body as amount to opposition, and make any such theory
of the origin of the later absurdly improbable. I could
wish no better foil for the history of the ascension than
the history of Elijah's rapture. The comparison brings
A

out contrasts at every step, and there is no readier way of
throwing into strong relief the meaning and purpose of the
former, than holding up beside it the story of the latter.
The real parallel makes the divergences the more remark­
able, for likeness sharpens our perception of unlikeness,
and no contrast is so forcible as the contrast of things that
correspond. I am much mistaken if we shall not find al­
most every truth of importance connected with our Lord's
ascension emphasised for us by the comparison to which
we now proceed.
I. The first point which may be mentioned is the con­
trast between the manner of Elijah's translation, and that
of our Lord's ascension.
It is perhaps not without significance that the place of
the one event was on the uplands or in some of the rocky
gorges beyond Jordan, and that of the other, the slopes
of Olivet above Bethany. The lonely prophet, who had
burst like a meteor on Israel from the solitudes of Gilead,
whose fervour had ever and again been rekindled by re­
turn to the wilderness, whose whole career had isolated
him from men, found the fitting place for that last wonder
amidst the stern silence where he had so often sought
asylum and inspiration. He was close to the scenes of
mighty events in the past. There, on that overhanging
peak, the lawgiver whose work he was continuing and
with whom he was to be so strangely associated on the
Mount of Transfiguration, had made him ready for his
lonely grave. Here at his feet, the river had parted for
the victorious march of Israel. Away down on his

horizon the sunshine gleamed on the waters of the Dead
Sea; and thus, on his native soil, surrounded by memo­
rials of the Law which he laboured to restore, and of the
victories which he would fain have brought back, and of
the judgments which he saw again impending over Israel,
the stern solitary ascetic, the prophet of righteousness,
whose single arm stayed the downward course of a nation,
passed from his toil and his warfare.
What a different set of associations cluster round the
place of Christ's ascension—" Bethany," or, as it is more
particularly specified in the Acts, " O l i v e t ! " In the
very heart of the land, close by and yet out of sight of
the great city, in no wild solitude, but perhaps in some
dimple of the hill, neither shunning nor courting spec­
tators, with the quiet home where he had rested so often
in the little village at their feet there, and Gethsemane
a few furlongs off, in such scenes did the Christ whose
delights were with the sons of men, and His life lived in
closest companionship with His brethren, choose the place
whence He should ascend to their Father and His Father.
Nor perhaps was it without a meaning that the Mount
which received the last print of His ascending footstep
was that which a mysterious prophecy designated as
destined to receive the first print of the footstep of the
Lord coming to end the long warfare with evil at a future
day.
But more important than the localities is the contrasted
manner of the two ascents. The prophet's end was like
the man. It was fitting that he should be swept up the
skies in tempest and fire. The impetuosity of his nature,

and the stormy energy of his career had already been
symbolised in the mighty and strong wind which rent the
rocks, and in the fire that followed the earthquake; and
similarly nothing could be more appropriate than that
sudden rapture in storm and whirlwind, escorted by the
flaming chivalry of heaven.
Nor is it only as appropriate to the character of the
prophet and his work- that this tempestuous translation
is noteworthy. It also suggests very plainly that Elijah
was lifted to the skies by power acting on him from
without. He did not ascend; he was carried u p ; the
earthly frame and the human nature had no power to
rise. " No man hath ascended into heaven." The two
men of whom the Old Testament speaks were alike in
this, that " God took them." The tempest and the fiery
chariot tell us how great was the exercise of Divine power
which bore the gross mortality thither, and how unfamiliar
the sphere into which it passed.
How full of the very spirit of Christ's whole life is the
contrasted manner of His ascension ! The silent gentle­
ness, which did not strive nor cry nor cause His voice to
be heard in the streets, marks Him even in that hour of
lofty and transcendent triumph. There is no outward
sign to accompany His slow upward movement through
the quiet air. No blaze of fiery chariots, nor agitation
of tempest is needed to bear Him heavenwards. The
out-stretched hands drop the dew of His benediction on
the little company, and so He floats upward, His own will
and indwelling power the royal chariot which bears
him, and calmly " leaves the world and goes unto the

Father." The slow continuous movement of ascent is
emphatically made prominent in the brief narratives, both
by the phrase in Luke, " H e was carried up," which
expresses the continuous leisurely motion, and by the
picture in the Acts, of the disciples gazing into heaven
" as H e went up," in which latter word is brought out,
not only the slowness of the movement, but its origin in
His own will and its carrying out by His own power.
Nor is this absence of any vehicle or external agency
destroyed by the fact t h a t " a cloud " received Him out of
their sight, for its purpose was not to raise Him heaven­
ward, but to hide Him from the gazers' eyes, that He
might not seem to them to dwindle into distance, but
that their last look and memory might be of His clearly
discerned and loving face. Possibly too, we may be
intended to remember the cloud which guided Israel, the
glory which dwelt between the cherubim, the cloud which
overshadowed the Mount of Transfiguration, and to see
in this a symbol of the Divine Presence welcoming to
itself, His battle fought, the Son of His love.
Be that as it may, the manner of our Lord's ascension
by His own inherent power is brought into boldest relief
when contrasted with Elijah's rapture, and is evidently
the fitting expression, as it is the consequence, of His sole
and singular Divine nature. It accords with His own
manner of reference to the ascension, while H e was on
earth, which ever represents Him not as being taken, but
as going: " I leave the world and go to the Father."
" I ascend to my Father and their Father." The highest
hope of the devoutest souls before Him had been, " Thou

wilt afterwards take me to glory." The highest hope of
devout souls since Him has been, " We shall be caught
up to meet the Lord." But this man ever speaks of
Himself as able when He will, by His own power, to rise
where no man hath ascended. His Divine nature and
pre-existence shine clearly forth, and as we stand gazing
at Him blessing the world as He rises into the heavens,
we know that we are looking on no mere mysterious
elevation of a mortal to the skies, but are beholding the
return of the Incarnate Lord, that willed to tarry among
our earthly tabernacles for a time, to the glory where
He was before, " His own calm home, His habitation from
eternity."
II. Another striking point of contrast embraces the
relation which these two events respectively bear to the

life's work which had preceded them.
The falling mantle of Elijah has become a symbol
known to all the world, for the transference of unfinished
tasks and the appointment of successors to departed
greatness. Elisha asked that he might have a double
portion of his master's spirit, not meaning twice as much
as his master had had, but the eldest son's share of the
father's possessions, the double of the other children's
portion.
And, though his master had no power to
bestow the gift, and had to reply as one who has nothing
that he has not received, and cannot dispose of the grace
that dwells in him, the prayer was answered, and the
feebler nature of Elisha was fitted for the continuance of
the work which Elijah left undone.
^
N

2

The mantle that passed from one to the other was the
symbol of office and authority transferred : the functions
were the same, whilst the holders had changed. The sons
of the prophets bow before the new master ; " the spirit
of Elijah doth rest on Elisha."
So the world goes on. Man after man serves his
generation by the will of God, and is gathered to his
fathers; and a new arm grasps the mantle to smite
Jordan, and a new voice speaks from his empty place,
and men recognise the successor, and forget the pre­
decessor.
We turn to Christ's ascension, and there we meet with
nothing analogous to this transference of office.
No
mantle falling from His shoulders lights on any of that
group, none are hailed as His successors. What H e has
done bears and needs no repetition whilst time shall roll,
whilst eternity shall last. His work is one: " the help
that is done on earth, He doeth it all Himself." H i s
a s c e n s i o n completed the witness of heaven begun at His
resurrection that " He has offered one sacrifice for sins,
for ever." H e has leit no unfinished work which another
may perfect.
H e has done no work which another
may do again for new generations. He has spoken all
truth, and none may add to His words. He has fulfilled
all righteousness, and none may better His pittern. He
has borne all the world's sin, and no time can waste the
power of that sacrifice, nor any man add to its absolute
sufficiency. This king of men wears a crown to which
there is no heir. This priest has a priesthood which
passes to no other.
This " p r o p h e t " does "live for

ever." The world sees all other guides and helpers pass
away, and every man's work is caught up by other hands
and carried on where he drops it, and the short memories
and shorter gratitudes of men turn to the rising sun ; but
one name remains undimmed by distance, and one work
remains unapproached and unapproachab'e, and one man
remains whose office none other can hold, whose bow none
but He can bend, whose mantle none can wear. Christ
has ascended up on high and left a finished work for
all men to trust, for no man to continue.
III. Whilst our Lord's ascension is thus marked as the
seal of a work in which He has no successor, it is also
emphatically set forth, by contrast with Elijah's translation,

as the transition to a continuous energy for and" in the
world.
Clearly the other narrative derives all its pathos from
the thought that Elijah's work is done. His task is over,
and nothing more is to be hoped for from him. But that
same absence from the history of Christ's ascension, ot
any hint of a successor, to' which we have referred in the
previous remarks, has an obvious bearing on His present
relation to the world as well as on the completeness of
His unique past work.
When He ascended up on high, He relinquished
nothing of His activity for us, but only cast it into a new
form, which in some sense is yet higher than that which
it took on earth. His work for the world is in one
aspect completed on the cross, but in another it will
never be completed until all the blessings which that

cross has lodged in the midst of humanity, have reached
their widest possible diffusion and their highest possible
development. Long ages ago He cried, " It is finished,"
but we may be far yet from the time when He shall say,
" It is done ; " and for all the slow years between His own
word gives us the law of his activity, " My father worketh
hitherto, and I work."
That ascension is no withdrawal of the Captain of our
salvation from the field where we are left to fight, nor
has He gone up to the mountain, leaving us alone to tug
at the oar, and shiver in the cold night air. True, there
may seem a strange contrast between the present condi­
tion of the Lord who " was received up into heaven, and
sat on the right hand of God," and that of the servants
wandering through the world on His business; but the
contrast is harmonised by the next words, " the Lord
also worketh with them." Yes, He has gone up to sit at
the right hand of God. That session at God's right hand
to which the ascension is chiefly of importance as the
transition, means the repose of a perfected redemption,
the communion of Divine worship, the exercise of all the
omnipotence of God, the administration of the world's
history. He has ascended that He might fill all things,
that He might pour out His spirit upon us, that the path
to God may be trodden by our lame feet, that the whole
resources of the Divine nature may be wielded by the
hands that were nailed to the cross, and for the further­
ance of the same mighty purpose of salvation.
Elijah knew not whether his spirit could descend upon
his follower. But Christ, though as we have said, He

left no legacy of falling mantle to any, left His spirit to
His people. What Elisha gained, Elijah lost. What
Elisha desired, Elijah could not give nor guarantee.
How firm and assured beside Elijah's dubious "Thou
hast asked a hard thing," and his " I f thou see me, it shall
be so" is Christ's " I t is expedient for you that I go away.
For if I go not away the Comforter will not come, but ii
I depart, I will send him unto you."
So manifold are the forms of that new and continuous
activity of Christ into which He had passed when He left
the earth: and as we contrast these with the utter help­
lessness any longer to counsel, rebuke or save, to which
death reduces those who love us best, and to which e e n
his glorious rapture into the heavens brought the strong
prophet of fire, we can take up, with a new depth of
meaning, the ancient words that tell of Christ's exclusive
prerogative of succouring and inspiring from within the
veil: " Thou hast ascended on high; thou hast led
captivity captive; thou hast received gifts for men."
r

IV. The ascension of Christ is still further set forth,
in its very circumstances, by contrast with Elijah's
translation, as bearing on the hopes of humanity for the

future.
The prophet is caught up to the glory and the rest
for himself alone, and the sole share which the gazing
follower or the sons of the prophets, straining their eyes
chere at Jericho, hid in his triumph, was a deepened con­
viction of this prophet's mission, and perhaps some
clearer faith in a future life. Their wonder and sorrow,

Elisha's immediate grasping of his new power, the
prophets' immediate transference of their allegiance to
their new head, show that on both sides it was felt they
had no interest in the event beyond that of awe-struck
beholders.
No light streamed from it on their own
future. The path they had to tread was still the common
road into the great darkness, as solitary and unknown as
before. The chariot of fire parted their master from the
common experience of humanity as from their fellowship,
making him an exception to the sad rule of death, which
frowned the grimmer and more inexorable by contrast
with his radiant translation.
The very reverse is true of Christ's ascension. In Him
our nature is taken up to the throne of God. His resur­
rection assures us that " them which sleep in Jesus will
God bring with him." His passage to the heavens
assures us that " they who are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them," and that all of both
companies shall with Him live and reign, sharing His
dominion, and moulded to His image.
If we would know of what our manhood is capable, if
we would rise to the height of the hopes which God
means that we should cherish, if we would gain a living
grasp of the power that fulfils them, we have to stand
there gazing on the piled cloud that sails slowly upwards,
the pure floor for our Brother's feet. As we watch it
rising with a motion which is rest, we have the right to
think, " Thither the forerunner is for us entered." We
see'there what man is meant for, what men who love Him
attain. True, the world is still full of death and sorrow,

A
ix.]

AND

THE ASCENSION

—
OF CHRIST.

185

man's dominion seems a futile dream and a hope that
mocks, but we see Jesus, ascended up on high, and in
Him we too are made to sit together in heavenly places.
" The breaker is gone up before them. Their king shall
pass before them, and the Lord at the head of them."
There is yet another aspect in which our Lord's ascen­
sion bears on our hopes for the future, namely, as con­
nected with His coming again.
There, too, the contrast of Elijah's translation may
serve for emphasis. Prophecy, indeed, in its latest
voice, spoke of sending Elijah the prophet before the
coming of the day of the Lord, and rabbinical legends
delighted to tell how he had been carried to the Garden
of Eden, whence he would come again, in Israel's sorest
need. But the prophecy had no thought of a personal
• reappearance, and the dreams are only dreams such as
we find in the legendary history of many nations. As
Elisha recrossed the Jordan, he bore with him only a
mantle and a memory, not a hope.
" Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into
heaven ? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you
into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have
seen him go into heaven." How grand is the use in
these mighty words of the name Jesus, the name that
speaks of His true humanity, with all its weakness, limita­
tions, and sorrow, with all its tenderness and brotherhood !
The man who died and rose again, has gone up on high.
" He will so come as H e has gone." " So "—that is to
say, personally, corporeally, visibly, on clouds, perhaps
to that very spot, " and his feet shall stand in that day

upon the Mount of Olives." Thus Scripture teaches us
ever to associate together the departure and the coming
of the Lord, and always when we meditate on His as­
cension to prepare a place for us, to think of His real
presence with us through the ages, and of His coming
again to receive us to Himself.
That parting on Olivet cannot be the end. Such a
leave-taking is the prophecy of happy greetings and an
inseparable reunion. The king has gone to receive a
kingdom, and to return. Memory and hope coalesce, as
we think of Him who is passed into the heavens, and the
heart of the church has to cherish at once the glad
thought that its Head and helper has entered within the
veil, and the still more joyous one, which lightens the
days of separation and widowhood, that the Lord will
come again.
So let us take our share in the great joy with which
the disciples returned to Jerusalem, left like sheep in
the midst of wolves as they were, and "let us set our
affections on things above, where Christ is, sitting at
the right hand of God,"

SERMON X.
C A N W E M A K E S U R E OF TO-MORROW ?
A N E W YEAR'S SERMON.
ISAIAH lvi.

12.

To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.

HESE words, as they stand, are the call of boon
companions to new revelry. They are part of the
prophet's picture of a corrupt age when the men of influ­
ence and position had thrown away their sense of duty,
and had given themselves over, as aristocracies and pluto­
cracies are ever tempted to do, to mere luxury and good
living. They are summoning one another to their coarse
orgies. The roystering speaker says, " Do not be afraid
to drink; the cellar will hold out. To-day's carouse
will not empty i t ; there will be enough for to-morrow."
He forgets to-morrow's headaches; he forgets that on
some to-morrow the wine will be finished; he forgets that
the fingers of a hand may write the doom of the rioters
on the very walls of the banqueting chamber.
Whit have such words, the very motto of insolent.pre­
sumption and short-sighted animalism, to do with New
Year's thoughts ? Only this, that base and foolish as
they are on such lips, it is possible to lift them from the
mud, and take them as the utterance of a lofty and calm

hope which will not be disappointed, and of a firm and
lowly resolve which may ennoble life. Like a great many
other sayings, they may fit the mouth either of a sot or of
a saint. All depends on what the things are which we
are thinking about when we use them. There are things
about which it is absurd and worse than absurd to say this,'
and there are things about which it is the soberest truth
to say it. So looking forward into the merciful darkness
of another year, we may look at these words as either the
expressions of hopes which it is folly to cherish, or of
hopes that it is reasonable to entertain.
I. This expectation, if directed to any outward things,
is an illusion and a dream.
These coarse revellers into whose lips our text is put
only meant by it to brave the future and defy to-morrow
in the riot of their drunkenness. They show us the vulgarest, lowest form which the expectation can take, a form
which I need say nothing about now.
But I may just note in passing that to look forward
principally to anticipate pleasure or enjoyment is a very
poor and unworthy thing. It is weakening and lowering
every day, to use our faculty of hope mainly to paint the
future as a scene of delights and satisfactions. We spoil
to-day by thinking how we can turn it to the account of
pleasure. We spoil to-morrow before it comes, and hurt our
selves, if we are more engaged with fancying how it will
minister to our joy, than how we can make it minister to
our duty. It is base and foolish to be forecasting our plea­
sures, the true temper is to be forecasting our work.

But, leaving that consideration, let us notice how use­
less such anticipation, and how mad such confidence, as
that expressed in the text is, if directed to anything short
of God.
We are so constituted as that we grow into a persuasion
that what has been will be, and yet we can give no suffi­
cient reason to ourselves of why we expect it.
" T h e uniformity of the course of nature" is the corner­
stone, not only of physical science, but, in a more homely
form, of the wisdom which grows with experience. We
all believe that the sun will rise to-morrow because it rose
to-day, and for all the yesterdays. But there was a to­
day which had no yesterday, and there will be a to-day
which will have no to-morrow. The sun will rise for the
last time. The uniformity had a beginning and will have
an end.
So, even as an axiom of thought, the anticipation that
things will continue as they have been because they have
been, seems to rest on an insufficient basis. How much
more so, as to our own little lives and their surroundings !
There the only thing which we may be quite sure of about
to-morrow is that it will not be " a s this day." Even for
those of us who may have reached, for example, the level
plateau of middle life, where our position and tasks are
pretty well fixed, and we have little more to expect than
the monotonous repetition of the same duties recurring at
the same hour every day—even for such each day has its
own distinctive character. Like a flock of sheep they seem
all alike, but each, on closer inspection, reveals a physiog­
nomy of its own. There will be so many small changes

that even the same duties or enjoyments will not be quite
the same, and even if the outward things remained abso­
lutely unaltered, we who meet them are not the same..
Little variations in mood and tone, diminished zest here,
weakened power there, other thoughts breaking in, and
over and above all the slow silent change wrought on us
by growing years, make the perfect reproduction of any
part impossible. So, however familiar may be the road
we have to traverse, however uneventfully the same our
days may sometimes for long spaces in our lives seem to
be, though to ourselves Often our day's work may appear
a mill-horse round, yet in deepest truth, if we take into
account the whole sum of the minute changes in it and in
us, it may be said of each step of our journey, " Y e have
not passed this way heretofore."
But, besides all this, we know that these breathing-times
when " we have no changes," are but pauses in the storm,
landing-places in the ascent, the interspaces between the
shocks. However hope may tempt us to dream that the
future is like the present, a deeper wisdom lies in all our
souls which says No. Drunken bravery may front that
darkness with such words as these of our text, but the
least serious spirit, in its most joyous moods, never quite
succeeds in forgetting the solemn probabilities, possibili­
ties, and certainties which lodge in the unknown future..
So to a wise man it is ever a sobering exercise to look
forward, and we shall be nearest the truth if we take due
account, as we do so to-day, of the undoubted fact that
the only thing certain about to-morrow is that it will not
be as this day.

There are the great changes which come to some one
every day, which may come to any of us any day, which
will come to all of us some day. Some of us will die
this year; on a day in our new diaries some of us will
make no entry, for we shall be gone. Some of us will
be smitten down by illness; some of us will lose our
dearest; some of us will lose fortune. Which of us
it is to be, and where within these twelve months the
blow is to fall, is mercifully hidden. The only thing that
we certainly know is that these arrows will fly. The
thing we do not know is whose heart they will pierce.
This makes the gaze into the darkness grave and solemn.
There is ever something of dread in Hope's blue eyes.
True, the ministry of change is blessed and helpful; true,
the darkness which hides the future is merciful, and need­
ful if the present is not to be marred. But helpful and
merciful as they are, they invest the unknown to-rnorrow
with a solemn power which it is good, though sobering,
for us to feel, and they silence on every lip but that ot
riot and foolhardy debauchery the presumptuous words,
" To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abun­
dant."
II. But yet there is a possibility of so using the words
as to make them the utterance of a sober certainty which
will not be put to shame.
So long as our hope and anticipations creep along the
low levels of earth, and are concerned with external and
creatural good, their language can never rise beyond,
"To-morrow may be as this day." Oftenest it reaches

only to the height of the wistful wish, " May it be as this
day !" But there is no need for our being tortured with
such slippery possibilities. We may send out our hope
like Noah's dove, not to hover restlessly over a heaving
ocean of change, but to light on firm, solid, certainty,
and fold its wearied wings there. Forecasting is ever
close by foreboding. Hope is interwoven with fear, the
golden threads of the weft crossing the dark ones of the
warp, and the whole texture gleaming bright or glooming
black according to the angle at which it is seen.
So is it always until we turn our hope away from earth
to God, and fill the future with the light of His presence
and the certainty of His truth. Then the mists and
doubts roll away; we get above the region of " perhapses" into that of " surelys
the future is as certain
as the-past: hope as assured of its facts as memory,
prophecy as veracious as history.
Looking forward then, let us not occupy ourselves
with visions which we know may or may not come true.
Let us not feed ourselves with illusions which may make
the reality, when it comes to shatter them, yet harder
to bear. But let us make God in Christ our hope, and
pass from peradventures to certitudes ; from " To-morrow
may be as this day—would that it might," to " It shall
be, it shall be, for God is my expectation and my
hope."
We have an unchanging and an inexhaustible God,
and He is the true guarantee of the future for us. The
more we accustom ourselves to think of Him as shaping
all that is contingent and changeful in the nearest and

X.1 CAN WE MAKE

SURE OF TO-MORRO W? 1 9 3

in the remotest to-morrow, and as being Himself the
immutable portion of our souls, the calmer will be our
outlook into the darkness, and the more bright will be
the clear light of certainty which burns for us in it.
To-day's wealth may be to-morrow's poverty, to-day's
health to-morrow's sickness, to-day's happy companion­
ship of love to-morrow's aching solitude of heart, but
to-day's God will be to-morrow's God, to-day's Christ
will be to-morrow's Christ. Other fountains may dry up
in heat or freeze in winter, but this knows no change,
" in summer and winter it shall be." Other fountains
may sink low in their basins after much drawing, but this
is ever full, and after a thousand generations have drawn
from it its stream is broad and deep as ever. Other
fountains may be left behind on the march, and the wells
and palm-trees of each Elim on our road be succeeded
by a dry and thirsty land where no water is, but this
spring follows us all through the wilderness, and makes
music and spreads freshness ever by our path. We can
forecast nothing beside. We can be sure of this, that
God will be with us in all the days that lie before us.
What may be round the next headland we know not;
but this we know, that the same sunshine will make a
broadening path across the waters right to where we
rock on the unknown sea, and the same unmoving
mighty star will burn for our guidance. So we may let
the waves and currents roll as they list—or rather as H e
wills, and be little concerned about the incidents or the
companions of our voyage, since He is with us. We
can front the unknown to-morrow, even when we most
o

keenly feel how solemn and sad are the things it may
bring.
" I t can bring with it nothing
But H e will bear us through."

If only our hearts be fixed on God and we are feeding
our minds and wills on Him, His truth and His will,
then we may be quite certain that, whatever goes, our
truest riches will abide, and whoever leaves our little
company of loved ones, our best Friend will not go
away. Therefore, lifting our hopes beyond the low
levels of earth, and making our anticipations of the
future the reflection of the brightness of God thrown on
that else blank curtain, we may turn into the worthy
utterance of sober and saintly faith, the folly of the
riotous sensualist when he said, " To-morrow shall be as
this day."
The past is the mirror of the future for the Christian;
we look back on all the great deeds of old by which God
has redeemed and helped souls that cried to Him, and we
find in them the eternal laws of His working. They are
all true for to-day as they were at first; they remain true
for ever. The whole history of the past belongs to us,
and avails for our present and for our future. " As we
have heard, so have we seen in the city of our God."
To-day's experience runs on the same lines as the stories
of the " years of old," which are " the years of the right
hand of the Most High." Experience is ever the parent
of hope, and the latter can only build with the bricks
which the former gives. So the Christian has to lay

hold on all that God's mercy has done to the ages that
are. gone by, and because He is a " faithful Creator " to
transmute history into prophecy, and triumph in that
" the God of Jacob is our refuge."
Nor only does the record of what H e has been to
others come in to bring material for our forecast of the
future, but also the remembrance of what H e has been
to ourselves. Has He been with us in six troubles ?
We may be sure He will not abandon us at the seventh.
He is not in the way of beginning to build and leaving
His work unfinished. Remember what He has been to
you, and rejoice that there has been one thing in your
lives which, you may be sure, will always be there. Feed
your certain hopes for to-morrow on thankful remem­
brances of many a yesterday. " Forget not the works
of God," that you may " set your hopes on God." Let
our anticipations base themselves on memory, and utter
themselves in the prayer, " Thou hast been my help ;
leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation."
Then the assurance that He whom we know to be good
and wise and strong will shape the future, and Himself
be the future for us, will take all the fear out of that
forward gaze, will condense our light and unsubstantial
hopes into solid realities, and set before us an endless
line of days, in each of which we may gain more of Him,
whose face has brightened the past and will brighten the
future, till days shell end and time shall open into
eternity.
-

0

2

III. Looked at in another aspect, these words may be
taken as the vow of a firm and lowly resolve.
There is a future which we can but very slightly in­
fluence, and the less we look at that the better everyway.
But there is also a future which we can mould as we wish
— the future of our own characters, the only future which
is really ours at all—and the more clearly we set it before
ourselves, and make up our minds as to whither we wish
it to be tending the better. In that region, it is eminently
true that "to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more
abundant." The law of continuity shapes our moral and
spiritual characters. What I am to-day, I shall increas­
ingly be to morrow. The awful power of habit solidifies
actions into customs, and prolongs the reverberation of
every note once sounded, along the vaulted roof of the
chamber where we live. To-day is the child of yesterday
and the parent of to-morrow.
That solemn certainty of the continuance and increase
of moral and spiritual characteristics works in both good
and bad, but with a difference. To secure its full
blessing in the gradual development of the germs of good
there must be constant effort and tenacious resolution.
So many foes beset the springing of the good seed in
our hearts—what with the flying flocks of light-winged
fugitive thoughts ever ready to swoop down as soon as
the sower's back is turned and snatch it away, what with the
hardness of the rock which the roots soon encounter, what
with the thick-sown and quick-springing thorns—that if
we trust to the natural laws of growth and neglect our

x.]

CANWE

MAKE

SURE OFTO-MORROW7

197

careful tending, we may sow much but we shall gather
little. But to inherit the full consequences of that same law
working in the growth and development of the evil in us
nothing is needed but carelessness. Leave it alone for
a year or two and the "fruitful field will be a forest," a
jungle of matted weeds, with a struggling blossom where
cultivation had once been.
But if humbly we resolve and earnestly toil, looking for
His help, we may venture to hope that our characters will
grow in goodness and in likeness to our dear Lord, that
we shall not cast away our confidence, nor make ship­
wreck of our faith, that each new day shall finrJ in us a
deeper love, a perfecter consecration, a more joyful ser­
vice, and that so, in all the beauties of the Christian soul
and in all the blessings of the Christian life, " to-morrow
shall be as this day, and much more abundant." " T o
him that hath shall be given." " The path of the just is
as the shining light, that shineth more and more until the
noon tide of the day."
So we may look forward undismayed, and while we
recognise the darkness that wraps to-morrow in regard to
all mundane affairs, may feed our fortitude and fasten our
confidence on the double certainties that we shall have
God and more of God for our treasure, that we shall have
likeness to Him and more of likeness in our characters.
Fleeting moments may come and go. The uncertain
days may exercise their various ministry of giving and
taking away, but whether they plant or root up our earthly
props, whether they build or destroy our earthly houses,
they will increase our riches in the heavens, and give us

fuller possession of deeper draughts from the inexhaustible
fountain of living waters.
How dreadfully that same law of the continuity and
development of character works in some men there is
no need now to dwell upon. By slow, imperceptible,
certain degrees the evil gains upon them. Yesterday's
sin smooths the path for to-day's. The temptation once
yielded to gains power. The crack in the embankment
which lets a drop or two ooze through is soon a hole
which lets out a flood. It is easier to find a man who has
done a wrong thing than to find a man who has done it
only once. Peter denied his Lord thrice, and each time
more easily than the time before. So, before we know it,
the thin gossamer threads of single actions are twisted
into a rope of habit, and we are " tied with the cords of
our sins." Let no man say, "Just for once I may
venture on evil; so far I will go and no farther." Nay,
" to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more
abundant."
How important, then, the smallest acts become when
we think of them as thus influencing character! The
microscopic creatures, thousands of which will go into a
square inch, make the great white cliffs that beetle over
the wildest sea and front the storm. So, permanent and
solid character is built up out of trivial actions, and this
is the solemn aspect of our passing days, that they are
making us.
We might well tremble before such a thought, which
would be dreadful to the best of us, if it were not for
pardoning mercy and renewing grace. The law of

reaping what we have sown, or of continuing as we have
begun, may be modified as far as our sins and failures
are concerned. The entail may be cut off, and to-morrow
need not inherit to-day's guilt, nor to-day's habits. The
past may be all blotted out through the mercy of God in
Christ. No debt need be carried forward to another page
of the book of our lives, for Christ has given Himself for
us, and H e speaks to us all—" Thy sins be forgiven thee."
No evil habit need continue its dominion over us, nor are
we obliged to carry on the bad tradition of wrong-doing
into a future day, for Christ lives, and " if any man be in
Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away,
all things are become new."
So then, brethren, let us humbly take the confidence
which these words may be used to express, and as we
stand on the threshold of a new year and wait for the
curtain to be drawn, let us print deep on our hearts the
uncertainty of our hold of all things here, nor seek to
build nor anchor on these, but lift our thoughts to Him,
who will bless the future as H e has blessed the past, and
will even enlarge the gifts of his love and the help of his
right hand. Let us hope for ourselves not the continuance
or increase of outward good, but the growth of our souls
in all things lovely and of good report, the daily advance
in the love and likeness of our Lord.
So each day, each succeeding wave of the ocean of
time shall cast up treasures for us as it breaks at our
feet.
As we grow in years, we shall grow in the grace and
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, until

the day comes when we shall exchange earth for heaven.
That will be the sublimest application of this text, when,
dying, we can calmly be sure that though to-day be on this
side and to-morrow on the other bank of the black river,
there will be no break in the continuity, but only an
infinite growth in our life, and heaven's to-morrow shall
be as earth's to-day, and much more abundant.

SERMON XI.
THE

SOLITARINESS

OF

C H R I S T IN

HIS

TEMPTATIONS.

ST. LUKE xxii. 2 8 .

Y e are they which have continued with me in my temptations.

E wonder at the disciples when we read of the unseemly strife for precedence which jars on the
tender solemnities of the Last Supper. We think them
strangely unsympathetic and selfish; and so they were.
But do not let us be too hard on them, nor forget that
there was a very natural reason for the close connection
which is found in the gospels between our Lord's an­
nouncements of His sufferings and this eager dispute as to"
who should be the greatest in the kingdom. They dimly
understood what He meant, but they did understand this
much, that His " sufferings " were immediately to precede
His "glory"—and so it is not, after all, to be so much
wondered at if the apparent approach of these made the
settlement of their places in the impending kingdom seem
to them a very pressing question. We should probably
have thought so too, if we had been among them.
Perhaps, too, the immediate occasion of this strife who
v

v

should be accounted the greatest, which drew from Christ
the words of our text, may have been the unwillingness of
each to injure his possible claim to pre-eminence by doing
the servant's tasks at the modest meal. May we not
suppose that the basin and the towel w ere refused by one
after another, with muttered words growing louder and
angrier : " It is not my place," says Peter; " you, Andrew,
take it"—and so from hand to hand it goes, till the
Master ends the strife and takes it Himself to wash their
feet. Then, when He had sat down again, He may have
spoken the words of which our text is part—in which H e
tells the wrangling disciples what is the true law of
honour in His kingdom, namely, service, and points to
Himself as the great example. With what emphasis the
pathetic incident of the foot-washing invests the clause
before our text: " I am among you as he that serveth."
On that disclosure of the true law of pre-eminence in His
kingdom there follows in this and following verses the
assurance, that, unseemly as their strife, there was re­
ward for them, and places of dignity there, because in all
their selfishness and infirmity, they had still clung to
their Master.
This being the original purpose of these words, I venture
to use them for another. They give us, if I mistake not,
a wonderful glimpse into the heart of Christ, and a most
pathetic revelation of His thoughts and experiences, all
the more precious because it is quite incidental and, we
may say, unconscious.
r

1. See then, here, the tempted Christ
In one sense, our Lord is His own perpetual theme.
He is ever speaking of Himself, inasmuch as He is ever
presenting what He is to us, and what He claims of us.
In another sense, He scarcely ever speaks of Himself,
inasmuch as deep silence, for the most part, lies over His
own inward experiences. How precious, therefore, and
how profoundly significant is that word here—" in My
temptations " ! So He summed up all his life. To feel
the full force of the expression, it should be remembered
that the temptation in the wilderness was past before His
first disciple attached himself to Him, and that the conflict
in Gethsemane had not yet come when these words were
spoken. The period to which they refer, therefore, lies
altogether within these limits, including neither. After
the former, " Satan," we read, " departed from Him for
a season." Before the latter, we read, " the prince of
this world cometh." The space between, of which people
are so apt to think as free from temptation, is the time of
which our Lord is speaking now. The time when His
followers " companied with Him " is to His conscious­
ness the time of His " temptations."
That is not the point of view from which the Gospel
narratives present it, for the plain reason that they are
not autobiographies, and that Jesus said little about the
continuous assaults to which He was exposed. It is
not the point of view from which we often think of it.
We are too apt to conceive of Christ's temptations as all
gathered together—curdled and clotted, as it were, at the

two ends of His life, leaving the space between free. But
we cannot understand the meaning of that life, nor feel
aright the love and help that breathe from it, unless we
think of it as a field of continual and diversified temptations.
How remarkable is the choice of the expression ! To
Christ, His life, looking back on it, does not so much
present itself in the aspect of sorrow, difficulty or pain, as
in that of temptation. He looked.upon all outward things
mainly with regard to their power to help or to hinder
His life's work. So for us, sorrow or joy should matter
comparatively little. The evil in the evil should be felt
to be sin, and the true cross and burden of life should be
to us, as to our Master, the appeals it makes to us to
abandon our tasks, and fling away our filial dependance
and submission.
This is not the place to plunge into the thorny ques­
tions which surround the thought of the tempted Christ.
However these may be solved, the great fact remains,
that His temptations were most real and unceasing. It
was no sham fight which He fought. The story of the
wilderness is the story of a most real conflict; and that
conflict is waged all through his life. True, the traces
of it are few. The battle was fought on both sides in
grim silence, as sometimes men wage a mortal struggle
without a sound. But if there were no other witness
of the sore conflict, the Victor's shout at the close would
be enough. His last words, " I have overcome the
world," sound the note of triumph, and tells how sharp
had been the strife. So long and hard had it been that
H e cannot forget it even in heaven, and from the throne

holdsforth to all the churches the hope of overcoming,
"even as I also overcame." As on some battle-field
whence all traces of the agony and fury have passed
away, and harvests wave, and larks sing where blood ran
and men groaned their lives out, some grey stone raised
by the victors remains, and only the trophy tells of the
forgotten fight, so that monumental word, " I have over­
come " stands to all ages as the record of the silent, life­
long conflict.
It is not for us to know how the sinless Christ was
tempted. There are depths beyond our reach. This we
can understand, that a sinless manhood is not above the
reach of temptation; and this besides, that, to such a
nature, the temptations must be suggested from with­
out, not presented from within. The desire for food is
simply a physical craving, but another personality than
His own uses it to incite the Son to abandon dependence
for his physical life on God. The trust in God's pro­
tection is holy and good, and it may be truest wisdom
and piety to incur danger in dependence on it, when
God's service calls, but a mocking voice without suggests,
under the cloak of it, a needless rushing into peril at no
call of conscience, and for no end of mercy, which is not
religion but self-will. The desire to have the world for
His own lay in Christ's deepest heart, but the enemy of
Christ and man, who thought the world his already, used
it as giving occasion to suggest a smoother and shorter
road to win all men unto Him than the "Via dolorosa"
of the Cross. So the sinless Christ was tempted at the
beginning, and so the sinless Christ was tempted, in

various forms of these first temptations, throughout His
life. The path which He had to tread was ever before
Him, the shadow of the Cross was flung along His road
from the first The pain and sorrow, the shame and
spitting, the contradiction of sinners against Himself, the
easier path which needed but a wish to become His, the
shrinking of flesh—all these made their appeal to Him, and
every step of the path which He trod for us was trodden
by the power of a fresh consecration of Himself to His
task and a fresh victory over temptation.
Let us not seek to analyse. Let us be content to
worship, as we look. Let us think of the tempted Christ,
that our conceptions of His sinlessness maybe increased.
His was no untried and cloistered virtue, pure because
never brought into contact with seducing evil, but a
militant and victorious goodness, that was able to with­
stand in the evil day. Let us think of the tempted Christ
that our thankful thoughts of what He bore for us may be
warmer and more adequate, as we stand afar off and look
on at the mystery of His battle with our enemies and His.
Let us think of the tempted Christ to make the lighter
burden of our cross, and our less terrible conflict easier
to bear and to wage. So will He " continue with us in
our temptations," and patience and victory flow to us
from Him.
II. See here the lonely Christ.
There is no aspect of our Lord's life more pathetic
than that of His profound loneliness. I suppose the most
utterly solitary man that ever lived was Jesus Christ. Ix~

we think of the facts of His life, we see how His nearest
kindred stood aloof from Him, how " there were none to
praise, and very few to l o v e ; " and how, even in the
small company of His friends, there were absolutely none
who either understood Him or sympathised with Him.
We hear a great deal about the solitude in which men of
genius live, and how all great souls are necessarily lonely.
That is true, and that solitude of great men is one of the
compensations which run through all life, and make the
lot of the many little, more enviable than that of the few
great. " The little hills rejoice together on every side,"
but far above their smiling companionships, the alpine
peak lifts itself into the cold air, and though it be
" visited all night by troops of stars," is lonely amid the
silence and the snow. Talk of the solitude of pure
character amid evil, like Lot in Sodom, or of the loneli­
ness of uncomprehended aims and unshared thoughts—
who ever experienced that as keenly as Christ did ?
That perfect purity must needs have been hurt by the
sin of men as none else have ever been. That loving
heart yearning for the solace of an answering heart must
needs have felt a sharper pang of unrequited love than
ever pained another. That Spirit to which the things
that are seen were shadows, and the^ Father and the
Father's house the ever-present, only realities, must have
felt itself parted from the men whose portion was in this
life by a gulf broader than ever opened between any
other two souls that shared together human life.
The more pure and lofty a nature, the more keen its
sensitiveness, the more exquisite its delights, and the

sharper its pains. The more loving and unselfish a heart
the more its longing for companionship: and the more
its aching in loneliness.
Very significant and pathetic are many points in the
Gospel story bearing on this matter. The very choice of
the twelve had for its first purpose, " that they should be
with Him," as one of the evangelists tells us. We know
how constantly He took the three who were nearest to
Him along with Him, and that surely not merely that
they might be " eyewitnesses of His majesty" on the
holy mount, or of His agony in Gethsemane, but as having
a real gladness and strength even in their companionship
amid the mystery of glory as amid the power of darkness.
We read of His being alone but twice in all the gospels,
and both times for prayer. And surely the dullest ear
can hear a note of pain in that prophetic word : " T h e
hour cometh that ye shall be scattered, every man to his
own, and shall leave Me alone; " while every heart must
feel the pitiful pathos of the plea, " Tarry ye here, and
watch with Me." Even in that supreme hour, He longs
for human companionship, however uncomprehending,
and stretches out His hands in the great darkness, to feel
the touch of a hand of flesh and blood—and, alas, for poor
feeble love !—He gropes for it in vain. Surely that horror
of utter solitude is one of the elements of His passion
grave and sorrowful enough to be named by the side of
the other bitterness poured into that cup, even as it was
pain enough to form a substantive feature of the great
prophetic picture: " I looked for some to take pity, but
there was none; and for comforters, but I found none/

So here, a deep pain in His loneliness is implied in
these words of our text which put the disciples' partici­
pation in the glories of His throne as the issue of their
loyal continuance with Him in the conflict of earth.
These, and these only, had been by His side, and so much
does He care for their companionship, that therefore they
shall share His dominion.
That lonely Christ sympathises with all solitary hearts.
If ever we feel ourselves misunderstood and thrown
back upon ourselves; if ever our hearts' burden of
love is rejected; if our outward lives be lonely and
earth yields nothing to stay our longing for companion­
ship ; if our hearts have been filled with dear ones and
are now empty, or but filled with tears, let us think of
Him and say, " Y e t I am not alone." He lived alone,
alone H e died, that no heart might ever be solitary any
more. " Could ye not watch with Me ? " was His gentle
rebuke in Gethsemane. " Lo, / am with you always," is
His mighty promise from the throne. In every step of
life we may have Him for a companion, a friend closer
than all others, nearer us than our very selves, if we may
so say—and in the valley of the shadow of death we need
fear no evil, for H e will be with us.
I I I . See here the grateful Christ
I almost hesitate to use the word, but there seems a
distinct ring of thanks in the expression, and in the
connection. And we need not wonder at that, if we
rightly understand it. There is nothing in it inconsistent
with our Lord's character and relations to His disciples.
P

Do you remember another instance in which one seems
to hear the same tone, namely, in the marked warmth
with which He acknowledges the beautiful service of
Mary in breaking the fragrant casket of nard upon his
head ?
All true love is glad when it is met, glad to give, and
glad to receive. Was it not a joy to Jesus to be waited
on by the ministering woman ? Would He not thank
them because they served Him for love ? I trow, yes.
And if any one stumbles at the word " grateful" as applied
to Him, we do not care about the word so long as it is
seen that His heart was gladdened by loving friends, and
that H e recognised in their society a ministry of love.
Notice, too, the loving estimate of what these disciples
had done.
Their companionship had been imperfect
enough at the best. They had given Him but blind
affection, dashed with much selfishness. In an hour or
two they would all have forsaken Him and fled. H e
knew all that was lacking in them, and the cowardly
abandonment which was so near. But He has not a
word to say of all this. H e does not count jealously the
flaws in our work, or reject it because it is incomplete.
So here is the great truth clearly set forth, that where
there is a loving heart, there is acceptable service. It is
possible that our poor, imperfect deeds shall be an odour
of a sweet smell, acceptable, well-pleasing to Him.
Which of us that is a father is not glad at his children's
gifts, even though they be purchased with his own money,
and be of little use ? They mean love, so they are
precious. And Christ, in like manner, gladly accepts

what we bring, even though it be love chilled by selfish­
ness, and faith broken by doubt, and submission crossed
by self-will. The living heart of the disciples' acceptable
service was their love, far less intelligent and entire than
ours may be. They were joined to their Lord, though
with but partial sympathy and knowledge, in His tempta­
tions. It is possible for us to be joined to Jesus Christ
more closely and more truly than they were during His
earthly life. Union with Him here is union with Him
hereafter.
If we abide in Him amid the shows and
shadows of earth, He will continue with us in our tempta­
tions, and so the fellowship begun on earth will be per­
fected in heaven : " If so be that we suffer with Him, that
we may also be glorified together."

P

2

SERMON

XII.

T H E WELLS- OF SALVATION.
ISAIAH xii.

3.

With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.

' " T W O events, separated from each other by fifteen
hundred years, bear upon these words. One was
the origin of the peculiar form of this prophecy, the other
contains its interpretation and claims to be its fulfil­
ment.
The wandering march of the children of Israel had
brought them to Rephidim, where there was no water.
Their parched lips opened to murmur and rebel against
their unseen Leader and his visible lieutenant. At his
wits' end, Moses cried to God, and the answer is the
command to take with him the elders of Israel, and with
his rod in his hand to go up to H o r e b ; and then come
grand words, " Behold, I will stand before thee there upon
the rock, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall
come water out of it." It is not the rock, nor the rod,
nor the uplifted hand, but it is the presence of God which
makes the sparkling streams pour out. How the thirsty
men would drink, how gladly they would fling themselves

x

on the ground and glue their lips to the glancing blessing
or dip their cups and skins into it, as it flashed
along !
Many a psalm and prophecy refer to this old story,
and clearly Isaiah has it in his mind here, for the whole
context is full of allusions to the history of the Exodus,
as a symbol of the better deliverance from a worse
bondage, which the " Root of Jesse " was to effect. The
lyric burst of praise, of which the text is part, carries on
the same allusion. The joyful band of pilgrims returning
from this captivity sing the " Song of Moses," chanted
first by the banks of the Red Sea, " The Lord is my
strength and song, and he is become my salvation."
This distinct quotation, which immediately precedes our
text, makes the reference in it which we have pointed
out, most probable and natural.
The connection of these words with the story in the
Exodus was recognised by the Jews at a very early period,
as is plain from their use in the remarkable ritual of the
Feast of Tabernacles. That festival was originally ap­
pointed to preserve the remembrance of Israel's nomad
life in the wilderness.
In the later days of the nation, a
number of symbolical observances were added to those of
the original institution. Daily, amidst loud jubilations,
the priests wound in long procession down the slope from
the Temple to the fountain of Siloam in the valley be­
neath, and there drew water in golden urns. They bore
it back, the crowd surging around them, and then amidst
the blast of trumpets and a tumult of rejoicing, they
poured it on the altar, while thousands of voices chanted

Isaiah's words, " With joy shall ye draw water out of the
wells of salvation."
So much for the occasion of the prophecy, now for
its meaning and fulfilment. Nearly eight hundred years
have passed. Again the festival has come round. For
seven days the glad ceremonial had been performed.
For the last time the priestly procession has gone down
the rocky road; for the last time the vases have been
filled at the cool fountain below; for the last time the
bright water has been poured out sparkling in the sun­
light ; for the last time the shout of joy has risen and
fallen, and as the words of the ancient chant were dying
on the ear, a sudden stir began among the crowd, and
from the midst of them, as they parted for his passage,
carne a young man, rustic in apperrance, and there, before
all the silence-stricken multitude, and priests with their
empty urns, " In the last day, that great day of the feast,
Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come
unto me," and drink. Surely such words, in such a con­
nection, at such a time, from such lips, are meant to
point the path to the true understanding of the text.
So then, consider what we have to understand by the

wells of salvation.
We are not to be content with any shallow and narrow
interpretation of either idea in that phrase. No doubt
" salvation " in the Old Testament often means merely
outward deliverance from material peril. But there is
surely a perceptible deepening of the meaning of the
word in the mouth of this prophet, to whom was granted

a nearer approximation to the light of the gospel both
in respect of the Saviour and of His salvation, than had
previously been given. We shall not strain his meaning
here, if we take salvation almost in the fully developed
New Testament sense, as including negatively the de­
liverance from all evil, both evil of sin and evil of sorrow,
and positively the endowment with all good, good both of
holiness and happiness, which God can bestow or man
receive.
Then if so, God himself is, in the deepest truth, the
Well of Salvation. We need only remind you that the
figure of our text does not point to a well so much as to
a spring. It is a source, not a reservoir. So we have
but to recall the deep and wonderful words of the
psalmist: "With thee is the fountain of life," and others
not less profound, of the prophet, " They have forsaken
me, the fountain of living waters," in order to be led up
to the essential meaning of this text. All the springs
from which salvation, in any measure and in any form,
flows to the thirsty lips of men are in God Himself. What
grand truths that thought involves I It declares that
salvation has its origin in the depths of God's own nature.
It wells up as of itself, not drawn forth by anything in us,
but pouring out as from an inner impulse in His own deep
heart. God is His own motive, as His own end. As His
Being, so His Love (which is His Being) is determined by
nothing beyond Himself, but ever streams out by an energy
from within, like the sunlight whose beams reach the limits
of the system and travel on through dim dark distances,
not because they are drawn by the planet, but because they

are urged from the central light. Surely, too, if God be
the fountain of salvation, the essence of salvation must be
His communication of Himself. The water is the same
in the fountain as in the pitcher. So, while salvation
includes and gives rise to many another blessing both in
this life and in the next, the very core and heart of it is,
the possession of God Himself, filling our spirits and
changing our whole nature into His own image.
But, God being the true fountain of salvation, notice
that Jesus Christ plainly and decisively puts Himself in
the place that belongs to God : " If any man thirst, let
him come unto me, and drink." Think of the extra­
ordinary claims involved in that invitation. Here is a
man who plants Himself over against the whole of the
human race, and professes that He can satisfy every
thirst pf every soul through all the ages. Every craving
of heart and mind, all longings for love and wisdom, for
purity and joy, for strength and guidance, He assumes to
be able to slake by the gift of Himself.
Moses sinned when he said, " Must we fetch water out
of this rock ? " and expiated that sin by death. But his
presumption was modesty compared with the unheard-of
assumptions of the " meek and lowly " Christ. There is
but one hypothesis by which the character of Jesus can
be saved, if He ever said anything like these words—and
that is that He who speaks them is God manifest in the
flesh, the everlasting Son of the Father.
One other remark may be made on this part of our
subject. The first word of our text carries us back to
something preceding, on which the drawing water with

joy is founded. That something is expressed immediately
before : " The Lord Jehovah is may strength and song :
He also is become my salvation." These words are
quoted from Moses' song at the Red Sea, and there
point to the one definite act by which God had saved the
people from their pursuers. In like manner, we have to
look to a definite historical act by which the fountain of
salvation has been opened for us, and our glad drawing
therefrom has been made possible. The mission and
work of Jesus Christ, His incarnation, passion and death,
are the means by which the sealed fountain has been
opened. In these, or more truly in this, as one great "
whole, God becomes to us what in the depths of his
Being He always was. The living stream is brought
near. For men, Jesus Christ is as the river which flows
from the closed and land-locked sea of the infinite Divine
nature. He is for us the only source, the inexhaustible
source, the perennial source—like some spring never hot
or muddy, never frozen, never walled in, never sinking one
hair's-breadth in its basin, though armies drink, and ages
pass. " They drank of that Rock which followed them,
and that Rock was Christ." So all the files of this moving
host of men find the same spring beside them, where­
soever they pitch, and the last of all the generations shall
draw joy from the eternal fountain, Jesus Christ!
Consider, again, what is the way of drawing from the
well of salvation.
It is not difficult to come to a right understanding
of the act which answers to this part of the metaphor.

People have given many answers to the question, If God
be the fountain of salvation, how are we to get the water?
If I may say so, pumps of all sorts have been tried, and
there has been much weary working of arms at the
handles, and much jangling of buckets and nothing
brought up. The old word is true, with a new application
to all who try in any shape to procure salvation by any
work of their own: " Thou hast nothing to draw with,
and the well is deep." But there is no need for all this
profitless work. It is as foolish as it would be to spend
money and pains in sinking a well in some mountainous
country, where every hill-side is seamed with watercourses,
and all that is needed is to put one end of any kind of
wooden spout into the " burn" and your vessels under
the other. The well of salvation is an Artesian well that
needs no machinery to raise the water, but only pitchers
to receive it as it rises.
Christ has taught us what "drawing" is. To the
Samaritan woman H e said, " Thou wouldst have asked of
him, and he would have given thee living water." So,
then, Drawing is Asking. To the crowds in the Temple
courts He said, " Let him come unto me and drink."
So, then, Drawing is Coming. To the listeners by the
Sea of Galilee He said, " He that cometh to me shall
never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst" So Coming, Asking, Drawing, are all explained
by Believing. To trust Christ is to come to Him. To
trust Christ is to draw, and to trust Christ is to drink.
Simple faith draws all God's goodness into the soul.
Now that faith which is thus powerful, must fix

and fasten on a definite historical act. The faith
which draws from the fountain of salvation is not a
vague faith in generalities about God's goodness and the
like, but it grasps God as revealed and becoming our
salvation in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Nor
is it a vague faith which has regard to Christ in his
lovely character and perfect purity only, but one which
lays hold on that great miracle of love perfected on
the Cross where He bore our sins. In that wonderful
discourse in which Christ proclaims Himself the Bread
of Life, it is very instructive to note that H e advances
from the more general statement that life comes from
eating of that bread which is Himself, to the more
special and defined one, " Whoso eateth my flesh and
drinketh my blood hath eternal life." Not merely
Christ, but Christ crucified, is the food of our souls,
the water of life. So then the drawing is faith, and
that a faith which grasps the great sacrifice which Christ
has made, as the channel whereby God's salvation comes
near to each thirsty lip and drooping soul.
The words preceding our text suggest another charac­
teristic of the faith which really draws water from the
fountain : " He is become my salvation." That is to say,
this believing grasp of Christ manifested in a definite
historical act is an intensely personal thing. We are not
merely to say " He is the Saviour of the world," but
" He is my Saviour, He loved me, and gave Himself for
me? We must lay hold of that love as embracing our­
selves, and make our very own the treasure which
belongs to all. No general faith in Christ's mercy, or in

the atoning power of His Cross, will suffice to make us
glad and to bow our souls in quick and quickening love.
It must be something a great deal more personal than
that: even the faith that His heart has love in it for me,
that I am not lost in the crowd, nor forgotten in that
abstraction, " the world," but that I had a place in His
thought when He died, that I have a place in His heart
while H e lives. Thus making our own " the common
salvation," and filling our own vessel at the great fountain,
we shall have our own joy in the common gladness.
Consider too, the joy of the water drawers.
The well is the meeting-place in these hot lands,
where the solitary shepherds from the pastures and the
maidens from the black camels' hair tents meet in the
cool evening, and ringing laughter and cheery talk go
round. Or the allusion may be rather to the joy, as of
escape from death, with which some exhausted travellers
press towards the palm trees on the horizon that tell
of a spring in the desert, and when they have reached it,
crowd to the fountain and drink greedily, no matter how
hot and muddy it may be.
So jubilant is the heart of the man whose soul is filled
and feasted with the God of his salvation, and the salva­
tion of his God. True Christianity is a joyful thing, not
indeed with foolish laughter like the crackling of thorns
under a pot, but with a joy too deep to be loud, too pure
to be transient. Such a man has all the sources and
motives for joy which the heart can ask. Salvation

unfolds into manifold gladnesses—rare and profound.
There is in it forgiveness, which makes us " hear joy and
gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may
rejoice." There is companionship with God and Christ,
and such society makes " our hearts burn within us."
There is obedience to His will, and then His statutes
become the " joy of our hearts." There is a bright hope
beyond, and " in that hope of the glory of God we can
rejoice." We are independent of externals, possessing
that which no change can affect and of which nothing
can bereave us. So we can sing the old song : " Though
the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the
vines, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the
God of my salvation." How different the false and
fleeting joys of earth, when men resort to their broken
cisterns that can hold no water. The grim words of
the prophet are only too true about all other springs of
gladness : " They came to the pits, and found no water;
they returned with their vessels empty. They were
ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads."
That great Lord and Lover of all our souls calls to
each of us now, as H e did to the men of His generation,
when H e was on earth. To them He stretched out His
hospitable arms as H e stood in the Temple court and cried,
" If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink."
To us He speaks from heaven, in the great words which
all but close the volume of revelation : " Let him that
is athirst come, end whosoever will, let him take the
water of life freely." May each of us answer, " Sir, give
me this water, that I thirst not, neither come to earth's
broken cisterns to draw."

SERMON

XIII.

SEEKING T H E F A C E OF GOD.
PSALM xxvii. 8, 9.
When thou saidst, Seek ye my face ; my heart said unto thee, Thy
face, Lord, will I seek. Hide not Thy face far from me.

' T ^ H E R E appears to be a good deal of autobiography
in this psalm. The writer, whom we take to be
David, travels back in thought to the past of his life, and
his backward glance fixes on two distinct objects. At
one time he thinks of the past as God's past, all illumined
by the radiance of His favour, and helped by the might
of His imparted strength; and at another, he thinks of it
as his own past, wherein he strove to love and serve his
keeper God; and from both of these aspects of the days
that are gone he draws encouragement to hope that God
will be the same, and humbly resolves that he, for his
part, will continue the habit of trust and obedience. For
instances of the remembrance of God's past, we may take
the words which follow this text, " Thou hast been my
help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my
salvation," and the other reference to the signal deliver­
ance of his early years, which is often unnoticed by

ordinary readers, " When the wicked, even mine enemies
and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they
stumbled and fell " (ver. 2 ) . The expressions recall the
braggart boast of Goliath, " I will give thy flesh unto the
fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field," and the
vivid picture of the end of the fight, when the stones went
crashing into the thick skull of the bully, " a n d he fell
upon his face to the earth." As instance of his retrospect
of the past as his, take such words as these, " One thing
have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after," or, " I
had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of
the Lord in the land of the living." Here, in these words
of our text, these two ways of looking at the past are
woven into one strong cord, that the Psalmist may hang
his confidence and his prayers thereon. What God has
been saying to him in days that are no more, and what he
has been saying to God, are planted like the two piers of
an arch, that from them may rise heavenwards the prayer
and the hope, " Hide not thy face far from m e ; " " Leave
me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation."
Happy they who can look back on years made fair by
God's recognised gifts and their own loving obedience,
and who can feel that what God has been to them, and
what they have been to God, has stamped their lives with
an impress to which all the future will be true ! Happy
they if their forward look is a prayer offered in lowliness,
and not a boast made in presumption ! We have here
then God's voice to the heart, the heart's echo to that
voice, and the heart's cry to God, founded on both the
Divine voice and the human echo.

There is here, first, God's voice to the heart.
There may be some difficulties about the rendering
of our text, which, however, need not concern us now.
Our English version is sufficient for our present purpose,
and, according to it, we have here, as it were, summed
up in a kind of dialogue of two phrases, the whole speech
of God to us men, and the inmost meaning of all that
devout souls say to God. "Seek ye my face "—such is
the essential meaning of all God's words and works.
" T h y face, Lord, will I seek"—such is the essential
meaning of all prayer, worship, and obedience.
But let us observe a little more closely what the
Psalmist means by that phrase, " Seeking God's face."
It needs to be translated into a more modern dialect, in
order to convey much meaning to some of us. We may
begin then by asking the significance of that expression,
" the face of God."
It is one of those strong Scripture phrases which escape
any danger of misconstruction by the very boldness of
their corporeal metaphors.
The highest and most
spiritual conception of God is reached, not by a pedantic
scrupulosity in avoiding material representations, but by
an unhesitating use of these, and the remembrance that
they are representations. The unsubstantial abstraction
of the metaphysical God, described only in terms as far
removed as may be from human analogies, for fear of
being guilty of "anthropomorphism," never helped or
gladdened any human soul. It is but a bit of mist through
which you can see the stars shining. But the God whom

men need and can know and love, the God who is a
Spirit, comes near to us in descriptions cast in the mould
of humanity, and loses none of His purely Spiritual
essence, nor any of His Infinitude, because we have
learned to speak of the eye, and arm, and the hand, and
the heart, and the face of the Lord, The more unmis­
takably " gross" and " carnal" the representations, the
more do they proclaim their true character, and the less
danger of their being misunderstood. The eye of the
Lord is His all-seeing knowledge ; the arm and the hand
of the Lord are substantially the same, though with certain
shades of difference in the ideas which they suggest, and
may be said to express the active energy of the Divine
nature. The face of the Lord, we may say, is that
aspect or side of the divine nature which is turned to
man, and is perceptible by him. It is, roughly speaking,
almost equivalent to " t h e name of the Lord." That
expression has a much profounder meaning than is
ordinarily felt to belong to it. It means the manifested
character of God, the net result of all His self-revelation
by word and work. And so these two phrases—the face
of the Lord and the name of the Lord, come to nearly the
same thing.
Both of them are worth noting for one
reason besides others—namely, that they bring out into
clear prominence the twin facts, that there is that in God
which may be known, and also that which cannot be.
Whilst once or twice in the Old Testament " the face of
God" is used to express the dazzling brightness of His
essential being, which no man can look on, it more
usually means the knowable part of the Divine nature,
Q

and, like the other phrase which we have compared with
it, draws a broad distinction between that and the un­
knowable depths—the unspeakable in God. We see the
radiant brightness of the full moon, but no eye has ever
beheld the other side of that pure silver shield. So the
simple expression of our text keeps us from the twin
errors of supposing that we can know nothing of God,
and of forgetting that we can know but an aspect and a
side of His nature.
It may be further noticed that another idea is usually
connected with the expression—namely that of light.
The face of God is thought of as the sun, and so we read
" Lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us," and
other similar passages, in which the two ideas of the rising
of the sun on an else dark world, and the rising of the
Divine countenance on else dark and wintry hearts are
paralleled. All thoughts, then, of brightness, of clear
illumination, of gladness and knowledge, of favour and
warmth, cluster round the emblem; and of the Jehovah
of the Old Testament, as of the glorified Christ of the
New, it may De said, " His countenance was as the sun
shineth in his strength."
If these things be true, then we may learn what it is
to " seek His face." We do not need long and painful
search, as for something lost in dim darkness, in order to
find the sun. We do not need to seek the sun with
lanterns; nor to grope after God if haply we may find
Him. A man need only come out of his dark hiding-place
to find it. If he will but turn his face to the light, the
glory will brighten his features and make glad his eyes.

And in like manner, to seek God's face is no long,
dubious search, nor is He hard to be found. We have
only to desire to possess—and to act in harmony with
the desire—and we shall walk all the day in the light of
His countenance. Count the knowledge of God and the
experience of His sunny favour as more than all other
treasures of wisdom or delights of love or lower things.
" There be many that say, Who will show us any good ? "
and the search is vain, even because it has no clear
knowledge of what is good, and seeks to make up for the
limitations of its possessions by their multitude. " Lord,
lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us." That
is the one pearl of great price, for wdrich all the frag­
mentary and partial preciousnesses of many goodly pearls
are wisely exchanged. Endeavour to keep vivid the
consciousness of that face as looking always in on you,
like the solemn frescoes of the Christ which Angelico
painted on the walls of bis convent cells, that each poor
brother might feel His Master ever with him. Make Him
your companion, and then, though you may feel the awe
of the thought, " Thou hast set our secret sins in the light
of Thy countenance," you will find a joy deeper than the
awe, and learn the blessedness of those, sinful though
they may be, who walk in the full brightness of that face.
Let Him be the object of your thoughts, and more and
more of your whole nature.
Let feeling and desire,
affection and will, mind and work, all turn to Him, taking
Him for motive and end, for strength and means, and
turning all your being towards Him as the sunflower turns
to follow the sun. Scrupulously avoid whatever might
Q

2

dim the vision of His face. An invisible vapour may
hide a star, and we only know that the film is in the
nightly sky because Jupiter, which was blazing a moment
ago, has become dim or has disappeared. So fogs and
vapours from the undrained swamps of our own selfish,
worldly hearts may rob the thought of God of all its genial
lustre, and make it an angry ball of fire, or may hide
Him altogether from us ; and we cannot be seeking Him
and earthly things any more than we can serve God and
Mammon.
If this be the meaning of seeking God's face, then note
that this invitation is God's merciful voice to us all.
Whether the Psalmist is thinking about any special time
or way in which God so spoke to him does not appear.
Rather, we may suppose that he is summing up the
meaning of the whole of God's dealings with him in the
past. However that may be, it is true that God thus
speaks to each of us, and that we may even say He speaks
thus only to us. By the revelation to us of His own
beauty and wonderful fitness to satisfy the hunger of our
souls, He is wooing us to seek His face. So infinitely
fair and good is He, that to make Himself visible is to
draw us to Himself. To know Him is to love Him, and
the heart of all His self-revelation by speech and deed is
the gracious call to come to His brightness and be at rest.
By the very make of our spirits, which bear on them
alike in their weakness and their strength the sign that
they are His, and can only be at rest in Him, He says,
" Seek ye my face." By ail H.s providences of joy or
so? row, by disappointments and fulfilments, by hopes and

fruitions, by losses and gains, by all the alternations which
" toss us to His breast," He says, "Seek ye my face."
In all that befalls us our purged ears may hear " the great
voice saying, Come up thither." And most of all in
Jesus Christ, the true " angel of His face," in whom all
the lustre of His radiance is gathered, does He beckon us
to Himself. The highest, most loving, most beseeching
form of that wonderful invitation, " Seek ye my face," is
the call of Him in whose face we see the glory of God as
we see it nowhere besides : " Come unto me, all ye that
labour and are heavy laden." So He speaks to the whole
world. So He speaks to each of us. So He speaks to
me by Christ, who is the dearest utterance of His love
and the express image of His person.
II. We have here the heart's echo to the voice of God.
" My heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek."
Swift and immediate, as the thunder to the lightning, the
answer follows the invitition. If the resolve to seek
God's face be not made by us at the very moment when
we become aware of His loving call, it is very unlikely to
be made at all. The first notes of that low voice fall on
the heart with more persuasive power than they retain
after it has become familiar with them, even as the firstheard song of the thrush in spring-time, that breaks the
long wintry silence, has a sweetness all its own. The
echo answers as soon as the mother voice ceases. But
how many of us hesitate and delay, and content ourselves
with intentions to answer, and so by lapse of time lose
our very consciousness that God is speaking to us at all.

Some of us are as dead to the perception of His gracious
call, just because it has been sounding on uninterruptedly,
as are the dwellers by the waterfall to its unremitting
voice. And it is always dangerous to delay for one
moment the uprising of the heart in any resolution which
we know to be right. Any unnecessary interval inter­
posed between the perception of duty and the doing of
duty weakens the perception and the resolution as well,
and lowers the whole tone of a man. So do not let us
tolerate any lingering hesitation in ourselves in yielding
to the Divine summons. The only safety, the only peace
lies in prompt obedience and in an immediate answer.
There is also brought out here very plainly the complete
correspondence between the Divine command and the
devout man's resolve. Word for word the invitation is
repeated in the answer. This man's obedience is no
partial obedience. He does not take part of God's call
and yield to that, leaving the rest to be dispersed in
empty air, but all the breadth and depth of the message
that comes to him from God is contained in his an­
nouncement of his purpose. Like the sailor at the tiller,
he answers his captain's directions by repeating them.
" Port," says the officer. " Port it is," says the steersman.
"Seek ye my face." " T h y face will I seek." The
correspondence in words means the correspondence in
action and the thorough-going obedience. How unlike
the half-and-half seeking, the languid search, as of people
listlessly looking for something which they do not much
expect to find, and do not much care whether they find
or no, which characterises so many so-called Christians!

They are seekers after God, are they ? Yes, with less
eagerness than they would seek for a sovereign if it rolled
from their fingers into the mud. And so need we
wonder that so may of us have' but little consciousness
of a found God to brighten our lives ? " Seek, and ye
shall find" is ever true, thank God, but it must be a
whole-hearted seeking, and not the feeble, flickering desire
and the listless action which mark so many of us.
Note, too, the firm and decisive resolution shining
through the very brevity of the words. The original
gives that brevity even more strongly. Three words
suffice to hold the law which the man has made for the
pole-star of his life. Fixed resolves need short professions.
A Spartan brevity, as of a man with his lips tightly locked
together, is fitting for such purposes. It is the waverers,
who have more than one end in view, or the feeble-willed
who try to brace themselves up by talking, making a
fence of words around them, who are profuse in their
vows The sober temperament, that measures difficulties
and knows the tenacity as well as the gravity of its
determination, keeps its breath for the struggle, and does
not waste it on blowing the trumpet beforehand. If we
are quite resolved that our life's business is to be seeking
God's face, we shall for the most part say little about it.
What a contrast that clear, self-conscious, firm reso­
lution is to the hesitations and indecisions so common
among us ! How few of us could honestly crystallize the
aims that guide our life into any single sentence!
How much fewer there are who could do it in that sen­
tence ! We try the impossible feat of riding on two horses

at once. We resolve and retract, and hesitate and com­
promise. The ship heads now one way and now another,
and that not because we are wisely tacking—that is to say,
seeking to reach one point by widely-varying courses—•
but because our hand is so weak on the helm that we
drift wherever the wash of the waves and the buffets of
the wind carry us.
Further, we have in this heart's echo to the voice of

God the conversion of a general invitation into a personal
resolution.
The call is, " Seek ye." The answer is, " / will seek."
That is what we have all to do with God's words. H e
sows His invitations broadcast; we have to make them
our own. H e sends out His mercy for a world ; we have
to claim each our portion. H e issues His commands to
all; I have to make them the law for my life. The
stream flows deep and broad from the throne of God,
and parts into four heads, the number expressive of
universal diffusion throughout the world; but I have to
bring if into my own garden by my own trench, and to
carry it to my own lip in my own cup. The gospel tells
us that Christ died for the world; I have to "appro­
priate " that, as our fathers used to name it, by saying
H e gave Himself for me. So when that merciful voice
comes to us there must be, each for himself, a personal
response to it. "Seek ye my face." Let us each reply,
" Thy face, Lord, will / seek."
Nothing in all the world is so blessed as to hear that
wonderful beseeching call sounding in every providence,
travelling to us from every corner of the universe, speak-

ing to us in the light of setting »uns and in the hush of
midnight skies, sounding in the break of waves on the
beach and in the rustle of leaves in the forest depths,
whispering to us in the depths of our own hearts and
wooing us by all things to our rest. Everything assumes
a new meaning and is appareled in celestial light when
we are aware that everything is a messenger from God to
guide us to Himself. And nothing is so joyous as to
yield to that most tender summons, while on the other
hand, its non-acceptance breeds and brings discord and
unrest into our whole being. To stifle it wholly is im­
possible, conscience will ever and again stir. When we
feel most secure, and have deadened our ears most
effectually, as we think, some word or look, a chance
line in a book, a sunset, a phrase in a sermon, the
meeting of a funeral, some fleeting gladness, sets the
chords vibrating again. So there is constant inward
strife, or, if not, so much the worse ; for the man who
has lost the capacity of discerning God's voice has lost
the most of what ennobles his nature. But that is heaven
on earth, nobleness, peace, and power, to stand as at the
point of some great ellipse, to which converge from all
sides the music of God's manifold invitations, and listen­
ing to them to say, I hear, and I obey. Thou dost call,
and I answer, Lo ! here am I.
III. The third bend in the stream of thought here is the

heart's cry to God founded on both the Divine voice and the
human echo.
" Hide not thy face far from me " is clearly a prayer

built upon both these elements in the past. God's in­
vitation, and my acceptance of it, both give me the right
to pray thus, and are pledges of the answer.
As to the former, " Thou saidst, Seek ye my face *—
" hide not thy face from me " is but the vivid way of
putting the thought that.God cannot Contradict Himself.
His commandments are promises. " Thou shalt" is but
the hard, rough shell which covers a sweet " I will" from
His lips. If He bids us seek His face, He thereby
pledges Himself to show us His face. He binds Himself
to us by His commandments; and, in that sense too, as
well as in others, His law is a covenant, placing Him
under obligations, even as it does us. He recognises the
force of the plea upon our lips, and owns that we prevail
when we urge it. He can point with majestic self-vindi­
cation, to all the records of the past, and assert, " I have
never said to the seed of Jacob, Seek ye my face in
vain." So we may build an unshaken confidence on His
unchangeable fidelity to 'the obligation under which He
comes by sending forth such a summons. Be sure that
God never calls us to a feast and sets before us an empty
table, when we take Him at His word and come. His
past is the guarantee and pattern for His future. Has
He bid me seek His face ? Then He cannot hide His
face from me, nor say me nay when I beseech Him to
lift up its light upon me.
As to the second ground of this prayer, it rests on my
past as well as on God's. " Thy face will I seek—hide
not thy face from me." That is the confidence that
because we seek we shall find. My feeblest desire brings

answers correspondent to its strength and purity. It
cannot be that any man ever truly longed to know God
and was balked of his wish. You may have exactly as
much of God as you want; as much, that is, as you can
hold, as much as the ordering of your lives makes it
possible that we should possess. There is no limit to
our consciousness of God's loving presence and help,
except that drawn by ourselves. He fills the vessels we
bring, be they large or small. And there is no possibility
of any longing after Him remaining unsatisfied. No
hunger of heart, no aching emptiness, no eyes failing
with looking for the visitor who never comes, no pining
away in sick disappointment, have any place in the
relation of the soul to God. So sufficient is He, so near,
so infinitely desirous to impart Himself, that H e n e e d s
but the narrowest opening to pour His fulness into the
heart. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
God, for they shall be filled. He does not hold out a
gift with one hand and then twitch it away with the
other when we try to grasp, as children do with light
reflected from a looking-glass on a wall. That fair face
does not elude us when we try to look on it, but to seek
is to find, to wish for God is to have God.
" Seek His face evermore," and your life will be bright
because you will walk in the light of His countenance
always. That face will brighten the darkness of death,
and " make a sunshine in that shady place." As you
pass through the dark valley it will shine in upon you,
as the sun looks through the savage gorge in the
Himalayas, above whicn towers that strange mountain
-

which is pierced right through with a circular aperture;
and when you reach the land beyond you will enter it
with the wonderful hope on your lips, " As for me, I
shall behold thy face in righteousness," and heaven's
heaven will be that " H i s servants serve Him and see
His face."

SERMON XIV.
CITIZENS

OF

P H I L I P , i. 2 7 ,

HEAVEN.
28.

Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ:
that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear
„ of your affair?, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind
striving together for the faith of the g o s p e l ; and in nothing
terrified by your adversaries.

E read in the Acts of the Apostles that Philippi
was the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and
a "colony." Now, the connection between a Roman
colony and Rome was a great deal closer than that
between an English colony and England. It was, in
fact, a bit of Rome on foreign soil.
The colonists and their children were Roman citizens.
Their names were enrolled on the lists of Roman tribes.
They were governed not by the provincial authorities,
but by their own magistrates, and the law to which they
owed obedience was not that of the locality, but the law
o f Rome.
No doubt some of the Philippian Christians possessed
these privileges. They knew what it was to live in a
community to which they were less closely bound than
v

v

to the great city beyond the sea. They were w.embers
of a mighty polity, though they had never seen its
temples nor trod its streets. They lived in Philippi, but
they belonged to Rome. Hence there is a peculiar
significance in the first words of our text. The render­
ing, " conversation," was inadequate even when it was
made. It has become more so now. The word then
meant "conduct." It now means little more than words.
But though the phrase may express loosely the Apostle's
general idea, it loses entirely the striking metaphor under
which it is couched. The Revised Version gives the
literal rendering in its margin—" Behave as citizens "—
though it adopts in its text a rendering which disregards
the figure in the word, and contents itself with the less
picturesque and vivid phrase—"let your manner of life
be worthy." But there seems no reason for leaving out
the metaphor; it entirely fits in with the purpose of the
apostle and with the context.
The meaning is, Play the citizen in a manner worthy of the gospel. Paul does not, of course, mean, Dis­
charge your civic duties as Christian men, though some
Christian Englishmen need that reminder; but the city of
which these Philippians were citizens was the heavenly
Jerusalem, the metropolis, the mother city of us all. H e
would kindle in them the consciousness of belonging
to another order of things than that around them. H e
would stimulate their loyalty to obedience to the city's
laws. As the outlying colonies of Rome had sometimes
entrusted to them the task of keeping the frontiers and
extending the power of the imperial city, so he stirs-them'

up to aggressive warfare; "and as in all their conflicts the
little colony felt that the Empire was at its back, and
therefore looked undaunted on shoals of barbarian foes,
so he would have his friends at Philippi animated by lofty
courage, and ever confident of final victory.
Such seems to be a general oudine of these eager
exhortations to the citizens of heaven in this outlying
colony of earth. Let us think of them briefly in order
now.
I. Keep fresh the sense of belonging to the mother city.
Paul was not only writing to Philippi, but from Rome,
where he might see how, even in degenerate days, the
consciousness of being a Roman gave dignity to a man,
and how the idea became almost a religion. H e would
kindle a similar feeling in Christians.
We do belong to another polity or order of things than
that with which we are connected by the bonds of flesh
and sense. Our true affinities are with the mother city.
True, we are here on earth, but far beyond the blue
waters is another community, of which we are truly
members, and sometimes in calm weather we can see, if
we climb to a height above the smoke of the valley where
we dwell, the faint outline of the mountains of that other
land, lying dream-like on the opal waves, and bathed in
sunlight.
Therefore it is a great part of Christian discipline to
keep a vivid consciousness that there is such an unseen
order of things at present in existence.
We speak
popularly of " t h e future life," and are apt to forget that

it is also the present life to an innumerable company.
In fact, this him of an earthly life floats in that greater
sphere which is all around it, above, beneath, touching it
at every point.
It is, as Peter says " ready to be unveiled." Yes,
behind the thin curtain, through which stray beams of
the brightness sometimes shoot, that other order stands,
close to us, parted from us by a most slender division,
only a woven veil, no greit gulf or iron barrier. And,
before long His hand will draw it back, rattling with its
rings as it is put aside, and there will blaze out what has
always been, though we saw it not. It is so close, so
real, so bright, so solemn, that it is worth while to try to
feel its nearness; and we are so purblind, and such
foolish slaves of mere sense, shaping our lives on the
legal maxim that things which are non-apparent must be
treated as non-existent, that it needs a constant effort
not to lose the feeling altogether.
There is a present connection between all Christian
men and that heavenly City. It not merely exists,
but we belong to it in the measure in which we are
Christians. All these figurative expressions about our
citizenship being in heaven and the like, rest on the
simple fact that the life of Christian men on earth and
in heaven is fundamentally the same. The principles
which guide, the motives which sway, the tastes and
desires, affections and impulses, the objects and aims,
are substantially one. A Christian man's true affinities
are with the things not seen, and with the persons there,
however the surface relationships knit him to the earth.

In the degree in which he is a Christian, he is a stranger
here and a native of the heavens. That great City is,
like some of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad
river, with the mass of the metropolis on the one bank,
but a wide-spreading suburb on the other. As the
Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark to London, so is
earth to heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the
bridge. As Philippi was to Rome, so is earth to heaven,
the colony on the outskirts of the empire, ringed round
by barbarians, and separated by sounding seas, but
keeping open its communications, and one in citizenship.
Be it our care, then, to keep the sense of that city
beyond the river vivid and constant. Amid the shows
and shams of earth look ever onward to the realities,
" the things which are" while all else only seems to be.
The things which are seen are but smoke wreaths,
floating for a moment across space, and melting into
nothingness while we look. We do not belong to them
or to the order of hings to which they belong.
There
is no kindred between us and them. Our true relation­
ships are elsewhere. In this present visible world all
other creatures find their sufficient and home-like abode.
" Foxes have holes, and birds their r o o s t i n g - p l a c e s b u t
man alone has not where to lay his head, nor can he
find in all the width of the created universe a place in
which and with which he can be satisfied.
Our true
habitat is elsewhere. So let us set our thoughts and
affections on things above. The descendants of the
original settlers in our colonies talk still of coming to
England as going " home," though they were born in
R

Australia, and have lived there all their lives. In like
manner we Christian people should keep vigorous in our
minds the thought that our true home is there where we
have never been, and that here we are foreigners and
wanderers.
Nor need that feeling of detachment from the present
sadden our spirits, or weaken our interest in the things
around us. To recognise our separation from the order
of things in which we "move," because we belong to
that majestic unseen order in which we really " have our
being," makes life great and not small. It clothes the
present with dignity beyond what is possible to it if it be
not looked at in the light of its connection with " t h e
regions beyond." From that connection life derives all
its meaning. Surely nothing can be conceived more
unmeaning, more* wearisome in its monotony, more
tragic in its joy, more purposeless in its efforts, than
man's life, if the life of sense and time be all. Truly it
is " like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing." " T h e white radiance of eternity"
streaming through it from above gives all its beauty to
the " dome of many-coloured glass " which men call life.
They who feel most their connection with the city which
hath foundations should be best able to wring the last
drop of pure sweetness out of all earthly joys, to under­
stand the meaning of all events, and to be interested
most keenly, because mcst intelligently and most nobly,
in the homeliest and smallest of the tasks and concerns
of the present.
So, in all things, act as citizens of the great Mother of

heroes and saints beyond the sea. Ever feel that you
belong to another order, and let the thought, " Here we
have no continuing city," be to you not merely the bitter
lesson taught by the transiency of earthly joys and
treasures and loves, but the happy result of " seeking for
the city which hath the foundations."
II. Another exhortation which our text gives is, Live
by the laws of the city.
The Philippian colonists were governed by the code
of Rome. Whatever might be the law of the province
of Macedonia, they owed no obedience to it.
So
Christian men are not to be governed by the maxims
and rules of conduct which prevail in the province, but
to be governed from the capital. We ought to get from
on-lookers the same character that was given to the Jews,
that we are " a people whose laws are different from all
people that be on earth," and we ought to reckon such a
character our highest praise. Paul would have these
Philippian Christians act " worthy of the gospel'
That
is our law.
The great good news of God manifest in the flesh, and
of our salvation through Christ Jesus, is not merely to be
believed, but to be obeyed. The gospel is not merely a
message of deliverance, it is also a rule of conduct. It
is not merely theology, it is also ethics. Like some of
the ancient municipal charters, the grant of privileges
and proclamation of freedom is also the sovereign code
which imposes duties and shapes life. A gospel of
aziness and mere exemption from hell was not Paul's
1

R

2

gospel. A gospel of doctrines, to be investigated, spun
into a system of theology, and accepted by the under­
standing, and there an end, was not Paul's gospel. He
believed that the great facts which he proclaimed con­
cerning the self-revelation of God in Christ would unfold
into a sovereign law.of life for every true believer, and
so his one all-sufficient precept and standard of conduct
are in these simple words, " worthy of the gospel."
That law is all-sufficient. In the truths which con­
stituted Paul's gospel, that is to say, in the truths of the
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, lies all that
men need for conduct and character. In Him we have
the " realised ideal," the flawless example, and instead of
a thousand precepts, for us all duty is resolved into one
—be like Christ. In Him we have the mighty motive,
powerful enough to overcome all forces that would draw
us away, and like some strong spring to keep us in
closest contact with Right and Goodness. Instead of a
confusing variety of appeals to manifold motives of
interest and conscience, and one knows not what beside,
we have the one all-powerful appeal, " I f ye love me,
keep my commandments," and that draws all the
agitations and fluctuations of the soul after it, as ths
rounded fullness of the moon does the heaped waters in
the tidal wave that girdles the world. In Him we have
all the helps that weakness needs, for He Himself will
come and dwell with us and in us, and be our righteous­
ness and our strength.
Live " worthy of the gospel," then. How grand the
unity and simplicity thus breathed into our duties and

through our lives ! All duties are capable of reduction
to this one, and though we shall still need, detailed
instruction and specific precepts, we shall be set free
from the pedantry of a small scrupulous casuistry, which
fetters men's limbs with microscopic bands, and shall
joyfully learn how much mightier and happier is the life
which is shaped by one fruitful principle, than that which
is hampered by a thousand regulations.
Nor is such an all-comprehensive precept a mere
toothless generality. Let a man try honestly to shape
his life by i t ; and he will find soon enough how close it
grips him, and how wide it stretches and how deep it
goes. The greatest principles of the gospel are to be
fitted to the smallest duties. Indeed that combination—great principles and small duties—is the secret of all
noble and calm life, and nowhere should it be so beauti­
fully exemplified as in the life of a Christian man. The
tiny round of the dew-drop is shaped by the same laws
that mould the giant sphere of the largest planet. You
cannot make a map of the poorest grassfield without
celestial observations. The star is not too high nor too
brilliant to move before us and guide simple men's feet
along their pilgrimage. "Worthy of the gospel" is a
most practical and stringent law.
And it is an exclusive commandment too, shutting out
obedience to other codes, however common and fashion­
able they may be. We are governed from home, and we
give no submission to provincial authorities. Never mind
what people say about you, nor what may be the maxims
and ways of men around you These are no guides for

you. Public opinion (which only means for most of us the
hasty judgments of the half-dozen people who happen
to be nearest us), use and wont, the customs of our set,
the notions of the world about duty, all these we have
nothing to do with. The censures or the praise of men
need not move us. We report to headquarters, and
subordinates' estimate need be nothing to us. Let us
then say, " With me it is a very small matter that I should
be judged of men's judgment. He that judgeth me is
the Lord." When we may be misunderstood or harshly
dealt with, let us lift our eyes to the lofty seat where the
Emperor sits, and remove ourselves from men's sentences
by our " appeal unto Caesar," and, in all varieties of
circumstances and duty, let us take the gospel which is
the record of Christ's life, death, and character, for our
only law, and labour that, whatever others may think of
us, we " may be well pleasing to him."
III. Further, our text bids the colonists fight for the
advance of the dominions of the city.—Like the armed
colonists whom Russia and other empires had on their
frontier, who received their bits of land on condition of
holding the border against the enemy, and pushing it
forward a league or two when possible, Christian men
are set down in their places to be "wardens of the
marches," citizen soldiers who hold their homesteads on
a military tenure, and are to " strive together for the faith
of the gospel"
There is no space here and now to go into details of
the exposition of this part of our text. Enough to say in

brief that we are here exhorted to " stand fast;" that is,
as it were, the defensive side of our warfare, maintaining
our ground and repelling all assaults; that this successful
resistance is to be " in one spirit," inasmuch as all resis­
tance depends on our poor feeble spirits being ingrafted
and rooted in God's Spirit, in vital union with whom we
may be knit together into a unity which shall oppose a
granite breakwater to the on-rushing tide of opposition;
that in addition to the unmoved resistance which will not
yield an inch of the sacred soil to the enemy, we are to
carry the war onwards, and, not content with holding
our own, are with one mind to strive together for the
faith of the gospel. There is to be discipline, then, and
compact organisation, like that of the legions whom Paul,
from his prison among the Praetorian guards, had often
seen sinning in steel, moving like a machine, grim, irre­
sistible. The cause for which we are to fight is the faith
of the gospel, an expression which almost seems to justify
the opinion that " the faith " here means, as it does in
later usage, the sum and substance of that which is
believed. But even here the word may have its usual
meaning of the subjective act of trust in the gospel, and
the thought may be that we are unitedly to fight for its
. growing power in our own heart, and in the hearts of
others. In any case the idea is plainly here that Christian
men are set down in the world, like the frontier guard, to
push the conquests of the empire, and to win more ground
for their King.
Such work is ever needed, never more needed than
now. In this day when a wave of unbelief seems passing

over society, when material comfort and worldly prosperity
are so dazzlingly attractive to so many, the solemn duty
is laid upon us with even more than usual emphasis, and
we are called upon to feel more than ever the oneness
of all true Christians, and to close up our ranks for the
fight. All this can only be done after we have obeyed
the other injunctions of this text. The degree in which
we feel that we belong to another order of things than
this around us, and the degree in which we live by the
Imperial laws, will determine the degree in which we can
fight with vigour for the growth of the dominion of the
city. Be it ours to cherish the vivid consciousness that
we are here dwelling not in the cities of the Canaanites,
but, like the father of the faithful, in tents pitched at their
gates, nomads in the midst of a civic life to which we do
not belong, in order that we may breathe a hallowing
influence through it, and win hearts to the love of Him
whom to imitate is perfection, whom to serve is freedom.
IV. The last exhortation to the colonists is, Be sure of
victory.
" In nothing terrified by your adversaries/' says Paul.
H e uses a very vivid, and some people might think, a
very vulgar metaphor here. The word rendered terrified
properly refers to a horse shying or plunging at some
object. It is generally things half seen and mistaken for
something more dreadful than themselves that make
horses shy ; and it is usually a half-look at adversaries,
and a mistaken estimate of their strength, that make
Christians afraid. Go up to your fears and speak to

them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will generally
fade away. So we may go into the battle, as the rash
French minister said he did into the Franco-German war,
"with a light heart," and that for good reasons. We
have no reason to fear for ourselves. We have no
reason to fear for the ark of God. We have no reason
to fear for the growth of Christianity in the world. Many
good men in this time seem to be getting half-ashamed
of the gospel, and some preachers are preaching it in
words which sound like an apology rather than a creed.
Do not let us allow the enemy to overpower our imagi­
nations in that fashion. Do not let us fight as if we
expected to be beaten, always casting our eyes over our
shoulders,,even while we are advancing, to make sure of
our retreat, but let us trust our gospel, and trust our
King, and let us take to heart the old admonition, " Lift
up thy voice with strength ; lift it up, be not afraid."
Such courage is a \ rophecy of victory. Such courage
is based upon a sure hope. " O u r citizenship is in
heaven, from whence also we look for the Lord Jesus as
Saviour." The little outlying colony in this far-off edge
of the empire is ringed about by wide-stretching hosts
of dusky barbarians. Far as the eye can reach their
myriads cover the land and the watchers from the
ramparts might well be dismayed if they had only their
own resources to depend on. But they know that the
Emperor in his progress will come to this sorely beset
outpost, and their eyes are fixed on the pass in the hills
where they expect to see the waving banners and the
gleaming spears. Soon, like our countrymen in Lucknow,

they will hear the music and the shouts that tell that He
is at hand. Then when He comes, He will raise the
siege and scatter all the enemies as the chaff of the
threshing-floor, and the colonists who held the post will
go with Him to the land which they have never seen,
but which is their home, and will, with the Victor, sweep
in triumph " through the gates into the city."

SERMON XV.
MOSES

AND

HOBAB.

NUMBKRS X. 2 9 , 3 1 .

And Moses said unto Hobab . . . Leave us not, I pray t h e e ; for­
asmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness,
and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes.

H E fugitives whom Moses led reached Sinai in three
months after leaving Egypt. They remained there
for at least nine months, and amidst the solitude of these
wild rocks they kept the first Passover—the anniversary
of their deliverance. " On the twentieth day of the
second month " they began again their march through the
grim, unknown desert.
One can fancy their thoughts and fears as they looked
forward to the enemies and trials which might be await­
ing them. In these circumstances this story comes in
most naturally. Some time before the encampment
broke up from Sinai, a relative of Moses by marriage,
whose precise connection with him need not trouble us
now , Hobab by name, had come into camp on a visit.
He was a Midianite by race, one of the wandering tribes
from the south-east of the Arabian peninsula. H e knew
every foot of the ground, as such men do. Pie knew
x

r

where the springs were and the herbage, the camping
places, the short cuts, and the safest routes. So Moses,
who had no doubt forgotten much of the little desert
skill he had learned in keeping Jethro's flock, prays
Hobab to remain with them and give them the benefit
of his practical knowledge—" to be to us instead of
eyes."
The free, wild wanderer does not care to leave the
black tents of his tribe to link his fortunes with those of
the unwieldy hosts of fugitives, and flatly refuses. Then
Moses presses the proposal on him, with judicious
compliments and large promises of sharing in all their
prosperity.
It is noteworthy that the narrative does not tell whether
the persistent request succeeded or not. We find, indeed,
his descendants enrolled in the great Doomsday Book of
the Conquest as possessing land and probably incorporated
among the Israelites. It may, therefore, be supposed
that either then or afterwards Hobab forsook his country
and his father's house to shelter himself beneath the
wings of the God of Jacob.
But, at all events, the silence of the record is significant,
especially if taken in connection with the verses imme­
diately following. The historian does not think it worth
while to tell whether Moses' attempt to secure the help
of a pair of sharp Bedouin eyes succeeded or failed, but
passes on to describe at once how " the ark of the
covenant of the Lord went before them to search out a
resting-place for them," and how " the cloud was upon
them when they went out of the camp." He puts the

two things side by side, not calling on us to notice the
juxtaposition, but surely expecting that we shall not miss
what is so plain. He would teach us that it mattered
little whether Israel had Hobab or not, if they had the
ark and the cloud. Perhaps he meant us to ask ourselves
whether it was not a wavering of faith in Moses to be so
anxious to secure a human guide when he had a Divine
leader. So, at least, it appears to us, and from that point
of view we purpose to view the incident now.
I. There are times and moods in which our forward
look brings with it a painful sense of the unknown
wilderness before us.
The general complexion of the future may be roughly
estimated. We soon outlive the illusions which dance
before us at the beginning, and cease to expect such
surprising delights and radiant flashes of unexpected
good fortune as young dreams spread before us. We
know very early in life, unless we are wonderfully
frivolous and credulous, that the thread of our days is a
mingled strand, and the prevailing tone a sober, neutral
tint. The main characteristics of what we shall meet we
know well enough. " That which is to be hath already
been." But the particular events are hid, and it is
strange and impressive when we come to think how
Providence, working with the same uniform materials in
all human lives, can yet, like some skilful artist, produce
endless novelty and surprises in each life. All men
tread substantially the same road. " There hath nothing

befallen us but such as is common to men," and yet for
every one of us the road is new day by day. Some of us
go on for years in an unbroken monotony of the same
duties and circumstances, and know that, in all pro­
bability we shall be doing the same things till we die,
and yet every morning we come to our work with some
feeling of novelty which is not all illusion. " We have
not passed this way heretofore," is always true of each
new day's tasks and incidents ; for even if they be the
same as those of a thousand days before, yet we who
tread the road are not quite the same, and the bearing
of the events on us is somewhat different.
The solemn ignorance of the next moment is some
times stimulating and joyous. To young life it gives
zest and buoyancy, and secures many a joyful surprise.
But to all there come times—and perhaps they are more
frequent as life goes on, and the consciousness increases
that changes now will generally be losses—when the
blank curtain between us and the next beat of the
pendulum is felt to be very near us and' very thick, and
when the ignorance is saddening, and when the shapes
that we paint on its black folds are gloomy and threaten­
ing. Terrors come to us all, and we are apt to clasp
our treasures with a spasmodic grasp, as much anguish
as love, when we think of what must be some day, and
may be any day. In some moods, and thinking of some
things which are certainties as to the fact, and contin­
gencies only as to the time, each of us must say—
"Forward though I cannot see,
T guess and fear."

It is a libel on God's goodness to speak of the world
as a wilderness. H e has not made it so ; and if anybody
finds that " all is vanity and vexation of spirit," it is his
own fault. But still one aspect of life is truly represented
by that figure. There are dangers and barren places,
and a great solitude in spite of love and companionship,
and many marchings and lurking foes, and grim rocks,
and fierce suns, and parched wells, and shadeless sand
wastes enough in every life to make us quail often and
look grave always when we think of what may be before us.
Who knows what we shall see when we top the next hill,
or round the shoulder of the cliff that bars our way?
What shout of an enemy may crash in upon the sleeping
camp; or what stifling gorge of barren granite—blazing
in the sun and trackless to our feet—shall we have to
march through to-day ?
The great crises and trials of our lives mostly come
unlooked for. There is nothing so certain as the un­
expected. The worst thunder comes on us out of a clear
sky. Our Waterloos have a way of crashing into the
midst of our feasts, and generally it is when all goes
" merry as a marriage bell" that the cannon shot breaks
in upon the mirth, which tells that the enemy have
crossed the river and the battle is begun.
II. We have here an illustration of the weakness that
clings to human guides.
Most commentators excuse, or even approve of this
effort by Moses to secure Hobab's help, and draw from

the story the lesson that supernatural guidance does not
make human guidance unnecessary. That, of course,
is true in a fashion; but it appears to us that the true
lesson of the incident, considered, as we have already
remarked, in connection with the following section, is
much rather that for men who have God to guide them,
it argues weakness of faith and courage to be much
solicitous of any Hobab to show them where to go and
where to camp.
Of course we are meant to depend on one another.
No man can safely isolate himself, either intellectually or
in practical matters. The self-trained scholar is usually
incomplete. Crotchets take possession of the solitary
thinker, and peculiarities .of character that would have
been kept in check, and might have become aids in the
symmetrical development of the whole man, if they had
been reduced and modified in society, get swollen into
deformities in solitude. The highest and the lowest
blessings - for life both of heart and mind—blessedness
and love, and wisdom and goodness—are ministered to
men through men, and to live without dependence on
human help and guidance is to be either a savage or an
angel. God's guidance does not make man's needless,
for a very large part of God's guidance is ministered to
us through men. And wherever a man's thoughts and
words teach us to understand God's thoughts and words
more clearly, to love them more earnestly, or to obey
them more gladly, there human guidance is discharging
its noblest function. And wherever the human guide
turns us away from himself to God, and says, " I am. but

a voice, I am not the light that guides," there it is blessed
and safe to cherish and to prize it.
But we are ever apt to feel that we cannot do without
the human leader. Our hearts crave for earthly love,
and that craving is, as it were, an open channel, through
which the purest water of life which this world can yield
is poured into our hearts. But how close to the joy and
the blessedness does the temptation lie! Are we not
ever in danger of giving the very choicest of our love to
the dear ones of earth, lavishing on them the precious
juice which flows from the freshly-gathered grapes, and
putting God off with the last impoverished and scanty
drops which can be squeezed from the husks ? How we
rejoice over the love of earth, and cherish it, and feel
ourselves rich and strong by reason of it! How we sink
in utter despair and hopeless sorrow when it passes from
us, and feel " they have taken away my gods, and what
have I more ? " How we follow the counsel of those
whom we love, cherishing their lightest word, and feeling
glad and free when we are carrying out their faintest wishes !
And, alas, how often, in a very real and tragical sense,
" a man's foes are they of his own household," and their
love and tenderness more deadly than their hate could
ever be, because it keeps us back from God, and blinds
our eyes to the pointing finger of our. true Guide and
Lover!
We are meant to get much of our belief and practice
from human teachers and examples. But our weakness
of faith in the unseen is ever tending to pervert the
relation between teacher and taught into practical fors
r

getfulbess that the promise of the new covenant i s , " They
shall all be taught of God." So we are all apt to pin our
faith on some trusted guide, and many of us in these
days will follow some teacher of negations with an
implicit submission which we refuse to give to Jesus
Christ. We put the teacher between ourselves and God,
and give to the glowing colours of the painted window
the admiration that is due to the light which shines
through it. The teacher, be he preacher or author, has
succeeded in his work when he has taught his pupils to
do without him, having led them to the place where they
can draw at first hand from the depths of G o d ; and the
highest eulogium that he can receive is when his scholars
say to him, " Now we believe, not because of thy saying,
for we have heard him ourselves."
There are a thousand ways in which our poor weak
hearts cry out in their sense-bound unbelief for visible
stays to lean upon, and guides to direct us. In so
far as that is a legitimate longing, God, who never
" sends mouths, but He sends meat to feed them," will
not leave us to cry unheard. But let us guard against
that ever-present weakness which clings tremblingly to
creatures and men for help and guidance, and, in pro­
portion as it is rich when it possesses them, trembles at
the prospect of losing them, and is crushed and desolate
when they go. Do not put them as barriers between
you and God, nor yield your own clearness of vision to
them, nor say to any, " Be to us instead of eyes," nor be
over anxious to secure any Hobab to show you where to
camp or how to march.

III. The contrast which is brought into prominence
by the juxtaposition of this section and that which
follows it, makes emphatic the thought of the true leader
of our march.
The trryj leader of the children of Israel in their
wilderness journey was not Moses, but the Divine
Presence in the cloud with a heart of fire, that hovered
over their camp for a defence and sailed before them for
a guide. " The Lord went before them by day in a pillar
of cloud to lead them the way." When it lay on the
tent, whether it were for " t w o days, or a month, or a
year," the march was stayed, and the moment that the
cloud lifted " by day or by night," the encampment was
broken up and the long procession was got into marching
order without an instant's pause, to follow its gliding
motion wherever it led and however long it lasted.
First to follow was the ark on the shoulders of the
Levites, and behind it, separated by some space, came
the " standard of the camp of the children of Judah, and
then the other tribes in their order." Surely there was
no place here for Hobab's skill, and if Moses had re­
membered how their marching and their encampments
were fixed, he need not have been so anxious to secure
his sharp eyes.
We have the same Divine guidance, if we will; in
sober reality we have God's presence; and waiting
hearts which have ceased from self-will may receive
leading as real as ever the pillar gave to Israel.
God's providence does still shape our paths, and God's
s 2

Spirit will direct us within, and God's word will counsel
us. If we will wait and watch we shall not be left un­
directed. It is wonderful how much practical wisdom
about the smallest perplexities of daily life comes to men
who keep both their feet and their wishes still until
Providence—or, as the world prefers to call i(^ " circum­
stances "—clears a path for them. No doubt in all our
lives there come times when we seem to have been
brought into a blind alley, and cannot see where we are
to get out; but it is very rare indeed that we do not see
one step in advance, the duty which lies next us. And
be sure of this, that if we are content to see but one step
at a time, and take it, we shall find our way made plain.
The river winds, and often we seem on a lake without an
exit. Then is the time to go half-speed, and, doubtless,
when we get a little farther, the overlapping hills on either
bank will part, and the gorge will open out. We do not
need to see it a mile off; enough if we see it when we
are close upon it. It may be as narrow and grim, with
slippery black cliffs towering on either side of the narrow
ribbon of the stream, as the canons of American rivers,
but it will float our boat into broader reaches and onwards
to the great sea.
Do not seek to outrun God's guidance, to see what
you are to do a year hence, or to act before you are sure
of what is His will; do not let your wishes get in advance
of the pillar and the ark, and you will be kept from many
a mistake, and led into a region of deep peace. Our
blunders mostly come from letting our wishes interpret
our duties, or hide from us plain indications of unwelcome

tasks. We are all apt to do like Nelson, and put the
telescope to the blind eye when a signal is flying that we
dislike. No doubt sometimes even docile hearts make
mistakes, but no man who has not tried it would conceive
how many of the highest results of practical wisdom are
secured by the simple in heart, whose only skill is to wait
on the Lord and be guided by Him.
The old injunction is still our duty and our wisdom:
" G o after the ark, yet there shall be a space between it
and you; come not near it, that ye may know the way ye
ought to go." If we impatiently press too close on the
heels of our guide we lose the guidance. There must be
a reverent following, which allows indications of the way
full time to develop themselves, and does not fling itself
into new circumstances on the first blush of apparent duty.
The merely worldly virtues of prudence, caution, judgment
unbiassed by inclination, and the like, have all a Christian
side, and are all included and glorified in the elements of
that temper which religion enjoins as certain to be re­
warded with the Divine guidance : " The meek will he
guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way."
In the strength of that confidence let us turn away
from dependence upon human guides, and lift our ey.s
to Him with the voice which is at once a prayer and a
vow : " Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel." Better
to take Moses for our example when he prayed, as the
ark set forward and the march began, " Arise, Lord, and
let thine enemies be scattered," than to follow him in
eagerly seeking some Hobab or other to show us where
we should go. Better to commit our resting times to

God with Moses' prayer when the ark halted, " Return,
O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel," and so to
repose under the shadow of the Almighty, than to seek
safety in having some man with us " who knows how we
are to encamp in this wilderness." God's presence is
enough for toil and enough for rest. If H e journey with
us by the way, He will abide with us when nightfall
comes; and His companionship will be sufficient for
direction on the road, and for solace and safety in the
evening camp.
We have often to travel by solitary ways. Some of us
have to journey all alone, with no fellow-travellers for
society or for succour. Some of us have perplexed paths
to tread. Some of us have sad memories of times when
we journeyed in company with those who will never share
our tent or counsel our steps any more, and, as we sit
lonely by our watchfire in the wilderness, have aching
hearts and silent nights. Some of us may be, as yet,'
r.ch in companions and helpers, whose words are wisdom,
whose wishes are love to us, and may tremble as we
think that one day either they or we shall have to tramp
on by ourselves. But for us ail, cast down and lonely,
or still blessed with dear ones and afraid to live without
them, there is a presence which departs never, which
will move before us as we journey, and hover over us as
a shield when we rest; which will be a cloud to veil the
sun that it smite us not by day, and will redden into fire
as the night falls, being ever brightest when we need it
most, and burning clearest of all in the valley at the end,
where its guidance will only cease because then " the

Lamb that is in the midst of the throne will lead them."
" This God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our
guide even unto death."
IV. A final thought suggested by this incident is, that
our craving for a human guide has been lovingly met in the
gift of Christ.
Moses sought to secure this Midianite guide because
he was a native of the desert, and had travelled all over
it. His experience was his qualification. We have a
brother who has Himself travelled every foot of the road
by which we have to go, and His footsteps have marked
out with blood a track for us to follow, and have trodden
a footpath through the else pathless waste. He knows
" how to encamp in this wilderness," for He Himself has
" tabernacled among us," and by experience has learned
the weariness of the journey and the perils of the
wilderness.
His life is our pattern. Our marching orders are brief
and simple: Follow your leader, and plant your feet in
His footprints.
That is the sum of all ethics, and the vade mecum for
practical life. However diverse our duties and circum­
stances are, the principles which come out in the Divine
record of that fair life and wondrous death will fit with
equal closeness to us all; and so Divine and all com­
prehensive is it that it abides as the sufficient pattern for
every class, for every stage, for every variety of character,
for every era, and every land, till the end, and beyond
the end.

264

MOSES

AND HOBAB.

[SERM.

xv

Our poor weak hearts long for a brother's hand to hold
us up, for a brother's voice to whisper a word of cheer,
for a brother's example to animate as well as to instruct.
An abstract law of right is but a cold guide, like the stars
that shine keen in the polar winter. It is hard even to
find in the bare thought of an unseen God guiding us
by His unseen Spirit within and His unseen Providence
without, the solidity and the warmth which we need.
Therefore we have mercifully received God manifest in
the flesh, a Brother to be. our guide and the Captain of
our salvation.
To Him then transfer all those feelings of confidence
and affection too often lavished on men. The noblest
use for the precious ointment of love, which the poorest
of us bears in the alabaster-box of the heart, is to break
it On His head.
Thus loving and following Him, we shall be set free
from undue dependence on human helpers whilst they
are with us, from eagerness to secure them, from dread of
losing them, from despair when they depart. Perplexities
will disappear. Duty will become plain. Life will not
be a weary march through an unknown land where we
have to choose our path by our own poor wisdom, and
death is often the penalty of a blunder. All our duty and
joy lie in the one command, " Follow me ; " and if we
only ask Him to be with us " instead of eyes " and accept
His gentle leading, we shall not walk in darkness, but
may plunge into thickest night and the most unknown
land, assured that He will " lead us by a right way to the
city of habitation,"

SERMON XVI.
THE

OBSCURE

APOSTLES.

S T . M A T T H E W X. 5.

These twelve Jesus sent forth.

ND half of " these twelve " are never heard of again as
doing any work for Christ. Peter and James and
John we know; the other James and Judas have possibly
left us short letters ; Matthew gives us a Gospel; and of
all the rest no trace is left. Some of them are never so
much as named again, except in the list at the beginning
of the Acts of the Apostles ; and none of them except the
three who " seemed to be pillars " appear to have been
of much importance in the early diffusion of the gospel.
There are many instructive and interesting points in
reference to the Apostolate. The number of twelve, in
obvious allusion to the tribes of Israel, proclaims the
eternal certainty of the Divine promises to His people,
and the dignity of the New Testament Church as their
true heir. The ties of relationship which knit so many
of the Apostles together, the order of the names varying,
but within certain limits, in the different catalogues, the
uncultivated provincial rudeness of most of them, would

all afford material for important reflections.
But,
perhaps, not the least important fact about the Apostolate
is that one which we have referred, which like the names
of countries on the map, escapes notice because it is
" writ" so " large "—namely, the small place which the
Apostles as a body fill in the subsequent narrative, and
the entire oblivion into which so many of them pass from
the moment of their appointment.,
It is to that fact that we wish to turn attention now. It
may suggest some considerations worth pondering, and
among other things, may help to show the exaggeration
of the functions of the office by the opposite extremes £>i
priests and rationalists. The one school makes it the
depositary of exclusive supernatural powers; the other
regards it as a master-stoke of organization, to which the
early-rapid growth of Christianity was largely due. Tiie
facts seem to show that it was neither.
I. The first thought which this peculiar and unexpected
silence suggests is of the True Worker in the ChurcHs
progress.
The way in which the New Testament drops these
Apostles is of a piece with the whole tone of the Bible.
Throughout, men are introduced into its narratives and
allowed to slip out with well-marked indifference. No­
where do we get more vivid, penetrating portraiture, but
nowhere do we see such carelessness about following the
fortunes or completing the biographies even of those who
have rilled the largest space in its pages.
Recall, for example, the way in. which the New

Testament deals with " the very chiefest" Apostles, the
illustrious triad of Peter, James, and John. The first
escapes from prison; we see him hammering at Mary's
door in the grey of the morning, and after brief, eager
talk with his friends he vanishes to hide in " another
place," and is no more heard of, except for a moment in
the great council, held in Jerusalem, about the admission
of Gentiles to the Church. The second of the three is
killed off in a parenthesis. The third is only seen twice
in the Book of the Acts, as a silent companion of Peter
at a miracle and before the Sanhedrim. Remember how
Paul is left in his own hired house, within sight of trial
and sentence, and neither the original writer of the book
nor any later hand thought it worth while to add three
lines to tell the world what became of him. A strange
way to write history, and a most imperfect narrative,
surely. Yes, unless there be some peculiarity in the
purpose of the book, which explains this cold-blooded,
inartistic, and tantalising habit of letting men leap upon
the stage as if they had dropped from the clouds, and
vanish from it as abruptly as if they had fallen through a
trap-door.
Such a peculiarity there is. One of the three to whom
we have referred has explained it in the words with which
he closes his Gospel, words which might stand for the
motto of the whole book, " These are written that ye
might believe that Jesus is the Son of God." The true
purpose is not to speak of men except in so far as they
" bore witness to that light" and were illuminated for a
moment by contact with Him. From the beginning the

true " Hero " of the Bible is God; its theme is His selfrevelation culminating for evermore in the Man Jesus.
All other men interest the writers only as they are
subsidiary or antagonistic to that revelation. As long as
that breath blows through them they are music; else
they are but common reeds. Men are nothing except
as instruments and organs of God. H e is all, and His
whole fulness is in Jesus Christ. Christ is the sole
worker in the progress of His Church. That is the
teaching of all the New Testament. The thought is
expressed in the deepest, simplest form in His own
unapproachable words, unfathomable as they are in their
depth of meaning, and inexhaustible in their power to
strengthen and to cheer : " I am the vine, ye are the
branches, without me ye can do nothing." It shapes
the whole treatment of the history in the so-called " Acts
of the Apostles," which by its very first sentence pro­
claims itself to be the Acts of the ascended Jesus, " the
former treatise" being declared to have had for its
subject " all that Jesus began to do and teach " while on
earth, and this treatise being manifestly the continuance
of the same theme, and the record of the heavenly
activity of the Lord. So the thought runs through all
the book : " The help that is done on earth, He does it
all himself."
So let us think of Him and of His relation to us as
well as to that early Church. His continuous energy is
pouring down on us if we will accept it. In us, for us,
us He works. " My father worketh hitherto," said
He when here, " and I w o r k ; " and now , exalted on
T

high, He has passed into that same Divine Repose,
which is at the same time the most energetic Divine
Activity. He is all in all to His people. He is all their
strength, wisdom, and righteousness. They are but the
clouds irradiated by the sun and bathed in its brightness :
H e is the light which flames in their grey mist and turns
it to a glory. They are but the belts and cranks and
wheels; He is the power. They are but the channel,
muddy and dry; He is the flashing life that fills it and
makes it a joy. They are the body; He is the soul
dwelling in every part to save it from corruption and
give movement and warmth.
" T h o u art the organ, whose full breath is thunder;
I am the keys, beneath thy fingers pressed."

If this be true, how it should deliver us from all over­
estimate of men, to which our human affections and our
feeble faith tempt us so sorely ! There is one man, and
One man only, whose biography is a " Gospel," who owes
nothing to circumstances, and who originates the power
which He wields—One who is a new beginning, and has
changed the whole current of human history, One to
whom we are right to bring offerings of the gold, and
incense, and myrrh of our hearts, and wills, and minds,
which it is blasphemy and degradation to lay at the feet
of any others. We may utterly love, trust, and obey
Jesus Christ. We dare not do so to any other. The
inscription written over the whole book, that it may be
transcribed on our whole nature, is, " No man any more
save Jesus only."

If this thought be true, what confidence it ought to
give us as we think of the tasks and fortunes of the
Church ! If we think only of the difficulties and of the
enormous task before us, so disproportioned to our weak
powers, we shall be disposed to agree with our enemies,
who talk as if Christianity was on the point of perishing,
as they have been doing ever since it began. But the
outlook is wonderfully different when we take Christ into
the account. We are,very apt to leave Him out of the
reckoning. But one man with Christ to back him is
always in the majority. He flings his sword clashing
into one scale, and it weighs down all that is in the other.
The walls are very lofty and strong, and the besiegers
few and weak, badly armed, and quite unfit for the
assault; but if we lift our eyes high enough, we, too,
shall see a man with a drawn sword over against us, and
our hearts may leap up in assured confidence of victory
as we recognise in Him the Captain of the Lord's Host,
who has already overcome, and will make us valiant in
fight and more than conquerors.
^
When conscious of our own weakness, and tempted to
think of our task as heavy, or when complacent in our
own power, and tempted to regard our task as easy, let
us think of His ever-present work in and for His peop'e
till it braces us for all duty, and rebukes our easy-going
idleness.
Surely from that thought of the active
ascended Christ may come to many of His slothful
followers the pleading question, as from His own lips,
" Dost thou not care that thou hast left me to serve
alone ?" Surely to us all it should bring inspiration and

strength, courage and confidence, deliverance from man,
and elevation above the reverence of blind impersonal
forces. Surely we may all lay to heart the grand lesson
that union with Him is our only strength, and oblivion
of ourselves our highest wisdom. Surely he has best
learned his true place and the worth of Jesus Christ who
abides with unmoved humility at His feet, and, like the
lonely lowly forerunner, puts away all temptations to
self-assertion while joyfully accepting it as the law of his
life to
" F a d e in the light of the planet he loves,
To fade in his love and to die."

Blessed is he who is glad to say, " H e must increase,
I must decrease !"
II. This same silence of Scripture as to so many of
the Apostles may be taken as suggesting what the real
work of these delegated workers was.
It certainly seems very strange that if they were the
possessors of such extraordinary powers as the Sacramentarian theory implies, we should hear so little of
them in the narrative. The 'silence of Scripture about
them goes a long way to discredit such ideas, while it is
entirely accordant with a more modest view of the
Apostolic office.
What was an Apostle's function during the life of
Christ ? One of the evangelists divides it into three
portions—" to be with Jesus, to preach the kingdom, to
cast out devils and to heal." There is nothing in these
offices peculiar to them. The seventy had miraculous

powers too, and some at least were our Lord's com­
panions and preachers of His kingdom who were simple
disciples. What was an Apostle's function after the
resurrection ? Peter's words, on proposing the election
of a new apostle, lay down the duty as simply " to bear
witness " of that resurrection. Not supernatural channels
of mysterious grace, not lords over God's heritage, not
even leaders of the Church, but bearers of a testimony
to the great historical fact, on the acceptance of which
all belief in an historical Christ depended then and
depends now. Each of the greater of the apostles is
penetrated with the same thought. Paul disclaims
anything beside in his " Not I, but the grace of God in
me." Peter thrusts the question at the staring crowd,
" Why look ye on us as though by our power or holiness
we had made this man to walk ? " John, in his calm
way, tells his children at Ephesus, " Y e need not that
any man teach you."
Such an idea of the Apostolic office is far more
reasonable and accordant with Scripture than a figment
about unexampled powers and authority in the Church.
It accounts for the qualifications as stated in the same
address, which merely secure the validity of their testi­
mony. The one thing that must be found in an Apostle
was that he should have been in familiar intercourse
with Christ during his earthly life, both before and after
His resurrection, in order that he might be able to say,
I knew Him well; I know that H e died; I know that
H e rose again; I saw Him go up to heaven. For such
a work there was no need for men of commanding

power. Plain, simple, honest men who had the requisite
eye-witness were sufficient.
The guidance and the
missionary work of the Church need not necessarily be
in their hands, and, in fact, does not seem to have been.
In harmony with this view of the office and its requisites,
we find that Paul rests the validity of his Apostolate on
the fact that " H e was seen of me also," and regards
that vision as his true appointment which left him not
" one whit behind the very chiefest apostles." Miracu­
lous gifts indeed they had, and miraculous gifts they
imparted; but in both instances others shared their
powers with them. It was no apostle who laid his hands
on the blinded Saul in that house in Damascus and said,
" Receive the Holy Ghost." An apostle stood by passive
and wondering when the Holy Ghost fell on Cornelius
and his comrades. In reality Apostolic succession is
absurd, because there is nothing to succeed to, except
what cannot be transmitted, personal knowledge of the
reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To establish
that fact as indubitable history is to lay the foundation of
the Christian Church, and the twelve plain men who did
that needed no superstitious mist around them to
magnify their greatness.
In so far as any succession to them or any devolution
of their office is possible, all Christian men inherit it, for
to bear witness of the living power of the risen Lord is
still the office and honour of every believing soul. It is
still true that the sharpest weapon which any man can
wield for Christ is the simple adducing of his own
personal experience. " That which we have seen and
T

handled we declare " is still the best form into which our
preaching can be cast. And such a voice every man and
woman who has found the sweetness and the power of
Christ filling their own souls, is bound—rather let us say
is privileged—to lift u p : " T h i s honour have all the
saints." Christ is the true worker, and all our work is
but to proclaim Him, and what H e has done and is
doing for ourselves and for all men.
III. We may gather too the lesson of how often faith­
ful work is unrecorded and forgotten.
No doubt those Apostles who have no place in the
history toiled honestly and did their Lord's commands
and oblivion has swallowed it all. Bartholomew and
"Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus," and the rest
of them, have no place in the record, and their obscure
work is faded, faithful and good as certainly it was.
So it will be sooner or later with us all. For most of
us, our service has to be unnoticed and unknown, and
the memory of our poor work will live perhaps for a year
or two in the hearts of some few who loved us, but will
fade wholly when they follow us into the silent land.
Well, be it s o ; we shall sleep none the less sweetly,
though none be talking about us over our heads. The
world has a short memory, and, as the years go on, the
list that it has to remember grows so crowded that it is
harder and harder to find room to write a new name on
it, or to read the old. The letters on the tombstones are
soon erased by the feet that tramp across the church­
yard. All that matters very little. The notoriety of our

work is of no consequence. The earnestness and ac­
curacy with which we strike our blow is all important;
but it matters nothing how far it echoes. It is not the
heaven of heavens to be talked about, nor does a man's
life consist in the abundance of newspaper or other para­
graphs about him. " The love of fame " is, no doubt,
sometimes found in " minds " otherwise " noble," but in
itself is very much the reverse of noble. We shall do
our work best, and be saved from much festering anxiety
which corrupts our purest service and fevers our serenest
thoughts, if we once fairly make up our minds to working
unnoticed and unknown, and determine that whether our
post be a conspicuous or an obscure one we shall fill it
to the utmost of our power; careless of praise or censure
because our judgment is with our God; careless whether
we are unknown or well known, because we are known
altogether to Him.
The magnitude of our work in men's eyes is as little
important as the noise of it. Christ gave all the Apostles
their tasks—to some of them to found the Gentile
churches, to some of them to leave to all generations
precious teaching, to some of them none of these things.
What then ? Were the Peters and the Johns more highly
favoured than the others? Was their work greater in
His sight ? Not so. To Him all service done from the
same motive is the same, and His measure of excellence
is the quantity of love and spiritual force in our deeds,
not the width of the area over which they spread. An
estuary that goes wandering over miles of shallows may
have less water in it, and may creep more languidly, than
T

2

the torrent that thunders through some narrow gorge.
The deeds that stand highest on the records in heaven
are not those which we vulgarly call great. Many " a
cup of cold water only " will be found to have been rated
higher there than jewelled golden chalices brimming
with rare wines.
God's treasures, where He keeps His
children's gifcs, will be like many a mother's secret store
of relics of her children, full of things of no value, what
the world calls " trash," but precious in His eyes for the
love's sake that was in them.
All service which is done from the same motive in the
same force is of the same worth in His eyes. It does not
matter whether you have the gospel in a penny Testament
printed on thin paper with black ink and done up in
cloth, or in an illuminated missal glowing in gold and
colour, painted with loving care on fair parchment, and
bound in jewelled ivory. And so it matters little about
the material or the scale on which we express our devotion
and our aspirations; all depends on what we copy, not
on the size of the canvas on which, or on the material
in which, we copy it. " Small service is true service
while it lasts," and the unnoticed insignificant servants
may do work every whit as good and noble as the most
widely known, to whom have been intrusted by Christ
tasks that mould the ages.
IV. Finally we may add that forgotten work is re­
membered, and unrecorded names are recorded above.
The names of these almost anonymous apostles have
no place in the records of the advancement of the Church

or of the development of Christian doctrine. They drop
out of the narrative after the list in the first chapter of the
Acts. But we do hear of them once more. In that last
vision of the great city which the seer beheld descending
from God, we read that in its " foundations were the
names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb." All were
graven there—the inconspicuous names carved on no
record of earth, as well as the familiar ones cut deep in
the rock to be seen of all men for ever.
At the least that grand image may tell us that when
the perfect state of the Church is realised, the work
which these twelve men did when their testimony laid its
foundation, will be for ever associated with their names.
Unrecorded on earth, they are written in heaven.
The forgotten work and workers are remembered by
Christ. His faithful heart and all-seeing eye keep them
ever in view. The world, and the Church whom these
humble men helped, may forget, yet will not He forget.
From whatever muster-roll of benefactors and helpers
their names may be absent, they will be in His list. The
Apostle Paul, in his epistle to the Philippians, has a
saying in which his delicate courtesy is beautifully con­
spicuous, where he half apologizes for not sending his
greetings " to others my fellow-workers " by name, and
reminds them that however their names may be unwritten
in his letter, they have been inscribed by a mightier hand
on a better page, and " are in the Lamb's book of life."
It matters very little from what record ours may be absent
so long as they are found there. Let us rejoice that,
though we may live obscure and die forgotten, we may

have our names written on the breastplate of our High
Priest as He stands in the Holy Place, the breastplate
which lies close to His heart of love, and is fixed to His
arm of power.
The forgotten and unrecorded work lives too in the
great whole. The fruit of our labour may perhaps not be
separable from that of others, any more than the sowers
can go into the reaped harvest-field and indentify the
gathered ears which have sprung from the seed that they
sowed, but it is there all the same; and whosoever may
be unable to pick out each man's share in the blessed
total outcome, the Lord of the Harvest knows, and his
accurate proportionment of individual reward to individual
service will not mar the companionship in the general
gladness, when " he that soweth and he thatreapeth shall
rejoice together."
The forgotten work will live, too, in the blessed results
to the doers. Whatever of recognition and honour we
may miss here, we cannot be robbed of the blessing to
ourselves, in the perpetual influence on our own character,
of every piece of faithful even if imperfect service.
Habits are formed, emotions deepened, principles con­
firmed, capacities enlarged by every deed done for Christ,
which make an over-measure of reward here, and in their
perfect form hereafter are heaven. Nothing done for
Him is ever wasted. " Thou shalt find it after many days."
We are all writing our lives, histories here, as if with one
of these " manifold writers "—a black blank page beneath
the flimsy sheet on which we write, but presently the
black page will be taken away, and the writing will stand

out plain on the page behind that we did not see. Life
is the filmy unsubstantial page on which our pen rests;
the black page is death; and the page beneath is that
indelible transcript of our earthly actions, which we shall
find waiting for us to read, with shame and confusion of
face, or with humble joy, in another world.
Then let us do our work for Christ, not much careful
whether it be greater or smaller, obscure or conspicuous,
assured that whoever forgets us and it He will remember,
and however our names may be unrecorded on earth they
will be written in heaven, and confessed by Him before
His Father and the holy angels.

SERMON
THE

SOUL'S

XVII.

PERFECTION.

P H I L I P , iii.

15.

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded : and if in
anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this
unto you.

" A S many as be perfect;" and how many may they
^
be? Surely a very short bede-roll would contain
their names; or would there be any other but the Name
which is above every name upon it ? Part of the answer
to such a question may be found in observing that
the New Testament very frequently uses the word to
express not so much the idea of moral completeness as
that of physical maturity. For instance, when Paul says
that he would have his converts to be " men in under­
standing," and when the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks
of " them that are of full age," the same word is used
as this " perfect" in our text. Clearly in such cases it
means " full grown," as in contrast with " babes," and
expresses not absolute completeness, but what we may
term a relative perfection, a certain maturity of character
and advanced stage of Christian attainment, far removed
from the infantile epoch of the Christian life.

Another contribution to the answer may be found
in observing that in this very context these " perfect"
people are exhorted to cultivate the sense of not having
." already attained," and to be constantly reaching forth
to unattained heights, so that a sense of imperfection and
a continual effort after higher life are parts of Paul's
" perfect man." And it is to be still further noticed that
on the same testimony "perfect " people may probably
be " otherwise m i n d e d ; " by which we understand not
divergently minded from one another, but " otherwise "
than the true norm or law of life would prescribe, and so
may stand in need of the hope that God will by degrees
bring them into conformity with His will, and show them
" this," namely, their divergence from his Pattern for
them.
It is worth our while to look at these large thoughts
thus involved in the words before us.
I. Then there are people whom without exaggeration
the judgment of truth calls perfect.
The language of the New Testament has no scruple in
calling men " s a i n t s " who had many sins, and none in
calling men perfect who had many imperfections; and it
does so, not because it has any fantastic theory about
religious emotions being the measure of moral purity,
but partly for the reasons already referred to, and partly
because it wisely considers the main thing about a
character to be not the degree to which it has attained
completeness in its ideal, but what that ideal is. The
distance a man has got on his journey is of less con-

sequence than the direction in which his face is turned.
The arrow may fall short, but to what mark was it shot ?
In all regions of life a wise classification of men arranges
them according to their aims rather than their achieve­
ments. The visionary who attempts something high
and accomplishes scarcely anything of it, is often a far
nobler man, and his poor, broken, foiled, resultless life
far more perfect than his who aims at marks on the low
levels and hits them full. Such lives as these, full of
yearning and aspiration, though it be for the most part
vain, are
" Like the young moon with a ragged edge
E'en in its imperfection beautiful."

If then it be wise to rank men and their pursuits
according to their aims rather than their accomplishmentsi is there one class of aims so absolutely corres­
ponding to man's nature and relations that to take them
for one's own, and to reach some measure of approxi­
mation to them, may fairly be called the perfection of
human nature ? Is there one way of living concerning
which we may say that whosoever adopts it has, in so far
as he does adopt it, discerned and attained the purpose of
his being ? The literal force of the word in our text gives
pertinence to that question, for it distinctly means
" having reached the end." And if that be taken as the
meaning, there need be no doubt about the answer.
Grand old words have taught us long ago " Man's chief
end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.'' Yes,
he who lives for God has taken that for his aim which all
his nature and all his relations prescribe, he is doing

what he was made and meant to d o ; and however in­
complete may be its attainments, the lowest form of a
God-fearing, God-obeying life is higher and more nearly
"perfect" than the fairest career or character against
which, as a blight on all its beauty, the damning accu­
sation may be brought, " The God in whose hand thy
breath is, and whose are all thy ways, thou hast not
glorified."
People sneer at " saints " and point at their failings.
They remind us of the foul stains in David's career, for
instance, and mock as they ask, " Is this your man after
God's own heart ?" Yes, he is ; not because religion
has a morality of its own different from that of the world
(except as being higher), nor because " saints " make up
for adultery and murder by making or singing psalms,
but because the main set and current of the life was
evidently towards God and goodness, and these hideous
sins were glaring contradictions, eddies and backwaters,
as it were, wept over with bitter self-abasement and
conquered by strenuous effort. Better a life of Godward
aspiration and straining after purity, even if broken by
such a fall, so recovered, than one of habitual earthward
grubbing, undisturbed by gross sin.
And another reason warrants the application of the
word to men whose present is full of incompleteness,
namely, the fact that such men have in them the germ of
a life which has no natural end but absolute completeness.
The small seed may grow very slowly in the climate and
soil which it finds here, and be only a poor little bit of
ragged green, very shabby and inconspicuous by the side

of the native flowers of earth flaunting around it, but it
has a Divine germinant virtue within, and waits but
being carried to its own clime and " planted in the house
of the Lord" above, to " nourish in the courts of our
God," when these others with their glorious beauty have
faded away and are flung out to rot.
II. We have set forth here very distinctly two of the
characteristics of this perfection.
The apostle in our text exhorts the perfect to be "thus
minded." How is that ? Evidently the word points
back to the previous clauses, in which he has been des­
cribing his own temper and feeling in the Christian race.
He sets that before the Philippians as their pattern, or
rather invites them to fellowship with him in the estimate
of themselves and in their efforts after higher attainments.
" Be thus minded" means, Think as I do of yourselves,
and do as I do in your daily life.
How did he think of himself? He tells us in the
sentence before, " Not as though I were already perfect.
I count not myself to have apprehended." So then a
leading characteristic of this true Christian perfection is
a constant consciousness of imperfection. In all fields
of effort, whether intellectual, moral, or mechanical, as
faculty grows, consciousness of insufficiency grows with
it. The farther we get up the hill the more we see how
far it is to the horizon. The more we know the more
we know our ignorance. The better we can do the more
we discern how much we cannot do. Only people who
never have done and never will do anything, or else raw

apprentices with the mercifully granted self-confidence of
youth, which gets beaten out of most of us soon enough,
think that they can do everything.
In morals and in Christian life the same thing is true.
The measure of our perfection will be the consciousness
of our imperfection—a paradox, but a great truth. It is
plain enough that it will be so. Conscience becomes
more sensitive as we get nearer right. The worse a
man is the less it speaks to him, and the less he hears it.
When it ought to thunder it whispers; when we need it
most it is least active. The thick skin of a savage will
not be- disturbed by lying on sharp stones, while a
crumpled rose-leaf robs the Sybarite of his sleep. So
the habit of evil hardens the cuticle of conscience, and
the practice of goodness restores tenderness and sensi­
bility ; and many a man laden with crime knows less of
its tingling than some fair soul that looks almost spotless
to all eyes but its own. One little stain of rust will be
conspicuous on a brightly polished blade, but if it be all
dirty and dull a dozen more or fewer will make little
difference. As men grow better they become like that
glycerine barometer recently introduced, on which a fall
or a rise that would have been invisible with mercury to
record it takes up inches, and is glaringly conspicuous.
Good people sometimes wonder, and sometimes are made
doubtful and sad about themselves by this abiding and
even increased consciousness of sin. There is no need
to be so. The higher the temperature the more chilling
would it be to pass into an ice-house, and the more our
lives are brought into fellowship with the perfect life the

more shall we feel our own shortcomings. Let us be
thankful if our consciences speak to us more loudly than
they used to do. It is a sign of growing holiness, as the
tingling in a frost-bitten limb is of returning life. Let us
seek to cultivate and increase the sense of our own
imperfection, and be sure that the diminution of a con­
sciousness of sin means not diminished power of sin, but
lessened horror of it, lessened perception of right, lessened
love of goodness, and is an omen of death, not a symptom
of life. Painter, scholar, craftsman all know that the
condition of advance is the recognition of an ideal not
attained. Whoever has not before him a standard to
which he has not reached will grow no more. If we see
no faults in our work we shall never do any better. The
condition of all Christian, as of all other progress, is to be
drawn by that fair vision before us, and to be stung into
renewed effort to reach it, by the consciousness of present
imperfection.
Another characteristic to which these perfect men are
exhorted is a constant striving after a further advance.
How vigorously, almost vehemently, that temper is put
in the context—" I follow after; " " I press towards the
m a r k ; " and that picturesque " reaching forth," or, as the
Revised Version gives it, " stretching forward." The full
force of the latter word cannot be given in any one
English equivalent, but may be clumsily hinted by some
such phrase as "stretching one's self out over," as a
runner might do with body thrown forward and arms
extended in front, and eagerness in every strained muscle,
and eye outrunning foot, and hope clutching the goal

already. So yearning forward, and setting all the current
of his being, both faculty and desire, to the yet unreached
mark, the Christian man is to live. His glances are not
to be bent backwards, but forwards. He is not to be a
" praiser of the past," but a herald and expectant of a
nobler future. He is the child of the day and of the
morning, forgetting the things which are behind, and
ever yearning towards the things which are before, and
drawing them to himself. To look back is to be stiffened
into a living death; only with faces set forward are we
safe and well.
This buoyant energy of hope and effort is to be the
result of the consciousness of imperfection of which we
have spoken. Strange to many of us, in some moods,
that a thing so bright should spring up from a thing so
dark, and that the more we feel our own shortcomings,
the more hopeful should we be of a future unlike the
past, and the more earnest in our effort to make that
future the present. There is a type of Christian expe­
rience not uncommon among devout people, in which the
consciousness of imperfection paralyzes effort instead of
quickening i t ; men lament their evil, their slow progress
and so on, and remain the same year after year. They
are stirred to no effort. There is no straining onwards.
They almost seem to lose the faith that they can ever be
any better. How different this from the grand, whole­
some completeness of Paul's view here, which embraces
both elements, and even draws the undying brightness of
this forward-looking confidence from the very darkness of
his sense of present imperfection !

So should it be with us, " a s many as be perfect."
Before us stretch indefinite possibilities of approximating
to the unattainable fulness of the Divine life. We may
grow in knowledge and in holiness through endless ages
and grades of advance. * In a most blessed sense we may
have that for our highest joy which in another meaning
is a punishment of unfaithfulness and indocility, that we
shall be " ever learning, and never coming to the full
knowledge of the truth." No limit can be put to what
we may receive of God, nor to the closeness, the fulness
of our communion with Him, nor to the beauty of holi­
ness which may pass from Him into our poor characters,
and irradiate our homely faces. Then, brethren, let us
cherish a noble discontent with all that we at present are.
Let our spirits stretch out all their powers to the better
things beyond, as the plants grown in darkness will send
out pale shoots that feel blindly towards the light, or the
seed sown on the top of a rock will grope down the bare
stone for the earth by which it must be fed. Let the
sense of our own weakness ever lead to a buoyant con­
fidence in what we, even we, may become if we will only
take the grace we have. To this touchstone let us bring
all claims to higher holiness—they who are perfect are
most conscious of imperfection, and most eager in their
efforts after a further progress in the knowledge, love, and
likeness of God in Christ.
III. We have here also distinctly brought out the co­
existence with these characteristics of their opposites.
" If in anything ye are otherwise minded," says Paul.

xvii.]

THE SOULS

PERFECTION.

289

I have already suggested that this expression evidently
refers not to difference of opinion among themselves, but
to a divergence of character from the pattern of feeling
and life which he has been proposing to them. If in any
respects ye are unconscious of your imperfections, if there
be any " witch's mark " of insensibility in some spot of
your conscience to some plain transgressions of law, if in
any of you there be some complacent illusion of your own
stainlessness, if to any of you the bright vision before you
seem faint and unsubstantial, God will show you what you
do net see. Plainly then he considers that there will be
found among these perfect men states of feeling and
estimates of themselves opposed to those which he has
been exhorting them to cherish. Plainly he supposes
that a good man may pass for a time under the dominion
of impulses and theories which are of another kind from
those that rule his life.
He does not expect the complete and uninterrupted
dominion of these higher powers. He recognises the
plain facts that the true self, the central life of the soul,
the higher nature, " the new man," abides in a self which
is but gradually renewed, and that there is a long distance
so to speak, from the centre to the circumference. That
higher life is planted, but its germination is a work of
time. The leaven does not leaven the whole mass in a
moment, but creeps on from particle to particle. " Make
the tree good " and in due time its fruit will be good.
But the conditions of our human life are conflict, and
these peaceful images of growth and unimpeded natural
development, "first the blade, then the ear, after that the
u

full corn in the ear," are not meant to tell all the truth.
Interruptions from external circumstances, struggles of
flesh with spirit, and of imagination and heart and will
against the better life implanted in the spirit, are the lot
of all, even the most advanced here, and however a man
may be perfect, there will always be the possibility that in
something he may be "otherwise minded."
Such an admission does not make such interruptions less
blameworthy when they occur. The doctrine of averages
does not do away with the voluntary character of each
single act. The same number of letters are yearly posted
without addresses. Does anybody dream of not scold­
ing the errand boy who posted them, or the servant who
did not address, because he knows that ? We are quite
sure that we could have resisted each time that we fell.
That piece of sharp practice in business, or that burst of
bad temper in the household which we were last guilty
of—could we have helped it or not? Conscience must
answer that question, which does not depend at all on
the law of averages. Guilt is not taken away by assert­
ing that sin cleaves to men, " perfect men."
But the feelings with which we should regard sin and
contradictions of men's truest selves in ourselves and
others, should be so far altered by such thoughts, that we
should be very slow to pronounce that a man cannot be
a Christian because he has done so and so. Are there
any sins which are clearly incompatible with a Christian
character? All sins are inconsistent with it, but that is
a very different matter. The uniform direction of a
man's life being goaless, selfish, devoted to the objects

and pursuits of time and sense, is incompatible with his
being a Christian—but, thank God, no single act, how­
ever dark, is so, if it be in contradiction to the main
tendency impressed .upon the character and conduct.
It is not for us to say that any single deed shows a man
cannot be Christ's nor to fling ourselves down in despair
saying, " If I were a Christian, I could not have done
that." Let us remember that " all unrighteousness is
sin," and the least sin is in flagrant opposition to our
Christian profession ; but let us also remember, and that
not to blunt our consciences or weaken our efforts, that
Paul thought it possible for perfect men to be "other­
wise minded " from their deepest selves and their highest
pattern.
IV. The crowning hope that lies in these words is the
certainty of a gradual but complete attainment of all the
Christian's aspirations after God and goodness.
The ground of that confidence lies in no natural ten­
dencies in us, in no effort of ours, but solely in that great
name which is the anchor of all our confidence, the name
of God. Why is Paul certain that " God will reveal even
this unto you " ? Because He is God. The apostle has
learned the infinite depth of meaning that lies in that
name. H e has learned that God is not in the way of
leaving off His work before He has done His work, and
that none can say of Him, that " He began to build, and
was not able to finish." The assurances of an unchange­
able purpose in redemption, and of inexhaustible re­
sources to effect i t ; of a love that can never fade, and
U

2

of a grace that can never be exhausted—are all treasured
for us in that mighty name. And such confidence is
confirmed by the manifest tendency of the principles and
motives brought to bear on us in Christianity to lead on
to a condition of absolute perfection, as well as by the
experience which we may have, if we will, of the sancti­
fying and renewing power of His Spirit in our Spirit.
By the discipline of daily life, by the ministry of sorrow
and joy, by merciful chastisements dogging our steps
when we stray, by duties and cares, by the teaching of
His word coming even closer to our hearts and quicken­
ing our consciences to discern evil where we had seen
none, as well as kindling in us desires after higher and
rarer goodness, by the reward of enlarged perceptions of
duty and greater love towards it, with which He recom­
penses lowly obedience to the duty as yet seen, by the
secret influences of His Spirit of Power and of Love and
of a sound Mind breathed into our waiting spirits, by the
touch of His own sustaining hand and glance of His own
guiding eye, He will reveal to the lowly soul all that is
yet wanting in its knowledge, and communicate all that
is lacking in character.
So for us, the true temper is confidence in His power
and will, an earnest waiting on Him, a brave forward
yearning hope.blended with a lowly consciousness of im­
perfection, which is a spur not a cleg, and vigorous
increasing efforts to bring into life and character the fulness
and beauty of God. Presumption should be as far from
us as despair—the one because we have not already
attained, the other because " God will reveal even this

unto us." Only let us keep in mind the caution which
the apostle, knowing the possible abuses which might
gather round His teaching, has here attached to it, " Never
theless"—though all which I have been saying is true,
it is only true on this understanding—"whereto we have
already attained, by the same let us walk." God will perfect
that which concerneth you if—and only if—you go on as
you have begun, if you make your creed a life, if you show
what you are. If so, then all the rest is a question of
time. A has been said, and Z will come in its proper
place. Begin with humble trust in Christ, and a process
is commenced which has no natural end short of that
great hope with which this chapter closes, that the change
which begins in the deepest recesses of our being, and
struggles slowly and with many interruptions, into partial
visibility in our character, shall one day triumphantly ir­
radiate our whole nature out to the very finger tips, and
"even the body of our humiliation shall be fashioned like
unto the body of Christ's glory, according to the working
whereby He is able even to subdue all things to Him­
self."

SERMON XVIII.
T H E FIRST PREACHING A T ANTIOCH.
ACTS xi. 20, 2 1 .

And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when
they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching
the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them : and
a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord.
r

" P H U S simply does the historian tell one of the greatest
events in the history of the Church. How great it
was will appear if we observe that the weight of authority
among critics and commentators sees here an extension
of the message of salvation to Greeks, that is, to pure
heathens, and not a mere preaching to Hellenists, that
is, to Greek-speaking Jews born outside Palestine.
If that be correct, this was a great stride forward in
the development of the Church. It needed a vision to
overcome the scruples of Peter, and impel him to the
bold innovation of preaching to Cornelius and his house­
hold, and, as we know,,his doing so gave grave offence
to some of his brethren in Jerusalem. But in the case
before us, some Cypriote and African Jews—men of ho
note in the Church, whose very names have perished,
with no official among them, with no vision nor command

to impel them, with no precedent to encourage them,
with nothing but the truth in their minds and the impulses
of Christ's love in their hearts—solve the problem of the
extension of Christ's message to the heathen, and, quite
unconscious of the greatness of their act, do the thing
about the propriety of which there had been such serious
question in Jerusalem.
This boldness becomes even more remarkable if we
notice that the incident of our text may have taken place
bTore Peter's visit to Cornelius. The verse before our
text, " They which were scattered abroad upon the perse­
cution that arose about Stephen travelled,... preaching the
word to none but unto the Jews only," is almost a verbatim
repetition of words in an earlier chapter, and evidently
suggests that the writer is returning to that point of time,
in order to take up another thread of his narrative cotemporaneous with those already pursued. If so, three
distinct lines of expansion appear to have started from
the dispersion of the Jerusalem church in the persecution
—namely Philip's mission to Samaria, Peter's to Cornelius,
and this work in Antioch. Whether prior in time or no, the
preaching in the latter city was plainly quite independent
of the other two. It is further noteworthy that this, the
effort of a handful of unnamed men, was the true
" leader"—the shoot that grew.
Philip's work, and
Peter's so far as we know, were side branches, which
came to little; this led on to a church at Antioch, and
so to Paul's missionary work, and all that came of
that.
The incident naturally suggests some thoughts bearing

296

THE FIRST

PREACHING

on the general subject of Christian work, which we now
briefly present.
I. Notice the spontaneous impulse which these men
obeyed.
Persecution drove the members of the Church apart,
and, as a matter of course, wherever they went they took
their faith with them, and, as a matter of course, spoke
about it. The coals were scattered from the hearth in
Jerusalem by the armed heel of violence. That did not
put the fire out, but only spread it, for wherever they
were flung they kindled a blaze. These men had no
special injunction " to preach the Lord Jesus." They do
not seem to have adopted this line of action deliberately,
or of set purpose. They believed, and therefore spoke.
A spontaneous impulse, and nothing more, leads them
on. They find themselves rejoicing in a great SaviourFriend, They see all around them men who need Him,
and that is enough. They obey the promptings of the
voice within, and lay the foundations of the first Gentile
church.
Such a spontaneous impulse is ever the natural result
of our own personal possession of Christ. In regard to
worldly good the instinct, except when overcome by
higher motives, is to keep the treasure to oneself. But
even in the natural sphere, there are possessions which to
have is to long to impart, such as truth and knowledge.
And in the spiritual sphere, it is emphatically the case
that real possession is always accompanied by a longing
to impart. The old prophet spoke a universal truth when

he said : " Thy word was as a fire shut up in my bones,
and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay."
If we have found Christ for ourselves, we shall un­
doubtedly wish to speak forth our knowledge of his
love. Convictions which are deep demand expression.
Emotion which is strong needs utterance. If our hearts
have any fervour of love to Christ in them, it will be as
natural to tell it forth, as tears are to sorrow or smiles to
happiness. True, there is a reticence in profound feeling,
and sometimes the deepest love can only " love and be
silent," and there is a just suspicion of loud or.vehement
protestations of Christian emotion, as of any emotion.
But for all that, it remains true that a heart warmed
with the love of Christ needs to express its love, and will
give it forth, as certainly as light must radiate from its
centre, or heat from a fire.
Then, true kindliness of heart creates the same impulse.
We cannot truly possess the treasure for ourselves with­
out pity for those who have it not. Surely there is no
stranger contradiction than that Christian men and
women can be content to keep Christ as if H e were their
special property, and have their spirits untouched into
any likeness of his Divine pity for the multitudes who
were as sheep having no shepherd.
What kind of
Christians must they be who think of Christ as " a
Saviour for me," and take no care to set Him forth as " a
Saviour for you ? " Wnat should we think of men in a
shipwreck who were content to get into the life-boat, and
let everybody else drown? What should we think of
people in a famine feasting sumptuously on their private

298

THE FIRST

PREACHING

[SERM.

stores, whilst women were boiling their children for a
meal and men fighting with dogs for garbage on the
dunghills ? " He that withholdeth bread, the people
shall curse him." What of him who withholds the Bread
of Life, and all the while claims to be a follower of the
Christ, who gave his flesh for the good of the world ?
Further, loyalty to Christ creates the same impulse. If
we are true to our Lord, we shall feel that we cannot but
speak up and out for Him, and that all the more where
His name is unloved and unhonoured. He has left His
good fame very much in our hands, and the very same
impulse which hurries words to our lips when we hear the
name of an absent friend calumniated should make us
speak for Him. He is a doubtfully loyal subject who, if
he lives among rebels, is afraid to show his colours. He
is already a coward, and is on the way to be a traitor.
Our Master has made us his witnesses. H e has placed
in our hands, as a sacred deposit, the honour of his name.
He has entrusted to us, as His selectest sign of confidence,
the carrying out of the purposes for which on earth His
blood was shed, on which in heaven His heart is set.
How can we be loyal to Him if we are not forced by a
mighty constraint to respond to His great tokens of trust
in us, and if we know nothing of that spirit which said:
" Necessity is laid upon m e ; yea, woe is unto me, if I
preach not the gospel!" I do not say that a man cannot
be a Christian unless he knows and obeys this impulse.
But, at least, we may safely say that he is a very weak
and imperfect Christian who does not.

II. This incident suggests the universal obligation on
all Christians to make known Christ.
These men were not officials. In these early days the
Church had a very loose organisation. But the fugitives
in our narrative seem to have had among them none even
of the humble office-bearers of primitive times. Neither
had they any command or commission from Jerusalem.
No one there had given them authority, or, as would
appear, knew anything of their proceedings. Could there
be a more striking illustration of the great truth that
whatever varieties of function may be committed to
various officers in the Church, the work of telling Christ's
love to men belongs to every one who has found it for
himself or herself? " This honour have all the saints."
Whatever may be our differences of opinion as to church
order and offices, they need not interfere with our firm
grasp of this truth. " Preaching Christ," in the sense in
which that expression is used in the New Testament,
implies no one special method of proclaiming the glad
tidings. A word written in a letter to a friend, a sentence
dropped in casual conversation, a lesson to a child on a
mother's lap, or any other way by which, to any listeners,
the great story of the cross is told, is as truly—often more
truly—preaching Christ as the set discourse which has
usurped the name.
We profess to believe in the priesthood of all believers,
we are ready enough to assert it in opposition to sacer­
dotal assumptions. Are we as ready to recognise it as
laying a very real responsibility upon us, and involving

a very practical inference as to our own conduct ? We
all have the power, therefore we all have the duty. For
what purpose did God give us the blessing of knowing
Christ ourselves? Not for our own well-being alone,
but that through us the blessing might be still farther
diffused.
" H e a v e n doth with us-as men with torches do,
N o t light them for themselves."

" God hath shined into our hearts that we might give
to others the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ." Every Christian is solemnly
bound to fulfil this Divine intention, and to take heed
to the imperative command, " Freely ye have received,
freely give."
III. Observe, further, the simple message which they
proclaimed.
" Preaching the Lord Jesus," says the text—or, more
accurately perhaps—preaching Jesus as Lord. The
substance then of their message was just this—procla­
mation of the person and dignity of their Master, the story
of the human life of the Man, the story of the Divine
sacrifice and self-bestowment by which He had bought
the right of supreme rule over every heart; and the
urging of His claims on all who heard of His love. And
this, their message, was but the proclamation of their
own personal experience. They had found Jesus for
themselves to be lover and Lord, friend and Saviour of
their souls, and the joy they had received they sought to

share with these Greeks, worshippers of gods and lords
many.
Surely anybody can deliver that message who has had
that experience. All have not the gifts which would fit
for public speech, but all who have tasted that the Lord
is gracious can tell somehow how gracious He is. The
first Christian sermon was very short, and it was very
efficacious, for it " brought to Jesus " the whole congre­
gation. Here it is : " He first findeth his brother Simon,
and saith unto him, We have found the Messias." Surely
we can all say that, if we have found Him. Surely we
shall all long to say it, if we are glad that we have found
Him, and if we love our brother.
Notice, too, how simple the form as well as the sub­
stance of the message. " They spake" It was no set
address, no formal utterance, but familiar, natural talk
to ones and twos, as opportunity offered. The form was
so simple that we may say there was none. What we
want is that Christian people should speak anyhow.
What does the shape of the cup matter ? What does it
matter whether it be gold or clay ? The main thing is
that it shall bear the water of life to some thirsty lip. All
Christians have to preach, as the word is here, that is, to
tell the good news. Their task is to carry a message—no
refinement of words is needed for that—arguments are
not needed. They have to tell it simply and faithfully,
as one who only cares to repeat what he has had given to
him. They have to tell it confidently, as having proved
it true. They have to tell it beseechingly, as loving the
souls to whom they bring it. Surely we can all do that

if we ourselves are living on Christ and have drunk into
His spirit. Let His mighty salvation, experienced by
yourselves, be the substance of your message, and let the
form of it be guided by the old words, " It shall be, when
the Spirit of the Lord is come upon thee, that thou shalt
do as occasion shall serve thee."
IV. Notice, lastly, the mighty Helper who prospered
their work.
" The hand of the Lord was with them." The very
keynote of this book of the Acts is the work of the-as­
cended Christ in and for his Church. At every turning
point in the history, and throughout the whole narratives,
forms of speech like this occur bearing witness to the
profound conviction of the writer that Christ's active
energy was with His servants, and Christ's hand the origin
of all their security and of all their success.
So this is a statement of a permanent and universal fact.
We do not labour alone ; however feeble our hands, that
mighty Hand is laid on them to direct their movements
and to lend stiength to their weakness. It is not our
speech which will secure results, but his presence with our
words which shall bring it about that even through them
a great number shall believe and turn to the Lord.
There is our encouragement when we are despondent.
There is our rebuke when we are self-confident. There
is our stimulus when we are indolent. There is our quiet­
ness when we are impatient. If ever we are tempted to
think our task heavy, let us not forget that He who set
it helps us to do it, and from His throne shares in all our

toils, the Lord still, as of old; working with us. If ever
we feel that our strength is nothing, and that we stand
solitary against, many foes, let us fall back upon the
peacegiving thought that one man against the world,
with Christ to help him, is always in the majority, and let
us leave issues of our work in his hands, whose hand will
guard the seed sown in weakness, whose smile will bless
the springing thereof.
How little any of us know what shall become of our
poor work, under His fostering caie ! How little these
men knew that they were laying the foundations of the
great change which was to transform the Christian
community from a Jewish sect into a world-embracing
Church ! So is it ever. We know not what we do when
simply and humbly we speak His name.
The farreaching issues escape our eyes. Then sow the seed,
and He wih "give it a body as it pleaseth Him." On
earth Ave may never know the results of our labours.
They will be among the surprises of heaven, where many
a solitary worker shall exclaim with wonder as he looks
on the hitherto unknown children whom God hath given
him, " Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they
been ? " Then, though our names may have perished
from earthly memories, like those of the simple fugitives
of Cyprus and Cyrene, who " were the first that ever
burst" into the night of heathendom with the torch of
the gospel in their hands, they will be written in the
Lamb's book of life, and He will confess them in the
presence of His Father in heaven.

SERMON

XIX.

T H E MASTER A N D HIS SLAVES.
2 PETER ii.

i.

Denying the Lord that bought them.

H P H E R E were three great stains on the civilisation of
the world into which Christianity came : war, the
position of woman, and slavery. With the two first of
these we have nothing to do with at present, but the rela­
tion of the New Testament to the last of these great evils
naturally connects itself with the words before us. That
relation is at first sight very singular. There can be no
doubt that the atrocious system of slavery is utterly irreconcileable with the principles and spirit of the Gospel.
It dies in the light of Christianity, like some foul fungus
that can only grow in' the dark. And yet there is not a
word of condemnation of it in the book. The writers of
the New Testament found that evil institution which
makes the slaves chattels and their masters fiends in full
force, and they said nothing against it. Paul recognises
it in several of his letters, regulates it, gives counsels
to Christians standing to each other in the extraordinary
relation of owner and slave ; sends back the runaway

Onesimus to his master, and shows no consciousness of
the revolutionary force of his own words, " In Christ
Jesus there is neither bond nor free." Whether he fore­
saw the effect of the gospel in breaking every yoke or no,
the fact remains that Christianity at its beginning ran no
tilt against even the most execrable social iniquities, but
was guided by the wisdom which said, " Make the tree
good, and its fruit good." The only way to mend in­
stitutions is by mending individuals. Elevate the tone
of society by lifting the moral nature of the units, and
evil things will drop away and become impossible. Other
ways are revolutionary and imperfect.
In like manner, this same wicked thing, slavery, is used
as an illustration of the highest, sacredest, noblest rela­
tionship possible to men—their submission to Jesus
Christ. With all its vileness, it is still not too vile to be
lifted from the mud, and to stand as a picture of the purest
and loftiest tie that can bind the soul. The apostles
glory in calling themselves " slaves of Jesus Christ." That
title of honour heads each epistle. And here in this
text we have the same figure expressed with Peter's
own energy, and carried out in detail. The word in
our text for " Lord," is an unusual one, selected to put
the idea in the roughest, most absolute form. It is the
root of our word " despot," and conveys, at any rate,
the notion of unlimited, irresponsible authority.
We
might read " owner " with some approach to the force of
the word.
Nor is this all. One of the worst and ugliest features
of slavery is that of the market, where men and women

and children are sold like cattle. And that has its
parallel too, for this Owner has bought men for His.
Nor is this all; for, as there are fugitive slaves, who
" break away every man from his master," and when
questioned will not acknowledge that they are his, so
men flee from this Lord and Owner, and by words and
deeds assert that they owe Him no obedience, and were
never in bondage to Him.
So, then, there are these three points brought out in
the words before us : Christ's absolute ownership of men ;
the purchase on which it depends; and the fugitives who
deny his authority.
I. The strong expression of the text asserts Christ's
absolute ownership. If a word had been sought to convey
the hardest possible representation of irresponsible, un­
limited authority, bound by no law but its own will,
the word in our text would have been chosen. Such
authority can never be really exercised by men over men.
For thought and will are ever free. To claim it would
be blasphemy, to allow it would be degradation. But such
an authority, in comparison with which the most absolute
that man can exercise over man is slight and superficial,
this peasant of Nazareth claims, and not,in vain. Proud
hearts have bowed to his authority, and through the
centuries the whole being of thousands upon thousands
has gloried in submission—utter and all-embracing—to
Him. " What manner of man is this," it was said of old,
" that even the windb and the sea obey Him ? " But the
question opens a deeper depth of wonder, and a higher

xix.]

THE MA S TEE A ND HIS SLA VES.

stretch of power: " W h a t manner of man is this that
even the hearts and wills of men obey Him ?" His
autocratic lips spake, and it was done, when H e was
here on earth—rebuking disease, and it fled; the wild
storm, and there was a great calm; demons, and they
came out; death itself, and its dull cold ear heard, and
Lazarus came forth. To material things and forces He
spake as their great Imperator and Commander, saying
to this one " Go,'* and he went, and showing his Divinity,
as even the pagan centurion had learned, by the power
of His word, the bare utterance of His will.
But His rule in the region of man's spirit is as absolute
and authoritative, and there too "His word is with power."
The correlative of Christ's ownership is our entire sub­
mission of will, our complete acceptance of the law of
his lips, our practical recognition that we are not our
own. Loyola demanded from his black-robed militia
obedience to the general of the order so complete that
they were to be "just like a corpse," or " a staff in a
blind man's hand." Such a requirement made by a man
is of course the crushing of the will, and the emasculation
of the whole nature. But such a demand yielded to from
Christ is the vitalising of the will and the ennobling of
the spirit. To give myself up to Him is to become not
" like a corpse "—but to be as alive from the dead. We
then first find our lives when we surrender them to Him.
The owner of the slave could set him to any work he
thought fit. So our Owner gives all His slaves their
several tasks. As in some despotic eastern monarchies
the sultan's mere pleasure makes of one slave his vizier,
X

2

and of another his slipper-bearer, our King chooses one
man to a post of honour, and another to a lowly place;
and none have a right to question the allocation of work.
What corresponds on our parts to that sovereign freedom
of appointment ? Cheerful acceptance of our task, what­
ever it be. What does it matter whether we are set to
do things which the vulgar world calls " great," or things
which the blind world calls " small ? " They are equally
set us by Him to whom all service is alike that is done
from the same motive, and all that we need care about
is to give glad obedience and unmurmuring honest work.
Nobody knows what is important service, and what not.
We have to wait till another day far ahead, before we
can tell that. All work that contributes to a great end
is great; as the old rhyme has it, " for the want of a nail
a kingdom was lost." So, whatever our tasks, let us say,
" Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? "
The slave's hut, and little patch of garden ground, and
few bits of furniture, whose were they—his or his master's?
If he was not his own, nothing else could be his own.
And whose are our possessions ? If we have no property
in ourselves, still less can we have property in our pro­
perty. These things were His before, and are His still.
The first claim on them is our Master's, not ours. We
have not the right to do what we like with our own. So,
if we rightly understand our position, we shall feel that we
are trustees, not possessors. When, like prodigal sons,
we "waste our substance," we are unfaithful stewards,
also, " wasting our Lord's goods."
Such absolute submission of will, and recognition of

Christ's absolute authority over us, our destiny, work, and
possessions, is ennobling and blessed. So to bow before
a man would be degrading were it possible, but so to bow
before Him is our highest honour, and liberates us from
all other submission. The king's servant is every other
person's master. We learn from historians that the
origin of nobility in some Teutonic nations is supposed
to have been the dignities enjoyed by the king's household
—of which you find traces still. The king's master of
the horse, or chamberlain, or cupbearer, becomes noble.
Christ's servants are lords, free because they serve Him,
noble because they wear His livery and bear the mark of
Jesus as their Lord.
II. The text brings into view the purchase on which
that ownership is founded.
This master has acquired men by right of purchase.
That abomination of the auction-block may suggest the
better " merchandise of the souls of men," which Christ
has made, when He bought us with His own blood as our
ransom.
That purchase is represented in two forms of expres­
sion. Sometimes we read that He has bought us with His
" b l o o d ; " sometimes that H e has given "Himself" for
us. Both expressions point to the same great fact—His
death as the price at which He has acquired us as His
own.
There are far deeper thoughts involved in this state­
ment than can be dealt with here, but let me note one or
two plain points. First, then, that is a very beautiful and

profound one, that Christ's lordship over men is built
upon His mighty and supreme sacrifice for men. Nothing
short of His utter giving up of himself for them gives Him
the right of absolute authority over, them; or, as Paul
puts it, " He gave himself for us," that He might " pur­
chase for himseT a people." He does not found His king­
dom on His Divinity, but on His suffering. His cross is _ •
His throne. It seems to me that the recognition of
Christ's death as our ransom is absolutely essential-to
warrant the submission to Him which is the very heart of
Christianity. I do not know why any man who rejects
that view of the death of Christ should call to Him,
" Lord ! Lord ! " We are justified in saying to Him, " O
Lord, truly I am thy servant," only when we can go on to
say, " Thou hast loosed my bonds."
Then, consider that the figure suggests that we are
bought from a previous slavery to some other master.
Free men are not sold into slavery, but slaves pass from
one master to another, and sometimes are bought into
freedom as well as into bondage. Hebrew slavery was a
very different thing from Roman or American slavery—
but such as it was, there was connected with it that pecu­
liar institution of the Goel, by which, under certain cir­
cumstances, if an Israelite had sold himself into slavery,
he could be redeemed. As the law has it, " One of his
kinsmen may redeem him." So our Kinsman buys us
back from our bondage to sin and guilt and condemna­
tion, from the slavery of our tyrant lusts, from the slavery
to men's censures and opinions, from the dominion of
evil and darkness, and making us His, makes us free.

He that committeth sin is the slave of sin. If the Son
therefore make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
III. Our text also brings to view the Runaways.
We
do not care to enquire here .what special type of heretics
the apostle had in view in these solemn words, nor to
apply them to modern parallels which we may fancy
we can find. It is more profitable to notice how all godlessness and sin may be described as denying the Lord.
All sin, I say, for it would appear very plain that the
people spoken of here were not Christians at all, and yet
the apostle believes that Christ had bought them by His
sacrifice, and so had a right over them, which their con­
duct and their words equally denied.
How eloquent that word " denying " is on Peter's lips.
Did the old man travel back in memory to that cold morn­
ing, when he was shivering beside the coal-fire in the high
priest's palace, and a flippant serving-maid could frighten
him into lying? Is it not touching to notice that he
describes the very worst aspect of the sin of these people
in the words that recall his own ? It is as if he were
humbly acknowledging that no rebellion could be worse
than his, and were renewing again his penitence and
bitter weeping after all those years.
All sin is a denial of Christ's authority. It is in effect
saying, " We will not have this man to reign over us."
It is at bottom the uprising of our own self-will against
his rule, and the proud assertion of our own indepen­
dence. It is as foolish as it is ungrateful, as ungrateful
as it is foolish.

That denial is made by deeds which are done in de­
fiance or neglect of his authority, and it is done too by
woids and opinions. It is not for us to bring such a
grave charge against individuals, but at least we may
exhort our readers to beware of all forms of teaching
which weaken Christ's absolute authority or which remove
the very foundation of His throne by weakening the power
and meaning of His sacrifice.
Finally, let us beware lest the fate of many a iunaway
slave be ours, and we be lost in trackless bogs and perish
miserably. Casting off His yoke is sure to end in ruin."
Rather, drawn by the cords of love, and owning the
blessed bonds in which willing souls are held by the love
of Christ, let us take Him for our Lord, who has given
himself for our ransom, and answer the pleading of His
cross With our glad surrender. Then shall H e say, " I
call you not servants but friends."

SERMON
A

PRISONER'S DYING
2 TIMOTHY iv.

XX.
THOUGHTS.
6-8.

I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at
hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I
have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown
of righteousness.

" D A U L ' S long day's work is nearly done. H e is a
prisoner in Rome, all but forsaken by his friends,
in hourly expectation of another summons before Nero.
To appear before him was, he says, like putting his head
into " the mouth of the lion." His horizon was darkened
by sad anticipations of decaying faith and growing
corruptions in the church. What a road he had travelled
since that day when, on the way to Damascus, he saw
the living Christ, and heard the words of his mouth!
It had been but a failure of a life, if judged by ordinary
standards. H e had suffered the loss of all things, had
thrown away position and prospects, had exposed him­
self to sorrows and toils, had been all his days a poor
man and solitary, had been hunted, despised, laughed at
by Jew and Gentile, worried and badgered even by socalled brethren, loved the less, the more he loved. And
now the end is near. A prison and the headsman's

sword are the world's wages to its best teacher. When
Nero is on the throne, the only possible place for Paul is
the dungeon opening on to the scaffold. Better to be
the martyr than the Caesar!
These familiar words of our text bring before us a very
sweet and wonderful picture of the prisoner, so near his
end. How beautifully they show his calm waiting for
the last hour and the bright forms which lightened for
him the darkness of his cell! Many since have gone to
their rest with their hearts stayed on the same thoughts,
though their lips could not speak them to our listening
ears. Let us be thankful for them, and pray that for
ourselves, when we come to that hour, the same quiet
heroism and the same sober hope mounting to calm
certainty may be ours.
These words refer to the past, the present, the future.
" I have fought—the time of my departure is come —
henceforth there is laid up."
I. So we notice first. The quiet courage which looks
death full in the face without a tremor.
The language implies that Paul knows his death
hour is all but here.
As the revised version more
accurately gives it, " I am already being offered"—
the process is begun, his sufferings at the moment are,
as it were, the initial steps of his sacrifice—" and the
time of my departure is come." The tone in which he
tells Timothy this is very noticeable. There is no sign
of excitement, no tremor of emotion, no affectation of
stoicism in the simple sentences. H e is not playing up

to a part, nor pretending to be anything which he is not.
If ever language sounded perfectly simple and genuine,
this does.
And the occasion of the whole section is as remark­
able as the tone. He is led to speak about himself at
all, only in order to enforce his exhortation to Timothy
to put his shoulder to. the wheel, and do his work for
Christ with all his might. All he wishes to say is simply,
Do your work with all your might, for I am going off the
field. But having begun on that line of thought, he is
carried . on to say more than was needed for his
immediate purpose, and thus inartinciatiy to let us see
what was filling his mind.
And the subject into which he subsides after these
lofty thoughts is as remarkable as either tone or occasion.
Minute directions about such small matters as books and
parchments, and perhaps a warm cloak for winter, and
homely details about the movements of the little group
of his friends immediately follow. All this shows with
what a perfectly unforced courage Paul fronted his fate,
and looked death in the eyes. The anticipation did not
dull his interest in God's work in the world, as witness
the warnings and exhortations of the context. It did not
withdraw his sympathies from his companions. It did
not hinder him from pursuing his studies and pursuits, nor
from providing for small matters of daily convenience.
If ever a man was free from any taint of fanaticism or
morbid enthusiasm, it was this man waiting so calmly in
his prison for his death.
There is great beauty and force in the expressions

which he uses for death here. H e will not soil his lips
with its ugly name, but calls it an offering and a departure.
There is a wide-spread unwillingness to say the word
" Death." It falls on men's hearts like clods on a coffin
—so all people and languages have adopted euphemisms
for it, fair names which wrap silk round his dart and
somewhat hide his face. But there are two opposite
reasons for their use—terror and confidence. Some men
dare not speak of death because they dread it so much,
and try to put some kind of shield between themselves
and the very thought of it by calling it something less
dreadful to them than itself. Some men, on the other
hand, are familiar with the thought, and though it is
solemn, it is not altogether repellent to them. Gazing on
death with the thoughts and feelings which Jesus Christ
. has given them concerning it, they see it in new aspects,
which take away much of its blackness. And so they do
not feel inclined to use the ugly old name, but had rather
call it by some which reflect the gentler aspect that it
now wears to them. So " sleep," and " rest " and the like
are the names which have almost driven the other out of
the New Testament—witness of the fact that in inmost
reality Jesus Christ " has abolished death," however the
physical portion of it may still remain master of our bodies.
But looking for a moment at the specific metaphors
used here, we have first, that of an offering, or more
particularly of a drink offering, or libation, " I am already
being poured out." No doubt the special reason for the
selection of this figure here is Paul's anticipation of a
violent death. The shedding of his blood was to be an

xx.]

A PRISONER

9

S D YING THO UGHTS.

317

offering poured out like some costly wine upon the altar,
but the power of the figure reaches far beyond that
special application of it. We may all make our deaths a
sacrifice, an offering to God, for we may yield up our
will to God's will, and so turn that last struggle into an
act of worship and self surrender. When we recognize
His hand, when we submit our wills to His purposes,
when " we live unto the Lord," if we live, and " die unto
Him," if we die, then Death will lose all its terror and
most of its pain, and will become for us whit it was to
Paul, a true offering up of self in thankful worship. Nay
we may even say, that so we shall in a certain
subordinate sense be "made conformable unto his death"
who committed His spirit into His Father's hands, and
laid down His life, of His own will. The essential
character and far-reaching effects of this sacrifice we
cannot imitate, but we can so yield up our wills to God
and leave life so willingly and trustfully as that death
shall make our sacrifice complete.
Another more familiar and equally striking figure is
next used, when Paul speaks of the time of his " depar­
ture." The thought is found in most tongues. Death
is a going away, or, as Peter calls it (with a glance,
possibly, at the special meaning of the word in the Old
Testament, as well as its use in the solemn statement
of the theme of converse on the Mountain of Transfigu­
ration), an Exodus. But the well-worn image receives
new depth and sharpness of outline in Christianity. To
those who have learned the meaning of Christ's resurrec­
tion, and feed their souls on the hopes that it warrants,

Death is merely a change of place or state, an accident
affecting locality, and little more. We have had plenty
of changes before. Life has been one long series of
departures. This is different from the others mainly in
that it is the last, and that to go away from this visible and
fleeting show, where we wander aliens among things which
have no true kindred with us, is to go home, where there
will be no more pulling up the tent-pegs, and toiling
across the deserts in monotonous change. How strong
is the conviction, spoken in that name for death, that the
essential life lasts on quite unaltered through it all! How
slight the else formidable thing is made. We may
change climates, and for the stormy bleakness of life
may have the long still days of heaven, but we do not
change ourselves. We lose nothing worth keeping when
we leave behind the body, as a dress not fitted for home,
where we are going. We but travel one more stage,
though it be the last, and part of it be in pitchy darkness.
Some pass over it as in a fiery chariot, like Paul and
many a martyr. Some have to toil through it with
slow steps and bleeding feet and fainting heart; but all
may have a Brother with them, and holding His hand
may find that the journey is not so hard as they feared,
and the home from which they shall remove no more,
better than they hoped when they hoped the most.
II. We have here too, the peaceful look backwards.
There is something very noteworthy in the threefold
aspect under which his past life presents itself to the
apostle, who is so soon to leave it. He thinks of it as a

contest, as a race, as a stewardship. The first suggests
the tension of a long struggle with opposing wrestlers
who have tried to throw him, but in vain. The world,
both of men and things, has had to be grappled with and
mastered. His own sinful nature and especially his
animal nature has had to be kept under by sheer force,
and every moment has been resistance to subtle omni­
present forces that have sought to thwart his aspirations
and hamper his performances. His successes have had
to be fought for, and everything that he has done has
been done after a struggle. So is it with all noble life ;
so will it be to the end.
He thinks of life as a race. That speaks of continuous
advance in one direction, and more emphatically still,
of effort that sets the lungs panting and strains every
muscle to the utmost. He thinks of it as a stewardship.
He has kept the faith (whether by that word we are to
understand the body of truth believed or the act of
believing) as a sacred deposit committed to him, of which
he has been a good steward, and which he is now ready
to return to his Lord. There is much in these
letters to Timothy about keeping treasures entrusted to
one's care. Timothy is bid to "keep that good thing
which is committed to thee," as Paul here declares
that he has done. Nor is such guarding of a precious
deposit confined to us stewards on earth, but the apostle
is sure that his loving Lord, to whom he has entrusted
himself, will with like tenderness and carefulness " keep
that which he has committed unto Him against that day."
The confidence in that faithful Keeper made it possible

for Paul to be faithful to his trust, and as a steward who
was bound by all ties to his Lord, to guard His pos­
sessions and administer His affairs. Life was full of
voices urging him to give up the faith. Bribes and
threats, and his own sense-bound nature, and the
constant whispers of the world had tempted him all along
the road to fling it away as a worthless thing, but he had
kept it safe ; and now, nearing the end and the account,
he can put his hand on the secret place near his heart
where it lies, and feel that it is there, ready to be
restored to his Lord, with the thankful confession, " Thy
pound hath gained ten pounds."
So life looks to this man in his retrospect as mainly a
field for struggle, effort and fidelity. This world is not
to be for us an enchanted garden of delights, any more
than it should appear a dreary desert of disappointment
and woe. But it should be to us mainly a palaestra, or
gymnasium and exercising ground. You cannot expect
many flowers or much grass in the place where men
wrestle and run. We need not much mind though it be
bare, if we can only stand firm on the hard earth, nor
lament that there are so few delights to stay our eyes
from the goal. We are here for serious work ; let us not
be too eager for pleasures that may hinder our efforts
and weaken our vigour, but be content to lap up a hasty
draught from the brooks by the way, and then on again
to the fight.
Such a view of life makes it radiant and fair while it
lasts, and makes the heart calm when the hour comes to
leave it all behind. So thinking of the past, there may

XX.]

A PRISONER

9

S D YING THO UGHTS.

321

be a sense of not unwelcome lightening from a load of re­
sponsibility when we have got all the stress and strain of
the conflict behind us, and have at any rate not been
altogether beaten. We may feel like a captain who has
brought his ship safe across the Atlantic, through foul
weather and past many an iceberg, and gives a great
sigh of relief as he hands over the charge to the pilot,
who will take her across the harbour bar and bring her
to her anchorage in the landlocked bay where no tem­
pests rave any more for ever.
Prosaic theologians have sometimes wondered at the
estimate which Paul here makes of his past services and
faithfulness, but the wonder is surely unnecessary. It is
very striking to notice the difference between his judg­
ment of himself while he was still in the thick of the
conflict, and now when he is. nearing the end. Then,
one main hope which animated all his toils and nerved
him for the sacrifice of life itself was " that I might finish
my course with joy." Now, in the quiet of his dungeon,
that hope is fulfilled, and triumphant thoughts, like
shining angels, keep him company in his solitude. Then
he struggles, and wrestles, touched by the haunting fear
lest after that he has preached to others he himself should
be rejected. Now the dread has passed, and a meek
hope stands by his side.
What is this change of feeling but an instance of what,
thank God, we so often see, that at the end the heart
which has been bowed with fears and self-depreciation is
filled with peace ? They who tremble most during the
conflict are most likely to look back with solid satisfacY

tion, while they who never knew a fear all along the
course will often have them surging in upon their souls
too late, and will see the past in a new lurid light, when
they are powerless to change i t Blessed is the man
who thus feareth always. At the end he will have hope.
The past struggles are joyful in memory, as the mountain
ranges, which were all black rock and white snow whi e
we toiled up their inhospitable steeps, lie purple in the
mellowing distance, and burn like fire as the sunset
strikes their peaks. Many a wild winter's day has a fair
cloudless close, and lingering opal hues diffused through
all the quiet sky. " At eventide it shall be light."
Though we go all our lives mourning and timid, there
may yet be granted us ere the end some vision of the
true significance of these lives, and some humble hope
that they have not been wholly in vain.
Such an estimate has nothing in common with selfcomplacency. It coexists with a profound consciousness
of many a sin, many a defeat,, and much unfaithfulness.
It belongs only to a man who, conscious of these, is
"looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto
eternal life," and is the direct result, not the antagonist,
of lowly self-abasement, and contrite faith in H i m by
whom alone our stained selves and poor broken services
can ever be acceptable. Let us learn too that the only
life that bears being looked'back upon is a life of Christian
devotion and effort It shows fairer when seen in the
strange cross lights that come when we stand on the
boundary of two worlds, with the white radiance of
eternity beginning to master the vulgar oil lamps of
?

earth, than when seen by these alone. All others have
their shabbiness and their selfishness disclosed then.
I remember once seeing a mob of revellers streaming out
from a masked ball in a London theatre in the early
morning sunlight; draggled and heavy-eyed, the rouge
showing on the cheeks, and the shabby tawdriness of the
foolish costumes pitilessly revealed by the pure light.
So will many a life look when the day dawns, and the
wild riot ends in its unwelcome beams.
The one question for us all, then, will be, Have I lived
for Christ, and by Him ? Let it be the one question for
us now, and let it be answered, Yes. Then we shall have
at the last a calm confidence, equally far removed from
presumption and from dread, which will let us look back
on life, though it be full of failures and sins, with peace,
and forward with humble hope of the reward which we
shall receive from His mercy.
III. The climax of all is the triumphant look forward.
" Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous­
ness." In harmony with the images of the conflict and the
race, the crown here is not the emblem of sovereignity,
but of victory, as indeed is almost without exception the
case in the New Testament. The idea of the royal
dignity of Christians in the future is set forth rather
under the emblem of association with Christ on his throne,
while the wreath on their brows is the coronal of laurel,
"meed of mighty conquerors," or the twine of leaves
given to him who, panting, touched the goal. The
reward then which is meant by the emblem, whatever be

its essence, comes through effort and conflict. " A man
is not crowned, except he strive."
That crown, according to other words of Scripture,
consists of " life," o r " glory "— that is to say, the issue and
outcome of believing service and faithful stewardship here
is the possession of the true life, which stands in union
with God, in measure so great, and in quality so wonderous
that it lies on the pure locks of the victors like a flashing
diadem, all ablaze with light in a hundred jewels. The
completion and exaltation of our nature and characters by
the illapse of "life " so sovereign and transcendantthat it
is "glory" is the consequence of all Christian effort here
in the lower levels, where the natural life is always weak­
ness and sometimes shame, and the spiritual life is at the
best but a hidden glory and a struggling spark. There
is no profit in seeking to gaze into that light of glory so
as to discern the shapes of those who walk in it, or the
elements of its lambent flames. Enough that in its
gracious beauty transfigured souls move as in their
native atmosphere ! Enough that even our dim vision
can see that they have for their companion " One like
unto the Son of Man." It is Christ's own life which
they share ; it is Christ's own glory which irradiates them.
That crown is " a crown of righteousness" in
another sense from that in which it is " a crown of life."
The latter expression indica:es the material, if we may
say so, of which it is woven, but the former rather points
to the character to which it belongs or is given.
Righteousness alone can receive that reward. It is not
the struggle or the conflict which wins it, but the

character evolved in the struggle, not the works of
strenuous service, but the moral nature expressed in
these. There is such a congruity between righteousness
and the crown of life, that it can be, laid on none other
head but that of a righteous man, and if it could, all its
amaranthine flowers would shrivel and fall when they
touched an impure brow. It is, then, the crown of
righteousness, as belonging by its very nature to such
characters alone.
But whatever is the essential congruity between the
character and the crown, we have to remember too that,
according to this apostle's constant teaching, the
righteousness which clothes us in fair raiment, and has
a natural right to the wreath of victory, is a gift, as
truly as the crown itself, and is given to us all on
condition of our simple trust in Jesus Christ. If we are
to be "found of Him in peace, without spot and
blameless," we must be " found in Him, not having our
own righteousness, but that which is ours through faith
in Christ." Toil and conflict, and anxious desire to be
true to our responsibilities, will do much for a man, but
they will not bring him that righteousness which brings
down on the head the crown of life. We must trust to
Christ to give us the righteousness in which we are
justified, and to give us the righteousness by the working
out of which in our life and character we are fitted for
that great reward. H e crowns our works and selves
with exuberant and unmerited honours, but what he
crowns is His own gift to us, and His great love must
bestow both the righteousness and " the crown."

326

%

A PRISONER S

D YING THOUGHTS.

[SERM.

The crown is given at a time called by Paul " at that
day," which is not the near day of his martyrdom, but
that of His Lord's appearing. He does not speak of the
fulness of the reward as being ready for him at death,
but as being "henceforth laid up for him in heaven."
So he looks forward beyond the grave. The immediate
future after death was to his view a period of blessedness
indeed, but not yet full. The state of the dead in Christ
was a state of consciousness, a state of rest, a state of
felicity, but also a state of expectation. To the lull
height of their present capacity they who sleep in Jesus
are blessed, being still in his embrace, and their spirits
pillowed on his heart, nor so sleeping that, like drowsy
infants, they know not where they lie so safe, but only
sleeping in so much as they rest from weariness, and
have closed their eyes to the ceaseless turmoil of this
fleeting world, and are lapped about for ever with the
sweet, unbroken consciousness that they are " present
with the Lord." What perfect repose, perfect fruition of
all desires, perfect union with the perfect End and Object
of all their being, perfect exemption from all sorrow,
tumult and sin can'bring of blessedness, that they possess
in. over measure unfailingly. And, in addition, they still
know the joy of hope, and have carried that jewel with
them into another world, for they wait for "the redemp­
tion of the body," in the reception of which, "at that day,"
their life will be filled up to a yet fuller measure, and
gleam with a more lustrous " glory." Now they rest and
wait. Then shall they be crowned.
Nor must self-absorbed thoughts be allowed to bound

our anticipations of that future. It is no solitary blessed­
ness to which Paul looked forward. Alone in his dun­
geon, alone before his judge when " n o man stood b y "
him, soon to be alone in his martyrdom, he leaps up in
spirit at the thought of the mighty crowd among whom
he will stand in that day, on every head a crown, in every
heart the same love to the Lord whose life is in them all
and makes them all one. So we may cherish the hope
of a social heaven. Man's course begins in a garden,
but it ends in a city. The final condition will be the
perfection of human society. There all who love Christ
will be drawn together, and old ties, broken for a little
while here, be reknit in yet holier form, never to be
parted more.
Ah, friends, the all-important question for each of us
is how may we have such a hope, like a great sunset
light shining into the western windows of our souls?
There is but one answer—Trust Christ. That is enough.
Nothing else is. Is your life built on Jesus Christ ? Are
you trusting your salvation to Him ? Are you giving
Him your love and service ? Does your life bear looking
at to-day ? Will it bear looking at in death ? Will it
bear His looking at in Judgment ?
If you can humbly say, To me to live is Christ, then
is it well. Living by Him we may fight and conquer,
may win and obtain. Living by Him, we may be ready
quietly to lie down when the time comes, and may have
all the future filled with the blaze of a great hope that
glows brighter as the darkness thickens. That peaceful
hope will not leave us till consciousness fails, and then

328 A PRISONER'S

DYING

THOUGHTS,

[SERM. XX.

when it has ceased to guide us Christ himself will lead
us, scarcely knowing where we are, through the waters,
and when we open our half-bewildered eyes in brief
wonder, the first thing we see will be his welcoming smile,
and his voice will say, as a tender surgeon might to a
little child waking after an operation, " It is all over."
We lift our hands wondering and find wreaths on our
poor brows. We lift our eyes, and lo ! all about us a
crowned crowd of conquerors,
" A n d with the morn those angel faces smile
Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile."

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