YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1942

SERMONS ADDRESSED TO INDIVIDUALS

SERMONS
ADDRESSED TO INDIVIDUALS

BYREGINALD J. CAMPBELL
MINISTER OF THE CITY TEMPLE
LONDON

NEW YORK
A. C. ARMSTRONG&SON
3 and 5 West i 8th Street, near 5™ Avenue
1905

Copyright, 1 904, by
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON

Published^ December , IQ04

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE
It is often asserted that sermons as a rule make
very poor reading. Somehow they seem to lose
their human interest when they pass into the
printed page and the personality of the preacher
is withdrawn. Such, of course, is not always the
case, as the sermons of Spurgeon, Phillips Brooks,
and Robertson of Brighton clearly testify; but it
must be admitted that these are the exception, not
the rule. Most sermonic literature is dry reading,
or if it be the reported verbatim utterance of the
preacher — and this is not literature — the colloquial
isms and direct style of address have a tendency to
become irritating to the reader. This tendency is
especially noticeable if reported sermons are issued
in permanent form.
With these considerations in view something in
the nature of an experiment is being attempted in
the issue of the present volume. The sermons
included herein are not literature, they are ex
tempore speech; they are face to face teaching
and exhortation addressed to an audience which,
at the time, and to the preacher, consisted as it
were of but one individual. They are human
documents called forth by living human experiences.

vi PREFACE
Every one of these sermons came into existence
because some one asked for it or some life story
suggested it. It is the preacher's conviction that
in this way the Holy Spirit breathed upon the
word. Every sermon bore fruit in blessing re
ceived and acknowledged. They are now sent
forth upon a further mission, and in the hope that
some who read them may be helped thereby. A
short account of the origin of each is prefixed to
every text. By this method, perhaps, readers who
might otherwise fail to grasp their true significance
may enter in some degree the mental atmosphere
breathed by the congregation which heard them.
In no other respect have they been altered. They
are mere transcripts of the oral delivery, and, as
such, must be their own justification.
That they may be used again to our Saviour's
greater glory is the author's prayer.

CONTENTS

QUO VADIS? ....... I
II
THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS .... 21
III
THE WINDOWS OPEN TOWARDS JERUSALEM . . 35
IV
THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER .... 49
V
A FORFEITED GIFT ...... 71
VI
THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD ... 87
VII
SOME GREAT THING  105
VIII
ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND ETERNAL tIFE . 127
IX
THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION . . . 149
vii

viii CONTENTS PAGE
X
THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING . . . .169
XI
THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE . . .189
XII
BURNING— UNCONSUMED .... 205

XIII
SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY

XV
A SINFUL GOD . XVI
THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS XVII
ONENESS WITH GOD XVIII
INWARD TRUTH

225

XIV
A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD . .241

257

275

295

313

QUO VADIS?

It is my custom to remain at the City Temple on Thursday
afternoons in order to see and converse with such callers as may
wish for a private interview. This is almost the only way in
which pastoral work is possible to me, unless my correspondence
column in the British Weekly can be accounted pastoral work.
The geographical situation of the church is such, and the distances
from which members come lie so widely apart, that anything like
ordinary pastoral visitation is out of the question. But there are
some compensations in this fact. One of them undoubtedly is that
in the face to face and heart to heart conversations in the vestry,
minister and caller get to understand each other without much
waste of time. Few will take the trouble to come unless they
have some serious purpose in doing so : there are no preliminaries
to be got over ; no apologies for introducing religious matters ; no
false assumptions about the conventionalities of the occasion; we
can go at once to the point.
Through this method I have learned much. So far as one is
able to judge, God has blessed it more obviously than the pulpit
work out of which it grew. This may not be so in reality, but
the results are more easily estimated, and the personal relations
established are of a more sacred character.
The following sermon was preached on a Thursday morning
in 1903 ; it grew out of some meditation on certain tendencies of
the time and the contradictory advice given as to the proper way
to deal with them. Dr Josiah Strong's work was beginning to
be discussed. Dr Watson and others were reiterating with
emphasis that the Church must adjust herself to a new situation
and new problems. Mr Hall Caine had been arousing the en
thusiasm of an audience of social workers by his criticism of the
supineness of organised Christianity. Not more than usual, per
haps, were such speeches being made, but more of them had come
my way. I was of opinion then, as I am now, that vague charges 3

against the churches would do but little to solve the great prob
lem of the social needs of the hour. Outsiders taunt the churches
with their failure, and the churches themselves are in the mood
to acknowledge it. Where then is the mischief ? Preachers and
Christian workers are quite ready to be shown what to do if
anyone with clear vision can point out the way. My own view
is that this new susceptibility which the churches are exhibiting
towards a longing for a better and a healthier religious life marks
the beginning of a better day. In fact it is the Word of the Lord
for us at this moment, but our answer to His call must be an
individual one. We are enquiring what the Lord means us to
do for this generation. Are we prepared individually to do the
one thing, whatever it may be, which He reveals to us as the
answer to our prayer?
I remember saying this to two gentlemen who repeated in my
hearing, and that of the deacons, on the previous Sunday, some
of the criticisms of the churches hinted at above. They had been
struck with the possibilities of the City Temple if the congrega
tion were to act together as one great organised force. "What
are you doing yourselves?" I replied. "Christ never waits for
organisations." The situation here described was paralleled in the Upper Room,
and in the profound moral significance of our Lord's repetition
of the disciples' question, "Whither goest Thou?"

"Now I go My way to Him that sent Me, and none of you
asketh Me, Whither goest Thou?" — John xvi. 5.
These strange words fell from the lips of our
Master almost as a kind of interruption or aside in
the course of His valedictory address in the upper
room; yet they are full of luminous suggestion.
Their true relevance is only seen when we call to
mind the circumstances under which they were
spoken. In order to make clear what those circum
stances were, I will read three extracts from this
wonderful part of the New Testament, St John's
.Gospel. The question, "Whither goest thou?"
was put to our Lord at least twice before He
uttered the words which form our text. On the
first occasion, the question came from the lips of
Simon Peter: "Lord, whither goest Thou?" (John
xii. 36). On the second occasion, the question was
put to him inferentially by Thomas the Doubter;
the remonstrance of the Apostle was couched in
this phrase: "Lord, we know not whither Thou
goest; and how can we know the way?" (John
xiv. 5). How, then, could our Master, after these
two interrogations, say to the same group of men,
and on the same occasion, "None of you asketh
Me, Whither goest Thou?" They had asked Him
twice, and on neither occasion had He satisfied their

6 QUO VADIS
questioning. I take it that the explanation is this.
Our Lord had something of solemn import to say
to the disciples in the upper room, and they were
not prepared to hear it — perhaps not so much
prepared as He had a right to expect. In that
tender ejaculation, "I have many things to say unto
you, but ye cannot bear them now," I catch a tone
of rebuke. They were not in the mood to listen,
their thoughts were earth-bound, and even their
love of their Master robbed them at this moment
of the true spiritual perspective which He wished
them to attain unto. For our Lord's eye was fixed
upon the glory that was to be; for the joy that was
set before Him He already in anticipation had en
dured the Cross and despised the shame, and was
set down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Our Lord was looking past Gethsemane, beyond
Pilate's hall, past Calvary's hill, past even the tomb
and the Resurrection morning. He was looking to
the glory land and to that wider ministry which He
is exercising in our midst to-day. "I go My way
unto Him that sent Me, and it is expedient for you
that I go away." But is it wonderful that the
Apostles could not share in this magnificent vision
that the Master was taking at this moment? He
was compelled to pause, for their questionings were
missing the mark every time that they were made.
In the first instance He announced His approaching
departure, but Peter, confused at the thought of
the ministry which was now, as he thought, reach-

QUO VADIS 7
ing its zenith of success from an earthly point of
view, interposes the question, "Now, Master, where
are You going? Is it to Samaria? Is it to Rome?
Are You going to repeat there the triumphs of the
Galilean ministry? Shall we see a crowd welcoming
the Jewish Messiah, even into the imperial city,
with hosannas, just as to-day You have been
welcomed into Jerusalem? Whither goest thou,
Master? Let us go and share in the success and
the glory too." This was not altogether a selfish
proposition, either, for Peter really did love his
Master, but the full significance of his Master's
work he had yet to learn.
The gloomier doubter, when, little by little, our
Lord returned to the solemnity of the real farewell
that He was about to speak, voices the puzzled feeling
of the disciples in the expostulation : "Lord, we know
not whither thou goest ; we should be glad to go with
you, but we do not know the way." How much
clearer would it become— perhaps not much — to his
puzzled intellect, when the Master replied : "I am the
Way and the Truth and the Life. No man cometh
unto the Father but by Me. I go My way unto Him
that sent Me?" This stopped their questioning;
they did not wish to hear the word of farewell, and
it gradually became clear to them that the Master
was really going. This was the end of the earthly
ministry; no more teaching upon the hillsides of
Galilee, no more crowds — thousands strong — press
ing upon Him to hear His words; no more brief

8 QUO VADIS
authority for these disciples ; and, above all, what was
to become of the Messianic kingdom in which they
had expected to play so august a part? It was all
coming to an end. Hence the questioning stopped, too.
This good-bye is not temporary, it is final; there
is not a new ministry to be commenced in Samaria
or in Rome; Jesus is withdrawing Himself from the
gaze of men. If there is to be a ministry it is no
longer to be a visible ministry; and all of a sudden
it came to these simple Galileans that the world
would be a blank to them without Christ; they
ceased questioning, for sorrow had filled their
hearts. Now, you see — shall I call it? — the
psychology of the situation. The Master, with
His tender smile, looked upon the men who had
eagerly offered themselves a few minutes before,
questioning where He was going, that they might
accompany Him. "Lord, why cannot I follow Thee
now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake." The
answer, in effect, was, "You are not ready; before
the cock crow thou shalt thrice deny that thou
knewest Me." When it came to the real good
bye, and they felt that the Jesus they had known
and loved and followed was to be removed from
them, is it any wonder that their self-offering and
their affectionate questioning came to an end?
"Why don't you go on with your questioning?
Twice you have asked Me whither I am going;
now when I make it clear that I go My way unto
Him that sent Me, the questioning has stopped;

QUO VADIS 9
none of you asketh Me, Whither goest Thou? And
yet this, if you could only see it, is the best news
that I have spoken to you this night. It is ex
pedient for you that I go away. The ministry has
not come to an end; it is only beginning. The
Christ is to reign: have you faith enough to come
with Me through the darkness? There is a glory
dawning; by-and-bye the Comforter is coming;
the Christ shall be lifted up, and all men shall be
drawn unto Him. And ye are My witnesses; for
ye have been with Me from the beginning." If
these simple men had only known it, now was
their opportunity. Their questionings were missing
the mark, they had not realised what the Master
said, and He was telling them in this moment of
farewell of a coming nearness, transcending anything
ever yet known of their earthly Master in His
Galilean days.
I want to> apply the words very intimately and
specially to your case and mine. Spoken nineteen
hundred years ago, they have as fresh a significance
to-day as when Peter and Thomas first heard them.
He who spake them is gone; there is no Jesus
here; taken by wicked hands and crucified and
slain, He no longer lives to walk and work amongst
men. Those who heard Him have gone; the
body of St Peter has long mouldered into dust.
Who can say what has become of Thomas the
Doubter? The men who- played the hero for
Christ in the first ages of the Church, those who

10 QUO VADIS
saw Him in the flesh and heard these precious
sayings fall from His lips, have all passed to their
reward, and now, if these words have any significance
at all, it is not for them, it is for you and for me.
Though the Christ is gone, the spirit of the Christ
remains. I do not wish you to understand that
word in any vague or unreal sense. Some of the
men to whom I speak have a very feeble faith
in my Lord, and I would like to take you with
me every step that I go when I repeat His words.
How much could you say with assurance about
Jesus Christ? Where is He, who is He? About
the latter of those two questions we have wasted
a great deal of time. I will ask you to follow me
in a series of hypotheses. Where is the Christ?
Grant me two things, and I will tell you. First,
I want you to say, with Matthew Arnold, "There
is an Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness." Now, my brethren of the City
offices, the strenuous life of this vast Metropolis,
representative as you are of the typical life of
England, can you say that? You are sure from
the bottom of your heart that there is, though
you cannot prove it, an Eternal, not ourselves, which
makes for righteousness. You would say that
much? Take another step, which is but the same
proposition, and affirm with the Victorian poet,
" To feel, although no tongue can prove,
That every cloud that spreads above,
And veileth love, itself is love.''

QUO VADIS n
Say this also. Our life has a significance far beyond
our present apprehension of it, and every life has
value for God. We have an immortal destiny.
" Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal,
' Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul."
You may think very little about the world's to
morrow, and you may be far more concerned about
your own to-day than you may be about any after
death, but while you affirm with me those two
things — there is a Righteousness enthroned some
where, and there is a better day for you and me —
if you can only say that much, you have already
come to close quarters with the Christ. It is a
marvellous thing that every time a man proceeds
to ask any question concerning the fundamentals of
his own being and destiny he is at grips with Jesus.
It is impossible that it should be otherwise. We
have identified — or if you won't pass that word,
let us say associated — Jesus with the Eternal that
makes for righteousness, and if there is a deathless
life for any, then Jesus, whoever He may be, is
alive somewhere. Now, supposing it is Jesus the
Carpenter, and only He, who lives somewhere, it is
a question of the gravest import for you and me
what that Christ is thinking about this world, and
how much He can do to affect our destiny. Only
suppose that He happens to be the director of that
destiny, can you think of any question so important,

12 QUO VADIS
so urgent, as this, Where is the Christ leading His
own ? Whither goest Thou, my Lord ?
I have brought into the pulpit with me a book,
written on a subject that does not concern us for a
moment; it is not a religious book, unless, perhaps,
very indirectly, but a book on a scientific subject,
and I take from it this sentence :
"There is nothing to hinder the reverent faith that, though we
be all children of the Most Highest, He came nearer than we,
by some space to us immeasurable, to that which is infinitely far."
I am not going to ask any man here for any more
theology than that "He stands nearer, by some
space to us immeasurable, to that which is infinitely
far." Now suppose — I am going on with my
hypotheses — suppose, instead of Jesus, I was talking
about your father or mother or child who had passed
into the unseen and to the Eternal that makes for
righteousness ; if your father is really there, if the
grave does not hold him, if your mother's lips have
not been silenced for evermore, your father is
thinking and your mother is praying about you.
You cannot imagine them to be changed; the child
has not forgotten the love that you once gave, and
the parents can never forget the solicitude they
once showed for you who are bone of their bone,
flesh of their flesh. Now suppose — only suppose — -
that the Christ who once taught in Galilee, the
Christ who gathered this little circle of men round
Him in that upper room, even if He be only Jesus

QUO VADIS 13
the Carpenter, has gone into the unseen with the
same spirit that He showed in the days of old, with
the same deathless love, with the same yearning
solicitude to save men; does it matter, or does it
not, what this Man, whose name is lifted above all
the names that are in the earth, is thinking and
doing about this world? I cannot stop here; some
thing impels me to take the last step, for faith
urges me to say: He is thinking and He is doing.
His is the name above every name, that to which
every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall con
fess Christ Jesus as Lord. He is the Master of our
fate, the Lord of life and death. Now what is
Jesus doing? To the question that stands before
all other questions, "Lord, whither leadest Thou?"
the signs of the times ought to afford us the answer.
It is never easy for a man to> estimate the conditions
of his own day; we are too near to the facts. For
instance, I think it is most likely that Mr Cham
berlain will loom larger in the estimate of posterity,
possibly, than in that of this day and generation.
We did not know how great Mr Gladstone was
until we came to think of him as a figure in history;
now we are getting a right perspective as we look
back. But the perspective is not easy to get when
we stand in the midst of big events. It is not easy
to estimate, then, the signs of the times, but per
haps a good way of trying to discover the prevailing
mood of our own time is to look back a little while
and see how it compares with that which is past.

14 QUO VADIS
In the middle of the last century England was in
a temper somewhat different from the temper which
she exhibits to-day. In 1846 the Corn Laws had
just been abolished, and from that moment a new
era of hopefulness and prosperity dawned for our
historic nation. Not this country only, but other
countries, shared in the buoyancy of spirit which
came like the dawning of the morning to a weary
world. France took a step forward in the inaugura
tion of a new Constitution; nationalities in Europe
were struggling into political liberty; young Italy
was looking to this country as an example; and we
— what were we doing? Albert the Good

was

just inaugurating that first experiment in inter
national friendly competition and goodwill — the Great
Exhibition of 1851. The other day a man, who
was then in early manhood, told me that, speaking
for his contemporaries, he could say men were filled
with hopefulness; they felt the golden age was
just at hand. Moreover, there was a great con
fidence in the future of our own country; men,
praying for an era of peace, thought of England
as being the leader and the guide of the civilisation
of the world. A good spirit was abroad, a hopeful
spirit, one of alertness, buoyancy, confidence. What
became of it? In 1854 we had the Crimean War
— a blunder; worse than a blunder, a crime, as we
have now discovered; in 1857 we had the Indian
Mutiny; in 1870 the Franco-German War, and in
1878 the Russo-Turkish War, with its long legacy of

QUO VADIS 15
atrocities. All our hopes have been damped. The
education of the people has not wrought the results
that were expected. The buoyancy and confidence
that existed in this country in 1848 appear to have
crossed the ocean, and are now the characteristic
of our cousins in America. A certain misgiving,
apparently, is in the minds of some of the best
men to-day, that perhaps we are witnessing the
beginnings of national decay. In religion, what do
we see? The Rev. Frank Ballard states it as his
opinion that the vast mass of the workers amongst
our fellow-countrymen are being increasingly alien
ated from the Church. He says it is not definite
hostility so much as indifference and contempt which
they show to us and to our methods. If we have
lost the note of confidence and hopefulness, that
verve, that glamour of enthusiasm which has again
and again in the history of the world swept over
the people that were making history, we must get
it back. For, be assured no nation can long stand
which ceases to believe in her mission. England
has had something to do for God — may it be that
the churches are asking the wrong questions of
their Master to-day, and failing to read Him in the
signs of the times? Christ has to do, not now and
then, but all the time, with the making of history
for He is the Master of the destiny of nations as
of individuals, and He rides on the whirlwind and
directs the storm. If we can read the signs of the
times aright, we hear our Master's call from out the

16 QUO VADIS
midst of the conditions of our own day, "This do
and thou shalt live."
What shall we do? There are many amongst us
anticipating an evangelical revival, a great stirring
of the religion which is ineradicably present in the
hearts of men in all ages. What form will this
revival take? On one hand, we hear one thing,
and on another, another. Sometimes the Church
is blamed for her slackness in the preaching of the
old evangel; sometimes she is blamed in that she
has not succeeded in getting the ear of the masses
as her Master did by adapting her message to their
needs. An article was put into my hands only five
minutes before I came into the pulpit, curiously
enough, written upon the very theme upon which
I am addressing you — What form the next revival
will take. There will be one, of that you may be
perfectly sure, Church or no Church. Peter and
Thomas in this chapter are asking the right ques
tion, it may be, "Lord, whither goest Thou?"
and were almost ready with the answer: "To
Samaria or to Rome— to this shibboleth, or to that;
Lord, we are prepared to accompany you, and to
repeat them as we have always done." And the
Master's answer may be coming now as it came to
them, "Because I have said these things, sorrow
has filled your heart." Before I read the article I
am about to quote, let me take you back to John
xvi., and see why it was that sorrow had filled their
hearts— partly because the Master was going, but

QUO VADIS 17
partly because the glory was going with Him. Peter
had just been sharing in the hosannas; he wanted
more, and this is what he received: — "The time
shall come when he that killeth you will think that
he is doing a service unto God. These things have
I told you, that when the time shall come you may re
member that I told you of them. But because I have
said these things" — not only that He was going,
but that something else was coming, a strenuous
time, a time of trial — sorrow had filled their hearts.
Peter was ready for the Mount of Transfiguration,
ready for the hosannas and the palm-branches, but
he was not yet ready for the Cross. Yet the time
did come when Peter was ready to testify, suffer,
and die, for his Lord.
Now, supposing Peter were here to-day to put
the question to the Master, "Lord whither goest
Thou?" — for where He is I must go; help me to
fulfill the destiny which Christ has declared to the
generation in which I was born. The answer is
this. "There will be a revival," says Dr Watson,
better known as Ian Maclaren.
"When God is pleased to send His new Prophet, one expects
that he will preach the Gospel of social deliverance; that the
white female slaves who sew from morning till night, and half
through the night, and hardly get the wherewithal to keep soul
and body together, should be delivered from their bondage, that
every labourer who is willing and temperate should have his
living wage wherewith to keep himself and his family, that every
citizen of England, however humble, should have his own little
home wherein to live in peace and comfort, that the countryman
B

18 QUO VADIS
should not be evicted from the land to make room for wild
animals and rich men's sport, that the owners of insanitary prop
erty should be punished and not compensated, that temptations
should not be placed at every street corner in the way of the poor
and miserable, that every man should have free access to educa
tion, to the country, to health and just enjoyment, and that the
burden of weariness and sickness and tyranny should be lifted
from the shoulders of them who labour and are heavy laden.
From this preaching, when it comes with power, two classes will
receive a blessing. . . . When Christianity has at a great cost
given a home to the humblest of the people, she will find a wel
come home in the people's heart."
All this means some cost to the individual. It is
easy for any man to put his finger on the difficulty
to-day, and to say how others should solve it; but
the call comes to us each by each and one by one.
"Simon, Son of Jonas," said the Master, "lovest
thou Me more than these? Tend my sheep, feed
my lambs." No fear of the dying down of moral
enthusiasm; the Christ is leading, and the spirit of
Christ is inspiring every heroic service for the King.
You who would serve the Master, serve the Master's
own. We call for the union of all who love in the
cause of all who suffer. Don't let us misplace our
question, "Lord whither goest Thou?" The signs of
the times afford the answer. We cannot but follow
where Jesus has led. There is a Roman Catholic
legend as to the martyrdom of the Apostle Peter,
which runs thus: St Peter was urged by his fellow-
Christians in Rome, when martyrdom was imminent,
to flee the city and take refuge from the last dread
ordeal. Finally he succumbed to the appeal, and

QUO VADIS 19
was about to flee from the headsman's axe, when he
fell asleep, and dreamed that he had escaped the
city. Outside, in the Appian Way, he met his
Master's form coming towards the Rome he had just
left, and Peter uttered the words of his question
in the upper room, "Lord, whither goest Thou?"
The answer of the Master was, "I go to Rome to
be crucified a second time." Peter bowed his head
before the Master, and said, "Lord, be it far from
Thee. I shall go." He turned back. When he
woke from his dream he no longer desired to escape
martyrdom; he was crucified for Christ. Beloved,
we are called to be crucified with Christ. There is
no escape. In the practical things of this world,
doing the right, the loving, the kind, and the true,
will always cost. It has to be faced, and it must be
done, if we would follow where He leads. There is a
familiar picture called the Via Dolorosa; the central
figure is the Christ leading a suffering, groaning,
agonised multitude. The Cross is upon His shoulder,
and in the darkness of that sombre avenue men and
women are toilsomely, painfully creeping behind
Him along the Via Dolorosa to a better place on
the further side of the forbidding crags. False to
the facts! He went forth bearing His Cross,
standing strong upon His feet. We who follow
behind Him to the strenuous and the heroic life
have no need to lie down and toilsomely to creep
behind the Master. The cure for the pusillanimity
of the weak, the coward shrinking from high things,

20 QUO VADIS
the remedy for dying-down enthusiasms, is to preach
Christ's salvation, Christ's consolation, Christ the
Master, the near, the present, the strong Friend.
He is leading, He is thinking, He is caring. He has
never ceased to care. And as He cares His call
comes. Who amongst us is ready to obey?

THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS

The following sermon had a very simple origin. From time to
time members of my congregation send requests for prayer for
themselves or their friends. Sometimes these requests are accom
panied by particulars intended for the minister's eye alone. A
greater number of these than usual had been received ; stories of
trouble, perplexity and danger. One such note contained a post
script, the exact words of which I cannot remember, but conclud
ing with the phrase, "Songs of despair." Instantly there came to
the preacher's mind the hymn that Jesus sang before Calvary —
no song of despair.

II
"And when they had sung an hymn, they went out." — Mark xiv. 26.
This text opens before us an endless vista of
love and beauty. "And when they had sung an
hymn, they went out." Think of all that was to
follow, and remember that Jesus knew it. This
hymn, whatever it was, was therefore the death-song
of Jesus. And what was it? There is surprisingly
little curiosity on the subject. I do- not recollect
that I have ever heard the question asked, What
was the hymn that Jesus sang on the night of His
betrayal ?
It may be that many here have never thought
about it at all. And yet we every one of us remem
ber with a certain sweet sadness the songs of our
beloved dead, and when they sang them.
"Jesu, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly."
While I repeat the line, some person present says
to himself, "Those were the last words my father
ever uttered." " To Him the first fond prayers are said
Our lips of childhood frame;
The last low whispers of our dead
Are burdened with His name."

24 THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS
"Rock of Ages cleft for me." While I repeat the
familiar line that we shall be singing in most of our
places of worship within the next few days, some
one present will be thinking, "That was my mother's
favourite hymn." We remember these associations
with the name of Jesus, and we graft them upon our
memory of the holy dead. Is it not, then, somewhat
surprising that we never ask what hymn it was that
He Himself sang in the hour and article of death?
There is good reason to believe that it was Psalm
cxviii. It was especially appropriate to the feast
which Jesus observed with His disciples, and it con
tains the very sentence with which the crowds
greeted Him on that morning or the day before in
the streets of Jerusalem, "Hosanna! Blessed is He
that cometh in the name of the Lord." It was being
sung by more than the little group of disciples in the
upper room, but it was far more appropriate than
anyone but Jesus knew, for He sang it alone. The
steps of His betrayer were even at that moment
audible as they passed into the night. The grand,
lonely soul of Jesus, august Son of God, singing in
the moment of His betrayal; His murderers are
ready with their swords and staves, the fires are lit
in the hall of Caiaphas; the very cross is fashioned
and Calvary's horror is waiting. It was all arranged ;
there was no justice about the matter; the verdict
was foreordained by those who had schemed to
murder Him, and in this terrible moment this is
what He sings : —

THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS 25
"I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.
. . . This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice
and be glad in it. . . . God is the Lord, who hath shewed us
light; bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the
altar. Thou art my God, and I will praise Thee : Thou art my
God, I will exalt Thee. O give thanks unto the Lord, for He
is good, for His mercy endureth for ever."
This was the song that Jesus sang.
The death-song of Jesus is, you see, a song of
triumph uttered before the agony came. He knew
absolutely that the Father would not fail Him, that
evil could not prevail, and that the sacrifice would
be a great victory. But mark this : He could not
see beyond Calvary. He knew, but He could not
see. Faith never can do otherwise than that; it
knows, but it cannot see. He could see the whole
way right up to Calvary; He knew what He was
going to do, and that it must be done alone, and as
Peter and John were singing on either side of Him,
"Bind the sacrifice with cords," he knew that they
were going to run away; the moment they stopped
singing He told them about that, as we read in the
context; and He knew that He would have to fling
His strong arm around them, and beg their lives from
his own murderers. He knew it; He knew about
the midnight trial, and the travesty of justice; He
knew the face of the perplexed Roman governor on
the throne when He, the King, stood before him, as
an accused criminal. He saw the sea of murderous
faces round the cross, and He already felt in antici
pation the terrible shame of it all. Yet He could

26 THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS
not see beyond Calvary. He only knew, "Thou
wilt not leave his soul in the grave, neither wilt
Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption"—
every detail up to Calvary, and not a moment
beyond it.
Someone will say, Could Jesus have done less?
Surely He could see the end from the beginning.
He foresaw the rending of the tomb. He knew
how much hung upon His faithfulness, and upon the
way He fought His conflict through. In a word, the
whole destiny of humanity rested upon what Jesus
would do. Could He have done less than He did?
I answer, No, He could not. But that does not
lessen my obligation to Him, nor the fitness of its
expression. Jesus could not have done less just
because He was Jesus, and because He was so
noble and pure, and because His purpose had to be
accomplished to the last detail. So He did not
shrink from the Cross. He could not have done
less, nor does this consideration diminish the grandeur
of His demeanour in the slightest degree.
Two great mysteries stand out here. First, the
mystery of His agony. As a Roman Catholic theo
logian has put it, the agony in the garden and the
dereliction on Calvary present to the gaze an ocean of
sorrow on the shores of which we may stand and
look down upon the waveless surface, but the
depths below no created intelligence can fathom.
Never speak lightly of the agony of Christ, for you
do not know what it was, nor how terrible, nor how

THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS 2>]
overwhelming even to the Divine Son of God. The
second mystery is the mystery of His deliverance.
He saw through the first mystery, but not the second.
He saw the agony as we never can see it, but He
did not see beyond. We see the second, but not
the first. We never can look on Calvary except
over the empty tomb. We see on this side of the
Cross; Christ looked on the other. Think, then, of
the grandeur and the magnificence of that august
Figure, standing pathetic and lonely in the upper
room, singing, "Bind the sacrifice with cords, bind
it to the horns of the altar . . . O give thanks
unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy
endureth forever."
The present Bishop of Worcester somewhere
says, there was nothing endured by Christ which
we may not also be called upon to suffer in our
degree. I ask you to weigh that sentence. In
fellowship with Christ we may be capable of the
same grandeur of achievement in our degree; and
herein consists the principal value of my beautiful
text, "And when they had sung an hymn, they
went out." Do you observe the plural number?
There were twelve men singing, but only One of
them sang the song as it should be sung. The
eleven did not know much about it. They pro
tested their loyalty, their faithfulness, their fervour
of devotion, but by-and-bye they forsook Him and
fled. But that was not the end, thank God. Peter
and John and the rest had their chance again, and

28 THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS
the time came round when they sang the death-
song of Jesus as they had not sung it before, and
this was the ring of it: "I have fought a good
fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith, I am now ready to be offered." These terror-
stricken Galileans who fled from Gethsemane ere
long became heroes for the Christ, and sang the
death-song of Jesus in the very face of tyranny and
shame. The things that had terrified them before
were mere shadows compared with this. But
something had changed them: was it not that they
had learned to sing the death-song of Jesus with
His own accent, knowing it was but the beginning
and not the end?
Looking into the face of this congregation this
morning, I am conscious of a deep respect for the
souls that look back at me out of your eyes. What
tragedies are here; what secret agonies; what
shame; what betrayal; what desertion; what mid
night trial; what Calvary, I know not, but I would
ask you a question in the spirit of my text: What
kind of song is your heart singing? Can it sing at
all? Can you see God anywhere? Or is your
vision bounded by the cross? I mean the cross on
which your hopes have been crucified. There are
some grand things here, if I could only get at them.
And, by the way, I never remember preaching a
sermon here, and adducing one single illustration
from the facts of human life as I know it, withoul
someone who was here either coming or writing tc

THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS 29
me afterwards and saying, "That was my life you
were describing." Well, I once heard of, but never
knew, a young father who fought a battle with
fate on this wise. He was smitten with a deadly
disease; he knew it, and was told that his only
chance of life was that he should suffer someone to
minister to him, and for the rest of his days — short
days, too — he should take things quietly and rest
and wait for death. "Let others suffer, and let
others strive; be still," said the doctor, "that is
your only chance of life." But he had two little
babes, so he took another course. He might have
turned bitter, and cursed and railed against fate, and,
with it, God. Or he might have pitied himself and
taken the easier course, and called upon others to
provide for these his loved ones. But he did not;
he went out as if nothing had happened, back to his
work with double intensity. He could not leave his
children to the mercy of the world. It is not that
the world is so very unkind, but it forgets. He
determined they should have their chance when he
himself was gone. He uttered no complaint; he
never presented to them any story of his own
heroism. He just went on with brave heart and
cheerful face. For years that man sang the death-
song of Christ, and no martyr going to the stake
ever sang it better.
I have also heard of, but never knew, a young
mother, whose means of livelihood was her gift of
song, and once when her only child was lying ill at

30 THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS
home she had to sing for bread before a gaping
crowd, and refuse an encore that she might escape
from the footlights and get back to that suffering
bedside. When she got there it was only to hear
that there was no hope. This was the last request
of her dying child — "Mother, sing to me!" Can
you think of anything more terrible than that mid
night agony? In the very presence of the shadow
of death the brave little woman gathers her baby to
her breaking heart and paces that death-room
singing : —
" I think when I read that sweet story of old
When Jesus was here among men,
How He called little children like lambs to His fold,
I should like to have been with Him then."
The child was going home, the mother was to live,
but it was she and not the child that sang the death-
song of Jesus, and sang it well for love's sake.
Compare these two cases, and you can find experi
ences in this congregation sufficiently like them to
make it worth my while to paint the picture. Of
one such I have heard this very week. A mother
writes to me, as many people do about the things I
teach and the things I do not teach, and complains
that I declare an impossible God, an imaginary God,
a God, she says, for comfortable Christians. Here
let me in an aside warn anyone from ever seeking
to interpret another person's life and labelling it
either comfortable or stern. You never can change
places with anyone, and you never can penetrate to

THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS 31
the springs of another man's being: only God can do
that. But this, in effect, is what she says. I do not
give you the very words. My heart filled up with
pity when I read them : "Knowing the struggle I
have had to keep the wolf from the door, and how
I prayed my prayers in vain, I have come to the con
clusion there may be a God, but He is no God of
love, He is a God whose words are pain. If there
be such a God, I loathe Him with my whole soul.
My little girl of six has learnt to blaspheme His
name, and I never rebuke her, rather, I am glad."
Poor bitter-hearted woman! Do you know, I think
I can read in a declaration of that kind that she is
not so far from God as she seems. If a man has
intensity enough to protest against the heavenly
Father, the one feeling can be pretty quickly trans
lated into the other, and the protest become praise.
But oh what a mistake she is making now! She
knows little or nothing of the fellowship of the Cross.
Has she never heard anything of the meaning of
Gethsemane and Calvary, or the death-song of
Jesus? She has refused to sing it, and what is
worse, she has stifled the song of an angel in the
heart of her little child. How near together lie
success and failure in the great moral crisis of life!
We say of that young father whom I have just
described, "Could he have done less?" Of course
he could not; he would have been false to his
trusteeship if he had. He did exactly what God
meant him to do; no more than Jesus, could he

32 THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS
have done less in the shadow of Calvary. He sang
the death-song, sang it like a martyr, sang it like a
saint, and it may be that you and I, sooner rather
than late, will have our death-song to sing, and to
go on living.
I speak this morning to any man or any woman
who is fronting some terrible thing, who, like Christ
in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, goes forward
with a face towards the gleam of light at the end, with
the demons whispering gibes in your ear. Your prayer
for strong deliverance is heard; you can meet your
fate — shall we call it fate? — your lot, with bitterness,
or you can meet it with the spirit of defiance, which
is the spirit of the devil all the same. There is
another way: meet it in the spirit of the Christ;
rise high to the opportunity. "I shall not die, but
live, and declare the works of the Lord . . . bind
the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the
altar" — and oh — can you say it? — "give thanks
unto the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy
endureth for ever." The Lord would not think
much of humanity if He gave it only the toys in the
nursery. He gives us something grander than that;
it is the fellowship of the Cross. We have nothing
to do with our own redemption ; we have much to do
with filling up the measure that is behind. Christ
fought a battle for us, let us fight our battle with
Him. I would say, then, to any man or woman of broken
mutilated life, Lift up your heart and listen, listen

THE DEATH-SONG OF JESUS 33
to the death-song of Jesus, which is sung by the
heavenly choir, the choir of those who have washed
their robes and made them white in the blood of the
Lamb. When the organist was playing that lovely
voluntary this morning, which came with such a
sweet and quieting devotional influence upon your
hearts and mine, I thought of something which I
now suggest to you. If you were to place in this
pulpit a violin or harp tuned to the pitch of the
organ above, and leave it alone, not touching it, and
that voluntary was played again, and you bent your
ear near to the stringed instrument, seemingly so
silent, you would hear every note of it coming
from strings that are swept by the hand of no
human player. My brethren, you are like the
harp strung by the hand of God. Keep atune
with heaven, and you shall sing such a song
as you will never otherwise sing in this world.
It is no human hand that sweeps the strings, only
the Hand that tuned them; and your melody already
joins with that of the great choir above.
As my closing application of this beautiful
message of God, "When they had sung an hymn,
they went out," let me quote some lines by the Rev.
V. J. Charlesworth :
" When friends are few or far away,
Sing on, dear heart, sing on !
They rise to sing who kneel to pray,
Sing on, dear heart, sing on !
The songs of earth to heav'n ascend,

THE WINDOWS OPEN TOWARDS
JERUSALEM

The following was a business man's sermon, and preached for the
sake of an individual. Probably there were many more like him
in the congregation, but I only knew the one man whom I sought
to help. He was not a church-goer: that is to say, he attended
no place of worship on Sundays, although he was a regular at
tendant at the Thursday service. Years before he had been put
out of touch with religious work by some real or fancied affront
— in fact he seemed to have been rather hardly and unsympathet-
ically used. He was now willing to make a fresh start, but could
not help blazing out at the meanness and unscrupulousness of
the treatment meted out to him in business by professing Chris
tians. I still see this hearer sitting in the midst of the city men
Thursday by Thursday. Whether this particular sermon helped
him or no I never knew, but it reached one or two young fellows
who were beginning to find out that success has its penalties, of
which envy is one.

Ill
" Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went
into his house, and his windows being opened in his chamber
toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day,
and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did afore
time." — Daniel vi. 10.
The book of Daniel has long been a subject of
controversy amongst scholars, and is a favourite with
some who profess to' find in it indications concerning
the political future of the world. For the present,
however, you and I need not concern ourselves with
questions of scholarship or prophecy. Our text is
plain enough; it has a meaning and a value in
dependent of both. Neither the scholar nor the
would-be prophet, foreteller of events I mean, has
aught to say that can add anything to the force and
the commanding personal appeal of our text. Let us
look first at the meaning, and then at the value which
the meaning indicates.
Here is a great man, Daniel by name, who is a
stranger in a strange land, one of a captive people;
but, like so many of his race, he is found to be useful
to the reigning house in the country where he now
is; and so he is preferred before even the subjects
of the same race as the king himself; and we are
told the king thought to set him over the whole
realm. You know enough about human nature to
37

38 THE WINDOWS OPEN
be aware of what would happen. In this case, at any
rate, the writer of this book was inspired by ex
perience. It was with Daniel as with Merlin in
"The Idylls of the King" :—
" Sweet were the days when I was all unknown.
But when my name was lifted up, the storm
Brake on the mountain, and I cared not for it.
Right well know I that fame is half disfame,
Yet needs must work my work."
Daniel appears to have gone quietly on the path
which not the king but God had marked out for him;
lived his life, did his duty. His practice was to keep
his soul right towards God by this meditation three
times a day. He would enter into his private room,
open his window towards Jerusalem, the home of his
love, in order that he might remind himself of his
allegiance to the God of Israel, and that he had no
abiding city in Babylon. What was the king to
him, and all the king's honour? Yonder, at Jerusa
lem, in the service of Israel's God, were Daniel's
thought and Daniel's hope.
Now observe the devilry that is set on foot.
The king loves his talented subject, and so by guile
Daniel's foes have to make a way through that
devotion to encompass the destruction of their rival;
they suggested the king's vanity the way in which
this might be done. There is to be no prayer for three
days. Who ever dreams that Daniel would intermit
his devotion for that? Now can you see them
slinking round outside the chamber of his devotion

TOWARDS JERUSALEM 39
and looking up: "Has he the window open?
Just what we expected!" "Then they came near
and told the king." Is not that true to life? You
do not need to look very far for the meaning of my
text now; and if the sermon were to stop at this
point, every one of you could supply the application.
It is just possible that some man present might be
saying to himself, "I am sorry you have chosen this
particular illustration of what human nature knows
to be true; what a childish tale this is about a man
being flung into the lions' den and coming out
unhurt! Tell it to children." Well, I am telling
it to grown men. It may seem to you altogether
irrational, but I actually believe it. I remember
listening to Dr Parker's posthumous message to the
Free Churches, which contained something of a
remonstrance against a certain kind of Biblical
scholarship in these terms : — "We are now told
that there was no den, that there were no lions,
and, worst of all, that there was no Daniel." If my
revered predecessor were here this morning, I would
point out Daniel to him in the congregation. For
in this story we have a very vivid picture of ordinary
human life, and an epitome of the destiny of many
and many a true servant of God. I am looking into
the face of some men who are being committed to
the den of lions, and will find themselves there
before this afternoon is out. I would talk to them
as from the heart of God; and this is all I have to
say. You know where you are going, do you not?

40 THE WINDOWS OPEN
You know the writing is signed; open the win
dows towards Jerusalem; no compromise with the
enemy; be as though he were not there. We have
no abiding city here, but seek a city out of sight.
You will be a better citizen of this world if you live
in the full vision of the next.
Let me take that youngster, perhaps the youngest
male hearer that I have this morning, and I will tell
you about his life. He is, as the cynic would say,
cursed with a conscience. He has just earned his
little piece of success. He stands well with his
employer; he has worked hard enough to get there,
and it seems as if the road is opening before him,
and life will bring him some good things by-and-bye.
Here is the enemy. This young man is finding he
has to pay his price for his success — calumny, petty
persecution, inflicted in ways which are difficult to
fix and to face out; and sometimes you are almost
inclined to turn cynic yourself. Then the preacher
comes along and says : "Open the windows towards
Jerusalem. Look back along the line of history to
One who stood in that fateful city at Pilate's judg
ment seat. Consider Him that endured such con
tradiction of sinners against Himself; and when He
was reviled, reviled not again." "Ah, yes!" is the
response, "but I cannot see Christ in business." I
am thankful you cannot, unspeakable thankful; for
if you could, a great moral opportunity that you have
now would never be yours at all; for persecuted and
persecutor would both be on the side of Christ,

TOWARDS JERUSALEM 41
seeing Him in power and great glory. There is a
moral value in not knowing too much; mystery hath
its uses. If you could see things as they actually
are you would never even talk about the Cross, you
would not hesitate as to what you ought to do. Do
it now, as if you could see. Wait a moment. I said
you could not see Christ. Open the windows toward
Jerusalem, and gaze through the things that are seen
to the things that are not seen. Look into the face
of the Master and you will see something that the
world cannot see, and it will keep you true. Human
nature is capable of many damnable things, even
now; and lest I should be held to be prophesying
smooth things and telling nursery tales instead of
God's word, I would just say this : you may have
worse to suffer yet; this may only be the beginning.
The writing is signed; you may not know it, or you
may; go on as if you did not know; go to your
God; open the windows of your soul heavenward,
and leave the rest to Him.
We will take that woman — pure and good — who
is the breadwinner in a certain family; but she has
to earn her living for herself and the rest in the
presence of foul and humiliating insult. Most men
here will know that I am not imagining this. It is
true of I know not how many in this sanctuary
to-day. There are some times when you feel that
you can bear no more, and will let the consequences
be what they may; you must retreat from this posi
tion of hardship and shame. You have no one to

42 THE WINDOWS OPEN
tell. It is astonishing how few there are in the
world to whom man or woman can disclose their
whole soul. But as the living has to be won, and
for somebody else who cannot win it if you do not,
I think I know what you must do. The writing is
signed, and it seems as though the lions are waiting;
but you must go back. Open the windows toward
Jerusalem ; the world does not have it all its own
way. There is God, and He is just, and He is
strong. "My God shall supply all your need
according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."
Fear nothing, save to compromise with the Highest.
Live where He is, for as He is so are we in this
world. Take this business man — to whom I meant to
speak at first. You are finding every day, as it were,
the penalty of succeeding in almost anything, it
matters not what. It seems as if life is all battle.
What a weary game it is, this making money in the
City! What a rest, what a relief to get home at
night and leave the lions for a while! You know
what professional jealousy means : you know what
it is to make an implacable, inveterate, unsleeping
enemy who will hit you under the belt every time
he can. Sometimes you are tempted to get the
blow in first, to bring down the standard of conduct
and right doing and right feeling. Never submit to
that temptation : it is the business man's par ex
cellence. It is so difficult to keep a humble heart,
a pure spirit, and a childlike attitude to God, when

TOWARDS JERUSALEM 43
you are fighting like a man beset on the stricken
field, and heaven so far away. Well, be the man;
keep the windows open toward Jerusalem. The
higher vision will save you from the shame of falling
in this world of a thousand temptations to the strong
man. Let the indications be what they may, let
threatenings be all they seem, your God is stronger
than they all. God and one make a majority.
Just as I came up the pulpit stairs, the sexton
handed me this little spring token1 from one of my
City men. I have been looking to this man for
some time for little loving tokens of this kind.
From his card I see that he is an Artist and a Scot,
and his house is named after that little piece of gorse
I hold in my hand, which by the way a Scotsman
does not call gorse. It must be a figure of his own life.
There is the golden flower of success, and here are
the thorns that make it so I can scarcely hold it.
It reminds me of the experience of a brother artist
of this man, told me a little while ago. He has just
got some plans into the Royal Academy, and he
showed me the only unfavourable, even a venomous,
notice of them which appeared in a paper. He
said, "Would you think that this man is not speak
ing his real sentiments at all, perhaps never saw the
plans? But I happened to pass him in a competition
a little while ago, and he has been waiting for me
ever since." Just so, that is the way the world
does. It is a curious thing that out of all this
1 A small bouquet of gorse covered with golden blossoms.

44 THE WINDOWS OPEN
multitude this morning there is not a single man
who can say he never had an experience of the
kind, and never knew what it was to provoke the
hostility of a man to whom he had never done any
harm. Nor does it matter; be prepared for that;
it is the writing that fronts all opportunity for moral
heroism. The world will never give you any credit
for the better motive if there are two from which
to choose. Disinterestedness is seldom believed in.
What is his game? is the question, if you will
excuse the homely parlance, that is asked of any
man's conduct when it even seems to be unselfish.
But why do people get soured when they find that
this is so? That is the world's writing: they are
looking to see if you have your window open.
Open it as if the world were not there. "Be thou
as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not
escape calumny."
There are some specially trying times in every
man's life, and it may be that yours — if I speak to
only one man in this place — has now arrived. Now
I would most earnestly point out the real danger to
you in these seasons of trial. It is not what you
think it is. It is of a double kind. First, that
evil aimed at you may arouse in you a like evil.
A sinister mood tends to reproduce itself. Secondly,
fear of a threatening evil may lead you to bow to
the storm, and to lower your flag, to turn ever so
little from the path of strict rectitude. Do not
succumb to either suggestion. You meet a man

TOWARDS JERUSALEM 45
who dislikes you — instinctively you know it — and
you repay him in kind. Your heart is beating
quicker when you are in his presence, but it is not
with a good emotion. Or you hear of a man who
is scheming to ruin you, and forthwith you hit him
with all your might. He would never do you any
harm if there were no ally within your own soul.
There is a danger from which to flee. To repay
evil with evil is the worst possible policy you could
adopt. When our Lord left us the exhortation,
"Love your enemies; pray for them who despitefully
use you," He uttered the strictest common sense.
That is your only way of safety. We have all heard
Cromwell's dying prayer. Did you ever notice
how singularly beautiful and noble was the closing
petition? — "Pardon those who would trample upon
the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people
too." It is always difficult to be just to an enemy;
it cannot be done until you get into that Cromwell
spirit, which was the Christ spirit before it was his.
The ignoble thing would be to take a different
ground, and even in thought to repay evil with evil;
the noblest, the wisest, the safest, is to take the
ground that Daniel took. When he knew that
the writing was signed, he went back into his room
and opened the windows toward Jerusalem. There
is always a highest — live there. There is always
a holiest — look there. Fear nothing, save to
tamper with your own conscience. Be brave and
true, and trust in God. "Yea, though I walk

46 THE WINDOWS OPEN
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and
Thy staff they comfort me."
It may be that these City men who have gathered
within these walls to worship this morning for a
little while, or some of them, are going back to the
most trying experience of their life. Well, go; do
not shirk it ; the way to Beulah-land may lie straight
through the Valley of the Shadow, and if it does
be sure of this: God will be no nearer in Beulah-
land than in the dark valley; and evil can do no more
in the dark valley than in Beulah-land. As you go
back to your business to-day, remember to keep
the windows open toward Jerusalem.
A year ago, when I first came here, I had on
Thursday afternoons several At Homes, in order
to make the acquaintance of friends and visitors,
and I remember one day a man came in to speak
to me whom I had never seen before and have
never seen since. He had a shy, half-shamefaced
way that often men have in exposing a weak side
to another man. He said to me, "You were speak
ing this morning in a figure thus : You described
a man hanging from a prison wall all night, dreading
to drop into safety. I have been hanging on for a
year or two, dreading to let go, because I feared
it would not be safety; it would be a precipice over
which I should fall. Pardon me for saying it, sir.
I am sorely tempted to put myself right in a way
that once upon a time I should never have dreamed

TOWARDS JERUSALEM 47
I could even entertain in thought. What am I to do?"
At first I thought he had come, as so many do, to
ask that I should put him right. I was thankful I
did not say so; for in another moment he said,
"Mind you, neither you nor any other man can
save me; if ruin comes it will be on too big a scale
for you or for anyone else to avert the catastrophe.
What I want to know is this : Knowing as I do
that my little ones are sleeping at home, and that
this harassment is hanging over me, and that if I
fail they suffer too, what am I to do?" I said,
"Do you really need to ask a preacher?" His reply
was, "I think not; but if I refuse to do what I am
sorely tempted to do, what then? Ruin — failure."
I said, "Perhaps so. Go back to your business,
and fail; and when your life story comes to be told
— and it may be a long while yet — praise God for
the success. You have not done; it seems to you
so simple to take the selfish wrong road, to go down
because the hill is so steep to climb." "No," he
said, "not that. What I am afraid of is, I am
going down." I said, "If you go, underneath are
the everlasting arms. A man falls into the hands
of God — the safest place, be he sinner or be he
saint. Go there." I have never heard from him
what happened; I sometimes feel I would like to
know. For I can parallel that story. I could show
men who do not stand so high up in the world as
they used to do; but they are thankful that con
science is clean. They know it was worth while to

48 THE WINDOWS OPEN
take the straight road; they know it was the wisest
plan to do the right thing; they know it were
better to bequeath to their children a father's noble
character than to sin for the sake of temporary
deliverance. They know that in the den of lions
there was no evil, for the Lord of Hosts was there.
The God of Heaven has His own way of delivering
those that put their trust in Him. The Eternal
God is our refuge, and underneath are the ever
lasting arms. Brother men, keep your hearts pure
and sweet and clean. Keep your soul open towards
God. Live your life with the windows open toward
Jerusalem. Trust in God and do the right.

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER

This sermon was an attempt to reach some successful commercial
men who were among the casual hearers at the City Temple.
Worshippers they were not, for their estimate of Christian char
acter had, somehow, become sadly vitiated. A friend sent me a
line saying a group of these commercial men were in London and
would be at service on Sunday evening. The bow was drawn
at a venture, and not in vain.

IV

"Then saith Pilate unto Him, Speakest Thou not unto me?
knowest Thou not that I have power to crucify Thee, and have
power to release Thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no
power at all against Me, except it were given thee from above :
therefore he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin." —
St John xix. 10, n.
There is a moral tragedy enacted here. There
seems to have been a certain understanding between
Jesus and the Roman Governor who condemned
Him to death. We can see this by the demeanour
of the governor in the presence of the prisoner.
They changed places. Pilate seems to confess his
inferiority by his very uneasiness and by the
respect that breathes through all his utterances to
Jesus. We have already pointed out one or two
of these during the reading of our lesson. But
here is another, a sort of impulsive, feverish, not
very dignified remonstrance directed against Jesus
because He keeps silence in the face of his accusers.
Pilate wishes to show at his best in the presence
of these chief priests and scribes who are watching
him with jealous eye, ready to denounce him to his
own imperial master if he does not do what they
want. Jesus stands quietly but majestically in the
midst, the King that Pilate had confessed Him to
be, and answers never a word. Then petulantly
the governor expostulates in the terms of our text,

52 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
"Answerest Thou nothing? Speakest Thou not
unto me? Knowest Thou not that I have power
to crucify Thee and I have power to release Thee?"
Then our Lord speaks. He knows that this poor
puppet of the Roman Emperor, this plaything of
the scheming priests, has no power at all. What
is more, He knows that the governor is himself
aware of it. He has a great opportunity, and he
is flinging it aside. Nay, further, He dares to utter
the hard saying that even they, like Pilate, must
have derived their power for mischief from the
fact that it was first a power for good, entrusted
to them by the Lord of Glory Himself. "Thou
couldest have no power at all against Me except
it were given thee from above."
But there was something Pilate could have done.
He might have been, as I have elsewhere said, the
first on the roll of the Christian martyrs. He had
no power to save Jesus. If he had released Him
at the moment it would only have been to take
his place beside Him later. He had not moral
courage to do what his heart prompted him to do,
and he felt it was right to do, speak for Jesus,
face His accusers, because he knew what the con
sequences would be. Had it been otherwise there
would have been a fourth cross erected upon Calvary,
nay, perhaps there would have been only two, no
brigand being crucified beside Jesus, but only the
Roman governor who tried to save Him, and died
a martyr for his nobleness.

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 53
Pilate felt that Jesus was not of earth, but of
heaven. He knew He was a Son of God, though
he could not have said just whence His authority
was derived, but felt, as we all feel, the power, the
grandeur, the majesty of His character. He knew
that he was committing a foul crime in handing
Him over to a cruel death. Far better if we had
been able to speak of Pilate to-night as the first
man in all history to suffer and die for Christ. He
let the opportunity go. It availed him nothing, for
if tradition is to be believed, his end was tragical
after all. But the Christ knew at the moment what
was at stake, and our text is an expostulation to the
governor. In fact, it is the holding up of an ideal
and an invitation to it. "Thou hast no power. He
that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin."
Thine is but the power which will bring destruction
it may be upon thyself, the power of choosing the
right with the certainty of suffering at the end. As
for the priests, what for them? Jesus said nothing
to them. They were more difficult to deal with
than the governor, more vicious hypocrites by far.
They would not enter into the judgment-hall for
fear of being defiled, but they were doing a
hateful and abominable thing when they sent Christ
there to be destroyed. They were serving their
own ends, giving vent to their own guilty passions,
and in doing so they were taking upon their lips the
name and authority of God. It was in the name of
religion that they denounced Him to their own

54 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
people. It was in the name of political principle
that they denounced Him to the Roman governor.
Knowing so, they put Him out of the way. You
can feel that Pilate's failure, tragical as it was, was
not half so tragical as the failure of those priests with
the power that had been given unto them by God.
Leaders and teachers of the people as they were,
they well understood what Jesus meant when He
said, "He that delivered Me unto thee hath the
greater sin." For they deliberately employed the
God-given power, knowing that they were doing it
to destroy the God-sent messenger. They must
have felt who Jesus was, but even if they did not
they must have felt what Jesus was, and yet in the
face of their knowledge they sent Him to death,
and the power by which they sent Him was the
power that they claimed to be divine.
Power is always a dangerous gift. It may be
used for high ends, or it may be employed to blast
and to destroy high things. The late Mr Gladstone
once said, nearly at the close of his life, that the
tendency of power was always to demoralise its
possessor. The nineteenth century, he asserted,
had in this country been a century of political
emancipation. The people, using the word in its
general sense, were coming to their own. The
power was now placed in their hands, and the
question the great Christian statesman put to
England was, How are the people going to use
that power? for, judging by the lessons of history,

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 55
it has nearly always been that the possession of
power meant anything but a noble use thereof. In
the French Revolution, for example, we see what
power in popular hands was capable of doing.
People began by coming to their own. Under the
influence of the eloquence of a Mirabeau and a
Rousseau, they claimed in the name of high ideals
to dispossess the men who had sinned against the
God-given trust. Then the guillotine was set up,
and rivers of blood flowed in that devoted city, the
capital of that fair land. When I was there a few
days ago, and read, written upon the outside of
nearly every public building, "Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity," I could not but remember that
those words had been placed there in the time of
tumult and lust for blood, all done by the power
which the possessors were asserting was given by
high destiny for high use. How did it end? We
all know how it passed into the hands of vicious
and villainous men. Perhaps they were not vicious
or villainous before they received it. Few can bear
to be the trustees of power. Power in the hands
of religion has worked some of the most diabolical
evils in history, not to speak of politics, and it is
all the more dangerous because it can make a weapon
of religious zeal. One of the saddest chapters in
the history of mankind is the chapter of religious
persecution. We who are accustomed to hear it
now afar off can scarcely bear to tolerate the name
of the system which used it for the worst, but there

56 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
are few of us who can claim to be religious at all
who have much right to speak in this regard. When
the Congregationalism of which so many of us in
this building to-night are so proud, and in which we
have so great confidence, had the upper hand, it
used the sword, and it used it badly, and in some
cases used it wickedly. Is this spirit gone? Is the
danger past that even religion cannot bear to be
the possessor of power? It is not gone. The
danger is not by any means past. By this door
to-day enter hypocrisy, cant, religious lies, intoler
ance, bigotry, self-righteousness, a disposition to
make another suffer for his opinions. And most
detestable and hateful of all, it frequently happens
that such pain is caused and such evil is done in
the name of God. The fires of hell are lighted the
moment a man gives rein to bad passions, and names
God or even Christ as reason for his doing so.
And God permits it, too. A great gift for useful
ness may become a curse, and often has done. Too
often the gift is not buried, like the talent in the
earth. It is put out to usury for the devil. Surely
there must be a reckoning day for this, the worst
of all sins, the deliberate misuse of the power that
comes from God.
So far, perhaps, most of us have felt fairly safe
from inclusion in this indictment. Most of us feel
that we have never had much power to misuse. It
is my strong and increasing conviction that a good
deal of the cant and hypocrisy around us nowadays

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 57
is to be found amongst those who imagine them
selves to be freest from it. I need hardly instance
in an audience of this kind, promiscuous as it is,
what I feel to be the mistaken spirit of some evan
gelistic Christians of the present hour. We have
read of, and we constantly hear of, the fierceness
and the intolerance of the spirit of injured Noncon
formity. Granted the injury, I deplore with you the
spirit in which the injury is too often met. There
is a certain arrogance and self-righteousness about a
good deal of our reasoning and our protest of to-day
that I would to God could be swept away by a
nobler spirit.
To-night, however, I am addressing men who are
neither Churchmen nor Nonconformists. I am
addressing some who can afford to be quizzical,
because they are of the great crowd that looks on.
I was asked this morning to speak a word to-night
directly to commercial men, and I am informed that
amongst my congregation there are many this
evening who are not in the habit of giving in their
adherence to any particular form of religious pro
fession. Now, it would be perfectly easy while I
spoke the words in the former part of my sermon
to-night for you to be saying to yourselves, It is
quite true; we know how vicious, how vitriolic the
religious spirit can be in the name of religious zeal,
how men can give vent to their worst natures in
the name of the highest principle, but thank
goodness we do not belong to that particular set.

58 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
We are in the position of being able to say, "A
plague on both your houses." Well, now, I
would with all respect point out to you, address
ing you as a man to men, and not as one
on any special pedestal of authority — point
out to you that in this principle you are
only entitled to repudiate a lower in the name
of a higher. I often feel that the man of the
world, who is rather proud than otherwise of the
name, is by no means entitled to denounce excess
of religious zeal or the unloveliness of the average
religious character. There are not very many things
so dangerous as the spirit of the cynic engaged in
rebuking sin. And there is a good deal of it. There
is a section of the secular Press, which, pretending
to be superior to all creeds and denominations, look
ing down upon them all and smiling at them all, sets
up an ideal which in spirit is anything but an im
provement on that they would condemn. Have you
ever heard the cynic in private life pointing out
another man's evil motive, and have you not felt
that there was something poisonous about his very
presence? The cynic is a danger in any society.
The cynic is a special danger when he poses as the
destroyer of false ideals. He has nothing but a
worse to put in their place.
Now, brethren, I put my question to you again.
As you are only entitled to repudiate a lower in the
name of a higher, I would ask you what are you
doing with your life? You who have, as most of

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 59
you have, a respect for the name of Jesus, but very
little respect for His so-called followers, what are
you doing with God's gift of power as it has been
afforded unto you? It is easy for you to imagine
yourselves to be standing on the side of Christ, as it
were, in that historic scene in Pilate's hall and to be
speaking for the Master rather than to be taking
your seat upon the judge's bench. Nay, it is only
too possible that from the judge's bench you may
pass to the ranks of Annas and Caiaphas and the
crowd. And the man who refuses to have anything to
do with religion because he can see nothing that is
noble, no high incentive in the religious example of
those about him, puts himself in the spirit of the
priests who condemned Jesus because of the envy
they felt for a higher than their own. If you can see
nothing admirable in the life of the Christian Church,
I would ask you what are you putting in its place ?
Have you a higher ideal of manhood and life and
love and duty, and are you living to it? Because if
you are, then, and not till then, are you entitled with
authority to say, "A plague on this or that false ideal
which assumes upon the lips of its professors the name
of God."
A little while ago we were visiting Switzerland.
Some of our party began to ascend one day one
of the highest peaks in that particular district where
we were staying. You have all heard of the
edelweiss, a plant that grows usually in almost
inaccessible spots in these mountain regions. I

60 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
noticed that some of the inhabitants of the district
were selling the edelweiss in the valleys before we
began to ascend the mountain at all, and, like the
rest, I bought a bunch of it. When I reached home
I found on one of my bookshelves a poem descriptive
of the ideal, the strenuous ideal, of the man who
gathers his edelweiss from the mountain top and the
craggy steep and the inaccessible crevasse, higher,
far higher than the common earth, high above our
ordinary levels of daily life. I thought to myself,
"I got my edelweiss easily. Someone else gathered
it, I but carried it home." And as a general rule
and all through history you will find there has been
some hero gathering the edelweiss. It has been
easy for other men to take it home afterwards.
Some have laboured, some have suffered, we, their
inheritors, have but entered into their labours.
How seldom you meet the heroic temper anywhere,
How seldom you meet the man who is prepared to
lose for the advocacy of a principle. How seldom
you meet a man who will shoulder responsibility and
go bravely forward for an ideal though he be the
only one to profess it, and how much more seldom
you find a man who will do that in a Christlike spirit.
Oh, it is difficult to be intense and at the same
time to be tolerant. It is difficult to be in deadly
earnest and at the same time to remain benevolent.
Too often when we have scaled a certain height,
and seen a certain vision and garnered a certain
harvest, then we have begun to trifle with the ideal

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 61
and confess it with our lips when the spirit of it has
gone. It is as if we had handed Christ over to
be crucified afresh and in so doing had given back
the power granted to us. Nay, worse than that,
misused it, employed it for other ends than God
gave it to us at the first.
You have your special dangers, my fellow men,
business men, though you are a fine manly set of
men — to take you as a whole. May I ask what your
dangers are and ask you whether you can answer the
question along with me? The first you will say is
obviously the rush to make money. Nothing of the
kind. It is thundered in the pulpit and in the
religious press to-day as the greatest danger of our
time, the rush to grab and to get. It is not, there
is a danger anterior to that. It is the coarsening of
our aspirations, it is the fading of idealism from our
national life, and you commercial men are specially
prone to it if you will permit me without offensive-
ness to say so. All men become like their pursuits.
A man's thoughts determine him. As he thinketh
in his heart so is he. You can be very very selfish
and apologise to yourself for that of which you
know you are guilty by saying it is not possible to be
anything else and yet be a successful business man.
You have very little time, I know, to read, to think,
to pray. You are a little inclined to be con
temptuous of these things and of a man in earnest
too. If there is a type of character that you detest
more than another it is that of the religious pro-

62 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
fessor who is living no better life than you. Now,
to be honest, I would ask you to look beneath your
own profession and see if you are not sometimes
guilty of that of which you accuse him. You have
power. Up to a certain point you have used it well.
You have a type of manhood to which you give the
term of approval. But are you using your power
for higher ends than those with which you began
to gain it? It is God's trust to you. Are you using
it as well to-day as when it was first given, or are
you using it to crucify the Christ in yourself? You
do this every time you deliberately act from a base
or a sordid motive. Materialism on a petty scale is
the bane of a good many of the men I am addressing
to-night. You may be guilty of putting your own soul
to death, and all the while have the spirit of self-satis
fied superiority about it. The religious man does
not seem to be so very detestable and contemptible,
after all, when you bring him into the presence of
an ideal like yours, for what, after all, is the world
better for the man who condemns the failure of
another to live to a high ideal, which he himself
never dreams of even trying to reach ?
We will go a little closer to the subject. Here
is another danger of the commercial man. You
have, it is true, a sort of good-fellowship, a notion
of a good comrade, but of what kind should we say
a good fellow should be? It is not true that the
religious talker sins against the social ideal, as you
sometimes accuse him of doing, and yet I do not

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 63
want you to be a religious talker. Is not this true,
however, that very often our good-fellowship means
that every man in a certain company is talking and
is acting below his own habitual level? We seem
ashamed of moral dignity. Let those who have
never been guilty of falling below what they know
to be their best selves when in the society of other
men just pass this by, it does not concern them. But
unless I am mistaken, I have heard in the presence
of commercial men and professional men, too, and
the ordinary man about town, I have heard conver
sation which I felt sure was below the level, the
ordinary level, of every man in that company. I
have seen young fellows whose character was being
blighted, and blighted by the example of their elders
and no man protested, and I have felt that in the
presence of ideals which were the exact opposite of
those in which you were trained from your childhood
some of the men who knew better and were living
better might have intervened to save a lad from
corruption. Not the religious talker, again I say,
is wanted. We want the man who is prepared to
live up to the high moral standard that his conscience
feels to be the best he has ever seen. The thing
to be feared to-day is not wrong religious notions,
it is moral flabbiness. The thing to be dreaded
to-day is not vicious, petty religious intolerance, it
is that men will let go the standard that conscience
has set up. The danger to-day is that men cease to
care about certain offences against righteousness; the

64 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
danger is lest fineness of feeling be at a discount;
the danger to such men as you is, I am afraid, that
sometimes you neglect the higher duty in the pur
suit of the lower. Are you not guilty, then, of
deliberate sin, not against religious creeds, but
against what is written in letters of fire on every
man's heart, the moral standard of Jesus Christ?
George Eliot said, some time near to her death,
that she started life with three ideals, three points
of anchorage — God, immortality, and duty. She said
the third was the only one that she held most certain
at the end. God seemed to fade out of her life,
belief in immortality went, too, but to duty she had
clung to the last, and for her duty she was prepared
to suffer and die. Robertson of Brighton, at the
religious crisis of his life, as most of you know,
spoke of his experience in similar terms. He was
not quite sure what creed embodied the truth, if
indeed any did at all, but of one thing he was
perfectly certain, that the eternal laws of righteous
ness claimed his obedience, and he felt at the worst
it was better to be pure than impure, better to be
clean than unclean, better to strive honestly and
earnestly after the highest he had seen than to let
these things go, and speak as if they did not matter.
Duty is a creed that will lead you into the fulness
of truth. Follow the divine manhood at whatever
cost. Keep your heart pure and your standard high.
I know of the fierceness of the struggle in which
so few of you succeed. I know how little you have

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 65
to hope ever to become men of wealth and power as
the world counts it. If there be one or two rich men
here to-night there can hardly be more, probably all
the rest of you who are busy in the ordinary business
battle never expect to do more than secure a com
petence. What I would ask you to do is this, Never
be crushed underneath material burdens, no matter
what they may be. Keep your soul clean and your
vision clear. And it is possible, nay, it is more than
possible, it is certain, God has given you the power
of doing it, and for that power you are responsible
to Him.
Take that lad, now, who will be with you to
night when you get back to your hotel, and in
your commercial room will be listening to his elders,
to the ideals that you have set before him as being
proper and ordinary for business men. This lad
has just come from a country home. He knows
very little of the great world. He talks as if he
did. He will try to conceal his ignorance from you
for fear of being laughed at, and presently perhaps
he may be laughed at because he has some of the
associations, some of the vestiges, some of the in
fluences of a religious home still clinging about him.
You find him out. Do you make it easier for that
lad to live the right life, the good life, the straight
and pure life, or do you make it harder by the
atmosphere into which he has come? Come, now,
business men, face this fact together. Some day
you hear that he has gone wrong — somebody is
E

66 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
going wrong every day from such concerns as yours
and such ordinary walks of life, as you know best.
This lad goes wrong — drink or women, or both.
Then you have to ask the question, What sent
him wrong? and when you meet him in your
little society, to take up the old-time conversation
and to advocate the old-time ideals, and to make
the old-time denunciations of other people whom
you accuse of being canting hypocrites, you have
to account for that young man's ruin. You say
his vices destroyed him. True they did, but
something destroyed him before the vices gripped
him, and that was the atmosphere, the moral atmos
phere, of the business house into which he was
introduced. Remember this, the vices were but
as Pilate on the bench. They had power, to be
sure they had, and he could have defied them if
he liked. God had given him power greater than
they, but the vices were only the Pilate, and you
may have been the Caiaphas. What ideal did
you set before him? He was weaker than
you; you could go to the very verge of ruin and
turn back. It was not the wine, it was not
the women, it was his associates that destroyed
his life, as they are being destroyed in hundreds
and thousands throughout this great land of
England to-day, and it is no cant and hypocrisy
I am talking now. Manhood and only manhood
can save him. If there is one thing more than
another that we need in England to-day, it is

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 67
tolerant, open-hearted manhood, manhood beneath
which the weak can shelter. Manhood is a trust
from God. Manhood is a God-given power, and
for our manhood we must give account at last when
we stand before the great white throne.
Let me tell you a case now in point where manhood
has come to the rescue. I have a friend in Edinburgh,
a well-known preacher, getting on in years. I will
not name him, but if you choose to guess his name
I shall not be offended. It happened on one
occasion the following incident came under his
notice, indeed, formed part of his experience. A
commercial man was in the habit of going to listen.
One Sunday it struck him that the preacher was
discouraged about something, did not seem to be
himself, failed in giving his message with his usual
power. So he thought, after having heard him for
so many years he was entitled to turn comforter
himself. He made his way to the preacher on the
Monday morning to tell him this. First about
himself. "Years ago," he said, "under the in
spiration of your ministry I made up my mind to do
two things. First, I would buy a new book every
week and I would read it to keep my soul from
being fossilised by the things with which I have to
deal day by day, to keep before me the divine ideal.
But, secondly, I made up my mind that I should not
be merely passive amongst the men with whom I
have to deal, but if I could bring any man to the
better life by my example, by my invitation, it

68 THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER
should be done. I have never posed as being a
man of prominently worthy religious character, but
now and then I have asked a friend to step with me
here and listen to you. I thought I would come
this morning and tell you that last night you gripped
a man's conscience and changed a man's life, and I
think God must be glad." "Well," replied my
friend, "you have told me that, now I have some
thing to tell you." And he opened a drawer and
showed this man of commerce a dozen or twenty
letters received from commercial men who had been
brought to that place of worship by him, and who
said it was not merely on his invitation that they
came, but on his life. They felt his goodness,
his unselfishness, his worth, his Christlike char
acter, although he seldom talked lip-language about
Christ. Here was an ideal, practically it is the only
ideal that I care to commend to you.
I care very little, business men, whether you
believe in my doctrine or no, I care a great deal
whether you believe in the moral standard I have
set before you or no. The one thing that matters
is right living and the only thing about which you
and I will be asked in the great day will be how we
have used our life. Because we are not alone, we
do not stand or fall to ourselves and ourselves only.
All around us there are lives that touch ours. An
atmosphere has to be created, created by manhood
at its best, and you can live the Christ life with the
simplest faith in Him without making any very loud

THE MISUSE OF DIVINE POWER 69
profession of doctrine at all. And yet I tell you
that to-day, just as much as in that old-time day of
which we have been reading to-night, the trial is
going forward in the judgment-hall and we are
either standing with Christ upon the floor or sitting
with Pilate upon the bench, or we are with the
gibbering, hateful priests outside. In which
company of the three are you and I to be found?
I would like to be with that commercial man in the
great day of reckoning and revelation, for when he
and the Master meet face to face Jesus will say,
"Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord." Will He say it, does
He say it, can He say it to you and to me? He hath
granted us a great trust. Not a man of us can
repudiate the knowledge of it. We are placed
where we are for no trifling reason, but that we
may witness for God and right and truth. Are we
doing it, or are we already judged and condemned ?

A FORFEITED GIFT

This sermon was preached to a backslider. 1 have sorrowfully to
confess that it was preached in vain.

" He wist not that the Lord had departed from him." — Judges xvi. 20.
Every country has its particular accumulation of
legend and tradition and folk-lore. Our own, for
instance, has its Song of Beowulf; its legend
concerning a character who is certainly historic,
though we know very little about him — King
Alfred ; and the stories in which children delight
and which the adults have not forgotten concerning
the famous outlaw Robin Hood. Switzerland has
its William Tell, though how much that is told
about him to the modern tourist is the truth, who
shall say? In Germany it is Friedrich Barbarossa,
Norway has its King Olaf ; Denmark its hero who
lies asleep until the hour of Denmark's greatest
peril, and then he is to awake and save it. Pro
bably all the beautiful and interesting stories that
have gathered around characters like these have had
their origin in some fact. Some outstanding man
has impressed himself upon the imagination of his
time by the grandeur of his achievements, and his
memory has not been allowed to die.
The story which has been written around our
text is just one of these. It belongs to the half-
historic legend and folk-lore of Israel. I do not

74 A FORFEITED GIFT
regard it as literal history, but there is a truth to
be disentangled — disengaged is a better word —
from its setting. The modern mind would, almost
without investigation, repudiate the thaumaturgical
element here. That any man was ever endowed
with miraculous power because he was a Nazarite,
unshaven from birth, seems to be out of character
— certainly it was out of harmony — with the facts
of ordinary everyday experience. But cannot the
plain, stolid, Anglo-Saxon intellect see beneath the
imagery here and take away the dress in which this
hero of old time is presented to us ? Here is a man
with a gift — that is one prime fact — raised up for a
great work, and he must have been faithful to it
up to a point, or Israel would not have remembered
him. But he became false to it, by arrogant self-
indulgence. And the worst of it was he is not the
only one in history of whom it may be said that the
gift departed from him, that his vocation was forfeited
and at the end he himself was ignorant of the
fact. All of you can see therefore in my text a world of
meaning, always true to human experience as you
and I know it whether we retain or whether we
dismiss the particular setting of this life-story.
Before passing on I would remind, at any rate, the
younger members of my congregation, that the Bible
and particularly the Old Testament is always to be
read in the light of Christ. Three-quarters of the
questions you ask concerning its difficulties would

A FORFEITED GIFT 75
disappear if you would just remember that simple
principle. Whether it be its miracles or its moral
standard, you must think of the Bible and what it
has to tell in the terms of the Christ and what we
know of Him.
Now we cannot approach even this story without
taking with us something that we have learned from
Calvary, and when with our knowledge of Jesus we
come to investigate the life-story of Samson, the
lesson is not far to seek. Painters and poets have
made it their theme, because of the tragedy with
which this great life closed, and I suppose most of
you here present are familiar with the great poem of
one of the greatest of our national prophets, upon this
theme, the fall, the failure, and the death of one
who might have been a mighty power for good in
the history of the world.
Up to a point, as I have said, he was. Beyond
that point he failed, and did not see that he was
serving himself instead of his Maker. He fell.
The fall and the death of Samson are illustrative of
a recurrent human experience. Unfaithfulness to a
divine gift results in its withdrawal. In a sense all
men are divinely gifted, though their gifts differ
both in quality and in degree, which is precisely
what we ought to expect. No man in this congre
gation to-night is precisely in characteristics, personal
history, and destiny, what anyone else is or ever has
been. You are each of you unique in the history of
mankind. There is a divine inbreathing in every

y6 A FORFEITED GIFT
soul that comes to moral consciousness in this world.
Some characters stand out from their fellows, but
perhaps their prominence is more apparent than real.
Who knows what the perspective of heaven would
show concerning the comparative worth of the men
and women who are gathered before me in this
house to-night, and whose very names I do not
know? In history, however, and particularly in
Bible history, we are well acquainted with examples
of the principle I have just been trying to place
before you. Suppose Samson had lived and died
like the great lawgiver of Israel — who can think
about Moses without believing his estimate of man
hood is better for that life ? Joshua, who, inspired
by a greater than himself, hearing his divine call,
"Moses my servant is dead, now therefore arise,"
rose captain of Israel, faithful to the call, was faith
ful to the last, in his dying hour, calling Israel before
him, " Choose you this day whom ye will serve."
Elijah, the most picturesque of them all, a solitary
figure in a decadent age, defying all the untoward
tendencies of his time, witnessing for God and in the
sublimity of his death impressing Israel for good,
like Samson, but oh, in what a different fashion !
Elijah wrought more by his death than he had
wrought by his life, a purification of morals and
manners that his testimony had never managed to
accomplish. The removal of Elijah from the earthly
scene shamed and impelled Israel to reform.
Suppose that Samson's life and death had been as

A FORFEITED GIFT yy
these — for he was called to the first place just as
these were ? He had his opportunity and he put it
away. " He wist not that the Lord had departed
from him." Vocation may be forfeited, and there
is no tragedy so sad, no end so melancholy, as that
in which a man discovers that he has been living for
long without God and without the gift that might
have led him to great things. As in the sacred, so
in the so-called secular history of the world — is
there any secular history ? I venture to believe
that there is not. We take our stand by the side
of Socrates, who never heard of Israel's God, but
lived and died in witness of the highest that he had
ever seen, and even Moses did not die a nobler death
than he ; taking, as he said, a leap in the dark,
but he was faithful to what he knew to be
the divine charisma granted to him. St Bernard,
in what we are now accustomed to call the dark
ages, a simple monk, rejects all the honours of
the world, and when no one else dares the task,
stands before the crowned monarch who had been
unfaithful in one of the most sacred ties which
God has ever ordained to bind heart with heart and
soul with soul. This king, because he was a king,
would have entered the sanctuary, but was forbidden
and repelled by the stern monk who shook Europe
and the world. There was a divine gift upon
St Bernard, and we feel, we see, we know the
grandeur of the man. He was called, and he
was not unfaithful to the call.

78 A FORFEITED GIFT
Compare these with characters whose testing, in
some ways as great, ended in a sadness that makes
us for pity bow the head. Cranmer, standing at
the stake to die for his faith — how much more
nobly he might have died if he had not had to hold
in the flame the unworthy hand that signed his re
cantation. And Wolsey, as Mr Hughes was telling
us a few nights ago, rising to the first place in the
kingdom, and then forfeiting it, not because he was
capable of the fearless testimony of a Bernard, not
because he showed the courage of an Elijah upon
Carmel, but because he halted between two opinions,
not knowing which way the balance of royal favour
might incline. Hear his dying words, " O, Cromwell,
Cromwell, had I served my God as I have served my
king, He would not have given me over in my
grey hairs." Both Cranmer and Wolsey named
the name of God to the last, claimed Him as upon
their side, spoke as it were in the language of the
Christ, knowing not, never reflecting that the spirit
of the Lord had departed from them. Oh, history
is full, it teems with instances in which men put off
the day of reckoning, deceiving themselves, forfeit
ing the gift divine, trampling upon their own oppor
tunities. They wist not that the day of the Lord
was at hand and that the Spirit of the Lord had
departed from them.
At first sight it might seem as though these con
siderations had little value for such an audience as I
have present before me to-night. But such is far

A FORFEITED GIFT 79
from being the case. God's gift is bestowed upon
every man in his degree and for his particular work.
You have had your gracious opportunity, your season
of vision, and whatever kind of man you are it will
be of no use in the great day of reckoning for you
to deny the moment when the charisma came. There
is a judgment of surprises, it is true. "Lord, when
saw we Thee sick or in prison or in necessity and
did not minister unto Thee ? " And the answer
may come — " Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of
the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto
Me." Do we know the opportunity when it comes?
Can we recognise the voice eternal ? Are we clear as
to the moment when we stop our ears and close our
eyes and turn our feet from the pathway of duty ?
Men mourn the consequences of sin more than they
mourn the sin. We hear men lamenting that they
did not see more clearly that the wages of sin was
agony and shame. "Oh," they say, "how strangely
is this moral universe ordered. We are not told
about the other side of the wrong-doing." Every
man buys his experience for himself, and when he
finds it hard murmurs in surprise, he did not know.
One thing you all know. You know that wrong
is wrong. You know with what motive you do the
evil service. You know for what object you leave
a duty undone, you know when you juggle with
the things that are necessary to true living, you
know when you try to compromise with the ideals

80 A FORFEITED GIFT
that were given to you. You know perfectly well
if this gift that is in you is debased, and when you
know it you have rightly judged in the day of dread
discovery that the Spirit of the Lord has departed.
Now let me examine at closer quarters what I
have been trying to set before you thus plainly. It
is sometimes said that the word of the prophet
has no hearing in these days. Men are indifferent
to the claims of the Christ. God has but little
place in their lives. To a certain extent that is
perfectly true. There are many men in this church
to-night who hardly know why they are here — some
it may be out of idle curiosity, some prepared to
scoff at what they see and hear, some to whom the
practices of devotion have no reality and no mean
ing, there is nothing in their lives upon which these
things can take hold. Now, these are the very men
to whom I have something to say. I do not begin
protesting about my creed and urge you without
argument and without sympathy and without ex
planation to accept mine. No, no, I have another
way. I want to read yours, and ask you whether
any man needs to argue about any justification of
the creed that is written in letters of fire within
your own soul.
Now, my friends, is it true of the men before
me who reject God and Christ and the Bible, and
with it all the ideals and associations that belong of
right thereto — is it true that they are living the life
of the highest they can see ? Is it true of you that

A FORFEITED GIFT 81
you are living to the holiest you have seen?
When you exchanged something else for Christ
did you choose a higher or did you choose a lower ?
If you chose a lower, putting from you the higher,
on whatever hypocritical pretext your choice was
made, you did it knowingly, and you forfeited a
great opportunity, and you thrust from you the divine
gift. You were nearer God as a child than you are
now, and therefore nearer truth and beauty and
light and love. You saw further into the meaning
of things as they are than you see to-day with all
your worldly wisdom. It is so easy for a man to go
wrong while naming the name of right, and talking
as though life were still conformed to an ideal, when
the back is turned upon the light all the same.
" He wist not that the Lord had departed from
him." I will describe, if you will permit me for two
minutes, the life of some of the men in this place
who have never gone flagrantly wrong in all their
days, who have been perfectly satisfied with them
selves up to this moment. Is this true? Re
member, I am choosing not the man who is
deliberately wicked, I am speaking to a weaker
being than he, for most of you are not particularly
strong even in the world's way. Here is one typical
London character, a man who is living for himself.
He never acknowledges it to himself; not that he
is absorbed in the pursuit of gain, because he is not
particularly absorbed in the pursuit of anything.

82 A FORFEITED GIFT
He does not know the meaning of the word
" sacrifice." So soon as a thing becomes difficult
it is not for him. He cares nothing for that which
brings to him no immediate and material return.
He has no outlook beyond the immediate present.
His aim is to get as much as possible out of life at
as little as possible personal cost. How to amuse
himself is the ideal of part of the young manhood
of to-day, at any rate. Such a character pours
ridicule upon the people who are in earnest, in
earnest about anything. It seems to him infinitely
absurd that people should preach or pray or labour
for something greater than their own self-interest.
He is superior to these things. How ridiculous
looks the man who spends his time in advocating
this cause or that cause. You are apt to ask, in
your disbelief in unselfish motives, what is really at
the bottom of the seemingly heroic acts of men who
have, so far as you can see, nothing to gain by what
they do. Poor fool that you are, dreaming that
all is well when all is wrong, you are a meanly tragic
failure. You do not even know that the failure is
here already, sunning yourself in your own self-
satisfaction, but knowing not that the glory of a
day that once was yours has left you long ago.
Some of you are sleeping the sleep of death in the
lap of the harlot, but there will be a dread awaken
ing by-and-by. It may be upon this side of the
grave, it may be upon the other, but " God is not
mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he

A FORFEITED GIFT 83
also reap." It is perfectly true that you are able to
silence the voice of conscience, perfectly true that
you can banish your scruples one by one ; perfectly
true, and you know it, that manhood can deterio
rate and a man respect himself less and less as the
years go on. And yet it may never be acknow
ledged even to one's own heart, let alone to the
world that waits and watches without. "He wist
not that the Lord had departed from him."
Now, brethren, let us get close to the facts. You
and I must do it some day, we may as well do it
now. It is true that some amongst us are prostitut
ing God's gifts to base ends ? Who has ever be^en
any better because you live ? What have you added
to the world's good ? What do you purpose to do
to-morrow with the manhood that God has granted
to you ? Does that question matter, or does it
matter not ? Oh, men of the twentieth century,
and of England and of London, you have your place
to fill and God has sent you to fill it. You have your
work to do and only you can do it, and your oppor
tunity is coming and you have known it and you
know it now. God's gift rests upon you and you may
be in danger of being false to it. Shall it be a dirge
that is chanted over your life? C^uite recently
when we were in the Eternal City I paid a visit to
that famous picture which everybody knows, in the
Sistine Chapel, Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment."
As we sat before the masterpiece in silence, as
becomes him who would look upon such a work,

84 A FORFEITED GIFT
wrought in an age of wonders and dreams, I thought
to myself that the Christ upon the throne there, the
throne of judgment, is not my Christ — this Christ
with a clean-shaven face, with an expression of in-
placability, hurling down to destruction the poor,
wretched beings who had no longer opportunity
for protest. That is not my Christ, but is more
like the conqueror in a Roman triumph, more like
Achilles in his chariot dragging Hector, vanquished,
round the walls of Troy. But behind the idea of
the stern painter I did see a truth, as many have
seen it before him, and that you and I must face too.
There is a Christ who will judge. Before that
Christ we must all appear. If you could see — but
you know it not — you are standing before Him now,
and there is not a man among you, strong as you
are and worldly - wise, who could face without
tremor, agitation, or shame, if your life is conformed
to the baser ideals, that Christ of glory Who once
was crucified for you. And the reason why I think
you would dread the Christ Who is Judge is just
because He was the Christ of crucified purity and
love. Shall I tell you, if only in symbol, what I mean ?
Once a lad came to me, a young fellow just as some
of you are, and asked me to help him in a difficulty,
the very circumstances of which I have forgotten.
I knew who he was, so I said, " Why did you not
go to your father? He is a good man, upright,
loving, true." "I could not face him," was the

A FORFEITED GIFT 85
answer. " I should just as soon expect the sun to
fall from heaven as my father to compromise with
what he knew to be right, either for himself or for
me. I should have to pay to the uttermost farthing."
And yet that father was not a hard man. The sinner
feared the face of the man, a good man, inflexibly
righteous. In all compassion that is worthy of the
name there is a mingling of austerity. Who would
dream of compromising with the ideal when we stand
in the very presence of the Christ ? Then you
should not compromise with it now. " Awake,
thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light."
There is no good in preaching except that there
be a to-morrow. No preacher has the function of
the herald of death. We are the heralds of life.
When the last word comes to be spoken it will not
be the prophet who speaks, it will be the Judge.
It is the prophet who speaks now. The living
Christ is calling to those who have ears to hear.
His claim men can well admit, because He is the
Highest. When I can find anything higher than
Christ, then that becomes my creed forthwith. To
Him we turn our eyes, the Giver of the ideal, and
more than that, of the power to conform thereto.
" Whoso hath felt the spirit of the highest
Cannot confound nor doubt Him, nor deny ;
Yea, with one voice, O World, though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I."
Brother men, I am not calling you to anything un-

86 A FORFEITED GIFT
reasonable or impossible. Recognise that the divine
gift rests upon you for just what you are and where
you are, and that it can be withdrawn, and it may
be. You are not living to your highest, and yet
you could in the strength of the Lord God. Have
you wandered away from it, turned your face from
the light? Come back. The Master of us all is
waiting to receive.
" Come, lest this heart should, cold and cast away,
Die ere the Guest adored she entertain,
Lest eyes which never saw Thine early day
Should miss Thy heavenly reign."
May the great God, to Whom all hearts are
open, receive and reconsecrate every life in our
midst unto His great service and to the glory of
His great name.

THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD

The central experience of the sermon which bears this title is
a piece of real life given in the illustration of the elderly man
whose greatest trouble came in the evening of his life. He was
a brave man, unselfish and good, so I spoke to him from the
pulpit, and finished the sermon, so far as he was concerned, in
the vestry.

VI

" As . . . the feet of the priests that bare the ark were dipped in the
brim of the water . . . the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of
the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst . . . until all the people
were passed clean over Jordan." — Joshua iii. 15, 17.
We have a very striking historical incident herein
referred to. I do not pretend to explain it as it
stands in terms that would satisfy every critical
mind ; but, whatever the literal facts may have
been, our text enshrines a spiritual truth to which
the story here narrated lends vividness and power.
I am not at all disposed to believe that this story
is incredible ; but it may well have been that, as
handed down in the history of Israel, the facts
recounted may not have been precisely as they took
place. We have to read, as we would the narrative
of a poet, a little between the lines, and fill in the
details for ourselves. It must have been an incident
that took very firm hold of the imagination of Israel,
for it is told here with such vividness and power
that apparently it had become a part of their folk
lore. It was told by the parents to the children,
and monuments were erected to commemorate the
passing of Israel over Jordan. What do you think
actually took place ? I have supposed it to be
something like this : — Joshua, the great captain, a

90 THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD
man of unusual force and genius, led this wandering
people, who, after forty years' hardening in the
wilderness, were now become a formidable host,
to the very borders of the promised land. Then
they find that the way is barred, not only by the
enemy, but by the river, which had overflowed its
banks. Jordan, famous in history and song, they
now behold for the first time. It is like a lake with
a torrent tearing through the midst of it. It is no
wonder that Israel called a halt upon the borders
of this, as it were, unknown sea. But the great
captain finds a way through. The very fact that
Jordan has overflowed its banks means to him that
it is fordable somewhere. He finds the place ; the
enthusiasm, courage, and devotion of the people
would supply the rest. The great captain waits
upon his God, and then turns to his people : " Here
is the way through the flood; march on; let the
priests that bear the ark of the Lord go through
the waters and stand still on any rock that will
supply them with a footing ; and where they stand
do you pass." And it was even as he said. As
the priests that bare the ark came to the brim of
the waters the host rose and followed, nothing
daunted by the seeming obstacle, or by the turbid
billows, or the apparent blackness and depth of
Jordan. And when they that bare the ark stood
in the midst, their feet upon any rock that would
afford them footing, some swimming, some walking,
some carrying burdens, some with little children

THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD 91
upon their shoulders, some leading others with their
hands, the great host poured through — there was
a way over Jordan.
Here is a figure of at least one experience of the
man of faith — the experience that the simple trust
which refuses to call halt when the Divine com
mand is to go forward is never put to shame. God
was the real Leader of Israel; the enthusiasm and
self-devotion of the great captain, who laid his spell
upon the mighty host, were derived from heaven.
This was the way that God had marked out for
Israel. The way lay through the flood, and that
way Israel took at the bidding of its Leader.
There may be one point of view from which this
interpretation of the text may appear to be false —
namely, the point of view which regards it as having
reference to the circumstances rather than to the
growth of the soul. I am taking a spiritual view of
my text, keeping in mind the vividness of the his
torical incident. But now I would wish you to strip
off everything that is merely external and adven
titious, local and temporary, and regard it as for all
time, and as having an individual application. Fix
your mind upon the principle rather than upon the
particular scene. Oftentimes in history a similar
feat has been attempted, with the same high en
thusiasm, and has utterly failed. I think, for in
stance, of the Crusades, when all Europe gathered
under the banner of the Cross, marched upon Jordan,
essayed to cross this very river, and to attack this very

92 THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD
capital of Jerusalem. Europe failed where Israel suc
ceeded. Europe set out to obtain possession of the
tomb of the Saviour; popes blessed the banners ; kings
and princes enlisted under them ; millions of lives
were sacrificed, and rivers of blood were set flowing.
But the tomb remains to-day, as it was then, in the
possession of the Mohammedans. What Israel did
on this historic day Europe at a later day failed to
do. Why? Because the body of Christ was not
there ; it was an empty tomb they were looking for,
and for the moment found, and from an empty tomb
they were hurled back. God had not bidden them
set out upon that quest. The difference between
Israel's conquest and the defeat of the Crusaders lies
in this : that, though in both cases the enthusiasm
was equal, though the Cross was blessed as much as
the ark of God had ever been, the Crusaders called
upon God to bless what they set out to do, whereas
God called upon Israel to go forward, and Israel
obeyed. Take another instance in history that comes
nearer to our own time. It has been said that more
mischief has been caused in the world by men who
have conscientiously believed themselves to be led by
God than by all other causes put together. This
may or may not be true, but it has something on the
face of it to justify the assertion being made. Take
for instance the seventeenth century in this beloved
land of ours, just before the outbreak of the great
civil war. There had been eleven years of personal

THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD 93
government when the Stuart King asserted his right
divine to govern without help from constitutional
authority. I believe Charles I. was firmly con
vinced that he derived his commission and authority
from on high — but at the cost of his life. That was
a small thing : he might have been a martyr to a
great idea, but that for which he stood died with
him and never rose again. Still more tragic, perhaps,
is the fate of one of his ministers. I never can read
the life and words of Archbishop Laud without feel
ing for him a certain sympathy and even admiration.
He was a good man, according to his light. He set
out, however, to do that which Englishmen and
Scotsmen will never endure — to enforce an external
uniformity of religious observance. He set out to
coerce the conscience, and he failed. He tried with
pains and penalties, with cruelty and injustice, to
enforce what he conscientiously believed to be the
best thing for the Church of God in his country.
" Unity," said he, " cannot much longer subsist in a
church when uniformity is thrust out of the door."
Most pathetic are the entries in his diary as he lies
in prison awaiting the end. He had set an ideal
before him, and called upon God for its accomplish
ment, and was surprised when it was shattered into
ruin, wondered in bewilderment that he had been
abandoned at the crossing of Jordan. It was because
he had never been set to go that way. He tried the
flood at its deep : the great captain of Israel tried it,
indeed, where it had overflowed its banks, but he

94 THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD
knew that God had made a ford there. Where
Laud failed many another has failed, not only in the
Established Church, but in that for which you and I
stand. There was a day in that very century when
Puritan and Covenanter strove against one another;
Greek met Greek that day at Dunbar. For once in
his life Cromwell met his match in David Leslie, and
if they two had been left alone to fight it out it is a
grave question whether the Lord Protector would
have returned victor to England. But the Presby
terian ministers interfered, quoting this very chapter,
and perhaps my text itself. They, in counsel
assembled, compelled their general to move his hosts
down the hill. They said, "It is the sword of the
Lord you hold in your hands ; fall on and destroy
the Puritan army." So Leslie, sorely against his
will, moved to the attack. As Cromwell saw him
coming, he shut his Bible, mounted his horse, and,
rallying his army, said, " Let God arise, and let His
enemies be scattered ! " God could not be on both
sides ; so the Presbyterian ministers who were so
sure of their cause were scattered in flight ere many
hours were gone. We love and respect them to-day
for all they did and suffered in that strenuous time,
but we may learn the lesson their history teaches —
that it is not always the side that calls upon God
that is sure of being able to pass the flood and stand
victor on the other side.
Now let us come home a little more closely with
our illustrations. It has been said that one of our

THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD 95
national vices, and the one about which we are most
sensitive, is self-righteousness. If self -righteousness
is conspicuous in one person more than another, it
is in the middle-class Briton, church-goer and non-
church-goer. We are familiar with the type — the
man who is perfectly certain that he is right, though
all the world be wrong ; but he has not been
so perfectly sure as the saint and martyr who in
dying has conquered. A man may be cross-grained,
selfish, domineering, ambitious, covetous, and cruel ;
and yet he may whitewash all this with religion,
and, using the name of God, think that obstacles
will melt before him, that he will march through
the flood. When we have to do with these people
at close quarters — in fact, when we have been
included in their ranks ourselves — how surprised
we have been when the flood, instead of going away,
has overwhelmed them and us ! As a minister of
religion, it has fallen to my lot sometimes to try
to compose differences in other churches than my
own. More than once, in undertaking such a
difficult task, I have ere long found it impossible
to succeed — not because one could not see what
the matter was, but because one could not make
the parties who were causing the trouble see just
what it was. I have seen a man stand and sing
with the air of a martyr at the stake, with almost
the look of one, and yet he was the seed and the
root of all the mischief — his spirit completely wrong.
Standing for God, he said, and on principle — which

96 THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD
meant, as a rule, his own cross-grained will — and
he meant to have it, and to have it all. He had
come to his Jordan ; Jordan would not give way.
He called upon the Lord, and he raised the ark,
as he thought ; but he was the god enshrined in
that ark, in spite of the name inscribed on his
banners. To add that of Jehovah made no differ
ence : Jordan was there, there Jordan remained ;
there was no passage for him.
Some of us know the man of business who
justifies some exceedingly shady doing by the
utterance of some such pious expression as this :
"In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall
direct thy paths." He has a keen sense of justice,
perhaps, but he has very little sense of mercy. The
man may be hard, covetous, grasping ; he can shut
his ears and eyes to a thousand things, so clear
in his vision of the way of true business dealing.
He will tell you, " No man ever heard me break
my word ; no man ever heard me make a promise
that I did not keep. That which has given me my
success is what I require from others; I stand
upon simple justice and righteousness," and so on.
He is not always quite sure of the foundation of
the righteousness upon which he says he takes
his stand. Righteousness is incomplete except its
highest and final expression be love. "If any
man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of
His." Not every one that saith unto me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but

THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD 97
he that doeth the will of my Father which is in
heaven." I speak in pity and in sympathy to any such man
as I have described. Do you know why the
Crusaders failed, failed at Jordan? Do you know
why Charles and Laud failed, failed when they
crossed the Tweed? Do you know why you are
failing? It is because you have called your own
way God's way ; because, deep down at the bottom
of all your motives, is worship of self; because you
have not seen with the larger vision what it is
that lies at the end of your march. Otherwise
you would not be so keen upon the things that now
are, for the fashion of this world passeth away.
It is not sufficient to go through life calling upon
the name of the Lord ; we have to be sure that we
have heard the voice of the Highest saying, This is
the way. The reason why men of great talent who
have stood for God, as they thought, have failed is
this : They have confounded God with the second
best, not the best. You only find God upon the
highest. If we have heard that voice Divine, it
matters not that the way lies through the desert
and the flood ; that is the way of victory and peace.
We have to define and make clear both our motives
and our aims. The highest and noblest we can
ever hear is the voice of God. We cannot take the
right way if we have chosen it in a wrong spirit.
Popes may bless banners, kings may claim Divine
right, business men and church members may utter

9 8 THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD
the name of God as the justification of their own
way, but Jordan cannot be passed until self has been
surrendered. Any man can know when he has the
mind of Christ. Such a man is led by the Spirit of
God. He bears the ark of God upon his shoulders,
and the waters give way before him ; and not only
for himself: others pass by, as it were under his
shadow. We may be like the priests in the middle
of the stream, standing on the rock and holding the
ark high up. To see us so standing is a help to
many a man to plunge into the stream and cross by
himself. " On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wistful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie."
" On Jordan's stormy banks " the waters will give
way for you : you can march to the other side in
perfect safety. So that you have given yourself to
your Captain and the great High Priest it is easy
for you to take the way that God has marked ;
things are bound to go wrong if you take the way
upon which God is not.
Suppose we try to put all this to ourselves, right
now, as the Americans say. What are you and I
living for ? Are we fitted to carry the ark of God
upon our shoulders? These old Covenanters that
were defeated at Dunbar drew up a Catechism,
which I used to learn in my early days. Perhaps
it would have been well if David Leslie had held

THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD

99

it in his hand that historic morning and catechised
the Presbyterian ministers with it. One question
in that Catechism runs thus: "What is the chief
end of man?" — and its answer: "Man's chief end
is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever."
Thomas Carlyle says you cannot make a grander
affirmation than that as the meaning and the end
of your life. Let us test ourselves with it. You all
have your faces turned somewhere ; you are marching
upon some road. Are you quite sure that the end
of it is to glorify God and to enjoy Him ? The will
of God is ever goodwill to men. Like the great
captain of Israel, we can swing our blade with con
fidence when it is against enemies of God ; we can
give the order, too, to march on, if we have
previously heard it in the secret place from the lips
of God.
I remember many years ago, in early Oxford
days, going for a walk with a friend, some con
siderable distance from the university city. In a
little hamlet we came across a small chapel —
Wesleyan we took it to be. Entering through
the open door, we found a poor old woman sweeping
the floor and dusting the pews. We began to talk
to her; we saw that the little chapel was part of
her life ; she had been in at the building of it, and
she and her husband were at first paid to take care
of it. But the population drifted away, the members
became very few, she said. Their spirit was very
beautiful ; they could not afford to pay her and he».

ioo THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD
husband any longer, so she and he did the work for
nothing — that is, they did it for God. The husband
was called home : she was left alone. She went
on with the work. "When it is too much," she
said, " a neighbour gives me a helping hand. I am
glad to do the work ; goodness and mercy have
followed me all the days of my life. I shall soon
be over the dark river and at home ; until then I
serve God this way." That simple old woman was
living no narrower life because she had grown
poorer and poorer. There was nothing mean about
her obscurity ; there was something grand in its
very simplicity ; she had learned the deep secret,
the way to master sorrow, the way to make life
full and rich and glad. She was actually standing
in the middle of Jordan's stream bearing the ark
of God upon her shoulder, and probably it was true
that many a life was the better and many a crossing
the happier because she stood there.
Contrast with this another case. One Thursday
there came to me in the vestry a man who had spent
the greater part of his life in a district not very far
from this spot. He said he had lived through a
clean, straight, honourable career ; he had done his
best for God in his little way. But trouble came
to him just at that time of life when he thought
he had passed all shoals and shallows, steered safely
past all rocks, and entered the harbour of old age.
He was stricken in the tenderest part of his nature;
the partner of his life, the one he had sworn to love

THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD 101
and cherish, had gone wrong — I need not state the
vice. His children stood by him, but the thing he
valued most was wrested from him. Home was
wrong when peace was gone. He said to me, with
tears in his eyes : " All Thy billows have gone over
me." Had I only thought of it then, as I think of
it now, I would have said : " Not unless you lie
down in them ; they have only gone over your feet ;
you are standing right in the midst of the torrent
of Jordan, and you have to stand there while the
waves sweep round your feet, but your children
will pass over with the mighty host more easily if
you will be a true, strong, and brave man. Keep
true, keep your head up, and your face towards
the other shore." God is not done with such a
man as that : his life was not wasted, and he needed
not to give way when the moment of testing came.
You are the priest called to pass before the host;
to you is given a position of vantage and honour.
Stand in the torrent till the Captain says : " Cross,"
and then no man can hinder your way. I am not
preaching any fair-weather Gospel; I know that
good men go under, as the world counts it, but all
I am desirous of making you understand is that when
they go under they go up. No man who has ever
suffered for right needs your pity, and he knows
he does not ; he would not take any other way, and
is perfectly conscious of the recompense. Pass he
will, and the righteous God brings him through.
Just as, one by one, we leave our possessions on

io2 THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD
this side Jordan, as they drop from us in mid
stream, one by one they are gathering on the other
side. "Part of the host has crossed the flood, and
part is crossing now."
I would speak a word of personal appeal.
It may be that I address some man or woman
who is facing a hard thing this week, and you
are tempted to compromise with evil, to bring down
the banner of the Lord, ever so little it may be,
to forsake that which in your heart you know to
be the indubitable right. Never allow yourself to
dally with the temptation even for an instant.
Look to the other side ; on the other side of every
hard experience is a greater blessing, so you be
found faithful. God is ready with His recompense ;
no flood will ever sweep you away. You are afraid
of what has not come and never can come. On
the way to what you know to be the ideal, on the
way which you are certain is the way of duty, there
may be a Jordan. March on ; you are not the first
who has crossed that flood; the great Captain and
the great High Priest have gone before you. May
I change the verb ? It is a singular one : Our
Captain and our High Priest are one and the same.
Jesus went through, yet Jesus stands in our midst,
and holds up the ark of the Lord. Do you re
member the way that Jesus took when Jordan
fronted Him? Setting His face steadfastly to go
to Jerusalem, He saw there only a Cross, an agony,
a shame ; and when loving hearts would have turned

THE WAY THROUGH THE FLOOD 103
Him aside, He repelled the temptation, for He knew
whence it sprang. " Get thee behind Me ! "
Calvary was the Jordan of Jesus ; He went bravely
forward, crossed the river, and then came back and
stood in the midst that we might cross under the
shadow of the Cross of Calvary.
" There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign,
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.
" Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green ;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.
" Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o'er,
Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,
Should fright us from the shore."

SOME GREAT THING

"I had some young men in mind in preaching the sermon entitled,
' Some Great Thing.' It is an attempt to portray to themselves
some characters which have in them a touch of Stoic pride.
The preacher's object was to commend the worth of a humble
confession of Christ — the Christ who is beyond criticism. There
are some men who resent being placed under obligation even to a
Redeemer. Pride is a very subtle thing, and not seldom dubs
itself manliness."

VII
"And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My
father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou
not have done it? how much rather, then, when he eaith unto thee,
Wash, and be clean?" — i Kings v. 13.
Here is another of these Old Testament miracles
which are so puzzling to the modern, and especially
to the Western, mind. I have no explanation to
offer. We can but form our own judgment on the
facts, and the tale is plainly told. I read it to you
just now for our lesson. But there are several
things to be observed concerning this class of
phenomena before we make the mistake of dis
missing this story as a fable.
First, the modern mind, by which I mean yours
and mine, trained to believe in the uniformity of
nature and the universality of law, is naturally
incredulous concerning what is usually termed
miracle. The ancient, and especially the Oriental,
mind, was just the opposite. With us the miracle
would require more justification than the prophet's
message. With them, the prophet's message
received its justification in the miracle. Well,
now, allowing a great deal for the difference in
mental attitude between the old and the new,
between the East and the West, you will have to
107

108 SOME GREAT THING
concede that the man who wrote down this story
must have believed it word for word.
Secondly, this miracle is one of an enormous
class of similar phenomena which occupy the field
of history and have a tendency to recur. The
history of mediaeval Christendom is just crammed
with miracles of the same kind, and, what is more,
it is exceedingly difficult — nay, it is almost im
possible — to rule them out of the field of vision,
and say that the men who related them, and
believed that they saw them, never saw them. In
modern times, take, for example, the Miracles at
Lourdes or at Holywell, or, to come nearer home
still, the various faith-healing cults which exist in
our own land and within a few yards of this very
Church. I have no wish contemptuously to rule
them out of the discussion, nor have we any
business to do anything of the kind. It is my
belief that expectation does a great deal. Though
I consider that for a time like ours, for such a life
as you and I live, it may indicate childishness and
even weakness of character to be always looking
for the phenomenal and the thaumaturgical, yet
we have no business to pour contempt upon the
records of such when they come across our
mental vision. As I have just said, expectation
does a good deal. What we expect has a chance
of coming to pass. What a good many people
expect, more or less justifies the expectation. We
may take it for granted that Naaman was

SOME GREAT THING 109
healed because everybody around him expected
he would be, and observe, he himself was
not incredulous when he declined to obey the
prophet's commands. It was simply that his pride
was hurt. "Dip in Jordan ! " he would have said.
" Abana and Pharpar are a great deal better. They
are bigger rivers. If I have to wash and be clean I
would rather wash at home. Besides, why could
not the prophet come out ? I am a very great man,
yet he sends a messenger, and I thought, as I sat
in my carriage, he would be sure to come out, and
with a good deal of obsequiousness and deference
would do some exceptional palmistry, and I should
go away cured." "I thought." He had prepared
himself in his mental pose for what did not take
place. " Wash and be clean " was the curt message.
" Go to Jordan," and Naaman did not like it.
Thirdly, after the considerations just advanced, I
think you and I will be prepared to readjust our
mental attitude to the problem of the relation of
mind to matter, and the subjection of the latter to
the former. I will ask you, therefore, to-night, to
pass this miracle without further discussion. You
may take it just as it stands. " There are more
things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in
our philosophy."
But it is the psychology of the series of incidents
here recorded with which we are most concerned.
How true they are to human nature, and how close
the parallel between Naaman and ourselves. Here

no SOME GREAT THING
is a man stricken with leprosy, and at the same time
eaten up with pride. If he had been asked to do
some great thing, he, soldier that he was and master
of legions, would instantly have done it. A mighty
man, he expected to be asked to perform a mighty
feat. When the prophet said, "Go to this Judean
stream, get out of your carriage, stoop down and
wash and be clean," he went away in a rage.
Human nature, which is capable of much grandeur
of achievement in great things, in special things,
often breaks down in the presence of small things.
So it was with Naaman. So, too often, it is with
us. There are men here to-night, I am perfectly
sure, who are cavilling in the presence of the
claims of Christ, and they think it is because they
themselves are superior to the claim. They suppose
it is because they have a greater, a more austere,
ideal than the preacher has to set before them,
whereas all the time they are simply acting in
the spirit of Naaman, and do not know that what
they count a great thing is not the thing that is
asked of them at all, but some harder thing which
is not usually called great. God does the great
things, and does not need humanity to help Him. I
have in the pulpit with me a letter from a young
man who read somewhere a sermon that was
preached here, presumably to young men, on a
Sunday evening a few weeks ago. Writing in the
name of three or four others, he says : I think I will
not read the letter, but sum it up in a few words : — ¦

SOME GREAT THING 1 1 1
" We have been reading together the life of the great Stoic
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and to tell you the truth we feel that
this man's life was a higher and a nobler one than that of most
Christians, certainly a better life than ours. We wish we could
attain to his ideal, and it is in no carping spirit that I ask you, Would
it not be better for some of us to live as well as Marcus Aurelius
and make less profession of Christianity ? and could not we do as
well if we were as true as he to the ideal set before us, without
professing Christianity at all ? "
I have not sent any reply. I am going to speak it
now, because I think there is probably more than
one young man present who could have written that
letter, and who certainly has that problem. Marcus
Aurelius represented the later Stoicism of the
Roman Empire, and I grant you that he was about
the finest example of it that was ever produced, at
any rate so far as is known. I will grant further that
Marcus Aurelius, and all that he stood for, is more
admirable than a good deal of Christianity in some
of its modern developments as we see it around us
to-day. The late Mr Lecky compared it favourably
with some of the third century developments of
Christianity — with their asceticism, intolerance,
fierceness of spirit, and almost brutality of living.
Well, now, it is not easy to see at first sight why
Marcus Aurelius should not be your ideal instead of
the Christian one. Any modern Marcus who has his
duty before him cannot but be a man to be respected,
but I will point out something you may never have
thought of. As a rule, in this self-sufficient type of
life, there is something vicious at the very base. It

112 SOME GREAT THING
was not so with Marcus, but it was so with his
philosophy. Stoicism was indigenous to the Roman
Empire. The Empire was the expression of its
philosophy. It was one that made strong men but
austere, and hard and proud. As a rule, Stoicism,
as it was commonly understood, exhibited nothing
of the virtue of humility, very little of sympathy.
It was a Stoic who wrote : —
" 'Tis sweet when tempests roar upon the sea
To watch from land another's deep distress,
Not that his sorrow makes our happiness,
But that some sweetness there must ever be,
Watching what sorrows we do not possess."
You have only to think of the burning heart of
St Paul uttering himself Godward for the sake of
his kindred, and willing that he himself might be a
castaway if so be that they might be saved, and then
to put beside him the very best that Stoicism ever
produced, to see that in its noble dignity it came
something short of that sublime self-abnegation.
What was there in St Paul that Stoicism never pos
sessed? I will tell you. It was strength blended
with humility and with spiritual sympathy. He
went deeper down, and he rose higher up than
Stoicism was ever capable of doing.
I say this without trying to show how worthless
the Roman philosophy was — quite the reverse. It
was a great philosophy. It did a great work in the
world. But the sun will put out the fire although
there is fire in the sun. Jesus makes Aurelius un-

SOME GREAT THING 113
necessary. And I will venture to think that if ever
Jesus and Aurelius had met face to face, if Aurelius
had ever entered into the spirit of the Christians
that he through a sense of duty persecuted, there
would have been a Christian Emperor long before
Constantine. He was not far from the kingdom of
God. History shows us a few such spectacles. Sir
Matthew Hale, for instance, sat on the bench when
Bunyan's wife came to plead for her husband. The
humble-minded judge did not understand, he could
not see that he was dealing with a hero in that poor
Bedford tinker who was imprisoned for conscience'
sake. Someone has written very beautifully, "The
judge and the prisoner have met in heaven by now
and understand each other better." Not far apart
in spirit were they even then.
Of course you feel that these great souls such as
Marcus Aurelius, who has been quoted, were not
very far from Jesus ; but you have only to bring
Jesus into their company to see that you need not
follow Aurelius nor make him an ideal, for his ideal
is absorbed and illuminated by the presence of the
Son of God.
There is a good deal of the Stoic temper about
to-day. When you look back upon Stoicism you are
doing a very different thing from living in the midst
of it. It might have been a good thing then for a
man to live as Aurelius, but now you cannot look
back upon the line of history without seeing Jesus
H

114 SOME GREAT THING
standing in the path. Are you going to pass Him
to reach the side of Aurelius ? You need never do
it. All you want and all he ever wanted, noble
man, was just to understand what Jesus asked,
and the type and standard for which Jesus lived.
More than that, Jesus is not simply an example. He
is a dynamic of the very character that we commend
in Aurelius himself. The sun puts out the fire, but
it first kindled it, and it only puts it out when the
brightness of the shining and the warmth of the
heat it gives makes the fire necessary no longer.
I was told at luncheon to-day of a medical man,
typical of a great many men like you, who was
asked to come down to the City Temple and listen
to the preacher. He has no objection whatever to
the preacher, but he declined. His reason was this
— " I do not need it. I am trying now to live an
honourable and upright life. I am doing what I can
to help my fellows, to lessen the total of suffering in
the world." You will believe me at once, I am sure,
when I say that for a man like that I feel a consider
able amount of respect, and if it were only a question
of coming and hearing the preacher I should dismiss
at once all thought of objecting to his contention.
This self-respecting man with a moral ideal resembles
very greatly the Stoic. But he misses something.
He does not see that it is not the preacher he seeks
in the house of God, it is the something for which
the preacher stands. He does not see that the
person he is rejecting is not the preacher, and the

SOME GREAT THING 115
preacher's counsel has the sanction of his own moral
ideal. Why does he not penetrate behind the why
and the wherefore of the very life he himself seeks
to live ? In all charity — and my words are imper
sonal — you will allow me to give the reason. It is
because of "The Great Thing." He prefers to do
it rather than to have it done for him. And, mind
you, in every character where that is the prevailing
mood and governs the life there is something short
of the highest. In history grand things have been
done by men who could not stoop, and just because
they could not stoop missed the best and highest of
all. It was a great day when a message was sent
from Paris in the incipient stage of the Revolution
to the city of Marseilles, " Send us six hundred men
who know how to die." They found them on the
instant, and from the march of the six hundred men
upon Paris the history of Europe has been changed.
The " Marseillaise " was sung for the first time.
It was a great day in the history of the world —
though England was playing then a less noble part
— when a young American in the grip of the English
soldiers wrote " The Star-Spangled Banner," with
shot and shell flying over his head, but a great
enthusiasm, a noble and unselfish patriotism in his
heart. He would have dared and done anything.
It was a great thing to write that song, and he wrote
it there. It was a great day in the history of humanity
when Cromwell sat on his horse on the shores of

116 SOME GREAT THING
Dunbar and lifted up his voice, along with his
invincible Ironsides, and sang " Let God arise, let
His enemies be scattered." It was a great thing
nobly done. But he did some more things in his
life equally great that were not so conspicuous, and
one of the sweetest of all was his dying prayer, a
prayer not first and foremost of strength, but of
humility. " Lord, bless Thy people. Thou hast
made me the means of doing them some good and
Thee service. Pardon those who would trample
upon the dust of a poor worm, and give us a good
night, for Jesus' sake." That man could stoop as
well as rise, and that is why his sweep through the
firmament of history is so magnificent as it is. He
could do a great thing, but he did not despise the
day of small things. Nay, he was willing that the
greatest thing should be done for him — he stooped
low at the Cross of Christ.
Now, my young hearers, if I were to call you to
some great deed of heroism, would you not respond?
(Pardon me for suggesting that I, too, may venture
to-night to stand in the place of the prophet of
God.) I know you would — that spirit is not dead.
There are many people who think that chivalry and
idealism have passed out of English life. Nothing
of the sort ! If I were to ask for volunteers for a
forlorn hope by to-morrow, and you knew they were
needed, we should get them. I remember watching
at Bloemfontein the taking of the Waterworks,
when for the moment the supply had been cut off

SOME GREAT THING 117
by the Boers. It was a terrible sight, though, after
all, there was not much to see, but only what it
suggested. Common, ordinary men, such as you
and I meet in the street any day, were marching up
that hill of death line by line, with no perturbation,
no undue haste. Slowly, deliberately, heroically,
the British soldiers moved to the summit of the hill
that was held by the hidden foe, taking cover where
they could, but rising in the open when they must.
They just did it. It was called for. It was duty.
Those same men would drink and swear on Sunday
night in the public-houses in London. We know
them. They were capable of the great thing when
it was called for. You never dreamed as you met
them that there was the hero in them, but it was
there, just as surely as it is in you.
We read every day of some story of heroism in
the manning of the lifeboat, in the saving of com
rades from the explosion in the coal mine, and we
know the men who do it, poor material, too, but
capable of a great thing. And if to-morrow our
country were in extremity, if we saw men in peril,
and it meant the giving up of life in the attempt to
rescue them, and we called for men to do it, they
would come. I would guarantee to gather out of
this church a devoted band who could do the great
thing. Yes, you can do all this, but there are some things
you cannot or will not do. Why is it that so many
manly fellows will have nothing to do with religion,

118 SOME GREAT THING
are afraid to confess God— nay, more, are still less
willing to confess Christ than they are to name God?
God is only real to you in Christ, but I have noticed
this, though I am not always able to account for it,
that the word "God" may come to a man's lips
where he feels a great delicacy and reluctance about
the utterance of the word " Christ." Why ? Be
cause somehow the utterance of the latter means a
certain amount of self-committal. If a man names
Christ with reverence and a touch of simplicity and
tenderness, it is implied that he belongs to Him.
You might storm a height at the cannon's mouth,
but you do not care for the shame and ridicule that
might come from the charge of inconsistency or of
weakness. You give all sorts of reasons for your
abstention, and you think them true. Suppose we
examine some of them.
I know you in your business house. You are
straight enough. Up to a certain point your
standard is as clear and honourable as that of the
medical man I have just named. But you know as
well as I do that standard only holds good up to a
point. It would be a great deal easier to stand with
Aurelius than with Christ. All the moral dignity
and the strength and the suggestion, all the self-
respect that heightens into pride, is easy. That is
as simple as drawing your breath. You would be
ashamed of telling a lie for instance — it is easy to
tell the truth and shame the devil. You will not
stoop to lie. I will tell you what you will not stoop

SOME GREAT THING 119
to, either. You will not stoop to a confession of
need. You are prepared for the great thing.
There is still a greater, only it does not seem
greater, because you come down to it instead of up,
and that is where you do not want to go. Do you
understand what the sentiment means of
" Thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
The submission of Man's nothing-perfect to God's All-Complete,
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet ! "
Listen to this man's reason for not joining himself to
Christ. "Oh," he says, "I can live a good life
without your Christ. I am trying to do it. Do not
ask me for professions which I cannot keep. There
is no need for them." Is there not? " You can live
a good life without Christ." Do you not detect the
pride in the statement ? Do you see what it means ?
It is the thrusting back upon self, as it were, the
entire responsibility for life. You will get broken
at that business, young man, before you have gone
very far. If not Christ, then somebody else for a
helping hand — it has been tried before and has been
as big a failure as you are making it. You can
manage without Christ in the living of the right
life? Let us examine the life and see. There you
have a record of it moment by moment, fact by fact,
across the whole consciousness of humanity. Im
possible ! for you know quite well you have failed
before the ideal time and again. You cannot live
your life, your right life, without faith in some thing

i2o SOME GREAT THING
or in some one, and before the days have gone much
further you will find yourself longing and yearning
for a stronger hand than yours to save your manhood.
Oh, you can live it, if you will stop short. But
Aurelius' standard will not do. There is something
more austere and exacting still, where you will not
be required to do the great thing. It will be done
for you. Can you stoop to it and rise ? If the
prophet had bid thee do some great thing wouldest
thou not have done it ? How much more, then,
when he asks thee to leave thy burden in the hands
of the strong One, the Eternal, the "Saviour, Re
deemer, and Friend."
Here is another. "Christians," he says, in self-
justification, "are no better than other people."
Leave Christians alone. To your own Master you
stand or fall. I know all about the weakness and
the waywardness of Christians. It is not too much
to say that Christians have given me, for instance, a
worse time than other people have. But you have
nothing to do with them. When you stand before
the throne on the great day — and it is coming, this
great day of discovery — you will not be asked how
John Smith or Tom Jones lived. You will be asked
whether you followed and obeyed and lived to the
ideal that was given to you. If you have seen the
Highest, cleave to it, for be sure the highest will
be required of you. You need not be ashamed of
being found in the company of Christ. You are only
asked to confess your need of Him.

SOME GREAT THING 121
Once upon a time a man in some such mood as
yours drew to that same Lord as He stood, a seem
ing peasant, upon the roadway in Galilee, and kneeled
down at His feet, and this is how He prayed — "Good
Master " — that is just what you are saying, you go
so far as that, anybody, and pay Him a compliment
— " Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit
eternal life ? " He was perfectly sincere, so are you.
His life did not satisfy him, he wanted a better —
just like you. And the Master's reply was nothing
doctrinal, very simple, " Thou knowest the com
mandments, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear
false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother."
The answer came, " Master, all these I have kept
from my youth up." The Master knew him, and,
speaking straight to the deepest in him, said, " One
thing thou lackest. Go and sell everything you
possess and give it to the poor, and follow Me."
There was one thing he would not do. He did the
grand thing of falling down in the street — it meant
a good deal to do that. But when the Master said,
" Give your all," he was not prepared for that. I
have known a man honest enough to say that in my
time. " I have some things I do not feel willing to
give up. Christ cannot have them, so I cannot have
Christ." But for one such man there are ten thou
sand who will not acknowledge the real reason for
" staying away." It is that they are prepared for
the great thing, but not for the lesser, which nobody
sees. And the great thing in your case may be just

122 SOME GREAT THING
what you are doing and doing with a worthy manhood.
But there is something else required, and it may be
nothing but a giving up. You are no hero if you
can only be a hero by a spurt and with the band
playing, as it were. You are a hero if you are pre
pared to go down as well as to go up, to give to
Christ all that you have and are, as well as to do
something conspicuously brave and sublime in His
service under the gaze of men. If the prophet
had bid thee do some great thing, I know it would
have been done. How, then, when he asks thee to
come to the Cross and leave everything there and
yield heart and mind and soul into the keeping of
Him, and Him only Who is really strong.
There is a heroism which is as great as any
I have seen. Look at the heroism of John Wesley !
He learned something between two periods in
his life, the former when he was going out
to America as a young man. When the storm
came he screamed and trembled. He was like a
woman — I withdraw that word — he was in terror of
the elements. Some of the sailors laughed at him,
for they were men who could face the great thing,
he was not. They would have gone down into the
great deep if necessary, the heroes that they were.
Wesley, the Christian, was not. But he saw some
thing that filled him with awe, a little group of men
and women, Moravian Christians, standing and sing
ing, singing in the midst of the tempest, as near to
God by sea as they were by land, and altering their

SOME GREAT THING 123
demeanour no whit for the presence of the storm.
Wesley felt there was something missing in him,
and he learned, and the time came when that same
man was gripped by a murderous crowd and led to
what seemed certain death. All through one
memorable night Wesley, the preacher, who only
sought their good, was being hurried hither and
thither, now to be drowned, now to be stoned, now
to be hanged, as the mood of the mob changed. He
was none of them, but it would not have mattered
— he was ready. His own account of it was this —
he was just as quiet and just as undemonstrative
when he was the obscure person whom England
would not have said very much about it if he had
been murdered, as he was in the great assembly
when he stood face to face with thousands and tens
of thousands of listening hearers — just the same man
in the moment of sublime victory, and the same man
prepared to face ignominy and shame and death.
What made the difference ? Why, Wesley had
found the real Christ, and the real Christ made a
hero as great as any Aurelius of them all, a hero,
too, who could show himself such on all occasions,
and a hero whose dignity was present, not in hard
ness in the time of such conflict as I have described,
such thrilling danger, but in sweetness and in sym
pathy and in love. He would have knelt and prayed
for these same murderers, and would have counted
it a glorious thing if he had been destroyed for their
sakes, if they had been gathered into the kingdom.

124 SOME GREAT THING
It is to such a character as that I am calling you,
and to such an ideal as that I summon you. It is a
great thing, only the world does not always count it
such. If you will expect some great thing, it will be
by taking a greater thing from Christ Himself. He
will make you capable of it. You will be glad to
owe it to Him. You will go back to your business
to-morrow prepared for scorn, you will go back to
be taunted, if need be, with something you feel
conscience requires you to do or to leave undone,
and you will defy the conventions of society. Many
would rush to the point of the bayonet who would
not do that. The great want of the present hour is
moral grit. Dare to live your true life. Let no man
interfere with you in your relations with your God.
And if you know a thing to be true and feel it to be
demanded of you and see it to be the highest that
has ever crossed your path, and you feel your urgent
need of the clasp of the Lord Divine, why, my brother,
surrender ! It will be the grandest thing you ever
did in your life, far more so than following the petty
ideals which now satisfy you. If the prophet asked
for some great thing, he would get it from you.
The forgiveness of sin, the strengthening of man
hood for the battle with the tempter, all are from
Him Who is really the source of good in every man,
whether he acknowledges Him or not, "that in all
things He might have the pre-eminence " He de
serves. " Humble yourselves under the mighty hand
of God, and He shall lift you up." "If any man

SOME GREAT THING 125
willeth to do the will of My Father which is in
heaven, he shall know of the doctrine, whether
it be of God or whether I speak of Myself."
" For whoso loveth his life shall lose it ; but
whoso loseth his life for My sake shall keep it unto
life eternal."

ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
ETERNAL LIFE

This sermon was asked for by some of the younger members of
the congregation. It gave rise to some questioning on the part of
those at whose request the text had been chosen. As a result
of this questioning a further aspect of the subject was treated some
weeks later, and entitled the Law of Retribution. The supreme
difficulty of those who correspond with me upon these sermons
appears to have been the content of the word Eternal. Some have
understood me to teach that all sin revenges itself in an everlasting
sequence without hope of remedy, while others, oddly enough,
have understood me to mean that sin is punished in this life and in
this life alone. I need hardly point out to readers of these two
sermons that in my view of this great and solemn subject there is
no possibility of avoiding what is commonly termed the punishment
of sin. But punishment has a merciful purpose, and repentance,
which shrinks not to accept the consequences of sin, secures in the
divine order their certain transformation into good. Eternal life
is expressed in kind, not in duration, and every true follower of
Christ is in possession of it now.

VIII

"These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteom
into life eternal." — St Matthew xxv. 46.

To-night I wish to teach rather than exhort, or to
exhort only by the teaching and its implications. This
text is a most solemn and important utterance of our
Lord, and we have no reason to doubt that the
parable in which it appears is given to us substantially
as it came from Him. But you may have observed
for yourselves that the words of the text do not
appear in the Revised Version of the New Testa
ment precisely as they appear in the Authorised, and
the change is not unimportant. The Authorised
Version reads, as you have already heard, " These
shall go away into everlasting punishment ; but the
righteous into life eternal." Now the word which is
translated "everlasting" in the former part of the
text is precisely the word which is translated
" eternal " in the latter part. Therefore the revisers
of the New Testament have given us the sentence
thus : — " These shall go away into eternal punish
ment: but the righteous into eternal life." The
word " everlasting " represents the received theology
of the seventeenth century, when the Authorised
Version of the Bible, as we have it, and in many
I "9

130 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
ways the more admirable version, was first promul
gated. The word " eternal," however, which takes
its place in the Revised Version, is so much truer to
what I feel our Lord's meaning must have been that
I would like to dwell upon what I take to be its
content for a few moments.
Any Greek, or any person accustomed to speak
Greek amongst those who first heard our Lord make
use of this word, would be in no doubt as to its
meaning. Perhaps our Lord did speak in Greek.
Greek was well understood throughout the whole
region in which His teaching was given. It was
what French became a little while ago to modern
Europe, the language of common intercourse as be
tween people who spoke various and little understood
dialects. Perhaps He did not speak in Greek. He
may have spoken in Aramaic. If so, you may be
perfectly sure that the word which is rendered by
this Greek term "eternal" was one which in our
Lord's mind bore exactly the same meaning.
Now, what does "eternal" mean? I will give
you one of its meanings first, which I may call its
lesser meaning, and which though not necessarily
contradicting the larger meaning, certainly limits it.
It may mean "age-long." The word "eternal" is
aluviog and it has for its root a/civ " an age," or a vague
period of time. What our Lord may have meant to
say here is, "These shall go away into age-long
punishment," not specifying how long, "and the
righteous into age-long life."

ETERNAL LIFE 131
But as you see, and it is often pointed out, this
interpretation of the term logically carries with it
this conclusion, that as the punishment of the wicked
is not necessarily endless but age-long, so the bliss
of the righteous is not endless either. We feel at
once, then, that our Lord could not be speaking
in such indefinite language as to hold out a sort
of limited hope to those who lived worthily and
righteously in this world. It is not age-long life
that He promises. It is something vaster, nobler
than that.
Well, then, we will put aside that one meaning.
As I have said, it does not necessarily contradict
what I am now going to tell you, but it certainly limits
it. The word "eternal," however, as used in the
Greek language, may mean — often does mean —
that which is outside of, and above, and tran
scends, and supersedes time. Or we will put
it in another way, the eternal is the real, as
opposed to the seeming. Please bear that in mind
while we are going a little further in our examina
tion of the text. The way in which many under
stand this text, even those who do not believe it, is
that " eternal " is equivalent to "everlasting." Let
me give you an illustration. I was reading only last
night, in a paper which appears week by week — I
may as well name it, I have named it before, it is
called T. P.'s Weekly — a little chapter of autobio
graphy in which the well-known journalist whose
name is given to the paper, describes his own

1 32 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
childhood. Mr T. P. O'Connor says, that one of
the ideas which came home to his imagination
most forcibly when a boy, was that of eternity,
and it was because at the school which he
attended, and which I take to have been a Roman
Catholic school, there were certain seasons when
the boys were required to abstain from play, from
the usual indulgences of boyhood, and betake them
selves to meditation and devotion. Amongst the
books which Mr O'Connor then read was one which
he said brought home to him with the utmost force
the idea of eternity. This, he says, is the way it
was taught. Speaking of the fate of the impenitent,
the writer of the little devotional manual went on to
say — Supposing at the end of a million years of
torment, a soul who had been condemned to ever
lasting punishment were to raise himself from his
agony and ask what time it was, the answer would
be " It is eternity." At the end of another million
years suppose the same soul again to raise his
suffering eyes and ask what time it was, the answer
would come just the same — "Eternity, and eternity
is only beginning." To an imaginative boy such as
Mr O'Connor must have been, I can well understand
with what pungency the content of eternity as thus
presented must have come home to him. But it
is an awful thing to think of eternity in that way.
If Mr O'Connor were as learned in the history of
thought as he certainly is master of letters he would
know that to a Greek that was not eternity, but it

ETERNAL LIFE

133

is quite true of his mediaeval theology — and there
was not a pin to choose in that respect between
Romanism and Calvinism ; we have not escaped it
to-day; it is still in our midst, and my solemn
purpose to-night is to address you who have ceased
to believe it and have not known what to put in its
place. I was passing the other day by a great
expanse of advertising wall, and I saw on it in large
letters, put there by some zealous follower of
Christ, " Where will you spend Eternity ? " and
mentally I instantly amended the phrase to myself,
"How am I spending eternity?" We have a way
of thinking of eternity as coming by and by, that
it will be endless time. Believe me, my brethren,
eternity is not coming ; it is here, it is now. We
are speaking as if we had something to wait and to
watch for. " Where will you spend eternity ? "
But the thought which has most authority with
conscience ought to be this, " What am I doing in
eternity ? How am I using the eternal now ? "
For brethren — here I beg that you will give me
your patient attention for a moment — there is really
no such thing as time. The eternal is the only real.
You cannot put a bound to time at either end.
Follow history back as far as it will go till it is lost
in the dim regions of antiquity, and ask what lies
beyond at that end. Endless time; in a word,
infinity of days. And follow through the hours
when your life ends, until history ends, too, at the
other end. Can you put a bound to time there, and

134 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
what is the term? There is no term. Time is
endless. There again is infinity of days. Pluck
out of the midst of it your twenty, thirty, forty,
fifty years of life, and how much is left of the
grand total ? Precisely what there was before you
began counting, infinity of days. The moment you
try to grasp this thought it eludes you. Yet there
is no escape from the conclusion that there is no
time, there is only eternity. I cannot mark eternity
off in days, and weeks, and months, and years, and
centuries, because it is only God's unchanging now.
The fact is, time, like space, is a sort of limita
tion imposed on thought. I say like space. Let
me illustrate again. I look towards the west wall of
the building wherein I am speaking. What lies
beyond that barrier ? Space. And beyond it ? Yet
again space. And what beyond that ? Imagination
can carry you no further — infinity. At this end
infinity too, so west, north, and south, there is no
boundary to that whereon you stand. Hold firmly
for a moment to the thought. If I could lift you
and the Church and all that appeals to our senses
here, out of the midst of this infinity, how much
would be left ? Just as much as there was before.
You can take no section of the infinite. All that
we are compelled to say concerning this fact, which
is a fact, and an unescapable fact too, is, space does
not exist. I am compelled to think in its categories
just as I am compelled to think in the categories of
time, but neither of them really is. Neither time

ETERNAL LIFE 135
nor space, but only eternity and the infinite are
true. Now, brethren, if you have followed me in my
philosophising so far — every one of us is an embryo
philosopher — may I ask you to look again at our
text. The temporal is that within which we are
limited. The conception of everlasting, even, is an
instance of that limitation. We speak of eternity
as time added to time added to time added to time
ad infinitum. It is impossible. There is no such
thing. The time element must come out. The
fact that we are conscious of it is simply a proof
of our limitation. Why we should be thus limited
we do not fully know, but sometimes I think I see
glimpses of the. reason. It is that we may know
against the dark background of evil the meaning of
the good. We may not know very much about the
mystery of life, but we know just enough to find a
right way through it. The man who is living for
what he feels to be highest, for what he knows to
be the right, has it always written with unmistakable
plainness within him. That man knows that he is
moving towards escape from his limitation. By
every good act or thought we rise above our limita
tion, as it were, and come into immediate relationship
with the life which never changes, which is the life
of God, and thus we are prepared a little for an
understanding of our Lord's strange words in the
seventeenth of St John : " This is life eternal, that
they might know Thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent."

136 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
By implication, what are we to say, then, is the
absence of this? Can I find a better word than
punishment ? Punishment is limitation accepted,
punishment is the placing of the soul in a prison-
house, punishment is to dwell in the eternal with
out seeing that it is eternal, punishment is to be
content with the material, though the material may
bring pain to the soul. Punishment, in a word, is
prison, liberty is eternal life. Every evil thought
or deed is limitation accepted. Death will not
free you, for death itself is only an incident in
eternity. " As the tree falls, so must it lie ;
As a man lives, so shall he die."
Now I trust I have shown you something of what
eternity really means. It is God's now. The in
troductory words of our parable show that this is
so. " When the Son of Man shall come in His
glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall
He sit on the throne of His glory, and before Him
shall be gathered all the nations." When? Now.
You are not waiting for the judgment, it is going
on. You are before the judgment seat of Christ
at this moment. All your thoughts are read in the
light of the eternal. God makes no mistakes. The
mercy of Christ is such that it will not spare.
It is impossible not to believe in eternal punish
ment. Every act, every thought of evil draws to
itself its own inevitable result. "Be not deceived,
God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth,

ETERNAL LIFE 137
that shall he also reap." We are not waiting for
eternity to have the balance put right. Men may
feel that they have dodged God, as it were. They
have not. Some of us who have been trying to
live righteously feel as though it were well with the
unrighteous. It never is. Inevitably, here or on
the other side of death, wrong living works itself
out in tragedy. There is no tragedy so dreadful
as that of the soul which has sinned against itself.
What is punishment but the imprisonment of the
soul in its own wickedness? Retribution is ab
solutely inevitable and unescapable. Some of you
talk as though it were never so. I have heard it
said that the moment you eliminate the time element
from the thought of eternity you have taken away
its dread. It is the exact opposite with me. The
moment I take the time element out it seems as
if eternity is crashing upon me. I feel as though it
were impossible to doubt that the lash descends,
the punishment comes, the prison door is closed
upon the soul. You told a lie, that lie has turned
to rend you, has shut you under its own baleful
influence. You turned from the pathway of right
towards sensual self-indulgence, and lo 1 you become
a prisoner of your flesh, and of the flesh see corrup
tion. You do harm to another, and by and by the
harm comes back again to you with compound in
terest. " He that speakest against Me wrongeth his
own soul." Men talk about eternity as though they
could afford to wait for it and will be prepared for

138 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
God's judgments when they come. They know
very little of the real meaning of the judgment.
Here and now, with resistless force — for God cannot
be cajoled — descends the penalty of a sinful life.
Some of you are living as it were like a man
sleeping in the topmost storey of a burning house
and telling himself that there is no danger until
the fire reaches that floor. The foundations are
gone. So it is with evil life. The man who lives
falsely is already undermined by the judgments of
God. It is punishment to be shut off from eternal
life and beauty, joy, love. Death itself can give
him no rescue. It simply takes the bad man, as it
were, from one prison-house to another, and gives
him on the way a glimpse of the blue sky above
and the fresh sweet air in the midst of which he
might live and ought to have lived. All punishment
is eternal. All true living is eternal. God's eternal
now is the one thing from which the bad man
cannot escape and the good man does not want to
escape. There is nothing like illustration. May I close
my sermon with one ? Suppose we had before us
here two rich men. I have no sympathy with the
cant which speaks as though it were an absurd idea
for a man to dream of being rich. Wealth is power.
All power may be used for good. But there is
a point beyond which no man can strive for
money without perilling his soul, and I will show
you what I mean. We have heard of a millionaire

ETERNAL LIFE 139
— he shall be nameless for the moment — who spent
his life in amassing money by every means in his
power. He had no scruples as to the way in
which he obtained it. He would rob on a large
scale or a small. Conscience appeared to be dead.
He was only a scourge to the community in the
land in which he lived. In the end, one day, in
a drunken delirium, he leapt overboard and the
ocean swallowed him. Does anybody feel that
there was no tragedy in an end like that ? I do
not say it was inevitable. That man might have
lived a cool, calculating, hardened ruffian, steeled
against the opinion of the world. Would he have
escaped tragedy? I trow not. He might have
waited till the last dread hour when the summons
came which no man can refuse to obey, and then
he would see that his guilty gold had built a prison-
house around his shrivelled soul, and out of that
prison-house he could find no means of escape.
Some theologians would say eternity would be
the beginning of his self-discovery. Eternity —
eternity is here. Death may have been the begin
ning of his self-discovery of his misuse of eternity, and
the penalty descends upon him who had gained all
he sought to gain, but in the gaining had lost his
soul. But here is another man, and I do not shrink
from naming him. We will say a Samuel Morley
stands before us. God has blessed this man with
this world's goods and abundance of them. But

140 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
what use does he make of them ? How many souls
have been lifted nearer God for the helping hand
and the power of Samuel Morley? How many
lives have been sweeter, how much corruption has
been swept away, who can tell ? Wealth could not
build a prison-house around that man's soul. It
rather furnished him with wings to fly. Poor men,
do not mistake me. God has given you your op
portunities, too. They are not the same as Samuel
Morley's. Making friends of the Mammon of un
righteousness is a perilous thing to do, and without
it you may enter into the eternal habitations.
Let me give you another figure. Here is a
young roue who has brought down his father's grey
hairs in sorrow to the grave. Many a worthy man
has an unworthy son, and of all unsolved problems
I think the problem of an evil succession to a noble
example, a bad son to a good father, is one of the
greatest. This lad has broken the heart of the
nearest and dearest. He has had every indulgence
that money could buy, every opportunity that human
affection could give, all to no purpose. Those who
loved him had simply furnished him with the means
to destroy himself. A sort of sinister devil seems
to possess him. He knows the anguish he has
caused, and some day, when he has run his course
and has no more to hope for from boon companions
in this life, when all the means that were once at
his disposal for the ruin of himself and others are
squandered, when he, as a derelict on the ocean of

ETERNAL LIFE 141
life comes to himself, young men, that roue must be
suffering the tortures of the damned. He is not
waiting for some hell of a million years ; he has a
hell of to-day, he has the horror of this night, he
has the feeling of tragic failure. He knows himself
in the grip of a demon whom he cannot shake off.
He has exchanged heaven for hell, and love for
hate. What sort of punishment do you call that ?
I call it the punishment of God's unchanging now.
As he has sown, so he has reaped. The penalty
did not wait. It descended upon him with the first
sin. The second was easier because of that. The
sequence you now see.
Here is yet another, quite different from
either of these two, a man present, perhaps, in
the congregation. A Christian? Oh, no, nothing
so weak and so childish as that ! This man is
superior to all the ordinary sanctions of that curious
snivelling creature called a Christian — is a man
of the world. He is as hard as a flint. He does
not stand very high in the opinion of mankind,
but you cannot describe him as a failure. No man
can get inside the joints of his armour. He knows
well how to defend himself. Do not appeal to this
man for pity. Do not appeal to his better self. He
seems to have none. It was not always so. He
had once. Mark the dread law. That man has
stifled every good impulse. Meaning to get on in
life he has trampled under foot all that he formerly
held to be noble. All his squeamishness has left

142 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
him. He no longer has scruples. When he wants
a thing he gets it ; if he feels he would like to do a
thing he does not stop to measure whether in the
judgment of the eternal it is good or bad. He is
too hard. What can you expect from this man ?
No Gospel will ever find entry through his sheet
armour. All I can say is that the inevitable moment
is coming when the cumulative penalty of the way
he has been living will come home to him. He may
be too insensible ever to know what it means on
this side of death. You go hoping that at the
deathbed of the wicked you may see a belated
repentance. Nothing of the kind. Ten to one he
will die as callous as he lives. But then ? But
then ? The poor shrivelled soul will pass into the
presence of his Maker, but not into liberty, not to
gladness, only to disillusion and the outer darkness,
one prison-house exchanged for another. You would
not change with him now. He is in prison and
does not see it, but you see it and you do not want
to go where he is, where he lives, even now. He
has trifled with eternity here, and now eternity is
avenging itself upon him. He is shut away from
God, and the worm that dieth not is busy with
him — remorse, self-loathing, the conscience is
tortured with the thought of forfeited possibility
and the long, long night that lies between him and
righteousness again. How much more, who shall
say, but all this is said by our Lord in this figure
of the Last Judgment. It is not the judgment that

ETERNAL LIFE 143
has been waiting. That man was a prisoner long
ago, but he did not know it. The hour comes
when he does know it, and then he feels what was
true before, the punishment eternal is upon him.
Will you compare with these depressing and
sinister examples another I will give you ? I could
choose if I liked some suffering saint with whom
suffering seems to be limitation in this world, and
nothing is liberty and little joy. But I will not.
I will choose just some ordinary man out of this
congregation and make his experience speak. Here
is a business man in a small way, just an ordinary
man, a hundred of whom you will meet in the course
of a hundred yards to-morrow on your way to the
city. This man is trying to do right, to live the
straight life, to keep near to God. He feels there
is a God to serve, a God who is one of righteousness
and love. That man has not been prosperous in the
world. Do you think he has made a bad invest
ment ? If you could get that man to stand up and
speak to you, he would say that if he had his time
to come over again and his sacrifice to make, for the
sake of the right and the true he would make it over
again. There is a blessing now. There is a voice
that speaks within. There is an experience of
which nobody can rob him. He knows what that
is. This is life eternal, that this man's eyes are
fixed upon God. He has risen above his prison-
house. The world may refuse him his rewards, but
with God he already is in spirit at one, and this is

144 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
life eternal. Moreover, there is a day coming to him
when he who now sees as through a glass darkly
shall see face to face, when the last barrier falls
down, when the last veil is removed. O glorious
liberty of the children of God ! " His righteousness
shall shine forth as the noonday in the Kingdom of
the Father."
Mark our Lord's solemn teaching concerning the
great Revelation to come. It is not the number of
propositions you could repeat about God ; it is the
way you have lived. I have been astonished some
times to reflect how it is that the theologians so
often miss the point of this parable. What is it
all about ? Some of the people who were most
astonished when they heard the Master's " Come,
ye blessed of My Father," were those who did not
know they had been standing in the forefront of
the battle, and did not know they had been on the
watchtowers waiting for the coming of the morning.
I will tell you what they did know. They knew
what it was to live nobly, and they triumphed.
There are some men before me doing that now.
Well, my brother, I want to speak to you one word
of revelation from the heart of the Most High.
You are on the right way. I beseech you to see
all that lies before you in so far as God means you
to see. And there is one thing I think He means
you to see, and that is that the smile of the Father
is yours, that the presence of the Saviour divine is
with you all the days, that you have never won a

ETERNAL LIFE 145
victory yet in a strength that was your own and
yours alone, and when you have seemed least sup
ported as it has seemed to you and to the world,
all the omnipotence of the Eternal has been behind
you, and all the glory of the Father has been shining
upon you. Simple faith would lift you higher than
you have ever been. Trust God. Righteousness
and love are behind all, after all, and best of all.
When the scales fall away, oh, the expansion of
revelation ! This is life eternal.
I remember once speaking to a friend of mine x
in Brighton who, giving me his experience of his
own childhood, said, " I can remember when my
mother cried as she cut the bread for our breakfast,
keeping none back for herself, for it was the last
crust that she was dividing. I, the eldest born,
inquired the reason why this was done. It has
kept me straight in the world ever since under
terrible temptation. She said, ' My lad, your father
has been dismissed from his situation because he
would not lie, and we have come to the last loaf,
but I am proud of your father, and you must grow
up like him too.'" "And," said my friend, for he
is a friend in a very humble position, " I have tried
to do it. The example of that great sacrifice is
before me, that solemn and sad morning when it
seemed as if we had come to the last, and God
let us go through and remained silent. But it
was not the last. Somehow I felt that morning
1 This man is also referred to on p. 197.
K

146 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT AND
as if I stood higher, I was so proud of my father's
manhood, and to-day as I look back and remember
that we did come through many a hardship, it
is true, but we have come through. I would not
barter our faith, our quietness of heart, the mutual
love and respect of our home circle for all that the
world could give, if we had to leave those things
outside." What shall I call that ? This is true life, is it not ?
When we get to heaven we do not expect to find
another sort, we expect to find that. That kind
of manhood in upon the throne of the universe.
It went there by the Cross of Calvary. This is
life indeed, and this is life eternal.
I can imagine someone asking me, " How am I to
get into this eternal life, for it seems as if sin closes
me round and the world is too much for me, tempta
tion too strong, and I cannot escape. You threaten,
but you cannot save." You remind me of some
people I have heard about. One of them came
and kneeled down in the streets one day to one
whom he took to be a Galilean peasant whose
vision he felt was greater than his own, and this
is what he said, " Good Master, what shall I do
that I may inherit eternal life ? " The man saw
something better than he had ever seen before.
" Lord, to whom shall we go ? " said a poor
fisherman, "Thou hast the words of eternal life."
So we will go with the young ruler and with
Peter the fisherman and we will kneel down at the

ETERNAL LIFE 147
same feet and we will remember that that life, that
noble life of Christ, that stainless life can never die.
He is not only living now, He is living in your very
midst if you only knew it. His is the true life, the
ageless life, the deathless life, eternal life. " I am
come that they might have life and that they might
have it more abundantly."
" O ! how shall I whose native sphere
Is dark, whose mind is dim,
Before the Ineffable appear,
And on my naked spirit bear
The uncreated beam ?
" There is a way for man to rise
To that sublime abode : —
An offering and a sacrifice,
A Holy Spirit's energies,
An Advocate with God : —
" These, these prepare us for the sight
Of Holiness above ;
The sons of ignorance and night
May dwell in the Eternal Light
Through the Eternal Love ! "

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION

See Preface to preceding sermon.

IX

" If thy hand cause thee to offend, cut it ofF; it is better for thee to
enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the
fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the
fire is not quenched." — St Mark ix. 43, 44.
Some time ago, when preaching from the parable of
the Last Judgment, and with special reference to
the text, "These shall go away into everlasting
punishment, but the righteous into life eternal,"
I made certain statements which I have been asked
to repeat, or at any rate to restate in simpler form.
This I willingly do, for the truth then declared is
one which, of all others, needs clear and unhesitat
ing statement in an age like the present.
You remember that I told you on that occasion
that the word " everlasting " is the word which
in the same sentence is translated " eternal." They
ought not to be two words, for they are only
one. Neither is " everlasting " the best translation
of the term. It should be " eternal " in both cases.
The word eternal signifies a something which is
not explained by the English word everlasting. It
is not something which begins after death, but
that which we are living now. This is eternity
Eternity is that which is, as opposed to that which
seems. Eternal life, to quote the words of our

152 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
Lord Himself, is to know God. Eternal punishment
therefore, if we are to use the word punishment at
all, is the opposite of this. It is the result of the
deliberate putting away from ourselves of the life
that ought to be lived with God. If there be a
man here seeking God, and who yet feels he has
not found Him, he whose search is sincere, humble,
and true, that man has found Him. " Thou wouldst
not seek Me if thou hadst not already found Me."
But if there be a man here who once stood near to
God and felt the joy of serving Him, whose life,
though narrow in range, was wide in opportunity
and grand in experience, and has forfeited all this
by the deliberate choice of what was mean and base
and selfish and worldly, that man is undergoing
eternal punishment now, for he has chosen the
seeming in opposition to the real, he has deliberately
thrust from him that life which in heaven he would
have enjoyed in greater fulness, but not in different
kind from the life which he might live now, the life
of God.
Life eternal is to know God. That man has
invoked his own punishment who from his life
has thrust God away. As this does not seem to have
been perfectly understood last time I taught it, I
take another of our Lord's solemn sayings on the
same subject as my text to-night. It is even more
solemn than the parable which is usually described
as the parable of the Last Judgment. The words
in the ninth of St Mark are terrible. Take them

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION 153
literally, take them symbolically, take them as you
will, they are full of solemn warning, even of some
thing more than warning, of menace against the man
who chooses a way of his own. There has been
much unintelligent comment upon this chapter, and
especially upon this portion of it. It can hardly be
necessary to say that Jesus was actually quoting in
the use of these words. You will find the
original, or part of them at any rate, in the last
verse of the sixty-sixth chapter of Isaiah. Our
Lord knew the Old Testament, whatever we do.
Here is the prophet's description of the chastise
ments overtaking the evil-doers of his day, a puri
fication stern in its method, beneficent in its effect.
"It shall come to pass, that from one new moon to
another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all
flesh come to worship before Me, saith the Lord.
And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases
of the men that have transgressed against Me : for
their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be
quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto all
flesh." The simple men whom our Lord addressed
knew where that figure of the undying worm came
from and the unquenchable fire, and they were
standing near to the historic spot thus described in
the words of the prophet, where criminals were
done to death, where Israel had been purified by
the edge of the sword, where worms were busy
upon the putrefying corpses, where the fire was lit
to carry the stench away. Our Lord made instant

154 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
use of the figure thus supplied, and Himself applied
it to the moral life, the life that we have to live
now, and He said not one word about the life
beyond the grave. Speaking, not of death, but of
life, He means, "Let nothing stand between you
and right, no suffering, no sacrifice, for destruction
waits upon every form of wrong, and pain follows
upon every act of sin."
Now, to relate this text to the common belief
and experience, perhaps the best way in which to
put this relation will be to restate in your hearing
that which you already know perfectly, the creed
of popular theology concerning the great facts of
life and sin and redemption with which we are all
familiar. It may be put thus — I mean the theology
that is just passing away, sometimes miscalled the
old theology, but in reality a very new theology, it
is only of yesterday, and like yesterday it is dead
or dying — We are all sinners and deserve to go to
hell. The hell that is meant is usually a place
of torment, torment unending on the other side of
death, a hell which you will never see until the
angel of death summons you. We are all sinners,
says this popular creed, but God has provided a
victim to endure an equivalent of what we have
deserved. Jesus died upon the Cross, therefore we
need not suffer. He died in time, the agony was
only for a few hours, but that which He did effect
was a deliverance which will only begin when we
touch eternity, deliverance from the consequences

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION 155
of sin; though we may feel, as a corollary to this
belief, that forgiveness is ours now, we may thank
God and receive it.
It is true that this doctrine has been held with
qualifications. I leave out any reference, for in
stance, to the doctrine of election, by which some
are supposed to have been predestined to ever
lasting bliss, taking effect at the same moment, on
the other side of death, and some to eternal woe,
eternal meaning everlasting. We omit also re
ference to Antinomianism, by which it was held
that those who were of Christ, those who had
availed themselves of this mighty work of His need
not trouble about righteousness of life. All their
guilt had been transferred to Him, not only the
past and the present, but the future too, and they
need not trouble themselves about living any too
well. But the popular qualifications are these — First,
the impenitent are not held to be included. Prac
tically Christ did not die for all the world ; He only
died for those who lay hold upon His atonement,
the rest are left out of account. Secondly, even
the penitent, however, must put on holiness, or he
may forfeit that which Christ has effected for him.
There was a great deal of truth lying beneath all
this I have stated thus crudely because it is held
crudely. I am not here to sneer at it, because down
at the bottom of this statement of truth there was
something which we must never let go, for if we

156 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
do, we do it at our peril. But as a matter of fact,
men have ceased or are ceasing to believe it. I
question if more than a few in this great congre
gation believe it just as I have stated it. The pulpit
is becoming increasingly silent about it. It is only
here and there that you will hear a preacher insist
upon it in all its vividness — I was going to say its
rawness. Instead of that preachers will as a rule
vaguely imply that there is something or other, un
comfortable, unwelcome, but well deserved, awaiting
you upon the other side of death if you do not be
lieve and lay hold here upon the facts I have men
tioned concerning the redeeming work of Christ.
But, however vaguely they may state it, I say men
are not greatly interested in it. If I were to preach
it to-night with all the emphasis I know, you would
feel that I was striking a false note. Some of you
would never come here again, for you would feel
that the prophet had no message, in fact he was no
prophet at all ; he was stating what your conscience
and your better self repudiated.
Do not be in too great a hurry, however, I will
show you what it is you really repudiate. We have
come to think three things about this form of
doctrine. First, that it is immoral to punish anyone else
for my sin, for your sin. Listen to the word punish.
It is immoral to punish anyone else for your sin or
for mine. Moreover, it is impossible. No one has
ever been punished for anybody else's sin ; only the

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION 157
sinner can be punished. Though at the same time
we all admit the grand counter-principle running
through all life ; it is that vicarious suffering,
voluntarily borne, is grand and noble and divine.
Many a person has stood in the way of another's
punishment and taken it himself, but when it fell
upon him it was no punishment ; it was something
else, it was glorious. That principle it is the
highest exemplification of which — no, the root and
inspiration of it — we discern at Calvary. Vicarious
punishment and vicarious suffering are as wide as
the poles apart.
Secondly, we do not, we cannot get rid of the
consequences of our sin by the merits of anyone
else. So much of repentance in these days and all
days is repentance of merely what follows the sin,
and not of the sin itself. We are punished, ex
perience tells us so, and we do not have to wait for
death. Sometimes we try to cheat ourselves that it
is not so, but it is with a misgiving at the bottom of
our heart all the time. We know that no act of
faith, however definite and however strong, saves
us from bearing the penal consequences of our
wrong-doing. In the church to-night, it may be,
there sits a man who contracted a bad habit in his
youth. He could have stopped it then; he acted
in defiance of good counsel, of fatherly love and
motherly devotion. He braved their prayers, he
mocked their faith. Now, if that man had to go
back and begin again, what do you think he would

158 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
do with his life ? Let the devil at his elbow tell you.
He has put himself in the hands of a something
which is now stronger than he. It has laid its
clammy, iron grip upon his moral nature. He is a
slave and a sufferer, and he knows it. Let any
preacher mock that man by saying, " Come, my friend,
come to the Cross, confess your sin, there is no hell
for you," he would say, " Liar ! I am in hell now."
Thirdly, it is impossible to believe — I am stating
what you feel, remember — that any sin can deserve
punishment from everlasting to everlasting. Re
reading John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita
Sua a few days ago I came across a sentence I had
never noticed before. It was something to this
effect — It were better for a soul to endure extremest
torment through endless ages rather than commit
one venial sin. This John Henry Newman declared
to be the belief of the Catholic Church. I am not
quite so sure that it is. If it were, I feel sure your
conscience and mine would be compelled to re
pudiate it ; it puts dishonour upon God. The
reason why so many of the pulpit appeals fail
nowadays is because men have come, they hardly
know how, to protest in the name of some higher
law against these implications of the older doctrine.
We do not believe these things, we cannot believe
them. The man in the street will not be won by
them. No man, I verily believe, is ever terrified
by this kind of language about retribution into
choosing the Kingdom of God.

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION 159
Let me repeat these three things which, though
we repudiate them, contain a truth, a truth I am
going to set forth again. First, you feel that it is
immoral that anybody should be asked to bear your
punishment. If you are a true man, and your re
pentance is genuine, you never ask anyone to take
your place and take your stripes. Secondly, we
know we do not get rid of the consequences by
swallowing this belief or that about the forgiveness
of sin. The consequences are here, and in some
cases at any rate, we watch them working out with
all the inexorableness of fate. Thirdly, we do not
believe, however stern the consequences of wrong
doing may be, that they ought to continue from
everlasting to everlasting. All retribution misses
its meaning here and God is dethroned, for I can
never see any meaning in retribution for any purpose
except it be in the interests of the sinner. If it
fall upon him in sharpness it is not for the sake
of vengeance but for the sake of something higher
and nobler.
Now, brethren, observe the serious result of this
way of thinking of ours. It has weakened moral
appeal. Good old Christians listening to me to
night are trembling for what I will say next, for
fear one should condone wrong-doing or make any
man or woman in this place to-night feel that it
matters little whether they do right or wrong if
somehow and inevitably things will come agreeable
at the end ; it has weakened the moral appeal ;

160 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
men feel, or some men feel, that they can afford
to trifle with the moral law. You cannot. Listen
again to the words of Jesus, " It were better to
enter into life maimed than having two hands to
go into the moral Gehenna, into the fire that shall
never be quenched, where their worm dieth not,
and the fire is not quenched." There is no sug
gestion there of the inevitableness of escape from
what sin deserves, there is no thought of how little
it matters to do that which is wrong and to live
the life which is base. Nay, right is right, and
wrong is wrong, and each meets with its due sequence
of reward. I want you to listen to two things here.
First, death is not of much importance. The
common soldier is no theologian, the life-boatman
perhaps could state no article of doctrine with
clearness and fulness, neither are they particularly
anxious to count what follows death, and see with
clearness what awaits them, but these men at the
call of duty, of high service, of right-doing, will
lay down their life. In our best moments we are
all the same. Death does not frighten us if we
meet it breast forward and along the line of high
duty. It is not of much importance, and it cancels
no debt, it only means a new focus, and not a
new man. Observe that our Lord does not dwell
upon it in His teaching. You have no warrant in
the words of Jesus for supposing that death marks
an epoch either of reward or retribution. It is life
with which He was concerned, life with which we

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION 161
are all concerned, too, living truly or falsely, rightly
or wrongly, nobly or basely, and God has written
His law in men's hearts so that they know it matters
much to choose the highest and quit the lowest,
to live nobly rather than ignobly, to seek duty
rather than pleasure, the good rather than the
great. Jesus put this into all His teaching— the
reward and the retribution begin now.
I brought into the pulpit a copy of " Jane Eyre,"
which probably everyone in the congregation has
read. I draw your attention to the creed of
Charlotte Bronte as it appears in one of the early
pages of this book: —
" Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity
or registering wrongs. We are, and must be one and all, burdened
with faults in this world : but the time will soon come when, I
trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies ;
when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous
frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain — the
impalpable principle of life and thought, pure as when it left the
Creator to inspire the creature. . . . Surely it will never, on the
contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend ? No ; I
cannot believe that. I hold another creed ... it makes Eternity
a rest — a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss."
Now, brethren, while I believe that is God's
purpose for mankind, I believe it is not quite as
stated here. " As the tree falls, so must it lie ;
As a man lives, so shall he die."
Death is only a turning in the road. It is not a
fresh beginning, it is only a new morning, and when

1 62 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
you import death, as you do, into your theology,
you forget that your Master seldom or never did.
" I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell :
And by and by my soul return'd to me,
And answer'd ' I Myself am Heaven and Hell.' "
The second thing I want you to remember is
this — every thought reacts upon the thinker, every
deed upon the doer. The penalty of every sin
is contained in the sin itself. That penalty begins
to work out from the moment the sin was conceived.
The harvest may be long in coming, but it all comes,
here or hereafter, in this life or in the life beyond,
or both. This is more terrible than the doctrine
we have been discussing to-night, because it is
absolutely and inevitably true. " God is not
mocked. Whatsoever a man seweth that shall he
also reap." Every stone flung upward from a
human hand will come down with precisely the
same force with which it was hurled.
" The tissues of the life to be
We weave with colours all our own,
And in the field of destiny
We reap as we have sown."
Every lie rebounds upon him who speaks it. The
man who robs a brother finds a brother avenged.
It is the living God Who is the avenger. The
same act may be one of self-mutilation or it may be
the retribution of the Most High. You ruin a
woman. It may be that upon this side of death,

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION 163
let alone upon the other, the worm that dieth not,
in the gnawings of remorse, will bring home to
you the foolishness, the utter madness of the
sin.
It is possible that I have stated this truth so
strongly as to cause in some a certain shrinking
of heart, in others a certain feeling of protest.
Somebody will be saying to himself "Alas! for
the sinner. Is God a mere machine ? Is it all
inexorable justice? Is there no hope in Christ?
Men and brethren, what shall we do ? " Come
back and think of the old gospel, the same gospel
that was preached by the apostle. We take our
stand now by the side of those who heard Jesus
utter the words of our text. Repent — the old, old
method, the old, old way. Repent, not of the
consequences, but of the sin. Fear only to sink
in weakness and shame.
There are men listening to me to-night who
can find no way out of a moral entanglement
in which they have involved themselves, and
they have little hope. Suppose I speak to a
young lad thus — You have been tempted this
week in the shaping of your career to take ad
vantage of someone else. You have been tempted
to stain your soul with a lie. You have been
tempted to thrust down another that you might
claim what the world calls success. You have been
tempted to turn your back upon your father's
principles, tempted to do something foul and base

1 64 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
and wrong, in the hope of a profit that is to come
by and by. You defend yourself thus — " If I do
not, the gate will not open ; if I do not, life will
press hardly upon me. I feel myself full of
ambition, full of the stirrings of a new-found power.
I want a chance to live. I can atone for all this by
and by. Only a little sin at the outset of life, and
afterwards, oh ! what there might be in fulness and
richness and gladness. I might be a power for
good." Cut it off! It means death. Out with
it ! Do not dally for an instant with excuses.
Have done with it ! I will tell you of someone who
went through this temptation before you. His
name was Jesus, and He was the author of the
words of our text. He faced it in the wilderness.
The bending of the knee to Satan, and to-morrow
the throne of the Csesars, oh ! the power for good
that that might mean ! And the answer was, " Get
thee hence ! " A small life rather than a great, if
it must be, the cross rather than the throne! "It
is better to enter into life maimed than having two
hands to go into the Gehenna of fire." The Jesus
Who went through the conflict chose the self-
mutilation and the lonely life and the crown of
thorns and the betrayal and the agony and the
shame and the death because He knew it was not
death. Enter into life maimed, for it is life eternal
now. It is choosing God and knowing God. And,
my young brother, the day will come when you
would give all you possess to have the chance again.

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION 165
No sin was ever sinned yet that was worth while.
The evil comes home to roost, and, however long it
takes for the effect to work out, it comes, it comes
on, and it has not done coming when death comes,
perhaps it is only beginning. The man who chooses
the lower level instead of the higher finds out his
blunder, and, oh, what a sad and terrible disenchant
ment. Do you not feel that this is eternally true ?
There was a powerful book published some time
ago, "The Silence of Dean Maitland." It was a
parable of the life of every man who deliberately
chooses the way of the sinner. It began in little
things, little things for which excuse was made.
Then it led to greater things, then to a life lie, a
lie that was told by silence. All through that man's
life of outwardly glorious success the worm was
gnawing at his heart. There was no panacea for
remorse. The fire was not quenched. And at last
the hand had to come off and the eye to come out,
and public confession was made and justice was
vindicated and right was done. It is not only in the
case of Dean Maitland appearing on the pages of
fiction that this is so. It is always so. There is
no escape from it. Either at the beginning or at
the end the sacrifice has to be made. The cheaper
and the better, as well as the nobler, is in the
wilderness, facing the adversary at the beginning of
the life work. Repentance is cutting off that you
may enter in. It is life eternal here and now.
I also brought into the pulpit another book from

1 66 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
which I intended to quote to you to-night, Ruskin's
"Crown of Wild Olive." It seems strange to me
that this generation is already, as it were, beginning
to forget one of the greatest prophets God ever
gave to them, John Ruskin. I am about to quote
from his essay on War, which was delivered as an
address to the students of a military college.
" In general, I have no patience with people who talk of ' the
thoughtlessness of youth' indulgently. I had infinitely rather
hear of thoughtless old age, and the indulgence due to that.
When a man has done his work, and nothing can any way be
materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with
his fate, if he will ; but what excuse can you find for wilfulness of
thought, at the very time when every crisis of future fortune hangs
on your decisions ? A youth thoughtless ! when all the happiness
of his home for ever depends on the chances, or the passions, of an
hour ! A youth thoughtless ! when the career of all his days
depends on the opportunity of a moment ! A youth thoughdess !
when his every act is as a torch to the laid train of future conduct,
and every imagination a fountain of life or death ! Be thoughtless
in any after years, rather than now — though, indeed, there is only
one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless — his death-bed.
No thinking should ever be left to be done there."
This is true teaching ! These are the words of
eternal life, they are the echo of the teaching of
Him who uttered the text we have had in our
minds and before our eyes this night.
This is the spirit of Jesus that speaks. Repent
ance — repentance brings every man back to the
feet of the Christ whether he knows it or not.
You never yet were sorry for sin, but you were

THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION 167
standing in the presence of the Crucified. You
never turned your back upon a wrong but what
you had something to do with the Christ. How
much can Christ do for you? Everything! You
leave the future to Him. If any man here has
been thinking wrong and thinking lightly about it
and thrusting from him the thought of to-morrow or
that far off, shadowy future, where his evil may
be buried in oblivion for ever, let him make no mis
take about it. Halt just where you are and turn
back upon that road and go back to the height
from which you have come down. The only place
of safety is here. The further on, the deeper
doom. It may cost something. What does that matter?
There is only one thing you have to think about at
this time, that is, get rid of everything that is base
and unholy and impure ! Down with it ! Let the
Christ be glorified in your life. For already the
hand of that same Christ is at work here, and all
that needs to be done to rescue you from the grip
of the adversary He will do. He can remit all the
consequences of evil if He pleases. He hath suffered
for the sin of the world. But you must not make
terms with Him. What you must do is to cut off
the hand if it be necessary, lop off the foot, pluck
out the eye. But be right with God rather than
wrong with the dominion of the whole world.
And if you do, the day will come, perhaps it will
not be so very far distant, when you will hear

1 68 THE LAW OF RETRIBUTION
the same Jesus speak again, and this is what He will
say: —
" Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the
Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world."

THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING

The following sermon was preached because of a confession made
to me of mistaken loyalty on the part of one or two people,
resulting in what amounted to a deliberate breach of the law of
God. It suddenly struck me that beneath those unhappy histories
there was something in its essence good and noble, and which
might be turned to high account. The woman who shielded her
husband in his continued practice of cheating someone else, and
the man who was prepared to give up church and Christ and
splendid usefulness for the sake of a fashionable, worldly young
woman, whom he could obtain on no other terms, were here
described. To particularise too plainly might have caused offence,
so the lesson of the highest self-offering was pointed out through
other lives

11 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his
son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said,
Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thy
hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him : For now I know
that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only
son, from me." — Genesis xxii. 10, n, 12.
Here is an instructive, and, rightly understood, an
inspiring incident, and yet it is one to which justice
has seldom been done. Much has been spoken and
written concerning it, but the commentators have
often wandered sadly from the point. Even King
James's translators appear to have misunderstood or
only partially comprehended the significance of it.
The title they give to the chapter is " Abraham
tempted to offer Isaac." " He giveth proof of his
faith and obedience." Apparently those seventeenth
century scholars considered that the chapter should
be thought of as the trial of Abraham's faith. I
would rather call it the raising or the purifying of
Abraham's faith. They would almost give us the
idea that God needed to discover something about
Abraham. The truth is, this chapter teaches us
that Abraham had to discover something about God.
God did not tempt Abraham to any deed of violence.
Instead of that He raised the faith of Abraham and

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the service and even the character of Abraham to a
higher level than they had ever occupied before.
Modern biblical criticism, or some part of it, has
gone to quite the other extreme. I need hardly tell
this congregation that there are biblical scholars who
believe and teach that Abraham was a myth, that
this story is a legend, that it may have ethical value,
and so on, but we must not look upon it as literal
history. Well, frankly, it matters not to me if it
were so, because it is true of some servant of God in
every generation, and the offering of Isaac is repeated
and consummated perhaps every day in the year in
this very land of ours. But for all that I think it is
historically true, and true just as it stands. And I
think so on the ground of what we may regard as
internal criticism. Let us try to put ourselves
sympathetically in the place of this man who offered
his beloved in reality to God, whether he sacrificed
him or no.
Abraham was little better than an Arab sheik,
brought up amidst surroundings as widely different
from yours or mine as it is possible to suppose.
Yet he had the same moral problems to meet, the
same decisions to give, the same God to serve. He
was so far different from those in the midst of whom
he lived that he could not bring himself to believe
in a god who was worshipped by sensuality and by
shame, but in a God whose nature was righteous
ness. This it is that marks Abraham off from his
times and entitles him to our respect and to the

THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING 173
name of the friend of God. But he had been
educated, too, within a circle of ideas the influence
of which he could not escape, any more than you
and I can escape the intellectual environment of our
own time. Religion was often a matter of human
sacrifice, of horror, of terror and of woe. Religion
has been made such in many generations in the
history of mankind. We have not to travel very
far from this spot to find that in a measure it is so
to-day— a thing of woe and darkness rather than of
joy and light.
Abraham, however, having discovered his God
of righteousness, now proceeds to test himself
with regard to the validity of all earthly affec
tion, and I can imagine, as he feels his pride,
his fatherly pride in his dear son, growing
day by day, that the influence of early training
would sometimes come over him. He would feel
at the bottom of his heart a certain misgiving as
to the purity and Tightness of this love. " Ought
I to care so much for my boy? Am I keeping
back from God something that ought to be His?
Am I, in fact, worshipping another god than the
God I have found ? Is Isaac mine or His ? Would
it be a sublime thing, in fact, does God want it —
that I offer my boy, as my father and my father's
father have offered their boys to their gods ? "
Then the moment comes, the resolution is taken,
he sets out upon his journey, and the lad who is
to be his victim accompanies him, unquestioning,

174 THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING
for Isaac had a part in this event. And still think
ing and still troubling over the question, they arrive
at the mount of sacrifice. Abraham binds him who
is dearer than life itself to the old man, lays him on
the altar, and prepares for the last dread blow.
But he cannot deliver it. As he looks at his victim
who has so often lain in his arms he lifts the knife,
but puts it down again. Can he strike? His re
ligion and the ideas of worship in which he was
trained tell him to deal the blow and get it over.
Something else cries, "Hold! lay not thine hand
upon the lad." This was a moral crisis and a
terrible crisis, too, for Abraham ; and it is because
of the vividness with which it is pictured here that
I venture to think, critic or no critic, it took place.
He looks at his lad, he looks at his knife, and then
the highest prevails. It was as though an angel
spoke to him, for God did speak in the mind
of this heroic, single-minded servant, who with
a very dim light shining in his soul chose to serve
at his best. He let the knife fall, and, clasping
his hands, lifted his face to heaven and spoke thus
— these words ought to be put into his mouth
rather than into the mouth of the angel — " My
God, I shall not lay my hand upon the lad, Thy
gift to me. I shall not do anything to him save
love him as I did before. For Thou knowest that
I fear Thee. Were there anything grand and
good for which to give my child, Thou shouldst
have him. I would not withhold my son, mine

THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING 175
only son, from Thee. It is not blood wherewith
I serve Thee, but love, and if love called for
blood it should be given, but Thou hast not called
for blood this day." Thus the voice of the angel
spoke in Abraham's own heart.
Abraham's highest self-offering was made when
he was ready to give, if occasion demanded, if
anything high and noble and true called for it,
the life of his son, his own life of lives. " He
hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and
what doth the Lord require of thee but to deal
justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with
Him?" From this incident, in all probability, sprang the
higher religion which marks off Israel from the
kindred peoples from which Israel came. If
Abraham had not seen at the altar that human
sacrifice, as such, did not please God, but the
highest sacrifice of all, which would allow nothing
to stand between the soul and righteousness,
there would have been no chosen people. Israel
would never have been born but for Abraham's per
ception of this great spiritual truth. And some
thing more is shown to us in this very chapter, which
I think the commentators have missed — " Jehovah
Jireh " — " The Lord will provide " is the translation.
Better still, " The Lord will see." The Lord Who
searches the heart knows what Abraham would do if
righteousness needed, knows what he would give if
love of truth commanded. There is no barrier between

176 THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING
earthly love and heavenly love. " The Lord will see,"
as the Lord hath seen. Here was the highest self-
offering of which the soul was capable. He was
offering that which was dearer to him than life itself.
The principle herein declared, the situation herein
described, has repeated itself in human history a
thousand times since that far-off day — a thousand
times ? — may be a thousand thousand times. It
teaches us this — God requires no meaningless sacri
fice from any man. I said, no meaningless sacri
fice, but there are occasions in life when earthly
affection has to be sacrificed to eternal truth, when a
lower love has to be offered up in the name of a
higher. Well is it for him who can discern the
occasion when it comes.
To illustrate what I am here teaching, let me refer
you to two incidents, which I think separately I have
mentioned to you before. One I take from Professor
Lecky's "History of European Morals." In his
account of mediaeval monasticism, Mr Lecky gives an
illustration, told in the monastic chronicles them
selves, to this effect. A father, weary of the world
and the world's ideals, one day appears at the gate of
a monastery, leading by the hand his little son. You
will be wise enough and large-minded enough to say
along with me that, in that grim and barbarous time,
a monastery represented the nearest approach to the
Christian ideal that was to be found. This man
wanted to flee the world and all its tumults, all its
rewards likewise, and chose instead the service of

THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING 177
God as he saw it. He was received at the monas
tery gate, but on condition that he submitted himself
to every test of his sincerity. These men were
grimly in earnest, indeed, who lived within the
cloistered walls. They took his little boy away from
him, clothed him in rags, beat and tortured him in
the presence of the father, starved him whilst the
company ate — could the father eat, I wonder ? Day
after day and week after week went by, the child
growing thinner and thinner and sadder and sadder.
The father steeled his heart, believing that this was
the service of the living God. He was saving his own
soul by crucifying his flesh and blood, by trampling,
as he was being taught, on earthly affection. The
hour came when the supreme test was applied. The
abbot bade him take his child in his arms, carry him
to the river that ran past the monastery, and fling
him in. The father obeyed without question. Poor
child, I wonder what he thought as he lay in these
callous arms. But at the moment when the deed
was to be done the abbot's hand stayed the man, as
the voice of the angel had stayed Abraham. " Now
we know," was the verdict, " your sincerity. Now
we are aware that nothing will stand between you
and Christ. Your soul is saved, come back, spare
your child."
Before I comment upon this incident, let me place
another beside it ; then perhaps but little comment
will be needed. I have here what is to me a very
precious book, an old edition of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's
M

178 THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING
Progress," in which there is a memoir of the author,
that great preacher and saint, one of the noblest
vindicators of the form of religion under which
you and I worship to-day. John Bunyan went to
prison for his faith, in a day when it meant much
to suffer, and he endured within those prison
walls some things which were harder than death.
He was brought before his judges, and was told,
so he tells it in his own words, " Hear your judg
ment. You must be taken back again to the prison,
there to lie during the king's pleasure. If you
do not submit to go to Church and hear divine
service and leave your preaching, you must be
banished this realm, and after that if you shall be
found in this realm without special licence from the
king you must hang by the neck till you are dead.
And so," said Bunyan, " he bade my gaoler have
me away." The hero answered thus — " I am at a
point with you. If I were out of prison to-day I
would preach the gospel again to-morrow by the
help of God." If the narrative stopped even there
it would be inspiring. We should feel that was
a true man, and a brave and a humble. He made
no oration. His speech was a good deal shorter than
his judges', but nothing more needed to be said.
But now there came the parting from his wife and
children, and in his own vivid phraseology it is
thus described. " Oh, the thought of the hardship
to my poor blind child. I thought it would break
my heart in pieces. It was as the pulling of the

THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING 179
flesh from my bones. I saw I was as a man who
was pulling down his house upon the heads of his
wife and children." I think I can quote the rest
myself. Speaking of the poor blind child who came
day by day to the prison to take away the little
work by which Bunyan was able to support them
all in some degree, he said, " Poor child ! how hard
it is like to go with thee in this world. Thou must
be beaten, must suffer hunger, cold, and nakedness,
and yet I cannot endure that even the wind should
blow upon thee." Do we not feel, you and I, that
in this speech there was something almost tragical ?
Here was a man to whom the stake would have
meant nothing, a man who could have faced torture
and shame and death with equanimity. He was
putting on the altar that day what was dearer to
him than a thousand lives. His blind child, his wife,
his other dear ones, were offered to the service
of the Most High and for love of Jesus Christ.
Now we will take our mediaeval saint again. The
two incidents look very much alike. Are they?
They are infinitely apart. The one is squalid, the
other is sublime. The would-be saint's offering was
fanaticism born of selfishness. He was saving his
soul at the cost of his child. Bunyan's was the
supremest form of self-sacrifice of which he was
capable. These two men take us back to Abraham and
that altar on the top of Mount Moriah. Abraham
might have been like the mediaeval saint, and he

180 THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING
might have struck his blow, but something higher
stayed his hand, and that something higher was the
spirit that controlled Bunyan; the prayer which is
here put into the mouth of the angel, was a sort of
hymn of praise to the God Whom he had discovered,
Who asks for the highest, not the lowest, Who will
be content with nothing less. He was prepared for
sacrifice if love and honour and duty and heroism
called for it. But they did not call, so the lad was
spared. The particular had given way to the uni
versal, the temporal had given way to the eternal.
The question most men have to face some time or
other is — What shall we do when the highest form
of giving is asked for, the yielding of love in the
name of righteousness ? Abraham's answer you
have, Bunyan's only expresses it a little more
vividly. We know, then, what God requires of
us. Now, brethren, to bring the matter still more
plainly home to our consciousness, let me adduce
modern experience. To-day is yours and mine. It
is but a year or two since England was stirred at
the news that Lord Roberts had been commanded
to go to the front and direct the movements of the
British troops in South Africa. In a dark hour of
the history of his country he went — it was a darker
hour in his own. His boy had fallen on the field
of Colenso, and I who speak to you to-night went
to see the spot where he fell, and stood on it, and
thought what I am now telling you. We were all

THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING 181
greatly moved with admiration when the veteran,
without a word about his own sorrow, went bravely
to the front at the call of duty. He was serving
his country, not counting the cost, and it does not
matter to us at the moment whether the service in
which he was engaged was (so far as the policy is
concerned) right or wrong. He was right to go.
The sympathetic fibre in our hearts is touched for
this reason — that man if he had had another son,
would have laid him down if England had wanted
him. Now England called for the father himself.
Would he have given more gladly his life or his
boy ? The question need not be answered. Lord
Roberts gave his son and gave himself, he gave
himself in his son before he ever saw South
Africa. Well, now, I have instanced a man in high station.
I am going to tell you about another whom you
do not know, and perhaps only two people in this
congregation do know. A man who never had
more than thirty shillings a week in his life, but
he did as much as, or more, than Lord Roberts.
He stood exactly in the position in which Abraham
stood on Mount Moriah. A working man in
Brighton, a man of sterling character and moral
worth, of delicate health, who had known struggle
all his days, but who, unlike so many of his fellows,
fears God and keeps His commandments, gave this
as the explanation of his conduct in an hour of
confidence to me. He said, " I was the son of a

1 82 THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING
man who had still less in his best days than I have
ever had to spend. I was brought up in a poor
home, all the poorer for the incident that made me
what I hope I am." His father had been turned
away from his work because he could and would
not do a mean and shabby and wicked thing.
He would not lie away his manhood, and he
would not cheat another man's rights out of
existence. The alternative was presented to him,
"Comply or you go." He thought about his
wife and children, laid them on the altar of duty,
and went. "And," says my friend (for I am
proud to claim him as a friend), " I was the only
one of the family old enough to know what it had
cost my father. He did not tell me, it was my
mother. As she cut the last loaf for the children
her tears were falling fast over the bread, and I
questioned her to know why. She took me aside
and explained, and I have never forgotten how my
heart swelled and my bosom throbbed as in sympathy
I took my stand with my father. She said, ' He is
a true man, he has done right. We must praise
God, we must trust Him for our bread.'" He
continued, "They were hard times and anxious.
We came through at last, but in a manner of
speaking we never got back where my father volun
tarily stepped from. But, oh, don't I love and
revere his memory ! All that is good in me to-day
I feel I owe to that man's influence and example.
He was a father of whom to be proud, a man of God ! "

THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING 183
Brethren, there are so few of these fathers in
this England of ours to-day that some of us are
beginning to wonder whether her glory is over.
You would not have to ask the question if you
could multiply that man by a hundred thousand.
The destiny of our nation would be safe.
It was Abraham's principle again. God asked
for something, not that He did not know what His
servant would do, but His servant had to know it,
like Abraham as he stood at the altar counting the
cost. His decision was this : —
" Because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."
So on the altar, like Bunyan, he put his wife and
babes, came out a hero and a conqueror for the
living God.
You and I may have to be confronted with this
very question in some other form. I think this
man of the Bible did not solve it any more truly
than the working man at Brighton, and we read the
Bible wrong and mistake its significance if we think
Abraham had any greater help to rescue him or any
severer tests to pass through or any deeper spiritual
questions to solve than you or I. Abraham's God is my
God, your God, the God of my Brighton friend, and
it is his question we have to solve in another form.
May we never mistake its meaning. Sometimes you
may stumble into the blunder of Mr Lecky's
mediaeval saint, or you may rise to the height of
Bunyan and the Brighton working man. Which

1 84 THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING
shall it be? I have heard people say things like
this, "God knows I loved that lad too much, so He
took him away. He left me lonely and left me sad,
but then I ought not to have loved anyone in
excess." Or I have heard the word of warning:
"Mother, father, do not adore that child as you do.
Do not pour your affection upon him without reserve
as you are in danger of doing. Oh, be careful, be
cause he may be taken from you. You may be
loving him too much." Beloved, that is a lie! We
never love anyone too much. God never asks from
any man anything approaching to the sacrifice of
noble affection. I am aware that there is something
here that savours of the sacrifice that Bunyan made
and that Abraham was willing to make, but the
form in which the question is put savours more of
Abraham's decision on the sacrificial morning. We
never love too much, we only love too little. God
is not a jealous God in that sense, that you are to
take your child out of His way because He will be
first. The prophet saw clearer who said, " If a man
love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can
he love God Whom he hath not seen ? " But there
is a love for which men and women will sin. The
wife will lie for the husband, mothers will do wrong
for their children, fathers will sin for home, friend
will sacrifice to the devil for friend. Know, then,
that in every case where such decision is taken you
have sacrificed husband, wife, child, self, to the
lower, and not to the higher. The highest love is

THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING 185
the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and by
that I mean the love of Christ which never spared,
never will spare those whom He calls. He will have
the highest, and the highest self-offering may mean,
often does mean, Calvary. I wonder what the
mother of Jesus thought when she saw Him hanging,
agonising, dying, upon the cross. He did not spare
her, because His Father had not given Him the
word to come down from the cross. He hung there,
and she suffered in Him. I wonder what Peter
thought when he learned what it meant to follow
the Nazarene after all. He had denied Him to save
his own life, afraid of the lash in Pilate's hall when
he saw it lacerating his Master's back — poor timid
Galilean, afraid, yet loving all the time. But when
the awful crisis was past and he met his Master
again and sobbed out his shame and his sorrow, there
was a new Peter. What did life mean now ? Jesus
promised no bed of roses, no fine time in this world,
but He promised him a reward of which the world
could not rob him, and I think I would rather have
been Peter than Pilate a thousand times. Pilate had
his chance and lost it, Peter had his again and took
it. He went to stripes, imprisonment, contumely,
shame, the cross — the actual wooden cross, upon
which Peter died for His Master. That is the love
of Christ, which passeth knowledge, for where is
Peter to-day ? Nearer, perhaps, than you and I think.
Heaven might press through this wall of film, and
show us how things really are. What is death?

1 86 THE HIGHEST SELF-OFFERING
Nothing. Life is everything. " Fear not them that
kill the body and after that have no more that they
can do." But fear surrender to the base, fear to
trifle with noble love, fear to stain with mud and
dirt the affection which God has given you. Give
all to Him. Consecrate all earth's affection at the
altar, and if from the altar you must go to Calvary,
then go ! Love's highest is called for, the worthiest,
the only one which you can offer in the presence
of the Lamb of God. If you give it, you shall
find your soul again, higher, purer, in the glory land.
For in heaven all that you have ever loved that was
worth loving, in heaven all that you have ever served
that was worth serving, is in the keeping of the
Lord Jesus. That Friend who never failed a friend
has in reserve for you everything you have offered
Him. Oh, if men knew what a blunder sin is, if
they knew how little it was worth while to trifle
with the opportunity that God gives, no altar would
be set up by the hand divine on which we would
be unwilling to place ourselves or lay the nearest
and the dearest if God and the kingdom of heaven
required it.
Let nothing stand between you and God and
truth and right. The highest service you can
render to a dear one is to love him too much to
sin for him.
If any affection asks you to be disloyal to God
and right and truth, nail it on the cross. It is
your best course with what God has given you.

THE HIGHEST. SELF-OFFERING 187
Here, it may be, I am coming closer to your ex
perience. How do I know but that I am speaking
to some person who is tempted for love's sake to
compromise with what you know to be good ?
Never do it. Never stand for a moment in the
presence of the adversary of your souls. Away
with everything that hinders your approach to God.
There may be those here who have known home
tragedies too dreadful to be named in the public
place. You perhaps know, mother, father, what
David felt when in the line of his duty he sent
an army against his son. You know that cry of
agony that was wrung from his royal heart, " O,
Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom ! would God
I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son ! "
My friend, if there be any temptation upon your
road which means surrender to a false love, I
beseech you to have done with it. God will take
you through, prepare Himself a lamb for the burnt
offering. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
Stern and even terrible sometimes is the love of
God, but it never fails the loved. Hold on to it,
and it will save you. Hear the words of one who
gave all that man could give to the service of the
living God : "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."

THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE

There is a pathetic story attaching to the sermon which bears this
title. I had in mind a good man whose quiet work in London
many people have reason to thank God for, but who in his time
has sinned and suffered deeply. There are few men for whom I
have a greater respect, but not until lately have I been able to
persuade him to put an end to his mournful habit of retrospection.
He has allowed the consequences of one sad mistake to cloud the
whole of his spiritual life. What he is principally slow to see is
that self-reproach carried to excess is a form of unfaith. A full
salvation is inconsistent with longing and regret for a day that is
dead. Too great a readiness to turn one's back upon the past is a
mark of shallowness, but the opposite is a kind of spiritual sombre-
ness. There are many who fall into both errors.

XI

"And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the
water of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate I " — 2 Sam. xxiii.
'5-
There are some characters in song and story which
have the power of impressing posterity with some
thing of the charm felt in their presence by their
contemporaries. It is not always easy to say just
why. For instance, a book just issued gives us yet
one more study added to the numerous and appar
ently never-ending series of studies of the character
and career of Mary Queen of Scots. Even to
English people, Mary Queen of Scots is always
profoundly interesting. Can you tell me why?
Some would say, "Yes, because such a mystery
surrounds her career." That is not all : mystery
surrounds many other people, but we are not all
interested in solving it. The fact is there is some
thing distinctly human about the character of Mary
Queen of Scots. There is something in her which
vibrates in the great heart of humanity the wide
world over. That is why, with all her sin and
sorrow, we feel her to be so truly typical of the
experiences which are repeating themselves in every
century and generation.
Such a character again is that of Alexander the

192 THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE
Great. His soldiers would have died for him
willingly ; they asked no greater honour, no higher
ideal, than to perish in the sight of Alexander,
doing his bidding, winning his battles. As we look
back we can hardly understand why ; yet Alexander
lives for us as he lived for them : we feel him to be
a real personality. Amid all the shadowy figures of
history a man like this stands right out. Why is
it ? Why, in spite of his sensational ambition, there
was something wonderfully human, rich, and deep
in the character of Alexander. Closer to our own
history and experience, perhaps, we come when we
name King Alfred. Little is known about Alfred
that is authentic ; his name and work come down
to us through the mists of legend. We cannot see
distinctly the face of the great Saxon king, but he
has cast a spell over us as he has cast a spell over
many Englishmen since his own day. Why is it ?
This time because, however apocryphal the stories
may be which are told about him, we feel the spell
of personal goodness : it is a real man and a true
that looks out upon us from that far century. Such
a character again is Queen Elizabeth. Never was a
British sovereign served by a nobler or greater band
of men than stood around the throne of the maiden
queen. There are flaws in that great character.
A woman truly on some sides of her nature, she
seemed to be a wild beast on others. The very
men who served her best were by her lightly and
easily forgotten. Yet Cromwell said — and we echo

THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE 193
Cromwell's words, looking back as he looked —
" Queen Elizabeth of famous memory. We need not
be ashamed to call her so." To a Scottish audience
I would adduce as a similar figure in history, loom
ing large and clear, Bonnie Prince Charlie. Of all
the beautiful songs ever written or sung north of
the Tweed, none excel those that have been com
posed concerning the personality of Prince Charles.
Was he good ? I am afraid I cannot say as much
as that. How he falsified the promises of youth,
this man who spent his days in lust and debauchery,
and filled a drunkard's grave at last ! Yet every
person who reads his biography is touched by it,
and feels a certain thrill of sympathy for Bonnie
Prince Charlie and for his fate. Something clings
to his personality that redeems him, in spite of his
faults, and we can hardly say just what it is.
I have named a long series : we feel as if we
have personal acquaintance with each of them.
We cannot say just why it is they stand out, except
it was that they are typical of humanity, as a whole,
in its sins and sorrows, good and evil, joy and pain.
They sounded the depths, they rose to the heights.
Humanity vibrates in sympathy with such careers.
Distinctively such was King David. I have purposely
named these great ones of antiquity one by one,
because I thought you might like to hear why it is
that we feel that had we to place them in sequence
we might place this Old Testament character first.
Everybody feels that he knows King David. I
N

194 THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE
always feel as if I could recognise him in the street.
We are not afraid of him at all ; we are not awed
by his majesty. We feel a certain sympathy and
kinship with his character. Why is it ? Just for
the same reason as those whom I have already
named come home to us. It is because of some
thing distinctively human, real, deep, and true in
the nature of this Israelitish king. Oh, he sinned
deeply, he repented agonisingly, he suffered greatly,
he won grandly. He is described as a man after
God's own heart ; but that was not because he
never sinned a sin or never made a mistake. Take
his life. Here was an adulterer, a man of treachery,
lust, and evil; a man who sunk as low as it is
possible for a man to do, and retain anything to
which we can give the name of manhood ; yet, in
spite of it all, we feel as if there were something
generous, noble, child-like, in the nature of King
David, which showed itself time and again, and
stamps him truly human. This was the man who
loved Jonathan, who mourned for Absalom. In
all history, in all literature, there is no more
pathetic cry than the cry that went up from that
bereaved father's heart : " O my son Absalom, my
son, my son Absalom ! Would God I had died for
thee, O Absalom, my son, my son ! " That alone
would bring us close to the heart of King David,
but here in this chapter is told a simple incident
that shows us something like the spell of Alexander
upon his followers. David had around him mighty

THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE 195
men, who loved, worshipped, followed, would have
laid down their lives for him. One day, toward
the end of his life, the weary old king, looking
back upon the scenes of his childhood, murmurs a
prayer aloud, and the dull ears of the mighty men
catch it. They speed to gratify his wish ; they
do it at the j eopardy of their lives. It was a grand
deed. " Oh," cried the king, " that one would
give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem,
which is by the gate ! " When they had brought
it, their own blood being the price of it, and placed
it in his hands, he could not drink it. " Be it far
from me, O Lord, that I should do this : is not this
the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of
their lives ? " Therefore, he would not drink it,
but poured it out unto the Lord. I say there is
something dramatic there, something beautifully
human, something grand on both sides. David
was no less typically human, standing on his
pedestal, than were the three mighty men who
won for him the drink that he said he longed for.
Do you think they brought David precisely what
he wanted? No; the mighty men missed seeing
something that you and I can see now, looking
back. David was a poet, a seer ; the tongue that
uttered this prayer was one which, though it may
not have uttered it for the first time, must have sung
in the house of God : "The Lord is my Shepherd,
I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in
green pastures, He leadeth me beside the waters of

196 THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE
rest." It was David the poet who spoke. The
weary old man, drawing toward the evening of his
days, looking back upon the Bethlehem of his youth,
where he used to keep his father's sheep in the
fold, and thinking of the long, dreary pilgrimage
between that day and this, utters, almost in the
spirit of the Shepherd Psalm, the plaint and the
prayer, "Oh, that I could go back; oh, that one
would give me to drink of the water of the well of
Bethlehem ! " An impossible prayer. The king
could not be the shepherd boy again ; the innocence
of his joyous youth was past. But I think I know
what he felt, and so do you. Recently I went to
visit a spot where some of my childhood's days were
spent, and some of the very happiest I have ever
spent anywhere. I went to look at the old scenes
that I thought I remembered so well. It was a sad
vision. The old home was in ruins in the ground ;
a little way up the road there was a spring well,
by the side of which I used, as a boy, to play.
I saw so many changes that I did not even want
to go and look. But a kind friend took me as
guide. " Good water, Mr Campbell," he said.
"I know that," I replied; but I did not drink it.
David did not want that water, he wanted childhood
again, and childhood's radiance, sweetness and purity.
I think I felt just a little as David must have felt.
The water was no good to him. He could not
go back ; you and I cannot go back.
Is there a single person who does not feel some-

THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE 197
thing of this in his experience? There may be
some who do not look back upon their child
hood with anything approaching pleasure. I see
one man whose childhood was one long tragedy.
Now the Lord has led him to a large place ;
but for the most of us it is not so. We look
back for something, we can hardly describe what ;
but something we miss in life as it is. We were
nearer to heaven, to reality, to sweetness once —
or so we sometimes feel — than we are to-day.
Gazing into your faces, I read history in every one
— moral experience chiselled in. Some of you
look careworn, tired, unable for the burden of
life ; some as though you are ready to lay it
down. Others standing up to it, as it were,
strong, rich, full in your manhood ; but you bear
the scars, and on every one of you is the hand
writing of time, pain, sorrow. Do you never look
wistfully back, wish you had your opportunities
again, feel as though you would make a better
thing of life, with fewer mistakes, fewer things
to regret if you could only start once more? Do
you think about the chequered way that you have
come? And now with David's experience, you are
living through your happy childhood, when you
knew nothing about life as you know it now.
Some of you never dreamed of being in the City
Temple this morning, and you wish that everything
during the last five, ten, or twenty years, which
has culminated in your being in this place this

1 98 THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE
morning could be blotted out. You were in a
holier once, or so you feel, when you lisped your
prayer beside your mother's knee, when you lived
under the shadow of your father's good name.
Love came then, and made life richer and fuller ;
sorrow followed it, and made it darker and emptier;
sin came, and blackened it. The old home is gone ;
the old environment, the sweet fleckless experience,
so heavenly, so pure. " Oh, for a drink of the
water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the
gate ! " David longs and • says. There are more
poets than David to say it for us ; and many a
poet has said it since. One of the greatest of
our own, reared as it were in our very atmosphere,
writes thus : —
" As life wanes, all its strife and care and toil
Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees
Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass
Of climbing plants, heavy with bloom and dew
The morning swallows, with their songs like words —
All these seem clear and only worth our thought."
Browning and Tennyson changed roles for once —
it is the latter that strikes the sublimer as well as
the more familiar note : —
" Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O sea !
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me."
" Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea !

THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE 199
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."
This is a very natural feeling, and there are many
ways of treating it ; here is one — I name it only
to reject it — the way of Cynicism and Pessimism.
It is to steel heart and mind against melancholy,
remorse, and even affectionate regret. You may
pass a day in comparative quiet if you try not to
feel, not to realise, not to look back.
" Ah ! my beloved, fill the cup that clears
To-day of past regrets and future fears ;
To-morrow ! — why, to-morrow I may be
Myself with yesterday's sev'n thousand years."
That will not satisfy except for a moment. We
may all feel ourselves in that mood, but we do not
stay there. The Persian poet himself did not ;
he knew that there was another and higher way.
It is this — to realise that true life, the life of
the soul, never grows old, although it grows up.
Our true home never is, never was, amid the
symbols and shadows of time, but in the grand
reality of eternity. The well of Bethlehem in the
morning — there is no turning back to it in the after
noon. There is a farther, a more glorious morning,
a deeper, a nobler, a purer draught from the waters of
God, the waters of rest. The soul in growing older
is not farther from God than in the days of sweet in
nocence. To turn in simplest, most childlike trust to
God, truth, heaven, wherever you are and however
you are, is to drink deep of the water of ageless life.

2oo THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE
I have now come to the point where I must go
to humanity's purest teacher. We shall take our
stand by the Son of Man, the human Christ, as
He sits weary on the well of Samaria. Try for
one moment to do this in reality. Here is Jesus
treading life's dusty pathway, feeling as you and
I often feel, knowing, as you and I know life
with its trials, disappointments, sorrows, failures,
its beginnings again ; living through it all, never
defeated by it. Here sits Jesus weary with
the greatness of the way, like ourselves wanting
human sympathy, and, as we so often are, re
fused. " Give me to drink," pleads the Son of
Man ; and the answer is dislike, prejudice, ignorance.
Then the Divine remonstrance comes, " If thou
knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith
unto thee, Give Me to drink, thou wouldst have
asked of Him, and He would have given thee
living water. Whoso drinketh of this water shall
thirst again, but whoso drinketh of the water that I
shall give him shall never thirst. But it shall be in
him a well of water, springing up unto eternal life."
This was the water for which David thirsted
when the poet-king uttered his longing cry for
the water of the well of Bethlehem, he was
looking back to the life of the child, but I think
in his heart was the longing for the life of the
saint. Can we feel as David must have felt at that
time? Looking back along the road of life, what
did he see ? There is Shimei, flying, cursing him,

THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE 201
and throwing dust upon him as he walks with bowed
and stricken head. Yonder in the wood hangs the
body of his dearest loved son, who has lifted his
hand against his father's throne and his father's life.
Yonder, again, he sees Israel exulting, he hears the
shout of his people going up in acclamation when
the fearless shepherd boy comes from his seclusion
to strike down Israel's tyrant. A proud moment,
but David does not want that moment again. Now
he sees in the hand of the great king, whom it is
his privilege and duty to soothe, the poised javelin,
ready to be thrown. Now he is fleeing for his life,
hunted like a partridge on the hill ; now his arms
are round about Jonathan. And, again, Jonathan
dead, Saul gone, David king — strong, unscrupulous,
guilty, taking Bathsheba to his bosom, Uriah
gasping his last at the front of the fighting-line,
slain by the lust and the treachery of him who was
after God's own heart. Now he seems to see again
the sombre figure of the prophet of God entering
into his presence in the midst of his splendour, pomp,
and triumph — " Thou art the man ! " and the voice
of conscience re-echoed the voice of the prophet.
" Oh," thinks the weary old king, drawing near to
the end, "If I could but go back! Oh, for a drink
of the water of the well of Bethlehem. Oh, for
childhood's opportunity ! " That is how some of
us feel amidst the trivialities, absurdities, shams,
meanness, violence of life. Are we not weary,
would we not go back ? But the true and deeper

202 THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE
thought is David's own. Would we not go up ?
Oh, if there be water of life, give me to drink !
O Lord with the pierced hand, no mighty man can
bring me that water, the draught of which means
that I thirst not again. But there is One who
fought His battle for me, and brings it to me, the
crown of thorns upon His head, the mark of the
lacerating spear in His side. With the pierced hand
He gives that cup ; Master from Thy hand we take
it, the water of ageless life.
If this be true, and my whole life is built on it,
and my whole task here springs from deepest sincerity
concerning it, I want you to do something to-day, do
it now. I address first, it may be, that young man
who has been in London I know not how long, but
long enough to learn the ways of sin. There are
some things he wishes he had never looked upon, some
words he had better never have heard, some deeds he
had better never have done. Oh, cursed wisdom!
Give me back my innocence! Here is another in whom
the vexations, disappointments, crushing sorrows of
life have succeeded in dulling the spiritual suscepti
bility. Such a one does not look up any more, the
soul is silent towards God. You are no longer
capable of high expectation or high enthusiasm.
Again, look at that man who once was a success
like King David in his heyday. This man of
business was once a man of power, of influence, but
in an evil moment success tempted him to that
which in his conscience, he knew to be wrong ! he

THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE 203
has been hurled down from his eminence, and life
is a tragic failure for him to-day. His heart is full
of bitterness and self-loathing. Yet for the moment
he thinks, If I could begin again ! Oh, for a drink of
the water of the well of Bethlehem that is at the gate
of manhood ! How different it might be ! Now
listen to me. You are only a child still, everyone
of you. You thought you had gone a long way
from God, and so in experience you did. But the
Father cared too much for you to allow you to do
it with impunity. You have paid for your ex
perience, sometimes in sharpest discipline, sometimes
in deepest sorrow. "Shall not the Judge of all
the earth do right ? " Pray your prayer like a
child ; there is no going back ; God in His mercy
has closed that door ; the way is up.
" We have passed age's icy caves
And manhood's dark and tossing waves,
And youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray.
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
Of shadow-peopled infancy,
Through death and birth to a diviner day."
Permit the paradox — some men by their sin open
the gateway to saintship. Of course, that is not
true as it stands, nothing ever is ; but I will illustrate
it. A dear friend of mine, a minister, speaking
to me about the life history of one whom I knew
almost as well as he, told me about a blot in that
particular career. He said, " I have never known
a man of greater promise, of greater natural endow-

204 THIRSTING FOR THE WATER OF LIFE
ments ; but he sinned one sin which the world will
not forgive, and it seemed as if the door of useful
service were slammed in his face. I think he has
mourned every day of his life since in sackcloth and
ashes, because of that one delirious moment when he
sinned the sin which the world will not forgive, but
perhaps upon which God looks with kinder eye."
He added that the following question was put to him
by one of those busybodies who try to keep a raw
wound open. I loathe the very sight of them, and
I think I am fairly tolerant ; but there is one type
of character I cannot endure, and that is the man
who looks for the worst in his neighbour, keeps
open the guilty record, and passes on the story, grim
and dirty though it be. He came to my friend and
said, " What do you think ? You know So-and-So ?
Such-and-such happened in that year. I don't think
you ought to be with him so much. What do you
think about it?" "I think," was the reply, "that
when he fell, God, by the exposure, by the swiftness
of the chastisement that followed, gave him the
opportunity of becoming a saint. He took it."
Yes, brethren, it would be safest to take that way.
We cannot go back to Bethlehem ; we do not want
to, but we can go forward, past Calvary to the
eternal hills, and drink of the river of life. And
the spirits and the saints say, Come. And let him
that heareth say, Come, And let him that is athirst
come. And whosoever will, let him take the water
of life freely.

BURNING— UNCONSUMED

No one particular circumstance brought forth the following sermon.
Rather it was suggested by a series of accumulated incidents ; so
many people came or wrote to me concerning the belittling effect
of petty every day problems, limited horizons, galling domestic mis
fits, and uninspiring vocations. Meditating how best to help them,
there came to me the thought that the source of disquiet in every
instance lay in failure to discover the light of God in the common
things of life. To grapple with even the most ordinary problems
of existence a man must idealise bis real. He who has eyes to see
may behold what Moses saw — the splendour of God in the wayside
task. It may not be out of place to state that God greatly blessed
this sermon in helping many hearers to see amid their daily tasks
the " light that never was on sea or land."

XII

"And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out
of the midst of a bush ; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with
fire, and the bush was not consumed." — Exoous iii. s.
The event to which our text alludes is one of the
greatest which has ever taken place in the history
of mankind, although it seems so humble and so
little noteworthy in itself. By this I mean that its
effects, in accumulating sequence, have been pro
foundly significant and tremendous. No one requires
to ask why. There are a few things in history upon
which all civilisation, all human well-being, all
possibility of moral advance, appear to turn, and
this is one of them. It is no exaggeration to say
that what we reverence most in our life to-day, the
things by which we live and for which we would
die, were locked up with Moses at Horeb on the
day about which we have been reading. I am
not inclined to dispute about the historicity of
Moses and his work for Israel, and the account
of himself that he has put into these pages, nor,
indeed, whether he wrote them at all. The fact
remains that there is just as much evidence for the
historicity of Moses as there is for the historicity of
Justinian, and we have good reason to believe that

208 BURNING— UNCONSUMED
the Jewish leader placed his mark deeper into the
history of mankind than did the Roman Emptor.
Let us try to understand how Moses came to be at
Horeb, and what it was he saw. We cannot under
stand it without following in some detail the account
of his life as it is given in this book.
The child of an enslaved people, his life saved by
the devotion of a mother and sister, who hid him in
the water in which babes of his own age and race
had been thrown to be drowned : discovered by the
daughter of the great King himself: brought up as
a favourite at Court : learned in all the wisdom of
the Egyptians : regarded as the son of Pharaoh's
daughter — here was a gentleman by training,
outlook, environment, everything that the high
civilisation of Egypt could give him at that day.
But when he came to mature years he made a
discovery. Those who had given him birth, those
of his own kith and kin, the race in which he could
discern his own lineaments, were lying under the
oppressor's heel. The cry of Israel was going up
continually to a seemingly deaf God. The lash of
the taskmaster was present with them in all their
daily toil, and their woe was an accumulating totality
which Moses could not contemplate unmoved. So,
as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us,
the hour came when this man — for he was a man —
"refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter." He belonged to the oppressed people,
and with his own people he took his stand. He

BURNING— UNCONSUMED 209
did more than that. He had not been reared a
slave, and, therefore, he was not able to behold
without an attempt to remove it the oppression of
those he loved. He slew an Egyptian to save a
Hebrew, and then fled for his life.
How many years Moses spent in the wilderness
we do not know ; half a life-time it must have been.
He was not a young man on the day of this vision
which we read of in Exodus iii., but we may
understand that all this time, away from the scenes
of his youth, he had been brooding upon the wrongs
of his own people, and wondering how he might
save them. He had heard of Israel's God, because
he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.
Israel did not know as much about Jehovah, perhaps,
as he did ; they had forgotten their Lord. Not so
Moses. On this particular day, as he was leading
his flock towards Horeb, it seems to him as though
Israel's God has come to him, and spoken with him,
and he hears the mandate from heaven : " Go back !
save your people ; lead them forth from the land of
Egypt, and out of the house of bondage." He
questioned within himself as to whether he had seen
rightly and heard truly. "Who am I? — a poor
shepherd of the wilderness, an exile, unprotected,
unknown. Why, the people of Israel themselves
will have forgotten me. Why should I heed ? This
may be an hallucination, and the voice itself the
voice of my own consciousness : who am I to effect
this great deliverance ? " But the vision is still
o

2io BURNING— UNCONSUMED
there, and the voice he still hears, and presently,
unquestioning, he obeys ; and history, as I say, came
to one of its turning-points as Moses moved back to
the land of Egypt, whence he had fled. He goes
to make a nation ; he goes to revive, and, in a sense,
to found, a religion ; he goes — now we are looking
a long way — that Britons might be born, that this
congregation might worship here, that we should
take upon our lips the name of Jesus. Such it was
took place in that far-off day.
Now, I have no mind to say a single word which
would rob this theme of any of its grandeur ; my
aim would rather be to help you to behold it in
greater fulness. I am not sure that many of us are
thinking of it rightly now. I can remember, for
instance, as a child, as doubtless many of you can,
when an illustrated book of Scripture stories was
put into my hands ; and I have fond recollections of
that book, for I spent many happy hours over it. In
it an attempt was made, in rough, inartistic fashion,
to portray what Moses saw in the desert near to
Horeb. A little shrub not much bigger than a goose
berry-bush was on fire ; in the midst of it stood a
shadowy form ; before it knelt Moses, taking off
his sandals. Looking back now, I can see a little
the absurdity of the suggestion of the immature
artist. But are you quite sure that you see any
farther into the mystery even now than the artist
of my youth-time saw ? Let us see whether some
one else has not. I have in my hands an excellent

BURNING— UNCONSUMED 2 1 1
and suggestive little book, " The Education of
Christ," by Professor Ramsay, of the University of
Aberdeen. The purpose of the book is to show
that even Jesus must have been influenced in youth
by the environment in which He was placed, to an
enormous degree, and not least in that environment
was the splendour, the magnificence of the scenery
of the historic neighbourhood in which that youth
was spent. On the mountain sides where Jesus
climbed, Moses or the people of Moses themselves
had stood ; there had taken place some of the most
famous events in the history of Israel. It was im
possible, thinks Professor Ramsay, but that the very
atmosphere of it all, the suggestions of it, the radiat
ing influences thereof passed into the mind, the heart,
and the very fibre of the mental constitution of Jesus
of Nazareth. In working out this thesis, the Pro
fessor has a chapter on what he calls, " The Power
of the Great Plains," and in it he quotes the follow
ing from a novel describing the American prairie.
It is the experience of a cow-boy.
" Two days ago he was riding back, alone, in the afternoon, from
an unsuccessful search after strayed horses, and suddenly, all in the
lifting of a hoof, the weird prairies had gleamed into eerie life,
had dropped the veil and spoken to him ; while the breeze stopped,
and the sun stood still for a flash in waiting for his answer. And
he, his heart in a grip of ice, the frozen flesh a-crawl with terror
upon his loosened bones, white-lipped and wide-eyed with frantic
fear, uttered a yell of horror as he dashed the spurs into his panic-
stricken horse, in a mad endeavour to escape from the Awful
Presence that filled all earth and sky from edge to edge of vision.

212 BURNING— UNCONSUMED
Then, almost in the same fashion, the unearthly light died out of
the dim prairie, the veil swept across into place again, and he
managed to check his wild flight and look about him. It was as
if his spirit stood apart from him, putting questions which he could
not answer, and demanding judgment upon problems which he
dare not reason out. Then he remembered what this thing was
which had happened. The prairie had spoken to him, as,
sooner or later, it spoke to most men that rode it. It was a
something well known amongst them, but known without words,
and, as by a subtle instinct, for no man who had experienced it
ever spoke willingly about it afterwards. Only the man would be
changed ; some began to be more reckless, as if a dumb blasphemy
rankled hidden in their breasts. Others, coming with greater
strength, perhaps, to the ordeal, became quieter, looking squarely
at any danger as they faced it, but continuing ahead as though
quietly confident that nothing happened save as the gods ordained."
That is a powerful passage, and I make bold to
say that I think I understand something of what
was in the writer's mind ; I think I may venture to
affirm that some of you do also. There are at least
two experiences in my life in which I can remember
something similar. One was on this very American
prairie, near to the Colorado mountains. I and my
companion were alone in the observation car of an
American railway train, riding away from the moun
tains, which rose like a craggy wall in the distance.
There came on such a thunderstorm as we seldom
or never see in Britain. There, before us, on
the further side of the long stretch of prairie,
was this spur of the Rocky mountains, Pike's
Peak, towering above the rest. The great gorges
seemed to be filled with flame, and round the top of

BURNING— UNCONSUMED 213
that mountain peak the lightning flamed like a
crown of fiery thorns, every now and then thrusting
down on to the prairie itself a sheet of flame — an
avalanche, as it seemed, relentless, irresistible, making
us to feel how puny we were, how great were the
elementals in the midst of which we had been thrust.
There was nothing common there ; the prairie was
just as it had been the day before, only that it was
clothed with a new and sudden splendour, hidden in
the heavens until that moment of vision. You will
hardly need to be told that the effect upon us was a
solemnising one ; our leading thought was of the
splendour of God.
My other experience was in South Africa. We
were climbing in the night, also in a railway train,
from the level plain around Cape Town up to that
great table-land which is known as the Karoo. We
seemed as though we had just reached the top when
morning dawned. I drew aside the blind of my
sleeping-carriage and looked out. There, stretching
around us in every direction for hundreds of miles,
was the flat plain of the veldt, studded with little
bushes like the acacia that Moses saw, in the far
distance rising the unclothed crags with the flat
tops so characteristic of South Africa. But there
was this addition. Not only was the solitude broken,
but it was broken by a sudden splendour. The
morning sun touched every thing into glory. You
who live in Britain have little or no idea of the vivid
ness of colour on these vast plains. The very rocks

2 1 4 BURNING— UNCONSUMED
were sporting crimson, and all the little shrubs were
tinted with gold. It was a never-to-be-forgotten
sight. Once again we fell silent ; there was nothing
to be said ; we were in the presence of the real — it
seemed as if all spake of the Eternal. Granted, we
bring something to the vision ; it might be possible
for a man to herd cattle in the South African bush
and never to see its glory ; it might be possible for
a man to climb the craggy sides of Pike's Peak and
never again see the splendour of the moment I have
described. The one grand message which our text
contains for us resides in this : Moses saw something
that day which he was fitted to see. We understand
now something of what it was. Our text says really,
not "a bush," but " the bush." He did not see a
flaming gooseberry- bush, as it were ; the whole
landscape was lit up with the glory of the Lord upon
whose name he had been brooding. The past history
of his people fired him as he thought that the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not dead but
alive ; he felt his heart thrill and quiver. There was
something for him to do ; God was speaking, God
was calling. He questioned with himself no longer ;
he turned in obedience to the heavenly vision granted
in the desert.
The value of our text for you and me resides in
the similarity of our experience with that of the
great prophet. The divine is never absent from the
soul of him who has eyes to see and a heart to feel
the presence of the Eternal Real ; every common bush

BURNING— UNCONSUMED 2 1 5
is afire with God, and every place is holy ground.
The flame, the very flame that Moses saw in the
desert at Horeb, is burning still and unconsumed.
The world is full of God, and not only so, but
God calls His master men by the voice that speaks
from the flame. A holy enthusiasm can see and
hear what is hidden from selfishness and sin.
" Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows !
But not quite so sunk that moments,
Sure, tho' seldom, are denied us,
When the spirit's true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones,
And apprise it, if pursuing
Or the right way or the wrong way,
To its triumph or undoing.
" There are flashes struck from midnights,
There are fire-flames noondays kindle,
Whereby piled-up honours perish,
Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle ;
While just this or that poor impulse,
Which for once had played unstifled,
Seems the sole work of a life-time
That away the rest have trifled."
Yes, His holy flame for ever burns. There is nothing
common or unclean, for we see shining upon it the
light divine ; and never do you see that light shining
— the light that never was on sea or land — but from
the midst of the flame there comes the call of God.
I think I know my congregation pretty well ; it is
like any other congregation in that it contains people
of diverse yet similar experiences, now of sorrow,

216 BURNING— UNCONSUMED
now of joy, all of limitation — limitation which we
seek at our best moments to transcend. The
people to whom I am speaking are for the most
part trained in the midst of petty ideas ; but
one and all of you are capable of wonderful
things. There are here frivolous people, selfish
people, worldly people, people who hardly ever
pause to put two serious thoughts together. On
the other hand, there are people here who have
been stricken down by sorrow, who know the
shadow as well as the sunshine, and far more of the
shadow than of the shining. All of us, however,
have our best moments, and in those moments we
would, if we could, get past the limitation and into
the glory and live worthier. Do I say wrong if I
repeat, you are by virtue of those moments capable
of wonderful things ? The most commonplace, the
most selfish, the most worldly-minded, might be
changed, if he only saw in the desert what Moses
saw, and heard on the plain the voice of God.
Many times have I seen on the face of a common
place man something that kindled into power.
Have you not seen it? What is the cause of it?
I take it that it is but the reflection of the vision
that was seen at Horeb. It is when God speaks to
a man's innermost being, when God has reached
what is most like Himself in our nature, and we have
responded, and heart and mind and countenance
light up with it, that people cease to think of us as
commonplace. Of that shining, which is as the glory

BURNING— UNCONSUMED 217
of the Shekinah we may know nothing ourselves ;
like Moses, we may not know that our face shines.
" We are the children of splendour of flame,
Of shuddering also, and tears :
Magnificent out of the dust we came,
And abject from the spheres."
God is not far from any one of us. I wish to
particularise by choosing, as it were, two people
from the congregation and speaking directly to
them. It may strike you as odd that the first I
choose is a woman. " Speaking about the great
Law-giver of Israel, and then in the same breath
comparing his experience and applying it to that of
a woman, surely you have begun at the wrong end
of things ! " Not at all. I take the life of a
woman for this reason. For the most part, in this
land of ours — for we have not yet learned to do
things right — the life of a woman is narrower and
meaner than the life of a man — man's fault mostly,
but there it is. I doubt not that in this congrega
tion this morning there sits some woman full of
possibilities for good, who came in here sad and
heavy-hearted indeed. She has been beating her
wings against the cage all her life ; things have
never come right to her, and she has felt, and she is
right in feeling, that she was made for better than
anything yet she has ever chanced to live. Even
when marriage came, it may be, it was not liberty.
Your life is spent amongst the humdrum, the
commonplace, even the sordid ; no liberty for the

218 BURNING— UNCONSUMED
soul. The things you once saw, as it were, on the
cliff-tops of the morning you have had to try to
forget, and yet you cannot forget ; disappointment
and heart-break have done their work. You entered
the house of God to-day in the faint hope that some
word might come to you, as it were, from the lips
of God that should be somewhat of a compensation
and a solace. Have I described your life aright?
Well, now, listen to me. Take care what you seek
when you come here to call upon the name of Jesus.
Moses would have understood Jesus ; that was why,
and it was a very felicitous thing, Peter saw him
standing beside Him on the mount of vision.
Moses would have understood ; perhaps you would
not. Self-pity is the wrong mood in which to come
near Calvary. The thought of escaping from things
that hinder, of running away from the duty that
seems to be cramping and repellent, getting peace
by cessation of strife, is not the right thought to
have when one comes into the presence of Jesus.
Mind you, you are perfectly right when you feel
that you are entitled to the satisfaction and the
peace that you have never yet had. You are
perfectly wrong if you feel that coming to Jesus
means, as it were, a letting you off the things against
which your soul is chafing. It will be quite the
other way. The peace will come and the satisfac
tion be yours, but it will be when you have trampled
down the lower nature and thrust it beneath you in
the energies of your soul. God is speaking to you

BURNING— UNCONSUMED 219
out of the flame, but the message is : Back to
Egypt, to the people that will not understand, to the
people that will cry for the fleshpots when you
have led them out ; back to the sordid, narrow,
commonplace ; but see it in the light of Horeb, in
all the splendour of God. Some women have done
it who were as little likely as you are ever to see
such a vision as that which Moses saw.
I brought into the pulpit with me this morning
another book, from which I venture to quote.
Most of us are familiar to some extent, at any rate,
with the writings of Mark Rutherford. They are
especially pleasing to me because they treat of
common life and of very ordinary people. He does
not idealise the characters of the people, but it
seems as if he could turn on to them something of
the light that shone into the desert of Horeb. He
tells us, in that part of his Autobiography which he
calls Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, of the dislike
he felt for his little stepdaughter Marie. He could
never understand the child. She was growing into
womanhood without the barrier having once dis
appeared between her and him, until one day sorrow
came to that home — bewildering, crushing, over
whelming sorrow — and he found he was unable to
face it. In that mood, helpless, the man stood ;
forward came the child.
" What a change came over that child ! I was amazed at her.
All at once she seemed to have found what she was born to do.
The key had been discovered which unlocked and revealed what

220 BURNING— UNCONSUMED
there was in her, of which hitherto I had been altogether unaware.
. . . Faculties unsuspected grew almost to full height in a single
day. ... I remember once going to her cot in the night, as she
lay asleep, and almost breaking my heart over her with remorse
and thankfulness ; remorse that I, with blundering stupidity, had
judged her so superficially, and thankfulness that it had pleased
God to present to me so much of His own divinest grace. . . .
My love to Marie was love of God Himself as He is . . . because
that revelation had clothed itself with a child's form. ... I
appeal, moreover, to Jesus Himself for justification. I had seen
that kingdom of God through a little child."
But for the sordid, but for the commonplace, and
but for the sorrow that shivered both, Mark
Rutherford had never seen the soul of that woman-
child. So it may be, so it is, with any woman, with
any child, with any man, anywhere. God calls from
the midst of the flame. He never summons you to
what you are unequal to.
" He who bids us forward go
Cannot fail the way to show."
God has never asked what you cannot give, never
set a task you cannot perform. Go back to your
life ; go back to the questions you have left, but go
back with the enthusiasm of old Israel and this leader
of men to nerve you. God is speaking from the
midst of common things, but He is speaking from
the things that flame, not merely from the things
that repel. So Jesus calls to you, and will have the
best from you. Believe that the best is yours to be
and to do and to give.
Now I would speak of a man, with whom some of

BURNING— UNCONSUMED 221
you think I ought to have begun. It is a curious
thing, but a fact, that the greater number of the
men I see around me have not succeeded in life ; by
which I mean that their early enthusiasms have not
been realised. As you grow toward midlife you
feel you are disappointed — you are nobody in par
ticular after all ; you once thought you might be.
As you have learned to be practical, you have
learned to dethrone your ideal. It does not seem
sensible for a man at midlife to talk as he would
have talked when he stood on the threshold of
manhood. But sometimes you wish that God had
given you to do something worthy of that which
you saw in your highest moments, in your enthus
iastic days, the times when you could have given
yourself for an ideal ; but there is no stake at which
to be burned, there is only a desk at which to
be chained ; there is no big heroic thing to be done ;
there is just the rent to get and the little mouths to
feed, and it takes all your time and all your manhood
to do that. You feel that the effect of your en
vironment upon you is to shrivel you, and make you
less a man than you once hoped to be. You have
entered the house of God with some hope of being
made contented with your lot, or at least forgetting
it for a time. You are quite wrong about the mood,
and you are quite wrong about the history. The
biggest things in history are taking place out of
sight, this one in Horeb amongst the rest. You
never know the value of service in the light of

222 BURNING— UNCONSUMED
the Eternal ; never call a human deed small or great
until you stand on the other side of death and know
as you are known. What we want nowadays is the
fighting mystic. Young men, as a rule, are not
mystics, though they think they are ; it is the older
men who come to know best of all that life is not
what it seems, let alone all it seems. It is possible
for a man when he has shed his ambitions to go
back to the simple, holy mood of childhood. Moses
was not a young man when he saw his vision and
dreamed his dream ; he was getting to be an old
man, and it is an old man's vision that we are talking
about. A strong man, but life behind him. He
fought his battle in Egypt, and then thought it was
over. He had buried the man he slew, and fled from
the people he would have saved. Helpless and
baffled, he stood alone in the wilderness, an old man,
looking up and looking back. To him God came in
the midst of the scrub, and the scrub seemed to light
up, and the world seemed to expand, and the impos
sible became possible, and the unreal shone out real,
vivid, true, something for Moses to do after all. He
went back alone, an old man, and alone he did it,
not a young man. God granted him vision of the
highest. You pray, " Give me comfort ! " I will ; that is
comfort ; it is not comfort on the low level, but com
fort on the high level. " Give me inspiration ! " I
will ; it is here. And what Moses saw in the flame
and heard you may see and hear. You will be better

BURNING— UNCONSUMED 223
and happier for obedience to what you see in your
best moments alone with God. Enter into the
atonement of Christ yourself, become part of it.
Wherever there is a wrong to be righted, Christ is
at work ; wherever there is a great deed to be done,
if it is only at the fireside or in the counting-house,
there is the call of God. Will you be one of God's
master men ? There is wondrous sweetness and
power in the very thought. It needs not that you
should be great, it only needs that you should be
good. " I would not have the restless will that hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do or secret thing to know ;
I would be treated as a child, and guided where I go."
Behold, then, before you the bush, burning, uncon-
sumed. Behold the splendour of God. The Lord
has come to your little world like a flame of fire.

SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY

The following sermon contains two illustrations from real life, but
neither of them was more than an illustration. The purpose of
the sermon was to reach one or two people whose moral history,
had I been at liberty to state it, would have been a much more
startling and emphatic testimony than anything I actually did say.
The truth about one of these was as follows : On a previous
Thursday a friend had brought to me a story concerning a family
whom he expected to see in the City Temple on the following
Sunday evening. He particularly wished me not to describe their
circumstances too accurately for fear he or someone else should be
suspected of having made me acquainted with the facts. I may
remark in parenthesis that this often takes place : I outline a
situation and state a moral question as I have met them in real
life. Forthwith someone writes to say that he suspects I have
heard something about him — as a rule I have never heard of him
before. This particular story was one of persistent, calculated cruelty
on the part of an individual whose public character stood rather
high. If ever a man was guilty of soul murder it was this
eloquent denouncer of other people's sins. He had pronounced
views on national morality, the wrongs of the Boers, and many
other things. The vileness of his home conduct I verily believe
he never stopped to think about. If he recognised himself in
Nathan's denunciation he was careful never to say so. Of course
he was not the only one present whom it was sought to reach by
this gospel of self-revelation.

XIII
"And Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man." — z Samuel xii. 7.
In this lurid sentence the prophet of God con
demned the guilty king out of his own mouth. It
was no mild utterance this, but one charged with
moral passion and righteous anger. The circum
stances called for the word, too. The wretched
man upon the throne now saw, and for the first
time, what his sin really was. No more dastardly
act had ever stained David's life. It was the
blackest of his reign — I mean the abduction of the
wife of Uriah and the murder of her husband. It
was guilt calculated upon and persisted in, guilt
covered up even in David's own mind by sophistry
and self-excuse. Now comes the moment of revela
tion, when the true state of things is declared to
David's consciousness just as it had long ago been
declared subconsciously, though he never dared to
face the truth.
It can hardly be necessary that I should recount
the circumstances. The king of Israel cast his
lustful eyes upon another man's wife. In his un
scrupulousness he planned the destruction of him
who stood between his lust and its gratification.
Uriah must be got out of the way, and in a very

228 SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY
base and wicked fashion the deed was done. Uriah
was placed in the front of the fighting line and died
with his face to the foe. The irony of the situa
tion is that he died as an Israelitish soldier fighting
for his country, and not improbably with the name
of his king upon his lips and enthusiasm for David
in his heart, charging the foe for the man who was
his murderer. Doubtless David covered up the fact,
which Uriah himself never knew, by saying to him
self, "This man died a worthy death — why not he
as well as any other soldier ? I did not slay him, the
enemy slew him. In all probability he would not
have chosen another death if he were a true soldier
and patriot. I am not guilty ; therefore now what
more natural than that I without reproach should
take unto me Uriah's wife ? "
Probably this was the way that David accounted
for the deed to himself. Not so the prophet of the
Lord. Israel was fortunate in that she possessed,
and never was entirely without, one or two intrepid,
fearless men of God, men of the pattern and stamp
of Elijah, and such a one was Nathan.
Imagine the scene that is hinted at in this chapter
rather than described. David, royal David, sits
upon the throne in the day of his splendour, sur
rounded by his mighty men, and the plain-garbed
figure of the prophet of God appears on the scene.
He is made welcome- — why should it not be so ?
This victorious king is the chosen of the Lord.
What message can Nathan have to bring but a

SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY 229
message of good? The court is hushed to listen.
The wisdom and righteousness of David respond
eagerly to the demand of the prophet. Thus
and such the rich man has done. Thus and such
vengeance is called for, retribution to be awarded.
What saith the king? "And David's anger was
greatly kindled against the man ; and he said to
Nathan, As the Lord liveth (you see David is on
the side of the Lord) the man that hath done this
thing shall surely die. (David is the sword of
the Lord.) And he shall restore the lamb fourfold,
because he did this thing and because he had no
pity." Thus he voices his own condemnation, thus he
seals his own doom. The court is silent, waiting
for the prophet to speak. One sentence it is which
issues from his lips, how terrible, only David knew,
though the awe-stricken listeners must have felt,
too, something of the impact of the tremendous
utterance, "Thou art the man."
I cannot imagine that Nathan said these words
with a shout. Rather he spoke them more quietly
than David had blazed forth his ready anger.
David on the seat of judgment passing sentence
upon himself may speak eagerly and feverishly
on the side of righteousness, " This man shall
surely die." Said Nathan (he does not need to
shriek): "Thou art the man — thou!"
Self-deception is never very difficult. Men are
curiously averse to calling things by the right name.

2 30

SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY

There is no kind of hypocrisy so subtle and so
dangerous as the hypocrisy which is hypocrite to
itself and will not acknowledge its own presence.
We can see transgression very plainly in the lives of
others, but we are, as a rule, unwilling to face the
truth concerning ourselves. But that truth will out,
and in the light of God we have to face it whether
we will or no. " Be sure your sin will find you
out." Such was the note of my theme this morning.
For the benefit of those who were not present I
will just give one point in the message. It was
this : — Oftentimes God finds a way into a man's
heart by breaking him, as it were, upon the wheel
of misfortune. To some natures, at any rate, sorrow
is the only means, the only instrument whereby
God can make the highest felt. A man suffers
what ostensibly he does not deserve, something
unjust, something so far as the world is concerned
utterly irremediable. That something must be God's
message to him, God's means of uncovering the
soul that He may address Himself thereto.
Two men came into the vestry after that sermon
this morning. One followed upon the heels of the
other. The first man, a gentleman in appearance,
told me this striking story — shall I say gave me this
striking piece of autobiography ? "I am one man
you were talking about this morning. I have suffered
seven years' penal servitude for something I did not
do, and which it is now known I did not do. You

SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY 231
can read the circumstances in the daily papers.
They speak of making me amends. Of course you
know nothing can ever make amends for the seven
best years of my life. I did not deserve, from one
point of view, as you rightly said, what came to me.
But you were perfectly right in what you have said
in that I deserved it in another sense. By that fiery
discipline God woke my soul to life. I now know
that the things which we can see and touch, the
things commonplace and everyday, the things for
which we spend ourselves, are not the real, are
not the truest, are not the deepest, are not all.
They are only the gateway into the eternal. I
have found God. It was worth the seven years."
As he turned to go out, another man came in,
from the north country, also a gentleman, a man of
a certain education and standing and prosperity. If
he be here to-night he will not mind, I am sure,
what I am going to tell you, for it is by no means
uncommon. He came to remind me of a boy whom
years ago I knew, and he told me that somewhere
that lad is in London, and if possible he would that
I could find him, or if he ever comes to me that I
will detain him with a message of love from his
Lancashire home. He said, " We do not know
where he is, and we feel that the truth were
perhaps better hidden from us." The boy was
educated to be a professional man. He never took
his degree. His parents began to suspect, long,
long before he left home for good, that something

232 SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY
was wrong. Sympathy ceased. He lived his life
apart. He kept away from the ordinary, simple
family altar which was erected every day in that
home. His fellowship with his brothers and sisters,
let alone with his father and mother, was severed.
There was an absence of frankness. Something or
other unaccountably was being kept back. You
see, the false note had been sounded, the evil and
hateful something had crept in, there was an element
that had to be huddled away and kept out of sight.
The inevitable hour came. He could no longer stay
where he was. That home is mourning to-day
because of a wandering lad. I wonder now if that
young man could change places with the ex-convict
about whom I have spoken, which of the two is to
be the more pitied. God seems to have treated the
one I named first far more sternly than he treated
the other, for the prison walls have not closed upon
this lad yet. But for all that I would venture to say
that whereas the one man has gone out with a con
sciousness of self-respect, with a confidence in the
eternal Tightness of things, and with a vision of the
meaning of life such as he never had till the chastise
ment came, this other man, this man who is the
cause of a home affliction and a home scattering is
in hell, that is where he is, though he walks the
streets of London, or though he may be to-night in
the house of the strange woman, laughing the
loudest among his companions. That man is in
hell, and he knows it. His sin has found him out,

SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY 233
the evil, sinister fate, has got a very tight grip. It
matters little what the circumstances are. Of the
two he is the one to be pitied, and his lot is the one
to be dreaded. How little it matters what a man
endures, how much it matters what a man is !
" Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our
secret sins in the light of Thy countenance." If
that man had faced years ago what was coming and
now is, if he had had the moral courage to turn
right round, cost what it might, it would have been
better for him than what is true of him now.
There are many present, no doubt, who can
relate similar experiences concerning themselves or
their loved ones. Out of a congregation as large as
this it is safe to say perhaps thousands, two thousand
it may be, have known or passed through a similar
experience to the one I have touched on. Either
you or that lad of yours, that friend, that wife, that
husband, began to live a life apart from truth and
right. Confidence was slipping away, some secret
weakness was unconfessed, some evil entanglement
was holding fast the soul in fetters. If only the
right name were to be applied to the life that some
of you are living or have been living, or the nearest
and the dearest have lived or do live — if the right
name were applied what would it be ? Oftentimes
it is too ugly to be applied. We can cheat our
selves as David did, that because the world knows
nothing and because there is a euphemistic word to
describe a foul thing, that therefore God is deceived

234 SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY
too. He is not, and heaven is not. The world
of truth interpenetrates this, the world of glory
is not a handbreadth off. You cannot hide from
the eternal right. As Arthur Hugh Clough hath
it in one of his most familiar lines, " Listen before
I die, one word. In old times you called me
pleasure ; my name is guilt." What a dark name,
what a foul name, what an unpronounceable shudder
ing word you would have to apply if you were
honest, some of you, to the things you have been
and the things you have done ! God, you see,
applies the right word — " Thou art the man."
What in somebody else you would name unmis
takably God has named in you. Often a man's
degeneration is clear to all about him long before
it is so to himself. He is ready to blame anyone in
the world except the man most to blame — himself;
and he can work up indignation against any form of
evil not his own. I have known men who could
write to the newspapers most eloquent letters of
denunciation concerning some public wrong or some
mistaken international policy. If these very men
could have been followed to the fireside you would
have been able to read a tale of misery in the face
of their dear ones. And the men oftentimes who
shriek the loudest at the delinquencies of some who
are a sign for every man to point at dare not expose
their own secret lives, the tale would be too squalid
and too shameful. But, dear friends, God's moment
comes, the dreadful moment of disillusionment for

SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY 235
every soul that has kept away from the truth. It
may come soon or it may come late, but come it
surely will. " Thou art the man."
Speaking this afternoon to Mr Badger about this
subject, he handed me some lines that, curiously
enough, had come into his own possession.
" Though no mortal e'er accused you,
Though no witness e'er confused you,
Though the darkness came and fell
Over even deeds of hell.
" Though no sign nor any token
Spoke of one commandment broken.
Though the world should praise and bless,
And love add the fond caress.
" Still your secret sin would find you,
Pass before your eyes to blind you,
Burn your heart with hidden shame,
Scar your cheek with guilty flame.
" Sin was never sinned in vain,
It could always count its slain,
You yourself must witness be,
To your own soul's treachery."
In God's economy, in God's moral world, the
meaning of punishment is that the soul is compelled
to see itself as it is, and to acknowledge the eternal
justice. Come it soon or come it late, God's verdict
upon sin is written large in the experience of the
sinner. If, my friends, I were to quit the subject here
it might be enough for some of us, the one word

236 SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY
necessary for the vindication of the eternal moral
order. But it would not be enough for some others.
I could not help thinking, as I spoke, about the
wretched man who never needed me to tell him a
single word of what has been uttered up to this
point. There may be a man here who could tell it
to you in far more lurid and convincing terms than I
have told you, because he has been living it. What
must such a man have been thinking as I have
spoken ? Perhaps he may be feeling something of
rising indignation against the speaker. " Where is
the good of lacerating an open wound ? Why
remind me of what no earthly verdict can reverse ?
I must dree my own weird, I have made my bed and
on it I must lie." A man can grow cynical, self-
contemptuous and world-hating all in a breath by the
remembrance of a fact like this.
Well, sir, it is to you that I most want to speak.
You know — those at least who know me know — ¦
that I do not trifle with the facts of life and tell you
that sin is done with as soon as you have tossed it
in the air, so to speak, on the chance that it may
reach the ears of God as a confession. It is not so.
The way of transgressors is hard, but it is hard
because of the mercy of God that is behind. " There
is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared
when Thou judgest."
I was reading recently in one of Maurice Maeter
linck's books, I think the last, a paragraph some-
to this effect. Some of you here will feel that

SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY i^y
what Maeterlinck has to say about certain of the
deep things of the Gospel is hardly worth consider
ing, yet you may be wrong. On this occasion, at
any rate, this modern mystic reached the Gospel
truth by a roundabout road. This is what he says
— 1 do not quote, I only paraphrase — If a man hath
done a guilty deed, if a man hath been betrayed by
himself, dragged down by evil propensity, and hath
the courage and the faith to rise again, the day
comes, the moment is his when he can say, It was
not I that did it.
Of course you see the paradox of the mystic.
Yes, but it was a truth stated in paradox. A man
may so rise above the habitual level of his own
character that deeds are forgotten. It is not so
much the deeds that matter, it is the climate of the
soul, it is the moral atmosphere in which you live
that is telling out the truth. A man's real fall often
antedates by long the fall that the world can see
and judge him by. But, look you, if a man has
risen so far by virtue of his penitence that he
reaches the heart of God; so exalting himself by
true humility that he is no longer capable of that
old sin, it is, as it were, blotted out of the book of
remembrance. To such a man I would be entitled
to say in the name of the Lord of Hosts, " Thou
art not the man," the man that was, but another,
redeemed, purified, made holy by the Spirit of
God. There are some people who are morbid in their

23 8 SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY
introspection and their view of their own moral
delinquencies. To such people I would speak a
word of warning. Remorse is not repentance.
Morbidness is by no means humility. There is
another way and a higher. If there be one man
here who feels that his life is blackened by his own
misdoing, I entreat him to pause and consider this
mighty truth. It is impossible for you to contend
with God. Once you have realised that there is no
longer need for you to remain in the prison-house.
If any man is hopeless concerning the past I call
him to a deeper as well as a higher life. An old
mediaeval mystic once wrote, "In every man there
is a godly will which never consented to sin nor
ever shall." You know what that signifies. It
tells you that the deepest self in every man is
Christ. What? Yes, I mean it. Until conscience
is dead Christ is not gone from the soul of any man,
but that Christ you may be crucifying ; and as the
preacher to-night I have just the same duty as the
Roman Governor performed in an earlier day when,
half cynically, half pityingly, he brought out the
Christ and set Him before the mob, " Behold the
Man ! " the man that you are crucifying in your
self-loathings, in your self-despisings, in your hatred
of the world and its temptations and its delusions,
crucifying the Christ within you by staying down in
the bondage of sin. Greater is your sin in the re
jection of the redemption of the Most High, it may
be, than the sin which plunged you into your self-

SIN'S SELF-DISCOVERY 239
despair. Listen to the voice that comes from
farthest heaven, " I will blot out as a cloud thy
transgressions and as a thick cloud thy sins."
"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be
white as snow ; though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool." There is a great mystery
here and I am content to leave it so. God speaks
through the voice of conscience, the self-accuser, the
one that no man can escape, no man can avoid, no
man can delude. "Thou art the man." Say, then,
to the Father, "I have sinned against heaven and
before Thee." Then hast thou found thyself, thou
hast come back to God ere the words are uttered,
and the Father's word to thee is this word of for
giveness and mercy and tender love. Rise, thou
child of the holiest, though in the deepest of depths
thou hast plunged thyself and sunken thy soul, for
God the Father pitieth His children, God the
Saviour redeemeth His own. "Behold the Lamb
of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."

A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD

It may be interesting to some readers to know that the indi
viduals for whose sake this sermon was preached are described in
the application. Moreover, they recognised it, and came to tell
me so. It is a simple, although somewhat exceptional theme, but
I never remember to have experienced greater blessing both in and
after the service. This was God's timely word for a number of
those who worshipped with us that morning.

XIV
" Behold I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled
into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell."
— Judges vii. 13.
This is a somewhat remarkable text, and that not
merely on account of its quaintness, but of the vast
field of spiritual suggestiveness which it opens to
us. The phrase, " a cake of barley bread," may
not at first sight appear to mean much, but it covers
a whole chapter in a brave and strenuous life.
Here we have a tiny nation oppressed by powerful
neighbours. They are not a great people. Al
though they have been known in history as the
Chosen People, they are few in number, apparently
are weak in character, they have just fallen under
the dominion and worship of the obscene god Baal.
Jehovah appears to have deserted them. They
would not have their Father's God, so He has left
them to their own. They have been reduced to
extremity. They have been maltreated by the
oppressors, and at this, the darkest moment in the
fortunes of Israel, a deliverer arises, not from among
the leaders of the people, nor from those who stand
in high places, but as has often been the case in
history, from the lower ranks themselves.
Gideon is the hero in question, a man of the

244 A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD
same stature and quality as Wallace and William
Tell. He begins by questioning with himself how
long the worship of Baal, with its immoral, de
grading and obscene rites, was to be tolerated in
Israel. Someone must have the courage to speak
and to do something more than speak, someone
must have the intrepidity to act. And Gideon
thinks it may as well be he as anyone else. So one
morning credulous, self-indulgent Israel rises to see
the god Baal hurled from his pedestal and helpless
to avenge the affront. Their first thought is to
revenge it for him. They would have slain Gideon
but for the intervention of his father. "If Baal is
injured, and if Baal is worthy to be worshipped, let
Baal, and Baal alone, revenge the injury. Hold ye
your peace." So Gideon earned the name of
Jerubaal, the antagonist of this hitherto powerful
deity. His next step is to consider whether Israel,
won back to the purer worship of Jehovah, might
not be delivered from the sword of the oppressor.
Who is to do this ? The Amalekites and the
Midianites are as the sand of the sea for multitude,
and Israel but a handful, and a handful of slaves at
that. But, his resolution once taken, this man,
questioning within himself, arrives at the conclusion
that he himself is the chosen of the Lord to do the
work. How often he hesitates, like Moses and like
most of the Israelitish prophets, leaders, captains,
judges ! He is self-distrustful. He puts the Lord
first to one test and then to another. He is not free

A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD 245
from the superstitions of his time, and who knows
but "there are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamed of in our philosophy." Even the
test of the fleece may have been honoured to this
man's good and his people's salvation. Finally, with
three hundred men at his back he decided to strike
the first blow.
But on the very eve of the conflict he hesitates
once more. How real it all is ! because it was
taking place within, and not without the man, this
discussion and this presentation of opposite con
ditions. How real it all is ! He goes down to
listen and to spy within the camp of Midian itself
and he hears one man tell his fellow a dream. The
dream is almost in the words of our text. A cake
of barley bread tumbles into the camp of Midian,
and smites a tent, and it falls and lies ruined before
it. Gideon returns without a word. He takes
it as a symbol, a sign that he, the chosen of the
Lord, is already victor in the counsels of the Most
High, and his decision and his act were one and the
same. To his little band he exclaims, " Arise, the
Lord has delivered the host of Midian into our hand."
Why " a cake of barley bread ? " Why did
this hero attach so much importance to this symbol ?
First, it was the symbol of poverty. Israel had
been reduced to this coarse fare, and was not
obtaining enough of that. Perhaps the enemy
taunted them with it. This was all they had left,
the food of the beasts of the field — "a cake of

246 A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD
barley bread." It was the symbol of weakness —
the cake of bread against the tent of the Midianit-
ish general. It was the symbol of obscurity —
Gideon himself was as a cake of barley bread, a
labouring man called to be the instrument of God
for the deliverance of his country.
Now let me tell you why I think this piece of
human history is so interesting and helpful. It is
because what is here related took place, for the
most part, in Gideon's mind, and he had no more
to help him to a decision than you and I have in
similar issues. The moment you bring in an un
necessary supernaturalism, that moment you destroy
the value of any biblical narrative ; you push away
from you the man whose life ought to be an in
spiration for you. There is a supernaturalism in
this narrative just the same as there is in yours,
of the same kind, and perhaps in the same degree.
I am not one of those who try to read out of every
event the supernatural element. I would rather
read it in all round. God's wonders have not
stopped since Old Testament days, and there is
just the same kind of supernaturalism in your life
and mine as there was in Gideon's at this time.
We have here a case in which a man with
nothing to aid him but his sense of God and
right, essayed a seemingly hopeless task, and accom
plished it. No one else was even willing to try.
Such men are rare in history, but they have
always been forthcoming when God wanted them.

A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD 247
In the political history of mankind there are not a
few such characters. I have already named two.
William Wallace, a simple gentleman, saved Scot
land at a time when her nobles and even the man
who should have been her king ceased to believe
in her freedom and her destiny. Some of them
had joined the enemy. Hope was extinguished.
Few cared. "A cake of barley bread." William
Tell was something more than a legendary character,
probably, too. A Swiss peasant made history when,
in spite of all obstacles and in defiance of all pre
cedents, he snatched from the jaws of the mightiest
empire of the world the little republic which exists
to-day in the very heart of Europe. Benjamin
Franklin, a humble labouring man, anticipated Mr
Chamberlain by long years in his pleading with the
inhabitants of this country, with its crown and with
its government, not to thrust aside its imperial
destiny. He strove to avert the fate of his country
— shall I say, he strove to avert the separation of
his country from the motherland? He failed, so
he proceeded to make a nation on the other side.
Out of Benjamin Franklin's brain, to a large extent,
the American Constitution and the American Re
public sprang. A labouring man — " a cake of barley
bread " — a maker of history. Joan of Arc — one name
suggests another — a peasant girl, a victim of French
selfishness and English tyranny, but to-day the patron
saint of her country — " a cake of barley bread."
In the religious world, in religious history, the

248 A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD
facts are even more instructive — Francis of Assisi, a
friendless youth, expelled from his father's house
without so much as clothes to cover him, the regenera
tor of Christendom ; Savonarola, a preaching friar,
unarmed, defenceless, pitted against the mightiest
system the world had ever seen, and up to a point,
though it cost him his life, a victor and the harbinger
of victory; John Wycliffe, a poor scholar, "the
morning star of the Reformation," when princes and
great nobles, not to speak of the common people,
dared not to raise their voice against the iniquities
of Rome ; Martin Luther, the simple monk of Wit
tenberg, who tore half Christendom away from the
See of St Peter ; Hugh Latimer, an English yeoman,
Reformation bishop and martyr for all time; John
Wesley, the son of a clergyman, himself a clergy
man of the Church of England, too poor, sometimes,
to pay his way almost, but the author of the greatest
revival of modern times, whose followers have belted
the globe with the story of the gospel, was even
refused a hearing in the Church he loved so well —
" a cake of barley bread " against an army.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon — some people here are
old enough to remember when he was nicknamed
" The Essex Bumpkin " — this man was the apostle
of the nineteenth century. An uneducated Ameri
can, D. L. Moody, reduced so low that at one time,
though there was no fear of him going under, it was
with him an anxiety how to make ends meet, how
to carve out for himself a career. When success

A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD 249
did come it was laid aside — five thousand dollars a
year given up to do God's work, and that alone.
" A cake of barley bread " ; but he awoke the
English-speaking world with the story of the love of
God. How true are the words of the apostle in my
second lesson of this morning. " For you see your
calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after
the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are
called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of
the world to confound the wise ; and God hath
chosen the weak things of the world to confound
the things which are mighty ; And base things of
the world, and things which are despised, hath God
chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to
nought things that are : That no flesh should glory
in His presence. But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteous
ness, and sanctification, and redemption : That,
according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him
glory in the Lord."
To us, looking back on these achievements, it
seems as though the people I have named could
never have had a doubt or a tremor. But it was
not so. Like Gideon, they questioned and hesitated,
just as you and I do, until the decisive moment came,
and a moral purpose was formed and carried into
effect. I have in the pulpit here with me this morning a
copy of the Literary Supplement of the Times of
last Friday. There is a passage in it to which I

250 A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD
would wish to direct your attention. It is well
worth it. In an able review of a book about the
" Saints of England," the writer says : — -
" Even to purely scientific minds the subject of the saints — of
those men and women who, having been born in this world, have
renounced at some period in their history the usual fashions of the
world, and in consequence have received from contemporaries, or
posterity, an enduring record of their renunciation — is one of
extreme interest, as it has ever been of vital importance to mystics
and members of the Church. Canonization is rarer nowadays
a great deal than it was in the Middle Ages. Strong souls of
passionate, humane and spiritual intention live grinding on in our
material midst with hair shirts infinitely more cruel than any of the
Middle Ages bound about their worn and exhausted bodies.
They are often the mothers and fathers of many children, fearless,
if weary, toilers in a wilderness of sodden city streets ; sometimes
they are the sons and daughters of almost unendurable family
circles. And there are even more remarkable and unrecognised
saints than these — saints who drive in motor-cars and wear their
eyeballs out beneath the blaze of electric light in drawing-rooms ;
social saints, these last, ' playing the game ' in the face of disease,
disgrace, and ruin, for the sake of some family tradition, some
purely worldly hope for child or brother; that very ' game of life'
upon which the saints so persistently, joyously, and — may we say
it? — with such self-satisfaction were wont to turn their backs, and
thereby win into their memories the ' eternal ' halos of mankind."
Just so, had we eyes to see it, as the writer of the
article has. How true it is to say that God's pur
poses are being worked out. God's battles are being
fought in obscure places, but as surely and as really,
and in God's eyes with as much value, as any of those
that have taken place on the great field of history.
Here before me this morning, I doubt not, though

A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD 251
perhaps they have never thought of it, are some
who are the chosen of the Lord as much as Gideon,
Luther, Wesley, Moody, only you were chosen for
the day of small things. Is your vocation of any
less value on that account ? Not in the least. You
stand now as plainly outlined before the gaze of
God and heaven as ever stood a John Wycliffe or a
Martin Luther when fronting the inquisitors and
persecutors of old. You are fighting as great a
battle as Gideon fought, as true a battle, and in the
purpose of God it may be as worthy a conflict as
ever he carried to a successful issue.
Here are God's "cakes of barley bread." Let
me speak to one or two of you personally. You see
that man of humble parts, concerning whom the world
knows but little, but whose lot in life has already
been so strenuous and so hard. This man is a
member of a scattered family, gathered perhaps into
many households. He was just the member of the
family from whom least was expected when he was
young. He has had to carve his way alone, and to
do it against odds. He had no particular chance
given him ; no particular pride was ever shown in
him. But now — now that his grip and strength of
character, now that his singleness of purpose and
honesty of aim have been crowned with a moderate
amount of success, that man has the burden of the
rest loaded upon him. How often that occurs in
human history. Life is not easy for anyone of you.
It is full of care and tragedy, perhaps, for many who

252 A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD
are here just now. Such a man as I have now
described is one of God's " cakes of barley bread."
There is nothing very interesting about him. No
one would ever dream of describing him as remark
able, but here he is, carrying not only double, but
more than double the load he need carry if it were
not that he had other lives to think of as well as his
own, so many weak wills to strengthen. He is
always called to rescue in the moment of stress, and
forgotten the moment it is over. Is it any wonder
that he shrinks from the conflict and avers that he
has had enough? But he always goes back, and
always takes up the burden again, and always strikes
his blow for a brother's good. Ungrateful Israel is
saved by him — why ? Because he has realised
down in the depths of his heart this is his duty.
He cannot let father or brother go down, so he is
the man that they ought to be, this Gideon of
modern times, playing the game in the obscure
corner, one of God's " cakes of barley bread."
Now turn your eyes toward the quiet little woman
who has come to church alone. Her husband knows
too much to worship God on the Sabbath day ; he
has outgrown it. This little woman knows in all its
fulness the problem of poverty, anxiety, struggle,
home sorrow. She has married a man in whom she
finds it difficult to believe now as she did on the day
she espoused him. But she tries to do it, and keeps
a brave face to the world, and will never confess
that she married one who was weak, but who

A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD 253
appeared to be strong. If ever trouble comes to
this family, it is the wife who bears it, not the
husband, who says he does. Here is one who has
not only to face the crisis when her husband lies
down before it, but she has to keep up his spirits
too, and renew the dying hope within him. She
does not tell the world, and the world does not care,
though perhaps the world would give the man what
it thinks he deserves. This woman is neither
beautiful nor brilliant. She will attract no attention
in company. There is nothing showy about the
part she plays ; but what will be the outcome ? I
know. Her children shall rise up and call her
blessed. The truth will out sometime where it most
matters to be told. It is known now, if she could
only see it, in high heaven and in the presence of
the angels who are strong and pure, and whose
strength and whose purity are shown in their
sympathy with these struggling ones of earth.
Ministering spirit below, you have a kinship with
those ministering spirits above ! God knows the
task that was set, and how it is being done. " A
cake of barley bread," a single arm against a host, a
brave battle with the inevitable end. God's ways
shall triumph, and triumph in you. Hold on, for as
sure as you are here this morning so surely has God
called you to the work that you are doing, and to
the victory you shall win. Turn back to the task
you have left with the full assurance that so it is
and so it must ever be.

254 A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD
Now just let your thoughts turn to this boy and
girl, for they are little more, who have come to
church to-day to receive strength and inspiration for
an almost impossible task to-morrow. The father
has been taken away by the hand of death. The
poor mother is not able to cope with the world, not
able to think what to do or what measures to take
to keep the old home together. So this boy and
girl have to be father and mother to their own
mother and to the rest — and I am painting no
imaginary picture. I know it to be true. They
are not versed in the ways of the world, so they are
cheated and they are wronged and they are op
pressed. They are the losers, mostly, when the
conflict comes with the hard, practised man of
affairs. Now and then they find a friend, but they
are learning, even so young, not to put much trust
in human promises ; they hold good as long as they
do not pinch the person who makes them. It is a
hard task. Sometimes they feel as if it ought not
to have been set them. Yet these are only tempted
for the moment to shrink from what God has sent
them to do. To-morrow it will be all right again.
Back to the front ! God's "cakes of barley bread"
thrown against a host, victory granted and assured !
Gideon looked just like any other Israelite, and
amongst the people here this morning it would
puzzle you to pick out the men who are playing the
game as I have described it. Within as many
minutes I sometimes talk to two or three men and

A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD 255
try to figure out what might be if circumstances
changed with anyone of them. One man comes with
his complaint of the hardness of fortune, the inex-
plicableness of fate, and excuses himself for having
failed and gone down. Another comes, tells you
nothing about it, but you know he has to begin
again just where he started years ago, because of
the mischance which has overtaken him, and which
he never did anything to deserve. What a differ
ence in the two men ! I know if I put this latter
man down in the midst of a great city, or in the
wilds of Africa, he is not going under. He carries
his credentials in his character. Usually the secret
of a man's failure, though he knows it not, is not to
be sought in any external circumstances whatever
but in himself, and a man's success before it comes
is guaranteed by the quality of his brain and heart.
" Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple trust his utmost skill ! "
Shall I tell you where to find the secret of
invincible courage — intense unselfishness ? Look up
the record of the men of faith. Have you a great
task before you to do to-morrow ? In what spirit
do you propose to attempt it ? Have you a duty for
God ? With what resource will you face it ? Do
you ask — it is very natural that you should — why all
this? Why am I expected to do this work and
bear that extremity of fortune ? What hope of
success when I have done it? "A cake of barley

256 A CAKE OF BARLEY BREAD
bread " against an army. Yet rise up, children of
God. Christ is with you, nay, Christ comes again
in you to a fresh encounter with the host of evil.
Our first hymn this morning is a glorious comment
on this text : —
*' Oh, wisest love ! that flesh and blood,
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against their foe —
Should strive and should prevail."
Where am I to look for my Christ ? In heaven ?
Well, yes, in heaven. When we see Him face to
face we shall know something of what we have
owed to Him all the way. But here is the place for
the saint to look for Him now. Look within your
own heart and you will find Him there. All that is
best in you is Christ. The Christ divine indwells
every one of you, you unrecognised saints of God.
It is His work that you do ; His spirit which
prompted it, and His victory that you are to win.
Only "a cake of barley bread"; only a frail hand
and a single arm ; only a trembling, fearful heart,
but yonder the mighty work and here, at hand,
within, the Lord of Hosts !

A SINFUL GOD

The following subject was chosen as a result of conversations with
a number of pessimistically inclined people, whose questions involved
the venerable problem treated in the Greek tragedies, and the Book
of Job. In the choice of title and text I made an attempt to
bring Christian experience to bear upon a problem to which mere
speculation is unequal. The issue was sharply stated — too sharply
to be at once understood by some people who were present. Vide
the postscript which follows the sermon.
I may remark that one of these conversationalists was Mr Hall
Caine, whose forthcoming book, " The Prodigal Son," treats the
same theme.

XV
" We make Him a liar." — i John i. 10.
The title I have given to our subject is, I admit, a
strange, almost an irreverent, one, but our text
justifies the phrase if only to force an issue upon
our consciences. It is no trifling alternative with
which the writer of this chapter arrests our atten
tion by the use of this startling phrase. He places
in bold relief what is the half-comprehended feeling
of many whose thoughts and lives are in direct
opposition to that view of the nature of God which
came to us in Jesus Christ. " If we say that we
have not sinned we make Him a liar" — there is no
help for it. If the moral attitude of the man of the
world is the true and wise one, be he hedonist,
pessimist, or materialist, then God Himself must be
a sinner, and the universe is a lie.
Before going further, let us be sure that we have
grasped the writer's meaning. The word " liar," as
employed in this text, sounds to English ears a very
strong epithet ; it has an offensive and even a con
temptuous significance. If you or I were to employ
the term in addressing or describing anyone in our
circle of acquaintance, we should expect it to be
resented. But the offensive and contemptuous 259

260 A SINFUL GOD
significance is not necessarily present in this passage.
It really means the essential falseness of all existence.
It could be employed even of an unconscious God.
Suppose you imagined that the power behind pheno
mena is utterly unconscious of itself, and that a good
man crushed by irresistible fate was destroyed by a
God that did not know it when He did it, you might
feel and say : The universe is false to my conscience ;
conscience has bidden me do right — I have been
destroyed by doing it : and this blind, deaf, and
dumb God of mine did not know. But is it not
immeasurably worse if you can bring yourself to
feel and say that the God behind all, after all,
knows perfectly well what He is doing, knows you
and all about you, but is utterly indifferent as to
what happens to you when you have served His
immediate purpose ; you may suffer, but He cares
not ; you may die, He has done with you ; good
and evil, right and wrong, joy and sorrow are all one
to Him ? " He plants His footsteps in the sea, and
rides upon the storm." What could such atoms as
you say to the Judge of all the earth, a Judge to
whom right and wrong matter equally nothing ?
As John Stuart Mill says : We would arraign such
a God — we could not help it — before the tribunal
of our own consciences, and we should say : One
thing at least He cannot do, He cannot compel me
to worship Him, and if He sends me to hell for such
a refusal, then to hell I will go. That quiet pessi
mist of centuries ago uttered almost a twentieth-

A SINFUL GOD 261
century sentiment about such an extremity when
he wrote : —
" We are none other than a moving row
Of magic shadow-shapes, that come and go
Round with the sun-illumined lantern held
In midnight by the Master of the show."
Here then is an issue which the writer of our
text forces upon us. If the man who is seeking to
follow the right that is written and proclaimed
within his own conscience find no correspondence
with the voice of that conscience in the world out
side him, then the universe is a lie. It behoves this
generation to ponder well the declaration contained
in these words, and every one of us must, whether
he likes or not, take up some attitude towards them.
To the man of indifferent life who feels he is obey
ing the law of the universe by living a bad life, I
have a question to put, or, rather, I would like him
to put it to himself : Is God a liar, or am I ? Let me
illustrate. I doubt not I address some who feel the
terrible pressure of the burden of the world's woe.
Who has not done so at some time or other ? And
who is himself so steeped in self-satisfaction as not
to feel one pang of sympathetic sorrow for those
less fortunately placed than myself? We may feel
the pressure of the problem through our sympathy
with agonising humankind, or through our own self-
pity. Going out into my garden one morning to
listen to the song of the birds, I found in one bush
a little nest full of tiny mites all dead, and I could

262 A SINFUL GOD
not for the life of me understand why ; I knew
that no one in my house would do such a cruel
thing as take away the mother of those little
ones. Presently I discovered the reason. Hang
ing by her feet in the garden net was the
little songster whose home that tiny nest was.
She had been seeking food for her little ones, and
had been caught there and slowly destroyed. My
imagination conjured up the scene that must have
taken a good while to enact — the slow death, the
longing to be free, the starving progeny, the seeming
sinister cruelty of it all. No philosopher that has
ever lived, any more than the weakest, smallest
child, is able to give a full and satisfactory answer
to the question. Why? There was epitomised
the story of sentient life in the world, and in face
of that tiny tragedy, I sent up my question to the
Lord of the universe, and felt for the moment as if
I stood upon one side and He upon another, and as
though there were in humanity an element of pity
which he Himself lacked, though the power was all
His. At our young men's meeting last Thursday
the veteran philanthropist who addressed it said,
" I am sometimes glad I do not live in London. I
almost think it would unman me ; there is the
apparently hopeless sorrow of the great sunken
masses of London to account for. There seems to
be so little done and such a cry of agony rising from
the abyss, that I feel if I were amongst it, in the
presence of it, it would break my heart." I know

A SINFUL GOD 263
what Dr Paton meant, as most of you do. It is, as
we read in our first lesson (Job ii.), that evil is
stalking to and fro in the earth, and walking up and
down in it, and God tolerates it — nay, it may be,
ordains it.
Yet there once stood amongst us a Being who
had a verdict to pronounce, and, though he gave no
full explanation, He said this concerning the great
problem which you and I are now facing : " Are
not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and not one of
them falls to the ground without your Father.
Behold the fowls of the air; they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns, and God
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?"
This same Jesus — whom some people have accused
of looking too lightly upon the great problem of the
woe of the world, who, as He watched the sparrow
die at the same moment, uttered the word " Father"
in conjunction with the tiny tragedy — this Jesus
went to a cross for His faith ; human hands nailed
Him there. If there ever was a vision about the
meaning of the universe and of the nature of God,
Jesus had it, but it did not save Him from the Cross.
He uttered no complaint against God, and His last
word was a word of pity for man. But this Jesus
who thus spoke about the love of the Father for
His children paid for it surely in His own life ; the
dichotomy went straight through His experience.
We feel the desperate antinomy in the experience
of Christ as we feel it nowhere else. These con-

264 A SINFUL GOD
tradictions in experience are to some natures
appalling; we feel as though harmony were im
possible. Some of us feel at times as if we are
living two lives — one in which we are as Jesus, and
the other in which we have to conform to the world's
evil standard. This is the doctrine of Positivism —
humanity on one side, nature on the other. Humanity
can be considered as one, so can God ; but the real
God, the hard God, the masterful God, is upon the
other side, and identified with the soulless world.
I was reading in a book called "Love and Hunger "
which came to me the other day a statement of this
dichotomy which probably the writer did not mean
to make. He describes a working man sitting by
the bedside of his little child ; he has been out of
work weeks and months. The doctor has told him
his child may be saved if he can give her good food
and take her away to the seaside, and so on. The
man cannot get the food to give the child ; the
comforts are impossible, the seaside — you might as
well speak of heaven. The man grows desperate as
he sits there and watches her slipping away from
him into the unseen. Within a few hours of the
time when death has done his last and worst, the
work is granted. The man feels no gratitude to
anybody ; it comes too late. But at the very hour
when the child is taken from him he must go out to
earn his daily bread ; there she lies still on the bed,
and here is he, pushing trucks about a goods yard.
There is the problem epitomised — the two lives, the

A SINFUL GOD 265
one at the bedside, love that would have given itself
in extremest sacrifice to save the little one ; the
other conforming to that hard and terrible law. He
had to labour and he had to suffer.
Even greater is the question as affects the distribu
tion of God's judgments. Now and then a man comes
to me and pours out his saddening tale as to the way
in which God has judged righteous judgment concern
ing him; he has sinned against the light, and righteous
ness has been terribly vindicated in his life. But for
one such man there are twenty men who never come.
"The wicked flourish like a green bay tree." Here
is a scheming monster with whom everything has
gone well to all appearances since he began his
lying career; why should that harpy be tolerated
in the ranks of humanity any more than a bird
of prey ? It may be I address one who is helpless
in the face of intolerable wrong inflicted by such a
hand ; which of you has the better footing in life,
you with your conscience or this man with none —
he who has been raking riches to himself ever since
he began to think ? That is a question as between
your conscience and your God. A friend showed to
me some months ago a newspaper paragraph which
concerned one of us. Putting it down on the
table, he said, " When you consider that pungent,
lying, loathsome statement, which only just avoids
the law of libel, what is your first thought concern
ing the writer ? " I read the paragraph without a
tremor of emotion, without any feeling either of

266 A SINFUL GOD
indignation or respect. I said, "Well, the man who
wrote it probably had his bread to earn, and sold
his soul in doing it." "Precisely," said my friend;
"but he must have thought it would pay him to do
it ; he must have thought the world would give
him a chance if he did it; therefore, this expresses
his philosophy of life. He would lie away another
man's career, he would stab to death another man's
peace, he would not give the treachery two thoughts
after he had done it ; but he must believe somehow
that the world is so made that it will let him do
this, and the world's God is of such a kind as to
approve it, otherwise it never would have been
done." You see what I am trying to bring out. Con
science, even at its best, sometimes feels the terrible
dissonance between good and evil, between the ideal
and the real, and conscience at its worst acts as
if the real were the evil, and as though it would
pay to do that which is wrong, rather than to do
that which is right. Men must believe it, or they
would not persist in sin ; nay, they might even deny
that there is such a thing as sin. When you see
a man giving his life to shame and wrong you are
tempted to believe that the law of the universe is
the survival of the fittest — go on if you can, carve
your way, for you must, nature will not spare you ;
believe that the law of the universe requires you
not to know anything about sin, not to be squeamish
about wrong ; take things as they come, keep your

A SINFUL GOD 267
footing, live your life. If so, the universe is worse
than a tragedy, it finds a place for the victorious
lie ; good and evil it is equally indifferent to, right
and wrong, peace and pain are confused together.
What shall we say, then, of those who try to live
another kind of life than this, but that if the man of
the world has the best of it, if the hedonist comes
off conqueror, if the materialist philosophy is the
very truth, and God is blind and deaf and dumb, or
worse, then the universe is a lie.
Here, then, is the issue before us. Many of you,
without facing things out, are living as though the
question were already settled for you. If evil is
stronger than good, then you are entitled to call even
conscience a liar ; if there is nothing to vindicate the
righteous man, then God Himself is the aider and
abettor of sin, and is justly condemned by the very
thing that has been held to reveal Him. Nay, if good
has usually been on the cross, and evil on the throne,
then even Jesus Christ, the Being of clearest moral
vision that the world has ever known, was also the
blindest and the most deluded, and those who have
loved and followed and suffered and died for Him
are of all men the most miserable and the greatest
fools. I intentionally put the case pungently. Here
it stands then : Jesus Christ on the one side and the
god of the materialist and the hedonist upon the other.
If the man of the world is right, and piety a failure,
then Christ is a mistake, and those who follow Him
are worse.

268 A SINFUL GOD
But stay : there are two things I would like to
bring before your attention. First, supposing it
were possible to imagine God being on one side
and right on the other ; better perish with the right
than succeed with such a God. We will put it that
way. Perhaps you think I am saying something
new, but centuries before Jesus walked on earth
a man worked out that problem ; nor is it merely
in the book of Job. A Greek tragedian represents
Prometheus hurled from heaven and chained to a
rock by the king of the gods because he chose a
right that was greater than Zeus. This god could
not conquer ; he crushed him, but the victim had the
victory after all. Prometheus chained to the rock
appealed to eternal right against enthroned wrong.
How like that is to the story of the mediaeval wor
shipper, who, when told that the gospel of Christ
was only the story of the world's greatest tragedy, that
not good, but evil, gained the victory, answered :
"Then I had rather be in hell with Christ than in
heaven without Him." This is the ultimatum of
conscience. If the universe had a sinister meaning,
and a devil were at the heart of it, better perish
with Prometheus chained to the rock — better die
with Jesus on the cross — than succeed by obeying
the sinister will of such a god.
But here is the second consideration. Thousands
have done this very thing, and pronounced this very
ultimatum. Men have followed the prompting of
their highest nature with this astonishing and sub-

A SINFUL GOD 269
lime result : they have come to feel absolutely certain
that conscience told them no lie, but that omnipotent God
is righteousness, truth, and love. I am afraid that
some will miss my meaning here. It is that when
Calvary became the only issue out of an impossible
situation, when good and evil were so pitted against
each other that the good had to suffer, evil had to
triumph, that the decision for the highest taken not
only by the Christ, but by all who followed and
loved Him, has led to victory after all. It is a
sublime fact that this has meant the discovery
that the great God is righteousness, truth, and
love — a God that will by no means clear the
guilty. " The Lord executeth righteousness and
judgment for all that are oppressed." " Like as a
father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them
that fear Him." " For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever
believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal
life." Ponder this well, all you whose lives are so
ordered as to "make Him a liar." Can you stand in
the judgment, not the judgment that is afar off, but
the judgment that ever proceeds? Your life is
registering its own decrees. Is evil gain or loss?
Were it well to serve it or defy it ? I ask you to
appeal to the experience of the man of faith in any
age. At that meeting last Thursday to which I
have already referred one of our deacons spoke and
gave us this piece of experience ; it arrested my
attention instanter — in fact, I may say this sermon

270 A SINFUL GOD
came out of it : — He said it had often struck him as
an appalling thing that young men of his acquaint
ance were sometimes willing and ready to avow that
the determination to get on meant the sacrifice of
moral principle. They would speak in this way:
"The world is so ordered to-day that the man
who would succeed must have money — money I must
have ! The man who has none is thought little of
to-day ; therefore I mean to get it. If it is wealth
that leads to power, and wealth that spells success,
I cannot afford to be without it. I will get it,
honestly if I can ; but if I cannot, still I will get it."
This, said my deacon, struck him as being a ghastly
sign of the times — that a man should so present
the alternative to himself and so decide. He was
not speaking from imagination, but from what he
knows well. There are men who, whether they
confess it or not, have deliberately made this
choice, which I should call a pact with the forces
of evil.
You see what such a man says to himself. It is
not a question of sin. He would not acknowledge
its existence ; sin can only be recognised when
righteousness is enthroned. Righteousness may not
vindicate itself at once, but a man will not acknow
ledge his sin who is obeying what he calls the law
of the universe, a necessity imposed upon all flesh.
He says: "You must live, you must succeed if you
can ; you cannot afford to be squeamish. Do not
parade your sympathy; this world is not a place for

A SINFUL GOD 271
sentiment. Get on, honestly if you can, but get on
anyhow ; and when the time comes when you must
turn to the left and win success, or turn to the right
and become a failure, do not fear or hesitate to go
to the left." You see what you have done ; you
would not acknowledge it, but the word " sin " has
no entrance here or any stake at all. Be it so.
You have taken your choice ; you have " made Him
a liar," and, not only so, but all the experience of
saints and martyrs since time began. You have
taken your stand with a sorry crew — those who
prevail for the moment, but to-morrow are dismissed
in ignominy from before the face of God.
You, then, who dread life, who are tired of it
and suffer under it, have you been to Christ with
your trouble, with your problem ? Has He laid His
healing touch upon you ? Have you anything to
yield up to Him? Then fear nothing else. " If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous
ness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him
a liar." If He cannot keep you in peace and safety
once you have chosen Him, then, in the language
of our text, He is a liar ; but can He — does He ?
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so whom He has
delivered out of the hands of the enemy. " Many
are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord
delivereth him out of them all." "Sorrow endureth
for a night, joy cometh in the morning." This, then,
is the meaning of life. I am glad that God has

272 A SINFUL GOD
made it no child's play ; there is many a twentieth-
century Job who has had to face these issues and
come through, walking by faith — the faith that never
loses grip of the hand of righteousness. It is the
righteous man who knows that God is true. " There
hath not failed one word of all His good promise."
I have no fear or hesitation in stating this alterna
tive: Either God is a liar, evil man, or you are;
either righteousness is the last word of the universe,
and is one with the love of the All-Father, or else
your life is at one with the law of evil. But if the
Cross of Calvary is really the way to the throne of
His glory, you are condemned even now. But you
who have served truth and suffered for it, you who
have been nailed on a cross of your own for trying
feebly and in a corner to serve the same great law of
righteousness, you who have come to Christ, turn
ing your back upon evil as you turned your face to
Him, you need have no fear: "Yea, let God be
true and every man a liar." When the heart of
a righteous man speaks true, it knows Him to be
the Father and Redeemer of us all. But beware,
ye workers of iniquity. " Turn ye, why will ye
die ? " The life that is raised against God is fore
doomed. His righteousness will dash it to pieces
like the potter's clay.
A Question Answered
Before announcing his text on Sunday evening
Mr Campbell said : —

A SINFUL GOD 273
" Someone who appears to have been present at
the service this morning has sent in to me the follow
ing question, to be answered if possible from the
pulpit to-night. I could hardly undertake to answer
in the pulpit every question that comes to me, but as
this arrives so soon after my teaching of this morning
I think it is well worth a word.
'"Will Mr Campbell kindly explain why the
power to do evil is greater than the power to do
good ; or, in other words, why evil is stronger or
more powerful than God ? '
"The answer to the question is that evil is not
stronger or more powerful than God, though it may
often seem to be so. Even human experience at its
highest is a constant denial of any such pessimistic
creed. There are men here to-night, I do not doubt,
who feel in their hearts, and sometimes say with their
lips, that this is a world in which it is easier to do
wrong than to do right. To the flesh it may be,
but there is something within every man which in
the very moment of his sin informs him of a larger
and a purer and a higher life, and in so doing calls
him towards it and condemns him for failing.
Every person here must admit that. Moreover,
in my teaching this morning I tried to show to you
by two parallel statements what Christian experience
has to say upon this point. Supposing, as in the
Greek tragedy, you are, like Prometheus, chained
to the rock for having dared to do right, having
given yourself to a noble cause and suffered defeat
s

274 A SINFUL GOD
thereby ; supposing, I say, that the universe was so
made that you had to be chained to the rock, like
Prometheus, or nailed upon the Cross of Christ,
better go, then, and suffer in defiance of an evil god
than succeed by obeying a sinister law. There is
something in the human heart which says, ' Better
be crucified with Christ, if that were the very last
word that the universe ever uttered, than obey a
god whose name and nature are wrong.'
"But, secondly, the very men who have done
this are the men who have discovered for us and
written large upon the skies of time the truth that
to him who suffers for the good there enters the
confidence that God is good. The men who have
gone to the stake for right, the men who have been
tortured for the sake of truth, the men who have
been heroic in the world's great affairs, defying bad
humanity itself for the sake of something which is
eternal, have by that very process and that very
experience become convinced of the fact that omni
potence was upon their side after all. God and
righteousness and truth and love are one, and the
men who have gone to Calvary in that belief have
not doubted that it was so. And it will be so for
every man in this place who dares to venture his
life and his career upon it to-morrow. You will not
be allowed to live and to die without the conscious
ness that you are on the side of God."

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS

It often falls to my lot to have to reason with young men who are
agnostically inclined. When such a young man is unteachable I
leave him alone, feeling certain that time will modify his self-con
fidence ; but if along with his agnosticism there goes a wish to
render obedience to the best, there are many ways of helping him.
This sermon was designed to show that not only is humanity com
pelled to be agnostic — in the literal meaning of the term — con
cerning by far the greater number of the questions that even a child
can ask about the universe, but that this ignorance of ours has a
certain moral value ; it gives us an opportunity for noble living amid
things the full meaning of which we see not. This is the way in
which character is made. It startled some of my young men to be
told that in this sense I was not only an agnostic myself, but that
every Christian must be, and that even the Christian's Lord was
not exempt from the reality of this experience. It is so often and
so freely asserted that our blessed Lord had no mysteries to face,
that He is made to seem an unreal and unhelpful Being to men of
this generation who are trying to follow Him. The mistaken
abuse I received for this sermon, from good people who never saw
the point of it, was more than balanced by the good work it did
among my own young men. It made Jesus real to them, and
taught them to see that a man's worth consists in the way he deals
with that corner of his life in which there is no room for doubt,
and no excuse to be agnostic.

XVI
"But of that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." — Mark xiii. 32.
If one were in search of a text with which to
testify to the genuineness of the Gospel narrative
he could not select a better than this one. It is,
indeed, remarkable, in regard to early Christian
records as a whole, that the further we get away
from apostolic times the less simple and credible
are the accounts of the various writers. When we
compare the gospels with sub-apostolic narratives
of what profess to be incidents in the life of Jesus
we are struck by the naturalness and spontaneity
of the former as against the turgidness and miracle-
mongering of the latter. The gospels are probable
from their very simplicity, just as the sub-apostolic
records are largely improbable because they lack
that quality. In the gospels Jesus appears as a
simple yet sublimely impressive figure, while in sub-
apostolic literature He is anything but that. This
text, then, is one of many which do something to
establish the genuineness of the Gospel records;
for in sub-apostolic times it would have been added
to or explained away. Here in St Mark's Gospel
it stands just as Jesus spoke it, and apparently the
277

278 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
utterance is meant as an acknowledgment of His
ignorance of some things.
There is in many quarters to-day a tendency like
that of sub-apostolic times, a reluctance to admit
that our Lord could be ignorant of anything.
People who hold that view fail to see that in so
doing they destroy the humanity of Jesus, and
therefore His value for us. What avail His struggle
and sorrow if He knew all about their meaning,
and why they came, and the issue thereof? His
life and work would be unreal if we could compel
ourselves to believe that. No; as He here Him
self asserts, His consciousness of His destiny and
His mission was limited. In many things Jesus
was the Child of His time, and I will mention some
of them. For one thing, there is no reason for us
to believe that Jesus thought anything other than
that Moses wrote the Pentateuch from the first
chapter to the last, and that all the other authors
of the Old Testament books were as traditionally
described and named. I remember once, in Oxford
days, hearing a popular preacher, who came to the
University city with the special object of over
throwing, as he called it, or attempting to over
throw, the work of one Biblical scholar of eminence
— Canon Driver — and the way he proposed to do
it was this : " Jesus said Moses wrote the Levitical
code ; therefore he did write it, otherwise our Lord
is not what He professed to be, and our Lord is
not divine." The good man was perfectly genuine

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS 279
and perfectly sincere, but, as you can see for your
selves, his argument was not necessarily sound —
far from it. For, on our Lord's own showing,
there were some things He did not know ; and
this may, with all reasonableness, have been one
of them. Who wrote the Pentateuch or who wrote
the Psalms was not the question that Jesus came
to settle, nor the information that Jesus came to
give; neither should it ever be, in the life of any
rational man, or of any Christian, a question of
primary importance. The questions of primary im
portance lie deeper than that, deeper than the
authenticity of this or that book, but not deeper
than the great moral facts of our being. The Lord
hath written His law within our hearts. What Jesus
came to reveal no man stands in doubt of who looks
at the life of Jesus and tries to conform himself to it.
Further, Jesus was a Child of the time, in
all probability, in that He assigned causes for
disease which we do not assign to-day. Epilepsy,
for example, was believed by everybody in His
time and among His countrymen to be demon-
possession. It may have been — there is nothing
asserted to the contrary — that Jesus thought so
too. Again, there is no reason to think that He
knew all the facts concerning the structure of the
physical universe. It is marvellous how He avoided
error concerning these things ; but there is no
indication that Jesus foresaw the astronomical dis
coveries of a later day, nor did He give any hint

280 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
that He thought about them. In political history
the knowledge of Jesus appears to have been con
fined to His own people and to the influence of
Rome upon them. He never foresaw England ; He
never said a word about the British Empire. He
never seems to have looked much further than His
own generation, as the chapter that we read for
our lesson (Mark xiii.) shows. Yet, in the pro
vidence of God, England has had a place to fill in
the world relatively as great as that of Rome, and
her mission is not terminated yet. Lastly, Jesus
was the Child of His time, in that He not only
anticipated a speedy end of the world, but that
it would be of a cataclysmal character: hence our
text. "This generation," He says in the context,
" shall not pass till all these things be done." It
is common knowledge that the Christian Church
in general in the first age expected a speedy coming
of the Messiah and a speedy end of the world.
But Jesus did not come as was expected. The
end of the world is not yet. Every week some
fresh prophet professes to find from certain portents
the exact date when this earth and the heavens are
to be dissolved and the elements melted with fervent
heat ; but so many have been their false alarms,
so numerous their disappointments, that I think
we may take it for granted that the end will not
come quite so soon as any person in this generation
believes, any more than it came in the generation
to which Jesus belonged. But I say it is clear

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS 281
from this chapter that Jesus Himself anticipated
the end sooner than the facts have shown to
be the case.
But all this only serves to bring Him very near
to us, without dimming in the slightest the beauty
of His spiritual vision or diminishing one iota His
moral pre-eminence. It only showed that Jesus
possessed no dual consciousness. He could not
be at once finite and infinite — Himself and some
body else. He was Jesus. He brought to us
the manhood of God, and everyone of you who
is trying to live the life of Jesus in the spirit
and strength of Jesus is showing forth the same
thing. For God is not something apart from
humanity. He is humanity, and infinitely more.
All that God was in humanity, that Jesus was,
and is. He consistently represented humanity at
its highest, and thus showed it to be in its essence
divine. " Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway, yours and
mine.
Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine."
We may, therefore, with reverence, regard this
text as illustrating the agnosticism of Jesus.
Agnosticism was a word, coined, I believe, by
the late Professor Huxley, to express a certain
mental attitude towards questions insoluble at
present by the human intellect, but with which
religion professes to deal. I do not mention the
term with any intention of attacking it — far from

282 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
it. I believe it has done a necessary work. Indeed,
I would like to show that there are some things
upon which young men can afford to be agnostic,
and some upon which every man must be agnostic,
and for that we have our Lord's own warrant. It
was the late Mr Herbert Spencer who, in his
" First Principles," defined the basis of agnosticism
thus: "The power behind phenomena is utterly
inscrutable." There are people here who do not
think that proposition ought to pass unchallenged.
Yet " God's ways are in the sea." The Christian
could say that, and is so far an agnostic. " Canst
thou by searching find out God ? " The answer
is, No. But this Jesus of whom I have been
speaking addressed Himself directly to the power
behind the phenomena, as though He knew some
thing concerning it. He said: "I thank Thee,
O Father, that Thou hast hid these things from
the wise and understanding, and hast revealed them
unto babes." The power behind phenomena, if
it is to be revealed at all, must be revealed to a
certain quality of heart rather than to a certain
quality of mind. This quality of heart Jesus ex
hibited at its fullest and best, and you and I may
partake of it. There are some things that we
can come to know concerning our being, and our
destiny, and our place in the heart of God, although
we may be in the dark about all things else.
No doubt I address not a few who are in the
particular mental mood which has conventionally

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS 283
been called agnosticism. In a congregation so
large as this, containing so many young men, it
is impossible to suppose that every person accepts
the orthodox and conventional view of the person
of Jesus and the doctrines of Christianity. You
do nothing of the kind. I do not think any the
worse of you if you have faced your difficulties
fairly and bravely. In your case, in all probability,
what you call agnosticism simply means a sort of
religious uncertainty. " How do you know ? " would
be the question you would address to me if I
were to make any very definite assertion concerning
God, human destiny, immortality. " Prove your case."
Now, I want to show that we are all, more or less,
compelled to assume yourpresentattitude, only, where
as you take it about the deepest things, some of us
have come to see that we cannot afford to take it
about those things, and that experience justifies us in
taking a more confident, more optimistic attitude
toward the great questions of human life. Thus,
we are all compelled to be agnostics, of a kind and
up to a certain point — I am not afraid of the word.
Men were agnostics before the word was coined,
but they did not know they were. I would like
to show you that your value as a man depends
upon the quality of your agnosticism ; your merit
before God depends upon whether you are an
agnostic in the sense that Jesus would approve or
whether you are not.
You remember, probably, the story of the con-

284 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
version of King Edwin of Northumbria. It was a
long time before Huxley's days, but there was some
agnosticism taught by a statesman in King Edwin's
wooden hall when the missionaries of Augustine
came to the northern capital and waited before the
Saxon monarch and his lords. At first they were
inclined to repudiate him and his doctrines. At
last one of the council arose and spoke thus : " Thou
knowest, O King, that oftentimes on a winter
evening, when we are assembled within this dimly
lighted hall to do the business of our people, a swallow
will come in from the night and pass through the
hall and out at the further door — from darkness
into darkness again. So it is with the human soul.
We come we know not whence ; we go we know
not whither. If, therefore, these new teachers can
tell us aught concerning whence we come and
whither we go, let us hear them." Great events
proceed from small causes. It may have been in
the providence of God that that speech that night
had something to do with your Christianity and
mine to-day. Yet we are just in the same position
intellectually as that Saxon speaker was who stood
before King Edwin concerning the same questions
that he raised. He was an agnostic, though he
did not use the word. So are we, and yet we may
be Christians notwithstanding. Do we know
whence we come ? Some preach reincarnation, but
most of us would brush aside the suggestion that
we have ever lived before. Whether we brush it

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS 285
aside or not, we cannot prove either yea or nay ;
we have to hold our judgment in suspense in a
question of that kind. The question first to be
settled is, what to do with our destiny while we are
here, how to prepare for the destiny that awaits us.
Can you tell whither you go? Not a few in this
congregation are not at all sure that there is any
life beyond the grave. They wish it could be
proven. So do I. But we can do no more than
infer it from the moral constitution of the universe.
If to-morrow you could fling wide open the portals
of the unseen, you would not necessarily make
better one man on the whole globe ; rather, you
would probably give opportunity for the formation
of some syndicate to exploit it. You would make
no man, necessarily, feel that he must be a better
man, a nobler man, than he was before. Here,
then, we stand just in the position of the Saxon
lord who advised King Edwin that we know not
whence we come, and we know not for certain, in
the fashion of scientific truth, whither we go. We
can but fall back on the position of Tennyson, which
is the position of every Christian too, and say : —
" My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is."
Human nature refuses to believe that grim alter
native. The moral argument for immortality is the
only one that is much worth while. We are

286 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
agnostic, then — compelled to be agnostic — in the
sense, that we cannot prove, by demonstration, that
there is either heaven or hell.
Again, we are agnostic concerning the staggering
problem of the existence of evil. By evil I mean
both sin and suffering. As I came down to the
church to-night I saw the newspaper placards about
the battle which has been raging for days in the far
East, and is not over yet. This is what the headlines
said : —
RUSSIAN ROUT

HORRIBLE CARNAGE

RIVERS CHOKED WITH DEAD
If you will allow your imagination to rest upon those
phrases for a moment, and to translate you to the
scene where those events are taking place, you will
have a problem to which no philosopher has ever yet
been equal. In its presence everyone has to hold
his judgment in suspense. He can give no opinion
as to the why and the wherefore of these things
in a world which is said to be ruled by divine
love, the governance of which is righteousness.
But two days ago I read in the newspaper some
thing that would touch some of us British people
more nearly still. A young couple, father and
mother, were putting their only two children
to bed. One of them, a little fellow, leaping

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS 287
out of his father's arms at the top of the stairs,
fell to the bottom, and was killed. His mother
rushed from where she was bathing the baby
to the spot where the tragical fall took place, and,
in her agony, casting herself upon her baby boy,
forgot the other. When she returned the poor
little mite was drowned. I see you feel just as I
felt when I read that. There is something inexplic
able there. None of us can see any possible good
in a discipline of that kind — a horrible, crushing
calamity. Poor father ! Poor mother ! They must
be sufficient for each other to-night, for the veil has
dropped — dropped from the hand of death — not only
between them and their children, but between them
and their God. On a larger scale similar tragedies
are taking place everywhere. It may be questioned
whether there is anything more tragic than the
bereavement caused by the shattering of the bonds
of love. It is just because we are made capable of
affection that pain can strike so deep. Who can
answer the problem which is raised thus ? None of
us. You can but stand silent in the presence of
that awful fact to which all flesh is heir.
Outside of this church there is a murder going on
somewhere. You will see it told in the papers to
morrow. Have you an answer for the problem of
human depravity? Nay, you need not go outside
the church. Stay here. What burdens have been
brought into this place ? What awful resolves, it
may be, have been taken by some worshipper ere he

288 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
entered the door! What anguish and distress of
mind, what a poignant experience is someone's who
has come to rest for a little while in the company of
his fellows and to try and forget ! Oh the horrible
pit and the miry clay ! You are very quiet as I
speak. Some of you, the youngest of you, have
learned to be quiet in the presence of some of the
dread things of life ; for, young as you are, it may
be hope is gone and you are of those whose lot is
cast — " With those who watch but work no more,
Who gaze on life but live no more."
Do you know the meaning of it all ? I do not.
Sometimes I think I can lift a corner of the curtain.
There is one thing — one thing only — which gives
hope in the midst of trial, and it is the experience of
the Saviour. He knows, even in sight of the Cross
and in spite of the shame, yea, in the midst of the
agony, and in face of the tomb, that it is well with
him who suffers for righteousness. The word has
been spoken from the unseen to the deepest in His
own soul. There has been nothing noble but its
price was paid in pain ; there has been no manhood
worthy of the name but it was born in the furnace.
Were this all, it would be poor comfort, even
then ; but I must take you further with One who
had a higher vision than mine. These things were
not hidden from the Great Agnostic in Whose
name we are gathered. What had Jesus to say
about them? Almost nothing at all. Nothing?

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS 289
— nothing about whence we came and whither we
go? nothing about meaningless agony? nothing
about human depravity, and the cause thereof,
and the end thereof? — nothing? No; nothing
that would be evidence in the laboratory, but much
that is evidence to conscience. Jesus never raised
the question of the goodness of God ; He took
that for granted, and lived His life accordingly.
Jesus took for granted the essential rightness of
God's doing. His pure soul reflected the Father's
love, and the Cross could not destroy His faith in
it. Jesus never discussed whether a man had lived
before or should live again. Of Himself He said,
"Before Abraham was, I am." To those who
drew near to Him He assumed the eternal destiny
of every soul, and it is to pure and holy lives that
the same revelation is made to-day. It is not
necessarily the people who have suffered most that
are the most faithless. Now and then you meet
a man who has been turned bitter by his woe ;
now and then you meet a lonely soul who has
lost faith in the kindness of the Father because she
has been robbed of love. But I think I can say
that those I have known who have suffered most,
upon whom God has laid the heaviest burden, who
have had sorrow heaped on sorrow, agony added
to agony, till Nature could bear no more, have not
uncommonly been those who stood nearest to the
heart of Christ, those who have gazed most trust
fully into the Father's face. There is a phenomenon
T

290 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
for you : the person who lives the Christ-like life
in the atmosphere of loving trust, somehow, in spite
of the agony — my phrase is not strong enough
— even because of the agony, transforms the Cross
into a crown of glory. The sufferers know not the
meaning of what they have to endure. "I was
dumb, I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst
it." Yet listen to the affirmation of the man of
faith: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in
Him." What kind of man does that kind of
agnosticism make ? I challenge you to tell me
whether Huxley's kind has done better. Has it
done as well ?
Now, before I close — I see my time is gone,
and I have not said half I wanted to say to
these young men before me, to whom my heart
goes out in brotherly sympathy — before I close, I
leave this with you. It is no begging of the ques
tion or dodging of the issue. That I say I know.
Agnostic you must be, but not all the way round.
There are some things you do know, even if no
preacher ever uttered them, and no man of science
considered them. What kind of life are you living
amid the issues that you clearly understand ? In
the business where you get your living you will
meet with men who are systematic liars, scheming
for their own ends. You say, "It is a bad social
system, but we cannot help it ; business is business.
In the present it is nothing better than barbarism.
We are longing, yearning for a better day, ' when

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS 291
men shall brothers be ' in the market as they are at
the fireside ; but at the present there must be falsity,
hypocrisy, suspicion." Don't believe it. The social
order will never change until some have been cruci
fied — it may be you are one amongst the number.
You dealt with a man yesterday who would lie his
soul away to gain a sovereign. You know he will
get the better of you by sharp practice if he cannot
by fair. The motto of many a successful man of
business is not better than this: "Get there, fairly
if you can, but get there." You have your place to
make, and to keep when you make it. Well, now,
if I were to say to that man who yesterday got the
better of you, and whose whole policy and maxim
and order of life are just what he treated you to
yesterday, "I know something better for you," and
I preached unto him Christ as Paul would have done
it, he might laugh in my face. " All very well," he
would say, "perhaps there never was a Jesus."
Well, I might manage to answer that. I could prove
the historicity of Jesus as easily as I could prove
that of Lord Palmerston, and the evidence is just as
good. " Prove then, that He said what is written
in the gospels." Very well ; I am willing to accept
that challenge, too, for if " Jesus " did not speak
the message attributed to Him, the man who did is
my Christ. "Then prove that He lives." I cannot.
He is worthy to live ; He is worthy to reign ; and
the life that is lived along that line is a triumphant
life, and the man who has come to that ideal never

292 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
finds fault with his destiny, however hard it may be.
He sees but a little way ; but that is enough. These
are not the men who have shrunk from arduous
issues nor strenuous conflicts ; look history through,
and you will see them among the highest and the
noblest of the sons of men. Agnostics, but agnostics
like the author of the hymn who wrote: —
" Keep Thou my feet ; I do not ask to see
The distant scene ; one step enough for me."
Agnostics, if you like, about nineteen-twentieths
of the facts of life ; but about the remaining
twentieth no compromise with conscience. Again,
can you afford to be agnostic concerning, let me
say it, the worth of womanly purity — your sister,
your mother, the woman whom you hope to make
your wife ? Give a logical reason, a scientific
reason ; we will have it that way. Why should
you feel the blush of shame on your cheek and
the mounting of indignation to your face if you
hear a man say a word about these sacred names
which would tend to diminish your reverence for
them and the respect which is their due ? Why
is it ? You will have to go deeper than scalpels
and microscopes can take you to find that. It is
written deep down in your heart by the finger of
God. He was there to write it Himself. It was
from the divine that that sentiment sprang.
Listen, then, you who are trying to live your
life without Christ, who confess yourselves to be

THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS 293
without a working faith. You are not quite so
bereft as you thought. Can you go no further?
Can you afford to be a liar? Can you afford to
be unclean ? Agnostic in a good many things, you
will pause before you are agnostic concerning the
things of truth and purity and right, the noblest
manhood. And when next your scoffer says, "Who
knows whether there be a Christ and a heaven ? "
answer thus : " Are you taking the way to find
out?" "He that willeth to do the will of My
Father which is in heaven, he shall know of the
teaching." Live like a man, a true man and a
brave, in the region where you cannot afford to be
agnostic. You will find that region is a little
larger by the time we meet again.
" Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone."
Listen, my friends and brothers ! I am taking
you back to Jesus again. He was agnostic, just as
you have to be, about some of the most obtrusive
things of life. Jesus could no more have answered
some of the questions I have mentioned to you
than you can answer them yourself. What will
take place within the next five minutes of your
life ? I do not know. What will be the
next word the preacher shall speak ? You
do not know. What is there waiting for you —
black or golden fate — to-morrow? I do not know;

294 THE AGNOSTICISM OF JESUS
you do not know. Is it death? is it life? is it
sorrow? is it joy? We do not know. We are
agnostics in these things and things like them, but
so was Jesus. But, as a saint of God sang just
before he went out to death —
" I know not what awaits me,
God kindly veils mine eyes."
I rest upon the eternal purpose. It is well with
those who put their trust in Him, well with those
who seek to walk uprightly. The man who is living
a pure life in the things of every day does know
something then about the meaning of life and its
call to him. Though it be shrouded in mystery, it
" means intensely and means good " ; and to face it
as Jesus faced it, and live it as Jesus lived it, means
that the things we know by being true and faithful
enable us to wait the revelation of the rest without
darkness or dread. " I know whom I have believed,
and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which
I have committed unto Him against that day." "We
know that all things work together for good to them
that love God, to them who are the called according
to His purpose."

ONENESS WITH GOD

This sermon was asked for by some of the young men who had
been helped and set thinking by the previous one on the Agnos
ticism of Jesus. It speaks for itself.

XVII
•' I and My Father are one." — St John x. 30.
These words of Jesus are in a sense a summary of the
Fourth Gospel. This is what the gospel is about,
and the text is the reason why it was written. The
writer himself tells us so. " These things are written
that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of God, and that, believing, ye might have life
through His name." What is chiefly remarkable
about the words of our text is that nearly everyone
who hears them thinks he knows what they mean,
and yet their simplest interpretation is not the one
that is usually put upon them first. It is strange,
too, that the meaning which constitutes their chiefest
value is the one that is usually passed over.
What, then, are we to say this sentence does
mean? I put the question to you, and no doubt
you are answering it mentally, somewhat in anticipa
tion of what is to follow. What can they mean ?
One might say, when Jesus declared, "I and My
Father are one," He affirms an eternal fact, for He
Himself is the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father,
the express image of God, or, as the Shorter Cate
chism has it, "There are three persons in the
Godhead ; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ;
297

298 ONENESS WITH GOD
and these three are one God, the same in substance,
equal in power and glory." Or, as an even better-
known creed has it, "There are not three incompre-
hensibles . . . but one." I say everybody, or nearly
everybody, on hearing the words of our text, would
at once give, in conventional language, in the lan
guage of someone else and written ages ago, some
such explanation of its meaning. Do you think we
have made it clear when we have used all these
words about it ? We have done the very opposite.
We have wrapped it up in symbols, but we have not
come to close quarters with it and gripped it. There
is nothing more certain than that Jesus employed
these words, not in their metaphysical sense, but in
their moral sense. It is true they cannot have a
moral without a metaphysical meaning, but it is the
moral meaning upon which Jesus laid stress, and I do
not think that those who heard Him mistook His
meaning. He took pains to show just what it was.
It is strange, indeed, that the context of this sen
tence is so seldom quoted. " Jesus answered them,
Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?
If He called them gods unto whom the word of God
came, and the Scripture cannot be broken ; Say ye
of Him, whom the Father hath sanctified and sent
into the world, Thou blasphemest ; because I said, I
am the Son of God ? If I do not the Works of My
Father, believe Me not." These are the evidences
of My oneness with Him.
If I may venture to paraphrase the sacred text, I

ONENESS WITH GOD 299
should say His remonstrance in every-day English
meant something like this. " Why are you so sur
prised ? Why so angry that I have said, ' I and My
Father are one ? ' If all the prophets, if all the royal
men of history, if all the noble ones of earth have
deserved to have applied to them this phrase, I said,
'Ye are gods,' do you not think that I, by My very
credentials, have some right to use the phrase like
wise? If they are gods, I do not say even so much."
For Jesus never in so many words said, "I am God."
If we have affirmed it, and we cannot help it, it was
not because He claimed it, it was because men read
Him, His credentials were clear by what He was.
They confirmed His utterance. " I and My Father
are one." I say it is strange that the context is
never quoted, for by this assertion Jesus claimed
divinity for manhood.
Still further, He asserted that everything that was
good witnessed for human oneness in God. " If any
royal men deserved the title Godlike, then," said
Jesus, " surely I may claim, if I do always the things
which please Him, oneness with My Father." All
discussion as to His metaphysical status is beside the
mark. His credentials were in the purity and noble
ness of His character and work. He said well,
" For which of these works do you stone Me ? " He
was and is one with the Father in spirit and purpose,
heart and will.
You will observe that I have left a question un
discussed, the pre-existence of Christ I have not

300 ONENESS WITH GOD
mentioned ; His lordship, other than in the moral
sense, I have not touched. Jesus may have been
from all eternity at the right hand of God. He
never thrust that fact upon His hearers, but what
He did press upon their attention and seek to enforce
by the lesson of His life was this — humanity is meant
to rest in the bosom of God. It should be true of
all men, and He came to help to make it true, that
they could say, as He said, " I and My Father are
one." Learn, then, that the reason why these words
were ever spoken was to lead mankind to realise its
oneness with God. For this we were created, and
to this we must attain. When we shall see Jesus,
as I trust we shall all see Him, face to face, we shall
never ask the question, the thought will not occur
to us whether He is man or God. The absurdity of
the inquiry by that time will be clear. No such
question, I say, will occur to us. No creed will rise
to our lips. It is just as true of heaven to say
there shall be no creed there as to say there
shall be no night there. Creed will have become
experience, and faith will have become sight. It is
related, I think of Charles Lamb (I speak subject to
correction), that, in company with some others, when
the person of Christ and His status in the ranks of
humanity was under consideration, Lamb spoke thus
— " If any of the worthies of antiquity, a Socrates,
a Shakespeare, a Luther, were to enter this room, we
should all stand, but if that Other came, we should
all kneel." You feel, without my having to add one

ONENESS WITH GOD 301
rhetorical word, the irresistible, invincible truth of
that assertion. If Jesus Christ stood where I stand
now — and I verily believe He does — and our eyes
were opened to see Him, the King in His beauty,
not a scoffer in this Church would curl his lip in the
presence of the Son of God. For since that day
when the Jews took up stones to stone Him, humanity
has come to know what Christ really was, and the
riddle they could not read, and the glory they could
not see, and the moral grandeur to which they were
not susceptible, are revealed plainly to the gaze of
all men. It now knows what Jesus was, and the
question of His metaphysical origin and the question
of His status in the Godhead never would have been
debated if it had not been for His moral value to
mankind. For the present, then, His value to us is
that in Him we can see what God is. To all eternity
you and I may be growing in the knowledge of God's
ways, you will never have to grow any wiser in the
knowledge of God's heart once you have seen Jesus.
We know Him now for what He is. We realise the
goodness of the Father in the transparency of the
character of the Christ. And still more — have you
ever realised it? — it is a creed that is worth your
while — to all eternity you will never find that God
the Father is any better than was the earthly Jesus.
That is the value of the Christ, and what He came
to reveal, and our souls respond to it now with earnest
ness and humility — His oneness with God in heart,
in purpose, mind, and will. " He that hath seen Me

302 ONENESS WITH GOD
hath seen the Father." "I and My Father are
one." This, I say, is to be your destiny too. God and
humanity are one. God is infinitely more, but He
has never withdrawn from your life, or else there
would be no life at all. Some day the will of
which you boast yourself now, the freedom that
you enjoy and misuse, will be gone, for if you have
learned Christ, all your goodness will be spon
taneous, you will not pause to consider or even
struggle before you do the right, and when you
have done it there will be no question of your will
and God's will. It will all be His. Glad freedom
when will is dead ! When sin is done away and
time shall be no more, men will no longer talk about
humanity and divinity; but God, heaven, mankind
will be at one, and you shall say, even as Christ has
been teaching you to say, " I and my Father are one."
As I was on my way to Africa, I heard a little
fellow pestering his mother to tell him when he
would see the sea. She was pointing it out to him,
"There is the sea, my child, there is the sea, all
around the ship." That did not satisfy the little
man. Pointing with his finger, now north, now
south, now east, now west, he kept on asking, "Is
that the sea, is that the sea, mamma ? " And her
answer was invariably, with the patience of mother
hood, "Yes, that is the sea." The puzzled ex
pression on the little fellow's face told me what was
in his mind. To him that was only water, and he

ONENESS WITH GOD 303
wondered when the point would come when that
which was distinctively the sea, the unfamiliar com
pared with that with which he had been familiar all
his life, would come into his vision. He could not
see the ocean for the water. There is an old saying
that sometimes we cannot see the wood for the
trees. The little child who picks a daisy may need
to be reminded that it is a flower. Is it a daisy or
a flower, is it water or the sea, the trees or the
forest, humanity or God? So may He grant that
you and I may live the life in which the very ques
tion becomes impossible. " I and my Father are one."
That the writer of the Fourth Gospel saw this
is perfectly clear from what he has written else
where. Does the sentence I am going to quote
have a more familiar and present value now we have
been meditating together — listen. " Beloved, now
are we sons of God, and it doth not yet appear
what we shall be, but we know that when He — or
rather, it — shall appear, we shall be like Him, for
we shall see Him as He is." May I go on? "Be
hold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He
shall dwell with them, and they shall be His people,
and God Himself shall be with them, and be their
God, and God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes. And there shall be no more sorrow, nor
crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for
the former things are passed away."
" When a soul has seen,
By the means of evil that good is best,

304 ONENESS WITH GOD
And through earth and its noise what is heaven's serene,
When our faith in the same has stood the test,
Why the child grown man you burn the rod
The uses of labour are surely done,
There remaineth a rest for the people of God,
And I have had troubles enough for one."
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is
one and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind." Here is the rule
and the way of life to men who have learned to
know that love is the fulfilling of the law, the funda
mental secret of the universe. All is love, all is
God. "I and My Father are one."
I say, then, this is our hope and this is the
meaning of our life, with all its light and shadow,
sorrow and joy, good and ill. I am talking to you
very quietly to-night, as though there were but one
person present, and we are conversing heart to
heart upon the deep things of life. We are —
permit the paradox — one and all, in living our life,
struggling back to a place we have never left in
the heart of God. Bad as you are, many of you,
foolish as you may be, sin-stained as you know
yourselves to be, God has never let you go. It
was a sinful man who wrote, " Whither shall I go
from Thy spirit, whither shall I flee from Thy
presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art
there, if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art
there." " I and My Father are one." To Him,
amidst our sins, are His children dear.

ONENESS WITH GOD 305
Now, brethren, I have unfolded my theme, and
I trust you see my meaning. I want to know
whether we understand Christ's purpose in uttering
this sentence. He did not utter it to glorify Him
self. He did not wrangle with the Jews to gain
a dialectical victory. He was aiming at something.
What was it? Let the context tell. If, said He,
you have said of the great ones of the earth, the
great and the good, Ye are gods — and it is a phrase
that often springs to our lips ; we use it even now
when we see one whose moral stature is higher
than his fellows, a godlike man — if you use that
phrase concerning them, may I not humbly claim
it for one whom God hath sanctified and sent to
bring you into life. Learn it well. The works
do testify that " I am the way, the truth, and the
life." Every man may enter into this experience
of the oneness of God. Even very ordinary human
nature has had power with some of you to touch
at least a corner of this life. I remember one
night in particular when I stood at this desk, as
I am standing now, a young fellow sat upon my
right in the chair nearest to me, and he afterwards
came to tell me this. I give the substance of his
words. "I came into the Church that night
with a heavy burden on my conscience, and a clammy
fear gripping at my heart. I was struggling as
it seemed in vain and in awful dread of falling
before a certain temptation. I came there hoping
that the preacher might turn to me and speak."

306 ONENESS WITH GOD
It just happened that when the service was over
I did turn, a thing I do not do once in a hundred
times, and spoke a word to the one who sat nearest
to me in our common worship. I little knew what
was taking place. Idealising the preacher whom
he thought he knew, he felt as if new strength
had entered into him. He fought his battle on
the morrow. He felt as if it were already won.
He felt as if he could take heart of grace and try
again. Where do you think the real strength came
from? It is often so in ordinary life. That man
was lifted nearer God because he was in the house
of prayer; and as he fell under the shadow of
another's spirit, did deity shine through humanity,
very ordinary humanity, or did it not ? Let the
works be the evidence.
Here is a man who owes everything he has in
the world to the example of a good mother or a
good father. You would have gone to the devil
long ago, young man, but on the threshold of the
gambling hell or of the liquor saloon, which does
a roaring trade on a Sunday night, you were arrested
by an invisible hand. Your mother's arm stretched
a long way, but it was strong enough to draw you
back from the things of hell. Be thankful now
you are stronger, be thankful — and you are thank
ful — that your manhood is what it is. The life,
pure, consecrated life, had power to bring you up
to God. Did God shine through such a life or
did He not? I have heard men say of father,

ONENESS WITH GOD 307
mother, friend, " My mother's life, my father's
manhood, my friend's goodness persuaded me —
even though my evil self would have ruined me —
persuaded me God reigneth." Seeking for a symbol
for God, you need not go beyond your own home
and your mother. Say, "She and my Father are
one," in the love that she bears for you and the
goodness that saved you. "I and My Father are
one." Even in ordinary humanity, then, such as I have
instanced, we have our sacred seasons when we
feel that humanity has not lost everything, and
all opportunity of showing God. I have looked on
the faces of men whose kindred I knew, and yet
who had sunken in infamy. I remember a man
whose face was a mass of corruption coming to me
without disclosing his identity, but I knew him, I
knew him for the man I was in search of, and why ?
It was because I saw his father's face, I recognised
his brother's features. He had done his best to
drink them into oblivion, but he had not managed
it quite. They were not gone. The air of a
gentleman was still upon him, and the noble dignity
of those who bore his name and were of his lineage
was evident in his very demeanour. A poor
drunkard, and perhaps worse, but there was shining
through him a noble humanity, figure of deity,
the "love that will not let me go."
But the other day, in that terrible war that is
taking place in the Far East, an august event took

308 ONENESS WITH GOD
place. Two Japanese officers arrested as spies,
condemned to death, asked as a last privilege to
be permitted to give what little worldly wealth they
possessed for the sake of the widows and children
of the Russian dead. The very startling surprise of
the deed stirred a chord of sympathy and admiration
for our common humanity in those who heard the
offer and in us who read it. What was it ? Amid
the horror of war, the blackness and hideousness
of the devilry in that hell upon earth, in that little
corner of the Far East, shone out a bright star.
Humanity was capable of something divine in a
golden moment. I have seen as much myself in
the deeds, in the carriage of ordinary men and
women, very ill to live with, people for whom in
their everyday life one could not entertain or mani
fest much respect. I have seen the impulsive act
of a bad man elevate him. I have seen the light
of heaven dawn in beauty upon the face of one
whose whole career had been for self-interest and
for the things that perished, but that look spoke
of heaven, not of earth. And, amongst the very
worst with whom you have to deal, you will see
from time to time, when the crisis is at hand, the
manifestation of that which is worthy of God.
What a man is in his best moments, that God has
made him capable of being for ever. That he must
and shall become, even though it be through pain.
" I and My Father are one."
One word of application. I would appeal to some

ONENESS WHTH GOD 309
of the non-Churchgoers who are present. I do not
say I am going to make you Churchgoers, but I
wish I could make you good men. Here you come,
brought perhaps by curiosity, to hear one who has
never raised his voice to a shout since you entered
the building, who has not uttered a sensational word,
who has not spoken a sentence just for the sake of
speaking. Hither you come, fresh from the great
fight for bread, for a footing in the great world.
You are supposed to take a poor view of humanity
and its ways. You are pretty hard yourself, coarse,
material, worldly. You are what would be called
practical men. There is not much sentiment to
spare, you have no vision of God and no aspiration
for a better and a higher life. Do not be untrue
to the very law of your own being. You know
quite well in your heart of hearts you would rather
be like Jesus than like what you are. If you
knew the way out of the life you are living, not
that it is so flagrantly bad, as the world judges,
but if you knew your way to a better and you
could go without struggle and without sacrifice, you
would go. What is it that speaks thus ? God
has never left you, nor the Christ, the Christ that
is within. Do you not feel that this is what the
universe means ? Do you not realise that this is
the purpose, the real purpose, of your poor little
sinful failure of a life, that you may say, as Jesus
said, "I and My Father are one." To be one with
right, to be one with heroism, to be one with good-

310 ONENESS WITH GOD
ness, to be one with the manhood that you can
respect and reverence and adore, that should be
the aim and object of your life. Do you know the
way to it ? I think, though you may say I have lapsed
back into conventionality and taken too much for
granted, I can take you to no better place than the
cross of Christ. What did it cost Him to follow
the right ? What did it mean to live what He felt
to be the true life of oneness with God ? It meant
Calvary. Ah, there is the place to which poor
human nature is unwilling to go. It might cost
you a Calvary to turn from your corrupt, evil ways
to-morrow and go right, and you are not prepared
for the price. Then be aware that as you turn
your back upon the light, as you repudiate the
Christ you are not merely repudiating a creed, you
are repudiating the ideal. You have deliberately
chosen the lower, not that which is humanity, but
that which is bestial. You have turned your back
upon heaven, you are choosing hell. Do you think
that is the way to peace and rest and joy? It can
never be. Face round, cost what it may in soul
agony. It is worth all that you can give to be able
to say with a clear conscience and a humble heart,
" I and My Father are one."
Here is another, a sore, burdened, stricken heart.
What are you doing in the City Temple ? You
have never been so very religious before, and you
have not come here because we talk platitudes, no,
nor because we take for granted the experience of

ONENESS WITH GOD 311
other men. It may be an inspiration, but we will
not strike the false note of pretending it is ours
unless it is. Hither you have come, filled with
vengeful, angry, evil thoughts. You have failed in
life, not entirely of your own fault. You have
suffered injury, you have no vision of God, any
more than the worldly man whom I have just
described. You are groping along in the dark.
Every blow you strike, remember, even in your
thought, recoils upon you. You deny your own
dignity, you crush down your own divinity. The
first thing for you to do, and this night, is to get
at one, not with the world, but with God, to get
the better, not of the man who struck you down,
but of the evil self that resents the injury. Rise up,
child of the highest, though Apollyon meet you in
the Valley of Humiliation, defy him in the name of
the Lord of Hosts. That you have a hard battle to
fight I know. It is no new thing in the history of
mankind, and I would have you aware that you are
not alone in doing it. " All nature," as Henry
Drummond says, " is on the side of the man who
tries to rise." Take courage for to-morrow. Fear
nothing. Calvary is never the last word. Be
brave and faithful, for on the dark waters of life
there sails another barque than yours. It may be
hidden from you by the shadows, but its Captain
is the Son of God. Jesus has not forgotten His
own humanity, nor has He ceased to care for yours.
He can move Heaven for you, and He will.

312 ONENESS WITH GOD
I am calling for a very simple decision. Say " I
will go right, I will be true. If I have never been
at ease with my own conscience and with God
before, I mean to be now." " I and My Father are
one." That vow is registered in heaven, and it is
heard by One Who has never failed the seeking
soul. " Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face,
By faith, and faith alone embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove ;
" Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, Thou :
Our wills are ours, we know not how ;
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine."

INWARD TRUTH

An interesting story goes along with this sermon. Attendants
at the City Temple may remember that on the Thursday following
the preaching of this particular sermon, I read and spoke about
the poignant letter of one who had felt himself described in the
experience here set forth. He was an educated man, and his way
of telling his story showed that he possessed great natural ability.
He declared his intention of ending his own life, which had
become intolerable through his depressing failures. He had
somehow slipped down gradually from a position of trust and
importance ; had ceased to be respected by his friends ; was
looked upon as a burden ; was shunned by his own family ; even
his children had learned to look upon him with the world's eyes.
The keenest thrust of all was that he now saw, or fancied he saw,
a change in his wife's attitude towards him. This was not
wonderful, he declared, for though she had been a brave, faithful,
uncomplaining friend, she could hardly fail to see him at length as
her children saw him. He made no appeal for help, and did not
even furnish his address. The letter, as a whole, is worth quoting,
but the closing sentence is sufficient to show its purport : —
" If my epitaph were to be written it would be : Here lies one
who trifled with life, who had abundant opportunities for usefulness
and honour, who might have been a power for God, a blessing to
humanity and others, a witness for righteousness, but who was none
of these because he lacked — Inward Truth."
This letter became my subject and my sermon on the follow
ing Thursday ; and the writer, broken down by the unexpected
declaration of God's mercy and love, came to me afterwards, as
I had asked him to do. Half a dozen hands were held out by
the city men present to give him a fresh start. No one had been
asked to help, but the help was freely given by good men. My
colleague, Mr Badger, acted as intermediary, as he has done in
many similar cases, with the result that to-day this gentleman is
not only doing well in the world, but is helping others to under
stand the meaning of Inward Truth. He was well worth the
miracle wrought by our Heavenly Father on his behalf.

XVIII
"Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts." — Psalm li. 6.
The 51st Psalm is a hymn of penitence, and is said
to have been written by King David after the
greatest folly and the darkest sin of his life. It is
possible that he was not the author, but, whether
he was or not, this utterance of sorrowing self-
accusation has become intimately associated with all
such spiritual moods as his, and has woven itself into
our hearts and experience. It is a prayer of singular
beauty as well as moral depth and religious signi
ficance. The Psalmist ignores the question of
penalty for his misdoings, and they were black
enough : it is God he wants and the purity he has
lost. "The sacrifices of God," he says, "are a
broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, O
God, Thou wilt not despise."
This utterance explains the meaning of the phrase
which is our text. No external act counts for any
thing ; God measures by the inner rightness — a
heart right with God and goodness, purity and
righteousness. The prayer of the Psalmist is,
" Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a
right spirit within me."
In these days the sense of sin is somewhat lightly

316 INWARD TRUTH
held by many people, while in others it seems to be
entirely absent. Nevertheless, there is in every man
a something which in its protest for truth comes
very near to the lost sense of sin. I am going to try
to show you what this something is.
The word " truth " in our text refers to moral
truth. Truth is one and indivisible, but it has many
aspects. For example, suppose I could hand a rose
to three such men as Professor Huxley, John
Ruskin, and C. H. Spurgeon, and ask them to say
what they knew about it or thought concerning it.
Professor Huxley — I purposely choose him, because
he was a man of sterling worth and high moral
character as well as a great scientist and accomplished
botanist — would instantly think of the structure of
the rose, and tell us about its anatomy ; in fact, his
knowledge of natural law was so profound that from
his acquaintance with the rose the professor could
infer the universe if he had not seen it. Mr Ruskin
would speak quite differently. We know, from the
eloquence of his writings, the charm and the magic
of his work, that his first thought would be concern
ing the beauty of the flower ; a universe of beauty
would be suggested to him by the simple rose.
Remember, the rose is but a symbol ; it stands for
the glorious, infinite unity, and to John Ruskin that
unity would breathe beauty. What of Mr Spurgeon ?
It has been said of him that, in his maturest days,
when he knew most about men and things, when he
had drunk deepest of the cup of life, when his

INWARD TRUTH 317
experience was at its very richest, he was as simple
as a child in his handling of the things of God.
They say that when he took a flower in his hand he
would speak about it as though he had seen it
made, had watched the fingers of God at work upon
it. To him the flower would suggest a universe,
too, just as to Huxley and to Ruskin, but it would
be a universe of righteousness, a universe that told
of the love of God. These three men would not be
singing three different songs, telling three different
truths ; they would be speaking one truth, but from
three different points of view. To Huxley the rose
would suggest the physical universe, to Ruskin the
universe of beauty, and to Spurgeon the universe of
moral truth ; but these three are one, and ultimately
the meaning of the whole is, God is love as well as
power, God is goodness as well as beauty. As
Tennyson has it : —
" Knowledge is the swallow on the lake
That sees and stirs the surface shadow there,
But never yet hath dipt into the abysm " ;
or, as Keats puts it : —
« ' Beauty is truth, truth beauty ' — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
The physical, the intellectual, the moral universe are
but one.
When a man says, "I follow truth wheresoever I
find it, and for that reason I am unable to accept
your affirmations about God," I should like to test

3i 8 INWARD TRUTH
him by the standard of Mr Spurgeon rather than
that of Professor Huxley — sterling man though he
undoubtedly was — and ask him, What kind of man
are you ? for the universe will reflect to you exactly
what you bring to it. What kind of life are you
living ? Are you a good man ? Are you living a
right life ? Are you even trying to do so ? Are
you looking upward every day? Is duty nobly
and faithfully done your watchword ? Then, though
you may not be able to affirm much concerning
the structure or the meaning of God's great mys
terious universe, you are at home in it, you have
truth in the inward parts, and there God speaks to
you. By saying I want to know what kind of
man he is, I am inferring that he does not know
his own world unless he himself is true at heart.
We in this country profess a great love of truth
in the shape of integrity, verbal trustworthiness,
and so on ; our standard is not very exacting, but
we could not get on at all without it. To business
men such a proposition as that is self-evident. When
I was in America last year I was somewhat amused
by criticisms I heard of our business methods.
More than once I met with the statement, "We
are sorry to say that very often we cannot trust
to British ways of doing business and what your
business men say about their stock-in-trade." My
reply was, " Oddly enough, that is exactly what I
heard on the other side of the water about you ! "
It is a matter of grave concern to both Britons and

INWARD TRUTH

3T9

Americans who love their country that in commerce
there is not more of the virtue to which we pro
fess to attach so much importance. There is much
trickiness and sharp practice in the places where
you get your daily bread; you have seen many
mean and dirty actions in business life ; in fact,
to the honest man life seems a continual fight
against dishonesty. One has to confess that the
standard of the world — though, thank God, it is
better than it once was — is still very low. You
cannot measure a man's motives by what he says ;
he may take the name of God upon his lips
though in his heart he is not true. The issue lies
deeper than a mere question, for instance, of dis
count on a bill. We say, after long acquaintance with
an individual — and as a rule only long acquaintance
justifies such statements — " So-and-so is a true man ;
I have proved him." Why do you use the word
"true"? Because you know something about that
man, though it might not be considered proof in
a court of law. If you were asked to write a
testimonial to his integrity, you would say some
things at which a judge or prosecuting lawyer
might laugh. But you have been down to the
depths of your friend's being, and you know he
rings true, because more than once he has been
willing to suffer for truth, the world not knowing.
It has been said of John Bright that his sincerity
was proved by every possible test, and I think
that was true. There are men in a humbler posi-

320 INWARD TRUTH
tion than that John Bright of whom it could be
said that they are true to the depths ; no mean
or shabby action could proceed from such men,
and we are grateful for their life and influence.
Amongst my circle of friends I have more than
one whom I feel to be true to the very core
of his being — loyal, strong, noble, and good. Such
men are worth more to their country than untold
gold, for they help to make men; to be under
the shadow of their influence stimulates one to
the living of a nobler life.
On the other hand, we know men who we feel
are false, though we cannot always say why ; and
here again our evidence in a court of law would
be nonsuited. There are men whom you would
not trust any further than you can see them ; you
know somehow, by instinct of honest judgment,
that these men would fail you in a crisis ; they
could be depended on just as far as it suited their
interest, and no further. Sometimes, by an accident,
the essential falsity of a man's nature is revealed.
A friend told me that he once received from a
man, with whom he was dealing in business, a
letter to this effect: "I find I overcharged you
threepence on the invoice sent you yesterday.
Please correct and return." Said my friend: "I
determined to watch that man ; I wanted to see
whether he was as particular about truth in the
heart as he seemed to be about truth in the letter."
Sure enough, later on, the man found himself in

INWARD TRUTH 321
a corner with his back to the wall, and it was not
a question of pence but of pounds. That man in
reality was a thief all the time. When I was in
Scotland recently 1 went to a very interesting place,
the Observatory at Paisley. I there saw an instru
ment for measuring earthquakes, a seismological
register. A block of stone, twenty-four solid feet
in depth, was thrust into the earth ; down and down
it went, standing like an isolated column in the
vacuum carefully preserved on every side of it. On
the top a delicate instrument was poised, which
actually wrote with a pencil a record of the vibra
tions and oscillations that were taking place in every
part of the globe. Said the gentleman in charge,
"If an earthquake were taking place in Japan its
motion would be written here as faithfully as though
we were on the spot to measure it." "Then what
about the rumbles here in Paisley ? " said I. " You
make noise enough in your streets : would they be
registered by your instrument ? " " No," was the
reply. " We do not trouble about vibrations on the
surface. We measure from the depths." That is
the way to measure — truth in the inward parts.
" Truth is within ourselves ;
It takes no rise from outward things,
Whate'er you may believe."
We do not measure by a man's profession, but by
what comes from the depths of his nature. A man
who is as faithful in the shadow as in the light, as
x

322 INWARD TRUTH
faithful when it does not pay to be faithful at the
time as when it does — that is the man to whom to
commit your trust ; he was right with God ere he
was right with you ; and if it came to be a question
whether he should sacrifice you or truth — truth as
Spurgeon understood it — it would be God he would
choose, not you.
" I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more."
There is something more than trivial sentimentality
in that utterance.
Before I come to closer dealings, I would just
indicate wherein really consists the greatest value in
all estimates of moral character. It is not merely a
question of dealing between man and man. If we
had nothing to preach about except iniquity, our
pulpit message would be a poor one ; I mean
un-equity, by which a man does not deal straight
with his fellows. That is not all, it is not the
end, it is not really the beginning. It is sin with
which we have to do — that is, a man's transgression
against God, the thing that hides God from him.
When you are dealing with iniquity you are really
dealing at the same time with another factor deeper
than any of the relations which a man holds with
his fellows, and that is his relationship with God.
Perhaps I address some men who have no very tight
grip upon the truth that they have a relationship
with God ; they would profess themselves uncertain,

INWARD TRUTH 323
agnostics, whatnot. " There may be a God, there
may not ; but," you say, " I am trying to live a
straight life." I wonder if you see how far your
creed goes. A straight life- — why, that means that
you might some day have to endure the whole world
of humanity shrieking shame upon you, isolating
you, withering you with censure and with sarcasm,
with opposition and abuse. Supposing you stood
alone against the world, would you still try to live a
" straight life ? " In your heart of hearts you feel
you would. Do you know what you have affirmed
now ? You have affirmed that truth lies deeper than
human interest or human opinion ; that truth is
eternal, and it comes from the depths. In other
words, truth is God, righteousness ; this righteous
ness that you serve is the very nature of the
All-Father. If a man is true to that in the heart
of him, he can defy the whole organised universe ;
for behind all, after all, God.
It is from this deeper truth that the grandest
achievements of history have always sprung. For
that truth Mr Spurgeon would have gone to the
stake cheerfully. Why ? Because he felt, as we
feel, that in the long run and the last resort all
humanity must be sacrificed if need be — I mean
all friendship, all relation with it — rather than be
false to what we feel is beneath humanity, greater
than humanity, worthier than humanity — the truth
of God. " My soul, be thou silent unto God."
" Create in me a clean heart, O God ; and renew

324 INWARD TRUTH
a right spirit within me." "Against Thee, Thee
only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy
sight." The Psalmist gauged accurately and described
our own experience when he uttered those words.
It is with God, when we come to real dealings with
truth, that you and I hold relation. Perhaps I
address a man who is right with the rest of
humanity, but wrong with this mysterious entity of
which I have spoken. To illustrate. Suppose Adolf
Beck, of whom we have been hearing so much, were
really guilty; suppose — as I doubt not some in
fatuated officials will insist — the crimes for which
he was punished had been really committed by him ;
how would he feel to-day with the whole country
ringing with indignation on his behalf? Would
you change places with him ? If, as you walked the
streets, conscious of your guilt, honest men grasped
your hands and uttered words of pity and admira
tion, I think that before the week was out you would
want to put an end to your life. Suppose I address
a man whose experience has been anything like that :
you managed to vindicate yourself once when you
knew that in the depths of you you were not true ; it
was the eternal right you had offended ; with the
eternal God you had yet something to do. Can
you remember your waking thought in the morning
after you had dreamed that your guilty act had never
been committed, the awful voice that sounded in
your heart, the voice that Pavid heard, " Thou art

INWARD TRUTH 325
the man ! " You may deceive the whole world, but
you cannot deceive that deeper self which is one with
God. " Against Thee have I sinned. . . . Thou
desirest truth in the inward parts."
One word more of application. If I address a man
of double life, a man with something evil huddled out
of sight, I would like to speak to him, not a word of
threatening denunciation, but of pity and pleading.
That thing you are seeking to bury, that putrifying
corpse, will come to light some day, like Eugene
Aram's victim. It is showing itself now in all its
hideousness to Him whom no evil can deceive. If
your life is a lie, it would pay you better — I an
nounce no penalty — to get right with the truth,
however much it may scorch you, than to persist in
the lie that seems to screen you. There is a true
reserve. Very few men will confess anything but
surface stories about their lives ; as a rule they do
not tell all the truth. Why should they? It all
depends just what it is a man is keeping from the
gaze of his fellows. If that which you are huddling
away is something by which you are injuring another
or the community, out with it. Pretence is not the
just reserve that belongs to such men as John Knox
and John Bright, men who are right with God and
can afford to be silent with their fellows ; what you
are keeping away is just that which God is showing
forth in the terrible light of the world of spirit ; it
is all already known.
What about the man who is deceiving the people

326 INWARD TRUTH
to whom he owes most in the world? Husband,
what about that faithful little woman at home whom
you are deceiving every day of your life ? Young
man, new to the great city, but old in its evils, what
about those people in the village from which you
came, who are telling tales of pride about you — that
are all false, only they do not know it? What
about those who are praising you for virtues you do
not possess and for courses of action you have never
taken ? What of those who denounce in your
presence vices of others that are not so dark as
yours ? What of those who hold you up as pattern
and example, when you are the very opposite ? Oh,
hideous travesty of life ! Can any man endure to
live it ? Truly the way of transgressors is hard,
because it is a false thing. The truth and the truth
only will make a man at peace with himself. If there
is any vestige or shadow of truth left in you, any
real manhood, you will be ashamed of being credited
with merits that are not yours. But if you have
ceased to feel, then you are sleeping the sleep of
death. The very agony and shame which you feel
when the truth is revealed is evidence that truth
within you is not dead. What about that young
fellow becoming entangled — it may be for the first
time, and conscience gnawing at him all the while —
in devious ways, keeping company he dare not con
fess, conforming to practices that he knows to be
shameful and bad? You are a miserable wretch —
you do not need anybody to tell you that. But in

INWARD TRUTH 327
time you will become callous and hardened ; the
voice that now speaks within you will be stilled ; you
have Truth down, as it were, helpless and at your
mercy : you are throttling her, and by the time you
have slain that heavenly guest you will find that you
yourself were the victim, the helpless victim, of a
ghastly sham that stands for you — that of wrong, of
shame, of evil. You are a slow murderer. " He
that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul."
The conscience of David slumbered for a while ;
so may yours, but only for a while. There was
another voice that spoke through Nathan the prophet,
the voice of the eternal right, that never can be stilled.
You may stifle the voice of conscience, but the voice
of God will speak again in time or in eternity. " Thou
art the man ! "
Make terms with righteousness even now ; get
right with God at this moment, cost what it may.
Turn round upon evil living if you have become its
victim. I care not what the price may be, it is worth
while. There is a way out of every moral entangle
ment and of every moral abyss. I have hardly named
the name of Christ in this sermon ; but any man who
sees the form of Christ before his eyes, when he
thinks about the facts which I have just set before
you, sees the answer to his prayer. " Whither shall
I go from Thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee from
Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou
art there ; if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou
art there." Whither shall I go ? Here is the way

328 INWARD TRUTH
and the truth and the life. If we confess our sins
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say
we have no sin, we make Him a liar, and the truth
is not in us.

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