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Stone, A. L. 1815-1892
Memorial discourses
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MEMORIAL DISCOURSES.
BX
REV. A. L. STONE, D. D.,
Late Pastor of the Park Street Church,
BOSTON:
FUBLISHEr) BY HEIN-RY HOYT,
No. 9 CORNHILL.
1866.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
HENRY HOYT,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
DEDICATION.
To the members of Park Street Church and Society, to whom seven-
teen years of happy fellowship with them in the service of the gospel
have united the author in bonds which no absence or distance can
sever, this volume, as an echo of the ministrations to which they
have listened so kindly and so long, is most gratefully and afifection-
ately dedicated.
PREFACE,
Not " dead, but absent," it was no thought of mine to be " still
speaking " to my former congregation of Park Street, or the larger com-
munity on whose patient audience I have so often trespassed. But
some of my brethren in the pulpits of Boston and its vicinity, and
not a few of the people to whom I have ministered so many years,
and hold fast to my heart by so many ties, desired me to leave behind
me, as I migrated to a distant part of the country, something which
should be to them a memorial of the labors among them which had
thus come to an end. There was no reason why I should not comply
with this request except my doubt whether these pages would have
any other value to them, or others, than that which their partial
friendship should attach to them, and this they overruled.
They are selected and grouped by no especial law, but as fitly
enough representing and continuing the endeavor of the writer to
bring the profitableness of "all Scripture" before those with whose
spiritual nurture he was charged.
May they yet be tributary to the Christian growth and comfort of
all who, for friendship's sake, or Christ's, shall search them for the
truth that honors the Master and saves the soul !
A. L. STONE.
CONTENTS
God — THE GOVEENOR 1
The Work of New England in the Futuee of the Country . 14
God's Delay to punish 46
The Sabbath in the Family 58
Knowing Christ 86
God and the "World reconciled . 102
Wearing Christ's Garments 115
Christ's Cup 127
Waiting 142
Incompleteness of Life 154
John's Failure , 167
Friendship 181
Faith's Ventures 197
Plea for the Monthly Concert 212
Human Loneliness 229
The Ministries of Time 242
Sorrows of Jesus 258
Balance Sheet ; or, Taking Account of Stock .... 266
All-Sufficiency of Christ 279
SERMONS
I.
GOD — THE GOVERNOR.
FOR THE KINGDOM IS THE LORD'S : AND HE IS THE GOVERNOR AMONG THB
NATIONS. — Psalm xxii. 28.
THERE are some very special aclvautages now, in the
attitude of the public mind, for considering and
appreciating the principles and procedures of the divine
government among men. It is to be feared that we
are not always in sympathy with God in his estimate of
the sacredness of Law, and his measures to preserve or
restore its inviolability. That estimate we sometimes
look upon as mysterious or extravagant, and those meas-
ures as high-handed, sanguinary, and cruel.
It is a grand thing for us, in that great contest of arms
in which the nation is engaged, that our stand is on the
side of loyalty. There are men as earnest, and perhaps
as sincere and conscientious, on the other side. But the
whole force of their position and the entire current of
their sympathies concur to make not law, but rebellion
against it, sacred to them; not the maintenance of
irovernment, but its overthrow ; not the preservation
of Union, but its destruction. The whole educational
2 GOD — THE GOVERNOR.
power of the movement upon them is toward demor-
alization and lawlessness. It loosens from about their
hearts the bands of governmental restraints, all binding
sanctities of covenants and compacts and oaths of fealty ;
makes it right and obligatory in their view to assail,
tear down, and subvert the majestic fabric of constitu-
tional authority, and the public order which it guards;
changes deceit, treachery, and robbery from crimes to
virtues ; and presents, on the other side, no countervail-
ing rights and sanctities defended and established, no
imperilled liberties fought for and bled for, to offset
and neutralize the awful nurture of revolutionary and
treasonable violence.
But every outlook of ours upon the great struggle is
from the heights of the capitol. We are with the gov-
ernment. We stand for the laws. We sustain the ap-
pointed and legitimate administration. We strike at
hydra-headed anarchy. For, let this rebellion prevail,
and government is impossible. All bands of allegiance
are like tow touched by fire. Compacts of confederation
are ropes of sand. Disintegration — as between North
and South, between State and State, between one portion
of a State and another, between cities and towns and
neighborhoods, between man and man, — nay, w^e might
say between body and soul in the same man, for there is
no final bound to the principle — becomes the supreme
law. We see the exigency with the eyes of our rulers.
It is a perfectly fundamental and radical issue. It is
life or death with all constituted authority. It is the
whole question of civil and social order. It is just the
GOD — THE GOVERNOR. 3
problem whether men can dwell together in communities,
or whether they shall resolve themselves back into indi-
vidualism and barbarism, become each an Ishmaelite, his
hand against every man and every man's hand against
him. And so deep and strong are our convictions that we
say, — we all say ; no tongue lisps a whisper of dissent,
— Government must be maintained at w^hatever cost.
Constitutional law must be enforced at all hazards.
And we suffer no man alive, and no page of history, and
no imagination of the thoughts of the heart, to put before
us any estimate of the hazard, any computation of the
cost, which can make us Mter in that stand. Before any
possible future, we repeat it with firm lips and steadfast
hearts, "at all hazards, at whatever cost." Here,
too, as in the other direction, is an educating power of
transcendent force, and the lesson upon us and our chil-
dren and our children's children will not lose its special
vitality for three generations, at least, of human life, and
will abide in our history, a voice of wisdom and authority
for all times and histories to come,
Xow, then, finding us in this attitude of mind, God
may speak to us concerning his kingdom. He is a Gov-
ernor, and he may press us, now, with conclusions af-
fecting his administration, which none of us can gainsay.
If he ask. Shall there be a government at all, set up
in his name on earth? we can only now give one an-
swer. Sometimes we speak of God as though he were
only a father to our humanity, and should confine himself
to that. A father's office we conceive to be to furnish
us with a home ; to make that home pleasant and safe ;
4 GOD — THE GOVERNOR.
to provide for us there as well as he may ; to call us to-
gether around the bright hearth and the smoking board ;
to appoint us a pillow of comfortable rest ; to watch at
our side with faithful vigils, tender care, and skilful
nursing when we are sick, and wipe away our tears
when we are sad. We all like to call God, ''Father:'
He appears in such an amiable, smiling aspect when this
relation alone is recognized, that we dismiss our fears, and
have only grateful sensations as he presents himself thus
before us. It is very agreeable to be so cared for and
cherished and blessed. So far, we have, none of us,
any quarrel with God. Let him pour his blessed sun-
shine upon us all the day. Let him soften our fields
with his spring showers, and fill our wells with his au-
tumn rains. Let him refresh the arid places of earth
with nightly dews. Let him give us the round of the
changeful and fruitful seasons. Let him gladden our
daily walks with the companionship of kindred and
friends, and make our tabernacle musical with household
talk. A good father, a kind benefactor. There is not a
heart on earth that objects to such a conception of God,
or to any such function of his superintending providence.
Nay, he may even advise, in a fatherly way, as to the
temper we ought to cherish and the conduct we ought to
exhibit, and chide us gently, if we miss the mark, and
seek to persuade us to better purposes and more filial
returns .
Our eyes are open a little wider now. We see clearly
that such an administration will not do. It is not strong
enough. It lacks enforcing and coercive power. It is
GOD — THE GOVERNOR. D
cruelly weak. In a sense, it tempts to rebellion and
defiance. God must be a Governor, as well as a
Father. He must enact laws, publish ordinances, set
up institutes ; come before us not simply with a father's
love, but with a ruler's authority. We want to see firm-
ness, as well as kindness, on his face. We want to feel
that there is a steadfast will, as truly as a paternal pity ;
that his throne stands as fast as his promises ; and that
his control of us and our fellow-men, and of all things
around us afiecting our interests, is as wide, searching,
and absolute as his exploration of our wants, and the
generosity with which all need is met. We shall agree
in saying, " If God be good, let him give us a govern-
ment, not shadowy, remote, and ineffective, but near,
positive, peremptory, that may be felt, relied upon, and
ascertained to be real and solid." The fatherhood of
God is a very affecting truth, but it does not of itself
go far enough for our confidence and our comfort. Not
till we read on his vesture and his thigh, that other
title, " King of kings and Lord of lords," are our souls
at peace. Here we plant our feet upon a rock.
Again, if God ask. Shall this government be main-
tained? our answer is equally prompt and hearty. We
have not two opinions about it. We want a strong,
steady, abiding government. We desire to know how
it is bulwarked ; what forces wait upon its behests ; what
executive vigor it possesses. Is omniscience its coun-
sellor? Is omnipotence ready to march at its bidding?
Does its control sweep the area of its territory, ubiqui-
tous in every part ? Is it prepared for all exigencies ? Is
6 GOD — THE GOVERNOR.
it a fair-weather government, on deck in pleasant lati-
tudes, handling the sails, steering the ship, ordering the
crew while the winds and currents favor? and does it
abdicate if there be gales or lee shores or mutiny? or
is it a government for stormy weather overhead and
conspiracies on board? What will it do if defied? On
that question our chief solicitude hangs. Let God put
that question to us. What shall my government do if
it encounter combinations and conspiracies against its
perpetuity? Shall it give way, retract its edicts, back
down, let whoso will renounce allegiance, and throw off
the character of subjects, or shall it be maintained? We
are ready with our answer. How easy it is to-day to
answer ! No hesitation ! Our response is brief, but em-
phatic. It repeats the last word of the question with a
downrisfht cadence, " maintained ! "
Suppose, again, the Great Governor asks us hoio far
he shall go in the maintenance of his government. We
reply again, without taking time for debate, and without
any qualification. As far as is necessary for the object.
Shall he proffer, then, the oath of allegiance to every
subject? Yes, to every subject. And if this oath be
declined, or, having been taken, be broken by falsehood
and perjury, shall he insist upon the supremacy of the
government there? Yes, he must insist. But if he
commit himself to such a demand, how far must he be
prepared to back it up? If need be, with the whole
power of the government. But it may call for the
waters of a universal deluge. Then let the deluge fall.
It may necessitate the ten plagues of his wrathful right
GOD — THE GOVERNOR. 7
arm. Then inflict them. It may make our earthly Niles
run red with blood. No matter, they must run through
loyal dominions. It may call for the extermination of
the Amalekites. Then exterminate them. It may com-
pel the administration to keep a standing army of fam-
ines, fevers, pestilences, and storms, and an immense
police of aches and pains and crosses and disappoint-
ments. Yery well, then the administration must do it.
It may oblige the government to make a terrible example
of rebels and traitors, to hold up their tragic end as an
awful warning, to show them to all the States of God's
empire gibbeted in eternal anguish and infamy, — the
shame and condemnation of their great parricide clinging
to them forever and ever. Well, if this be needful, it is
right. It is therefore good. It is benevolent. The
government has no choice. It must be maintained. In
the hearts or upon the necks of those v/ho oppose it, its
supremacy must be asserted. If it take cycles of proba-
tionary centuries, if it cost myriads of subject lives, if
it necessitate the laying waste of ten thousand worlds,
fortresses of secession and nests of sedition, — if it part
brother from brother, cut off unnumbered children of
God's loins from their Father's house, cast down from
the firmament a third part of the stars set therein by
God's hand, — the infinite good of an established gov-
ernment demands and justifies the prodigious outlay.
For, government sacrificed, all is lost; no good remains.
Better lose a part. The loss is partial and temporary.
It can be replaced. The good of a sustained administra-
tion is universal and eternal. How clearly we see that
8 GOD — THE GOVEENOR.
now ! How easy it is to answer these questions here and
to-day ! The principles of government are one, on earth
and in that august court. How fully God vindicates him-
self in our instinctive and accordant judgments ! How
absolutely we pronounce, The cost of maintaining govern-
ment must not he regarded! That is sanction enough for
any and all of God's procedures.
Again, suppose the divine lips reiterate the question,
What shall he done icith rehels? Possibly we should
suggest, especially to a government undeniably strong
enough to deal with them, a course of forbearance for a
while ; time given them for soberer thoughts ; attempts to
remove their prejudices, to convince them of the benevo-
lent intentions and spirit of the government, to awaken
them to penitence and shame, to lead them back, if possi-
ble, to their allegiance ; but when the question returns.
They are obdurate ; they will not have God to reign over
them ; they have set up for themselves ; they are deter-
mined upon independence of the rightful authority ; they
are going on under their own flag ; what shall be done with
them ? our answer again is prompt and decisive ; the gov-
ernment must proceed against them. It cannot allow their
triumph. That dishonors the administration before all
worlds, and must disaflect the loyal everywhere and for-
ever. No knee, on earth or in heaven, will continue to
pay homage to such a government, which is no govern-
ment. It must deal with these rebels, if it would not
have defection and rebellion general. It must put them
down. If need be, it must cut them down, it must mow
them down, — it must utterly exterminate them, if it
GOD — THE GOVERNOR. 9
come to that. Rebellion must be crushed out. Admit it
in any corner of God's broad kingdom, and allow it to
thrive and live and maintain its little rival empire there,
and the weakness and incompetency of the administration
are confessed, and it is disrobed of royalty from hence-
forth. Put an end to it. Rebellion itself is responsible
for the havoc which it provokes. Bring over it the
clouds of heaven, open the magazines of electric fire,
hang out the flag set with suns of light and striped with
red of dreadful vengeance. March the forces of Almight-
iness, and let the artillery open its thunders ; bring out
the reserves of Jehovah, the chariots of God, which are
ten thousand times ten thousand, — the rebellion must
BE WIPED OUT ! Can we give any other answer ? Put
the question to twenty millions of people in this our
nation to-day. Is God justified in putting down rebel-
lion in his dominions, by whatever pains and penalties
needful? and twenty millions of voices answer, with a
shout that rises above the choral melodies of heaven,
" Ay ! " These flags, that have blossomed out, this sea-
son past, so suddenly upon all the summer air, symbolize
more than the sentiment of loyalty to the great Republic.
They float and wave for a more august principle. The
mustering and marching among the hills and valleys of
our New England homes and across the breadth of
prairies and over dividing mountains are in allegiance to
a grander call than that of patriotism. All this fervor
and self-devotion declare a truth high as the throne of
God and eternal as his reign, — Rebellion against good
government must be extinguished by utmost power and
10 GOD — THE GOVERNOR.
severity. And more than this, they declare that it must
be so extinguished, the treatment be so effectual, the
warning so memorable, the crushing so final, that never
again, while government endures, shall rebellion lift its
head. When before was God's scheme of governing a
universe so indorsed by man ? Never in the long story
of time. But we see exigencies and principles now, as
our eyes never beheld them in the past.
If we ask, again, What is the duty of rebels? the
same unbroken unanimity replies, To lay down their arms,
restore their spoil, and submit unconditionally to the
government. No treating with God with arms in our
hands. No questioning of his intents, while our traitor-
ous flag is flying. No expectation of his clemency, or
demand for his forbearance, v/hile we occupy our for-
tresses. Submission first. Nothing before that. The
government must keep its one aspect, so long as we re-
sist and stand out. It can make no terms with treason.
All talk of amnesties and pardon must come in on the
basis of absolute surrender.
What is the duty of the loyal ? Clear again and un-
mistakable. They must take side with the government.
There must be no question with any mind where they
stand. They must not only let it be known, but make it
known, with which party they are in sympathy, — whether
with the government or with rebellion. There can be no
such thing as neutrality. Neutrality is infidelity and dis-
loyalty to the crown. It is aid and comfort to treason.
God insists, and we shall say to-day that he has a right to
insist, that every man shall run up his flag. We feel like
GOD — THE GOVERNOR. 11
insisting upon the same thing in the earthly issue. God
calls, "Come out from among rebels." "Confess Christ
before men." "Join the fellowships of my people." " He
that is not for me is against me." Oh, how impregnable
are these positions ! How intelligent is God's earnest-
ness, at the head of his government, in insisting upon be-
ing openly acknowledged in a time and in a world of
rebellion ! It is not enough for one of us to say, " Why,
I mean to be a just and peaceable man ; I am going about
my business ; I am not to be pressed into making demon-
strations." That's the mistake. No demonstration is a
demonstration. It is disaffection and defection. Men
must demonstrate. They must run up their flag, and it
must be the right sort of a flag too. We can understand
the intense abhorrence with which the lips of God pro-
claim it to these neutrals, — "So because thou art luke-
warm, and art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out
of my mouth." Are any of us neutral as between God
and the o-reat rebellion ? Do we leave it in doubt where
we are, what colors w^e secretly prefer ? We have not
thought of that matter as we ought, have we? See the
unutterable meanness and cowardice and wickedness of
that attitude. We don't want to fight, do we ! We pre-
fer not to arm ! we choose not to enlist ! When good
soldiers are crowned, where shall we be? When traitors
are punished, what will become of us?
Again, can the loyal do anything with happier effect
than this one thing, — show their confidence in the Supreme
administration? God's plans are large; they are slow-
moving as we reckon time ; they are not submitted to our
12 GOD — THE GOVERNOR.
inspection. Suppose they seem to us too slow ; fail of
what we call grand chances ; give up such capital strate-
gies of our devising; and we, with the king's uniform on,
marchinor under his orders and officers, and enrolled for
the war, stop and shake our heads, and vent our criti-
cisms, and propose our emendations, and purse up our lips
and shruo^ our shoulders ; what is the effect ? The effect
is to damage the government; to shake its hold upon
other hearts ; to interfere with its recruiting ; to pour a
contagion of faintness and uncertainty through the ranks
where we march. That is not for us. It is for us to obey
orders ; to trust the management of the campaigns to the
Great Captain of our salvation ; to march when he gives
command ; to pitch when the word comes ; to maintain
the post at which he sets us, and keep such a cheerful and
trustful air that men shall say, " These soldiers are confi-
dent of victory. They trust their leader."
By and by the war will be ended. All rebels will be
subdued to penitent allegiance, or punished with final
exile and ignominy. The loyal and triumphant forces
will gather home to the presence of the King and the
glory of the capital. What an ovation will await them as
they march in upon the streets of the royal city ! All
heaven will be moved at their coming. From lip to lip,
the tidings will leap, " The warriors of Prince Emmanuel
are returned from the fields of earth." And as the long
line comes gleaming on, the angelic welcomes will be
heard in farthest spheres, on the outer verge of light.
There are they that were stoned to death in riotous cities,
martyred witnesses of the truth ; there are the men, few
GOD — THE GOVERNOR. 13
and alone, that defended some " Sumter " of principle,
around which roared aloud the world's hostile scorn ;
there are they that left houses and lands, and home and
kindred behind, to give their lives in the great struggle ;
and each scar of battle will be a badge of everlasting
honor ; and the rent banners will be hung out over heav-
en's battlements, and bathed in living light; and the
hand that led the forces on will set upon each brow a
crown of glory.
2
IL
THE WOEK OF NEW ENGLAND IN THE
FUTUEE OF THE COUNTRY.
AND THET THAT SHALL BE OF THEE SHALL BUILD THE OLD WASTE PLACES;
THOU SHALT RAISE UP THE FOUNDATIONS OF MANY GENERATIONS; AND
THOU SHALT BE CALLED, THE REPAIRER OP THE BREACH, THE RESTORER OP
PATHS TO DWELL IN. — Isaiah Iviii. 12.
WE cannot to-day be narrow, and shut our thoughts
within the limits of the Commonwealth. The
TIMES are educating us all into views and sympathies
broad as the land. We stand in these hours on an emi-
nence, and our horizon is the borders of the Republic.
We are lifted to the dome of our nationality, and our field
of vision stretches to the water-line that marks either ocean
shore, — the blue of the Lakes and the blue of the Gulf.
We cannot name our State, or any State, without
thinking at once of our whole country. We are weaned
from the idea that a State is complete by itself. It is one
component part of a Federal Government, held to its sis-
ters by a deathless bond. It is a branch of a living and
fruitful vine, in which alone it has life and fruitfulness.
Except it abide in the vine, — we may reverently apply the
Scripture, — it " is cast forth as a branch, and is withered ;
THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND. 15
and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they
are burned."
Let the stars in the heavens break from their constella-
tions, but let not one on our field of blue part the chain
of celestial gravitation and attempt to shine alone. It
shall soon become a " wanderinsr star," " Sfoinor out in the
blackness of darkness forever."
We belong to a nation — a nation living still — fair
and strong and whole, undivided and indivisible, wear-
ing still on its brow, for all the jealous kingdoms to
read, the old familiar inscription, ''E jplurihus unxim^^
and girding itself anew for the race of the future.
And the question which I desire briefly to discuss to-
day is this : What is the work of Massachusetts, and of
New England, in this near future of the whole country?
We may say, in the first place, that the life of New
England cannot be dissevered from the national life.
There has been in some quarters certain idle and flippant
talk in reference to such a readjustment of the national
boundaries as should leave this old Puritan Common-
wealth and her five sisters outside the walls of the new
confederation. Bat our connection with the Eepublic is
not a matter of territorial contiguity and geographical
lines. Let men run border lines as they pleace ; let them
frame ordinances of separation ; let them build a Tartar
wall between us and the great homestead; neither civil
nor material barriers can exile us from the family circle.
It were just a& possible to separate from the loaf the lea-
ven that made it liijht and sweet, or from a human life the
principles and influences of its early nurture.
16 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
New England is not a certain limited portion of the
national domain, a sharp eastern angle that can be clipped
oflf. No map of the Union gives to the eye her full and
proper extent. No engineering art can explore and pro-
ject her share of our continental heritage.
Her life is ubiquitous in the nation. From her foun-
tain heart the warm arterial currents have circulated
through the whole body and flowed out to the remotest
extremities. Her sons have gone forth into every habi-
table place of the broad land. They have carried with
them her enterprise, her intelligence, her art, her ingenu-
ity, the pure and ordered life of her homes, the tranquil
securities of her law-abiding communities, her system of
common schools, academies, and colleges, her reverence
for the Sabbath, the memory and the love of her house-
hold altars and public sanctuaries. Their first harvests as
they have occupied and opened up virgin soil have been
not what the earth yielded to the hand of tillage ; they
sowed, first of all, Puritan ideas, — the seeds of New Eng-
land institutions ; and that which grew earliest beneath
their husbandry has been the transplanted life of their
own native hills and valleys. Here are indestructible
channels which cannot be closed, and through which the
fountained abundance of New England's fulness has flowed
out and is flowing still across the prairies, and along the
central valley, and through the wilderness, and unto the
far Pacific coast. New England can no more be divorced
from the Union than the maternity of a mother from her
children. That maternity is in their form and features ;
it gives the coloring to cheek and hair ; it looks from
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 17
their eyes ; it speaks from their tongues ; it runs in their
veins ; it beats in their hearts. Not even by miracle could
it be separated from them.
Separate New England from the Union ! Give us back
our sons and daughters, more than half a million of them,
from all the homes of the land outside our borders !
Give us back our millions of capital that have already
changed so much of the western wilderness to a smiling
garden, whitened the length of its rivers with the foam
of swift steamers, and braided over the land the iron
strands of trade and travel ; turn back upon us the deep
streams of wealth that flow out annually to those granaries
of the West for their cereal stores ! Give us back the
forceful and fruitful words that have gone forth from her
press, her pulpit, her rostrum of public oratory, from
every platform and every page on which the eloquent lips
of her sons have spoken, — words that have quickened and
controlled the intellectual life of generations, and guided
popular movements in every part of the country ; this
public speech of New England that has gone forth free
and fresh and vital as the air of heaven, gather it up and
restore it to its authors ; separate it from the popular
mind and heart, from the principles and the practice of
our homebred millions ! Give us back the messengers of
a pure gospel that have gone forth at our sending, with
large self-sacrifice, to plant the banner of the cross in
" western wilds," and bear it on in the very van of our
spreading civilization, and with them the churches they
have built, and the fair Christian order they have reared
amid the outlawry of frontier settlements ! Give us back
2*
18 THE WOKK OF NEW ENGLAND
the broad, bright river of our charities, that has branched
to so many thresholds of suffering through these four
tragic years ! Give us back the brave blood that has
drenched a hundred battle-fields, and reddened the trail
of New England feet wherever the armies of the Union
have marched !
When all this can be done, when the nation will con-
sent to this, then may men talk about " leaving New
England out in the cold." Till then, her place is in the
warm hearts of the people, her life mingled with the life
of the nation, " one and inseparable."
We have, we may say, in the second place, to keep
New England undegenerate.
The greatness of New Ensrland's influence is not so
much in what she does as in what she is. The two go to-
gether. When she works, when she speaks, it is the
background of character that lends to both their weight.
Just as when an individual utters his thoughts, — it is not
so much what he says as who says it. The chief empha-
sis of words and of deeds comes from the heart of the doer
and the speaker. There is no premium in the sphere of
moral power upon idleness, frivolity, and corruption.
Both for men and for communities, if we would have the
influence pure and strong, these attributes must first be
demonstrated in the character. It is when those who
speak in the name of New England can say, "Look at
her," that their oratory is beyond tongues of flame and
words of fire. We have it in charge, then, to guard the
purity and nourish the strength of this home-life. The
fountain must be full and clear if the streams are to be
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 19
pure and copious. We must keep the New England ideal
rounded and perfect in her actual.
There are some things New England cannot be. She
cannot be the granary of the nation, a great agricultural
producer. A single prairie lot, where the horses trot at
the plough in one straight furrow of miles before they
turn, and where, later, the reapers seem struggling like
wrecked mariners in the wide, tawny harvest sea,
" Rari.nantes in gurgite vasto,"
would swallow as a little morsel all the farming life
within oiu' borders. She cannot be a grower of tropi-
cal fruits and flowers, breathing from red, ripe lips
the fragrance of tropical airs; a tiller of the vine, the
orange, and the olive ; a nurse of pale invalids hurrying
from cold coast winds to seek soft bowers and sunny
vales. She cannot show in her granite clifis and rude
ravines the yellow, glittering scales to which the greed of
all nations should come rushing and trampling, hewing
down her hills, and turning her peaceful wilds back into
the bald desolations of old chaos. But she can be the
fountain-head ' of intelligence for the people, kindling in
every little vale and hamlet, for the poorest and humblest,
the lights of letters and learning, building on favored
heights her tall towers of Science, to scatter their rays
afar, calling to her classic halls the wisest teachers of
the day, shedding upon all the paths of her children,
from the untiring enginery of her press, the white leaves
of daily knowledge and high research, as orchard trees
shed the blossoms of spring, as this January sky sheds
20 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
its snowflakes to-day. She can be the schoolmistress of
the land, teaching the alphabet of all good nurture,
leading her pupils up through the great volumes of wis-
dom, and quarrying out the massive granite of her
thoughts for all intellectual builders.
She can be the mother of art and of invention, so that
the right hand of all labor, whether of the mind, the
shop, or the field, shall stretch itself out to her for the
most facile implements of its craft.
She can be the asserter and defender of all humane and
noble principles, so that every champion of truth and
freedom, every lover of the right and of his fellow-man,
shall draw inspiration from her words and strength from
her steadfastness.
She can especially be the mother and nurse of men.
This is her royal staple. The sands of the Cape are
barren and rough, and bleak are the Berkshire hills ; but
the barren sands and the bleak hills grow men. To train
the generations of her sons and daughters is the most
peculiar work of New England within her borders. She
does not put her infants out to nurse. Her generous
breasts suckle all her babes. She is to take each new-
born child of every home, and to solve over it this prob-
lem: Given a fresh young life, how to conduct it to the
noblest manhood, the purest womanhood ! From the cradle
to the fullest prime, and onward to the chamber of rest,
she is to be to this life, in all its physical, mental, and
moral culture, the institutions that, from first to last, shall
develop, mould, and guard it, the atmosphere that shall
fill its lungs, and drape it round about, a wise and faithful
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 21
foster-parent. Beyond all the newer and more unfur-
nished portions of our country, she is to provide within
her rocky portals a nursery for the children of the Re-
public.
There is one word which, more than any other, holds
before our thought the whole New England ideal. It is
not only a descriptive, but an inspiring word. It leads us
back to the presence and the heroisms of our dead fathers.
There throb in it the stern, strong pulses of martyr life.
It is keyed to the music of our early forest temples, in
which the Pilgrims worshipped God,
" And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthems of the free."
Oh that our New England might be, late and forever,
what she was at first, — Puritan ! Once a word of re-
proach, veined with sneering irony, — History has written
it as our proudest eulogy. To keep it unblotted down
the ages is our most sacred trust.
For this there must be a real, practical, public faith in
God. We must believe that he is a God nigh at hand,
and not afar off. We must not exile him to the seventh
heavens, — a cold, remote, hazy spectre. There must be
with us a reverent sense of his constant presence and a
devout recognition of the mingling of his counsel and his
hand in all our private and public affairs. How near he
was to our fathers ; they walked with him, and talked
with him, and questioned his will at every step of life !
Their eye sought his, their hand touched his in every
strait. We must not be afraid to name him, and avouch
22 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
him, and appeal to him, iu our proclamations and State
papers and legislative acts and judicial decisions. We
ought to be afraid to leave him out, and to withdraw our
public life from the shadow of those tutelar sanctities. If
ever we cease to be here a God-fearing people ; if we drift
away from the faith of a divine, revealed religion, and its
rightful control of human affairs ; if we give up the Chris-
tian Sabbath, as an effete institution ; if we discard the
Bible as God's code of laws for individuals and for States ;
if we dissociate politics and religion, breaking up the old
Puritan bridal, which wedded them, and pronounced over
them this nuptial benediction, "What God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder ; " if we make our pub-
lic days of thanksgiving and of humiliation mere festive
holidays, in which we seek our own pleasure rather than
to please and propitiate God ; if we divorce thus the voice
of the State, the course of law, the decrees of justice, and
the popular life from the word and authority of God, we
shall have emptied our old baptismal name of all its signif-
icance,— keeping the form, but not the life; the shadow,
not the substance , — and in that hour and in that act the
sceptre of New England's power will be broken, her
crown lost, and her banner that she planted in the wilder-
ness, with its ancient heraldry, " Christo et eccJesice,^' trail
dishonored in the dust.
Let all of us rather conspire to lift up again the old
Puritanic ideal. "It is certain," declares one of the early
New England voices, "that civil dominion was but the
second motive, religion the primary one, with our ances-
tors in coming hither. ... It was not so much their de-
IN THE FUTURE OF TPIE COUNTRY. 23
sign to establish religion for the benefit of the State , as
civil government for the benefit of religion." Another
voice, a century earlier, testified that the fathers " came
not hither for the world, or for land, or for traffic, but
for religion, and for liberty of conscience in the worship
of God, which was their only design."
This sacred interest was first everywhere. "As near
the law of God as they can be," was the instruction of the
General Court of Massachusetts, in old time, to its com-
mittee appointed to frame laws for the Commonwealth.
Only in the reproduction and general dififusion of this
spirit can we hope to make the New England of the past
the New England of the future, a power and a glory in
the land.
Looking forward now and beyond our own confines, we
may say, in the third place, that it belongs to us to live
in and for the future of the whole country.
This, too, is one part of our inheritance from a Puri-
tan ancestry. Our fathers were builders for the future.
They lived for all the coming ages. They laid deep foun-
dations whereon they hoped there might rise, after their
day, the walls of a Christian empire, to stand until earth's
"cloud-capped towers " should fall. We are fond of say-
ing, " They builded more grandly than they knew." Per-
haps that is true in respect to the political fabric of which
they laid the corner-stone, and the material results that
have followed their work. But they had a vision of a
spiritual temple that should rise from their humble begin-
nings, until its dome should span the continent and its
arches echo the psalms of meeting and mingling nations.
24 THE WOKK OF NEW ENGLAND
Foundation-work is congenial to the sons of New Eng-
land. It runs in our blood to be pioneers of a spreading
Christian civilization.
We must look forward, for our past is brief. It is
kindling and inspiring, but it is yet fresh and new. We
have no calendar of hoary centuries, stocked with events
and revolutions that have marked off the eras of history,
and rich with the spoils of time. Compared with the life
of nations and the courses of history, we began but yes-
terday. Looking back, a glance reaches the starting-
point. More naturally we turn our gaze forward. Not
records, but prophecies, hold our eyes. Untempted to
live on the glories of a dead ancestry, we are inspired to
do something for our posterity to commemorate.
We must look forward, for our ideal is higher than we
have reached. We may have been vain and boastful, but
none of us can believe that the summit of American great-
ness has been reached. The magnificent capabilities of
the continent, and the adaptation of our forms of life to
all possible progress on such a theatre, rebuke our com-
placency in the past, and hold in prospect a sublime goal
for which we have yet to gird up our loins and run.
We must look forward, because revolution leaves us
not a finished task, but only a clear track. Give us peace
and victory to-morrow, and it brings us only a vacation
from fighting, none from work. Eevolution does not
create a civilization. It opens the door and ushers it in,
if it be prepared. If this revolution of ours succeed fully,
it will have helped to rid us of some malign forces in the
development of American life, — at least, of some incarna-
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 25
tions of those forces ; it will deliver into our hands a na-
tion saved from crumbling apart ; but what this nation
shall be and do, what it shall live for and realize, is a
problem that will yet remain.
Nations must work, as God works on the earth, for
something yet beyond and unmatured. When they pause
and say, This is the limit and consummation of our doing,
he w^ill say of each of them, " Cut it down, why cumber-
eth it the ground ? " At every stage of progress they
must renew their devotion to what is incomplete in the
divine scheme for man. Casting off all dead and useless
appendages, burning their ships behind them as they
touch new shores of discovery and conquest, they must
follow hard after the guiding steps that are tracking man's
way to the calm heights of a perfect social state.
We may ask, then, in the fourth place, what are the
specific tasks to which we are to address ourselves in
working for the future of the whole country ?
The nearest duty of all is to push this war triumphantly
through. Persistent rebellion is alone responsible for all
the blood and treasure it shall yet cost to maintain the
supremacy of the government. That supremacy can only
be maintained by showing its power to be, as well as its
right to be, when both are called in question. Let no
sign of weariness or impatience in the protracted struggle
come from us while a rebel banner taints the air. The
length of the war has been absolutely indispensable for
the full sense of nationality ; the unity and authority of
the Federal Government to enter and possess the hearts
of the people ; for the radical revolutionizing of the old
3
26 THE WOEK OF NEW ENGLAND
social system of the South ; for the education of the mass-
es up to the political and moral issues of the present hour.
Let no voice among us call for peace while treason stands
erect and defiant. Let no sigh of complaint freight any
wind that blows from the North toward the capitol. To
every fresh call for men, let us give quick, consenting re-
sponse. The armies that have been marching through
the summer and autumn from victory to victory must
needs find their ranks thinner, and the final strokes are
yet to be delivered. We have to fill the ranks, to stimu-
late enlisting, to sound the call for volunteers at all the
gateways of our hills and in the streets of our towns, to
compensate the forsaken tasks of labor's thrifty hands, to
keep a light on the hearth of the absent soldier's home for
his wife and babes, and bread on the board and " the wolf
from the door." "Fight it through ! " Let the press em-
blazon it morning and evening. Let the ministry of Him
who came to send the sword on earth before his reign of
peace give it voice. Let legislation in town and State
give it all helpful practical indorsement. Let the whole
heart of New England give it clear and ringing echo.
And here, especially, where the word was first spoken
that broke the silent terror of the beginning, let that
sound have once more full volume and cheerful tone :
" The sons of Massachusetts to the rescue ! "
We have, of course, a duty of ceaseless vigilance. The
transition periods of a nation's life are perilous crises.
They inaugurate the dynasties of moral forces that are to
sway the sceptre for a cycle whose diameter no man can
calculate. The fortunes of this nation are in transition
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 27
uow. We have reached the line, sailing on in the Ship
of State, and are crossing it into seas unplonghed before.
In respect to opinions, morals, public leaders, society,
and institutions, we are leaving the old and entering upon
the new. On the other side of this great chasm that sep-
arates our past from our future, our national story is to
begin afresh, our annals to open a new volume. Public
sentiment is to be reformed ; new banners are to float in
the van of national progress ; we are to take down and
rebuild many a shattered line of our walls of empire ; we
are to legislate and to act upon novel questions without
precedents.
What shall we carry on with us ? What shall we leave
behind ? What new elements shall come in to leaven the
whole lump ? What old elements shall be extirpated or
neutralized? AVhat things vital and precious, the legacy
of the past, shall be studiously garnered up? What dead
weights shall be thrown off? Who will watch to see that
no divine gift of the old civilization is dropped out, no
seed principle of our earlier liberties and evangelisms
blown away or smothered, no ancient guarantees of public
faith and honor and popular privilege weakened or forgot-
ten ? Who will scrutinize as carefully the forces that har-
ness jthemselves to the onward movement, and make sure
that no wanton, profane hand lay hold of the sacred ark
of our hopes ; that no seed principle of mischief be sown
where many hands are scattering grain broadcast ; that no
insidious attempt to twine around our swelling limbs fet-
ters that shall one day cripple our growth and our free
motion, shall prosper?
28 THE WOEK OF NEW ENGLAND
This is precisely the demand that invokes New Eng-
land intervention. Her weight in the wavering scales of
our public destinies is not the weight of numbers, nor of
territorial greatness and promise, nor of political predomi-
nance. The centre of political power has forever receded
from the East ; it will visit no more the Atlantic slope of
the Alleghanies ; it is crossing meridian after meridian,
westward still. Let it pass ; our moral sceptre remains.
It is open to us still to sway the nation by the force of
ideas, to rule through the royalty of principles that can
never be discrowned. Let the questions which we have
just asked get their clear and authoritative answers in the
voice and the attitude of this little sisterhood of common-
wealths, and we rule the confederacy still. But we must
look well at the foundation of the principles which we at-
tempt to assert and maintain. They must have an un-
questionable right of supremacy. They must be royal
^^jure cUvino.^^ They must be no temporary policies and
expediencies, but everlasting facts and laws. They must
take hold of what is imperishable, have their roots in
the very nature of God, and be linked to the car of his
omnipotent providence. The divineness of government,
the supremacy of law, order imperial, human equality,
the inalienable rights of man, — intelligence, freedom,
law, and religion, — the four immovable pillars of commu-
nal peace and perpetuity, — standing by these, holding and
teaching this faith, New England will be a power in the
Union forever.
For these principles, then, she must be jealous with an
infinite jealousy in watching the country through this
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 29
present crisis. This is the turn of the fever. There must
be no negligence nor slumbering now ; every change must
be noted ; every pulse must be felt ; the slightest aberra-
tion is of moment. We must be Argus-eyed, so that no
future disaster shall impeach our vigilance in this critical
hour.
Another duty of ours concerns the deliverance of this
land from the bondage of the past. That deliverance is
not yet complete. For one, I am restless and anxious
until that consummation come.
We have been in covenant with a great wrong. We
admitted it into partnership with our rational life. We
awarded it rights and immunities. It proved itself a
fraudulent partner from the beginning, but we were held
by the bond. We kept it. There was an inherent in-
compatibility, but the covenant remained. Through all
this time our proper national civilization was not born,
but only conceived. Jacob and Esau struggled together
in this pregenital strife, never dissociated, the one clasp-
ing the other's heel.
It was meant that this land should be a home of liberty
and justice for all God's creatures to the end of time ; that
the rights of man should stand and grow here as the old
forests of the wilderness had stood and grown, their roots
striking deep downward, their tops branching upward to
the open, free heaven, their arms intertwining, and the
streams of a continent watering their lusty life. There
was to be one land on the face of the earth in which polit-
ical and i-eligious freedom should walk over its length and
breadth without let or threat, — one where there should
3*
30 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
be on the body aucl on the soul no cham. So our found-
ers builded ; so our fathers and mothers suffered and
wrought and prayed. And the new temple of promise
rose fair and stately, and its light streamed afar, and many
feet, weary and wounded, hastened thither to rest with-
in this secure asylum. But, alas, what shrines were built
within ! Was there one to a pure faith ? Was there an-
other to equal law ? Was there a third to maiden Lib-
erty? But what other fourth shrine is that, grim and
dark, crowding these three? What grisly demon sat
within, usurping place in that fair fellowship?
Alas for the new hope and the new nation and the new
world I Alas for our bright western star so soon turning
wan and dim !
But God had not joined this compact with evil. His
hands were not tied if ours were. He has a way of an-
nulling covenants with crime. He found the means to
shatter our inviolable bond. He sent the earthquake of
revolution to shake down the demon shrined in our sacred
temple. It stood strong. It had its foundation deep,
and had been buttressed with massive masonry. It was
clamped and riveted to the temple walls with mau}^ a bolt
of iron ; but the earthquake was stronger yet. It shook
and heaved and wrenched apart till it seemed as though
the temple itself would fall. Many said. It will fall. It
did, indeed, tremble and rock, and its lights were shiv-
ered ; but it stands yet, with tower and dome catching
the light of earliest and latest day, and the dark shrine is
overturned. It lies prostrate and in ruins. Its horrid
deity is fallen, like Philistia's Dagon before the ark,
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 31
maimed and broken, with the stump only remaining.
Thus is the bond parted ; thus the covenant ceases ; and
we have to watch now that no hand rebuilds that demol-
ished shrine ; that no malign craft sets up Dagon's stump
again in our great temple. Surely, we have felt the curse
of this corroding bond long enough. Shall we ever bow
our necks to it again? Shall we suffer any man among
men, or any fiend from below, to press its poisonous links
into our flesh once more ? We have the shattered mate-
rials of that dark altar to sweep out of the consecrated
temple, the last vestige of that horrid idolatry to banish
and bury forever. This work is not yet done ; it needs
finishing. There are those who would knit again the rup-
tured strands of the old, rent covenant. Men of New
England, legislators of Massachusetts, suffer this never
to be! Here, where the most strenuous voices of the
great reformation have been uttered from the beginning,
let them still sound forth, full and clear. You will have
to watch against cunning, selfishness, and intrigue ; against
many a nobler sentiment of mistaken generosity and mag-
nanimity and lingering reverence for the Constitution as
it was ; and against that foul monster, fouler and more
misshapen than Satan saw sitting portress at the gate of
liell,— Party Spirit. I do not feel safe or at peace
while any legal remnant of this accursed thing clings to
us. See to it that this bondage of the past be utterly and
forever doomed. Take you care that this incubus of evil
never more throne itself upon our national life.
From this last point, we may rise to a higher and more
general affirmation. We must see to it that the whole
32 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
course of this government, both in its constitutional law
and in its public administration, shall be determined by
strict right and divine iDrinciple.
Have wo or have we not yet learned the lesson, that
evil built into the templed life of a people is an element
of weakness and corruption in the structure? It may
seem to the builders a necessity. The whole work may
pause as though there could be no further progress with-
out allowing the wrong a place. Admitting it, the walls
may go swiftly up, as though vindicating the expediency
of the measure by a success fair and grand, and not else
possible. But God has taught us that this demonstration
is a delusion and a terrible mistake. The columns so reared
have to be taken down again ; that is the divine teach-
ing. It is not real progress to build in with evil, that the
work may go swiftly forward ; it goes swiftly to decay.
All that is built upon it is lost labor. It cannot stand.
While God reigns, nothing propped with wrong shall re-
main firm. That crumbling support will one day fail,
and the superincumbent pile lean to its fall. Nothing but
truth and right will stand. There is not a trumpet tone
so loud in all history as that which proclaims it now, that
our national disaster is the fruit of national crime, the
issue of mingling evil with the foundations of the repub-
lic. Are we not educated yet into the conviction that we
must build altogether in righteousness, if we build for
posterity and the golden future ? Have we not acquired
a conscience yet in the heart of this American people?
Shall we not walk at length by its light, without swerv-
ino" 9
IX THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 33
What is God's idea in a great nation ? Merely the bet-
ter carrying on of commerce and the elaboration of the
art of comfortable living? Is it not that it shall stand
the noblest representation of the principles of his own
supreme government, — nay, the actual vice-regency of his
sceptre among men, a temple of concrete justice, in
which no right shall suffer harm, and no wrong find a
shelter? If in any of its decrees and procedures it con-
tradict his attributes, malign his character, and annul his
statutes, will he accept it as his ideal, and write upon its
front " esto perpetua'^^ ? Will he not wTite that other sen-
tence in the old Hebrew, — ''Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin^^?
We are rebuilding here ; we must take better care this
time. It should seem enough to say that right is right ;
but we must add that right is safety, right is perpetuity,
right is immortality. Wrong is death and destruction,
wrong is treason and disloyalty. We are taking stern
measures with rebellion now. But every seeming patriot
who consents to any unrighteousness in the reconstructed
nation is a more insidious and a more deadly traitor to
the Union than any man with arms in his hands in all the
rebel hosts.
In this task of rebuilding, only the most resolute stead-
fastness, only the most sleepless vigilance, will keep evil
out. The demand will be incredibly urgent. "Yield
here ! " " Give way there ! " " Consent to this unimpor-
tant compromise, and embarrassment Avill be obviated,
and all will go smoothly ! " The pinch will be the sorest
when rebellion collapses. With the rebels at our feet su-
ing for terms, we shall remember that they were our
34 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
brothers. All our generous sensibilities will ])e moved
toward them. Our bowels will yearn over them. We
shall feel that we cannot be hard with them. We shall
be put upon our magnanimity. We shall take them by
the hand and lift them tenderly up. We shall be in-
clined to give them more than they would have the face
to ask. We shall desire to show them that the hand that
struck down their parricidal weapons was never a hand
of hate, but of grieved and reluctant justice. That will
be a perilous hour for the constancy of principle. Then,
when any voices ask us, in the name and in the spirit of
fraternal conciliation, to welcome the erring and the con-
quered back with their old properties and relations, in-
cluding some remnant of the ancient wrong or some new
vicarious wrong, it will be hard to resist. There is, of
course, a place and a sphere for compromise. We may
yield our interest, we may forego advantage, we may
waive opinion and preference for peace and harmony ;
but we have it as the most solemn charge of these years
of violence and blood, to yield nothing of righteousness
and justice to any demand for any gain so long as the
world standeth.
It is a part of our work, which ought to have distinct
and formal mention, to deepen in the hearts of the people
the sentiment of the sacredness of government. There
has been in the very nature of our institutions a chronic
and growing strain upon this sentiment. Everything in
this land tends to the elevation of the individual. We
teach that each man, standing erect in the image of his
God, is the peer of every other. We provide for the
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 35
largest training of the individual. He is a graduate of
the schools. He is master of tongue and pen. He is a
reader of books. He takes at least a daily newspaper;
perhaps he posts himself morning and evening upon all
the progress of thought and the chronicle of events. He
has his opinions. He embraces, it may be, some system
of social and political philosophy. More frequently he
holds to tenets and prejudices which are his own and un-
shared. He is the architect of his own fortunes. Every
track is free to him. He may aspire hopefully in any di-
rection, and cut for himself steps to any eminence of
name and place and power. He has his own religious
training and religious creed with no State establishment
to coerce him into uniformity. He looks up to no man.
He is dependent upon no one. He brooks interference
from none.
The nation is bristling all over with these individuali-
ties, as isolated and distinct and as sharp as the quills
of the " fretful porcupine." How can these millions of
independent thinkers be made to see alike, feel alike, and
act alike in the matter of the common supremacy of gov-
ernment? The more intelligent and self-reliant they be-
come, the more complete each separate manhood is, the
more difficult the problem grows. How can you make
any two or more of such constituents take the same yoke
and wear it peacefully together ? ^Yhat but anarch}^ can
come of such diverse and resolute elements ?
Now if government w^ere something that existed here
independently of these self-poised minds, framed for
them, laid upon them, with an inherent power to be and
36 THE WOEK OF NEW ENGLAND
to constrain subordination, the conditions of the problem
were instantly changed. But with all this independence
of thought and opinion, each man is himself clothed with
political power. He is a sovereign. There is none above
him. He is himself a maker and administrator of laws.
Of these millions of sovereigns how will you make one
harmonious, self-consistent, and authoritative sovereign-
ty?
Government is their creature, not their monarch.
How will you teach them to revere what their hands have
made? They will the government into being. If it
doesn't please them, they can take it down and set up an-
other. Is it natural that they should fall before it and do
it homage ? All public officials are their servants, whom
they have invested with liveries, and to whom they pay
wages. Is it to be expected that they should kiss the feet
of their servants? They feel that it is their right and
their duty to watch, to criticise, and to rebuke these pub-
lic servants ; and in this duty they cheerfully abound. Is
this the way to cultivate reverence and submission ?
How obvious is it that the maintenance of govern-
ment, and especially the hallowing of its authority over
such a constituency of free, intelligent, independent, and
sovereign minds, is one of those problems concerning
which there is always the hazard of an ill-omened issue.
Disloyalty and treason, and sympathy with both, are the
logical inference of this inflated sense of the popular rela-
tion to the government of the land.
We need to insist upon the divineness of human gov-
ernment. Our children must be taught it from the
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 37
cradle, that, however constituted, " the powers that be
are ordained of God." If men elect, God crowns. If we
lead our rulers to the chair of state, God puts the sceptre
into their hands. They become then, not our officials,
but his. They are the servants, not of popular caprice,
nor the will of majorities, they are the servants of the
throned Justice, the supreme Eight.
The natural philosophy of government ought to have
clearer, more impressive, and more constant explication
in all the literature that trains the American mind. Our
schoolbooks, the press, the rostrum, the pulpit, should
discuss with more earnestness and more simplicity the
fundamental principles of that philosophy.
If men are to dwell together in communities there
must, of course, be social order. The opposite of this is
anarchy, chaos. For order there must be law, — equal,
impartial, universal law.
For the supremacy of law there must be administrative
authority, — the right and the power to institute and en-
force law.
For the ground of this right, the charter of this author-
ity, we come back again to the will of God, who accepts
earthly magistracies as his vicegerents, and clothes them
with his own delegated sanctity.
There is no land under heaven that so needs the popu-
lar demonstration and the constant iteration of these
truths as ours. And it is but the nearest inference to
add that there is none where the righteousness of the
statute and the purity of the magistrate are more closely
connected with the sacredness of the government in the
38 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
popular heart. Civil enactments, whose inspiration is
partisan intrigue, or mercenary favoritism, — an unjust
ruler, setting up the dynasty of his own passions, preju-
dices, and partialities, — a corrupt legislator, writing in
the statute-book with unclean hands, — a magistrate
swayed by self-interest, and purchasable with gold, —
these give public contradiction to their divine paternity,
and make contempt of government and revolt against law
the instinct of all noble natures. So far as the popular
faith goes, the legitimacy of civil government, as an ordi-
nance of Heaven, runs in the channel of purity and equity.
For public impression, the proof of divine authorship halts
when the divine likeness fails. If we would keep men's
hearts among us loyal to civil authority, and help to make
the supremacy of law inviolable through the land, we
have it in solemn charge to guard the avenues to power
from all profane approach, and to exercise the functions of
office, legislative and executive, in all honesty and good
conscience.
I think it is worthy, also, of a moment's separate plea,
that we utter the sentiments and beliefs of New England in
full, clear, unequivocal speech. We must hold fast here
to our birthright of free thought and free speech. There
is nothing that concerns the honor and j)rogress of the na-
tion, or the rights of humanity, in reference to which it is
not our privilege to inquire, to form our conclusions, and
to declare them in the hearing of our fellow-men. Every
principle, every measure that seeks ascendency in this
land, every ancient, every fresh-founded institution, we
have a right to discuss. Whatever subtle leaven would
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 39
insinuate itself into the life of the nation, whatever comes
to us with the imposing front of precedent and authority,
and assumes the prerogative to control our history, we
may use our sharpest faculties to search out, and to show
forth their nature and their claim. The honest thoughts,
the deep convictions, the intense sympathies of our New
England hearts, frankly and boldly uttered, have been no
mean power in the nation in rectifying public sentiment,
undermining the security of wrong, and preparing the
national mind for generous and radical progress. There
have been those who would have laid a finger of iron on
New England's lips, and silenced her faithful witness.
But she keeps her birthright yet. Let her guard it well
for the future. Let her maintain her right to question, to
investigate, to form her opinion upon the wisdom and the
morality of all that courts the popular suffrage, not as one
ambitious to hold a barren sceptre, but earnest to pour
her own copious life into the public veins for the health
and vigor of the nation's being. This is one imperial pre-
rogative of New England, one most sacred obligation, — to
overstep her own boundaries with the forceful moral influ-
ence of her public testimony against all civil and social
wrong, her strong protective plea for every imperilled
right. Our numbers are few^ and our territory small ; we
have no Yalley Stream flowing from our hills through the
length of the northern continent. But from the ^Dure,
cool fountains of these moral and intellectual heights we
may send forth a ceaseless utterance for truth, right, and
liberty, — a deep, broad river, watering all the land.
There will come upon us soon a call to help repeople
40 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
and resettle a desolate South. There is one symbol of
prophecy upon the broAV of which we might write as its
most fitting interpretation this word, — War. It is that
"fourth beast," that Daniel saw in his night vision, ris-
ing out of the "great sea," — "dreadful, and terrible, and
strong, exceedingly ; and it had great iron teeth ; it de-
voured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue
with the feet of it." Under these horrid hoofs, many
parts of the South have become a waste more dreary than
any untamed wilderness. In the wilderness of savage
nature there is nothing suggestive of violence and de-
struction. But in following the track of an invading
army, we walk amid the wreck of what was once fair
and blooming ord^r.
The fences are gone from the fields once bearing up
thrifty tillage and rich harvests. Granaries and barns
have sunk into black heaps of coal and cinder. The lone
chimney tells where the peaceful cottage rose. A ranker
growth of tangled weeds betrays the site of the garden.
Rows of stumps recall the once fruitful orchard. The
level fields of the farm have been ridged up with earth-
works, and ditched with rifle-pits. In the once compan-
ionable hamlet not a dweller remains. A house or two
may yet be standing above the blackened ruins of its fel-
lows, but without doors or window lights, and with wind
and storm sweeping through its dismal chambers. Frag-
ments of household furniture lie scattered around, half
embedded in the earth. A schoolhouse or a church at
the fork of confluent roads shows, in its pierced and
shattered walls, how the meeting tides of battle surged
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 41
around that salient angle. Within, the floor has been
rudely cleared ; for what purpose many a dull stain on the
boards gives testimony. The public roads lead you to
the bank of bridgeless rivers. There are no vehicles of
travel remaining, no implements of husbandry, no tools
of art. No flocks nor herds wander in the pastures, no
beasts of draft or burden wait for the harness. The nar-
row, curving level keeps the memorial of the railway ;
but the sleepers are burned, and the iron twisted into
rusty contortions. Civilization must begin again with all
her tasks repeated, and these melancholy ghosts haunting
the scenes of her old triumphs. Immense regions at the
South are thus blighted. The obduracy of rebellion —
and rebellion is still obdurate — has brought upon itself
this unsparing scourge.
It seems to me that this tenacity of purpose with the
Southern leaders and ruling classes is of God. It wears
the aspect of a judicial decree. It is like the hardening
of Pharaoh's heart, that the whole Southern system of
life, labor, and society may be drowned together in this
red sea, and not a vestige of the old malign civilization
of that portion of our country survive these bloody
years.
Upon such a radical devastation there will come in our
new duties, to explore these wastes, to map out the vast
territories over which the ploughshare of extermination
has been driven, to open up the promise of these fertile
and masterless estates to the keen eyes of Northern thrift
and the hurrying tread of emigrant feet, to Americanize
the new busy marches that will soon press, with mightier
4*
42 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
armies, and with move peaceful weapons, those silent
fields, and to send thither the seeds of New England life
and institutions, to be scattered broadcast • and first of all
to occupy the ground.
There will be also a work, worthy our best endeavors,
to bring up, ennoble, and save a degraded remnant of
Southern population. Here all that is generous and
charitable, all that is magnanimous and forgiving in the
heart of New England, will have free scope. We shall
have to show our former enemies how sincerely and truly
we can be and are their friends. We shall have to bless
them in spite of their prejudices and all the depressing
weio:ht of their old habits. We shall have to show them
how much better we can do for them than they have ever
done for themselves. We shall need to parcel out for
them new estates, to organize for them home industries,
to put into their hands the implements of various work,
to help them lift a roof-tree over their heads, to inspire
them with hope, diligence, economy, and the ambition for
self-improvement, to set before them on their own soil
the models of our own sweet and comfortable domestic
life, to build schoolhouses and churches and send them
teachers and preachers, and sift into all their brightening
consciousness the light of letters, the issues of the daily
press, and a fresh, healthful, evangelical literature. This
grand charity will tax our fiiith and our self-denial to the
utmost for years to come. How many voices will call
mournfully to us throughout this bereaved and desolate
South ! What fragments of broken homes will appeal to
us ! How many wandering fugitives, not knowing on
IN THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 43
which side the grave their kindred are, houseless, friend-
less, penniless, with tragic memories behind them and no
light of hope before, will wait our' coming to bless them
with a shelter, and renew for them some faint interest in
life.
Of course the future of the African race in this land
is a problem that will press us as it will press the whole
country with its urgent and difficult conditions. This
land that has held them in bondage will have to give
them a home. This nation that has been to them a task-
master will have to be a foster-parent and a protector.
With their restored manhood, they must have such a
start in respect to their material interest and their social
prospects, as well as in all that relates to their intel-
lectual, moral, and religious nurture, that the future
shall, if possible, if they enter its open door, grandly
overpay their sorrowful past. For this full redemption
of the emancipated slave, New England must by wise
and unstinted charities, by generous legislation, and by all
social magnanimities, do her royal share.
This is a glance only at the tasks crowding in upon us
in the days that now are and the days that are to come.
It covers but a small part of the whole field of our duty
to our age and our race. But there is enough in these
few specifications to invoke our most strenuous diligence,
our loftiest consecration. It rests with us, and those who
shall succeed us, to make this New England of ours —
by her pure life and steadfast principle, her just laws,
beneficent institutions, and stainless morals, her clear and
commanding utterance for immortal right, her public and
44 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND
private charities, her sense of the grandeur of the ordeal
through which this nation and all it involves of hope and
promise for man is passing now, and, above all, her faith-
ful adherence to the original ideal of a Puritan common-
wealth, walking and talking with God, and holding his
will everywhere supreme — an angel of mercy and guid-
ance to our whole land, for this and for all after-times.
We congratulate the State rather than His Excellency
that this occasion signals no retirement from the chair of
her cbief magistracy. It was not needed for him, for any
completeness of personal or official honor, for the very
summit of a just and wide fame, that the people of Mas-
sachusetts should once more with such large consent put
the reins of her public affairs into those tried and skilful
hands. She honors herself most by so placing this high
trust. She knows, and beyond her borders the central
government and the nation know, with what prescient
forecast, what timely providence, what hopeful courage,
what unquenchable loyalty, what indefatigable diligence,
and what thoughtful tenderness her administration at
home and abroad has been conducted throus^h these dark
days of. revolution and conflict. Her internal order and
prosperity, her renown in the high places of the field,
both the spirit and the comfort of her sons doing brave
battle for the sacred flao- her weisfht in the scale of riofht
on the grave questions of the hour, are the bright record
which justifies the inference that she is governed well.
If we could spare you, sir, we would give you release
from these solemn cares, and follow you with our com-
memorative gratitude into the peaceful retirement of pri-
IX THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTEY. 45
vate life. But in these stern days of work, when our
whole New England has so much to do to inaugurate the
elect and waiting future, we pile our public burdens upon
you once more, and beseech the God of our fathers to
give you strength to bear them as worthily in the year to
come as in these historic years that have gone.
And may the gentlemen of the Senate, the Council,
and the House of Kepresentatives, called of their fellow-
citizens to the discharge of duties which would at any
time have invoked their best wisdom and highest fidelity,
be quickened to discern at what a point they stand in the
history and fortunes of the republic, and the lengthening
scroll of human progress ; and forgetting their own ease
and emolument, and rising above ever}^ personal and pri-
vate interest, give to the care of the State, and the honor
and safety of the nation in these troubled times, all their
heart and all their soul and all their mind and all their
strength !
And before the term of official duty which opens for
you to-day shall have run out, may we be called to join,
with all the people of the land, in keeping such a day of
public thanksgiving to Almighty God as has never gath-
ered our joy and praise in the past, — over a nation
saved, united, free, at peace wdth itself, with all the
world, and with the throne of Infinite Justice and Good-
ness !
III.
GOD'S DELAY TO PUNISH.
AND THEY CRIED WITH A LOUD VOICE, SAYING, HOW LONG, O LORD, HOLY
AND TRUE, DOST THOU NOT JUDGE AND AVENGE OUR BLOOD ON THEM
THAT DWELL ON THE EARTH ? — RCV. vL 10.
AMONG the scenes that rose before the eyes of John
of Patmos out of the vast dark future, tracked only
by these prophetic lines of light, was one that disclosed
to him a company of earthly sufferers gone home to heav-
en. There, under the shadow of the sacrificial altar, be-
neath the refuge of the atonement, they were grouped to-
gether, resting and waiting. They were resting, for
earthly pain and woe were past. They were waiting, for
their earthly indication yet lingered. It appears that
they were martyrs whom the fierce hand of persecution
had done to death for their fidelity to truth and Christ.
They seem to be aware of the procedures of the divine
Providence in the world they have left behind. They
know that the cause for which they died is not yet tri-
umphant. They see the proud crests of bigotry and op-
pression yet unhumbled. Have they given life in vain,
suffered and bled for nought? God is holy and hates
god's delay to punish. 47
evil. Why does he not smile down the crowned wrong?
God is true and wdll redeem his promises. Why does he
not show himself the friend of the righteous? And their
voices, not fretful and querulous, but earnest for the final
victory of the right, address the Highest, " How long,
O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge
our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? "
There are many souls yet dwelling in the flesh, who
echo that cry, "How long? " God reigns, we believe, we
know ; but evil also reigns. God is against it ; he has
declared that it shall not prosper ; but, despite his holi-
ness and his truth, the throne of iniquity stands. Power
oppresses, rapacity robs, lust deceives and betrays, de-
traction stabs in secret, armed injustice defies law human
and divine. "How long?" Men join together in earnest
league against some specific form of evil, as of tyranny in
government, or oppression in political institutions, or in-
temperance in morals, with God on their side and "the
good time coming " before them. But what a dubious
warfare ! How often are they baffled and defeated !
How deep the roots of evil have struck ! How securely
it lifts its towering growth ! They make slow progress.
Sometimes it seems as though they did not gain at all.
Is God on their side ! Is there to dawn a bright, millen-
nial day? The good despond, the bad grow bold. "Be-
cause sentence against an evil work is not executed
speedily ; therefore, the heart of the sons of men is fully
set in them to do evil." Why not? The evil-doer is un-
punished ; he w^alks at large ; no judgments make him
afraid ; God doesn't silence his proud boasting. Is it so
48 god's delay to punish.
certain that virtue has an iufiuite ally? How these
delays of the Supreme Justice lend heart to the wicked !
What do they care for some distant, shadowy terror?
Here are the prizes of their corrupt desires right at their
feet. Before the crash comes, before the hour of reckon-
ing chimes, they will have enjoyed the lawless sweets to
the full, and have escaped into some refuge yet to open.
And still God is silent ; his hand is motionless ; the
heavens are serene. The righteous wait for a sign ; but
earth and sky are mute. "How long, O Lord?" Oh, if
evil might be at once put down, and wrong righted now,
treason to law, liberty, humanity, and all good brained
at a stroke, the almighty thunders flashing instant wrath
upon guilt and crime, then might the lowly lift up their
heads, and the days of darkness would be numbered !
Must we, then, chide these divine delays? Shall we not
rather ask if they are not in God's sight both wise and
good ?
We must remember for one thing that this world is
not a world of retribution. The great harvest law is, in-
deed, established in nature. Providence, and morals, that
"whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." But
when and where the full harvest shall be garnered are
still open questions. The supreme administration takes
position in regard to good and evil, and declares it will
visit for all wrong ; but the times and seasons for such
judicial visitation are not disclosed ; whether the aveng-
ing judgments shall fall sooner or later God gives no
pledges. Here and there he drops the bolts of doom
visibly and suddenly upon the head of guilt, that men
49
may not forget that there is a God, and that he rules
in righteousness. And then again for long, silent in-
tervals, he reserves all his wrath, and the path of crime
seems heaped about with impregnable securities. Often
the good pass away under a cloud ; the wicked carry their
bad ventures through with a high hand, and depart amid
the blaze of success. God does not undertake to make
things equal here and now. No earthly history writes
out the whole of his procedures, or balances the accounts
he keeps. All human records of his administrative poli-
cies must be fragmentary, if not distorted ; for the pro-
cesses of his government pass beyond the ken and the pen
of mortal historians, taking in time and eternity. If God
wait, therefore, he does not forget. If retribution de-
lay, it is not, therefore, set aside ; it only shifts the scene
and defers the hour. If some great offender step into
the grave before pursuing vengeance overtake him, and
they who have watched his course say above the turf
that hides him, "Here's a bold, bad man, that came to the
end unchecked and unscathed," we may reflect that he has
not yet come to the end. The grave is not a refuge from
the power of God ; it is only a passage from one state to
another. Beneath its portal the criminal has gone for-
ward to meet his Judo:e.
Instead of being a world of retribution, this is a world
of probation. Trial with human character is progressive
and continuous. It takes in successive incidents, influ-
ences, and occasions. It has its stages of advance, its ebb
and flood tides. Its grand crises often come late. Its
preparatory processes are often veiled and unsuspected,
5
50 god's delay to punish.
and can only be learned on some great consummation day.
Principles, whether right or wrong, grow by slow incre-
ments, like oaks on the hill-tops, and by many a wrestle
with wind and storm. Were God to rebuke evil with his
instant judgments, these deliberate courses of human de-
velopment would all be cut short. The gradual ripening
and strengthening of the soul's moral life would be made
impossible ; the fair blue sky above would be shrouded
from human sight; the thunder cloud of wrath would
bow low, and black our daily life ; incessantly its fires
would gleam and its artillery roll, and underfoot the green
earth would be an aceldama of blood ; for sinful man's ap-
peal to the justice of a holy God is without intermission.
Again God delays his primitive stroke, that his own
character may be more clearly revealed. He has all
power ; how will he use it ? He hates sin with an infinite
abhorrence ; how will he treat it? When we are injured
or afironted, having the power to right ourselves, we
make haste to get satisfaction. How will God bear
wrong ? There is no sublimer spectacle in the universe
than the patience w^ith which that Supreme One endures
man's trespasses. Wave after wave the tossing sea of
human guilt breaks at his feet, and dashes its insulting
spray upon his robes of majesty ; his name is defiled, his
attributes denied, his power defied, his purposes contra-
vened; and to all this the sensibilities of his nature must
be exquisitely sensitive ; yet there he sits in the bonds
of an infinite self-restraint, calm, patient, and forbearing,
looking upon the endless succession of the mad waves of
human rebellion, and withholding his hand. He was
god's delay to punish. 51
strong when he lifted up the heights of the everlasting
mountains and curbed the lawless seas, — strong when he
subdued and hauled from heaven the rebel angels, and when
he built the worlds and tossed them out like bubbles upon
the flood of ether ; but is he in any act or work so strong
as in this awful self-control? All the voices of human
blasphemy cannot ruffle it ; all the tragedies of human
crime cannot break it down. The day rises and sets on
sorrow and guilt ; years of sharp wrong fill out their suc-
cessive revolutions; centuries, ages, lapse slowly away
under lusty and jubilant evil, and yet God waits, observant
of all, feeling all, remembering all, but passing it by
without a reckoning. Is this the way to bear wrong?
Would he teach us by his own marvellous example to
take patiently the spoiling of our goods, the bitter as-
saults of malice and all personal injury, and to look
also with patient forbearance upon the evils that waste
at large in the commonwealth of human happiness. If
He to whom vengeance belongeth defers its infliction,
shall not we? If that silent endurance of his so move us,
shall we not make it an inspiration and a law for our
own life ?
And how this long-sufiering calmness heightens the
impressiveness of wrath when wrath comes forth ! It is
not impulse then ; it is not sudden passion ; it is not the
rash outbreak of a vehement and ungoverned temper. It
is slow-moving, deliberate, resolved justice proceeding
unto execution because it can no longer delay, — j^roceed-
ing now inevitably and inexorably because its hour has
struck. Nothing is lost from the terror of punishment by
52 god's delay to punish.
this delay, but rather the dreadful tranquillity out of
which it takes its way lends it a fearfulness more overaw-
ing than the wildest rage.
Again, God's delays often respect the measures and
agencies by which the guilty are to suffer. Reprisal in
kind and manner is one and a favorite law of the divine
retribution. This may take time. A son dishonors and
outrages the gray hairs of his father. How shall he be
punished? Shall God chastise at once? Will the turbulent
boy see and feel his guilt now, or the keenness of the re-
quital, as he would if he live on till his own locks are
gray and his age beginning to be solitary, and then the
son of his own loins rise up to take him by the beard ?
Ah, when that late anguish rises in his heart, he will know
how he once wounded a heart that cherished him, what
a pang he inflicted; and as this answering pang stabs
his spirit, he will have it to say in bitter remorse, " It is
just." Young Jacob drove a dart to his father's soul
when, covering his smooth skin with the hair of the kid,
he swore to Isaac, "I am thy very son Esau." How
shall he be punished for this deceit? Wait. Come again
into his presence when, bowed with years, he leans upon
his staff, and his sons, cheating him in turn, ruthlessly lay
before him Joseph's coat of many colors stained with
blood, saying, "This have wo found. Know now whether
it be thy son's coat or no." Oftentimes the very prize
which the guilty hand seized becomes the instrument of
torture. Not all at once of course. Gradually its character
changes. It is long perhaps before it ceases to attract.
Slowly the leaven of a new virus enters into it, and
god's delay to punish. 53
at last it is worn, like the coat of Hercules, as a poisoned
robe, filling the frame with anguish and corruption.
God would have also human help in overcoming evil.
He keeps back the thunders of his power and calls
in loyal volunteers. He permits them to fight many a
strenuous battle, to become heroes on great field days ;
he drills and musters them in all the manly discipline of
a soldier's life and matches them against the stubborn
wrongs he would subdue. Their feeble arms take up, in-
stead of his omnipotent arm, the championship of virtue,
lift the gage of evil, and measure themselves against the
powers hostile to God's reign. This delays the victory,
but it exalts and ennobles humanity, tutors and educates
the servants of God, and lends an intenser interest in our
hearts to the long protracted struggle.
It is not always that the nature of an evil thing is seen
at the outset. God understands it. But if he smite as it
deserves, men may wonder at his severity. They cannot
enter at once into his estimate of what he has scourged,
because the evil was yet seminal and unexpressed. Let
it live and flourish and blossom by and by and bear its
ripe fruits before their eyes, and as those baleful apples
fall, men will underst^md better why the lightnings of
heaven should scathe and blacken such a growth. Unless
the evil came up thus to its full stature, and put on all its
deformity before it were dealt with, if it were choked and
checked in its young greenness, there were danger of its
repetition when the next hour of temptation should chime.
Let it stand and grow yet a while, let its swelling propor-
tions crowd out all healthful growths, let men look upon
5*
54 god's delay to punish.
its kingly coronal of Upas leaves, and mark the death
that spreads beneath its fatal dews ; let them look upon
some vice of character, at first thought well-nigh harm-
less, as later it pushes its rank leprosy over the whole
soul ; let some political wrong, at first only a hidden fer-
ment, break out into rancorous, pestilent eruption, where
foul and fast the life itself runs away ; let men see, let
history record, let generations feel, what desperate wick-
edness lies in the purpose to maintain political ascen-
dency for a sectional end; let wasted treasuries bear
their witness, and crimsoned fields and desolated homes
and broken hearts ; let the punishment linger till the fell
spirit, the horrid rapacity, the death-griping wilfulness of
this evil thing is stamped upon its brow, the mark of Cain
branded in so deep that not all the gloss of the Father
of lies can ever efiace it ; then let the heel of Omnipo-
tence tread it down, and one such demonstration will be
enough.
Good and evil are often so mingled in this life that
one cannot be dislodged without uprooting the other.
The wheat and tares grow together. For the sake of the
wheat, it is often better that the tares remain undis-
turbed. There are bad men whose crimes demand signal
rebuke, but there are certain precious interests partly
resting upon them which would suffer if they were rude-
ly struck away. They are men of foul hearts and pro-
fane lips, but they are husbands and fathers, and de-
pendent lives wait upon their industry, and nestle under
their care. They have fields to till and harvests to
raise and products of skill and labor to produce for the
god's delay to punish. 55
adornment and comfort of other lives. They do not fear
God, nor regard man ; but God can make them useful
nevertheless. Thek muscles are strong, and their wits
are sharp for him, and their very wrath shall praise him.
They shall serve, though unwittingly, as helpers to hu-
man advancement, subduing earth's briers and thorns, —
they are good enough for that, — increasing, for selfish
ends, useful inventions, sailing the ships of commerce,
and manning the ships of war, legislating, ruling, fight-
ing in great battles that set forward the progress of na-
tions.
Shall God make no use of them? If all that he ac-
complishes by the hands of wicked men were left out of
the sum-total of human working, it would greatly change
the footing up. Let him delay wrath and subsidize these
malign activities for his own beneficent ends.
Meanwhile look in upon the interior experience of
these respited lives. The final sentence which they have
provoked holds ofi*; but are they therefore exempt from
the penal consequences of ill-doing? Are there no sharp
returns for wrong which they find they cannot escape?
They live ; so did Prometheus chained to his rock on the
bald Caucasus, with the vulture tearing at his liver every
day. Is there no cruel beak that is fleshed perpetually in
their tortured heart ? Are there not bitter dregs in every
cup of sinful pleasure they drink ? Are they not taunted
with fears and forebodings ? Can they lay the pale ghosts
of accusing memories ? Does not conscience pierce them
with her barbed sting? Does not their soul sit in the
shadow when it sits alone? Are these criminals really
quite at large? If they walk abroad, are they not at-
5Q god's delay to punish.
tended by their jailer who leads them chained, and makes
them every now and then to feel the corroding iron ?
But there is another side of the divine character that
comes into radiant vision often in such delays. To show
mercy is the infinite delight of God's heart. To recover
the erring, to save the lost, to make the dead live again,
to bring enemies to his feet in penitent allegiance, —
these are his most illustrious triumphs. There is an in-
tercessor standing between the axe and every barren fig-
tree pleading, " Let it alone this year also ! " Spared
men may become changed men. They are spared often
on this peradventure. They may awake from delusion
and folly ; they may see how their feet are snared ; they
may meet yet some benign influence that shall prevail
over all the solicitation of passion and appetite ; afflic-
tions may bring them to their sober selves, and the lips
that wantoned with the divine sanctities may call trem-
blingly out of the dust, " God be merciful to me a sin-
ner." Were not this better than instant and hopeless
wrath? Whatever voice asks, "How long?" should we
not all answer, " Oh, so long as there is hope ; so long as
Mercy, sweet angel, can yet smile ; so long as the golden
sceptre of forgiveness and reconciliation can still be
stretched out " ?
Reviewing, then, these possible reasons for the delay of
God's just punishment of the wicked, we may say, Let
no man presume on such respite ! Delay is not forgetful-
ness on God's part. It is not escape on man's part. It
may indeed keep the way of return open, but all the
while it is but preparing, if such forbearance fail of this
end, a more certain and crushing doom. God is silent,
god's delay to punish. 57
is he ? while we grow bold in sin. We look and listen ;
there is no sight or sou,nd to alarm us. Ah, that very
silence is appalling. Unseen agencies are at work some-
where. Below the horizon's rim the storm is gathering ;
the air is breathless ; but this hush of the elements pre-
cedes the bursting of the tempest. You discern no
enemy. Look out, then, for an ambush. Nothing ap-
proaches. Be sure, then, you will be surprised. If God
delays in mercy, let not our presumption necessitate his
wrath; not presumption, but repentance, is the right
practical inference from such gracious forbearance.
And, on the other side, let no mon's heart doubt or
faint because evil seems to have present impunity. God
will prove liimself an avenger of all violated rights.
Wait. The tide will turn, will rise. Wait. The little
cloud like a man's hand will cover the face of the sky,
and make it black with fury. Wait. Distant the slow-
grinding wheels of doom move on. The vast iron rim
turns as though it scarce moved at all. The ponderous
arc comes down almost imperceptibly ; but it crashes
where it rolls. Have patience ; even a heathen could
write, "The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind
fine." The sure, inexorable processes of the heavenly
Justice are on their way. Hold on with faith, hope, and
good courage. In the end, God and right and truth and
virtue will triumph, and wrong will take its hopeless sen-
tence. Endure for a little while, maintain the conflict a
little longer, keep a good heart above reverses. God
delays, but he will come. To some despairing voice ask-
ing for the hundredth time, " How long? " will leap forth
his answer, "NOW."
lY.
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMHiY.
FOR I KNOW HIM, THAT HE WILL COMMAND HIS CHILDREN AND HIS HOUSE-
HOLD AFTER HIM, AND THEY SHALL KEEP THE WAY OF THE LORD, TO DO
JUSTICE AND JUDGMENT; THAT THE LORD MAY BRING UPON ABRAHAM
THAT WHICH HE HATH SPOKEN OF HIM. — Gen. XVUi. 19.
THE gifts of the promise made to him who was " called
the friend of God " were yet suspended on the condi-
tions of parental faithfulness and a household ordered in
" the way of the Lord." The divine purpose of mercy
and goodness to a pious line takes up, as indispensable
links in the golden chain, the right training of each gen-
eration in the long succession. If God's favor is to be
transmitted from sire to son, the statutes of God are also
to be handed doAvn, and a spirit of obedience and con-
formity to be, by all strenuous nurture, fostered and se-
cured. The family is God's first and fundamental institu-
tion for reproducing and continuing, as the fathers die
and their sons succeed them, a people to know and serve
him. He ordained it before the Church and the State;
or rather it was the earliest Church, the original and ger-
minal commonwealth. He builds States by building fam-
ilies, attaching their members thus to the soil of their
nativity, making patriotism an instinct, and the subject's
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMH.Y. 59
relation a habit from the cradle. He builds in the same
way his spiritual kingdom, spiritual knowledge and faith
becoming hereditary through the ministry of the Christian
home. For these issues he clothes the head of the family
with dignity and authority, confirms his sceptre by strong
and positive decrees, and makes his name and person
venerable and sacred by the offices he fulfils, and the
corresponding instincts of dependence and natural affec-
tion. If we lose the family as a school of virtue and pi-
ety, we lose the heritage of all covenanted blessings, —
we displace a unit from the series of God's stepping-
stones along our line, breaking off the succession, — we
sink a chasm between the deep-freighted divine hand and
the future it would have endowed with riches.
The family and the Sabbath — God's first institutions
for man — were put in significant proximity when he
ordained them both. If God's six days' work includes,
as some think, the creation of woman, and we repeat
concerning the day that followed the formula that an-
nounced the other completed days, "the evening and the
morning were the seventh day," then the first bridal eve
was the Sabbath eve, the first day of family life in Eden
was the Sabbath-day. If this be so, the Sabbath brings
to each wedded pair the fragrant memorial of those first
nuptials, on which
" All heaven
And happy constellations .
Shed then* selectest mfluence,'
and pleads that the union thus formed between itself and
the family remain perpetual. Over those bands we may
60 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
hear the great officiating Priest saying, " What God hath
joined together let not man put asunder ! "
Our home itself suggests the Sabbath. All days of the
week it is our rest. Wandering amid strangers, sasped
by the sharp and hard contacts of life's jealousies and
competitions, lonely in solitude, we turn how gladly to
the one threshold on which unfeigned welcomes, compan-
ionable voices, the gentle ministries of love, will greet
us and fill our spirits with tranquillity and repose. The
weary laborer in the field looks up to the declining sun,
marks his shadow lengthening toward the east, and bends
with fresh vigor to his task, as his thought glides away a
swift herald to his own cottage-door. Outside that door,
life to him is labor ; within it is rest. The implements of
toil he lays down before he enters. He goes in to be re-
freshed and cheered ; to sit, not stand ; to have a place
of ease at the bright hearth and pleasant board ; to lay
his length upon his couch, and let the soft tide of sleep
rise over him, and drown his consciousness. Home is
his peaceful evening port after the day's rough voyaging
for his body and spirit, — a perpetual Sabbath. One to
whom God has given such a daily Sabbath, so pleasant
and beneficent a reminder of the weekly rest, ought to
hear with most welcoming thankfulness, as though it
spoke with a voice of music, the command, " Six days
shalt thou labor, and do all thy work ; but the seventh
day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God ; in it thou shalt
not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter,
thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle,
nor thy stranger that is within thy gates."
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY. 61
The first thing, then, for the parent who asks the ques-
tion which we have here to answer, " How is the Sabbath
to be kept in the family ? " is to feel that his own spirit
and example will settle the reverence paid to the day and
the manner of its keeping in that little community of
which he is the head. He must look to himself first.
Before he consider methods and measures, and tax his
invention, and put his contrivances in operation, let him
question his own soul. What is the. Sabbath to him?
Does he call it "a delight, the holy of the Lord, honor-
able " ? Is it the festival of the week to his heart ? For
his whole nature, body and mind and spirit, ' does he
esteem it a most gracious boon of God? Is he looking
upon it as a severe intermeddling ordinance, breaking off
his most fascinating pursuits, taking so much from what
he calls, with all the eager relishes of his soul, in one
intense word, — "Life," dooming him to a dull, pulseless
pause of existence ? Or is this the culmination, the crown,
the zest of desire and hope, the welcome release from
worldly care, the banquet-day for a soul hungry and
thirsty and denied, amid earthly planning and toiling, fit
and full refreshment ? There's a compensative beneficence
in the Sabbath for the body's need. The weary frame
sits at high noon to gather breath and strength before it
renews the chase, but the pause is ever too brief. The
call afield sounds again before the brow is dry and
the swell of the bosom gone down into quiet. The night
comes with its anointing dews of sleep, and imparts fresh
increments of vigor. But the night is too short. It
doesn't impart as much as was expended. The balance
6
62 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
is against us still when the morning blows its clarion.
The stock on hand, through all the fluctuations, dimin-
ishes till the week be spent. Speedy bankruptcy were
inevitable, did not the Sabbath come in with compensa-
tive relief to supplement the pause at noon and the minis-
tration of the night with one solid day, insisting, kindly,
from sun to sun, "in it thou shalt not do any work," and
joining two reposeful nights by this pleasant isthmus of
restful light. Is there in like manner a compensative
element in the Sabbath for the soul's need ? How do we
think of it ? We run to the fountains of spiritual refresh-
ing morning and evening of our toiling days ; we moisten
our lips as we kneel down at the springs of comfort in
our closet and at the family altar ; we fill a cup from the
precepts and promises of the word ; we gather a little
manna thus daily as the dew rises and before the sun is
hot, — a taste of the bread of heaven; but the soul is
kept on short allowance. It expends amid worldly cares
and draughts more than it thus receives. It will become
lean and famished if a special and more bountiful table be
not spread for its need. What is it that supplements for
the soul's spiritual compensation the closet, the house-
hold worship, the daily Scripture reading? Is the Sab-
bath welcomed as such a feast-day to our hungry spirits,
— a day in which we can lie at the foantahis of refresh-
ment through all the bright hours, hear the governing
provider urge his large hospitality, — "Eat, O friends;
drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved"?
No strictness of ruling, no stern administration of Sab-
bath law, will commend the Sabbath to the fit hallowing
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY. 63
of the domestic circle, if the clay is not, with the family
headship, a loved and choice gift of God's goodness.
This little society mirrors the character set over it for
guidance and control. Looking into the clear depths of
some Alpine lake, you see all the snowy peaks around
leaning against that nether sky as in the upper. There
below, as above, the torrents foam and the avalanches
leap. There float the clouds as overhead, and the lonely
and lordly vulture poises in slow flight his broad wings.
Scarce more accurate is this mirrored repetition of the
surroundings and overhangings of the lake than the re-
production in the home of the pattern life and character
of the family head. Line after line the pattern is worked
into their own life by young copjnsts until the same lines
and figures faithfully reappear. With the most youthful
members of the circle, long before they can respond to
our voices in articulate speech, our words and signals
are intelligible, and answering signals give back perfect
counterpart of the correspondence. Then it is that what
they see and hear in the home, the tones that are uttered,
the scenes that are acted, voices of passion and mirth,
the hushed and solemn accents of prayer, the quietness
around them on the Sabbath-day, or the rude clamor that
fills its hours, the postures of kneeling or of revelling
households, occupy their mind with images thenceforward
vivid, influential, and imperishable. I have thought this
ought to be said here, for if the sense of this be not on
our hearts as parents, if the question of our personal
spirit and example be not our first point of solicitude,
and the necessity of honestly being and doing for our-
64 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
selves all that we propose for the household do not press
us, it is of little use to inquire further.
I. There must, of course, be for the hallowing of the
Sabbath in the family, as well as out of the family, a
refraining from work. It must be seen there that all the
workers, so far as possible, rest from labor, cease from
their ordinary occupation. This must not be a transfer
of the business from the office and the field to the privacy
of the home. It is not ceasing from labor to stay in the
house, instead of going to the counting-room or the shop,
and push forward our business enterprises by letter-
writing, posting books, and sifting estimates and calcula-
tions. This is to bring the world into the very scene of
which we are asking. How shall we keep the Sabbath
then? It is invading the sanctuary of the home with
what doesn't belong there on any day of the week. A
business man ought to leave his knit brow and corrugated
face behind him in the workshop, if he can, whenever he
comes in across the doorstep of his house ; let him go to
his wareroom and on 'Change a business man, with all his
problems working in the lines about his eyes and lips, but
let him come into the family a domestic man, his pack of
worldly care and harness of worldly toil depart at the
door or further oif, and the sunshine of love and joy
shining on his countenance. He wants his hands now, not
to strike a strong stroke in the earth, or on the anvil, or
at trade, but to meet soft and warm palms, to catch and
toss aloft his babe. His grim lips may relax for smiles
and kisses and gentle words. He comes in to cheer and
be cheered as a man who has not only a brain to contrive,
THE SABBATH IN THE FA^HLY. 65
a skill to execute, a will to hold his own in the world's
competitions, but a heart with which to cherish dear ones,
affections to come forth into refreshing play. It is a mis-
take and an impertinence on any day of the six to trans-
fer the shop to the fireside. It is all this, and a crime
beside, to make the transfer on the Lord's day.
As it isn't quite respectable on Sunday to strip the arm
for downright work, there are not a few who give up
the outward activities of their daily industry and keep on
planning. There are plans enough laid on the Sabbath
for myriads of fortunes, if God did not cross them, or
give them a malign success, — plans for business, plans
for travel, plans for pleasure, plans for every pursuit and
hope of heart and life. The Sabbath is of all days, with
multitudes, the day for planning. And this planning fills
the walls of many a home with its busy talk, through
almost all the hours of the family intercourse. It makes
the changeful interest of conversation whenever the silence
is broken. It leads out all the listeners and all the par-
takers into the dust and heat and glare of life again.
They sit together at the family board ; the light in the
room is perhaps subdued from yesterday's ; to the neigh-
bors they seem to be within keeping Sabbath. But they
are not within. They are out, going to and fro on free
excursion trains, loading and unloading ships, ransacking
foreign markets, buying, fashioning, and making up the
costume for the season, and settling mercantile and social
accounts. I believe it is a great and unceasing desecra-
tion of the Sabbath in many a family, this gabbling about
what shall be done on the morrow. There can be no
household Sabbath where this profanation is admitted.
QQ THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
It has been well remarked that to rest from work in
hallowing: the Sabbath is for each worker to cease from
that which is his own employment ; that is, each worker
is to cease to bo a worker in that matter. But wherein is
he a worker ? What constitutes him the man he is in that
department of human industry? Is he a worker only
with his two hands, or with the loins of his back? Does
he not bring thought and purpose and arrangement and
desio-n into his tasks ? Is he not a worker with his inven-
tion, his experience, his judgment, his sagacity? But he
is to cease to be a worker in his work. Then, in that
calling, he must cease from brain work as well as from
hand work, — cease from planning as well as achieving,
and rest his mind as well as his loins from that use of
his fiiculties with which he fills other days.
The housework itself, that which cannot altogether
pause on any day of the year, for any call, human or
divine, ought to be restricted and simplified. Every
housekeeper knows how to prepare for days of special
preoccupancy that interdicts careful attention to the do-
mestic management. Such days occur not unfrequently
in the progress of secular time, and are arranged for,
without much embarrassment. This precast may be ex-
ercised as well for the Sabbath, that, as toiling manhood
from without comes in to rest, toiling womanhood within
may sit down in the same domestic quiet, with few calls
to break in upon the calm, and plead for time and
thought and strength in household tasks.
I know that the wives and daughters of many homes
are unvisited by any such disturbing summons. Are
THE SABBATH IN THE FAIillLY. 67
there not the servants? If the table is to be graced
with the presence of Sabbath guests, and a sumptuous
banquet is desired, or if we choose ourselves to fare
more luxuriously than yesterday because we have more
leisure to sit and enjoy the dainties, or because the fomily
circle is more full, or because we shall not be driven forth
when the repast is ended to intercourse in which all our
keenness and alertness will be in demand, but may
drowse our dulness away, if we so please, in extension
chairs, or on pillowed couches, the special provision need
not greatly tax our personal attention or activity. All
that we have to do is to give our orders. The cook will
serve up at the appointed time our favorite dishes ; the
parlor girl and butler will see that the family style suffers
no discredit. All will go well. We pay good salaries,
and can rely upon having our directions faithfully and
gracefully complied with. We need not stay to superin-
tend ; we can sit through the morning in our pew, cool
and untroubled, our thoughts drifting away occasionally
to the entertainment in progress, but not in distressing
anxiety, rather in pleasant anticipation ; and in decorous
observance we and our favored children keep Sabbath
ordinances. Meanwhile at home the work goes bravely
on. The kitchen is a laboratory of art. The converging
processes that are to meet in the issue are put in motion,
each in its time and at its proportioned rate of advance.
Fires glow, meats steam, savory clouds thicken, and the
grand success looms clearly up through all the apparent
disorder.
But who are these creatures on whom the heat and the
68 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
burden are rolled? Are they machines, automatons?
Ah, no. They are men and women, beings with souls, —
souls as deathless as those that gave out the order for the
"dinner, and then rolled at leisure to the house of God, —
with the same large capacities, the same immortal des-
tinies pending.
Oh, the unutterable meanness of these family enter-
tainments ! The board is covered with generous cheer ;
but they are not generous souls that preside. They have
been somewhat thoughtful, they fancy, for their own spir-
itual health ; they have robbed the cheaper soul, which
they have kept grinding in the prison-house of toil, of its
Sabbath sunshine, God's house, Jesus' gospel. They
themselves must be edified by the formulas of worship, —
prayers, music, preaching, — and they must dine well.
As for the Irish help, why, it wont make much difference
with them, and they are well paid, and like the place too
well to leave, and really it is somewhat of a pity, but the
thing can't be managed in any other way, and this is the
day when these friends can best of all favor them, and so
there is nothing to be said. No, "nothing to be said"
just now ; but there will be something to be said by and
by. This is an honorable family, — by courtesy a Chris-
tian family, — but I know that the servants' wages there
are paid, if not in uncurrent money, in money which the
banks wont receive on deposit ! This family would insist
on being taken to heaven, when the time can't be post-
poned, in the femily coach, though drivers and footmen
had to take back the carriage, and thus be themselves
shut out !
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY. 69
The Sabbath iu the family should breathe its benedic-
tion of rest from work along all the levels of the family
mansion, and upon every avoidable secular task of hand
or thought.
Another thing in the hallowing of the family Sabbath
is to secure for the household an atmosphere of order,
serenity, and quietness. Some of us can remember the
Sabbaths of our childhood in country homes. There was
something in the very aspect of the homestead, without
and within, that helped the sanctity of the day. The
morning broke in unvexed stillness. The plough paused,
arrested in mid-furrow. Unyoked, the oxen cropped the
dewy grass, or, as the sun rose higher, lay ruminating in
the shade. No musical chime from the mower's arm
giving edge to his scythe disturbed the halcyon calm.
The brooks ran with fuller music, as though they struck
a richer melody of praise, and the bees' hum came in with
deeper and clearer resonance. A mellower light, as
though mingled of chastened elements, mantled the dwell-
ing and brooded over the sacred solitudes of the un-
wrought fields. The columned vapor from the solid stone-
built masonry of the chimney-top rose like morning
incense from an altar. Through the east windows, the
golden rays streamed in upon a scene of quietness and
order. The household furniture was in its place, — for
even chairs and footstools were not suflered to be ii-regu-
lar on that day, — the incitements and accompaniments of
childish sports were set aside as not to be handled in
those hours, the nameless litter of childhood's treasures,
strewn as by fairy hands through the "living room," was
70 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
cleared away, making strange and staid vacancy, and the
family clock ticked with a more suggestive and impres-
sive stroke. A spirit of cleanliness reigned, and draped
the forms that moved slowly about the mansion, as "with
fine linen, clean and white," which " is the righteousness
of saints." All rude and harsh noises were hushed, and
to our young hearts it was made to seem that the permitted
boisterousness of other days would wound the tender sen-
sitiveness of this. It was impossible not to discern that
this was a ^lay that differed from other days. We felt as
though some most reverent presence came nearer than
amid the clash of our implements of toil and instruments
of mirth, and that we must walk and talk softly beneath
that sacred shadow.
We cannot bring in, in every scene of household life,
this witness and echo of Nature to the statute of her Lord.
But the tranquil and orderly serenity of the family apart-
ments we may strive to secure. The eve of preparation,
diligently improved, may anticipate and save the hurry
and bustle of Sabbath morning. A studious carefulness
may make our movements more quiet, the tones of our
voices more gentle. Our children may be taught that
some of the shriller stops of their wondrously-varied
organ are not to be drawn on Sabbath-days. The loud,
ringing laugh and gleeful shout may be hushed into music
more subdued; the sonorous footfall, clattering through
entries and up and down stairways, taught a softer tread,
and passion and petulance chided as jarring on the pleas-
ant Sabbath harmony. You are thinking how difficult a
thing it is to tone down this sharp-chorded spirit, to key
THE SABBATH IN THE FA3IILY. 71
lower the spontaneous symphonies of those lips, to find
any Sabbath opiate for those restless and tireless nerves.
Yes, do the best you can ; the head of life and energy
within the young frame is so high and full that it will
force unwitting expression. The school-boy's self- vindica-
tion for startling the hum of school life by sending out
his breath round and musical from his mouth was almost
philosophically correct. "He hadn't whistled," he said;
"it whistled itself." This exuberance of strong pulsing
vitality is not to be harshly repressed, — frozen silent and
stiff by frigid frowns, — but softly hushed down as a
gentle sky calms a tossing sea, when all its waves are
gambolling at play. What we want is to inspire from
earliest life in these young hearts a tender reverence for
Sabbath hours, a growing sense that the day differs in
sacredness from other days, has other uses, and must have
another keeping. Still the problem remains, you say,
" How to manage these mercurial spirits, under unwonted
restrictions, and deprived of the diversions of other
days." Shall we keep from them their toys, deny them
the games, the blocks, the picture-books, that amuse so
many hours on other days ? Then what shall those little
empty hands take hold of? What objects shall those
restless, roving eyes fasten upon? Daytime is long for
these small people when unrestricted fertility invents
and caters for their entertainment. How can either they
or their guardians bear the burden of unoccupied Sab-
baths ?
I am not wise enough to answer. Blessed would be
the art that could devise and frame for the nursery a set
72 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
of Sabbath diversions ! How many benedictions of
mothers, ready to faint by the way, would come upon the
head of that fortunate artist ! And that word " diver-
sion" is the key to the problem, after all. These young
spirits must be diverted frofn preying upon themselves
and upon the rest of the household, in ways that shall
come to help the power of Sabbath associations. Occu-
pation is indispensable through some medium of eye or
ear or hand for the mind.
I found a group of children one Sabbath-day, with all
their secular blocks and cards in the midst of the parlor
floor, and engaged in busiest architecture. "But do you
play with your blocks on Sunday?'' I asked. "Oh,
papa!" protested one eager voice, "we are building a
church, and there is the pulpit, and we are going to put a
preacher in it, and then we shall have meeting." I did
not upset their steepled fabric, but I offered my services
as preacher, and was somewhat enthusiastically received.
A very extensive and elaborate arrangement of chairs
and sofas, harnessed with cords and mounted with foot-
stools and cushions, was introduced to me, at another
time, as a family coach, the driver in his place, with whip
in hand, ready to take the household to the meeting-
house for Sabbath worship. A more modest equipage
was suggested, occupying less room and attention, with
more quiet progress, as better suited to the Sabbath expe-
dition, and the apartment was restored to order, while
the incident furnished a good text from which to speak
of Christ's meek entry into Jerusalem, and of Elijah's
chariot and horses of fire.
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMD^Y. 73
If only there could be a rattle for the babe with the
mimic chime of Sabbath bells, a trumpet that would blow
a Sabbath tune, a soldier's array that would help the little
heroes to fight the battles that already summon them to
be valiant, what a relief it were ! Yes, and what a loss per-
haps to the discipline of the parental spirit !
After all our wit and self-devotion, it will be needful
full often to issue decrees and interdicts that rest on au-
thority alone. The Sabbath must say to childhood as it
says to manhood, as all divine law says to the subject,
"Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not." It is feared, I know,
that by such strictness we may make the Sabbath repel-
ling to young hearts, bring over them a chill when it re-
turns, as though a gloomy and cold shadow had fallen
upon them, and settle the memory of the day in their
hearts as something hostile and unfriendly to their joy.
I believe this danger is overrated. I have no doubt that
there are homes that are invested with almost funeral
gloom on the Sabbath-day, blots in the smiling landscape
of good and glad nature, out of which oppressed spirits,
feeling as though buried alive, would rush into any ave-
nue for the sake of escaping into light and air. These
are superstitious rather than Christian homes. They are
not homes where the parental heart retains the sympathy
of its own- youth, or gives itself in sacrificing love to the
comfort and improvement of the young. They are selfish
homes, most likely, where sternness prevails because it
is cheaper than kindness, and peremptory statutes save
indolence from self-reproach. But no home is so truly
joyful as a well-governed home, — a home where wise
7
74 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
laws are firmly administered, and wholesome restraints
imposed. No home is so miserable to all the inmates as
one where childhood and youth have the mastery over pa-
rental authority, and freely follow out the prompting of
their own lawless inclination. Liberty, guarded by law,
restrained by law, and obedient to law, is a happier state
than full and wild license. Religion itself is a binding
of the heart and God and duty; but it is through all its
exercises of penitence and submission, faith and hope, a
tenderer joy than the roving freedom on which it casts its
bonds. The child-heart is steadied and guided by re-
straining statutes ; it touches sure and firm certainties ;
the sweet sense of right and of its inward approval gath-
ers upon it, and its young feet find themselves, if not in
the paths of self-gratification, at least and even more con-
sciously, in "the way of peace." Abraham was to com-
mand his children and his household after him. It will
be often needful that the parent should exercise his right-
ful authority during the passing of the Sabbath-day. It
is the method by which God teaches the young heart the
great and precious lesson of obedience and submission.
We need not be afraid as parents, tenderly and firmly in
the last issue, to insist upon reverence to the Sabbath in
our home, to legislate for quietness and order, sure that
in this we are legislating for serenity of spirit and a
wealth of happy young thoughts, as well as for many
a precious thing in character beside. I can remember a
home so guarded by Sabbath-law and the supplemental
authority of the family head. I can remember that the
whole household group went regularly and reverently to
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY. 75
the house of God. No light excuse passed current with
that firm arbitration. Any convenient Sabbath sickness,
that was sick enough to detain one of us from the sacred
porch, was sick enough to be treated with the bitterest
remedy the house afibrded, not welcome a second time.
In pauses of worship, or in the mellow hours soften-
ing toward the evening twilight, the whole household
were gathered together, and the good old catechism,
each question, w^ith its "variations," " what is enjoined,"
"what is forbidden," etc., was recited from beginning to
ending. I think I can remember that childhood then was
a little restive at times under this strict constraint, that
keen eyes watched the sun's disappearing behind the
western hills, — the hour for relaxing the vigilance that
had stood on guard till then ; but I can remember and
do testify that it was not an unhappy home, the Sabbath
was not a gloomy day. Either these eyes cannot see
clearly through the mist of tender memories, or there
was never a happier, more genial, more loving home.
The atmosphere of law and love was one. Law was only
another name for love, and love administered law. xVnd
the Sabbaths thus spent in such regulated observances
were then and are now all bright in the review, because
gilded with the smile of approving Heaven. It was such
a Sabbath as I am pleading for, through which order,
quietness, and serenity reigned together.
It follows here naturally to say that it is one office of
the family Sabbath to cultivate the domestic affections.
The life of the week leads out the members of the family
and joins them to various outside fellowships. The mas-
76 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
ter of the home enters the circle of his fellow-craftsmen
and exchanges with them greetings and pledges. The
mistress looks after the ties that bind her to the social
sphere in which she moves. The sons and daughters go
to meet their school-day acquaintances or their chosen
companions of their age. They are these outside bonds
which are strengthened through the six days' contacts and
intercourse. Often those that dwell beneath the same
roof see but little of one another through the days of toil.
They exchange morning salutations, and snatch a hasty
meal in company, then drift about till evening brings them
together wearied and worn, or thronged still with care, and
the night hides them within her curtains. Many a busy
man is almost a stranger to his own household ; but the
Sabbath brings these parted ones together and holds them
together. They are for a few hours, at least, members of
no fellowship but that of the home ; they are all there,
and all at rest ; they sit side by side, with no hurrying
call to bid them " rise and depart ; " they can give ques-
tion and answer in long and intimate communion ; the
pent-up confidences of their hearts may have utterance
now ; fond inquiries bring out the troubling or the joy-
ful secret, and heart opens to heart. Then they go to
the house of God still in company. They sit again side
by side in the same family pew. The great truths of
God's Avord, however absorbing the meditation upon them,
do not tend to divide them in thous^ht and feehns: from
one another, but rather to endear them and draw the tie
closer in the anticipation of sharing together an eternal
home in heaven. The close of the day and the evening
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY. 77
has especial dews of blessing for the life and fragrance
of this domestic union. The calm of the day has taken
possession of their spirits. Its influences and associations
have rebuked littleness and meanness and envy and jeal-
ousy, and they are nearer together than when the day be-
gan. They look now more closely upon one another's
faces and forms. They seem comelier and lovelier to the
eye than on other days. All their attractiveness is fresh-
ened up. They are in newer and fairer costume than
yesterday's ; they scarce knew that each wore the family
features so becomingly, and that each could be so gracious
and winning in figure and manner. "It is not unlawful,"
says Baxter, discoursing on the " divine appointment of
the Lord's day," "to be at the labor of dressing our-
selves somewhat more ornately or comely than on another
day, because it is suitable to the rejoicing of a festival,"
nor is it unworthy of us to remember, we may say, that
thus the eyes in which we desire to appear and to be our
best may look upon us more fondly and pleasantly.
It is well that the evening meal be served invitingly,
not sumptuously and at the cost of the Sabbath's leisurely
calm to any member of the household, but with such
festal and relishing appliances as nimble skill can easily
furnish within this unoccupied hour, or generous fore-
thought provide as the old week goes out. We agree
with Ephraim, the Syrian, w4io exhorts against "glut-
tony and drunkenness " on the Lord's day. " Thou, my
brother, shouldst not annul the work of God for meat and
dainties, nor to favor an insatiable appetite shouldst thou,
occupied and distracted with culinary cares, hinder the
7*
78 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
sacred purpose of the day. All these things we leave to
those whose god is their belly and whose glory is their
shame." I am not pleading in the interest of appetite,
but in the name of a reunited household keeping the
Lord's festival, that their evening meal of itself contribute
something to the happy and genial intercourse around the
family board. The poet Grahame sings well, —
" Hail, Sabbath ! thee I hail, the poor man's day ;
On other days the man of toil is doomed
To eat his joyless bread, lonely, — the ground
Both seat and board. . . .
But on this day, embosomed in his home.
He shares the frugal meal with those he loves."
That is the place and hour for thankful reminiscences, for
speaking of God's good hand upon them in their house-
hold story, for calling up Sabbaths gone and fellow-wor-
shippers departed, and drawing the bonds of kindred love
and union closer about their hearts. The morrow will
strike the golden chain that holds them in one to-day and
jar them apart. Let them have their light feast as a
grateful celebration of the gladness and goodness of such
an hour, a help to its joyfulness and a seal upon its
memory. In staid and rigid Scotland the " Sabbath-night
supper" has been an immemorial institution, a household
sacrament, a sunbeam falling across a sombre cloud. It
was seasoned with pious talk, and, as TertuUian wrote of
the same charmed hour, "prayer concludes the feast."
So witnesses the bard of Ayrshire, —
** The cheerful supper done, wi' serious face.
They round the ingle form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er in patriarchal grace
The big ha' Bible, and his father's pride." Bukns.
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY. 79
Add to this chastened festivity music. Most afflicted
is that home where there is neither voice, nor art, nor
heart for the strains of sacred song. The family har-
mony culminates in that pleasant concert. All that has
kept any spirit there from any other melts away as the
varied notes mingle and blend. They all aim at concord.
They produce concord. They have come together in
agreement and unison. They cannot, after singing in the
same strains, soaring in company on Avings of praise
toward the divine presence, remember differences and
cherish alienations. There is a charm in this hour of
song for all the members of the household. Fretful
childhood and querulous age are alike soothed and spell-
bound. "I am persuaded," writes Legh Richmond to his
daughter, "that music is designed to prepare for heaven,
to educate for the choral enjoyment of paradise, to form
the mind to virtue and devotion, and to charm away evil,
and sanctify the heart to God. A Christian musician is
one who has a harp in his affections, which he daily tunes
to the notes of the angelic host, and with which he makes
melody in his heart to the Lord."
A Sabbath thus spent cannot fail to endear the mem-
bers of the home to one another. This is an issue it
were well to have distinctly in view. Whatever can for-
ward it, by pleasantness of mien and of speech, by using
more freely the language of love, for which, perhaps,
there are ears and hearts in our dwelling that are aching,
— a language that flies our lips in the sternness of our in-
terchanges with a selfish world, — by entering tenderly
into the sharp passages of one another's daily experience,
80 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
rehearsed on this clay, by making the rooms of the house
bright with firelight and lamplight, or bringing in flowers
to shed both beauty and fragrance around, and helping
the festal aspect of the home, w^e ought to call into ser-
vice. We should so keep the Sabbath within this domes-
tic retreat as to secure by it the full realization of the
highest ideal of Christian domestic life.
Finally, the Sabbath should be improved in the family
as a day for special religious teaching. The great object
of the day is to take off our thoughts from things mate-
rial, earthly, and temporal, and bring them into commu-
nion with things invisible, heavenly, and eternal. This
object must be pursued as steadily, and can be secured at
least as successfully, with the children of the household
as in wider and older circles. The responsibility for this
home nurture comes upon the parent or guardian. If he
act the part of a faithful and tender provider for these
dependent ones in all but this, and carelessly or indo-
lently or timidly omit this, he is yet chargeable with the
most unkind neglect. To have denied them daily bread
w^ould have been less cruel.
He may think himself unequal to so grave a task.
But why is he a parent? The relation is upon him. He
cannot flee from the duty.
If he heartily and prayerfully undertake it, he will find
himself wonderfully helped. He must, of course, be will-
in^: to summon his best energies to the work. The Sab-
bath will be to him, not a day of self-indulgent sloth, but
of great intellectual activity. Nor will he leave all the
burdens of the day for the day itself. He may make
large preparation for it before it arrive.
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY. 81
It will be his duty to see that his family know the pub-
lic ordinances of the day. If he teach otherwise by his
own example, in whole or in part, if he prefer for him-
self an easy and undisturbed attendance upon preachino",
with no restless elements in his pew, he can, in no way,
redeem for those young hearts the proper influence of the
day. He is teaching error, though he mean it not, by
a fearfully-convincing demonstration.
He may do much by interesting himself in their at-
tendance upon the Sabbath-school, aiding them in the
preparation of their lessons, looking with them into the
library-books which they bring in., inviting their teacher
to meet them under their roof and to become acquainted
with them in their domestic development, and lendino- his
whole personal sanction to the influence of this beneficent
institution in their relio^ious traininsr.
But this is not the whole, though it is where many
parents stop. He may lay up through the week special
questions and topics for Sabbath consideration, —ques-
tions that have arisen in the progress of family discipline,
— topics suggested by peculiarities of disposition and fliults
or virtues of character which he has observed from day
to day, but could not take thoroughly in hand. He may
gather night after night a store of touching and impres-
sive incidents from his nightly reading of the press ; re-
member his little school, his small home parish, in all his
reading and all his seeing and all his hearing, and have
more instructive and suggestive matter accumulated in his
Sabbath drawer than he can exhaust.
He must not forget that these young pupils receive
82 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMHiY.
their most vivid and memorable lessons through the
senses. It is worth his own while to make himself as care-
fully and fully acquainted as his circumstances will per-
mit with the wonders of the earth and the air and the sea,
and lead out the exploring and eager young thought to
those exhibitions of the divine power and skill and good-
ness, with which the visible creation is filled. The pages
of nature are all pictorially illustrated to his hand. Stars
and dewdrops, rainbows and violets, clouds and their
shadows, thunder-storms, the round and the products of
the seasons, their own frame fearfully and wonderfully
made, animal and insect life, light, heat, frost, — let him
make these sensible things ministers and revealers of God
and his character and his truth. He will find no lack of
interest, or of stimulating questioning with his young
audience.
Following the hint of teaching by the senses, let him
be sure to furnish the nursery with a pictorial Bible.
This emblazoned typology will draw curious eyes between
the leaves, and let in the marvellous histories there upon
the mind, and they will never be forgotten. Let him
seek to make this book of books a charm and a fasci-
nation to the circle of little ones. My own father was a
fine reader of Scripture narratives. He took pains to
read well in his house to the youngest ears that could
listen Avith any intelligence. It was as good as play to
hear him give out some of the stirring scenes of the
Scripture record. He used to indulge us often in that
way on the Sabbath. He was magnificent upon the duel
of David and Goliath. The first verse of that grand
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMH^Y. 83
chapter, as he began, always thrilled our hearts like the
blast of a trumpet. The echoes come back yet, as I read
it again, from that part of childhood's Sabbath hour, and
all ringing with heroic tones, "Now the Philistines gath-
ered together their armies to battle, and were gathered
together at Shochoh, which belongeth to Judah, and
pitched between Shochoh and Azekah, in Ephes-dam-
mim."
By whatsoever volumes and helps, we must teach our
households religiously on the Sabbath. Not in set
forms, not in systematic lessons, not in dry and hard
details. We must be men of parables. It is surprising
how rich and fertile one may become in this style of
teaching, even the humblest and least-favored mind, by
making it an object of a little thought and study. Our
children's minds and hearts are ours on the Sabbath. On
other days they are school-children, they are apprentices,
they are clerks ; they are studying, with other teachers
and masters, the knowledge of this world. On this day
they are with us. They are sons and daughters only,
while the Sabbath sun lingers. They are heirs with us
of immortality. We may join hands with them, draw
their arms within ours, and walk on with them toward the
gate of heaven.
I feel still that the practical difficulties remain as be-
fore. Childhood is restless, volatile, impatient of re-
straint, and naturally averse to religious truth. With
us both brain and heart are often weary. All our devices
fail at times to bring the peace of a Sabbath benediction
upon the troubled waters of household unrest. We are
84 THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY.
often, as parents, straitened, ashamed, and desponding.
I hope I have not added to this feeling of discourage-
ment, or if we despair over the ideal which so often
rises before us, it may serve to lead us down into the val-
ley of humiliation and prayer. God will help us, when,
feeling weak, we cast ourselves upon his strength. He
will make some of the failures over which we mourn
so bitterly — those unsatisfying, weary Sabbath-days —
blessed successes.
Some wedded heart here is saying, with a great sor-
rowfulness, " I stand alone in this formidable effort ; the
help I most need of all human giving is withheld ; it is
not help, but hindrance. What I say and do for Sabbath
hallowing in my home is unsaid and undone, I fear, by
one at my side. How strong, how comforted, I should
feel, if this interrupted union could only fill itself out by
a harmony ofiering and example in this sacred observ-
ance! "
Oh, lonely wife, I know thee who thou art ! Thou
canst not bid thy children dishonor their father ; thou
thyself honorest and lovest him. Thou canst not sufi'er
them to approve ; thou art in perpetual dread lest their
feet follow after the ways that so grieve thee and that
have to them such persuasive sanction. Beseech the
merciful One that, through the kindness of thine heart
and the weakness of love, thine own feet go not astray.
And thou redouble the mother's faithfulness, prayerful-
ness, and constancy, and doubt not that the strong and
living child thus trained will yet conduct down the divine
blessing.
THE SABBATH IN THE FAMILY. 85
Oh, husband, father, who takest thine own pleasure ou
the Lord's day, shall the seeds of that example grow up
in young hearts into hardness and crime, and on some
tragic day the child, whose eye follows now your
thoughtless Sabbath step, look back out of a stained and
blasted manhood to this light pleasuring of yours, as the
germ of his awful doom ? Do you know how you try
the heart, every throb of whose womanly tenderness is
yours, and which, keeping reproaches and remonstrances
silent, smiles, perhaps, upon you because it cannot grieve
you, in that over which it mourns ? Are there not gentle-
ness and manliness enough in your soul — if we speak
not of the fear of God and the voice of solemn duty —
to keep you from such a trampling at once upon God's
law, a woman's heart, and a child's fate ?
Y.
KNOWING CHRIST.
"... FOR I KNOW WHOM I HAVE BELIEVED." — 2 Tim. i. part 12.
HOW it is that one who walks with Christ, and whose
soul is joined to him in a vital and conscious union
knows this Saviour as no other soul knows him, it will be
difficult so to explain by any language or imagery which
can be employed as to make it intelligible to those who
have no experience of it. And yet this is just what many
an inquiring spirit desires and waits to comprehend.
They stand at a distance and look upon him whom the
gospel sets forth as the way of life. They walk round
about him without seeing how to approach him, and hav-
ing no confidence in any addresses they may ofier to him.
He is to them remote, indistinct, almost mythical. Per-
haps they have not yet settled it in their thoughts who
and what he is. If they attempt communication with
him, it is all on their side ; they have only their own
voices ; there are no returning accents ; all is silent, mo-
tionless, and unresponsive.
" Does he reveal himself to those that believe in him ?
Does he come to meet them out of this vague and hazy
distance ? Does he break his silence so that they hear
KNOWING CHRIST. 87
and recognize his voice? Do they know him as their
Friend and Eedeemer, and know that they know him, and
come into relations of intimacy with him, and exchange
with him reciprocities of love, confidence, and sympa-
thy ? " So they question.
If now as those to whom Christ is precious, and to
whom he has made himself known, we could open to
them all the journal of our hearts, introduce them to
scenes of an inward personal experience which never can
be thrown upon canvas, tell them how it is that we are
sure we have seen and felt and touched and embraced
him, what it is we know of him, by what process this
acquaintance was made and has ripened, and wherein is
the daily consciousness of his presence with us, and his
power upon us, it would meet perhaps better than any
other demonstration the state of mind in which so many
now are. True we might answer in the words of Philip
to Nathaniel, "Come and see." But they want to be
helped to come, and have their eyes guided to that which
is to be seen. We might say, "Here's the guide-book;
read and follow the directions." But it is not strano-e
that they should feel that it is one thing to look upon a
map of an unknown region, or to study a guide-book, and
another thing to hear from one who has been a traveller
that way what his own lips can say about it.
So they say to us, "Tell us how you know Jesus, and
know that he is such a Saviour." It may be that if we at-
tempt to tell, we shall often break down through poverty
of words ; that we shall often seem to them as speakino*
without meaning, because the meaning is beyond them ;
88 KNOWING CHRIST.
that when we lead them out into our experiences, we shall
get them presently beyond their depth.
Just as when one listens to two artisans conversing
upon the subject of their craft, or a circle of professional
men discussing the matters of their profession, he may
understand much of what is signified, but every now and
then is made to feel that he is off soundings where they
easily touch bottom. Still something surely can be said,
and said intelligibly, though it be said out of an expe-
rience to which the listener is a stranger, of that exper-
imental knowledge of Christ possessed by a renewed
heart.
1. We know whom we have believed not simply as an
historic personage, — just as we know Washington or
Columbus or William Tell. It is not simply that we can
say where he was born, and of what parentage, and trace,
without the omission of one incident, all the story of his
life. This you know as well as we.
2. It is not that we have opinions about him which we
entertain with entire confidence. Mere opinions might
be shaken by some style of argument, some show of evi-
dence, which we have not yet met. But absolute knowl-
edge, of course, nothing can overturn. We have opinions
concerning Napoleon Bonaparte and Oliver Cromwell,
but not the sort of intimate, experimental knowledge of
which we are now speaking. We have opinions concern-
ing our neighbors and acquaintances, the men whom we
have seen and mixed with for years, and yet none of
these men do we know as we know the Lord Jesus
Christ.
KjS OWING CHRIST. 89
3. It is not that we kuow him through the works of his
hand as Creator, and can speak thus of the power
that heaved up the mountains and hollowed the oceans
and arched the starry skies ; of the wisdom that has
executed such masterpieces of contrivance, and flows in
the countless channels of design ; of the taste that has
tinted the air, painted the sunset clouds, shaped the for-
est tree, carpeted the meadow with emerald velvet, and
starred it with flowers ; of the goodness that shines in the
sun, marches in the seasons, lisps down in summer rains,
and rolls its great weaves in harvest-time. The mere sen-
timentalist knows all this.
4. It is not that we know him as a Teacher in that rec-
ord of his short life. Many another eye than ours has
perused that Sermon on the Mount, and many another
tongue pronounced it sublime, unequalled. The touch-
ing and tender beauty of the parables, their simplicity,
aptness, force, and naturalness have been appreciated by
other minds, who have written them "exquisite, inimi-
table." The faultless and lofty maxims of his morality,
the gentleness of his charity, his purely Christian lessons
of forgiveness, have had other admirers than those who
know him as we kuow.
5. It is not that we know him just as an example,
have seen how he fulfilled all the relations of hfe, how
patient he was under contradiction, how, when he was
reviled, he reviled not again, how diligent and earnest in
the work he had to do, how meek, how mild, how long-
sufiering, how compassionate, how forbearing toward great
oflenders, how spotless and irreproachable everywhere.
All this record is public property, and this example has
90 KNOWING CHRIST.
even had its eulogies as the crowning purpose of his
mission and life.
6. The knowledge we have of him is a present and
current knowledge. We know him now and to-day.
We do not in this peculiar apprehension of him go back up
the centuries. It is not that we have made his acquaint-
tance here in these pages of long ago. Or if we were
here introduced to him, we have had another and a later
acquaintance with him. We know him in the present,
— not as the prophet that trod the shores of Galilee, and
the streets of Jerusalem, but as to-day and every day
with us and showing himself unto us.
7. We know him thus personally, for ourselves, not as
through the testimony of the evangelists, who walked
with him and talked with him. We, too, have walked
with him and talked with him. It is not of him that
we know from those that have been nearer to him than
we. We know himself by an intimacy existing directly
between his heart and ours. We have had experience of
what he is, and have come into personal relations and
conscious union to him.
8. We know him as our sacrifice and peace. When
we could not but consent to the law of God that it was
holy and good ; when we could not but confess that we
had broken it, and deserved its condemnation ; when a
sharper sentence was passed against us by our own
consciences within, and we carried about this burden,
Judas-like, "I have sinned," ourselves our accusers,
and knew no way to silence this remorseful accusation, or
to escape that condemnation, our peace slain, and a
KNOWING CHRIST. 91
fearful looking-for of judgment, half slumbering, half
wakeful, but always a dull, deep pain, an abiding gloom,
in our consciousness, we came one day upon this Jesus as
though he had just descended alive from the cross after
his agony. He was bleeding in head and hands and feet
and side. He looked upon us with ineflfable love in his
face, and as he fastened thus our wondering eye, he said,
" Burdened one, I have brought you a pardon for your sin.
Look up and smile ; you are acquitted, you are free."
Our first thought is one of rapturous amazement ; with
the second a chill questioning comes back upon our heart,
and falteringly we ask, "But did noi God then care much
about our sinning? Was it but a slight injury done to
him and his government ? Can he overlook it so easily ?
Did our consciences make too much of it, and were we
burdened more than we need to have been ? "
And still that look of love beams upon us, and that
wounded hand holds out the pardon, and, with a strangely
meaning smile, the voice says, "It is free, it is yours."
But our question falters forth again, " The penalty, then,
as an expression of God's estimates of holiness and sin,
was it too severe ? Is it set aside ? By simply returning to
our allegiance, can we make up all the injury done, and
are the interests of a moral government cared for ? " And
the lips sweetly reply, "The penalty is set aside. I have
come in God's name, and bringing God's love, to tell you
this good news." It is not clear to us yet ; something is
evidently held back ; the significance of that smile is not
interpreted ; we are still troubled in our joy about the
way the thing is managed, our conscience still shy of
92 KNOWING CHEIST.
resting in it, and we look up again, and another question
flashes across us, "Because we have not yet seen the
ill-desert of sin recognized and met. There is no expia-
tion. We cannot have peace even by an act of forgive-
ness at the expense of our conscience. But why do you
bleed? The pardon is all stained with crimson. What
is this that you have suflfered?" And the loving smile
half answers as we begin to feel that we are somehow
connected with that tragedy, and the voice briefly ex-
plains, "The penalty was set aside, and another sanction
for the law was substituted." "Yes," we reply, eagerly,
for we are on the track now, " and that substitute was
this great sufiering of one so august and sacred," and
our eyes fill with starting tears. "Why," it is answered,
" I could not show pity to a sinner, and be suspected of
sympathizing with his sin; that were still more to dis-
honor the law and afiront the Lawgiver ; that were treason
against the crown. So it was arranged that I should give
this testimony for the law and against sin, showing that I
am on God's side and the law's side as to sin, while still
after this sacrificial testimony I could bless and save you."
" Then it is you that have made this pardon so free, and
oh, at such a price ! it is for me you bleed, and God's love
has found a channel through that mangled flesh ! " " It was
a true burden which I felt," says conscience. "We were
not mistaken about the desert of sin ; but who could have
dreamed of such a way ? " And we fall at those feet and
take the pardon, and wash away the flowing blood with
faster flowing tears, and pour out our heart there and say,
"Lord, thou hast bought me, thou hast bought me." In
KNOWING CHRIST. 93
this scene we have known Jesus. It could not have been
more real to us if it had been between man and man.
We have held such an interview with him, and entered
into such relations with him. Always when the thoughts
of the past trouble us, we see him standing between our
sin and our punishment with his bleeding form. Always
when we are betrayed afresh into sin, with shame and
agony in our hearts, struggling with penitence and love,
we see him standing thus our shield from justice. So do
we know him ever as our sacrifice and our peace. We do
not dream this, we experience it. There is no more posi-
tive experience of our life. If you have confidence in our
sanity and our veracity, you must receive this testimony.
9. We know again that we have communion with
him. Our knowledge is that we are admitted to personal
intercourse with him. It is not that we believe in his
omniscience and omnipresence, and are persuaded that
hQ hears us and understands us and knows our desires ; it
is that he makes us feel that his personal presence comes
upon us and around us. We are no more sure, without
sight, of the presence of a flower by its fragrance, of
fire by its warmth, of the open air by its freshness, than
we are of his nearness by what he breathes upon us.
There comes before him, as he visits our place of kneel-
ing, an influence that heralds his approach. That influ-
ence fastens upon our heart and draws it unto him.
The influence of the magnet upon steel is not more pos-
itive. Love glows, faith clings, hope soars, weakness
and want plead, and the whole nature goes to him as his
presence draws. It is not imagination that stirs the soul
94 KNOWING CHRIST.
SO deeply and lifts all its passionate waves of trust and de-
sire toward this invisible presence, any more than it is
imagination that raises the tide wave out of the ocean
level, and keeps it rolling round the earth. It is not im-
agination that paints before our inner eye the portraiture
of that face in whose speaking lineaments we behold all
the heart of God. It is not fancy that calls up to our
thouo-ht just the promises we most need to cheer us, and
the precepts indispensable to guide, and makes us hear his
gracious whispers of acceptance and benediction. Imag-
ination is a waking dream ; but all this is the most con-
scious reality, and abides with us in solid results of spir-
itual comfort and life. Were they fancies, they would
evaporate in bright sentimentalisms, brief and unsubstan-
tial as the roseate morning vapors. Imagination could not
renew her magic for us thus every day. But commu-
nion is, with more or less vividness, our daily expe-
rience, and its influence remains a power upon our heart
continually. It is not the effect of place and posture
with us. We do not go to the closet to meet our Saviour
there ; he goes with us, as though he said, drawing our
arm through his, "Come, let us be alone together for
a while." It is not only in the closet that Ave have this
intercourse. As we do not meet there for the first, so
we do not part as we recross the threshold with outward
step. This consciousness of communion with Christ at-
tends us, so that a glance will look into his friendly eye,
a low-voiced call will bring an answering voice, a hand
stretched out will meet his clasping hand.
10. We know thus that we have him to lean upon.
KNOWING CHRIST. 95
The greeting of a new morning wakes us, and we have
the day's pilgrimage to set out upon. Whither the way
will lead to-day, and how the path will open, we know
not. In ourselves we are weak and dismayed before all
the uncertainties ckistering along the hidden caves our
feet are to explore. Then we ask him to join company
with us, that we may not go alone ; and straightway our
sense of solitude and loneliness departs. We know this.
Our spirit feels the fellowship and becomes brave and
hopeful in this consciousness. Presently the way be-
comes steep ; the climbing steps of arduous duty are to
lead us up the acclivities ; our panting breath and fal-
tering limbs appeal to him, and he bids us lean upon his
supporting hold, and we take him at his word, and find
that we are resting upon solid strength. The path be-
comes obscure and weary ; we turn in perplexity to him,
and he goes before us to show the right. Our doubts
dissolve. Guiding footprints lead us on without wander-
ing. The heat of the noontide becomes oppressive ; we
are wearied and ready to faint ; the day is but half gone
and we are spent. " Cast thy care here," is the sooth-
ing whisper that glides into our soul, — "Lay off thy
burden upon the Lord," "Lean more heavily ; I will sus-
tain you." We do lean ; we make over our weariness
to him, and we feel, we know, that we are rested, re-
freshed, and recruited. We next see clouds oratheriuof ;
the sun withdraws his light ; we plunge down some dark
defile ; we are afraid ; it is the shadow of an inscrutable
Providence that falls upon us, and our heart fails us.
But he makes us know that he is near ; he ever presses
96 KNOWING CHEIST.
closer to our side, and gives us the comforting assurance,
"I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." And so,
whatever the experience of the day, when our spirits
droop, when we are hard beset, when we know not whither
to turn, when our weakness is like the giving up of the
ghost, we find this one presence always about us. We
cannot be deceived. Every effect must have its cause.
We feel the blessed efiects of this divine nearness ; we
are rallied and reinforced in all wavering and despon-
dency ; we are breathed upon with a freshening vigor,
anointed with healing and strengthening oil, and come
through the day, because of this help, with a progress
to which we know our own feet to be totally inadequate.
11. We know thus, not only that we lean upon him,
but that he strengthens us. This actual reception of
strength, when we are altogether void of it, is a won-
derful experience. Some old propensity girds itself
against us ; some habit seen in increasing light to be a
hindrance to our spirituality and usefulness is to be
thrown off; some sin against which we have forgotten
to watch surprises us ; some cunningly arranged and
mightily enticing temptation gathers before us ; some
great cross lies at our door to be taken up ; some diffi-
cult, delicate, intricate duty summons us ; some challenge
of our powers of endurance or of action, by God or man
or spirit of evil, confronts us. At first, perhaps, we do
not feel our weakness. We adventure in our own suffi-
ciency. We try to stand, and cannot; we try to do, and
fail ; we match ourselves with our adversary, and the con-
test goes against us ; we lift at our cross, and our loins
KNOWING CHRIST. 97
give way. Our best resolution avails us nothing but to
show the absoluteness of our infirmity ; our sharpest en-
deavors only reveal how disproportionate they are to our
great need. Empty of resources, we turn to Christ; we
confess our emptiness and extremity. We beseech him
to make his strength perfect in our weakness. Now,
what we have to testify is this, — that with this resort
to Jesus the whole aspect of the case changes. We
stand, we overcome, we endure, we break the bands of
sin, we put to rout the powers of evil, we are more than
conquerors through him. We shout aloud our triumph,
"I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me."
We were fainting and sinking ; our powers were over-
borne ; there was no help in us. We look to him ; we
touch his hand, and as fabled Antseus, the son of earth,
in his wrestling with Hercules, received new strength
every time he touched the ground, so fresh forces of
divine aid come to our succor at every look upon Christ,
every contact with his sacred form. We cannot bo mis-
taken in this. It is the result of the thousand experi-
ments, all governed by the same law, and all issuing
adversely or prosperously as we trust ourselves on him.
It is the dail}' and hourly witness of our lives.
12. So we know him as our light. We are blind and
ignorant, and turning to him for illumination. Xot more
surely does the day come with the rising sun than guiding
beams stream down to our bewildered thoughts as we
invoke his shining. We know it by as many historic
scenes in our past as there are days in the yeai*s we have
lived.
9
98 KNOWING CHRIST.
13. So is he our life. If the branch of a vine had
consciousness, it could not more distinctly testify that its
life is in the vine than we can that our spiritual life is in
Christ. We look within for it, or without, upon all other
helps, and no pulse beats. We look to him, and the vital
currents are in motion and the heart throbs with strong
and lusty vigor. Our souls feel the living supplies as
truly as Nature in all her veins the reviving of spring.
We cannot say how this life cuts its channel from his
heart to ours ; but we know we receive it, and we know
we derive it ; it is not native, it is imparted, and it flows
to us, or flows within us, when, and only when, we turn
to him.
14. So he is in sympathy with us. It is not fancy
that he comforts us in sadness, for we are really com-
forted ; our tears are dried up ; the smile returns to our
face and the peace to our hearts ; and this transition from
mourning to joy is when we ask him to sufler our head to
droop upon his breast.
15. So we see his unchanged face in all trying events.
"It is I," he says, through the darkness and over the wild
heaving billows, "be not afraid." "I am Lord of provi-
dence, I am head over all things to my beloved ; I am
purging my branches, that they may bear more fruit."
My hearers, there is no end to this testimony. I have
striven only to produce specimens of it. To those whom I
chiefly wish to afiect, I shall have failed, after all, to make
the apprehension clear how distinct all this consciousness
is with a believer, how separate it is from all that is nat-
ural and self-originated within him, how certainly and
unerringly he knows it.
KNOWING CHRIST. 99
II. You ask now, Did you know all this at first? Had
you this clear perception of a present Christ and his
various agency at the outset? I answer, JVo. We only
trusted him for it, at the very start. We put our hand
in his, but we had no exjperience of his help along the
road, for we were not as yet travellers in it. We had the
confidence that he could and would carry us through, —
a confidence inspired by nothing that we had known, but
only by his word of promise.
III. You ask again, perhaps, how this knowledge has
grown upon us. I answer. By two kinds of experience.
Our experience of weakness, helplessness, and peril in
the great work of escaping from the bondage of sin, and
our experience of the actual fruits of resorting to Christ.
If I could take a single instance of such a twofold expe-
rience, it might make the matter clearer. Suppose, then,
that there grows upon me the conviction that a certain
trait in my character greatly hinders my piety, obstructs
my progress, grieves my brethren, stumbles sinners, and
clouds my own soul. I resolve to put it down. I grapple
with it. The struggle is long and severe. Sometimes I
think I have got the better of it. But I find soon that it
is as vital as ever. It needs to be plucked up by the
roots. Its tyranny becomes so galling that I cannot en-
dure it. I carry it to this Saviour and ask him to under-
take my deliverance, and he begins upon it with a process
of his OAvn. His treatment is deep and thorough, though
trying, his surgery sharp, but final. I am delivered and
healed. Can I doubt who has done it? And as these
experiences multiply, shall I not more and more come to
100 KNOWING CHRIST.
know him as a personal Saviour, and with increasing con-
fidence carry all my needs to him?
IV. Do you ask again, How didtliis knowledge begin,
how can it be entered upon? This is the way. The
burden of wanting such a help w^as upon our hearts, the
burden of sin, of captivity to it, and of condemnation for
it, of helplessness in ourselves either to escape the latter
or break from the former. We heard him set forth as such
a complete and glorious Deliverer, as willing and ready
to undertake for every soul that would confide its case to
him. We said. If this Helper is what he is represented,
he is what our great want requires. Tremblingly we
approached him and retired again, then drew near shyly
and once more retreated. Some single word of his caught
our ear, — " Come," " Come unto me," and we went in the
dark, and said there as we stood, alone, in the dark, " Is
the Deliverer near? Let us know this great deliverance.
Here we are. Lord, undertake for us." And we ventured
to leave our case with him, as a fiiint echo stole out of the
silence and seemed to whisper, "Him that cometh unto me
I will in no wise cast out." And we now know what we
did not so certainly know then, at once, that he began
with us that hour.
V. Do you ask. Can we begin so? Yes, you can.
Speak up to him now in the depths of your soul, —
"Saviour, Master, Guide, whom as yet we know not, we
have heard of thee as a Deliverer from the bondage of
wrath and sin. We are in captivity to both. Thou art,
w^e believe, the way of escape. We see not a step of the
way. We see not even thee. But we stretch out our
KNOWING CHEIST. 101
hands to thee ; we empty them of all our idols ; we lift
them for thy clasping and guidance. Only lead, we will
follow thee. We trust thee, make us know thee." Ee-
member this, — "It is not know and then believe, but
believe and you shall see the salvation of God."
9*
VI.
GOD AND THE WORLD KECONCILED.
. . . , GOD WAS IN CHRIST RECONCILING THE WORLD UNTO HIMSELF.— 2
Cor. V. part 19.
THERE is condensed here into a single line the whole
breadth of the gospel. Every word is compact and
weighty with the force of this great pressure upon it.
The story of the incarnation, its necessity, and its purpose,
the historic life and work of Jesus in the flesh, man's
apostasy and alienation from God, and the sublime and
touching spectacle of the infinite Father coming forth in
the sacrifice of his Son and the energy of the new-creating
Spirit to accomplish the marvels of redemption, — all
these are here.
We have nothing that so rounds and completes the
description of the gospel as this word, — it is a kecon-
CILING gospel. It is not merely a refining and educating
system, bringing out the occult virtues and graces
darkly sphered in human nature, or training to athletic
vio-or moral forces already vital within us, though feeble
and torpid. Its great work is not to polish the rough-
nesses of a spirit that only needs discipline and culture
to put on the beauty of holiness, just as a lapidary cuts a
GOD AND THE WOULD RECONCILED. 103
new-found diamond, that its imprisoned lustres may shine
forth.
Its chief travail is to reconcile man to God. No other
conception of it discerns its true glory, or enters into the
purpose of its divine author. If it come to us merely as
a code of higher morals, a stimulant to a more self-sacri-
ficiug charity of liviug, to open to us the iuspiring exam-
ple of that sinless Messenger from Heaven, to spiritualize
by teachings of heavenly wisdom and beauty our life of
sense, to lift us by its elevating truths above meannesses
and vulgarities and dishonesties, — if this be all, it is no
gospel for our deepest aud mo£t helpless need. The
angels might have hushed those choral chants that broke
the silence and lit the darkness of miduight above the
hills of Bethlehem.
It is an atoning gospel we want, — not one in the first
instance to excite and cheer us in our struggles after hu-
man perfection, but first of all to restore us to the favor
of God, to slay our enmity to him, and propitiate him
towards us, bringing us near to him in harmony and
friendship forever.
And so it announces itself in our Scripture, " God in
Christ EECOXCiLiNG the world unto himself."
I. If now this Vv'ork of reconciliation, proposed as the
chief function of the gospel, be a reality in the full signif-
icauce of the language expressing it, then there is as-
sumed here the essential fact of the guilt and euin of
MAN. We cannot advance a step in the explication of the
text, without conceding that God and man are at variance.
The holy inhabitants of heaven need no reconciling unto
104 GOD AND THE WORLD RECONCILED.
God. He is forever at peace with them. They have
never harbored a rebel thought against him. To reconcile
is to reunite in love and confidence those who have been
estranged, to remstate in forfeited fiivor and friendship
one who has offended, to make up and put away existing
hostilities and alienations. To reconcile man to God is
to bring them back to his favor, to appease his wrath
against them, to do away the division that has rived
them asunder. If such a work needs to be done, how ab-
solutely it argues man an apostate and alien from God.
Our first business, therefore, must be to set forth this
breach.
God sustains to this creature man, apart from the work
of redemption, relations of an infinite force and tender-
ness. He is the Maker of his frame, the Father of his
spirit, the Builder of his home, the Provider of his boun-
ties, the Preserver of his life, the Benefactor of his days,
the Giver of every good and every perfect gift. All the
offices involved in these relations God has fulfilled with
spotless honor to himself, with immeasurable goodness to
the creature. He has moreover made himself known to
man, disclosed his character, published his will, and fur-
nished him in his law a perfect rule of living. Now the
breach is this. There is not one of those relations which
man on his part has not violated and outraged. The
workmanship of God's power, he has " worshipped and
served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed
forever." The child of such a Parent, he has withheld
all filial love and reverence; a dweller in God's earth,
he has cursed and defiled it with sin ; a receiver of God's
GOD AND THE AVORLD EECOXCILED. 105
'bounties, he has hardened his heart against all the claims
of gratitude ; a subject of God's law, he has set at nought
its infinite authority, and lifted the banner of rebellion
against his sovereign. This is a weighty accusation, but
amply and sadly sustained by the testimonies of Omnis-
cience itself and witnessed to in all the rounds of the
current human life. Here, then, is sunk a gulf of sepa-
ration between God and man. God is of purer eyes than
to behold iniquity. He hates sin with a perfect hatred.
He is jealous of his honor and right as throned king.
He has enacted and sanctioned the law, "The soul that
sinneth it shall die." How can lie remain in friendly
communion with such rebels? Is it any wonder he has
withdrawn himself from a race in arms against him, and
hung over them the fulminations of his eternal wrath?
And on the other side man has rejected God. He has
trampled on his laws. He has given his honor unto
idols. His affections have gone after other gods. His
will has hardened itself against his Maker and Monarch.
He is sold under sin, a willing captive to Satan, at enmity
with God. How deep and awful this chasm ! jNIan can-
not cross it in the face of the sentinel thunders that o'aard
the divine justice. God cannot cross it, leaving his
broken law and shattered sceptre behind, trophies of suc-
cessful insurrection. No human prayer can span it, for
the condemned cannot plead against this Judge. Xo
divine mercy can overleap it, fettered by the stern neces-
sities of a moral government as yet defied and dishonored.
So they stand on either side, — God insulted and offended,
men filling up the measure of their guilt, and the yawning
106 GOD AND THE WOELD RECONCILED.
gulf between. So they stand, God lifting his dreadful
right hand with his glittering sword, man stiffening hia
puny arm of rebellion. No voice of mercy, no voice of
penitence, calls across from brink to brink. If God pass
over, it must be to take vengeance, to execute wrath. If
man pass, it must be to his trial and doom. Thus is a
world divorced from God. The great malign one has
wrought fearfully. The Eden intercourse is ended.
" No more of talk where God or angel guest
With man, as with his friend familiar, used
To sit indulgent."
Earth is estranged from God. God has gone up from
earth.
" Foul distrust and breach
Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt
And disobedience. On the part of Heaven,
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke and judgment given."
Can this gulf be bridged ? Can this wandering orb be
made to gravitate back toward the central sun ? Can the
great breach be repaired and God and man commune again
in protecting love and filial trust as in the early Paradise ?
And our Scripture answers, " God is in Christ recon-
ciling the world unto himself." And this is our next
point.
II. God first moves in the efibrt for reconciliation.
From his side of the dividing gulf, he looks across upon
his rebel subjects. They are the children of his loins.
Something of the Father's image is on them still. They
have lost their inheritance of immortality. Without God,
GOD AND THE WORLD RECONCILED. 107
without hope. Striving to cheat themselves into spasms
of fitful mirth, but carrying within them an upbraiding
conscience and a heavy heart, and looking out portionless
into the dark night of eternity. With all his feelings as
a moral Governor, whose authority has been trampled
on; with all his care as Sovereign of the universe,
whose word and will must be inviolable ; with all his
hatred of sin, and his unalterable determination to
punish it, he yet loves these wretched transgressors.
He cannot see them perish. He yearns over his prod-
igal, riotous children. He longs to gather them to
their Father's house, and kill the fatted calf. "How shall
I give thee up ? " breaks forth his compassionate sorrow.
Oh, he will not give them up. Man shall see, and Heaven
shall see, and the old Tempter glorying in his triumph
shall see, and all the universe shall see what God can do
to relight this darkened orb and set it again amid the
shining spheres that wheel about his throne. The cloud-
veiled heights of mercy, which no angel wing has scaled,
no creature eye looked upon as yet, shall be unveiled to
the wonder and praise of all loyal intelligences. Oh,
what new brightness poured its floods over creation when
the cloud moved ! Who before could have fathomed this
mighty secret of God's heart? God was holy and just
and good ; this they knew. Who could have hit the amaz-
ing truth that he could forgive sin, and advance the sinner
to crowns and thrones in heaven ? The rebel angels were
hurled from their happy seats. God moved to reconcile
man unto himself. They who looked to behold another
stroke of infinite justice, another province of revolt lopped
108 GOD AND THE WOELD HECONCILED.
off from the holy and happy kingdom of Jehovah, saw
another sight that held them mute with surprise and awe.
Man is helpless and hopeless. He cannot rise to God.
He can do nothing to bridge the gulf. He can make no
overture to God. He is under sentence. His doom calls
for him. But God rises in his place. A voice from the
midst of the throne pierces the heavens, rends the skies,
and rallies the despairing heart of earth, — "Lo, I come."
HI. And he who spake was himself the assurance and
type of reconciliation. While jet the gulf is impassable
it disappears in the symbol of the incarnation. Look
upon the person of Jesus. The lost humanity, the offend-
ed Deity, are one again. They are seen united there,
blended. God in Christ, ere yet the cross is reared, has
taken the rebel nature back to his bosom. He has trav-
ersed the distance that separated the two ; he has thrown
down the barriers between ; he has bridged the chasm ; the
restored humanity is wedded in indissoluble bonds with
the pitying Divinity, in and by the reconciling Christ.
Though the law be broken, though the creature be fallen,
though justice must be satisfied, though the sinner have
no offering he can bring, still God and man are met.
The outraged Lawgiver, the daring rebel, are joined to-
gether, and that mysterious alliance for whatever purposes
assumed is clear in this, — pledges entire reconciliation,
eternal fellowship. It is a promise for the creature reach-
ing beyond all the privilege and felicity of his former
estate in the garden. Adam and his Creator but com-
muned then. They were not one. But this reconcilia-
tion after the fall is to elevate and glorify the rescued
GOD AND THE WORLD RECONCILED. 109
humanity to heights attainable by no other rank of created
mind. "He took not on him the nature of ang^els."
"Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" "Thou
hast made us kings and priests unto God." I love to
linger here, to dwell upon this living prophecy of the
incarnation, to interpret its exceeding great and precious
promise, to welcome it as God's bond of so perfect a
reconciliation, so consummate a union, so glorious a des-
tiny, for sinful, outlawed man.
IV. And now we must inquire as to the actual
method of this reconciliation, whose transcendent issue is
given us in such a type. What is needful to be done be-
fore such a result can be realized ? Clearly the order and
supremacy of the divine government must be sustained
on the one hand, and the corrupt and alienated heart of
man must be rectified and won on the other. A recon-
ciliation must affect both parties. The bridge that spans
the gulf must have its double pier to rest upon, — one on
God's side, the other on ours. God cannot reconcile us
just by coming over to us. He must draw us to him.
He cannot come to us leaving the demands of justice
clamoring for satisfaction. He cannot draw us to him
without overcoming and slaying the enmity of our hearts
and renovating our nature. No part of this work is pos-
sible to man. Let him seek to build up a righteousness
of his own, and pile his good deeds, his laborious virtues,
and costl}^ charities one above ajiother, and raise himself
on these mole-hill eminences to match the altitudes of
the perfect law. Oh, how those towering Alps, from
their pure and far heights, look down upon him ! Never
10
110 GOD AND THE WORLD RECONCILED.
can his sliding feet and his frail strength of climbing reach
the sun-white summit. He cannot blot out one sin of the
past. His former guilt nothing but his death can expiate,
and his actual and current life, however loftily he aim,
wins not one smile from approving law, but darkens for-
ever under its awful frowns. Equally fruitless are his
best efforts to catch his truant affections and desires, to
brinof them chastened and lovinsr to his abused and in-
jured Father, to pacify his reproachful conscience, to bend
his disloyal will, to kindle within the life and power of an
earnest, practical, persistent godliness. Nor could created
wisdom have devised a plan by which God himself could
achieve this marvel, could wed these opposites. What a
problem it was to solve ! Given a law of infinite value,
with an infinite penalty and a world of transgressors, to
make reparation to law, let the transgressors go free, and
restore them to their allegiance ! If the sinner be cut off
in his guilt, the law is vindicated, justice is satisfied, gov-
ernment sustained, but there is not salvation for the lost.
If the sinner be justified and forgiven, while yet there is
no expiation for his guilt, it may be well with him ; the
mercy of God is illustriously displayed, but the authority
of the sovereign Ruler is prostrate in the dust. No more
shall the heavenly choirs sing together, "Justice and
Judgment are the habitation of thy throne. Just and true
are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear
thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name?" Under such an
administration rebellion shall not stop with earth. If
there be some unheard-of sacrifice by which God's just
hatred of sin and his determination not to suffer it to
GOD AND THE WORLD RECONCILED. Ill
offend with impunity can be expressed, by which thus the
guilt of the transgressor, being atoned for, may be par-
doned, what force beyond all this shall undertake the
renovation of human character, its resurrection from
spiritual death into newness of life? " Oh, the depth of
the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! "
God, in the person of the Son, took to himself a sacrificial
humanity, lending it by such alliance an infinite worth,
entering thus into a condition under the law, rendering
there a perfect obedience, not obligatory on him who was
above the law, shedding there the blood of expiation de-
manded by inexorable justice, thus lifting again the
trampled prerogatives of the crown, and then plying the
heart of the rescued sinner by the melting power of that
cross, the might of that dying love, and moving upon it
with the- life-inspiring energy of the new creating spirit.
This great transaction solves the problem. God can offer
reconciliation in the fulness of his mercy, for his crown
is protected, his government upheld. The sinner can
come into a cordial acceptance of this offer, and be at
peace with this offended majesty, being delivered by the
righteousness of Christ from the pain and pressure of an
evil conscience, won by the cross of Christ to penitence,
gratitude, and love, his will subdued and his nature
sanctified by the operations of the Spirit of grace. And
so in brief this wonderful Scripture hath its fulfilment, —
that God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.
Indignant justice is pacified ; obilurate rebellion is con-
quered ; the penal sanction of law is sustained ; the
sentence is removed from the penitent criminal ; with
112 GOD AND THE WOKLD RECONCILED.
unfettered love God invites ; with assured confidence the
weeping sinner draws nigh. Over the bridgeless gulf the
Mediator has laid his own body, and upon it a just God
comes with life and peace to meet the now hopeful offen-
der, forsaking all for that embrace of love. That which
was symbolized in the person of Christ is thus actualized.
A new, divine life, flowing free in this unobstructed chan-
nel, enters the dead heart of the race, and quickens it to
live again. God accepts a sufiering Christ as the con-
demned criminal's substitute. The sinner receives in his
welcoming and believing soul that atoning Christ as his
surety with God, bringing to him not only the seal of
pardon, but a new force of wilUng, loving, and obeying.
And so the song of joy breaks from his lips. Out of the
miry depths his feet are raised to stand on the Rock of
ages. What wonder that he sings of the Lamb that was
slain ! What marvel that we hear him after death chant-
ing on the celestial hills, " Worthy the Lamb ! "
My friends, the gospel which our churches hold and
our ministry preaches is sometimes thought to be and
represented to be a stern and harsh system, dealing
sharply with human errors, covering with forbidding
gloom the face of the Almighty Father, and pressing
its unlovely austerities upon shrinking and sensitive spir-
its. How unjust and mistaken a thought ! We preach
God in Christ, "reconciling the world unto himself, not
imputing their trespasses unto them." If we speak of
the great divisive abyss the fall has sunk between man
and his God, it is to unfold the necessity and the glory
of that redemptive system, that mediatorial work, that
GOD AND THE WORLD RECONCILED. 113
throws its indestructible arch across. If we speak of a
justice that demands for every sin the blood of expiation,
it is to point to the Lamb of God that taketh away the
sin of the world. If we speak of the carnal heart as en-
mity with God, it is to tell how Jesus died for you while
you were yet enemies, to reconcile you to the Father.
Our gospel is a gospel of reconciliation. Our ministry is
a ministry of reconciliation. The glad evangel put into
our mouths is this, "Be ye reconciled to God." There
is no other portrait of the divine character so ravishing
as this, no overture of God to man so tender, no voice
from heaven the burdened conscience so leaps to hear,
nothing that so lights the dying eye and comforts the de-
parting spirit. No other system of theology can so de-
monstrate to earth and heaven that mighty Scripture
" God is Love." " Herein is Love," not in the golden sun
or soft dews or airs of spring or fruits or harvests or
vineyards or all of autumn's generous bounty, — " Aere-
m," not in health and friends and social joys and daily
good, — " herein is Love ! not that we loved God, but that
he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for
our sins."
God is not your enemy. He would be your friend.
You are afraid of him, but he will deliver you from all
your fears ; your sins cry against you, but he will blot
them out with atonins: blood and remember them no
more forever; you dread the process of making peace
with him. Did the father of the returning prodigal afflict
him with hard conditions? But God is so great, so se-
renely holy, so girt with majesty and kiugliness ! Yes,
but he knows what you are, and welcomes you to a
114 GOD AND THE WORLD RECONCILED.
perfect reconciliation. Would you approach, fix your
thought on the Mediator. There he stands in human
form, — no aspect of inapproachable splendor and power,
— holding the Father's right hand in one of his, stretch-
ing the other to you, a bond between God and you, oc-
cupying and filling the whole distance ; human on your
side, divine on the other ; shading off humanity into De-
ity from you through himself to God ; shading off Deity
into humanity, again, through himself from God to you;
attaching you, by this mysterious, interlinked vinculum to
his Father and your Father, and transmitting divine life
and joy from the Father to your spirit. Still that out-
stretched hand, with the print of the nail in it, solicits
your acceptance. When you clasp it, Jesus is yours and
God is yours and heaven is yours. Holding there. Jus-
tice cannot strike you ; you belong to the humanity of
Jesus, and Justice has smitten there once, and is satisfied.
Held by that hand, you are one with the Father and the
Son. Those strange words of Jesus in prayer for his
disciples on the sorrowful night of the betrayal are ful-
filled,— "I in them and thou in me, that they may be
made perfect in one." Come! Are you not ready?
You are unworthy, you are weak, you are timid, you are
conscience-stricken, you are shackled by evil passions
and habits. Yes, all that is understood; but just such
as you are God in Christ calls you, waits for you, by us
beseeches you to be reconciled to him. Going hence to
some secret place of prayer, will you not give your hand
with your penitent heart to Christ, that henceforth, in
life and death, in earth's travail and heaven's glory, you
may, by that living link, be forever joined to God?
YIl.
WEAKING CHEIST'S GARMENTS.
AND THEY CRUCIFIED HIM, AND PARTED HIS GARMENTS, CASTING LOTS ; THAT
IT MIGHT BE FULFILLED WHICH WAS SPOKEN BY THE PROPHET, THEY
PARTED MY GARMENTS AMONG THEM, AND UPON MY VESTURE DID THEY
CAST LOTS. — Matt, xxvii. 35.
IT is a revolting scene of greedy cupidity which is here
witnessed at the very foot of the cross. The Saviour,
stripped of his garments, has been nailed to the wood, and
the cross lifted and secured in its place. The mortal an-
guish has begun. On the right hand and the left of the
chief sufferer hang the malefactors. The daughters of
Jerusalem are weeping around. One would think that in
the presence of such tragedies even the executioners
would be sober and decent. They are inflicting punish-
ment upon public convicts, it is true, but those convicts
are human, and their dying groans, if unworthy of pity,
might well touch a chord in the common nature that
should hold observers at least gravely silent. But those
whose bloody work has thus far progressed are not look-
ing at the face of Jesus. They are looking for his gar-
ments. Those are their inheritance. It is a part of the
usual price of the job. They are yet warm from his per-
116 WEARING Christ's garments.
son ; but the eager heirs cannot wait. While his sad eyes
gaze down upon them, they make partition of the plunder.
There are four of them, and they continue to make four
parcels of what they have to divide. The division is
equalized perhaps by severing the outer garment into its
parts, fabric, fringes, and borders, so that each shall have
his share. But when they come to the inner coat or
tunic, it is perceived that it is not made in the common
style, of two parts joined together, but is woven whole.
To tear it into fragments would make it useless to any-
body ; so they cast lots for this, and one of them appro-
priates it as his prize. Look at them in their new gar-
ments. Will they know themselves? Will their friends
know them ? Have they not come to resemble Him whose
well-known costume they have put on? Especially the
man with the seamless coat, may he not be mistaken to-
morrow for the Saviour himself, and startle somebody
with the reappearance of the crucified Nazarene ?
The resemblance goes no deeper than the garments.
They are wearing what the Saviour wore, but they are
like him in nothing else. They have his external appear-
ance, but within they are unchanged, and carry still the
hearts of thieves and murderers. They are his crucifiers ;
though they are clothed as he was while he walked among
the living.
Is there anything significant in this incident ? Is it not
by itself a very meaning parable ? Does it not hint to us
that there may be many who put on the garments of
Christ, but at heart they are no friends of his? May
there not be many reasons why men should willingly and
WEARING Christ's garments. 117
eagerly clothe themselves in the outward mantle of Christ's
likeness, and yet rank all the while among those who put
him to grief and shame ?
Let us suggest briefly some of these reasons, and name
some of those Avhom they are allowed to govern.
Few men who have a bad heart are bold enough to
wear openly the costume that really belongs to them. If
they were to expose all their vile thoughts and wicked
purposes to the public gaze, they would be shunned as
men shun pitch, slime, the plague, and other things that
work defilement and mischief. They must put on some
decent outside covering. They must cover up the cor-
rupt desires of their heart. What can they wear so
cleanly and unsuspicious as some garment from the vestry
of Christianity? These are wolves in sheep's clothing.
They learned this art from their "father." For Satan
himself is transformed often into an angel of light.
It is respectable now to put on Christian raiment. The
cross decorates imperial robes, and gleams in golden lus-
tre on proud temple towers. The religion of Jesus has
wrought too long and well in the earth to be despised.
The man who has embraced its truths, and is guided by
its principles, commands the confidence of his fellow-men.
Wherever one can introduce himself thus habited, the
garb carries with it a high and worthy indorsement.
There are some men whose idea of Christianity is that
it can be put on as one puts on a garment. With them
it is not, in its nature, an inward radical change, but an
outward fairness, pureness, and saintliness. It consists
in a decorous observance of the Sabbath and its institu-
118 WEARmG Christ's garments.
tions of worship, in a formal daily reading before the
household of God's word, and a still more formal address
to his presence, or in putting on certain ordinances sup-
posed to carry with them gracious forces for the character
and life. There is a desire to be Christian for the sake
of standing well with God and our own esteem, and these
light fabrics are easily fitted to us and are no burden.
Conscience is pacified, hope is warranted, the heart at
rest, and meanwhile there is no quarrel with the desire
and the relish for natural good.
There are reasons enough in our day for being not only
willing, but anxious, to appear invested with the badges of
a faith against which none but the worst men openly con-
tend, and the confession of which carries with it so much
that conciliates universal regard. And if now we come
to classes, and ask who they are who clothe themselves in
this Christian costume, we may remark, —
1. There are some who make humanity their whole
religion. They leave others to talk about the love of
Christ. They love their fellow-men. They plead the
rights of man. They argue the worth of man. They
cultivate the habit of expressing sympathy for human
sufferings, and extending charity to human want. They
devise institutions to shelter the houseless and friendless ;
they spread tables for the famishing ; they make garments
for the naked ; they carry about subscription books for all
manner of humane enterprises. Their charity is chiefly a
charity for the present life, a charity for the body ; it does
not busy itself much with missions, or gospel societies,
but it throws its arms around the fainting flesh, and seeks
WEARING CHRIST'S GARMENTS. 119
to better all the outward condition. Now this exact style
of humanity is, as far as it goes, Christian. It comes of
the gospel. It was born out of the teachings and life of
Christ. We have learned to see the value of man, to
pity the need of man, to comfort the sorrows of man,
to understand the dignity of man, to feel the brotherhood
of the race, since Christ came into the flesh and wrought
for man all his works of love, and died for man on Cal-
vary. And the very peculiarity of this charity, in look-
ing after the earthly condition of men, makes it a closer
copy of his kindness, all whose miracles of healing were
to lift and straighten and nourish the poor human body.
Here, then, is one of Christ's garments, clearly recogni-
zable in fashion, texture, and hue as his, worn in the midst
of human fellowships. Are the wearers therefore Chris-
tian? Outwardly and in doing they are. Are they
inwardly? What if they join themselves to those who
stoned him because he said, "I and my Father are one,"
and approve and pronounce again the same ancient rea-
son, "For a good work we stone thee not," — they are
advocates of good works, —" but for blasphemy, and be-
cause that thou being a man makest thyself God" ? With
Christ's garment on, and yet rejecting his doctrines, de-
nying his divinity, refusing him as an atoning Saviour
and expiatory sacrifice, are they not of those who crucify
him and then part his raiment among themselves ? From
his cross he beholds them consenting unto his death, and
putting on his robes for their daily wearing.
2. Again there are many who accept his doctrines, who
call him, "Lord!" "Lord!" but who never receive him
120 WEAEiNG Christ's garments.
into their hearts. They have been educated in the ortho-
dox faith; they hold the orthodox creed; they attend
upon orthodox preaching. Examine them at what length
you will, and you will find them clear and strong in the
truth that is distinctively evangelical. Let a stranger ask
them at large, "What think ye of Christ?" and no con-
fessor of Jesus could give, so far as the head goes, a
fuller and more satisfactory reply. " The truth as it is in
Jesus," they have put on entire. His seamless coat, un-
rent, clothes them. They walk abroad bearing his like-
ness to all who look upon their costume. Do they there-
fore love him? Have they joined their souls to him? Is
he their life and joy? He is, in their creed, is he in their
heart, their Lord and their God ? In spirit are they trans-
formed into his likeness? Oh, how many there are in all
our congregations who have the doctrines of Christ, but
who hold the truth in practical unrighteousness; who
accept all that we teach concerning him, giving their as-
sent to the whole system of his redemptive work, but never
giving their hearts to his spirit, their lives to his service.
You, too, my friends, wear his garments, but you are not
like him ; you are not his ; he is not yours. What you
yet need is to ]jut on himself.
2. There are again some who have joined themselves to
his visible people, and who wear openly the garment of a
Christian profession, who yet seem to lack the inward
life and power of godliness. Wherever they go, that gar-
ment of profession announces a Cliristian ; they wear it
into prayer-meetings ; they wear it into the Sabbath as-
sembly; they wear it to the sacramental table, while
WEARIXG CHRIST'S GARMEJs^TS. 121
the inward witness to what they thus declare is wanting.
Their costume and their spirit are at variance. Their
profession and their practice disagree. What they are
contradicts what they wear.
One maintains externally the appearance of great sanc-
tity. He is grave of countenance and careful of speech.
He is punctilious in all formal religious observances.
The household knows the length and comprehensiveness
of his daily prayers. He is hard upon the errors of other
men, and fastidious even about trifles which a more gen-
erous catholicity endures without disturbance. He is
hard even upon himself. He keeps himself up by con-
stant straining to this rigid standard. But there is noth-
ing of the freeness and warmth of love about him. There
is no fountain of tenderness in his soul. You would as
soon put your infant to nurse with one of the Egyptian
Colossi as to put a babe in Christ who wanted cherishing
care into these granite arms. He is not a renewed man.
Unawares he is a Pharisee, save that he is not a con-
scious hypocrite. He has great purpose and stern con-
sistency ; there is formed within him a conviction that
this rigid dutifulness is piety, but Christ is not formed
within him. Still another species of this outward sanctity
does cover up conscious inward corruption. The long
face is a mask. The man has found out that he is not
what he thought he was, — a changed man. There is a tide
of inward uncleanness surging to and fro in his soul,
against which the floodgates are never shut. He cannot
put off his sanctimonious habits ; it is agreeable to be
thought quite correct and eminently holy. It keeps
122 WEARING CHRIST'S GARMENTS.
curious eyes from peering into his bosom; the honest
acknowledgment of what he is would be too deep a
shame for his soul to bear. So he keeps on the garment,
and harbors inwardly the carrion birds of impure pas-
sions.
There is another in the Church who has the costume of
self-denial conspicuous on his person. That is a portion
of the robe of Christ. "If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me."
And this man denies himself all the round of what are
called the pleasures of life. These gay and costly festiv-
ities, that include rich tables, lighted saloons, music, and
flowers, draw not one farthing of revenue from him.
Is he not practising delf-denial ? The personal and do-
mestic luxuries of expensive furniture, elegant wardrobe,
dashing equipage, a decorated and brilliant establishment,
he lightly foregoes, though perhaps strongly importuned
in one direction and another by those beneath his roof.
Surely, a self-denying man.
His neighbors expend freely upon transitions with the
seasons, — in winter into the comfortable city mansion, in
summer out to a country retreat, or from place to place
on travelling excursions, breathing the air of the moun-
tains, sipping salubrious waters, taking the roll of the
surf, pacing amid rural fields and beneath rural shades in
inland rural towns. He calls all this "fashion," sets his
face against it, and practises again his self-denial. And
all the while that he seems to be dealing so abstemiously
and rigorously with what others find to be their natural
or acquired tastes, there is sitting within on the perch of
wEAKiNG Christ's garments. 123
his heart, a ravening cormorant, that devours everything
its filthy beak can gobble. This man might love worldly
pleasures perhaps, but he loves something else better.
He might be fond of luxuries and festivities and seaside
and mountain air and curative springs, but there is an-
other thing dearer yet. He loves money. The cor-
morant is covetousness. The Christian virtue of self-
denial was only a garment, the gilded outside of the
cage where he keeps his cormorant. When he says no
to a pleasure or a lust, it is not Christian self-denial
that speaks, it is a croak of the cormorant. When he
says no to the wife and daughters that plead for the beach
in sultry August, it is not that he may have wherewith to
endow God's poor, it is because his cormorant wants it
all. Strange that Christ's robe should cover such a
greedy spirit, the plumage of the holy dove this bird of
prey !
Again there is often a very demonstrative religious zeal
which really seems to consume the whole man, but which
at some one critical point breaks down. It is very ear-
nest for the souls of men ; it will go all lengths for their
rescue ; it multiplies means and agencies and importunities
to gather these aliens in ; it can give time and strength
and toil, will and money, too, to wield whatever hopeful
instrumentalities for their salvation. The cause of Christ,
the growth of the Church, the augmented fidelity and self-
devotion of Christians, absorb it. Here is Christianity in
full. The mantle reaches from the shoulders to the feet.
There is no scantmess in it. Its ample folds wrap the
whole person. Surely, here is a man with whom love is a
124 WEAEING CHRIST'S GARMENTS.
universal principle. His soul is full of it. It must over-
flow upon every partner of the common humanity with
whom he comes in contact. It will bathe and lave every
hand he touches.
Let us accompany this friend as he goes out to make
some trifling purchase. He is himself in trade perhaps,
and understands that a man who lives by trade must have
a fair profit. He sells on that principle. How does he
buy ? He calls for the article he wishes and examines it,
as though disapprovingly. He asi?:s the price. "What,
so much for this ? " His tone is ofi'ensive to a sensitive
mind. Perhaps he remarks that he does not wonder
that the sellers of this sort of ware get rich. He ex-
amines the article again, with increasing disapprobation.
But there is no abatement of the price. He depreciates
the quality of the material, the quality of the work, the
style and taste of the goods, while all the time it is the
thing he wants. He says plainly and bluntly, "You must
take less." "You ask too much." " I can't give it." He
is told finally that he is at liberty to leave it if he does
not care to take. But that does not suit him. He wants
it, and he wants to beat the seller down. He wants to
get it at a cheaper price. He wants to feel that he has
made a good bargain. He seems to forget that there are
two of them that have the natural desire to secure a fair
trade. He lingers yet and picks flaws, and half turns
away and turns back and urges fresh subtractions from
the value of the goods, and pushes hard for a reduction
of price. It is not a very pleasant scene. I am sorry to
detain you in it. At last the man is gone, paying down
WEAEING CHEIST'S GARMENTS. 125
his reluctant money. The seller has a little heightened
color on his face. He turns to us and remarks, "That
customer is said to be a member so and so of such a
church. I wonder what sort of religion they hold there.
I desire never to see the man in my store again."
Well, we might call on domestics in families to testify
to the impression which religious masters and mistresses
make on them. We might call on a wife to give in evi-
dence, if she only would, as to the sort of heart in a Chris-
tian husband that beats against her own. We might call
on clerks and employees to stand up as witnesses and say
how an intense Christianity develops in their direction.
But these points have been pushed far enough. Oh, it
is so sorrowful that w^hen we see Christ's vesture we can-
not be sure that his lineaments are there too ! It is so sad
that those whose names are fairly written out on the roll
of the church do under the Christian cloak what brinofs
indelible reproach upon the Christian religion ! It is a
matter of such deep, deep searching of ourselves that,
having on the garments of Christ, and having, as we hum-
bly believe, something of the spirit of Christ, there may
yet be so many things in us, such inconsiderate moments
and actions, that a keen-eyed world protests, " We see
the garments of Jesus, but we don't see anything else that
is like him."
Oh, I beseech you, let the Church be searched to-day.
If we keep underneath and mean to keep the qualities and
practices of a worldly, greedy, and selfish spirit, let us
strip off to the last fibre the vesture of the Master, that
the reproach come upon humanity, and not upon the doc-
10*
126 WEAKING CHRIST'S GARMENTS.
trine of Jesus. And if we wish a blessing upon us here
in our Christian work, let us do more than run to and fro
with swift-footed zeal, let us rectify our lives, put away
every evil thing, find the dead flies in the ointment and
extract them, for Christ wants clean hands as well as a
fervent spirit to minister in the holy things of his altars.
VIII.
CHEIST'S CUP.
BUT JESUS ANSWERED AND SAID, YE KNOW NOT WHAT TB ASK. ARE YE
ABLE TO DRINK OF THE CUP THAT I SHALL DRINK OF, AND TO BE BAP-
TIZED WITH THE BAPTISM THAT I AM BAPTIZED WITH ? THEY SAY UNTO
HIM, WE ARE ABLE. — Matt. XX. 22.
SUCH is human nature, even in discipleship, that it
was certain that sooner or later the hearts of the
chosen twelve would feel the temptation to human ambi-
tion. True, in the world's eyes, the Leader, whose per-
son and fortunes they followed, was an obscure provincial,
a man of no name or mark or rank, from a lowly family,
a despised Galilean, concerning whose claims to honor
and respectability it was enough to ask the contemptuous
question, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"
To acknowledge him was to lose caste in Jewish society ;
to follow him, so far from quickening any ambitious aspi-
rations, seemed rather the final crucifixion of pride. But
the disciples knew more and better concerning the dig-
nity of "the Nazarene." In their eyes he was an un-
crowned king. The day of his coronation was not dis-
tant. The throne of his father David was his. He
should sit and reign in a state more magnificent than
128 cheist's cup.
Solomon's. Where and what this kingdom was to be
were questions upon which they had vague notions.
Sometimes to their eyes its wide borders swept around
the hills of Canaan, defied and repelled the assaults of
Roman power, and their own Jerusalem was its royal
capital. Sometimes it took on a more celestial beauty
and grandeur, and was a kingdom not of this world ; but
Jesus was its Prince ; that lowly head should wear this
peerless diadem. And what should they be, — they who
walked with this heir of royalty every day, who shared
all his privacy, who companioned him under reproach
and ignominy, whom he called his friends, whom he had
himself elected to be with him and to compose his reti-
nue, who were the only hearts on earth that showed
him kindness and believed in his future ? Would he not
have ,royal gifts for them ? As he rose into these high
places of empire, should they not rise with him? Should
they not be nearest his person, most illustrious in dis-
tinction of all who should then do him homage, be his
councillors and senate, and share his kingliness as they
had shared his lowliness ? And which of them should be
first and foremost in this coming elevation ? Probably
these questions found secret audience in each heart of
this little band, and these visions of greatness floated be-
fore every eye. If there was an exception, it may have
been the heart of him surnamed " Iscariot ! " One strong,
overmastering passion excludes, or at least subordinates,
every other. There are not two monarchs of the heart.
Avarice ruled in the breast of Judas ! Fill his bag for
him, and others might come between him and either side
Christ's cup. 129
of Jesus. He was too covetous to be ambitious in that
direction.
James and John were among the earliest called of all
the disciples and on the same day with the calling of Si-
mon Peter, and Andrew, his brother. They had already
been distinguished by their Master, when he surnamed
them "Sons of thunder." Perhaps, too, they were ad-
mitted all along to special intimacies with Jesus, as Pe-
ter and these two seem to have been selected to be with
Christ whenever he reduced the number of his followers.
It may have been John's place to have reclined next his
Lord at every meal. In the distribution of the honors of
his kingdom, will he not give them pre-eminence? The
time has come for them "to make the request. They are
on their way up to Jerusalem, and Jesus has spoken
plainly of the sufferings and death he shall accomplish.
The two aspirants for chief places need an intercessor,
and their mother willingly undertakes the office. She
leads them near to him, and the three offer him their wor-
ship ; and then the matron signifies that she has some-
thing to ask. " What wilt thou ? " is the gracious encour-
agement,— gracious and encouraging, and yet it gives
her time to pause, if she will, and inquire of her own heart
what it is she craves. But her petition finds instant ut-
terancCi — "Grant that these my two sons may sit, the
one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy
kingdom." With a tender and pitiful look, we may sup-
pose, and a gentle voice, — for so the words seem to read,
— Jesus makes reply, "Ye know not what ye ask. Are
ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and be
baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? "
130
And in this question appears the truth which it will be
profitable for us, I hope, to revolve for a little. We un-
derstand the nature of that kingdom of which Christ is the
head better than did the early disciples. We are not
likely to make it a personal prize to sit on a throne with
our Lord, either at his right hand or at his left ; but it is
a desire with many a Christian heart to come nearer unto
the presence of Christ, to share a closer friendship with
him, to know a more intimate communion, to drink in
more of his spirit, to become more vitally and indissolu-
bly joined to him, and to sit ever like Mary of Bethany
at his feet, and learn of him. And we may. No voice
rebukes this sort of ambition ! There is a way in which
this longing of the heart may be gratified and satisfied.
And this is the doctrine of our Scripture. The price of
personal and pre-eminent nearness to Christ is to drink
of his cup and to be baptized with his baptism. The cup
of Christ and his baptism refer to all his sorrowful and
sufiering experience in the work of human redemption.
This twofold imagery divides that experience, perhaps,
into two parts. Baptism is an outward rite, and touches
us only externally. As a symbol it refers to that which
comes upon us from without, that which the hand of an-
other administers, or which some agency outside of our-
selves' brings in. But that which we drink we taste in-
wardly. Our own hand lifts it to our lips. Its flavor i«
inwardly appreciated ; its bitterness lingers in our
mouth; its fire burns in every vein, and its anguish
courses through our whole system. So in the suflerings
of Christ there was an outward and an inward smart.
Christ's cup. 131
Poverty and weariness and hunger and homelessness and
buffeting and scourging and thorns and nails were his
baptism.
The elements of his cup were mingled of the trials of
his spirit. They were all the burdens he took upon his
soul for man and among men ; all his care, all his com-
passion, all his travail of patience and of grief, his ex-
perience of contradiction, ingratitude, misappreciation,
rejection, and reviling. It was a full cup wrung out to
him. There were strange ingredients in it, such as no
other lips ever tasted, the dreaded bitterness of which
wrung from him the strong plea, "Father, if it be possi-
ble, let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless, not as I will,
but as thou wilt." But in speaking now of our fellowship
in the experience of Christ, we need not be careful to
separate the symbols he employed. We may call that
fellowship a tasting of his cup, or a participation in his
baptism, as our thought shall most naturally take the one
mould or the other. If we are to be near Christ, the first
cup we are to drink with him is the cup of Consecration.
One of his most distinguishing names is, by interpreta-
tion, "The Anointed One." As with holy oil he was
separated and set apart for his work. We may conceive,
for so the Scripture seems to intimate, that there were
glories and functions and administrations belouoino- to
him as the eternal Son of the Father which he laid aside,
that he might be singly devoted to this work. There
were certainly prerogatives and honors and sovereignties
which he waived, that it might appear unto principalities
and powers in heavenly places that he was engaged m
132 chkist's cup.
this one thing, and had accepted all its conditions and limi-
tations. When he comes into the field of human view,
this entireness of consecration asserts itself with most
abounding testimony. There w^as never for any scheme
or object of any creature such a diligence as his. Temp-
tation sought to make him swerve for its splendid bribes, —
"all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,"
but he was steadfast there. Ease and place and fame paid
court to him, but he would not turn aside. Weary nature
and fainting manhood offered their plea, but plead in vain.
His friends and followers interceded with him to persuade
him off from pain and suffering, but he so rebuked this
officiousness that the offence was never repeated. What-
ever voice called him to any side issues, his reply was
unchanging, "Wist ye not that I must be about my
Father's business ? " Every journey undertaken was for
this sole end. Each morning renewed his tasks of teach-
ing and healing, his labors of love, his pilgrimages of
mercy. Far on into the night he bore still upon his
heart the burdens of the day, and when he sends away
his disciples on the sea-shore, and after the sun has gone
down, it is not that he may rest, with no human contact
to quicken or weary any nerve of body or soul, but that
he may enter the shadow of some more straining and
mysterious wrestling. True, the methods of his work
were various. But it was one work. Its details were
not such perhaps as we should have marked out for him.
They sometimes stumbled his disciples. They raised a
doubt in the bold breast of John of the wilderness,
Herod's prisoner. Nothing seemed further from his
cheist's cup. 133
thought than the assumption of any royal state. He was
a travelling physician. He was looking after men's bodily
maladies. He delivered wonderful moral discourses in
parables. He roamed through Galilee and Judea, pro-
nouncing these beautiful lessons for daily life, and open-
ing the doctrines of his coming kingdom wherever he
could find an audience. He was present at social festi-
vals, dined with wealthy Pharisees, and mingled with
marriage guests, but all and everywhere with one intent.
Single-eyed, single-hearted, and in each variety of demon-
stration forwarding his great mission. He drank deep of
this cup of consecration, and offers it now to our lips, as
a bond and seal of union with himself. We are not to be
tithed. All idea of self-ownership and proprietary rights
we are to give up. We are to take the entire inventory
of our personal forces and efiects and lay at his feet. We
may not check off and separate and divide, — this for
Christ, this our own. We are not practically to arrange
that one day in seven shall be set apart for God's service ;
that the evening and the morning of secular days shall be
his ; that the amount pledged on subscription books is
sacredly to be reserved, and the balance is our own per-
sonal revenue from our toil, to be expended as we please,
and plead, if special calls are made upon us for service
and for charity, "I have not time; I cannot spare the
means." In the modelling and mapping out of some
professedly Christian lives, the claims of Christ cover but
a small part of the whole. A little Sunday domain,
rounded off at the corners, is staked out for him ; his
claim notches into the day's beginning ; it touches hazily
12
134 cheist's cup.
the border line of closing day obscured by mists from
dreamland. There is a small mortgage in his favor upon
the homestead, the interest of which only is paid, and
all the rest of the estate is clear for the titled earthly
master. Whenever he can steer clear of these definite
and limited claims, the whole broad range is free to
him, and every fruit that grows there is to sweeten his
own palate and grace his own board. Does this man
taste of the cup of Christ? Perhaps he does. He may
just moisten his lips, but a deep draught he does not take.
Oh, he must reserve nothing. He must write upon
houses and lands, upon body and soul, up6n heart and
life, upon all his pleasant things, " Sacred to Jesus." He
must lie down and rise up a consecrated man, a vassal
set apart to the use of his Lord. He must go to shop
and field and office and study and wareroom and drawing-
room a consecrated man. Is it hard to make over all,
to have nothing left, to be only a steward of time and
money and personal presence and personal power? It
is a great relief from care, for then neither gains nor
losses are ours, and we may lay aside all solicitudes about
harvest seasons, and spring and autumn trade, and the
risks of the sea. Is it a stripping off of earthly authority
and dignity, an abdication of the throne ? Well, this is
the cup. We can drink or we can refrain. But this is
the price of nearness to Christ here and hereafter.
Again it is written of Christ that he pleased not him-
self. A brief and simple phrase, but let one attempt to
appropriate and realize it as descriptive of his own style
of living, what a breadth of sweep, what a w^orld of
CHRIST'S CUP. 135
significance, he will find in it ! A young lady who had
just joined herself to the fellowship of Christian people,
and whose natural tastes and previous culture lay in the
direction of social gayeties and musical entertainments, par-
ticularly of the dramatic order, was in conference with
her pastor as to the restraints to be placed upon these
tastes in future. "You have no one now to please but
Christ," he said to her. "But am I never more, then, to
gratify my love of music and of society?" she asked.
" Never more in ways that Avould displease him, however
exquisite the gratification might be to you," was the reply.
" Am I to have, then, no pleasures in life such as others of
my age enjoy ? Is that which has been the light of life to
me to become darkness ? " " Can you not find your i^leas-
ure, then, in fulfilling the pleasure of Christ? Would you
grieve him to gTatify yourself? Would you not rather
miss from henceforth the taste of every earthly joy to
please him instead ? " " But this makes life so dull and
sombre," came, after a little, her sad and troubled answer.
And then, after another little pause, her frank and ingenu-
ous testimony lighting up her face with a look of joy such
as mirth never wore, "But I would rather please him."
Ah, my child, whoever you are, ready, like our first
mother, to shed " a few natural tears " upon leaving your
earthly paradise, take the cup ; the first taste seems bitter,
but a strange sweetness lingers on the palate. More
grateful every day becomes the draught. The thought,
"Christ's lips were on the brim before it came to mine,"
stirs into it an elixir of life no clusters of the vine ever
yielded. His eyes have looked into it before yours. His
136 Christ's cup.
face was just now imaged there. Drink next to him, and
so come near to him, and be one with him.
And what a sentence is that written of him again, " He
carried our sorrows " ! His own hand offers us again the
same cup, saying, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so
fulfil the law of Christ." We walk in the midst of earthly
wretchedness and distress. We are not to go through
briskly and carelessly, gathering our skirts unto our-
selves, lest they should sweep within the grasp of some
forlorn one and detain us. Here is one in affliction. You
cannot restore his loss, but you can stop and weep with
him. Here is one in want. Have you nothing to divide
with him? I do not speak of your last crust. It is that
which is usually handed out. Can you not share a fresh
loaf? Here is one struggling beneath a weight of care, a
pale watcher, who has not breathed a breath of pure, fresh
air for many a day, a toiling widow with fatherless chil-
dren, a deserted wife, or one worse than deserted, allied
to brutality and shame. Stop and stoop and step under
these burdens for a little, if you may, and let the released
one take a run into freedom and open day, doubly
cheered by the sunshine in the sky and on your kind face.
Here is another struggling with temptation. Ah, the
deep waters are about him ; the waves will go over his
head. Drop all, plunge in, drag him to the solid shore.
All this will keep your hands full, — yes, and your heart
full, and make your quiet home and your pillow so grate-
ful. But you will never suffer from ennui. Time will
never hang heavy on your hands. You will be furnished
with abundant occupation. The last thought of the day
CHRIST'S CUP. 137
coming to your soul, like the blessed balm of sleep to
your eyelids, will be this, "I have wrought all day for
others, dear Master ; I have tried like thee not to seek my
own." There's an opiate in that cup for weary nerves ;
you will sleep well.
Again, the cup of Christ includes misappreciation and
ingratitude, as the return for good done and favors be-
stowed. Do you like that ? We must not count largely
upon human thankfulness when we put ourselves greatly
out for another's advantage. There are not many that
love the yoke of obligation. We keep our friendships
best with those who owe us nothing. A quarrel is a
cheap svay to cancel all claims. We must be prepared to
have our motives suspected, our acts misconstrued, our
good evil spoken of, to receive a wreath of thorns for
coronation, to be counted meddlesome, impertinent, ob-
trusive, and fanatical. The very faithfulness that springs
from deepest love of the heart shall be reckoned unchar-
itableness, and the hand we freight deepest with bounty
shall be the first to smite. Not a pleasant cup this ; the
mixture is acrid and stinging as the waters that lie above
the "cities of the Plain." But Jesus drank this cup.
Around him one day a hundred threatening hands were
armed with missives of death. " Many good works," said
he, with touching point, "have I showed you from my
Father; for which of these works do ye stone me?"
Would you stand with him there? Consent, then, not in
a spirit of romance, not with a morbid, diseased fretful-
ness and suspiciousness, but with cheerful patience, that
those whom you chiefly strive to bless shall wound you
12*
138 Christ's cup.
deepest. Christ gave uucalculating love. He bought
every soul that denies him. The young man who went
sorrowful and disobedient from his presence he loved,
and left it on record that he loved him. He called the trai-
tor Judas "friend," and the kiss of betrayal met a loving
lip. He loved past all the wounding which secret or open
hostility could inflict. It was a patient love. Those dis-
ciples were such dull scholars they needed "line upon
line." "Line upon line " they had ; but every lesson left
them questioning among themselves, and brought out from
them the stupidest comments. "Beware of the leaven of
the Pharisees," he cautions them. "Ah," they say to
one another, " the leaven of the Pharisees ; it is because
we have forgotten to take bread." But he led them on
and up to his meaning with such unwearied patience, he
took them apart and dissected for them his own words
and reduced his wisdom to such simple elements, that
these grown-up babes in spiritual knowledge at length
could say, " Lo, now thou speakest plainly, and speak-
est no proverb." My brother, my sister, is your lov-
ing patience stoutly taxed? Take the strain with silent,
placid lips. What a hubbub of childish mirthfulness or
childish petulance there is sometimes in the home ! How
many distracting questions and instant and urgent calls
are crowded into that chorus ! It all pours in, perhaps,
upon one sustaining heart that needs to be strong. One
has a complaint to lodge, one has a hunger to be ap-
peased, one has a thirst to be quenched, one has a hurt
to heal, one has a pain to soothe, one has a jDerplexity to
solve, one has lost something which must be hunted up,
CHRIST'S CUP. 139
one has parted something which must be bound together,
and one, the most importunate of all, does not know what
he wants. All want a portion, occupation, something to
interest, something to absorb. Yesterday's device is stale
for to-day. The first suggestion is a failure, the second
carries only a minority, the third leaves still a minority.
The east wind is sharp without, or the rain is falling, and
the sky is lowering. And this task, varied beyond all
possible fertility of supposition, was the task of yesterday
as well, and must be taken up again to-morrow. Oh,
parent, guardian, teacher, are you able to drink this cup?
Sometimes the weary nerves and aching head and heart
will plead, "Let this cup pass from me!" Do you end
your prayer there ? There was a " nevertheless " in the
form you are following. Try again. Remember it is the
cup of Jesus. It will seat you at his right hand; it will
make you one with him. He drank of it, and commends
it to you. He does not taste cordials, and bid 3^0 u season
your drink with ashes. His cup, his own, he passes on.
Eaise it to your white, shrinking lips ; take up that
"nevertheless," — "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou
wilt." You look upon breaking fortunes, you look upon
alienated friendships, you look upon withering hopes,
you look upon failing strength, upon the dark shadow of
adversity. Are you able to raise the cup perpetually
"nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt"? A be-
loved one droops ; languidly the gentle eyes seek yours ;
whiter grows the thin cheek; a babe moans in your
arms, and then is still. A stalwart boy goes up into his
chamber and lies down, and comes not forth ao^ain. The
140 cheist's cup.
desolation of widowhood darkens toward your door.
Would you sit with Christ in his kingdom? Will you
have, then, this baptism? Go down with him into swift-
flowing Jordan, the chill of Hermon's snows in its wa-
ters yet. Take his cup, say your grace over it, " Never-
theless, not as I will, but as thou wilt, " and drain it off, and
you will find your Master at your side. His kingdom has
come unto you. He is on your right hand and on your
left; you will never more be alone. That last baptism
of his was under the cold flood of death. There is some-
thinsf written above the Sufferer's crowned head on the
cross beside that which is written in Greek and Latin
and Hebrew. Its letters gleam down the ages, and one
can read them here and now, — " Self-sacrifice, the law of
Christ" — "the law of Christian living." The thorns are
sharp, the nails rend cruelly, flesh pleads off, self-protec-
tion protests ; but the hand of Jesus beckons. The last
taste with Christ is of the vinegar mixed with gall. Oh,
are we able ? Have we been crucified with him unto this
vain world? Do we know always what we ask in our
prayers ? Is it sanctification ? Is it likeness to Christ ?
Is it unworldliness ? Is it poverty of spirit? Oh, but if
God answer any of these requests, it will be by a baptism
as of fire ; it will be by a medicined cup with gall in it.
Do we still pray it? Yes, let us venture, for he can sus-
tain while he disciplines. Behold the law of Christian
advancement ! the way of Christian honor the path to
crowns and thrones. It is a way descending into the val-
ley of humiliation. It stoops to service. Our Saviour
announced it plainly, "Ye know that the princes of the
Christ's cup. 141
Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are
great exercise authority upon them ; but it shall not be
so among you, but whosoever will be great among you
let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief
among you let him be your servant. Even as the Son of
man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and
to give his life a ransom for many." If the path climb, it
climbs as the path of Jesus did on the day of crucifixion
up the slope of Calvary. Let it be our constant prayer,
" Master, take us into thy fellowship and strengthen our
weakness for thy sorrowful but blessed baptism."
IX.
WAITING.
IT IS GOOD THAT A MAN BOTH HOPE AND aUIETLY WAIT TOR THE SALVA-
TION OP THE LORD. — Sam. iii. 26.
THERE are countries where the climate of the year
is divided into "the rainy season" and "the dry."
But the former is not one uninterrupted period of " falling
weather." Here and there, during its continuance, there
are sweet, bright, calm days, with not a cloud on all the
face of the heaven. The voice which I have taken this-
morning out of the old prophetic utterances I found in
the midst of the Lamentations of the weeping prophet.
But it is a cheerful voice. There is no sob of weeping in
it. It was a bright hour amid that rain of tears when this
word was written. And the sunshine lingers in it yet.
We hear in it an echo of that earlier note struck by the
harp of David. " Wait on the Lord, be of good courage,
and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the
Lord."
But this word " wait " is a cold word for most human
hearino-. Even Faith often finds it hard to receive it,
and passionate earthly desire meets it as the challenge of
an enemy. It is a good word for all times and all hearts.
WAITING. 143
It is especially good for us here and now. As a people
we do not find it easy to wait. A chronic fever of impa-
tience is in our land, the universal epidemic. It comes
partly of our stimulating climate, partly of our circum-
stances as pioneers of civilization on a new continent,
partly of the rapidity with which we have seen great for-
tunes built up and golden dreams realized, partly of the
straining competition on every racecourse for every goal,
and partly of the natural ardor of the soul eager to touch
its prize, and enjoy its good without delay. Speak to us
any other word than this. Bid us " run," and we gird up
our loins at once. Bid us " act," and the day shall not be
long enough for our diligence, the season too short for
our harvest. Bid us "dare," and no terror shall make us
blench. But "wait," — that denies all our longings, post-
pones our hopes, removes the feast to which our hunger
hastened, dries up the spring to which our thirst was
stooping. The salient, the energetic qualities of char-
acter are easily cultivated ; the retiring, the passive come
hard. Even with those who believe in God, his govern-
ment, his promises, his faithfulness, his fatherliness, the
virtue of patient waiting is of difficult acquirement.
God is sovereign, wise, good, and true. He will perform
where he has promised; but he is slow, and we chafe
against the deliberate process of his providence. This
fever of impatience burns in all the hearts of our Ameri-
can youth. They fret at all apprenticeship, whether to
letters, mechanic art, or trade. They are in haste to
graduate from all the preparatory stages, and to be
launched at once upon the real, earnest life. They hurry
144 WAITING.
through the ante-chamber to take their place within, with
the jostling crowd struggling for the upper seats. When
fully embarked on the voyage, they are impatient to see
across the breadth of waters the harbor entrance. Blow,
breezes, blow, and waft them over the ocean ridges to the
destined port ! How slow the log runs out ! Give them
a gale rather than a calm. Drive the steam hard, quicken
the paddle-strokes to one continuous rush and roar ; their
eager feet would leap down upon the shores of their
promised land. Our fathers were content to go slow, to
gain by small and sure increments, to "retire" when age
had silvered their heads, and their natural force was
abated, glad and content to touch when almost at life's
far boundary a competency. Not so with their children.
We want to make one leap from the bottom to the top,
forgetting that these large, adventurous leaps may also as
easily reverse the process and carry a man from the top
to the bottom. We want to be rich in a season, to ripen
and reap our golden harvest, as Nature does hers, in a sin-
gle summer. We want something left of our youth, and
all our manhood at least, for enjoyment. We want to lay
hold of our purses, not with the trembling hand of age,
but with the firm grasp of a strength not yet on the even-
ino- side of noon. Give us the morning for toil, if it
must be so, but give us a long, bright afternoon, with no
unfinished task. Let us earn with sharp diligence and
large profits while the hours are fresh and dewy, climbing
with braced limbs while the sun climbs. Then from the
splendid meridian, in a chariot like his own, gliding eas-
ily down the long cloudless decline toward the pensive
WAITING. 145
shadow of the distant twilight. And this is not merely
the fever of youth, the ardor of young men, the impetu-
osity of business adventure. It is found in every walk of
life. It is the restless haven of every heart's desire. It
waits upon every human scheme. It is in the strife of
opinions, in the clashing systems of moral reform, in the
growth of spiritual character and religious institutions.
The progress of mechanical improvements seems to have
infected every enterprise and hope of the heart of man.
We travel in a day as far as our fathers did in a fortnight.
It seems but fair, then, that there should be the same ratio
in making our fortunes and winning our purposes. What
took fourteen years then should take but one now. Nay,
this is rather too deliberate. If there were any way of
travelling by telegraph, we should most of us take the
" lightning train." It chafes us that thought and spirit
can fly so swiftly, and our gross bodies must lag so far
behind. We shall never be satisfied till Ave harness elec-
tricity to our travelling-car, and take the risk of breath-
ing on the trip. These advances of practical science in
locomotion, the transmission of intelligence, and in almost
every department of human progress, have made all old
methods of living seem intolerably slow. Our veins are
inoculated with mercury. Our whole system of life and
labor is impregnated with a restlessness that can never
fold its arms and be still. Of course it would be an utter-
ly vain, as an unwise and uncalled-for, attempt to seek to
arrest this ever accelerated tide of human progress. But
the spirit which it engenders in the human heart, and its
relations to morals and character, present matters of
13
146 WAITING.
gravest coDsideration. This impatience betrays many a
soul into crime. It is greedy of its ends. It seeks to
reach them by swift, sudden courses. It would take the
shortest cuts. Those which seem the shortest are often
crossed by certain opposing barriers. There are laws of
honor and rectitude, there are laws of the land, there are
laws of God, that lift themselves against the impetuous
desire. There is a terrible temptation to find a way over
instead of taking the longer and slower way round.
Surmount these hindrances, and the goal is so near.
Turn out for them, and the circuit is so weary and slow.
Here is a premium upon transgression. A formidable
rival may be removed or circumvented by a scheme that
involves the sacrifice of magnanimity, the dishonor of
some mean and dirty intrigue. Oh, would he were out
of the way ! How clear the track would be ! Take care.
If you consent, there goes the best of your nobility and
your manhood. You will have come out ahead of your
rival and — your honor. A false oath, — not so bad as
that, — a piece of misrepresentation, a little stretching of
what some men find to be the elasticity of the truth, and
a grand success is possible. A triumph with stained
hands, soiled garments, and the prostrate form of truth
trodden under feet. Avaricious impatience does not
mind the stains. They can be gilded over, covered up
by ^nd by with gold leaf. A little trenching on the Sab-
bath will round up a fruitful trip. An ungenerous advan-
tage taken of superior intelligence and superior opportu-
nity over a weaker brother, a forgetfulness in trade of the
law we respect in moral codes, — loving our neighbor as
WAITING. 147
ourselves, — will materially swell the aggregates of our
profits, give us perhaps for a season or for 3^ears the con-
trol of the market. How can we postpone such an
advance for our scruple's sake ? Labor itself is a burden ;
the rewards of honest industry are often small; these
steady, trifling gains will take years to foot up anything
respectable, that will allow us to lay down our tasks and
indulge our tastes. There is money enough with rich
houses, in well-filled purses, in the vaults of banks. An-
other's name well simulated ; a demand, with face and
voice disguised, upon a belated traveller; a midnight
operation upon the silver closet of a millionnaire, or the
interior securities of, or the trustful day defenders of, the
bank ; or a midday operation, striking fraudulent contracts,
or giving fictitious value to valueless stocks, and sudden
riches and gratifications would reward this single, bold
stroke. It is because desire cannot wait, because appetite
is clamorous for instant indulgence, because the eager
hands would clutch at once the coveted good, that crime,
stepping in with its confident but delusive promise, flings
its fetters over the soul. Again, this impatience of our
hearts impugns the fiiithfuluess of the divine Promiser.
In respect to all earthly good, the sacred pledge of God is
written in the ancient covenant, in the world's renewal of
its youth, that "seed-time and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter . . . shall not cease." The spirit
of this promise repeats itself in many a gracious assur-
ance concerning the great Father's care for the comforts
and needs of the body, and our portion of natural good.
But in some season of special trial the early and the latter
148 WAITING.
rain fail us, the heavens are brass overhead, the earth
powder beneath, the green blade pales to a sickly yellow.
How shall we be fed ? How will the garners of autumn
be filled ? The very necessaries of life seem to recede
beyond our reach ; prices mount on an ascending scale,
speedily distancing slow climbing labor and its rewards.
The implements with which we wrought are taken from
us, and our hands left empty. The field of toil, for which
alone we have training and skill, is thronged to repletion,
and we are left out. It is deserted of all men, and we are
left in it idle and alone, no man hiring us. Each turn we
make reduces our strength and disappoints our hope.
Inevitable want corners us, and no door of deliverance
opens. For us all the divine promises seem repealed and
forgotten. Is it not time for some daring, desperate, ex-
pedient ? It is very well to hope if a man can see any
light ahead, and " quietly wait " for salvation, if there is
any coming. It may be written ever so fairly, " Trust in
the Lord and do good ; so shalt thou dwell in the land,
and verily thou shalt be fed." But a promise wont spread
a table, or light a fire, or weave a piece of cotton, or
make up a garment, or pay a note, or satisfy the grocer
on the corner. We must look out for ourselves lawfully
or lawlessly. Necessity knows no law. Then is God for-
getful or faithless? Nay. All the while he is workiug
unseen and silently. Behind the curtain his hand is busy.
From afar converging lines are bringing up relief. Sepa-
rate forces will unite at the point intended. That point
will be perhaps man's utmost extremity. But at that point
hopeless destitution and the divine fulness will meet.
WAITING. 149
You remember how, in last autumn's campaign, upon All-
toona's thinly-defended works, in Sherman's line of com-
munication, moved a whole division of the rebel host.
One of Sherman's resolute leaders, by hard marching,
flung himself behind those works. The greatly outnum-
bering assailants demanded a surrender to spare the
effusion of blood. The Union commander was willino-
to meet the effusion of blood, and the storm broke upon
him with devouring fury. Seven hours it raged and
seven times his own numbers pushed the fierce assault.
Single-handed he fought it out. Where were the tens of
thousands of his comrades ? Was he left to his fate ? So
it seemed. Why, then, maintain against such odds the
unequal strife ? Why not yield while there was anything
left to save? Ah, he was there to fulfil a sacred trust.
And nobly did he discharge it, till unexpected victory
came at last, and the baffled enemy retired. Was he left
to his fate? Sherman's eye, from the top of Look-out
Mountain, was on evfery white puff that surged up from
those well-served batteries. The strong columns of the
army, under laurelled generals, were moving on through
all those hours and closing in, and well-nigh encompass-
ing the rebel bands. The whole loyal host was engaged
in bringing succor to that brave company in the belea-
guered town, though they knew it not. So watches and
works the all-beholding, faithful God, preparing the fulfil-
ment of his pledges when our hearts are ready to fiiint.
Let us be rebuked. Wait, in whatever extremity, and we
shall see that " God is not slack concerning his promises
as some men count slackness." Again our impatience
13*
150 WAITING.
outruns the divine Providence. God covenants with be-
lieving Abraham that in his seed shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed. But Abraham is an hundred
years old, Sarah is ninety, the promised heir is not,
and Eliezer of Damascus stands gaping and ready for
the inheritance. It is vain waiting longer; Abraham
must help Providence. So he allied himself with the
Egyptian bondwoman, bringing sore trouble and sharp
discord into his house, and embittering his age with
domestic feuds. And at last how simple and easy to
almighty power the redemption of his pledge ! how all-
sufficient the sovereign providence ! It was revealed to
Rebecca, even before she looked upon the faces of her
twin boys, that the elder should serve the younger. But
dim-eyed, gray-haired Isaac is on his death-bed, and still
Esau holds the birthright. Wait, oh, impatient mother,
God's word will not fail. But she cannot wait. She
must help God by a lie and a crime, and so she puts up
Jacob to that act of cruel deception, that almost broke
that aged heart, exiled Jacob for many long years from
his home, sowed bitter hatred between the brothers, and
brought upon the younger a keen reprisal when his own
head was bowed with the snows of life's winter. This
is the great temptation with an impatient spirit to outrun
Providence, to set up its own devices in the place of
Providence, and so defeat the nearest methods of God's
chosen plans.
Again this spirit of impatience misses in its haste the
hio-her good. Samuel, the prophet, anointed Saul king
over Israel, and sent him before him to Gilgal, bidding him
WAITING. 151
wait seven days till he himself should come and offer up
the sacrifices. Seven days Saul waited, but the Philistines
were mustering strong at Micmash, the men of Israel were
falling away from the king, battle was imminent, and
the sacrifice yet postponed. The seventh day is nearly
spent ; the host of the uucircumcised approaches. Samuel
will not come, and the rash, impatient king himself offers
the sacrifice. He has gained this preparation for the bat-
tle, and stayed perhaps the desertion of his people. But
what has he lost ? Scarce has he ended the rites before
the prophet comes, and announces that, for that act of
public disobedience, God had rejected Saul from the
kingdom. Obedience is better than all which disobedient
haste can hope to secure. Strength of character is better,
patience is better, calm submission is better, heroic en-
deavor is better, the steadfast passive virtues, born of
trial and made tough and abiding under the strain of
some wearing delay. How often in trouble we are blind
to this truth ! Oh, give us relief! Take off the burden !
Relax the tension upon nerve and spirit ! Give us an
antidote for the pain ! Come, Lord, ere our brother die !
Ah, sisters of Lazarus, let the Saviour linger. Two days
he abode still in the same place where he was. It seemed
indifference, cruelty, anything but love. But the mar-
vellous experience of the next four days, those precious,
precious tears of Jesus, the grand and gracious miracle
that stirred all Jerusalem from centre to circumference,
were well worth waiting for. Bear his absence a little
longer. Oh, tired and troubled spirit, the larger shall be
your deliverance, the sweeter your joy.
152 WAITING.
Over the delays of our personal sanctification we are
sometimes weary of waiting, impatient of our slow prog-
ress. It seems to us fitting that we should be. So
many weak sides, so many vulnerable points, so many
redoubtable and unhumbled foes, such frequent falls, such
shameful defeats. Oh, shall we ever grow strong and
have the mastery of our spiritual enemies? Yes, by suc-
cessive conflicts ; wait till the appointed hour brings them
on ; by oft-repeated trials they will rise upon us one after
another, by God's wise methods and seasons of spiritual
nurture. Let him introduce them, each in his time, and
we shall wear at last the victor's crown, and sing his
song.
We are impatient often in our own sphere of Christian
labor, that the gospel seems so powerless. There are so
many yet resisting souls that we long to see brought in as
the trophies of its conquering efficacy. Look how they
stand up in the midst of us, — men, more than we count,
on whom the truth has broken many a lance without ever
piercing their shield. Oh, for more frequent appeals for
a sharper weaponry out of the sacred arsenal, for more
puissant hands to wield it, for new modes of attack and
new secrets of overcoming. "Wait," said Jesus, to the
assembled disciples, ready to storm Jerusalem and sweep
over Lidia, "tarry in the city, wait for the promise of
the Father which . . . ye have heard of me." And they
waited, and with a sound "as of a rushing mighty wind,"
though all the air was still, and no leaf stirred on Olivet,
came the descending spirit, and then each flame-crowned
apostle went forth clothed with might and with salvation.
WAITING. 153
Let us wait as they waited, — wait in faith, wait in prayer,
wait in submission, wait in confident expectation, hope-
fully, quietly, with zeal and labor like Paul's, with cour-
age like Daniel, and we shall see in every field of hoping
and of toiling the salvation of the Lord.
Difficult but precious lesson, — the lesson of patient
waiting, of cheerful content under divine delays, of joyful
assurance, though the desire of our heart and the God of
our promises do linger long.
X.
INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE.
AND THE LORD SAID UNTO HIM, THIS IS THE LAND WHICH I SWEAR UNTO
ABRAHAM, UNTO ISAAC, AND UNTO JACOB, SAYING I WILL GIVE IT UNTO
THY SEED : I HAVE CAUSED THEE TO SEE IT WITH THINE EYES, BUT THOU
SHALT NOT GO OVER THITHER. — - DCUt. XXXiv. 4.
AS we move onward in the journey of human life, there
are many reminders by the way of the coming end.
The sickness that lays us up for a while in the midst of
our vigorous days, the decline of each setting sun, the
death of summer verdure and the autumnal fall of the
leaves, the lapse of the year, the passing of each of our
life's four seasons, the dropping from our side of the com-
panions of our way, — each of these is intended, and usu-
ally serves, to turn our thoughts forward to the final
arrest of our steps, the mortal sickness one day to seize
us, the going down of our last earthly sun, the winter of
our year. There is nothing unkind in sending us such
reminders. We need them. And they are given in
faithfulness and mercy.
And one of the impressions most vividly produced
upon us at such seasons is of the disappointing incom-
pleteness of our life on earth. The fever comes in the
incojvipleteness of life. 155
midst of our plans and toils, the closing day reproaches
us for many a brave purpose of the morning unfulfilled,
and the waning year cuts short the schemes which we had
hoped to see rounded with full success. This impression
is probably present on every heart as we stand here to-
gether on this shore of the last Sabbath of the year and
see its months, like waves broken and spent, all behind
us. How much that we meant to have effected before we
were called to stand by the pillow of the dying year is
still unachieved ! What good that we hoped to have at-
tained to is yet in the future ! What dear desire eagerly
followed is yet unpossessed ! And as it is to-day, so it
will be at the last. Each human life, longer or shorter,
wherever it pauses, and however it be protracted, will be
visited at its close with the sense of disappointment and
incompleteness. If Moses had been told, Avhen he led
out the tribes from Egypt, that he should never lead
them into the promised land ; that he should march at
their head forty years in the wilderness, but should never
cross the Jordan with them ; that he should come in sio-ht
of their goodly inheritance, but should never set foot in it,
never taste of the milk and honey, never sit under the
shadow of its fruitful vines, it would have been so sad
and depressing a sentence that faith and resignation could
hardly have struggled against it. There was always be-
fore his eye and his hope the vision of that great triumph
when he should stand at the head of a redeemed nation
on those sacred hills of promise, and be permitted to lift
up with his own hand the banner of the holy people
higher than all the ensigns of earthly royalty. But it was
156 INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE.
never to be. He was to come near it, but short of it.
It was to be almost within grasp, but not touched. One
only narrow stream of all that had separated him from
this prize still flowed between ; across it and far beyond
he could see with his eyes, but he was never to go over
with his feet. There he stood on the* very border, the
gate ready to open, the goal before him, when God said
to him tenderly, but firmly, " Come up into this mountain
and die ! " It was a trying word to Moses, and for one
moment he plead against it. "O Lord God, thou hast
begun to show thy servant thy greatness and thy mighty
hand. I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land
that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain and Leba-
non ! " And then came the final word, fatherly but sov-
ereign also, "Let it suffice thee ; speak no more unto me
of this matter." There followed indeed the glorious com-
pensative vision from that salient summit of the Moab
range, but the work and the hope of a life seemed to miss
of their crown. Touching illustration of that incomplete-
ness attending every human career in this world, upon
which we may briefly meditate as we are held awhile in
the grasp of this old year so near its end.
There is more than one sense, to be sure, in which
the briefest and most fragmentary life may be considered
filled out to utmost completeness. As to God's provi-
dential purpose in it, it is as long and as productive as it
was meant to be. Just as it is, it fits accurately into the
ever-developing divine plan ; no more and no less was ex-
pected from it. It is complete as a link between the gen-
erations of men and the stages of human progress. It
IiSC031PLETENESS OF LIFE. 157
takes the living torch from the hand of its predecessor
and passes it over to the hand of its successor. Then its
function is ended, and it may cease to be.
It is often complete in the balance of its own propor-
tioned seasons. It sports in the sunny hours of child-
hood. It drinks in the fervid inspiration of youth. It
shares the consciousness of manhood's strength. It wears
the white and honorable crown of age. It is a full life
year. It has had a spring, a summer, an autumn, a win-
ter, treading the full round of all the circling months.
There is sometimes, too, whatever the heart has longed
for, not yet attained, — there is sometimes, let us thank
God, a full-orbed sense of satisfaction with our work and
the length of our working day. A dying patriot and
statesman could say as he filtered in the midst of the toil
which, gray-haired and bowed with years, he still main-
tained, " This is the last of earth ; I am content." And
another gray-haired laborer on whom the hand of power
was laid with despotic violence could write it as his
peaceful testimony, " I am now ready to be offered, and
the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a
good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith."
Still how much that this same heroic veteran hadho^Ded
to secure of the victories of the truth must have rested
upon his mind as visions, upon whose fulfilment he might
look down from another world, but was never to see in
this!
This incompleteness will come into clearer recognition
if we consider how little a human life accomplishes in
14
158 INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE.
comparison with the plans of God. Those divine plans
are large. They reach from age to age, from generation
to generation, "from everlasting to everlasting." They
cover the beginning, the progress, the final periods of all
human history. They take up, employ, and dismiss suc-
cessive workers, while yet some miner detail only is
wrought out, and the vast integral scheme is scarcely at
all set forward. A single task may fill and weary the
hands of one laborer and another and another before it is
concluded, and in its completion seem only a trivial con-
tribution to the general progress. Measured by the co-
lossal, slow -moving system of God's providence, the
turning of this vast wheel that rolls on the designs of
the ail- wise Mind, — a wheel so high, so broad, that,
though always moving, its motion, like the growth of the
seasons or the procession of the constellations, is imper-
ceptible to our eye, — how brief, how fragmentary, how
evanescent is the little life and work of man ! God will
call him out of the families of earth a peculiar people.
Who shall have the founding and building of this elect
nation? How much shall any one chosen instrument ac-
complish in the piling of this slow-rising architecture?
Abraham hears the voice of God on the plain of Mamre,
and moves out to begin the work. He dies, and Isaac's
hand catches the slackened thread of progress. Jacob
goes over Jordan with his staff only, and comes back a
double band. Joseph disappears beneath the dark portal
of an Egyptian prison, and reappears in the second char-
iot of royalty. The babe of the Nile turns his back on
the court, choosing rather to suffer afiiiction with the peo-
INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE. 159
pie of God. Joshua inherits the captaincy of the tribes
after him. Warriors, judges, and kings in long succes-
sion follow on. Jerusalem itself sinks under sorrowful
judgments ; the abomination of desolation stands in the
holy place, and from the loins of David's line comes forth
a later and a mightier Leader to conduct the lingering
but sure march of the Church unto that triumphal hour,
when " the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of
the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to
the people of the saints of the Most High." But what
hero of the leadership, whose truncheon so many hands
have borne for a while, can say concerning this imperial
conquest, " Behold what I have wrought"? How small a
space in such vast reaches of progress does the span of a
single life cover! How broken and fragmentary, com-
pared with this sublime whole, must that life appear to
itself and the great Supreme One ! We rise up and
deliver a stroke or two, and then sink faint and over-
borne almost at the point where our toil commenced. It
is to compare great things with small, as though all the
tillers of earth had it in charge to makes its rough places
smooth, and to convert its deserts into gardens of bloom
and fruit. But the most that each can do is to bring a
single field into culture, and, having sown his first har-
vest, which another shall reap, the night cometh and his
work is ended. How insignificant the plat which has
compassed his utmost of diligence, as compared with the
broad continents and the boundless Saharas yet to be sub-
dued ! How incomplete the earthly life as judged by the
all-comprehending plans of God ! We had thought, in
160 INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE.
our clay, to help forward the kingdom of truth, to sup-
plant wickedness on the earth with righteousness, to carry
the light of salvation out over the dark seas and unto the
dark isles, and to help Jesus to his throne, and see him
begin to reign ere our eyelids should droop in the final
sleep ; but the evening twilight has descended, and our
lips can do little more than repeat the old challenge of
our enemies, " Where is the promise of his coming? For
since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they
were." What incompleteness in such living ! What a
fragment is such a being ! AYhat an humbling conscious-
ness must possess it at last of the unattained, now forever
beyond it1
So it will be also, not merely in reference to God's
plans, but in reference to our own private schemes, of
working, whether for earthly fruits or spiritual. You
shall hear some aged patriarch say, as he walks feebly
forth into the sun from his cottage-door, and gazes upon the
acres over which his hand has guided the plough for half a
century, " I always meant to have blasted out that ledge
of rock, to have levelled that ridge, to have drained that
swamp. It has been my purpose for years to have cleared
that boggy and stony pasture field for tillage and meadow.
I have often thought of opening a vista through that for-
est growth ; of sinking that steep ascent in my carriage-
path, by a cut to the heart of that knoll, into an easier
grade ; of digging a well in that upland range for my
herds ; of breaking that abrupt slope on one side of my
lawn into terraces ; of detaching my barn from my house,
and adding to the mansion a wing for more capacious
INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE. 161
domestic accommodation ; but I have never seen just the
time when I could enter upon these improvements, and I
am too old now. My sons after me may perhaps effect
some of them ; but I shall never undertake them." And
he turns back to his easy-chair with a sigh over his inter-
rupted work. Age and infirmity caught him before his
dreams were realized. The end is near, and what remains
undone must, so far as he is concerned, remain undone
forever. He has seen it with his eyes, but he has reached
a bound over which he may not go to possess it. And
where these hopes and plans have reference to spiritual
interests, the experience is the same. We had hoped to
have seen some one puissant enemy of the truth subdued,
and to have had a hand in the triumph ; to have secured
the evangelization of certain spiritual wastes alwa3^s ap-
pealing specially to our heart ; to have witnessed the
growth and establishment of some Christian enterprise,
whose foundations we had hoped to lay ; to have rejoiced
over the conversion of some dear friend and neighbor ; to
have had a jubilee in the home over some lost one found,
some wanderer returned to his father's house and his
father's God. But we have gone as far in our instrumen-
tality for these precious ends as we are permitted to go.
The end is near. Our words are feeble. A few more
prayers, and we must lay our burdens down and rest,
where nothing shall disturb or gladden us any more.
These unfinished holy endeavors, we behold their con-
summation in vision, but we are not to touch them with
living hands. So also there is personal good, long-covet-
ed privileges, we hoped to have enjoj^ed, but the taste of
14*
162 INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE.
which is never to sweeten our mouths, that valley stream
of Jordan meeting our feet sooner than we had thought.
What the failure will be none of us now can say ; but we
may be sure our life will be incomplete in respect to some
of these crowning expectations. Hope always outstrips
pursuit, and " Hope springs eternal in the human breast."
Some hope will reach across the river, and the swift cur-
rent will forbid our crossing over. We had hoped to have
carried our children through their process of education,
or to have seen them settled in their calling and winning
good successes, or to have sat beneath the new-sprung
roof of their home life, to have taken their children into
our arms and read the future of our lineage in their young
eyes. We had hoped to have cleared off certain incum-
brances from our earthly estate, and to have accumulated
a certain definite sum as our competence for age and an
inheritance for our sons and daughters. We had hoped
to have seen certain great aggressive movements in the
redemption of man from the bondage of prejudice, appe-
tite, and vicious habit prevalent, before our eyes should
close ; the true meaning of Christ's gospel settled and ac-
cepted by all professed believers ; the salvation of be-
nighted parts of our land coming forth out of Zion ; the
final overcoming of our own spiritual enemies ; the full
conquest of evil passions in our heart ; the peaceful set-
tlement of some long perplexing, practical question of
our personal religious life ; our full conformity to the
imao-e and will of Jesus. But when we stand there on
the bank of the river, we shall assuredly see some of
these hopes beyond us. Pursuit will stop at the water's
INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE. 163
edge. Possession will mock us from the farther shore.
There will be some good our hearts have intensely craved,
our hands wrought for diligently, our feet hastened after
far and wearil}^ which we shall see only with our eyes,
and, seeing thus, know that it is not to crown our earthly
lot, and confess in this baffled search, this postponed de-
sire, the incompleteness of this mortal life.
And if we ask now for the lessons and the uses of this
sense of incompleteness, how obvious it is that it is meant
to impress us with the conviction of God's all-sufficiency.
He does not lean so heavily upon his human helpers that,
when they fail him, his Avork pauses and his plans are ar-
rested. He does not build so confidently on these frail
pillars that, when they crumble beneath the load, the
fabric of his great scheme of Providence totters. His
stoutest champions, his foremost agents, the leaders of
movements that carry in them most of the conditions of
human progress, and the richest promise of human wel-
fare, may vacate their trust and lie down in silence and
darkness, but the divine counsels and the divine resources
suffer no bereavenient. Men ask. How can such great
losses be made up, and who is worthy to succeed to such
honors laid down? But God is not disturbed. His plans
•are not hindered. He can call whom he will to the vacant
posts. He has his successors already in view, iu train-
ing, and under appointment. His own all-sufficiency im-
presses itself upon us through this, his independence of
short-lived, frail, and fainting human workers.
In the same view his sovereignty appears more august
and kingly. It is his hand that fixes the limits of this
164 INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE.
fragmentary human life. He has appointed to each man
his bounds, which he cannot pass. He breaks in upon our
plans, our vitality, our strength, and decrees the arrest
of all our hopes and labors. He does it in ways so varied,
so unexpected, so startling, so discriminating, as to leave
the impression on men's hearts that there is a supreme
Disposer on the throne, who takes counsel of himself in
such arbitration, and acts his wise and sovereign pleasure.
Another use of this dispensation is to quicken our dili-
o-ence. Oh, all the voices of the frailty and brevity of
life bid men be up and doing. The morning and the
evening, the evening and the morning, in their quick suc-
cession, the rapid flight of the seasons, the swift tread
of the years, the lapse of fleetness and vigor in the human
frame, the changing shadows as our sun crosses the me-
ridian, — all unite in this salutation with every dawn, re-
peating it with each stroke of the hours, "Work while
the day lasts, for the night cometh in which no man can
work ! " Some tasks are sure to be crowded out of
life, some labors commenced to be left unfinished. Then
" what thou doest, do quickly ! "
And again the lesson is that, while redoubling our dili-
gence, we moderate our expectations. We are sowing for
magnificent harvests. We are toiling for splendid suc-
cesses. We are investing for richest returns. We are
climbing toward loftiest and most radiant summits. For
all our present hardship and rigor, there shall be a gol-
den future, and in the light of it, as it rises above the far
horizon and advances to meet us, our eyes glisten and
our step is more buoyant. Ah, how many have gone for-
INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE. 165
ward, their feet sandalled with such hopes, and stepping
as though they trod on air, who found that the river in-
tercepted their path before they reached the goal ; that
their confident expectation was only a view from Pisgah's
top ; that fruition lay beyond the stream, and their feet
touched those cold waters while yet their hands were
empty. Be moderate in desire and expectation. Tone
down this brilliance and eagerness of life's hopes, so shall
life's disappointing incompleteness be less bitter to our
spirit when the cup is raised to our lips. There is a pe-
culiar chastening for age in this arrangement of Provi-
dence. Age is the harvest time for which we have sowed,
and in which we expect to rest with our sheaves thick
around us. But how often does age stand b}^ its empty
granaries with no field on all its estate yet to reap. The
land of promise toward which it travelled so long is be-
yond it still. Instead of sitting beneath its vines and
tasting the grapes of Eshcol, it is sitting on the bank of
the river somewhat desolate and alone, waiting rather
than enjoying. We wonder often why good men, whose
years have been given to works of beneficence and piety,
should have such sharp discipline in age, — the loss of
health, the loss of property, the loss of those on whom
they expected to lean, the grief that comes from looking
upon the sorrow or the shame of some whom they love
and being powerless to help them. Ah, they were not
quite weaned from earth, not fully ripe for heaven !
These last touches of a gracious discipline are for their
final perfecting, — the mellowing of the fruit before angel
hands gather it. And under this earthly completeness.
166 INCOMPLETENESS OF LIFE.
our eyes look forward and upward for what is denied us
here. We shall not indeed go over this Jordan of disap-
pointment and inherit on the other side ; but there is an-
other Jordan which we shall cross. We shall not have
our home in the earthly Canaan, nor tread its vine-clad
hills; but we shall enter that celestial land of promise,
and sit on those serene heights where angels cluster, and
on which shines the light of God. We may not inherit
fully here ; we may advance only into the cold shadows
of poverty and neglect, as we go forward leaning on our
staff; but there, as heirs of God and joint heirs with
Christ, a full and satisfying inheritance will crown and
gladden every desire, and all earthly disappointment be
swallowed up in eternal satisfaction. This lifts the peo-
ple of God out of all the sadness that settles on life's
shattered hopes. On this mount of faith their feet can
stand as on Pisgah's top, and all the glory of the goodly
land appear before them, and loftier and whiter than
the snowy crown of Lebanon the dazzling mount of the
throne of God, and no voice of stern interdict pronounces
the decree, " Thou shalt not go over thither," but a wel-
come of soft music calls to them, " Come, ye blessed of
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world."
XI.
JOHN'S FAILURE.
AND HE SENT AND BEHEADED JOHN IN THE PRISON. — Matt. xiv. 10.
WHEN the angel Gabriel announced to the aged Zach-
arias that his old age should be no longer childless,
the announcement carried with it this assurance concern-
ing the unborn babe, "Thou shalt have joy and gladness,
and many shall rejoice at his birth, for he shall be great
in the sight of the Lord." And when that more illustrious
prophet heralded by the son of Zacharias had commenced
his public work, he bore his witness to the dignity of his
messenger and forerunner, — "Verily, I say unto you,
Among them that are born of women, there hath not
arisen a greater than John the Baptist." But how brief
was the earthly career of that greatness ! How suddenly
it paused ! In what obscurity it went down and went
out ! It seemed to end, too, in failure, — a failure all the
more disastrous and reproachful (perhaps in our eyes)
because it would appear to have been met off the track
of the preacher's legitimate calling, and might so easily,
with a little care and prudence, have been avoided. " See
what comes," we say, "of his interference with the morals
168 John's failure.
of sovereignty and power. He was not court chaplain.
He was not the keeper of the conscience of Herod. He
was not sent to regulate the domestic relations of the
Tetrarch. He had one message to deliver, one cry to lift
up. He Avas a herald running before the coming of Zion's
King to proclaim, " Eepent, for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand," "prepare ye the way of the Lord." If he had
confined himself to that, kept within his sphere, preached
that doctrine of repentance and wrath to come, and the
near advent of one mightier than ho, he might have
escaped the prison and the axe. "Possibly." And what
effect had his rash and obtrusive protest upon those im-
plicated in the evil? It kindled a revengeful and remorse-
less hate in a woman's heart. It drew into sympathy
and fellowship with her in a new crime the heart of her
daughter. It led the guilty Herod, not to repentance and
reformation, but to a deeper and more tragic guilt. It
must have held up the name of the chief magistrate to
obloquy and odium, and brought a scandal upon the ruler
of the people. It set the example of disrespect to digni-
ties, and tended to insubordination in the subject. It
ended in the silencing of a voice to whose stirring words
thousands had listened, and the sacrifice of a life that
mi«"ht yet have gathered unnumbered trophies of its ear-
nestness and fidelity. "Yes, all that." He had a field of
labor. It was broad and unoccupied. No man disputed
his precedence in it. His sway there was without a rival.
There was no narrowness in its limits to make him feel
shut in and straitened. Up and down the Jordan valley,
across the length and the breadth of the Judean wilder-
169
ness, he could range at his pleasure. He was bishop
there of all the desert, and he was fitted for his place.
He was at home in the desert life. His lungs played
freely in its congenial air. He had taken upon him, in
body and soul, the rude, stern, grand type of its nurture.
He coveted no purple robe. The locust of grassy valleys
w^as to him instead of fowl and fatling, and the wild
honey was sweet to his taste. He could dispense with
the home, the city, and social life. Night in the wild was
his pavilion, and the stars above the river his companions.
Brave, bold, rugged, strong, and young, he was the man
for this missionary work. He had gained a hearing too.
He spoke not to the echoes of the Moab mountains.
Jerusalem and all the region round about had heard of
him and gone out to him. He had touched the popular
heart. He struck, and every chord vibrated. And it was
not mere curiosity or sentimental interest that he excited.
He roused the conscience. He alarmed the fears. He
won his hearers. They forsook their sins. They came
to his feet broken-hearted penitents, and were baptized of
him in Jordan unto a new life. There was no flao-oino- of
this power over them. He was in the full-tide of this
popular movement on the crest of the wave. And if this
field had suddenly become barren, and yielded no longer
any harvest, he might still have pushed forward in the
van of that conquering kingdom, uttering to new people
and tribes the word, " It is at hand," and pointing over
his shoulder to the shadow of one whose shoes' latchet he
was not worthy to unloose.
All this opening for a life of usefulness, this splendid
15
170 JOHN'S FAILUKE.
harvest which he had begun to reap, he staked and lost
on one adventurous throw. He must needs intermeddle
with matters of state. He must go up from the Jordan
to Jerusalem to rebuke wickedness in high places. He
must beard the lion in his den, adulterous Herod in the
very insolence of secure crime and unlorded power. In
this he failed, by this one step he lost all. Was it a mis-
take and an error? Did he lose all? Was the life of
John in this turn of it and sacrifice of it a faihu'e?
That is my question. We cannot so conclude because he
died early and by a death of violence. Then are the
death of youthful patriots who fall in victorious battle a
mistake and a failure. Then were the death of martyrs
at the stake and in the amphitheatre a waste of generous
blood. Then were the sacrifice of Christ himself what
it seemed to his murderers, the defeat of his work and
the final triumph of his enemies. No. Death itself is
often the noblest victory. We may give much for a good
cause, and keep back life. We may give toil and prayer
and gold, and testify thus our sense of the soundness of
its claims. But when we throw in this final contribution,
when it is seen that we count life itself cheap before the
preciousness of some holier and worthier thing, that is a
testimony that silences all gainsaying. It is not certain,
then, that life given in sacrifice is thrown away, goes out
in waste and failure. John was true to his convictions.
At once we side with those convictions. We are sure
that he was in the right. Our hearts front the tyrant
who had inaugurated adultery as the morality of the court
and echo the calm, steady utterance of those unfaltering
John's failure. 171
lips, — "It is not lawful for thee to have her." It is a
great and rare thing for a life to be true to its conscien-
tious judgments, to swerve from them neither from fear
nor favor, to refuse to be bribed or awed into dishonest
silence, to act and speak as the free soul, the untram-
melled thought impels, to keep that soul free, and that
thought without a shackle, and carry the sustaining con-
sciousness that the outward and the inward correspond.
This noble assertion of moral liberty may bring the body
into chains. Is it better, then, to wear the fetters within,
to have no shackles on the limbs, to boast, "I am at
large," while the spirit is imprisoned in its own cowardice,
and thought and speech are in the ignominious chains of
falsehood? Which is success, and which is failure, — to
sit within dungeon walls a true man, or to stifle the moral
sense in a deeper darkness and ride in a chariot? The
man who abides by the right, who confesses it with heart
and life and lip, who moulds to these inward facts of his
moral convictions the outward shaping of his way, who
keeps life true to this inward light, who will have it, and
who makes it at any cost correspond with what God has
given him to know and believe and feel, has gloriously
succeeded, whether he be canonized living as a saint, or
be broken on the wheel. By this test the life of John
was no failure. He kept his truth. He brought his con-
victions into the incarnation of action. A fire burned
within his bones, — a fire of indignant remonstrance
against a public and notorious wrong. He would not
smother that fire. He would not be untrue. iS^o fear,
no policy, should mark his face in flattering and smiling
172 John's failure.
obsequiousness before the face of Supreme Power. He
maintained his freedom, and the voices of the ages say-
above his headless trunk, "Here lies a true man." I can-
not call that a failure ; I call it immortal success.
Again, John was a witness to the disinterestedness of
truth. If it had been seen in that trial of his constancy
that truth could be bought and sold, thiit truth coveted
preferment, that it ceased to be truth when danger and
suffering threatened, that it was a bidder like avarice and
ambition and every light and false thing for personal gain
and popular favor, that it loved ease and comfort and
emolument better than its own purity, that it was what it
was only for the sake of what it could win by it, and
when threatened with loss, changed sides like a politician,
— if this had been the witness of John, it would have been
more corrupting than the sin of Herod. But he stamped
it on his life, he stamped it on this historic page, he wrote
it on his prison walls, he preaches it still with the voice
that pierced the heart of the desert, "Truth has no price."
Again, the testimony published then and left to us is that
Truth is no respecter of persons. If when publican and
harlot appeared before him, when the humble and name-
less crowd surrounded him, John had preached "Repent,"
ringing it rough and full, — "repent, flee from the wrath
to come ! " and when the sensual and cruel Herod was in
presence, spoke not at all, or spoke softly, rounded off
the angles of that sharp word Repent, and spoke of the
desirableness of some improvement, of the probability
that his excellency might some day reject the infelicities
of his present position, and begged permission, in courtly
JOHN'S FAILURE. 173
phrase, to point out some of the consequences of what he
hoped he should be pardoned for saying he could not re-
gard but as a grave and serious error, that majesty of
Truth would have been brought into contempt ; he would
have been a traitor to her queenly dignity. He would
have interpreted her message in one dialect to an obscure
offender, and in quite another to the man who gilded over
his crimes with the gloss of wealth and station. That
would have been a flxilure for the world's pity and scorn.
The other was a success for the world's admiration, for
God's encomium. And now who knows the whole effect
at the time of that fearless and noble protest? It was
needful in God's deaUngs with Herod that this rebuke
should come in as a part of his history and experience.
It brought a holy God near to him and before him. It
held up right and lawfulness in outlines clearer and a
demand more audible than princes are often permitted to
see and hear. It was instead of a public sentiment, antic-
ipating judgment upon the vileness of a crowned poten-
tate, and dared to come near enough to make sure of beino-
heard and understood. It was the hour of God's mercy
to this ruler. It gave him one of those golden opportu-
nities vrhich come to us all to acknowledge and forsake
guilt, to fall down and pray, "God be merciful to me a
sinner." It may have arrested the evil influence of that
vicious example in a station so commanding and influen-
tial, and have kept back multitudes from following in the
path of so bold and shameless a demoralization. It set up,
we cannot say before how many minds, a divine standard
of what is lawful, and educated the conscience of thou-
15*
174 JOHN'S FAILURE.
sands, perhaps, to reverence and obedience. "Thrown
away and wasted ! " — that earthly life may have been in-
stead of the eternal ruin of thousands of its contempo-
raries, — may have held back a nation from lower deeps
of debauchery, and have saved from relapse, and have
confirmed in the faith and virtue of a new religion, the
tens of thousands of converts whom John had baptized.
We are not competent yet to pronounce that life a failure.
We are too distant, too ignorant, so to pronounce. Again,
it may be well enough to remark that the great work as-
siofned in Providence to this life seems to have been
achieved. His herald task was performed. He had seen
the hour when he could say, "This is He of whom I said,
After me cometh a man which is preferred before me."
Publicly he had baptized to an infinitely more glorious
and eventful mission than his own that greater and
mightier Prophet. The way of the Lord had been pre-
pared. The forerunner had turned the attention of the
people to this illustrious advent. His final discourse had
weightier tidings for the world's ear than any he had pre-
viously pronounced, "Behold the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sin of the world." He could add nothing
more to that. It was time to hear another voice speak.
There came a revolution in the popular heart, and instead
of the eagerness to rush forth into the wilderness to see
that more than prophet, the new quest was, "Sirs, w^e
would see Jesus." Already it had been told to John by
some of his own half-zealous adherents and followers,
"Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom
thou bearest witness, behold the same baptizeth, and " —
JOHN'S FAILURE. 175
oh, hard trial to the natural heart — "all men come unto
him." Not thrice, nor twice, has there been in all the
annals of humanity a nobler victory over self than the
answer of John evinces, " A man can receive nothing ex-
cept it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear
me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am
sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bride-
groom. But the friend of the bridegroom which standeth
and heareth him rejoiceth greatly because of the bride-
groom's voice. This, my joy, therefore, is fulfilled," and
he adds, w^ithout one rebellious thought, his self-triumph
moving us almost as deeply as that of Abraham before
the altar of Mount Moriah, words that poor human nature
finds it hard to speak calmly, but with the same great joy
on his face, "He must increase, but I must decrease." It
was not an incomplete life pausing where it did. As
truly as Paul the aged after him, could this youthful hero
sing, " I have fought the good fight, I have finished my
course, I have kept the faith." His work was done and
well done. His crown was won. Herod's hand placed
it on his head. His doctrines remain. His utterance
sounds down to us. What it is to prepare the way of the
Lord, what preaching it is that rouses and changes men,
he has taught us. A finished, consummated life, nothing
fragmentary, no failure here. We are wrong to measure
success by outward and visible results. The true meas-
ure of success is in one word, fidelity. When laurels
are distributed by God's hand to the victors of earthly
warfare and struggle, the eulogy of the divine lips does
not recount the trophies of that valor, more or less in
176 JOHN'S FAILURE.
number, — " Thou hast been faithful in few things, I will
make thee ruler over many. Enter into the joy." It is not,
" Thou hast been successful, thou hast been popular, thou
hast drawn crowds of followers and disciples after thee,"
but simply, " Thou hast been faithful." The world says,
perhaps, of some obscure laborer, if indeed she speak of
him at all, "This man has toiled in vain." The Church may
ask, if she will, "Whom has he converted?" The year
books shall bear record that others have made and bap-
tized more disciples than he. Against ill-success, against
discouragement and false judgment, he may have wrought
all his life, and seemingly at last succumbed to the diffi-
culties and impracticabilities of his position, and the first
cheering word he has ever heard may come to him when
God beckons him across the river and greets him with,
" Well done, good and faithful servant." But we should
omit perhaps the grandest refutation of the idea that the
life of John was a failure, if we should neglect to notice
the power of it for evermore as a kindling and inspiring
example. Ah, there stood a hero. There was no blanch-
ing in him. So should truth front wrong, his example
declares. It should dare first to speak, then to seal its
testimony with blood. For us he was constant, faithful
and fearless. It did not conquer Herod, but it has waked
and kept on fire the martyr spirit in other lives all down
the lapsing ages. It has rallied steadiness and endur-
ance ; it has animated Christian boldness and courage
since, in hearts no man can number. When the pinch
comes, the sight of one resolute face, one form that
quails not, puts manhood into a thousand breasts. Men
JOHN'S FAILURE. 177
have looked back to John iu many a crisis of hard-fought
fiekls and dubious days. There he stands, between the
prison and the headman's axe on the one side, and inces-
tuous Herod on the other. He seems to see neither
prison nor axe. God above and duty before him are all
he sees, and he wavers not for one uncertain moment.
We catch his spirit. We copy his deed. We see him iu
the same line with later and earlier conquerors. This
side of him, Peter dauntlessly saying, "Whether it be
right in the sight of God to hearken unto you, more
than unto God, judge ye." Beyond, far up the ages, is
Daniel, with one window of his chamber looking out to-
ward Jerusalem, the other toward the den of lions, and
the voice of prayer rising from his kneeling form. Had
Peter died then and there as he stood, had the lions had
the mastery of the young Jewish prince, doubtless illus-
trious and kindling would their example have been. It
were not well to have earthly deliverers attend always
upon Christian heroism. That would mix an earthly ele-
ment with the triumph of faith. Let some of these con-
querors pay the penalty of their faithfulness, refusing
deliverance. So shall their championship of truth and
right be a purer and more unquestionable witness to an
inward power sustaining them against nature's weakness.
Sometimes we have in current earthly histories exam-
ples on the field of strife of so-called failures, worth
more as quickeners to valor and helps to a soldier's vir-
tue than most brilliant successes. Such was the scene in
the late Crimean War when, on a dull October morninsr,
thirty thousand Kussians appeared over the hills of Bala-
178
klava, in the rear of the allied armies of France and Eng-
land, and swept the feebly-defended Turkish redoubts
crowning the heights. Eetiring then a little to choose
their ground, plant their batteries, and reform their army,
they seemed to be making preparations to bear ofi* the cap-
tured cannon of the allies. A somewhat confused order
was given from the English commander-in-chief, confused-
ly transmitted and confusedly interpreted, for the cavalry
to advance and frustrate the enemy's design. The effect
of the order thus understood was the world famous charge
of the Light Brigade, that hurled a little band of gallant
gentlemen against an army of horse, foot, and artillery in
the chosen position. Surprised at the order, misgiving
alone, unsupported, but lending their hearts to the work,
they rode through grape and shell, trampling under feet
a cloud of skirmishers, right over the fatal battery, cut-
ting through a mass of five thousand Russian cavalry, and
turning on their course, each man matched against a host,
pierced by lance-thrusts, hacked by sword-cuts, and rid-
dled by bullets, regained the camp by twos and threes,
riding out six hundred and seventy strong, returning with
scarce two hundred saddles filled. A waste of heroic life
and gallant blood we say. And yet it struck a chill
through Russian hearts, and bannered every English war-
rior in every succeeding fight. It taught lessons of the
soldier's obedience, the soldier's loyalty, and the soldier's
truth which the wars of centuries and a hundred gazetted
triumphs could not teach so well. It stirs the warm
blood in a soldier's bosom, more than the general's word
or the bugle's note. The memory of it will be the pride
John's failure. 179
of the English soldier, and fire and sustain his noblest
daring, so long as men shall learn the art of war. There
is to-day no aristocracy so peerless, no order of nobility
so illustrious, amono^ all Enijland's titled ranks, as that
little surviving company, concerning which men say as
they point out a solitary passer-by, " There goes one of the
'Light Brigade.'" There is no victory on all the plains
which English blood has moistened the island bards shall
love so well to sing, the plumed cohorts shall boast with
so generous an emulation, as this wasteful, useless, un-
equalled charge.
" When can their glory fade ?
Oh, the wild charge they made !
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred."
No, my friends.
Nothing that is true to honor and courage and fidelity,
nothing heroic and self-devoted, is ever in vain. The
hearts of Christ's warriors on earth shall ever feel the
thrill of brave blood at the name of John ; the bards of
Heaven shall celebrate his failure as one of the grandest
victories of God's human champions. Young men, breth-
ren, fellow-workers, go and do ye likewise. If you stand
for a truth, a principle, a sample of conscience, a price of
morality too high and pure for your associates to appre-
ciate ; if in any of these issues you stand alone ; if for
your persistent virtue the narrowing circle of neglect and
want shut in about you like prison walls ; if well-meaning
180 JOHN'S FATLUKE.
friends chide your too fastidious conscientiousness; if
you fail to carry your principle by the acclamation of
majorities, and find that you must sufier for it instead in
a minority of one ; if you are moved to give your young
life to the country that calls now for all her valiant sons,
and the thought of finishing your career so soon, on some
fatal field day, instead of living on in serene tranquillity
and amid household ties to a late old age, wrestles with
your spirit, look back again to that lonely prisoner, that
heroic youthful preacher and confessor, done to death for
his faithfulness, and accept your lot, listemng the while
to this watchword from overhead, " Be thou faithful unto
death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
XII.
FEIENDSHIP.
.... THERE IS A FRIEND THAT STICKETH CLOSER THAN A BROTHER. —
Prov. xviii. 24.
WE speak a very tender and sacred word when we
call one our "brother." But a brother may not be
a friend. All the household ties may be complete upon
a heart that yet feels that it has not one friend. The in-
timacies of the home may be coupled together, leaving
this heart unmated. And where love is not denied, the
love that is rendered us in the natural ties scarce seems
to us the tribute of the free heart. It is mixed with in-
stinct. It comes not so much as a matter of choice,
because the eye has seen and the heart has felt a charm
that cannot be resisted, but as a matter of natural instinc-
tive prompting, quickened by common blood, strength-
ened by common interest.
It may not be a personal homage when those who are
cradled together are found content with one another's so-
ciety. Nature has joined them rather than elective affec-
tion. The fellowship is close often rather hy force of
habit than by clinging tenderness and mutual sympathy.
The heart wants more than this. It wants one upon
16
182 FRIENDSHIP.
whom it can bestow its love and esteem, to whom it can
impart all its confidence, and from whom it can receive
the same, as a voluntary offering, the expression of a
good will which it has won not by blood, but by its own
qualities, not the dictate of nature, but the full, free
choice of the heart.
Sometimes this want is supplied within the circle of
the home, not as the fruit of nature, but above nature.
More frequently, perhaps, I had almost said more nat-
urally, this intimate friendship is with one outside the
home, the soul exercising its liberty, finding its happi-
ness in giving without the constraint of nature, and crav-
ing in return that which is spontaneous and uncon-
strained. It would love and trust, not of debt, but of
free will.
Give me a friend. _I__am not myself till I have a
^iend. My nature is locked up ; my friend has the key.
Till he open, how can I know, how can another know,
what my heart is capable of? I am restricted, stifled,
suppressed. I do not grow up and out to the light and
the air. I do not think my own thoughts, nor speak my
own language, nor warm into true, loving, and genuine
confidence till my friend come. If I have no friend, I
shall be likely to remain unexpressed, and so to be less
and less what I might be. My friend carries my devel-
opment beyond all my old consciousness of capacity.
What does a stranger or a mere acquaintance do for
my truer self? He takes a careless greeting, a light
courtesy, a civil word, a touch of my listless hand. Is
this all I have to give ? Is this all I am ?
FEIENDSHIP. 233
What a transformation one hour of intercourse with a
friend effects ; how my heart opens ; how I venture down
for its deepest mysteries, and lead them up to day; how
I dismiss the shyness that kept the sanctuaries of my soul
veiled ; how the soul itself walks forth like Adam in the
garden, unrobed but not afraid, meeting in the paradise
of friendship no eye that brings a blush ; how I speak
what my lips never uttered before ; how I feel what my
heart never felt before; how the hidden fountains at this
breath of spring — the rigid frost all dissolved — well up
and pour forth their fre^h, unchecked streams ; how my
nature revels in this genial clime, whose brightness is the
face of my friend ! Is this myself? I knew it not. I
should never have known it but for this touch of friend-
ship's magic wand. It is not my old solitary self.
It is my occult, my begotten, my possible self, and I
come into actual and demonstrative being in this natal
hour. I was never fully born until now, and knew no
complete maternity till I knew the cherishing nurture of
friendship.
How much, then, do I need that friendship itself should
do for me ? If I can put into speech all that my soul, in
its deepest asking, wants of a true friend, what shall I
plead for?
I want a friend that shall meet the craving of my heart
for a perfect loveliness and beauty. I cannot be satisfied
with loving fair and beautiful things that are inanimate.
The rose is perfectly beautiful in its way. My heart
springs toward the faultless arch and brilliant coloring
of the rainbow ; the wooded lake, far away from the
184 FEIENDSHIP.
hauuts of men, and unvexed by the intrusion of human
life, is quietly and exquisitely lovely. I admire these
charms of nature ; I stand fascuiated with gazing upon
them; I pronounce their loveliness without a blemish,
but I am alone while with them. There is no tenderness
in my love, no warmth of sympathy in it; there is no
exchange of soul. My taste is educated and refined, but
I have seen no face that answers back to mine.
I want an incarnate beauty, a loveliness living and
vocal, moving in the plane of intelligence, capable of ap-
preciating and reciprocating what I feel, so that I can love
and be loved after my kind. I want a being, a character,
a person, a soul, to whom I can say, " Thou," and who will
understand my offering when I lay dow^n there all that I
have. And I want the fairness to be exceedingly ftiir,
the loveliness exceedingly lovely. I want to gaze and
ffaze and see no blemish. We all have within us an ideal
of a grace and beauty that are faultless. Matching this
ideal and kindled by it, we have all of us an aspiration to
find and obtain this perfection, making the prize ours for-
ever. We are looking for it on every hand all our life
long, — a nature all truth and purity and gentleness and
tenderness and benevolence and strength, with no false
thing, no harshness, no prejudice, no fickleness, no
w^eakness in it. Shall this ideal mock and elude us
always? We question each bright face of earthly kin-
dreds to see if it be there. We hold a moment each
hand that touches ours. Is this the ideal friend, constant,
loving, sympathetic, above all meanness, selfishness, de-
ceitfulness, and mutability? We listen to each tone that
FRIENDSHIP. 185
falls upon our ear, if haply that one true heart still
searched for spoke there. Where we give our love and
confidence, it is as much our ideal we love and trust as
anything real which our eyes have discerned, often more.
We think we are looking upon the real when we have only
projected out our ideal and flung its charm over the
object of our gaze. And the disappointments of life
come often from the growing perception that the real fails
to coincide with what we thought we saw and were about
to possess. Indeed, we have learned, most of us by expe-
rience, even the most favored of us, that in the real we
must subtract more or less largely from the ideal, consent
to imperfection, fiud^ur best friends and truest not all
that we thought them, at least, not all that we could con-
ceive, come upon qualities or limitations of qualities that
demand our forbearance, even as we must ask, for our-
selves, from them, large forbearance in return.
This consciousness and discernment of mutual faults
makes our human friendships very tender and touching,
secures many sentiments in loving hearts, the exercise of
which would otherwise have found no place, — sentiments
of generosity, carefulness, forgiveness, and charity, —
but it denies to us forever our ideal. That perfect image
unmated anywhere, finding amid all varieties of human
life no mirror for its fairness and symmetry, comes back
to our heartsjjjke Noah's weary dove to the ark, and
hides within the chamber of our soul. We gaze upon it
still, but it is only an image. We refresh ourselves by
the contemplation of its surpassing attractions, but it is a
picture, and no more. Is there no original for this pic-
16*
186 FRIENDSHIP.
ture? Shall we never behold this image realized and
vitalized? Shall this hunger for a perfect loveliness
nowhere and never be satisfied ? Is it merely an internal
aspiration, a standard which our own soul has set up, and
is it to help us only as an educating ideal, but never to
gladden and enrich us as something with which we can
make a close and satisfying alliance ?
Let us rest this question here, unanswered, for the jaao-
ment, and pass on.
We want again, as a natural and inalienable demand of
the heart, a friendship that shall draw out our whole
capacity of loving. The heart delights to give love, to
go on giving so long as there is no check, to feel that it
can give without restraint or limitation. But suppose it
presently find that where it has begun to bestow love,
it cannot love there any more ardently ; that it has ex-
hausted or outrun the attractive power ; that it is like a
torfist^tree^rowing in a box in a__greenhguse, its roots
hemmed in and confined by that narrow crib, and its
boughs met soon by the low roof and clipped to that dwarf-
ish standard, — roots that would pierce the earth for many
a rod, seeking deep springs of remote watercourses, —
boughs that would rise into the mid-air and toss with a
giant's strength in dalliance with the full gales of heaven.
Suppose the heart awake to this consciousness that it has
given to its friendships all that those friendships can com-
mand, and has yet an indefinite capacity for loving unem-
ployed ; that it could give more love and yet more, but
cannot give more to these objects, outreaching and over-
growing them as a luxuriant vine outtops and overruns a
FRIENDSHIP. 187
low and scanty trellis ; what, then, shall comfort and por-
tion it ? What shall it do with this superfluous capacity
of loving ? Is it superfluous ? What was it given for in
such excess ? Shall this fountained fulness find no outlet,
and for want of channels set back and stagnate and breed
the malaria of ceaseless discontent, a perpetually chafing
restraint. When the heart questions, as it must if it
make no positive discoveries, if it were willing to love on
bUndly ; when it questions, as at times it cannot avoid
doing, the wisdom of bestowing such vast afl"ection upon
the frail, perishable, and imperfect objects of earth, and
the still outreaching vine seek something loftier and
larger to climb and spread upon, that it may show what a
vigor of life and productiveness is in it, shall it forever
droop unsupported to the ground, and plead with all its
vacant tendrils in vain ?
We want, again, a friendship that can enrich us indefi-
nitely. This is not a selfish desire so much as a noble
aspiration. Being incomplete in ourselves, we seek to
draw completeness from our friend. He must have what
we have not. He must not fall below what we have. If
he be poorer and weaker in everything than we are, he
will not help us up, but will drag us down. If we choose
as our friend one whom we can contain and measure on
every side, we shall either some day despise him or shall
sink content to his level, wrons^inof our own more vi<]:or-.
ous soul. He that chooses wisely chooses where he/
will have gain of something that he lacks. A true friend-
ship should be mutually improving. We also may give,
though we acquire. We may have something to impart
188 FRIENDSHIP.
where we have much to receive in this interchange of
bounty. We want a friend, therefore, whom we cannot
exhaust in a day or a season, one in whom we can
make new discoveries of wisdom and of worth every day,
one who has something beyond still in every disclosure he
makes to us of his thought and of his heart, one whom
we can never fully read as we peruse a printed volume,
coming at last to the end and saying, " I have finished,"
as we close it and lay it down. We want to feel that he
gives us richly of his abundance, and that, had our
want been greater, he could have given more, or that
he gives all, and yet could give again, as a cloud empties
itself, and passes, and returning on a changed current,
pours a fresh deluge down.
But while we desire thus a superior for our friend,
we want one who cannot despise us, one whose wisdom,
where he is wise and we are ignorant, will bear with our
ignorance ; whose strength, where he is strong and we are
weak, will bear with our weakness ; whose address, where
we are untutored, will guide and teach without humiliat-
ing us. We want to feel it safe — safe for our self-re-
spect— to show him our deficiencies, that he may supple-
ment them, and yet not look down upon us. We have
even a longing to show not only our weakness, but our
corruption, to confess that we have moral diseases at
heart, to beseech that we be not better thought of than
we deserve. We may indeed exercise modesty and hu-
mility in our earthly friendships, but we cannot show
there the evil imaginations that haunt us, lest we sully our
friend's purity too. Were there one to whom even this
FRIENDSHIP. 189
infirmity might be disclosed and our soul have help, and
yet our place be secure in his esteem and affection, oh,
what a friend were that !
We want in a friend quick perception and intelligent
sympathy. He must not stride in with rude and blun-
dering steps among our delicate sensibilities. His offers
of help must not be in a voice that jars upon our hear-
ing when we are sensitive. He must understand us, not
after long and reiterated and wearisome explanation of
our feelings, — he must understand us instinctively, read
our mood at a glance, penetrate to our trouble or our
joy with one diving look, adapt himself to the changes
of temperature beneath the sky of our soul without too
keenly feeling himself the variations of climate, — know
how, in one word, to rejoice with us when we rejoice,
-amLtojvveep witliJis . whan we^ weep .
We want one, and here is where our quest among our
human kindred utterly fails, who can come in upon that
region of interior loneliness, where we are so often weak
and desolate with none to help.
We have sorrows that we can never tell to any mortal
ear. Oh that there were one who could sit down and
hear the long sad tale and pity us and comfort us !
We have burdens to bear to whose liftiuo^ we can call
in no human hand. Oh that there were one who could
come to us when we are bowed and our strength is spent,
and with friendly hand lift at those burdens or sustain us
as we falter beneath the load.
We have temptations pushing us hard in unseen con-
flicts, to whose withdrawn battle-fields we cannot invite
190 FRIENDSHIP.
any with whom we associate to repair, lest they also re-
ceive some wound that will be henceforth reproachful to
us. Ah, if we knew a friend who could be our champion
then, himself invulnerable, and his friendship unchang-
ing, not to be forfeited by such a fellowship in our strug-
gle with evil, what a note of triumph we could sing !
When friends have counselled us and entreated us, and
shown us the way of safety and the path of honor, we
have still a remaining weakness in which they cannot
come to our aid, — a weakness of w^ill, an infirmity of pur-
pose, a wavering heart, a halting choice, which is often
fatal to our peace and welfare. Ah, if there were one
who could show us duty and counsel us to walk in it,
helping us to will and to do the unerring right, what a
friend were he in the crises of our life !
When my frame is prostrate in sickness, when I cannot
lift my fainting head, nor scarce stretch out the right hand
of my strength, when it is too great a task to speak aloud,
or to frame question and answer for any who come to my
bedside, give me then a friend whom physician and nurse -
can safely admit to my presence, who can salute me with-
out disquieting me, sit with me without imposing the
burden of his presence, whose presence itself is a benedic-
tion of rest and peace, who can interpret my feebly-mur-
muring lips without making me repeat my whispers, who
is calmly wakeful when other eyelids droop, who watches
as vigilantly and tenderly the pulses of my soul as the
physician those of my body, and gives me the sweet and
reposeful sense of being always cared for, the comforting
assurance that neglect is impossible, and I can bless the
painful captivity that shuts me up with such a friend.
FRIENDSHIP. 191
There will come some day a sickness that cannot be
healed, a hurt that is mortal. The final hour draws on.
My friends are about me. I see their love and sorrow.
I am setting out on a strange journey. Will any of that
weeping circle go with me? No, they are there to se6
me off while they stay. They take my hand not to join
me as I depart, but only to say "Farewell." They bend
over me, not to whisper the sustaining pledge, "I will
never leave thee, nor forsake thee," but to breathe a last
"adieu."
As I enter the shadow of the dark portal, I see them
clustering together behind me, leaving me to go forward
alone. "Oh, my friends, desert me not now, walk a little
way with me on this fearful unknown road." But how-
ever anguished my appeal, not one of them passes to my
side to bear me company. They weep, but their feet re-
main rooted to the ground. To my outstretched hand
they extend theirs, but it is only to wave the parting
signal.
Must I tread that shadowy valley with no companion-
ship? Is there no rod, no staff, that can comfort me?
Not one of all that have loved me to whom I can then
say, " Thou art with me, I am not afraid " ? And when I
have gone down thus to the dark river, and have crossed
over, what do I know of the farther shore ? Must I land
a lonely stranger on that shore of eternity, that dim vast
shore, with no guide, no welcome, no kindred, no tie from
the past, that holds firm and strong, no familiar friendly
voice that shall make me feel at home ?
These are some of the thoughts and questionings of my
192 FRIENDSHIP.
heart when I muse upon the friendship I need, and as I
muse and question, I perceive more and more the diffi-
culty of securing such a friend. Oh, rare and precious
treasure that should fill this great want of my soul and
my life ! Where shall I find him? Who is he? What
is his name, and where his home?
And I turn to read my Scripture again. "There is a
friend that sticketh closer than a brother." Does not
Solomon mean more here than the failure of natural afiec-
tion, and the exalting of real and abiding afiection above
natural ties? Is he not writing more grandly than he
knows? Does he not hold a prophet's pen? Is he not
sketching a likeness, the original of which should come
afterward? Is he not publishing an unconscious testi-
mony which one who was to arise in the fulness of time
should take to himself? How is it that all hearts agree
that this ancient utterance fits now but one name of all
that have been spoken among men ? Jesus of Nazareth,
the Son of Mary, the Son of the Highest, the Friend of
man, is this "Friend that sticketh closer than a brother."
He is " fairer than the sons of men." I can find no spot
or blemish in him. In him is no excess and no deficiency.
All that I have ever conceived of innocence and purity
and goodness, of patience and gentleness and sincerity,
are realized in him who did no sin, neither was guile
found in his mouth. My ideal is met at last.
There I can love without qualification and restriction,
with no guilty sense of idolatrous extravagance. I can
expend my whole power of loving. My heart cannot en-
large itself beyond the attractiveness of this beloved ob-
FRIENDSHIP. 193
ject. Love as I may, growing in loving capacity and
fulness through all immortality, I can never feel that I
have loved him enough. I only feel how mean, how poor
the offering of affection which I bring when compared
with his inexhaustible worth, and sing at last when my
one heart is emptied at his feet, —
" Had I a thousand hearts to give,
Lord, they should all be thme."
And as I cannot overtop this attractive power by an}^
luxuriance of my heart's love, so neither can I exhaust
the fruitfulness of that friendship for me. Successive
harvests may reduce the fertility of the soil ; the drought
may drink up river and lake ; but however much I draw
from the bounty of Jesus, from his love, his light, his
power, his faithfulness, I feel that there is an infinite ful-
ness left. These resources, and the kindness that makes
them mine, I cannot drain.
And pensioning my wants on this enriching friendship,
I never feel my relations to it degrading. I am never
despised, never reproached, never treated as a mere
hanger-on, a wearisome dependent. The more I ask of
this friendship, the more it gives, and the better it is
pleased, and there I may show all the indwelling corrup-
tion of my soul, and hear no word and catch no look that
puts me to shame. I may show it as freely as one with a
hidden cancer betrays the secret to a trusted physician,
receiving in return only an access of healing care.
Here I am understood. What I cannot express is
known. The sympathy of Jesus makes no mistakes.
17
194 FRIENDSHIP.
Deeper than my consciousness is his insight into my
trouble, and his manner as gentle as his intelligence is
wise, — soft words tenderly spoken, rest for weariness,
strength for weakness, comfort for sadness.
In the solitudes of my soul, where no human footstep
can tread, he is at home. I can find no chamber so inte-
rior and secluded where a grief may hide from him, or a
wounded spirit lie tossing without his knowledge and
presence. The balm which no human hand could reach
me for my secret hurts his wounded hand brings in ; the
temptation, whose severity I could not make known to
any intimate of my earthly fellowships, he foils with his
ever-ready skill and power, for I am willing that he
should know, and he is more than willing to defend.
The weak and waverinsi will he steadies and rallies and
girds with conquering energy.
He makes all my bed for me in my sickness ; comes in
with a step that never jars ; exacts nothing of eiiort and
action, but only asks peaceful trust ; excites no sensi-
tive nerves, but only calms both body and soul; keeps
unwearying vigils while he " giveth his beloved sleep ; "
makes every wakeful hour bright with his dear, comfort-
ing presence, so that the silent, dark night is a chamber
of radiant communion with him, and when my eyes ques-
tion him of th© issue, lays his finger on his lip and smiles
till I am satisfied.
And on that lone, last journey, when friend and lover
and brother retire from me, he gathers my arm in his, he
leads me on through the darkness. I feel no weight of
the sable gloom. I feel no fright at unseen awful terrors.
FKIENDSHIP. 195
I am with him, and a dawning light paves soon my ad-
vancing path, and I see a pearly gate, and I enter a gol-
den street, and my Guide and Friend presents me fault-
less before the presence of the excellent glory.
Is not this the friendship we want ? Can we live with-
out it? Can we die without it? If it were offered, could
any heart that was not mad reject it ?
They gave him his name of old, — scornful lips, but
they spoke the truth, "Friend of publicans and sinners."
He stands near us now and makes his gentle overture,
"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command 3'ou."
Will you have his friendship? Will you sacrifice
everything else to make him your friend ?
Take this hymn of trust and make it yours : —
0 holy Saviour, Friend unseen,
Since on thine arm thou bidst me lean.
Help me, throughout life's changing scene,
By faith to cling to thee!
Blest with this fellowship divine.
Take what thou wilt; I'll not repine;
For as the branches to the vine
My soul would cling to thee.
Though far from home, fatigued, oppressed.
Here have I found a place of rest.
An exile still, yet not unblest,
Because I cling to thee.
What though the world deceitful prove,
And earthly friends and hopes remove;
With patient, uncomplaining love
Still would I cling to thee.
-i*"^
196 rPJENDSHIP.
Though oft I seem to tread alone
Life's weary waste, with thorns o'ergrown,
Thy voice of love, in gentlest tone,
Still whispers, " Cling to me ! "
Though faith and hope are often tried,
I ask not, need not aught beside;
So safe, so calm, so satisfied.
The soul that clings to thee!"
XIII.
FAITH'S VENTUEES.
BY FAITH ABKAHAM, WHEN HE WAS CALLED TO GO OUT INTO A PLACE
WHICH HE SHOULD AFTER RECEIVE FOR AN INHERITANCE, OBEYED; AND
HE WENT OUT, NOT KNOWING WHITHER HE WENT. — Hcb. xi. 8.
IT was a sublime venture in the strength of which
Abraham went forth from Ur of the Chaldees in
search of a strans^e land to be shown him of God. No
geography of that unknown country lay before his eye.
All the map he had of it was this misty sketch, without
features or outlines, in the divine promise, "A land that
I will shew thee." His home was in the rich, alluvial
pastures of the lower Euphrates. That was his countr3^
the place of his nativity, the place of his kindred and of
his father's house. All the pleasantest and all the
strongest ties of his life held him fost to that spot.
Ancestral associations made the place sacred to his heart.
There he himself had lived till he was now seventy-five
years old. He was not a young man, standing alone,
just beginning the world, and free to strike out whither
he would in search of good successes ; he was a man of
family, with wife and aged father and youthful orphan
nephew and a considerable household attached to his
17*
198 faith's ventures.
movements and sharing his fortunes. The Canaan to-
ward which the heavenly call bade him journey was at
least four hundred miles away. All between was a path-
less wilderness ; there was no public road along which he
might take his domestic tribe, following securely in the
track of travellers who had gone before him. Swift
streams unbridged, mountain chains with passes unex-
plored, secluded valleys, the hiding-place of robber bands,
and the horrors of desert-life were certain perils to be
encountered. And what precisely should be the reward?
Something large, but vague.
But Abraham's foith was equal to the test. Ah, he
had the strong, sweet comfort of a sure call from God.
He knew what voice had spoken to him. There was no
doubt about the word of command. That was audibly
divine. And he so believed the Promiser that it was
easy for him against all dissuasives to obey, or, if not
easy, that great faith won the victory.
I think it was well for Abraham that that call was
to an unknown future. It would have been a tougher
strain upon his faith if he had seen what was to be
written of him in the years to come. Doubtless he
would still have triumphed, but it would have been after
a sharper conflict. The promise that leads him out is
this: "I will make of thee a great nation." When he
arrives in Canaan, a stranger amid its powerful and pop-
ulous tribes, the covenanted blessing in its repetition
seems to recede. " Unto thy seed will I give this land."
He flits about from mountain to mountain and vale to
vale, building an altar here and another there, but not
faith's ventures. 199
settling or pausing by any of them, moving southward, a
pilgrim from day to day without a home, and presently
driven quite out of the country by a grievous famine.
Is this the goodly countiy, the land flowing with milk
and honey? From the pursuing jaws of the famine he
hastens down into Egypt, and is soon in trouble with the
court and the king, and in peril of his life. Then back
again into the south of Palestine, in trouble on ac-
count of Lot, from the invasion of hostile kings, in
trouble in his own family, in trouble for the doomed
cities of the plain, in further and stranger trials of faith,
and dying at last with nothing of all that splendid inheri-
tance his own but a tomb, which he had bought with his
own money, in which lay his dead wife, Sarah, and in
which he himself, but for that one field still a landless
exile, was buried at her side. Truly he went out not
knowing whither he went, and not imagining. Amono'
all the pictures which, under the inspiration of his faith,
he drew of the future, probably not one of those hard re-
alities was sketched.
And this has been, ever since the peculiarity of our
earthly trial, the one record of every man's story. He is
called of God at each stage of his way to go forth, he
knoweth not whither. The call he hears, but what it
leads to he cannot foretell. The consummation he may
feel sure of; but the method, the process, the path that
lies between, even the nature of the prize he is to touch,
described in material terms and as though close at hand,
but changing for possession perhaps to some remote spir-
itual interpretation, — all this is hidden from him, an
200 faith's ventures.
enio-ma which only the future itself can solve. Each
morning of our life, each fresh enterprise for a clay or for
an hour upon which we embark, is a call to us to enter
into the unknown, by simple faith in God.
I wish to dwell upon the influence of this peculiar fea-
ture in our earthly trial, this venturing of faith upon
the unknown that lies outward from the present.
It is, in the first place, no dissuasive from going for-
ward. Every man has it to say as the light of morning
flashes under his opening eyelids, "I know not what the
day will bring forth. It may have some great disaster
in store for me. As I go out into the street I may en-
counter some shock of violence that shall shake the very
citadel of my life, — my wareroom and all that it con-
tains may be shattered into wreck; the day's business, de-
spite my best sagacity, may prove the most unfortunate
stroke of industry my hands ever delivered. It is all un-
certain . My whole labor may be vain and worse than vain . "
This is not the mere musing of a hypochondriac. It is
all the soberest truth. Shall this man, therefore, add, "I
cannot take a step amid such hazards. I cannot go for-
ward till the mist clears up. This walking I know not
whither is too rash. I will not rise. I will keep my pil-
low. I will adventure nothing because I cannot see the
end ! " Would you commend him for his wisdom and
prudence in such a decision? Would you not bid him
shake off both his fears and his sloth and, taking an in-
spiring draught of faith, gird himself for his day's journey
and his day's work! Shall the husbandman, because he
knows not what floods or drought or blight may come
faith's ventures. 201
upon his fields with the season's progress, refuse in the
young summer to plough and sow, lest there should be,
after all, no harvest for him. Shall there be no enterprise
of pith and moment undertaken because the issue lies
hidden under a cloud ? Shall our ignorance of the future
paralyze all our diligence, and will none but the headlong
and desperate venture to plunge forward into the dark ?
Faith never gives such counsel, nor worldly wisdom,
borrowing her lamp for the darkness of the wa3\ Faith
says, " Go forward ! " She tells us, " God knows what
is coming," and he bids us be up and doing. His eyes
survey all that is hid from us, and ours can look into his.
It is enough that he is not blind, and cannot be taken by
surprise. From shore to shore the wide, dim sea lies
level to his gaze, and he calls to us to sail on. There are
storms ahead, and sunken rocks, and fugitive icebergs,
and ships steering to meet us in our own track, and red-
handed pirates, and hungry swarms from foundering ves-
sels, and ten thousand other nameless perils of the deep.
Yes, all these possibly. But there is God overhead,
observing all, controlling all, guiding all. That is enough
for faith. And as to the matter of prudence, why, our
dangers do not come exclusively from motion. Sitting
still may keep us in the very focus of harm. The flames
may wTap the house from which we refuse to go out, the
bed from which we refuse to rise. There is no work of
life on which we do not proceed without knowing whither ;
but the believing heart simply says, " God knows," and
moves cheerfully and trustfully forward.
Again. The unknown of faith's heritage saves our
202 faith's ventuees.
weakness from being crushed. We can bear our griefs
and disappointments, by God's help as they come upon
us, one by one. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof," — sufficient for our strength, sufficient for our
knowledge. And only one day's evil can in the present
divine arrangement come upon us between the rising and
the setting sun. But God has not made us strong enough
to take upon our hearts in one burden all the evil of life.
That vision would quite break us down. Suppose in en-
tering upon the family relation we saw at one straight
glance forward all the trials that are to wear our strength
and make our hearts bleed, the pain and grief of little
children, their wrestling with strong diseases, anxious
days and sleepless nights on their behalf, the dimming eye
and whitening face of one and another, and the dreary
hush as they fall asleep, the heavy solicitude that comes
later when the problems of their character and destiny
are waiting solution, the sharp anguish of praying for
them in their times of temptation what seem to us un-
answered prayers. All the changes of that coming and
unwritten family story, its migration from scene to scene
and home to home, its struggles in dark days when want
is doorkeeper of the house, the infirmities of human tem-
per that sometimes darken its interior lights, the perplex-
ing questions it is to stagger under for burdened months
before responsibility sees an open path of duty, we could
not go to the bridal hour with so bright a face and light a
heart as now. We should turn pale with dread and mis-
giving, and ask ourselves doubtfully whether we should
be found sufficient for such a future. And yet who of us
FAITHS VENTURES. 203
in looking back over such a record would wish he had
otherwise chosen? Gathering in one all our sicknesses,
all our labors, all our sorrows, all our defeats, wringing
all life's bitterness into a single cup, and offering that cup
to our lips to be taken at one draught, who could lift his
hand to that cup and welcome that draught to his palate ?
That would make a Gethsemane darker than nature's mid-
night. Whatever the alternative were, we should be
tempted to plead, "Let this cup pass from me!" It is
better that we go forth not knowing what lies before us.
Again. The unknown to which faith leads us out
stimulates hope and aspiration. If we were not quick-
ened by the view of grand possibilities, there is little we
should attempt. Cold, absolute, certain knowledge would
be the blight of hope, the death of aspiration. We do
not know the future, but w^e can paint it. Give us our
colors and our brush, and stretch the canvas for us, and
move our easel near. Our way is to be onward along
sunny vales, by pleasant river banks, through gardens of
delights, with richest fruitage hanging low to desire, and
all hearts that beat in contact with our own catchino:
strength and joy from ours. You need not tell us that
this is a fancy sketch. For once it may come true. Say
not that scenes as fair have been painted before, but have
been uniformly overlaid by more sombre hues of reality ;
we are going to the unknown, and the unknown may be
even more radiant than our vision. Other men's lives in
the past have failed of their ideal, but ours may come
nearer. We see where they mistook ; we shall avoid their
errors, and achieve the success they missed. The flight
204 faith's ventukes.
of other men's hope has been amid cold clouds, pelted by
storms, beaten down by the great rain and hail, and has
come fluttering and out-wearied to the ground, but our
eagle will spread a more soaring pinion, and ride the
tempest with a stronger stroke, and hold his steep way
straight on for the sun. There are better prizes than hu-
man hands have gathered ; we may reach them, — loftier
heights than human feet have trodden ; we may stand
upon them. Many a gallant ship has struck in the
voyage ; ours shall come into the harbor. It may be the
divine will that the successes denied to those who have
gone before us shall crown our endeavors. Our friend-
ships shall prove more constant and prosperous than
those of which we have read. From our bridal altar a
pleasant highway shall lie onward amid bloom and ver-
dure unfading. Ah, what may not God purpose for us
of triumph and enjoyment? Faith takes hold of his
whole power and goodness. The unknown is what is
possible to him. Believingly, hopingly, faith-inspired, we
go forward, not knowing whither or to what, but dreaming
of the brightest.
And then again, going thus in faith to meet the un-
known, we are saved from the bitterness of disappoint-
ment. The particular hopes we have cherished may miss
of their fulfilment. But, then, we did not stand upon
hope, but upon faith, and that rock is steadfast still ; that
never moves. Our bright dreams fade out one by one,
but God does not change. Our ignorance, in which we
drew pictures, has not affected his wisdom. The real
ground of comfort and of confidence has not yielded by
faith's ventures. 205
one particle. He has brought to pass what he would.
It is not what we expected, but it is what he saw to be
best, and therefore it is best. It is better than the gay,
flimsy pattern our pencil sketched. It has undiscovered
connections with a richer and greater good than we have
seen. These trying events, so different from what we
had hoped for, are not final ends of God's dealing. They
reach forward into a future still unrevealed and worthy of
our most ardent aspiring. They are parts, humble parts
or costly parts, of a whole, which no eye but God's has
yet seen, and whose majesty and grandeur will fill the
soul when we apprehend them with infinite content.
You cannot convince us that failures are what they seem.
They are simply such uses as the great Designer chose to
make of us and our working for a scheme that cannot fail.
Faith's unknown is capacious enough to hold within its
globed sphere such issues of the divine beneficence, such
rewards for hoping, believing, and toiling, as shall make
all our anguish in journeying toward them a forgotten
travail in the joy of their new birth. In this view disap-
pointment has no deep sting to wound and rankle in our
souls. It is only in faith's rendering a correction of our
misconception as to the methods by which God will reach
through us his full, transcendent ends.
The effect of this arrangement upon character is one of
its most peculiar and most precious influences. If at the
outset of our way, at the threshold of every new enter-
prise, we could climb some height from which all the com-
ing road were visible, the long reaches to be traversed,
the hills to be climbed, the streams to be forded, the
18
206 faith's ventures.
sharp angles to be turned, the dark ravines to be thread-
ed, from which also the distant end lay full in view, it
would be natural for us to keep our eye upon that revela-
tion. At every forward step we should recall that map
of the road, and measure our progress and graduate our
expectation by what we could retain of that vision of the
whole journey. We should be looking steadily and
sharply for the features and way-marks of the road which
had impressed themselves most deeply upon our minds.
We should thus walk by sight, and make our eyes our
guide. But now, as we turn our eyes forward, there
hangs before us the thick, impervious veil that separates
us from the unknown. We can look back and gather the
record of the past, and listen to the voices of experience.
But as to coming events, we can only look up. There is
but one Being who sees the end from the beginning. For
our comfort and guidance, he offers us, in our weakness
and ignorance, the alliance of his perfect knowledge, his
infinite wisdom, his overcoming strength. We are taught
thus to walk by faith. We cannot see, but we can trust
him. We know not the road, but we can follow him.
We cannot tell what is coming, but we can look to him to
prepare us for all. The road forks, and we are utterly at
a loss which hand to take ; we peer into either opening,
but the unrevealing mist lies thick on both ; we can only
watch our Father's face, and lift our hand to touch his, and
wait the intimation of his choice. These necessities keep
us near him, awake our concern at anything that divides
us from his presence, and hold us in suppliant and de-
pendent intimacy with him.
FAITHS VENTURES. 207
If a promised blessing, some exiDected reward, seem
to recede as we advance, we study the promise more
deeply, we find new capacities of meaning in its terms,
we get glimpses of some better thing than that which we
thought so near at hand, and look forward to a grander
consummation than our life histories had ever dared to
hope for. If that which we dimly saw, and supposed just
before us, is yet afar off in some untravelled remoteness,
like a mountain peak, which at dawn of day we thought
we should reach ere noon, but find even as the day wanes
that it seems as far away as ever, what a majestic pile
must it be, to keep itself so along above the horizon, and
send forward its kingly salutation to such distant travel-
lers !
We have a Canaan in pledge and in prospect. We
travel on toward its border. Our feet are on its soil.
The land we touch is called Canaan, but it does not seem
our land of promise. It has sweet vales and goodly hills,
its vines are fruitful, and butter and honey flow down its
rocky shelves, but we are not put in possession. We are
a hungered and uuportioned still, and must journey on.
Why, then, our Canaan is still beyond and before us, and
its vales must be fairer than these, and its hills oreener,
and some goodlier Lebanon lift its white crown above it,
and clusters richer than those of Eshcol be ripeniuo- for
our coming. We are looking for a home and a rest, for
the soul is sure " a rest remaiueth ; " that cannot fail us.
And we have come, we think, upon our sweet possession.
Now, soul, be comforted, and, heart, be at peace. Now let
the dear, strong ties of kindred, manifold bands of love
208 faith's ventukes.
and sympathy, gather upon us, fasten their clasping coils
around body and soul, intertwine their thousand-fingered
tendrils with the chords of our very life. Here we are at
home. Our pilgrimage pauses here. Our tent life is at
an end. We shall have no more any feast of tabernacles.
Let us build of stable and durable material, and bid our
household gods accept their permanent shrines. God is
good and has kept his promises well. We will take the
harp and sing — But what is that he says ? " Arise ye and
depart, for this is not your rest ; it may by and by be your
tomb, but never your restful home." Why, then, we must
strike our tents again and take our staff and journey once
more. But a rest remaineth, and it is across the river, and
its name is Canaan ! Yes, it remaineth, but we are learn-
ing to think, we are beginning to know, that it is that
other and darker river which we are to cross before we
find it ; that we are to tread the celestial heights, that we
are to enter the promised rest, the sure inheritance, only
as we enter the city of God.
Truly each pilgrim of faith goeth forth not knowing
whither. He pitcheth at close of day as though at his
journey's end, and is not aware that he must move again
with the morning. God keeps his hope still just before
him, — just before him, but never grasped, — so that he
may run still with outstretched hand and eager desire ;
and then the hope is lifted higher, and God's lips smile
the assurance, "Here it is at last," and we see that we
have been running for nothing less than an immortal
crown," — for no transient home, but for an eternal heaven.
This is fiiith's large and full inheritance, her magnificent
FAITH'S VENTUEES. 209
unknown. The earthly disappointments are only step-
ping-stones each toward these serene final summits ; the
restlessness of earth, only the traveller's enforced dili-
gence in pursuing his road quite to its goal. Our igno-
rance, that stumbles and halts so often, and catches up
such inferior good as though it could be content with it
as a portion, and grieves so to lay it down, covers this
heritage of everlasting joy and peace. All the busy,
earnest years that lie between the starting-point and the
goal, all the rich investments of our heart's deep love, —
the fond, warm covenants in which we pledge a union not
to be sundered, — all personal and domestic ties, all so-
cial bonds growing out of our life with the full vitality of
nature and of grace in them, are but the training and dis-
cipline for our nurture unto his great and blessed pur-
poses ready to be revealed in us at the last.
If we saw now and beforehand as clearly as we shall
see the meaning of each particular part of the grand
scheme, we should miss the full power of its ministry
upon the growth of our souls toward the stature of their
immortal manhood. Let us give faith's rendering to the
poet's rhymes.
" When another life is added
To the heaving, turbid mass;
When another breath of being
Stains creation's tarnished glass;
When the faint cry, weak and piteous,
Heralds long-enduring pam,
And a soul from non-existence
Springs that ne'er shall sleep again;
When the mother's passionate welcome,
Sorrow-like, bursts forth in tears,
210 faith's ventures.
And the sire's self-gratulation
Prophesies of future years, —
It is well we cannot see
What the end shall be !
" When across the infant features
Trembles the faint dawn of mind,
And the soul looks from the windows
Of the eyes that were so blind ;
When the incoherent murmurs
Syllable each swaddled thought
To the fond ear of affection
With a boundless promise fraught,
Kindling great hopes of the morrow,
From that dull, uncertain ray,
As by glunmering of the twilight
Is foreshown the perfect day, —
It is well we cannot see
What the end shall be !
" When the boy, upon the threshold
Of his all comprising home.
Puts aside the arms maternal
That enlock him ere he roam;
When the canvas of his vessel
Flutters in the favoring gale,
Years of solitary exile
Hid behind its snowy sail;
V/hen his pulses beat with ardor,
And his sinews stretch for toil.
And a thousand bold emprises
Lure him to that eastern soil, —
It is well we cannot see
"What the end shall be!
" Whatsoever is beginning
That is wrought by human skill, —
Every daring emanation
Of the mind's ambitious Avill, —
faith's ventures. 211
Every first impulse of passion,
Gush of love or twinge of hate,—
Every launch upon the waters,
Wide horizoned by our fate,—
Every venture m the chances
Of life's sad, oft desperate game,
Whatsoever be our object,
Whatsoever be our aim.
It is well we cannot see
What the end shall be ! "
" It Is well we cannot see
What the end shall be] "
but best of all that, not seeing, we can both hope and
trust.
XIY.
PLEA FOE THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
AND WHEN THEY WERE COME, AND HAD GATHERED THE CHURCH TOGETH-
ER, THEY REHEARSED ALL THAT THE LORD HAD DONE WITH THEM, AND
HOW HE HAD OPENED THE DOOR OF FAITH UNTO THE GENTILES. — ActS.
xiv. 27.
FOR graphic and even romantic interest, there is no
other book of the Bible that surpasses this book of
the Acts of the Apostles. As its name indicates, it is a
book of action. You are led by it along a story of mar-
vellous adventures. There is not one dull chapter.
Every page is stirring and eventful. Neither history nor
fiction ever traced a chronicle more crowded with strange
and thrilling scenes. And the line of adventure is not,
either in its inspiration or its consequences, frivolous and
transient. The scheme that marshalled the journeyings
and the sufferings of these heroic actors was nothing less
than to " open the door of faith " to nations ignorant of
Christ and his salvation. What a lyric and picturesque
touch of the pen of Luke in this expression, — "opening
the door of faith" ! A door of light upon deep darkness,
— a door of deliverance for the bondmen of superstition
and idolatry, — a door beneath whose grand arch, and
PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT. 213
through whose stately portals, the long, bright procession
of the Christian virtues should enter in and possess the
realms of barbarism, degradation, and cruelty ! Perhaps
it will be popularly, though it cannot be to Christian
hearts, a less taking version if we say it is a record of
missionary labors, missionary trials, and missionary suc-
cesses. It is the first vohime of the long work of the
Church in obedience to that command, at once so full of
the love and the authority of Jesus, " Go 3 e into all the
world, and preach the gospel to every creature."
In the scene outlined in our text, we are introduced into
a missionary meeting, whose special purpose is the com-
munication of missionary inteUigence. To the disciples
at Antioch belongs the honor of the first mission ever sent
forth by a Christian Church. Moved by the Holy Ghost,
with fasting and prayer, and the laying on of hands, they
had set apart Barnabas and Saul to the missionary work.
(You read concerning this inauguration service at the be-
ginning of the present chapter.) From such "Farewell "
these two intrepid brethren had gone forth from city to
city, with various fortune, through perils and sufierings,
with ever increasing boldness, preaching the death and
resurrection of Jesus, and salvation through him. At
length, after persecutions and stonings, rejected of the
Jews, but with great and good success among the Gen-
tiles, they had completed their tour, and now stood again
among their brethren at Antioch. The whole Church
came together to hear these returned missionaries. There
was no need of urging an attendance upon that meeting.
None said, "It is only a missionary meeting; it will be
214 PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
dull and tame." There were no attractions within all the
city that could divert a disciple from the scene where
these missionary laborers were to tell their simple story.
Their hearts were bound up in hearing how it had fared
with those whom they had sent out to preach the new
gospel, and how that gospel was winning its way in the
earth. No strains of music, whether sacred or profane ;
no lips of eloquent orators, charming never so wisely ;
no scenes bright and pleasant with social festivities, could
compete with the interest of that rehearsal which was to
tell how a Christian mission had prospered. They had
not prayed and fasted and commissioned their brethren
to this work, to be indifferent to its record, and turn
carelessly away from the story of its progress, its difficul-
ties, and its triumphs.
In nearly all the elements of interest attached to this
occasion of long ago, and in some additional elements of
a grander scope and deeper power, we have this scene
repeated in our own times every month, in that " Con-
cert OF Prayer " now so widely observed by the modern
Christian Church. Eighty years ago last June, the ob-
servance of this Concert began with an association of
Baptist ministers of Nottingham, England. Forty years
earlier an attempt had been made, by a number of Scotch
ministers, to secure more united and concerted prayer for
a general effusion of the Holy Spirit " on all the churches
of the Redeemer and on the whole habitable earth." The
Saturday afternoon and Sabbath morning of each week,
and more solemnly the first Tuesday of each quarter of
the year, were specially commended to Christians for
PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCEET. 215
such seasons of agreeing intercession. Many pious hearts
in Great Britain, and some on this side the ocean, caught
the flame of this quickening influence, and "praying so-
cieties " were gathered and maintained in various places
in both countries. The sacred fire touched the heart of
our own Jonathan Edwards, who was moved to write an
elaborate essay, entitled " An humble attempt to promote
explicit agreement and visible union of God's people in
extraordinary prayer for the revival of religion and the
advancement of Christ's kingdom on earth." These ef-
forts and influences culminated at length in the adoption
of a resolution by the Nottingham Association, in 1784,
"recommending the setting apart of the first Monday
evening in every month for prayer for the extension of
the gospel." The circle of churches acting upon this
suggestion widened, though somewhat slowly, every year.
A few American churches, it is believed, kept alive the
old Quarterly Concert from its institution, before the
middle of the last century. A few more began the ob-
servance of the jMonthly Concert at about the time of the
sailing of the first missionaries of the "American Board."
But the observance of this Concert did not gain very gen-
eral prevalence until the year 1815, when it was urged
and enforced by the Panoplist, and almost immediately
welcomed by large and increasing numbers of local
churches. After some twenty years, it was found that
not a few pastors and churches, from the difliculty of
gathering a full attendance upon Monday evening, had
transferred the Concert to the first Sabbath evening of
the month. Several missionary and ecclesiastical bodies
216 PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
favored this change ; the subject was discussed at the
meeting of the American Board in 1838, and though no
action was taken, it would appear that this change had
been widely though not universally approved.
With such a past, this sacred season has come down to
us. Its observance, maintenance, and transmission are
now in our hands. It is no longer a novelty ; neither is
the Sabbath, nor Christianity itself; but none the less for
that ought our interest in it to be fresh, lively, and ten-
der. Our fathers and mothers loved it and honored it.
They would as soon have turned their backs on the Lord's
day and the sacramental supper as on this hour of prayer
for the conversion of the world. The first Sabbath of
each month was with many of them the communion Sab-
bath. Most appropriately they came from the table of
their Lord to pray that the memorials of his love and
death might be set before all the perishing. In their sac-
ramental hymn these two verses came always together : —
" 'Twas the same love that spread the feast
That gently drew us in;
Else wo had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.
"Pity the nations, 0 our God!
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious word abroad,
And bring the strangers home."
There is some reason to fear that, with the present
new generation of Christian believers, this Concert has
less interest and sacredness than with the generation re-
tiring. They felt that it was as divine as the very insti-
PLEA FOE THE MONTHLY CONCERT. 217
tution of missions ; that the Church at home could not
otherwise obey the command to go forth preaching the
word to the ends of the earth ; and that it was treachery
to the Lord, and to those whom they had sent forth in
their name to disciple all nations, to lay upon them such
a commission, and send forth with them no volume of
united, agreeing prayer. They had too faithful a spirit,
too tender a conscience, toward this observance, to al-
low in them the omission of any possible respect to its
most honored keeping. We wear the bands of fealty to
this venerable ordinance more loosely and lightly. With
us it is only one of a great many v:ays of spending the
evening of the Sabbath, between which one and any of
all the rest we are free to choose, as convenience, ease,
and personal inclination may dictate. The Sabbath even-
ing has come to have a thronging pressure upon it, such
as our fathers never dreamed of. It is our eveninof for
sacred operas, — I mean concerts, — for oratorios, for
paid declamation, for every department of humane and
moral enterprise, for the recitation of perilous adventures
in our modern land of bondage, for inaugurating new
police regulations in the metropolis, for well-nigh every
cause that can find an advocate, hire a hall, and that
wishes for an audience. These manifold channels, with
others less questionable than some of these, sluice off
the attendance upon the venerable Concert of Prayer,
and leave it sometimes stranded dry and high, like an
abandoned hulk on the shore.
Such a depletion and desertion of this meeting is a
great loss to the cause of missions, a great subtraction
19
218 PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
from the power and faithfulness of the Church in this main
artery of Christian life and labor, a blast and a blight
upon the intelligent and principled piety of the youth of
our communions, and a sad omen for the type of piety
that shall hold the ascendency with us in coming days.
Let me now take some one of you by the hand, whom
I see here this morning, but never see on the Concert
evening, and set before you the persuasive claims of this
Monthly Concert of Prayer.
Consider, first, its contribution to your intellectual cul-
ture, and to the amount of your positive knowledge.
Missionary explorations have now been pushed out over
the four quarters of the globe. They have traversed
the length and breadth of the continents. They have
searched the sea for hidden islands. They have made
the acquaintance of every barbarous people. They have
occupied the seats of ancient civilization. Toward the
poles, they have gone as far into arctic and antarctic win-
ters as the most dauntless navigators. Under the equa-
tor, they have braved the heat of tropic suns. The men
who have conducted these Christian marches have been
men of good ability, of studious habits, and of disciplined
mind. Most of them have been graduates of our colleges,
and not a few of them men of the highest promise in
scientific tastes, literary accomplishments, and intellectual
force. These men have gone out into these varied re-
gions of the earth, with their eyes open and their minds
alert, to observe and record all that came within their
field of vision. They have told us of the novel aspects of
these strange shores. They have opened to us the inte-
PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT, 219
rior of these mighty continents. They have mapped out
these island groups. They take us up picturesque val-
leys, and over rocky ridges, and across nameless rivers,
and pause with us on the margins of inland lakes, veiled
hitherto from all but native sight, and climb with us the
dome of volcanic mountains, until we see with them all
that their eyes have gazed upon. They tell us the
growths of the field and the forest, — what the hand of
nature rears, and what the hand of tillage. They paint the
portraits of the races dwelling in these far-off scenes, in-
troduce us to their houses, their social life, their temples
of worship, their religious rites, their traits of character,
their governments, their manners and customs. They
are not flying tourists, skimming over the soil as by ex-
press, and sketching only what they see by daylight from
the windows of a lightning train. They go into these
new climes to dwell there. They make themselves at
home among the people. They observe deliberately, and
by many a verification, all concerning which they testify.
They have the deepest practical interest in studying the
hearts and lives of these strange races, and they are men
whose testimony can be taken as the witness of truth and
honesty. The rehearsal of these testimonies, from be-
neath the face of the whole heaven, must needs bring to-
gether a vast amount of the most wonderful and the most
reliable contributions to human knowledge which our en-
lightened age can boast. It is knowledge not merely of
the dead past, but of the living present. On parallel
lines with our life at home, all these distant nations and
tribes are moving forward in their own current, daily his-
220 PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
tories. And every month, at least, we may look over,
eastward and westward, into these contrasted courses of
human progress, and keep a calendar of the whole drift
of the race. There is no periodical that comes upon the
table of the savant that contains within the same space a
juster, wider, more varied view of man as a mortal and
an immortal being — his condition, his dwelling-place, his
graduated interrelations on the full scale of humanity —
than the monthly " Missionary Herald " of the American
Board. Scholars quote it, ambassadors pay tribute to its
writers, science, geography, history, study and appro-
priate it. These are the pages, such are the facts, that
come month by month before the minds of those who at-
tend these missionary meetings. To some extent these
facts would be accessible without such attendance, in the
printed periodical; but, practically, they would not be
gathered. If read, they would not be made so impres-
sive and memorable. A young man who should resolve,
for his intellectual enriching alone, never to fail of at-
tendance upon this monthly resume of the world's getting
on, might, to his advantage, accept it as a substitute for
libraries and lyceums and lectures, and would, when in
years, find himself possessed of a sum total of mental ac-
quisitions which no pecuniary value could measure. No
young man who desires any breadth of intelligence con-
cerning the day in which he lives, and his contemporaries
of the great common family, can afibrd to neglect this
one source of intellectual training and furnishing.
But it is more vital to the idea of Christian culture to
say that nowhere else can you obtain such vivid con-
PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT. 221
ception of the depth of man's moral and spmtual ruin.
Human nature is the same with all the races, and in
every laud and clime. But we see it at home under the
ameliorating power and the decent restraints of the Chris-
tian faith. Take away these restraints, go before this
renovating power, where the dawn of this travelling day
of light and order has not yet risen. Oh, how deep and
total the darkness ! What forms are moving about in it !
What scenes are veiled in it ! What degradation is
there ! Follow the missionary's torch as he lights up
dimly the revolting reality. What faces are there ! Are
they human? Is that the mouth made to smile with
sweet and gentle affections? Is that the brow piled as
the throne of thought? Are those the eyes filled with
the light of intelligence ? Look upon the retreat where
that life kennels, translate its speech, trace out the rudi-
mental family relation, speak to them such words as vir-
tue, goodness, purity, benevolence, truth. Verily you
are talking in an unknown tongue. Are these our fel-
low-men, children of our own ancestors? Alas, what has
sin wrought ! This is the world that has departed from
God. This is what God saw and loved. This is what
Jesus saw, and died. Can any of us see it and think sin
a little thing ? Can any of us see it and doubt the doc-
trine of man's depravity ? Can any of us look upon it
habitually, and not appreciate the world's need of the gos-
pel ? If there be in our modern Christian development a
less burdensome sense of man's utterly lost and ruined
condition than our fathers had, if we have come to speak
pleasantly, tolerantly, and hopefully of human nature as
19*
222 PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
only needing a little smoothing and polishing to be accep-
table to a holy God, may not this defection be traceable
to a neglect of these dark exhibitions of human guilt and
shame ?
Here, too, perhaps, as nowhere else, we learn to appre-
ciate the power of the gospel as a restoric system. Can
it clothe these naked savages ? Can it lift these dull and
sensual eyes heavenward ? Can it transform these brutal
instincts to holy aspirations ? Can it change these fero-
cious tempers to meekness and love ? Can it lead out be-
fore these gross and debased minds God and good angels
and all the purities and sanctities of Christian living?
Can it displace the kennel with a Christian home, and es-
tablish within the decent order and propriety of a Chris-
tian household ? Can it change the wild, vile speech of
those untamed lips to words of prayer and songs of
rhythmic tenderness and worship ? Can it harness tyran-
nic and domineering idleness and improvidence to dili-
gence and thrift, and turn the wilderness into a garden,
the desert into a fruitful field ? Can it lift up the swarm-
ing tribes of such human outcasts, and build them into
the fair proportions of a Christian nation, and set it as a
gem of light and beauty on the bosom of the deep, the
loveliest thing God's eye looks upon on the broad Pacific
Sea? How such a view exalts the gospel before us!
How it rises and towers up — God's great work — with
new sublimities of power, more kindling, inspiring, and
quickening to our homage than we have ever elsewhere
seen it ! If we would know how much God has invested
of his wisdom and greatness in this redemption scheme,
PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT. 223
these are the scenes in which to acquire that knowledge.
No month shall pass without bringing some of these
amazing triumphs of the love and grace of Jesus before
us, to move our wonder and excite our adoring praise.
What other scene helps us to come into such full and
tender sympathy with Christ as this ? How does he feel
toward our lost race? How does he look upon these
"dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of
cruelty"? What are his thoughts of this vast, sunken,
heathen world? Is it for us only that he died? Does he
long for us, and none beside? Are not his compassions
waiting, waiting, waiting, till some voice speak his
name in the ears of these far-off ransomed ones, and some
hand lead them to him for pardon and crowns of life ?
What is his dearest wish, what is his grandest purpose,
on the earth ? Is it not to be known as the earth's Saviour
and Lord? Can a Christian heart be in sympathy with
Jesus and indifferent to missions ? Can that heart enter
into the feelings of that divine bosom, and prefer, on the
Concert eve, to spend the hour somewhere else? Find
me a place upon which the regard of the Saviour is more
intensely fixed upon the first Sabbath evening of the
month than that scene where the Church assembles to
pray, "Thy kingdom come," and to watch and listen unto
the answers to that prayer. Whither will you guide
me ? Shall it be where light hearts gather to be exhilar-
ated by artistic singing? Is Jesus present there with
warmer sympathies than where those prayers ascend, and
the ends of the earth send in responses? Shall it be
where some question of municipal polity is discussed?
224 PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
Shall it be where trained elocution is reciting the sen-
tences of famed orators for our literary entertainment?
Shall it be where an indolent household circle takes neg-
lige posture in easy-chairs and on soft lounges? What
other purely religious gathering even, however solemn
and spiritual, can have an object so grand, so comprehen-
sive, so near the deep core of the heart of Christ, as this
that has met to take up his great commission, and to bring
him his chief and long-delayed joy and reward ? If our
personal predilections, our itching ears, our roving pro-
pensities, our thirst for outside spiritual stimulus, our
desire for self-gratification, control our movements, why,
we may go hither and thither, as far as our vagrant feet
and our more vagrant fiincies shall carry us. But if sym-
pathy with Christ marshal our steps on this one Sabbath
evening, if we mean to be where he lingers with tenderest
interest, and to come under the most welcoming glance of
his eye and his warmest smile, can we doubt that this
scene of conference and prayer concerning the evangeliz-
ing: of the nations is the scene whither we should be led ?
It will be acknowledged, of course, that the Church
owes a duty to Christian missions, and that each individ-
ual member of the Church shares in that debt. What is
it that is owed? A little treasure, an annual gift, an
occasional utterance of the Lord's Prayer, without any
special emphasis on the missionary petition therein, more
than we put on that for our daily bread, a glancing of
the eye over the missionary column of the family religious
newspaper, if such a column can be found ? This cannot
be all. And yet it is likely to be about the whole, if one
PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT. 225
neglect the Monthly Concert. It is, with multitudes of
professing Christians living in such neglect, practically
the whole. Nay, we are to meet and hear freshly, again,
that great missionary command, with all the stress of
Jesus' heart in it. We are to meet and send out oar
cheer to the faithful brethren who have gone in our place
to the distant idolatrous tribes, and who look back with
straining eyes to see whether they are remembered still,
and how many of us come together to hear their saluta-
tions, and to waft them, in prayers, our united benedic-
tions. We are to meet to kindle in our souls afresh the
missionary ardor, to draw in a deep inspiration of the
spirit of self-sacrifice, and of the rescuing pity and yearn-
ing love of our Lord. The missionary life, which is,
more than any other form of expression, that Vvhich em-
bodies and conveys most of the heart of Jesus, — most
nearly identical with that spirit of Christ without which
no man is his, — cannot be vital and earnest with one who
chooses to live in habitual non-attendance upon this scene
of sacred missionary interest. .
If there is any one scene that secures the full and sym-
metrical development of the Christian character, crowns
and w^reathes it with all its graces in full bloom and fra-
grance, it is still this scene of the Missionary Concert.
Here is height, for we go up to the throned heart of
Jesus. Here is depth, for we gauge the abyss of man's
ruin. Here are length and breadth, for our thoughts
and sympathies and prayers run swiftly from pole to pole
of the habitable earth, and wrap the globe around, like
the tidal wave of its oceans. Here Christian pity is
226 PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
taught to weep her softest tears. Here Christian endur-
ance faces its sharpest conflicts, its heaviest strain, and
Christian heroism wins its greenest laurels. Here our
faith wrestles with hardest problems, and again looks upon
its brightest rewards. Here we come to feel that we are
nothing, and less than nothing, before the mountain bar-
riers that bar the gospel's way, and again that our faith,
instrumentally, is mighty through God to the pulling
down of the strongholds of error and sin. Here the love
of souls becomes a consuming passion, and the longing
insupportable that our crucified Lord should see the fruit
of his anguished travail and be satisfied. Here our search
grows eager for the ancient promises, and we sift the
word of God to trace out that covenant of the Father
that pledges to the Son the heathen world as his inheri-
tance. Humility, patience, perseverance, self-denial,
ceaseless gratitude for the things wherein we are made to
differ from our benighted kindred, the spirit of importu-
nate prayer, a discernment of, and a consecration unto,
the true and noble end of Christian living, — all these re-
ceive here, every month, a fresh baptism, wherein they
are sprinkled from the dust of earthliness, and show a
divine purity and beauty. The hold of our ambition, our
greed, our craving for luxuries, our all-encroaching world-
liness, are relaxed; and here, if anywhere, here almost
assuredly, we write upon body, soul, and estate, "All for
Christ." This makes a broad, vigorous, healthful Chris-
tian development. Nothing narrow, sickly, and dwarfing
in this experience. Here the disciple grows to his full
stature. He lives not in the confining cell of his own
PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT. 227
prejudices and bis selfish enjoyments. He lives in the
wide world over which the cross-bannered host of God's
elect is mai'ching, beneath the open sky, where the shadow-
ing wings of the missionary angel bear on that glad her-
aldry, calling down, through the airy spaces, " Peace on
earth, good will to men," and within the full circumfer-
ence of that large love that bought the world with a sacri-
ficial death.
My dear people, I do not think any of us can afford to
dispense Avith this school of Christian nurture. I think
many of us need a higher appreciation of its priceless
worth. I believe there is nothing that we can do for our
Christian growth, no influence under which we can sit for
our personal quickening and enlarging, no service which
we can render to the Master and the great scheme which
he carries on his heart, in any one hour of all the month,
at once so profitable to us, so fruitful for human good, so
grateful to Christ, as this attendance upon the meeting for
missionary intercession. Will any of you say that these
meetings are not interesting? That is your mistake.
They are. You cannot tell in any tone, by any utter-
ance, from any lips, the story of the struggliug and
triumphing gospel, the story of man's degradation and
sinfulness and woe, the story of our Christian comrades
pioneering the paths of saving truth in the far-off lands
of superstition and darkness, without interesting any
heart in sympathy with Christ. Will you stay away be-
cause the meetings are thinly attended? Is that a remedy
for that evil ? The single element of a thronged house , with-
out one other feature changed, would fill the meetings with
228 PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.
life and power. The presence of numbers, the warmth
of so many hearts beating together, the ascending clouds
of intercession from so many souls in unison, the inter-
acting inspirations from so many sympathies, all drawn
out in one direction, and coursing together through the
changes of the meeting, would make the place as solemn
and privileged as the council-chamber of the Deity.
It is one evening of a month. Give it to this service.
Set it apart and consecrate it, and make it sacred to this
observance. Write a vow before God, in your closet, to
keep this Concert. Let nothing but his peremptory hand
upon you keep you away. I would have no regular en-
gagement, of whatever sort, that should bereave me and
Christ of this attendance. Come, young and old ; come
in fair weather and foul ; come fresh or weary ; come
though angelic choirs give concerts in pavilions of gold,
though silver-tongued orators promise strains of elo-
quence sweeter than song. Come, to please Jesus, to
take upon your willing hearts the tender pressure of his
last command, and your souls shall reap a full reward ;
the welcomes of your waiting Lord shall greet you and
rest upon you, and the world's redemption shall be
hastened on.
XV.
HUMAN LONELINESS.
IF THOU BE WISE, THOU SHALT BE WISE FOR THYSELF ; BUT IF THOU SCORN-
EST, THOU ALONE SHALT BEAR IT. — PrOV. ix. 12.
DEIYE at midnight through the mazy streets of some
great centre of human life. Here and there a lamp
is faintly burning. The crowds have melted away. Si-
lence has settled down between the dark ranges of man-
sions and warehouses. The eye glances up and runs
along the surflice of the tall, dim walls. What is hidden
there within? AYhat secrets do those shuttered homes
enclose? If one could look into all that seclusion, what
strange elements of society, what varied and perhaps
startling experiences, personal and social, would meet his
view ! High up, half shaded, but struggling feebly out,
a light burns obscurely. What is there, — sickness, wake-
fulness, plotting crime, or only deep slumber watched
over by that friendly ray? Imagination revels at will.
But night, silence, and the dark masonry, with its curtains
and blinds, keep their secrets. We cannot explore or
know. And if all those windows were to flame out with
a sudden illumination, if we could take the wings of the
bird of night and fly over the thronged city, and every
20
230 HUMAN LONELINESS.
roof were transparent, we should know not much more
than we now know while pacing slowly and wonderingly
along the dark street. The interior scenes of those
guarded shelters would be visible, — passages, stairways,
and the furnishing of occupied apartments. We should
look upon faces and forms, hear the heavy respiration of
sleepers, or perhaps human voices interchanging murmur-
ing confidences. But the real mystery of life is more
darkly shrouded. Wake all the unconscious thousands
there, and let them offer their opened eyes and their or-
dinary daily face to our gaze, we should be but little
nearer the solution. There are more impenetrable walls,
there is a deeper night around that mystery, than the re-
tiring day and the hand of man have made. Only God
above and the heart within know the facts of experience
and character.
Each human life is an isolated life. It may have its
alliances and its contacts, but it never loses its identity
and its individuality. The stars are by our science, for
convenience' sake, set in systems, grouped in constel-
lations, but each is, for all that, a separate sphere, with
its own unexplored interior world. So the human soul
is an orb by itself. Its peopled chambers compose a
world apart from all other worlds. Amid crowds or
amid solitudes the man sits ever by himself in the solitari-
ness of his own uninvaded consciousness, with secrets
which he could not, if he would, make clearly intelligible
to any fellow-man, with questions and issues which he
must meet alone.
I wish to lead in our thoughts out of the world of broad
HUMAN LONELINESS. 231
and general sympathies, to disengage each of us from our
associations and clanships, to separate us from the sweep
of the tide, in which we seem blent with kindred drops,
our career and our destiny merged with those of our clas-
sification and fellowship, and to bring us in flice to face
with our own single selves. That is the intent of our
Scripture to single us out from a massed humanity, to
isolate us within our own personal orbit, to discover to
us the singularity of that orbit, to make us feel that un-
divided responsibleness that burdens ourselves, and to
recall us to the conviction that we are to meet the real
problem of life solitary and alone. The solitariness of
human life is the point specially to be illustrated.
1. Each man is alone in the original, native singleness
of his being. He was born alone into this world of his
kind, a unit of life, a single fresh soul from the Creator's
hand, with his own private and personal outfit of mental
and material forces, his own adjustment and proportions
of mind and body, their interchanges and relations of of-
fices and effects special and peculiar to him. His cerebral
development is his own. The intellectual and the animal
divide him up and share him by appointments never ex-
actly repeated. The physical serves well the rational, or
disappoints and cripples it, or shades ofi" toward the one
extreme or the other. He is of a hardy or tender spirit-
ual constitution; his sensibilities, frigid and stern, or
warm and sympathetic. His temperament is his own.
The whole balance, poise, and composition of his man-
hood are individual and unique. The elements of the
common humanity are there, but differently mingled in
232 HUMAN LONELINESS.
him from what they are in any other fellow specimen.
God's creative versatility and variety never run low. In
all the forest no two oaks in limb and trunk and shade
stand alike. On the seashore each grain of sand is in-
dividual and distinct. The wintry air is full of falling
snowflakes like blossoms shaken from the trees of para-
dise, but each is crystallized with a conformation of its
own. In breadth and height and hue the grass-blades
vary, and "one star differeth from another star in glory."
The diversity of the human form is a symbol of the real
diversity of the human life, and of itself helps by no
mean contribution to constitute that diversity. Souls are
as unlike as bodies. One may seem twin to another, as
in the fleshly form, but in stature, color, texture, or what-
ever expresses the dimensions and qualities of spirits,
each has its own specialty and vindicates its separate type.
The very object of creating men single and distinctive,
that their function and work may fulfil the Creator's de-
sign, keeps them in their identity apart. They may touch
at many points, they may compose little societies, they
may join their voices in the same strain of music, they
may lift together at the same burdens of human travail ;
but each voice has its own tone, each nerve its own force ;
this singleness of their own individual make always at-
taches to them. In that, each is forever himself, — himself
alone, and not another, and those limits and boundaries,
those descriptive lines that mark him off from the world
at large, shut him in to a personal and perpetual solitude.
2. Again, each man is alone in the citadel of his own
consciousness. He has an outward eye and an inward
HUMAN LONELINESS. 233
eje. With the outward he looks, and this map of earth
is unrolled before him. There rise the mountains, there
spread tlie plains, there the valleys are scored, there wave
the forests and murmur the brooks, and chase one another
in the play of Titans the colossal waves of lights and
shadows over the harvest fields of summer. There heaves
the sea, now in stormy tumult, flinging its angry billows
against all its bounds, and now sobbing itself to sleep like
a child wearied out by its own passion, and again bright
and sparkling in the gleam of sunny weather. Above
bends the sky, sometimes gusty and howling wdth winter
winds, or all still and black with a ray less gloom, or cur-
tained with impenetrable and chilling mists, or weeping
softly in summer rain; and then again, w^ith a deep,,
pure, and unfathomable blue, across which the crescent
moon cleaves her w^ay, or the sun rides royally, or through
which, as a transparency, the starry lights of celestial
windows and avenues show far and clear. This is the
outer world, with its sea and sky, its landscapes, seasons,
and changes. And I have outlined its map, because it
has its counterpart within. The inward eye looks over
an inner world as broad, varied, and marvellous as the
outer. There rise the ridges of its controlling thoughts,
its grand and stable beliefs ; there gush the fountains and
murmur the streams of its sensibilities. There wind the
channels of its habitual purposes and courses of soul ;
there is the expanse of knowledge over which the mind
ranges ; the long, branching vales of memory ; the
heights imagination scales ; there come and go the April
lights and shadows of its changeful moods ; there surges
20*
234 HUMAN LONELINESS.
up in tossing swells, or lies in calm repose, the great deep
of its emotions ; the forests are musical with birds, or
silent and gloomy above the covert of the passions that
have their lair there as beasts of prey. Above, to Hope
and Faith, in the atmosphere of this soul, there are some-
times clouds and driving and bitter blasts ; sometimes
blessed revelations seen remote like stars, and sometimes
the effulgence, the full splendors, of glorious sunlight.
This can hardly be called a fancy sketch. The outer per-
petually symbols the inner, — nay, it scarcely has any
meaning or reality save as the soul finds correspondences
for it and glasses all its features and vicissitudes in its
own more conscious life. Upon this inner world of con-
sciousness there rests only one human look. The soul
walks therein alone. It never can admit society there.
It is not in its power to open up these interior vistas to
any other eye. We may notice an air of abstraction come
upon one of our companions ; he seems lost in revery ; he
has forgotten our presence. But that is all we see, — his
face and form and vacant, assorbed manner, no more.
But what does he see within the narrow chamber of his
brain, whose walls and dome we can cover with our two
hands? There is a world broader and statelier than earth
itself. His thought glances across continents of won-
drous being, ferries itself over eceans all quivering and
throbbing with vitality, soars to a cope no eagle's flight
ever touched. Who can follow him? Who can read the
strange chronicle of his musings? Who can watch the
processions that sweep along those covered highways,
and say how they are draped, — whether in mourning sable
HUMAN LONELINESS. 235
or festive white? lu the sphere of consciousness each
man dwells alone.
3. Again. Each man is alone in the daily current of
his existence. I mean he lives his own life. It is him-
self, and no other, that wakes where he lifts his eyelids to
the light of morning. It is his own feet that begin again
his journey, as he takes up his pilgrim staff, girds his
loins, and sets forth. He thinks his own thoughts; he
summons before him his own aims ; he feels a craving
that reports itself to him alone ; his ideal good, his ideal
life, flit before him, visible only to his own eye, and
beckon him on. He has something lo achieve every day
which is his personal prize for the day. He walks with
his own gait ; the footmarks left are his ; he lifts in his toil
his own strokes, hurried or measured, strong or feeble ;
he has gained or lost as the day closes in a sense which
touches him as no other life. He may have yoke-fellows
in his toil, closest intimates in his schemes and dreams
and affections, but still his stream of life flows by itself.
If it join some companion stream, it shall be like the
union of the Aar and the Khone. They have united, they
fill one channel, they flow on between the same banks,
but far down below the point of confluence, they are seen
to be as distinct as when the one slid from beneath its
mighty glacier, and the other came roaring down the
Grimsel pass. So for many a league they pour onward,
side by side, the blue Ehone, the yellow Aar, — one, yet
divided. Each man has his own moulds of action, in
which he runs all his conduct. His method of viewing
motives, of reasoning upon premises, of arriving at con-
236 HUMAN LONELINESS.
elusions ; the springs within him, whose play is the most
constant, whose volume the largest, upon which whoso
would move him must lay a finger ; the force he expends
hour by hour, and the direction in which he advances ; the
threads he weaves in and the threads he drops, and con-
sequently the pattern that grows under his fingers, — all
these constitute and proportion his life, but no other in all
the compass of humanity. When he hears the record
read out at last, when that one leaf is turned in the eter-
nal book, and the original of that biographic story is sum-
moned, there will be no need to call his name ; he will
know the portrait ; he will step out of the throng to own
that life as his ; no other man will move ; the identity will
be so clear there can be no mistaking.
4. And each man, again, is alone in his sifting. There
may pass over his head peaceful and happy years ; fair
behind him lengthens out the pathway of his life, but
the night of his wrestling shall come. The one distant
terror, unknown for half a lifetime, or known and forgot-
ten, or remembered and yet postponed, in God's provi-
dence kept aloof, suddenly approaches, like Esau and his
armed band sweeping down from Mount Seir upon Jacob
and his company. It was years ago that the younger had
so grievously injured the elder brother, and fled for his
life. God has greatly blessed him since, and he has
prospered exceedingly ; but the crisis he has shunned so
long at last darkens toward him. To-morrow that aveng-
ing presence will be upon him, that brother's dreaded
riofht arm must be met. And the nis^ht leads him into
that terrible and mysterious conflict. The struggle must
HmiiiN LONELINESS. 237
come for every man. There is that in his nature, there
is that in his story, there is that in providence of testing
and trial, which he must meet. The ghostly shadow will
assume that one form which he feels he has chief cause
to dread. He must grapple with it for his life ; no eye
shall look on ; no crowds shall cheer ; no champion shall
come to his rescue. Alone, the night about him, singly
contending against a strength whose resources he cannot
measure, no release till a determinate issue be reached, —
that issue, life or death, glorious victory or shameful de-
feat, — he must fight it out. There is a temptation be-
fore which each man is personally and peculiarly weak.
Perhaps we have battled with it already, possibly that
sorest conflict is yet before us ; but whenever and where-
ever we meet it, w^e meet it alone. It will sift us ;
God will let us feel our weakness. Another man's trial
we could lightly bear ; that which vanquishes him we
could easily put to rout. No wonder, perhaps, he was so
soon overcome by such a foe. But there is some spirit-
ual antagonist as formidable to us. Just when we are
reproaching, perhaps, our fallen brother, our own Go-
liath of Gath enters the valley to meet us. Ah, if we
could know the history of every tempted and sinning
man, — the long, weary wrestling, the slow, sad night
shutting in the strife, the manful resistance, the waning
strength, the inward anguish, the self-loathing, the shame
like that with which naked Adam fled and hid in the ffar-
den, — if we should consider that a stress may yet be
laid upon us beneath which our best powers shall wither,
no words so gentle, tender, and loving should ever pass
238 HUMAN LONELINESS.
our lips as those we should utter over the erring. Let
us remember it. So far as human strength goes, each
must wrestle alone with the most triumphing temptation
that can assail him. Job's three friends sat by his side,
but they left him still alone ; the toils were his, and not
theirs ; and so with all the evils of his lot. So will it be
with us, each of us sifted and tested by himself.
5. Each man is alone in dealing with God's truth and
spirit. The gospel is preached by one utterance to a
thousand souls ; but to each man it is as if he sat there
uncompanioned in the house of God. God has only
spoken to him. The question raised is, What will he do
with this divine message ? Personally will he have Christ
to reign over him? The sun shines for him and his
neighbor ; the air is their common inheritance ; the same
fragrance of flowers they may inhale together. But out
of all that hear the oflfers of pardon and life only the soul
that in the solitude of its own voluntariness yields to the
moving spirit, steps forward for itself, and takes and
kisses the hand of the Sovereign, will find itself included
in the amnesty. Each must hear for himself, each must
resolve for himself, each must act for himself. Alone
with God, singled out from a world gone astray, God's
eye upon it, God's love wooing it, the bleeding hand of
Christ stretched out to it, the world, the flesh, and the
devil pleading against it, the soul must conclude in that
solitude this high debate, and choose for good or for evil,
for the death that never dies or the life that is everlasting.
6. Alone the soul must encounter the struggle of dy-
ing. The hand may be held in some warm, loving clasp ;
HUMAN LONELINESS. 239
underneath the drooping head may glide a strong embrac-
ing arm ; the white cheek may rise and fall to the breath
of some cherishing bosom, and the friends dearest in life
may stand around ; but the soul enters upon that dread
path alone. The fleshly hands meet, but no spirit of its
fellows walks hand in hand with the departing traveller.
What it sees, it only sees ; what it suffers, it only suf-
fers ; the progress is all its own, — the opening marvels,
the clearing shadows, the awful verities ; the other at-
tendants, though so near, are by the breadth of worlds
behind. We may have stood many a time by the side of
the dark river, and seen others go down into the chill
waters, and the way may seem familiar; we may think
we know it ; but when we assay the current, when the
cold waves rise higher and higher, and we gasp and falter
and feel for firm footing, and look to see what welcome
waits us on the further shore, what forms come to meet
us and environ us around, that experience we must try
alone and b}^ ourselves. It is coming to us, that solemn
hour ; it will take us into its solitary custody ; it will
single us out from the crowd and whisper in our ear, un-
heard by any other, either this inspiring messagey"The
Master is come and calleth for thee," or this stern arrest,
" Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee."
7. Alone, too, each shall rise in the great day; alone
each shall be judged, each sentenced alone. Though that
trumpet blast shall wake all that sleep, each shall open
his eyes with sensations all his own upon the scenery of
that day. Though all the generations of earth shall stand
together before the judgment-seat, yet each man's story
240 HUMAN LONELINESS.
shall be recited amid the hush of a listening universe, and
the final word, " Come ! " or " Depart ! " shall fall on each
heart as though none beside knew such joy or such grief.
So solitary, though amid dearest fellowships and closest
intimacies, is human life in all its stages, from its dawn
of being till its destiny is fixed forever. Come, then,
my friend, and look your isolation full in the face. You
stand a single individual soul in God's sight, responsible
for yourself, living your own personal life, moving toward
your own definite future. No crowd conceals you, no
general movement sweeps you in, no vague fellowship
provides for you apart from your personal, individual act-
ing. Alone you have sinned, alone you must repent, be-
lieve, and obey. Oh, the vital question of salvation is one
between you and God ! It must be settled in the chamber
of your own spirit. You yourself are to confront all the
weighty issues of your being in time. Religion is your
own personal matter, a life that is to be special to you, a
new vitality to come into the privacy of your own heart.
The deep solitariness of your whole existence admits of
one grand qualification. Into those lonely chambers one
glorious Being may come. Over the fields of conscious-
ness you may stray with one Friend by your side, who
shall see and know and feel all that you feel and know
and see. In the weighty conflict, this healing and vic-
torious presence may succor your fainting strength and
wounded form. Along the changeful highway, in the
shade, in the shine, the meek Pilgrim from Nazareth may
keep you company and share your experience. In all
trouble and anguish one tender Heart shall pulse with
HUAIAN LONELINESS. 241
yours, as truly at home at the core of your sorrow as you
that suffer. You shall enter the shadowy vale singing,
"Thou art with me." As all of earth recedes, you shall
whisper again, "Ihese have left me alone, yet am I not
alone, for my Saviour is joined to me, and we twain are
one spirit." And passing on and out, your watchword
at heaven's gate shall be, "Forever with the Lord.''
Come, O lonely life, and be united to the Lord of life.
O solitary spirit, be made one with the Father and the
Son, your solitude opening thus upon infinite riches of
sympathy, love, and communion.
21
XYI.
THE MINISTRIES OF TIME.
I THE LORD WILL HASTEN IT IN HIS TIME. — Isaiah Ix. 22.
GOD is sovereign and omnipotent, but he waits the
ministration of Time. He could force seasons and
laws, but it is his way rather to work through them and
by them. He has ordained them as servitors of his will.
His purposes on the earth, in the conduct of human af-
fairs, had, in respect to their accomplishment, a germina-
tion, a process, and a harvest-hour of consummation.
Time is the prime-minister of Providence, and brings
to pass in due order, at their full periods, and at the ap
pointed juncture, the patient counsels of the Most High.
There is no hurrying and no sickness of deferred hope on
that eternal and tranquil mind. "One day is with the
Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one
day." It lends a new dignity and a sterner and loftier
majesty to Time, when we consider it thus, not imperson-
ally, as the passing away of our days, — the swift, mute
lapse of the stream of life sliding down the vale, — but
as a strong, executive angel, a sceptred and conscious
force, that has it in charge to reveal and fulfil the hidden
plan of God.
THE MINISTRIES OF TIME. 243
Man is strong, and works great changes upon the earth
and his fellow-man. Art is strong, and produces its rapid
marvels. The forces serving the human will are nimble
and muscular. Heat and frost lift up monuments of their
might and magic. The fires of earth's centre, the winds
that sweep over the surface, the seas that thunder along
her shores, — these have their power and their trophies.
But Time is the great magician. All these latter forces
are sinews of its own arm. The changes, the revolutions,
the histories of this world, are only chronicles of the vice-
regency of Time.
It is fitting, as the swift shuttle glances past again,
drawing another thread into the woven fabric of God's
scheme for earth and man, bringing out yet more clearly
the parts in the pattern for the whole, that we pause to
consider
This ministry of Time in accomplishing the divine
pleasure.
If the whole scope of the supreme administration may
not be known thus, we may gather at least some of the
principles and particulars that unite at last to perfect that
consummate whole. We shall see that Time is, among
men, the revealer, the attester, the vindicator, the recti-
fier, the fulfiller.
Time tests the principles of human conduct. I speak
here of avowed principles consciously, perhaps boldly,
proceeded upon, set in contrast or antagonism with one
another. There is a difference among men, both in the-
ory and in practice, in respect to these principles. The
diversity and the divergence illustrate themselves in in-
244 THE MINISTRIES OF TIME.
numerable ways. Look in upon two scenes of family
training. In one of them the idea is, with the controlling
head, that the true end of domestic nurture is social suc-
cess. Special stress, then, will be laid upon the accom-
plishments whose chief grace is external. The manner
is a matter of first concern. The gloss of an outward
polish is of great price. The step must be put under tui-
tion. Motion must be artistic, graduated to rule and
canon. Exits and entrances must be fashioned after a
model. The introduction into society is a grand and sol-
emn crisis. Acquaintances must be made. The young
lives must be launched upon the social world. What if
they should be neglected, thrown out of the current,
stranded high and dry upon the bank, the stream of their
generation flowing merrily by, and leaving them, as it
were, only to serve as landmarks for the progress of the
gay, iris-tinted bubbles that float, with music and laugh-
ter, ever on amid greenness and bloom ? This must not
be. A social triumph must in some way be achieved.
And all the care and painstaking converge to this issue.
In the other the commanding object is the formation of a
right character. The interior life of gentle manners must
be gentle thoughts. The only external polish that will
never grow coarse is the outshining of inward purity and
kindness. The law of love is the suflicient code of polite-
ness and etiquette. The best social furnishing is the
wealth of the soul's virtuous intelligence, an appreciation
of what is true and beautiful in nature, in mind and mor-
als, the utterance of generous sensibilities and of a self-
respect that prefers its own calm approval to admiration
THE MINISTRIES OF TIME. 245
and flattery, and sets the price of its modesty too high to
oflfer itself as a prize for social bidding. You shall hear
now the first of these two systems remonstrating with the
other, predicting social isolation, social failure, urging the
demonstrative and forcing culture, adopting it for the
sons and daughters under its guardianship, and resting
cheerfully and complacently in its superior discernment
and wisdom. This subject carries me back in thought to
my own early rural home. I look in again upon the fam-
ilies that were so ambitious of social conquests. I see
the youths and maidens there planning festive entertain-
ments, and delighting in gay assemblies. The fashions
and the gayeties were, to be sure, somewhat on a rural
scale ; but it was our world, and a miniature in all essen-
tial features of the most brilliant metropolitan life. And,
to be sure, the sober, puritanical portion of the rising gen-
eration there were left quite outside this conventional so-
ciety,— their faces were not seen, nor their hands sought
in the ball-room. The winter evening ride, the rural
party, and generally all scenes of youthful merry-making
in which the set came together, were made up without
their presence. Here there were smiles and laughs and
romps and dances and cards and all the staple of vain and
thoughtless fellowship and enjoyment, from which our
graver style of young life was self-exiled. And so the
issue was made, and the trial of the two systems entered
upon. And in the one circle, quick friendships were
formed, a score of acquaintances were added to one's list
in a single evening. No danger of being lost sight of so-
cially, dropped out of social recognition ; here the doors
21*
246 THE MINISTKIES OF TIME.
stood wide open to social settlements and domestic alli-
ances. And sometimes it was felt, I know, on the other
side, that all such doors were shut against them. 'They
seemed isolated from those of their own age ; their seclu-
sion was uninvaded ; they could improve their minds, cul-
tivate their taste, study the secrets of happy, dignified,
and well-ordered homes, quite to themselves. Who would
know ever whether they were prizes or blanks? The
drawing would be all in the other circle, and the more
worldly policy looked like a success. There all w^as
bright and glittering. Here lay a shadow. There, there
was mating and marrying and giving in marriage. Here
all relations were undisturbed. Taking life as it is, this
more select discipline promised to be barren of results.
But principles are everlasting verities ; they change not ;
they are of slow development often ; their seed lies cold
and motionless long; their harvest comes late, but it
comes. Such issues are not to be settled in a day. Their
trial takes in, in its progress, more elements than are at
first seen to be included. The earlier appearances are
not reliable exponents of the final consummation. Across
the breadth of years I look and read the story truer. The
paths of life from those two circles, the streams from
those separate fountains, are visible before me. The
gay, brilliant type quickly darkened and degenerated.
That was its best. It never rose higher. There were
early excesses, there were early and dishonored graves,
there were floating wrecks of vice and dissipation, there
were sad, sad tales of shame and anguish, there were
miserable disappointments. Those that were specially
THE MINISTRIES OF TIME. 247
decked and tutored for proudest triumphs, somehow, al-
ways missed their goal. What they won was trash, or
worse, and for the most part they drew utter blanks. It
all came to nought. The glittering bubble burst, and
there was nothing in the hand but the stain of defiling
moisture.
And on the other side, once more, there was always a
wealth of personal resources ; there was a growing but
unconscious refinement ; there was fostered a selecter and
more discriminating taste; solid and abiding qualities
grew with the passing youthful season, and when more
difficult and fastidious minds came searching for fresh,
unsoiled natures, and an outfit for wider and hio-her
spheres, they found the golden fruit hidden beneath the
over-shadowing leaves, and gathered it with pride and
joy. I have lingered too long upon this, but it is a most
instructive page. And the record is repeated at ten thou-
sand social centres, only it cannot be written at once, or
read at a glance. Like Chinese writings, the lines stretch
down the lengthening scroll of Time. Time is the slow
scribe, the sure expounder.
One man argues that, "Take the world as it goes, and
you must practise upon it to gain your ends. You must
manage a little ; you must move subtly and dexterously to-
ward your aims ; you must not show your hand ; you need
not tell the whole story out; you must ask more than you
expect to get ; you must put the best face on a thing it
can be made to wear ; you may well enough leave sharp
eyes and keen wits to explore and interpret your silence.
The universal system is such that if we do not adopt this
248 THE MINISTRIES OF TIME.
policy, we shall be left hopelessly behind." Another mau
plants his foot immovably upon the conviction that hon-
esty is the best policy. He must be frank, transparent,
true. More or less, his gains must bring within his doors
no rej)roaches. Poverty is a pleasanter household com-
panion than remorse ; strict right with a crust, rather than
wrong with princely dainties. And the two procedures
start together on the track. The first success is almost
always on the side of cunning. Slow-moving, downright
honesty is speedily distanced. One holds a court, the
other sits in solitude. The proverb hardly expresses a
truth for " the life that now is." Ah ! wait a little. Hear
the witness of Time. Intrigue and practising cannot
always escape tjie light, and the light they cannot bear.
Men once bitten grow shy of traps. Nobod}^ loves to be
practised upon. Wily natures always come at last to be
distrusted. These little business and social treacheries
invariably, in the long run, lose the operators their richest
capital, — confidence. And the tides ebb away ; and now
it is honesty's turn. It comes late, but it is final. There
is nothing after it. Here is perfect trust, unsuspecting
security. Here we find bottom, and stand firm. The
proverb was altogether right. Principles have had their
development, and each after its kind borne its fruit.
Time has ripened and gathered it, — apples of Sodom for
the one; apples of gold, — nay, golden-globed sweetness
from the tree of life for the otter.
This is the demonstration of principle that cannot be set
aside, — the demonstration of Time.
Again, Time is the test of friendships. Where is the
THE MINISTRIES OF TIME. 249
love that never grows cold, that outlives youth and bloom,
that was founded on deeper and more vital attractions
than those that pass away with life's roseate morning?
Where are the hands that used to clasp ours ? Have they
warm and welcoming palms for us still? AYhere are the
lips that smiled upon us once ? Do they keep smiles or
sternness for us now? We used to listen to such earnest
and tender expressions of interest in our fortunes, delight
in our society, regard for our persons, and appreciation
of our characteristics. Are all those utterances silent
now? How much of youthful and ardent friendship has
survived those summer clays? How many of our later
associations have kept their first gushing promises in truth
and faithfulness ?
And yet we must not judge harshly. If there is any
lesson which Time letters most legibly on all the pages of
our story, it is, that our hard, reproachful judgments, our
morbid protests that all is false, deceitful, and hollow,
that truth and honor have forsaken the earth, that none
can be trusted, that no heart is sincere, that real kindness
and genuine good-will are not to be found among men,
are extravagances that would be ridiculous if they were
not so false and injurious. We have been deceived and
betrayed, but w^e must not generalize from that instance.
We have broken through the ice here and there, but there
may be yet broad fields of it as firm as a marble floor.
The very hearts that we pronounce alienated and estranged
may rather have become wearied than chilled. Dislocated
from one side, the broken fibres of social afiections must
cling somewhere. Thrown upon other fellowships, the
250 THE MINISTRIES OF TIME.
tendrils have caught and twined about fresh objects.
Once they were all free to turn and choose as they listed,
but they have been pressed long since into new alliances,
and have responded to the new appeals as once they re-
sponded to ours. But in this very fact they show that
their nature is unchanged. To human love, if not to our
personal memory, they still are true ; yes, and bring back
the old relations, and we, it may be, should not find them
wanting. This is what Time teaches.
And then, again, Time tries his tests upon character.
Sorrowfully, often, we are made to watch this process.
All seems fair outwardly. We have unbounded confi-
dence. We surrender our gravest trusts. We rest upon
this tried and approved integrity. It becomes a standard-
bearer in the most salient advances of Christianity. It
wins a good report. It stands a pillar, straight, strong,
and upright. Lay your weight there, build thereon ; and
we build, and feel secure for solid years. And, one day,
there is a crash. It was only the shell of a pillar ; either
within it was all rottenness and hollo wness, or a sudden
and violent wrench twisted it out of place, and down it
came, fallen and broken. It is a mournful lesson Time
has read us. Whom shall we trust? What shall we
build with? Character that has stood seemingly all
severer tests, passed unsullied amid youthful passions and
summer temptations, met the hour and call of solemn
duties, took on the sober livery of its autumn staidness
and ripeness, cannot this be confided in? Are life-long
victories over manifold forces of evil no security ? Ah !
one test remains. It is a silent, patient, long-waiting de-
THE MINISTRIES OF TIME. 251
tective. At last it gives in its report, and we are stricken
dumb with surprise and grief. Hastily, perhaps, we say,
" All is over ; this is the end ; there is nothing left there ;
here shuts down the gate of life and hope." And Time
may yet correct this too hasty conclusion, and read us an
unpublished story that would draw deep upon our tender-
est sympathies, and forbid us to pass capital sentence
upon our brother on one indictment only, when we are
impeachable in many points, and lead up out of the valley
of humiliation a chastened penitent, a restored wanderer,
whose lore in divine grace and infinite compassion shall
surpass all that we have known, whose fitness for rare and
special service shall be tempered in this fiery furnace, and
whose evening of life shall yet show a serene and glowing
west. Hast thou, O Time ! and thou, O wondrous Grace
of God! such revelations in store? We will pause, and
hope and pray till the future draw back its veil.
Is there a ghost in every house, a phantom dogging
every man's footsteps, a secret in every bosom? Here
and there, there is a seemingly calm and self-possessed
spirit, that faces tranquilly the light of day and the gaze
of all-searching eyes, as though the waters flowed trans-
parent with crystal clearness over a pebbly bed, in which
the while there is yet beneath this surface-sparkling, a
deep, dark pool, and at the bottom a grim, slimy monster
that never comes to the light. There lurks that leviathan
for unsuspected years. No ripple above, no commotion
on the surface, gives signs of the horrid life in the dark
depths. The man walks amid his fellow-men as though
with a consciousness never disturbed. No infirmity of
252 THE MINISTRIES OF TBIE.
nerve ever sets him to trembling. No pause in his un-
sleeping vigilance betrays him into fatal admissions. In
his utter solitude he sometimes faces this untold story.
But no lips can ever tell it. It lies within the compass of
no single knowledge. It is broken into fragments, like a
shattered ring, or a fatal bond torn apart and distributed
into remote and alien hands. Can those fragments ever
be gathered, those parts ever be reunited ? Alone and by
itself, each means nothing, reveals nothing. What simul-
taneous impulse shall move these " disjecta membra " to
come together ? The thing can never be ; and the keeper
of the shameful secret passes on reassured. Then Time
waves his wand. The hand that held one fragment mould-
ers in dust, and the eyes of executors scan curiously the
torn and yet ominous leaf. From opposite meridians, as
though led on by fate, come up, at the only juncture that
could serve the issue, the remaining witnesses. The mu-
tilated memorial is again a whole, but it is written in
cipher, and the dream of security 'lingers yet. And the
magic wand is lifted once more, and the hidden key drops
from its hiding-place, and all is legible and patent. Time
has become the minister of justice. And the last words
of every dying year wake in guilty breasts this dreary
echo, " There is nothing covered that shall not be re-
vealed, and hid that shall not be known."
And yet there are those to whom this word is not
dreary, but animating; not a menace, but a long-sustain-
ing promise. They have been under a cloud. Their
character has been unrighteously aspersed. Men have
believed evil of them. They have been the victims of
THE MINISTRIES OF TIME. 253
mistakes or of circumstances or of malignant conspiracy.
The baleful torches of calumny have flared upon them and
blackened them all over. Their simple assertion of inno-
cence has been taken as brazen-fronted hardihood. Many
a hand has been withdrawn from them ; many a face has
turned away. Friends once trustful and beloved have
passed by on the other side. So they have walked on in
the cold shadows of the long night, waiting for the dawn ;
and the slow hours rolled away. They had no hope but
in God, and God sent to them this championship of Time.
And one day the solution of the mystery was suddenly
uncovered, and men saw how they had been deluded, and
how falsely they had believed. And this patient inno-
cence shone forth like a rising sun, the brighter for its
obscuration, all the more revered that it had suflered lono-
o
in uncomplaining silence. And it is seen that character is
not committed to human keeping. No enemy can take it
from us. We need not fear, iu our innocence, the face of
mortal, the malice of infernal. We can calmly defy all
machinations ; and when girt about with hissing serpents,
who boast that they have us in their own den and power,
we can stand in the heroism of this single truth ; " The
Lord is on my side, I will not fear ; what can man do unto
me?"
Again, the real struggle of a man's life, the crisis of his
moral history. Time often holds in reserve. It comes not
in his sheltered boyhood, over which bend only bright and
genial skies. His youth glides past him, a peaceful stream
flowing on through gentle meadow^s. Manhood takes him
by the hand, and there has been as yet no faltering in
254 THE MINISTRIES OF TIME.
his step. He seems to have conquered in the fields of
life, to have mastered his passions without a conflict.
And, perhaps, gray mingles with the native hue of his
hair, the seal of his confirmation in settled integrity. He
knows not, and no man knows, the strength of his pro-
pensities. The hour of trial has never fairly fronted him.
What a mutinous crew slumber under the hatches there
he suspects not ! What combustibles are gathered be-
neath the fair fabric of his unsullied name ! What a train
might be fired, what a fight he might be called to maintain,
with upleaping and furious foes and flames, he never for
a moment dreams ! It may happen to him to know better
by and by. The ripe hour hurries on. It is all the more
perilous that he has never faced real and mortal danger.
He has no lore of warning experience. The train is fired,
and the tumult begins. Let him gird himself like a man.
The combat rages. What a fearful strife ! Forward and
backward the tide ebbs and flows. No such strain as this
has ever tested the might of his arm. He has called him-
self a soldier, but he has never had a field-day till now.
What if it should go against him ? He pants and bleeds
and falters. Oh ! woe the day, if he have not a divine
Helper, or if he forget to look up for heavenly succor !
Let no man speak harshly of the fallen ; let no man plume
himself upon his own immaculateness. Our day may
come. Low behind the bending west the distant cloud
may even now be rising. Be meek, charitable, watchful,
and prayerful.
God even commits his own vindication to Time. He
delays, both to visit for daring wrong and to reward pa-
THE MINISTEIES OF TIME. 255
tient faith. His threatenings and his proraises seem laid
aside, forgotten. The impious cry, derisively, " Where is
the promise of his coming?" and the believer, "Lord,
how long ? " But there is no demonstration from the si-
lent heavens. That sovereign hand begins its work afar
oif. It rolls up not a single event, but an ordered and
massive system. The good die while yet the consumma-
tion hoped for lingers. The vile triumph, and their seed
seems established in the earth. Then on the vast, dim
dial, the index points to the appointed hour, and ven-
geance and deliverance do their work ; and amid blas-
phemy confounded and righteousness exultant, sounds
the blessed voice, "I the Lord will hasten it in his time."
In the individual life the grandest spiritual truths are
learned late. Here, as in all learning, there is an alpha-
bet first, and more wondrous revelations afterward. For
these deeper and more radiant mysteries there must be
often a peculiar preparation. The soul must have a past
to look back to, to build upon. The path up the snowy
Alps is at first along rugged and earthy ravines ; by and
by it emerges, and the dazzling peak shoots heavenward.
The time of need, the hour of trial, the crisis of sharp ex-
perience, must bring the moment of revelation. We
must sufier our converts to be babes ; we must expect
for ourselves more glowing and rapt discoveries of God's
grace and loving-kindness than our poor attainments in
the past have ever mastered.
But these ministries of Time touch heart-nerves in
passing. They play sorely on tender chords. The mu-
sic is solemn, wailing, and dirgelike. There are weep-
256 THE MINISTRIES OF TIME.
ing kindreds here who dreamed uot a year ago, in their
glad security, what Time had in store for them ; that he
should lead their best beloved away from their circle;
that he was weaving ever, while they smiled and slept, a
winding-sheet for tender, fair, and manly forms ; that, in
the silence and in the darkness, he was digging a grave,
and lettering some sweet household name in marble ; that
soon he should shroud their joyousness in the darkness of
the tomb, their festive garments in the sable of mourning.
But this he had in keeping for them. He has lent
strength and grace to many a life ; he has piled up boun-
ties at every door; he has filled our garners with his
loaded wains ; but, alas ! he has stolen from hearthstone
and fireside what he can never replace.
And yet Time has a ministry of consolation too. He
heals where he wounds. It is of God that his touch has
such a balm in it. He wipes away tears ; he unknits the
furrowed brow ; he brings back the smile to the quiver-
ing lips ; he leads the captive forth into the sunshine ; he
gathers upon the bereaved the tender and soothing spell
of memory ; he plants flowers in the path where bleeding
feet have walked, pierced by the thorns.
O Time ! what dost thou yet keep back from us ?
What commissions hast thou to execute upon us in these
fresh, opening days of the new-born year? Whither
along this track that glides always into the shadow of to-
morrow dost thou lead our feet ? What of joy or of sor-
row, of conflict or of suffering, art thou marshalling even
now? Vain guess! No voice answers. Into the mist
opens no vista of light. But this we know. Time is a
THE MINISTEIES OF TIME. 257
creature of God. It waits upon that sovereign will. It
comes to us a guide sent from heaven, to conduct us on-
ward into the good pleasure of One whom in life and in
death we can trust with our mortal and immortal hopes.
O Time ! roll on the year, bring up the forces of the
hidden future. With one hand clasping the divine hand,
and a mutual good cheer, which we make a prayer to-
day, we go forward in faith and hope.
22*
XYII.
SORROWS OF JESUS.
.... A MAN OF SORROWS ... — Isa. liii. part 3.
WHEN mention is made of the sufferings of Christ,
our thoughts turn naturally to the scene in the
garden, where nature, overstrained, gave her witness in
crimson drops, and to the slow agonies of the cross, kill-
ing, not by any single mortal stroke, but by the sharp-
ness of conquering pain. This habit of thought fails to
appreciate the deep significance of such an expression as
that we are to dwell upon now.
It need not, necessarily, be a mournful and saddening
subject for us to consider. There is nothing depressing
in recalling the hardships and wounds of a soldier who
has come home victorious and laurelled from the wars,
nor in speaking of the storm and wreck and thirst, the
great fight with the elements through which the much-
enduring mariner has returned safely and prosperously to
port, nor in listening to chronicles of the long, dreadful
arctic night from one who sits at our warm fireside and
tells of the conflict and the triumph. Our Saviour has
endured the cross, passed beneath the shame, carried his
SORROWS OF JESUS. 259
sorrows and ours, and gone home to his glorious throne,
made perfect by sufferings, filling out thus the whole
spherical idea of substitution and personal sympathy, and
announcing himself as "he that liveth and was dead, and
is alive for evermore." To speak of his "sorrows " may
fill our eyes with tears, but they will be tears of grateful
tenderness, of glad thanksgiving, and will leave the eyes
that weep clearer and brighter to discern his peerless ex-
altation who thus suffered and triumphed for us.
The expression we are contemplating of its own force
indicates, not the crowning and closing specialty of suffer-
ing which Jesus endured, but the tenor of his life, the
current of his daily experience, the habitual consciousness
of his soul. It takes in, of course, as a part of its mean-
ing, that consummation of extreme and dying anguish,
but it covers the whole story beside. When we say of
one " he is a man of few words " we mean not that he of
whom we speak was particularly silent on a given occa-
sion, but that he is of a reserved and unsocial habit at all
times and everywhere. Our description has the same
breadth of extent when we speak of another as a man of
strong passions or prejudices, of another as a man of keen
observation, of another as a visionary man; we refer to
the general character and experience, and not to isolated
instances.
The life of Christ was a sorrowful life. It moved from
beginning to ending in that zone. Sorrow was his meat
and drink. It bathed his spirit with daily immersion.
In that shaded and thorny vale his feet walked always.
He never rose quite clear from this valley mist, this at-
260 SORROWS or jesus.
mosphere of sorrow that drooped about him and cluDg to
him. Ah, it makes our hearts ache, not, indeed, with a
sensation all of pain, but with a tender and burdened ful-
ness, which has its witness in our eyes, to follow this
Master thus, and remember it was all for us. The human
in him was altogether sorrowful. The expression fastens
our eye upon his humanity. He was a man of sorrows.
Those experiences of life which in us are mingled of
lights or shades, those avenues of entrance into the human
soul which in us are avenues to many a joy as well as
to here and there a grief, were in him experiences alto-
gether on the shady side, — avenues along which trooped
and pressed for admission a thronging procession of
griefs. To share the bright lot of our human nature in
its frequent providential story, to sit in our earthly sun-
shine, to taste the sweets of our earthly vines, to inhale
the fragrance of our earthly flowers, to be ministered
unto by seasons and climes, to hold delighted converse
with congenial spirits, and see the smile of friendship and
hear the words of love, — humanity with such an allot-
ment, if this were all, were not so great a trial even to an
exalted spiritual nature. But to take it with its ca-
pacities of joy and suffering only to have them filled with
the latter ; to take it with its deep sensibilities alive both
to pleasure and pain only to find it all sensitively thrilling
to pain, — this is another sort of transformation for a
blessed and holy nature, and it was with such an expe-
rience of manhood that Jesus entered.
Let us glance down the catalogue of these sorrows and
name such of them as meet our eye with most prominent
SORROWS OF JESUS. 261
lettering. We shall not have time to dwell, only to let
the list linger a moment on our rapid hearing; and
those unnamed will seem to some more worthy of com-
memoration, perhaps, than those to which we now lend
speech.
We need not make much of his poverty perhaps.
Other men have suffered and do suffer poverty. They
are pinched and distressed. They see the sad eyes of
unprovided ones looking up to them daily, and cannot
look back with an eye that relights the lamp of hope.
They are hungry and cold and have the faintness of want
and the heartache of despair, and all without any con-
sciousness of some high and infinitely blessed end to be
thus served and compassed. We know not that Jesus'
sufferings of destitution were more acute or in any wise a
sorer tax upon patience and manhood than that of many
over whom the heart of charity bleeds amid our own
homes. And yet we do not know all the history of that
poverty. Not much is said about it in the Gospel his-
tories. There are glimpses here and there. We know
what the circumstances of the family were when that
infant form was cradled. We know that Jesus wrought
with his own hands, probably through a long and toilsome
youth, to add something to the comfort, or take somethino-
from the sharpness, of need in his own father's house. A
single line tells us in plaintive confession, "The foxes
have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Sou
of man hath not where to lay his head." But there are
wide, blank intervals of his life, in respect to the comforts
necessary to the body, where the narrative is altogether
262 SORROWS OF JESUS.
silent. The more refined and sensitive a nature is, the
more delicate in its perceptions and tastes, the more the
coarseness of poverty's rude shifts must chafe and press.
As the humanity of Christ seems to have been left to feel
to the full its earthly experience, there may have been
under the shadow of this meaning silence such ever wear-
ing trials, such single scenes of intense suffering as we
cannot easily conceive. But we have said enough about
this.
Look at that sorrow of loneliness. His own family
understood him not, and his loved and loving disciples
were perpetually puzzled about him. All whom he chose,
and between whom and himself there were ties of kindred
and friendship, were yet so far off from him, looked upon
him with w^ondering and doubtful eyes. Even the mother
who held him in her arms, held him as it were at arm's
length, and Avondered over her strange babe. John might
lie in his bosom, Peter might touch his hand, the twelve
might sit around him at table and feast, but within the
humanity that came in contact with theirs, in his own
thoughts and feelings and cares, there was another and
inner sphere into which no man entered with him. There
was no equal, congenial, and brotherly companion into
whom his eyes could look, without speech, all the contents
of his heart, and read in return a perfect intelligence and
sympathy. He need not have gone away from his dis-
ciples to be alone. He was ever alone.
" Cold mountains and the midnight air
Witnessed the fervor of his prayer."
SORROWS OF JESUS. 263
But his loneliness was a mere solitary mountain height,
a deeper midnight for his uncompanioned soul. It seems
to have come over him now and then, and he speaks it
with such a voice it would seem as though the thrilled
and startled earth might give back a groan. "Alone,"
and yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. Think
of walking over this earth and through the midst of its
circles and kindreds without one companion for a day or
an hour of a lifetime !
We have spoken under our first head of his spirit as
gentle and refined, and of its hard and harsh contact with
the coarseness of want. But think now of its coming into
contact with all earth's rude and coarse types of life, its
nameless abominations, the things seen and heard and
understood which we cannot write, — sharp speech, evil
railing, mutual suspicions, wicked jealousies, taunts, re-
venges, ugly and tyrannical tempers, plottings and coun-
terplottings, the looks which a human eye can give, the
expressions which a human face can wear, the words
which a human tongue can utter, sharper than daggers,
more brutal than blows. Go on in your own imagina-
tion, of which however you need not much help. Only
fling the coloring of facts upon the canvas, and then see
what to such a spirit must be the sorrowful mingling with
such a race.
Think, again, of the sorrow of his sympathy and com-
passion. If he could have gone through the world hard-
hearted, he could have escaped this pain. Bat all grief
was his grief ; every woe came upon his inheritance ; he
bore our griefs, he carried our sorrows, he entered into
264 SORKOWS OF JESUS.
the burden of every tried one. The weeping sisters at
their brother's grave ; he catches sight of their faces, he
looks upon the tomb and — oh, look upon his own face !
the tears are flowing there — he sees a multitude around
him in the wilderness an hungered and athirst, and it is
written he had compassion upon the multitude, because
they were as sheep not having a shepherd. What would
it be to take all sufiering of others upon one sustaining
heart, — to see tears, hear sighs, intense wretchedness of
any kind, and make it all our own? Could one of us
bear it ?
Then there was the depth of human ruin into whose
abysses his gaze searched. Oh, what had sin wrought !
He saw its utter, sad devastations, the efiects of the fall,
such malice, such hardness of heart, such hatred of truth,
such lying, murders, and lusts, such ungrateful and de-
termined hostility to their Eedeemer bringing them salva-
tion ! What must it have been for him to have to say
to them such words as he used to warn and rebuke, "O
generation of vipers ! " He explored the depth of that
great gulf of man's apostasy as no other human eyes ever
did before or since.
Then the burden of those ruined ones, we cannot fathom
the love that looked out of his eyes, the yearning that
made his heart bleed, the restlessness to subdue, win, and
deliver. An earnest Christian knows a little of it. His
soul is a little fountain of such impulses, but in that soul
a great ocean heaved and swelled.
Then his disappointment, the fruitlessness, to so many
of his great mission. Oh, what thoughts were his when
SOEKOWS OF JESUS. 265
he sat on Olivet, and apostrophized the city lying there
beneath him, — " O Jerusalem ! " — Matt, xxiii. 37. And
what a tone lingers yet in such words as these : Ye will
not come to me that ye might have life " ! And then
this most desponding utterance, so tender that the tears
drop through it yet, " If I had not come and spoken unto
them, they had not had sin." But we cannot now go on.
We are here to commemorate a Saviour's dying love, and
all sorrow to-day may plead unto Jesus.
23
XYIII.
BALANCE SHEET; OE, TAKING ACCOUNT
OF STOCK.
"WHAT PROFIT HATH A MAN OF ALL HIS LABOR WHICH HE TAKETH UNDER
THE SUN? — Eccl. i. 3.
IT is a wise and needful custom in mercantile life to
pause periodically in the current of buying and selling,
review the work of our fiscal year, and take account of
stock. It were a piece of wilful folly, in neglect of such
review, to launch out upon new enterprises, to adventure
fresh charges and expenditures, or to dream and drift
drowsily onward, careless whether the past had added to
or diuiinished our resources. Of such a reckless and
blind confidence there could come, sooner or later, only
bankiniptcy and ruin. We need to ask what we have
gained, what we have lost, how the sum total of capital and
effects at the year's close compares with that at the year's
beginning ; whether our trusted investments are produc-
tive ; what there is to add to, what there is to subtract
from, our whole wealth.
Equally wise and wholesome is it for us, in the revolu-
tions of our natural and moral life, to have our points of
self-reckoning, to arrest thereat the swift-gliding stream
BALANCE SHEET. 267
of our planning, toiling, and hoping ; to call up the past
for its honest report; to raise the question. What have we
gained, what have we lost, in the true wealth of our
being ? and with careful arithmetic work out our balance
sheet of character and spiritual standing before setting
forward on the new reaches of our way.
The chimes that toll the death of the old year, and
then, changing their tone, ring out joy bells for the birth of
the new, strike for us a fitting hour for such a faithful
reckoning.
We do not need an argument to prove that no man's
life stands still. There is inevitably growth and progress
with every man in some direction. God's is the only
nature without advance or change. Each influence that
tries its powers upon us produces some positive effect.
If it be yielded to, it governs the pulses of the hour, per-
haps of all the future. If it be resisted, its visit is still
memorable, as strengthening the forces that have over-
mastered it and establishing their supremacy. Every day
brings up such influences to levy their pressure upon us.
These silent visits will have their record in perhaps the
imperceptible but real changes of our convictions, our
principles, and our purposes, the gradually fading or
deepening hues of the coloring of our thoughts and
our days. The long procession of such visits that suc-
ceed one another through the days of a single year
must inevitably affect the man, if not his demonstrations ;
the worker, if not at once his work. These influences will
be of every variety. They will be ordinary and spe-
cial. They will come from men, from books, from na-
268 BALANCE sheet; OR,
ture, from Providence, from the depths of our own soul,
from God's word and spirit. They will make up in their
aggregate the whole story of our experience ; and this
experience w^ill either sharpen our wits or dull them,
quicken or stupefy our sensibilities, bring us increments of
knowledge and power, or squander and waste the hours
and the occasions that ought to have helped our stores of
wisdom, and our stability in goodness and virtue.
Let us ask, then, to-day, on this first Sabbath morning
of the opening year, looking back before we look forward,
and with honest desire to ascertain all that the past can
reveal to us, what results of the old year's record must
we set down on the side of loss ? What may we carry to
the side of gain ? What " profit have we had of all our
labor which we have taken under the sun "?
First, then, on the side of loss, there is an actual dimi-
nution of our capital in Time. We embarked on life's
career with this capital at its maximum. At what num-
ber we could then write the units of its sum total,
we knew not then, we never have known since. But
God is merciful beyond the appreciation of most minds
in this among other tokens of his tender regard for our
comfort, that he lays not on human hearts the fear of
daily dying. He permits his creatures to rise up and lie
down, to o^o forth to their work and their labor until the
evening, without this cold conviction pulsing through
their souls, and uttering itself in doleful tones whenever
their lips open, "I shall die perhaps to-day. I shall wake
no more perhaps with another morning." He has abun-
dantly taught in his word and in his pavilion that human
TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 269
life is frail, that it is short at the longest, that it is as a
vapor that appeareth for a little time, then vanisheth away ;
that its continuauce is uncertain. We see the heavy
sheaves gathered in, — manhood in its prime laid low,
youth drooping in its summer, childhood's blossom and
the red bud of infancy nipped by untimely frosts. But
God so sustains our hearts that the arm of industry is
not paral3^zed ; hope rises with us every morning and runs
at our side, or glides on before us all the day. We send
out our ships on far voyages ; we sow and wait for future
harvests ; we invest when years are to roll forward their
salient changes before our dividends shall make us rich.
Undoubtedly we forget too often life's frailty ; the heart is
overbold and courageous ; we need to have it said to us
at least daily, as to the Macedonian of old, " Philip, thou
art mortal ; " but what comfort and tranquillity in laboring
and in gathering the fruits of God's goodness and human
toil, notwithstanding the sentence that arches us all,
"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" ! God
has permitted it to be written that our eyes may see it,
and our spirits know the buoyancy of this narrated hope,
"The days of our years are threescore years and ten." I
think it is not his pleasure that every man should enter
upon his day's work saying to his heart, "I shall die to-
day;" but still, as though he might, the man who is
always ready can toil in perpetual hope and perpetual
tranquillity.
But whatever our capital at the start, in respect to the
years ordained for us, we have lost another unit of that
loan from God. One year less to expend upon all our
23*
270 BALANCE sheet; OK,
earthly schemes ; one year less in which to toil for our
families, learn the lessons and fulfil the high ends of life ;
one year less in which to prepare for the life to come ;
one year less between us and that last chime of the clock
wound up to men only with the beating of our heart be-
tween us and the grave, and that which is after death, the
judgment. And if the completion of each year suggests
this thought, the completion of a decade of years makes
it more solemn and impressive. Seven such decades
touches the utmost bound. You and I have lived two of
those seven, three of them, four of them (the plural
" we " becomes less comprehensive as we advance) five of
them, six perhaps, and cutting in upon the seventh.
Look back, not far, to youth, childhood. How near
those bright, lawless days ! Only yesterday ! Measure
forward an equal reach, and where are Ave? Sleeping be-
neath a green ridge, with a white slab at its head lettered
with our name, and that little Latin word " 05^^," departed,
completing the sentence.
But when I raise the question of lost time, I mean
much more than the obvious and universal fact that our
years drop oflf one by one, and that another has now gone,
taken from the side of the capital yet unexpended to be
added to that which is spent. Have there been no days
of this year otherwise lost, — lost because unimproved ?
Have we been frugal of time? Have we been lavish of
moments ? Have we idled away no swift, underlying in-
tervals between rising and the morning meal ? After that
meal, and before our industry put on its harness, in loiter-
ing along while the working hours shone bright overhead,
TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 271
in drowsy animal indolence through the shades of even-
ing, in sleep beyond the ministries of needful refreshment
and recuperation? Nay, is it not possible that our busiest
moments, our intensest activities, are those that ouo-ht in
a faithful reckoning to be carried to the side of loss?
Strokes of labor, hours of work given to pride, worldly
grasping, self-indulgence, any issues of flesh and sense,
any ends that terminate upon the life that now is, — are
not these lost to us ? Shall we count them finally among
our gains? Have they helped our laud riches? Have
they not robbed us of so much that might have been, if
otherwise devoted, grandly productive ? All that has been
squandered on the needs or the desires and lusts of the
present with no other, no higher thoughts or ends has
gone hopelessly against us,— lost days, however crowded
with diligence, however gladdened by successes; for life
is one whole, not a little payment here in time ; it has one
story of progress and character and destiny, unrolling
from the here into the hereafter. Every truly faithful
work must take hold of life as a whole, as imperishable
and immortal, and the question of gain or loss must be
settled by those balances that can be carried forward to
the eternal enriching, or that are placed only momentarily
on the side of profit to disappear in the tremendous ofiset
of a whole probation wasted.
So that diligence, strong nerved and careful and gainful,
is not the trae redemption of time. Many a man who
pauses in his routine of work to aid in the direct nurture
and happiness of his home is saving time ; to cheer the
comfortless, to guide the perplexed, to hear the sad stories
272 BALANCE sheet; OR,
of temptation and remorse, and administer to such forlorn
spirits is saving time ; to sit down at the board and in
the evening circle with wife and children, imparting
knowledge and diflfusing light and joy, is saving time.
I dwell no longer on this point. Let us look to it, each
of us, and give it the place in our reckoning which we
judge belongs to it.
With some of us, again, I suppose there has been an
actual loss from the capital of strength and vigor. Per-
haps we cannot perceive it. We had better ask our
friends. Perhaps, again, we know it better than they,
are aware of signs not visible or palpable to them, — the
foot not quite so light, nor the step so elastic ; the form
not so perpendicularly upright, or, if so, not so sure a
match against weight and pressure ; the muscles failing a
little in hardiness and roundness, the sinews relaxing, the
hair changing its hue by single threads of a new coloring,
the power to do and to endure drained of something of its
fulness and volume. We weary sooner than we did. We
like easy appliances to which we were ever indifferent.
We shrink a little from sharp encounters with difficulties
which once only put us upon our mettle. We turn over
some of our hastening and hurrying to our boys, to
younger men. Is it so? Put it down, then, on the side
where it goes.
Have there been special opportunities, conjunctions of
favoring circumstances for doing some particular work,
which have come and gone unimproved, to return no
more, — a kindness to be shown, declined ; help to render
in a dark day refused, and the day not past by ; a soul to
TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 273
warn and succor in its crisis ; a providence to improve
and impress in the family ; a co-operation to render in
Christian enterprises that were calling earnestly for vol-
unteers ; a good for our own souls possible to some con-
secration of a day or an hour to that end ; a word to
speak for truth and right and humanity and God when
men's ears were open? What account must we make
to-day of these precious hours of the year, its most inesti-
mable opportunities, the real and most momentous con-
nections it had in God's purposes with our life, the ends
for which God gave it ? Reckon them in our lost oppor-
tunities, our forfeited occasions of doing and getting
good ? " Oh, how often we wish backward ! "
Has there been any loss of purity and delicacy and con-
scientiousness ? Have the finer sensibilities and the more
delicate and retiring sentiments of our soul been toyed
with, wantoned with, handled and sullied, made coarse
and common, so that our thoughts and feelings are less
select and sensitive, less kept within doors and out of the
glare and soot of street exposure. Have we become
world-hardened and world-soiled, so that we laugh where
we used to blush, and can permit a jest where once a light
word gave us a wound ? Let us look and get the exact
state of the balance here, and put the item in where it
belongs.
What have we done with special acts of discipline in-
tended for special efiects upon us ? We needed humbling,
we failed in submission, we were afflicted with chronic
discontent, we were fluttering with perpetual levity and
vanity, we were deep in the solemnest, gravest, and in-
274 BALANCE sheet; or,
tensest worldliness. God saw and meant us a special
mercy, and sent a chastening and helpful providence, a
little sharp lesson in his own heavenly tuition, to show us
our need and help us to realize a blessed amendment.
How have we received these offers and ministries of help ?
Did they produce their desired and destined effect, or did
we overlook their real intent, disappoint their aim, and
lose their most invaluable aid? Set them down, if so,
so much to our loss.
Has there been with any of us a loss of hope and trust
and good courage for truth and right? Have we been
ready to give up the proverb that honesty is the best pol-
icy ? Have we come to feel that it is vain to contend for
righteousness and humanity and justice? Have we been
so bereft of confidence in God as almost to doubt whether
he was on the side of a manful fight for principle and
piety? Have the dark clouds that lie with thunderous
blackness on our country's horizon caused us to bate one
jot of hope or effort for the incoming of the day when
involuntary servitude shall float away among the relics of
the grim and iron ages reaching along the past of human
history? Do we feel as though expediency, as against
right and principle and love, were the doctrine of the hour?
For ourselves in our own private personal story has so
sable a night hung over us that we doubted whether God
could bring the day, almost whether there were any sun
that shone anywhere? Has the strain upon faith been
too long, too severe, patience drawn out to its last nerve
of endurance, and the soul settling into the gloom of
hopeless insubmission? This loss of confidence in the
TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 275
great Enler and Father was a dreadful loss. Is it an
item in any soul's experience? If so, let it go in. Give
it a place on the balance sheet.
Possibly there has been with some soul a loss of char-
acter and moral standing. The hour of temptation came.
It found you alone, unaided, forlorn, in deep need. No
friendly companion to shield and strengthen you. The
Avhisper of evil was delusive, so plausible, no evil in-
tended, the snare so subtle, the wiles so hidden, the
meshes so soft and silken, that you were hopelessly en-
tangled before you dreamed of captivity, and now your
soul wrestles with mighty fears, with gloomy memories,
with black remorse, with environments of blank ruin that
stare at you as with Gorgon face, turning your heart to
stone. Oh, sad loss ! but always in this life when loss is
seen and known, if it be any loss short of the soul itself,
there is hope, because there is mercy in God. It is a
woful history, an experience such as you never dreamed
of writing for yourself ; but put it down ; it belongs to the
record of this year gone. It may be a stepping-stone to
great riches, but in itself it is a terrible loss. It must
stand now on that side of the account.
There may have been another loss, of which there is
always danger, concerning which none of us perhaps can
ever know with certainty, — the loss of the soul. I do not
mean with some who have entered eternity. I mean with
some of us who are to-day living men. If the records of
a human life teach anything clearly, it is that that life is
full of crises ; that on these critical points turn the issues
of punishment for the present and the future ; that on
276 BALANCE SHEET; OR,
some one of these critical moments the destiny of the soul
is settled, and that frequently before, perhaps long before,
that soul enters upon eternal scenes. Thus the wave of
some great providence, of some special blessing, or some
sharp affliction, or some visit of the Holy Ghost, or some
melting urgency of truth, lifts the soul nearer to God and
to duty and to a newness of life than ever before. It was
the grand swell that was appointed as its hour of greatest
hope and opportunity. Unimproved, settling back into
the old color and the old track of life, it is by and by
seen, — seen perhaps in the hour of dying, seen clearly
in the light of eternity, that there and then that soul came
the nearest to salvation that it ever came, that never again
was the prize of a blessed immortality so within its grasp,
so nearly possessed. Every year some such history must
be enacted. There are some here who ought, with trem-
bling hand and pale cheek, to write down on the side of
their losses, the words "my soul," and put an interroga-
tion point beyond.
Oh, it is a solemn reckoning we are holding ! It par-
takes of the character of the final judgment, only here,
blessed be God ! for every loss but one there is possible
yet an infinite gain that shall well-nigh utterly extinguish
it.
With many the year has been full of gain all along.
With all of us a year of God's kindly, nourishing, pater-
nal care. Put that down to gain, — four seasons of his
prodigal mercies, day and night ministering bounty, seed-
time and harvest smiling each in turn as with the radiance
of the divine countenance.
TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 277
There is the gain of so much and so many of life's
finished work and tasks. There is the gain of so much
service for God and man, the service itself, not its suc-
cesses, counting as gain for character and reward. There
are special lessons of truth and heavenly wisdom which
God has taught us, and which we could not barter for a
solid orb of gold, — precious secrets of spiritual living that
used to be mysteries, and are now a part of our daily
magic of overcoming. There are fruits of discipline, in
patience and contentment and resignation, and sweet sub-
missiveness and serenity of spirit, worth more than any
language can tell or any currency measure. There are
new spiritual traits nurtured within us and upon us which
we have so long coveted and almost despaired of, and
concerning which we now sing with broken heart, — bro-
ken in tender joy, — '' Oh, to grace how great a debtor ! "
There are new views of Bible truths, — God's deduc-
tions, rich promises, and positive precepts which clear up
many doubts, guide us out of long wandering in weary
paths and brighten all our sky as with sunbeams.
There is a vantage ground for future conflicts and vic-
tories shown us, in which our feet have become divinely
established, and on which we may wait with celestial
allies the assaults of the great adversary.
There are sweet daily mercies that have fallen for us
every morning as the manna fell for Israel on the face of
the desert, and the taste of which was as wafers mixed
with honey.
Oh, how these gains foot up ! What song of gratitude
can fully utter our hearts' recognition of this long column
24
278 BALANCE SHEET.
of God's contributions to our growing riches ? Even amid
sorrows we count still our profits, — friends departing,
chairs and chambers left vacant, the earth opening her
arms and taking to the rest of her bosom those whom our
arms were clasping and would fain have detained ; but so
God came nearer to our circle than ever before ; we felt
his blessed presence and comforting; we saw how faith
could triumph over nature's fainting, and looking up when
the last sigh w^ent outward from fading lips, w^e saw the
heavens opened and caught a glimpse of white-robed
spirits entering into joy and rest.
So stand the accounts wdth us to-day, a monition from
the past for the future, a sober arrest for thought and life
on this transition point. Yes, pause here yet one moment
longer. All our losses — all, let us hope — God may blot
out now w^ith the gift of his most generous pardon, the
overflowing w^ealth of his favor and love.
Oh, leave no such fearful balance against you, my
friends, as those items foot up which we have dwelt upon ;
drasr not such a debt forward into the burdened future.
Come to the great Proprietor, that these peculations upon
his estate intrusted to you may be graciously and pitifully
blotted out, and your way lie onward for all coming labors
and ventures with the everlasting gain of his friendship.
XIX.
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHEIST.
FAREWELL SERMON DELIVERED IN PARK STREET CHURCH,
FEBRUARY 4, 1866.
. . . BUILT UPON THE FOUNDATION OF THE APOSTLES AND PROPHETS,
JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF BEING THE CHIEF CORNER-STONE. — Eph. U. 20.
THE firmness and security of a building depend not so
much upon what we can see of the structure as upon
the parts which are mainly hidden and unseen. As we
approach from a distance, the pile may look fair and
stately, with broad front and lofty walls and crowning
turret and tower, and we may be ready to pronounce it
massive and strong. But we cannot know whether it be
so in truth until we have come nearer, and have examined
that lowlier and less visible part upon which the super-
structure rests. The strength of the edifice is not in lofty
wall or decorated porch or crowning dome, but in the
foundation. When all the materials are piled aloft, when
the tempest rocks it and the earthquake heaves, it stands
only if the foundation be solid and unyielding.
And the foundation, too, is distinguished into parts,
both for its honor and its security, its glory and crown.
The corner-stones take the chief burden of the super-
incumbent mass. To them the foundation lines are
280 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST.
clamped and joined. In their steadiness the whole is un-
shaken. Among these, one is "Chief," the Head Stone of
the corner, the Key of that compacted strength, of cost-
liest material and most careful workmanship, to whose
setting in its place is gathered whatsoever can do it grace
and reverence, to whose keeping are confided the treasured
memorials which are to be preserved unto coming ages
and generations.
The scriptural Church as- a whole, and so with each
particular church, both as a vital part and as a represen-
tative of the whole, is described as a building, a living
temple fitly framed together, resting on a certain definite
foundation with one chief corner-stone.
That foundation is nothing laid by the hand of man, or
found within the compass of man's nature and capacity.
It is what God revealed to prophets and apostles, w^hat he
gave them to know and to build upon, the truth and the
life which they experience and to which they bear witness,
themselves as witnesses to the words and works of their
Lord. And the Head of the corner is that Stone elect and
precious, which the pride of the builders rejected, but
on which God has built his Church so firm that "the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it." That rock is
Christ. In him the foundations meet in unity and
strength. In him the whole building is compacted. No
forces of nature, not all the powers on earth or beneath,
can overturn a structure so founded.
We have, then, from our Scripture this cheering and
comforting truth, — the all-sufficiency of Christ for his
Church.
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 281
There will be in our communion at this time so much
that belongs simply to the occasion, to be said, that we
must pass briefly and rapidly over points that were
worthily dwelt upon with largest treatment.
And I remark, in the first place, that we find enough in
Christ for the doctrine of the Church. The Church must
have a doctrine. It will live only as it holds living truth.
Its conquests are victories over minds. It gains and holds
its subjects not by the terrors and constraints of power,
the sword in one hand, the ke3's of destiny here and here-
after in the other. It has to persuade men, to secure the
convictions of their souls, to show them something to be-
lieve, on which the longing and inquiring heart can rest.
And it brings forth this grand compendium of its teach-
ing, — " God manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit,
seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in
the world, received up into glory." Here are height and
length and breadth and depth. "It is a broad land of
wealth unknown." There is no narrowness here to disap-
point and fret the exploring mind. There are background
and forcOTound to this truth. Touch it at whatever
point, come upon it in whatever aspect, and you are led off
either way into the Infinite. It is not a little round of
human working, or of earthly moralities in Avhich the
preacher of this doctrine treads. He need not be com-
passionated of the reformers and the philosophers because
he is shut up to the doctrine of Christ. If he determine
not to know anything, as a religious teacher, but Jesus
Christ and him crucified, he is no captive in a cell that
denies him range of feet and thought. The universe of
24*
282 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST.
God's nature, God's government, and God's providence,
the eternity of God's purposes, the everlasting principles
of justice and right compacted in law, the wonders of re-
demptive mercy and vicarious love, the marshalling of
human histories in all their annals of blood and crime and
heroic achievement, their dark shades and their light
shades, their progressive civilizations, their painful experi-
ments, their sciences and philosophies and acts as tributary
to the reign of Christ, — this is the limitless field, the
sphere without walls or cope, in which the preacher of
Christ and his salvation ranges at will. Here is enough
to stimulate the mind, to gird every power for strenuous
wrestling, to feed it, to expand it, to hold it in awe, and
to satisfy it that God has worthily broken silence to make
a revelation of his will vocal to the race.
Here, again, in the doctrine of Christ is sufiicient for
the attraction of those outside the Church. God loving:
his human children astray and lost, guilty and con-
demned, and coming among them in the incarnation,
moved by that great love to take their sicknesses, sor-
rows, and sins upon him, and through his sacrificial death
in the flesh to reconcile them unto himself and restore
them to the heirship of heaven and immortality, is a story
men will stop to hear. There is an earnest element
under all the light frivolities of human consciousness.
There is a deep voice in the heart to whose pleading
nothing less than the atonement wrought by the Lamb of
God can make answer. There are dark solitudes of hu-
man experience in which each man walks alone repeating
after the false disciple, that traitor Judas, "I have
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 283
SINNED." It does not meet such an experience to call to
this man to listen to a song, all whose strains are bor-
rowed from nature's minstrelsy, the notes of birds, the
chant of streams, the "deep, profound, eternal bass" of
oceans ; or to lead him up before some exquisite picture
in which the loveliness of human nature is painted ; or to
exhort him in pleasant words to be just and true and gen-
tle as a man and a brother among his fellow-men. This
treatment does not go deep enough, — I mean deep
enough powerfully to attract and hold the interest of
men. But this great tragedy of the cross has power in
it. It comes to deal in earnest wdth earnest matters.
It is full of dramatic life and force. It does not at-
tempt the adjustment of sinful man's relation to a holy
God with smooth w^ords and surface manipulations. It
goes to the root of the difficulty. It cuts through the
fair bloom of the surface to the hidden diseased core. It
is downright radical, and thorough in its treatment of
human hopes and fears. Every voice from this doctrine
commands attention. If sick men or wounded men call
in a physician or surgeon, they want to be healed. They
want thorough, effectual treatment. Pleasant drinks and
opiates are not an equivalent for health and soundness.
And men's religious wants are not met, their souls are
not at rest, they are not satisfied with hearing, till they
hear of a slain Lamb that taketh away the sins of the
world. It is found that an earnest gospel gathers men to
its proclamation. The w^ords of Christ are verified, " I,
if I be lifted up, lifted on the cross, lifted in human teach-
ing as the object of attraction before the world, will draw
284 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST.
all men unto me. The pulpit that preaches Christ cruci-
fied need not run out into literature, or social life, or cur-
rent providences, or the sweep of reform movements, or
advertise quaint and whimsical themes, to supplement the
charm of that gospel. The dying of Jesus for human
salvation touches the world's heart. Publish these glad
tidings, and the feet of men run together to catch that
message.
Again, Christ is sufBcient for the pastoral care of his
Church. He shepherdizes each flock and guards every
fold of his people. He is the good Shepherd, ever faith-
ful, constant, and vigilant, and giveth his life for the
sheep. He leads them out into green pastures and beside
still waters. He taketh the lambs in his arms and car-
rieth them in his bosom. It is he who appoints under
shepherds to go in and out with the flock, to guide and
feed and defend them. But he does not himself retire.
The under shepherds are responsible to him. He fur-
nishes and strengthens them for their calling. They are
a living bond between him and the souls for whom they
watch. They hold their office from him. They derive
all their authority from him. They have so much au-
thority as his spirit and his truth dwelling in them and
communicated through them confer upon them. It is his
voice, and not theirs, which the sheep are to hear from
their lips. If they are unfaithful, he does not cease to
care for the flock whom they mislead or neglect. If they
die or remove, he resumes all their functions. The flock
is not left shepherdless. Forever he leads them and
feeds them and keeps them. He never changes his place.
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 285
He never breaks the tie that binds him to them. Lovino-
once, he loves unto the end. They are never bereaved of
him. Whoever goes, he remains. Whatever post is va-
cant, whatever office work resigned, he may always be
found. To all that call upon him he is ever near.
Is not this sufficient for the comfort of believers ? It is
natural that they should look for the words of Christ and
the consolations of Christ to those whom Christ has set
over them for this very ministry ; that they should feel in
their times of doubt, of sickness and pain, of sorrow and
anguish, that they must have this representative of Christ
to stand by their side, to bend above the pillow, to bow
low with their prostrate forms and breathe the salutations
of Jesus. And it is natural that they should feel that if
this messenger of their Lord be not their helper in such
hours of trial, their burdens will weigh heavily, and their
hearts seek relief in vain. Who will come to their cham-
ber when the strong fever is on them and lay on their
brow a gentle touch, as though his hand had brought from
Jesus' palm some virtue of soothing? Who will meet the
look of their upturned eye searchiug for some promise
that invites the unworthy to be at peace, and answer it as
though Jesus replied, "I do not condemn thee, go and
sin no more "? Who will have the first burdened confes-
sion of the penitent wishing to be led to the hand that
distributes pardons? Who will open tender arms for
their babes at the font of baptism ? Who will bless the
bridal hour when their sons and daughters stand at the
altar of wedded love? Who will listen to the ever vary-
ing tale of their personal and domestic history, now with
286 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST.
smiles and now with tears, with looks that give and words
that speak love and sympathy in all that can befall them
as pilgrims through earth? Who will hold their hand
and repeat words of promise and strength and pleasant
voices out of heaven when their heads droop in the last
faintness and the scenes of time grow dim to their failing
sight ?
He whom they have known and loved so well and chosen
for all these sweet and sacred offices may have gone to be
a dweller with another people, and will fill no more any
of these wonted relations to their life. Yes, but Christ
abides. He is sufficient for all these wants of the heart,
these vicissitudes of an earthly experience. He comes to
the solitary mourner, whispering, " I will never leave thee
nor forsake thee." He stretches out his arms toward the
babes of the nursery and pleads, " Sufier little children,
and forbid them not to come unto me." He calls all the
weary and heavy-laden to his presence to find rest at his
feet. If there be no human face bending above the sick,
the sad, the fearful, the self-condemned, will they not look
wuth clearer eye and straighter glance into the face of
Jesus? Is there any sting of bitterness he cannot re-
move, any sorrow he cannot comfort, any burden he can-
not lighten, any ministry of strength and growth and
fruitfulness he cannot fulfil ? Is he not sufficient for all
the pastoral care of his people ? Will not that even be a
happy hour to many of them when they cease from com-
munion with his messenger and come nearer to himself,
with neither man nor angel between ?
And if our thought were not of individuals and fami-
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 287
lies, but of the whole brotherhood, in all that concerns
their prosperity ; if any of you ask, with troubled fore-
boding, what will be the future of this church and people ;
who will throng its porches and fill its interior spaces ; who
will adhere to it now and who will desert it ; who will
break unto us the bread of life and draw water for us
from the wells of salvation ; who will help us to meet
with just sentiment, earnest purpose, and vigorous action
the great practical living questions of the day, to which the
gospel is to be applied, and the Christian life to be adjust-
ed ; whose hand will lift our banner and carry it in the
fore front of the host of God in their onset upon the
kingdom of darkness and of evil, — oh, let every heart
rest on the solid rock of this assurance, Christ is suffi-
cient for all this need of coming days ; he will not see
his flock perish of hunger or thirst ; he will not leave
them defenceless in the presence of ravening wolves ; the
honor of his name is bound up with the honor of yours ;
both are inscribed together on the folds of the flag, and
he will not sufi'er that banner to trail in dust and shame.
He loves this church. He will take care of its future.
It is built on him. It cannot be overturned. Let none
of you say or think or dream that its prosperity has cul-
minated, its power to bless the world has passed the
meridian, for you do thus dishonor the "strength of
Israel," and show that you confide more in man's weak-
nesses than in almighty love and o-race.
Christ is sufficient for his Church as a bond of union
among its members. For a deep and abiding harmony in
Christian fellowship there must be an overcoming of the
288 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST.
natural selfish tempers of the heart. Each must be able
to look on the other, and through whatever variety of
feature and of expression, see a likeness that speaks of
brother's blood, and publishes the fact of a common family
tie, a household unity. This common likeness must be,
more or less distinct, — a likeness unto Christ. Oal}^ in
partaking of the spirit of Christ can the wilfulness and
w^intonness of our corrupt natures be so corrected as to
blend in self-forgetful amity. To keep Christ's ordi-
nances, to obey his commands, to commemorate his life
and death, to help one another grow by transformation
unto his image, and to bring strangers to love and serve
him as his children and friends, is the ideal of Christian
association under Church covenants. Of such a union
Christ is at once the object and the strength.
Is it not in him, my brethren, that you are one? Is
not he the crystallizing centre of this household of ours ?
Is it not his body and blood that have made the sweetness
of our sacramental feasts? Is it not his presence that
has made our place of weekly prayer as the vestibule of
heaven ? Is it not his truth that has held you to its Sab-
bath utterance in these thronged aisles ? Is he not the
head and heart and soul of which we are the body and
members visible? Has your fellowship been merely in
the strength of your attachment to a man ? Will you say
this with your lips and publish it as your withdrawing
feet pass outward from this family home ? Will you let
the world discover that this is the seal of a Christian cove-
nant? Will you set up a man as rival of Christ, and put
the human above the divine as a bond of the fellowship
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 289
of believers? If this is our household relationship, the
tie has not been severed any too soon. It had better
never have been formed. If this be all, it is no matter
how quickly we fall apart as a rope of sand, nor how widely
we scatter to be henceforth indistinguishable on all the
surface of the earth and unknown in heaven.
But it is not so. It is in the love of Christ and in the
service of Christ you have been joined. It is in the like-
ness of Christ you see eye to eye. This bond you will
not dishonor. This bond is indestructible. While this
remains first in your regard, you cannot grow cold toward
one another or wish to part. Proclaim it by word and
deed that you are one in no temporary surface agreement,
no passing touch and clasp of a human hand, but one for-
ever and indissolubly in Christ.
As I think of my personal relations to you, and of the
many years in which we have walked together, in the fel-
lowship of the gospel "from the first day until now,"
there is one exiDression of the heart of Paul toward his
brethren of Philippi, which perpetually recurs to me : "I
thank my God upon every remembrance of you." Happy
church concerning which the chief apostle could bear
such a testimony ! How must that line have been read
and heard as they came together at the tidings that Paul
had written to them out of his captivity at Rome ! Hap-
py Paul who could so write, not in the mere forms of
hollow courtesy, but as the honest voice of his truth-lov-
ing soul ! In all his past with those beloved brethren
in whatsoever demonstration of theirs toward him, there
was no "root of bitterness," nothing that rankled, nothing
290 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST.
to be forgiven or forgotten; "every remembrance" was
so sweet and pleasant to him as to be a matter of joyful
thanksgiving to God.
It is my exceeding felicity that I can borrow this wit-
ness of the apostle and give it public utterance to-day,
without qualification or reserve concerning this beloved
church and people. If there were anything in all your
treatment of me that called for the charity of oblivion, I
hope I should be equal to such generosity. But I find
here no occasion for the grace of magnanimity.
There is no incompatibility of any sort that makes it
needful that we should part. It seems to me that we
could dwell together in unity and harmony through time
and eternity. If there are any of you who cannot echo
this sentiment, you have left me in utter ignorance of
such dissent.
It is a voice from across the continent that persuades
my reluctant feet away from you, the voice of God in the
shout of a new-rising empire beyond the mountains and
on the Pacific coast.
Our Republic is to be continental. Our eastern wall
and our western are to be washed by Atlantic and Pacific
waves. There must be no risk, which we can avert, of
such a strain across the ridge of the Rocky Mountains
that the country shall by its own weight break and fall
apart. We must secure the bridal of that occidental
realm with our own by bonds that cannot be riven. Lives
that are deep-rooted here must stretch out their pendant
boughs and take root there, and make and keep the na-
tion one by clasping fibres which cannot wither or die.
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHEIST. 291
Our American Zion must be continental also. We can
hold no inch for nationality's sake which we would not
hold more eagerly for Christ. Wherever the Old Flag
goes and receives fealty, there must the banner of the
cross be planted too. We cannot content ourselves with
a Christian civilization at the East, and see with uncon-
cern all its sweet charities and oentle decencies struogliDsr
with barbarism on those new shores. The hunt for gold
pushed fiercely forward by rough and adventurous men,
carrying with them no homes, no society, no Sabbath, no
civil order, no code of law, and making that rude materi-
alism their idolatry, of course has tended to barbarism.
There was need of a vigilance committee, there w^as need
of purer and cleaner elements of civil and social life, there
was need of the watch-towers of religion, and clear- voiced
prophets to proclaim from their summits the divineness
of government and justice, and all the softening and re-
straining influences of a gospel of peace and love. There
was need that a Sabbath should be carried over, and that
the lawlessness of wild spirits flushed with gold and
strong drink, and making of that day a carnival of greed
and rioting, should hear its calm, holy voices, and be led
back from their frenzy to decency and sobriety.
There has been, in such reforming and refining influ-
ences, great and good progress. But the struggle is still
going on. "Come over and help ! " is the cry on every
Western breeze. There is abundance of energy there,
acuteness, daring, and resolute force. But the sweeter
and gentler graces of life are crowded in such rude con-
tact quite into the background. They must be reinforced
292 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHKIST.
and held in countenance and made all-penetrating and
pervasive by the entering in of a more demonstrative
Christian culture until the whole lump of this vigorous
society is leavened. Men who carry that culture with
them, who have it as the atmosphere of their homes, and
the breath of their own life, who can stand up amid all
deteriorating and roughening influences without being
dragged down by them, and lift other men to their fairer
level, — men who will go in with the charm of refined
Christian households, and the sweet contagion of a godly
and gentle life, as well as with the messages of an ele-
vating and sanctifying gospel, are yet needed, — oh, in
what numbers ! — to enter into this unfinished strife and
help goodness and purity and charity to their full tri-
umphs.
There is power there, alert and girded, ambitious of
large success and great achievements, — power unmatched,
perhaps, in sharpness of intellect, boldness of will, and
keen ambition in any other community of our land, young
or old; but as to the work it shall accomplish, the in-
stitutions it shall build, the future of which it shall be the
architect, not so certain as it would be and ought to be
either of its direction or inspiration.
The great tides of strong life surge to and fro waiting
the orbed influences of heaven, ready enough to follow
any masterful leadership, though it head toward error and
evil. How readily those tides, now so easily turned,
might gather a motion and momentum which the reform-
ing work of years could not check, and the happy future
of that new land be postponed for half a century of hard
and costly reformation !
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 293
Now a great multitude of voices there, full, clear, and
earnest, are asking, " What next?" in their march toward
the inheritance of coming days. Who shall stand among
them to answer such questions and to lift an index hand,
kept parallel with the divine counsels, and point forward?
How shall the longing be met on that distant shore
that turns ever back to this, giving it, as tidings come
from it, as steamers sail for it, as the heart revisits it amid
the business of the day and the dreams of the night, no
geographical name, but only that one, dear, all-compre-
hending word, "Home"? Who will carry New England
out thither, import it into the midst of them, its honest
Yankee faces, its holy chimes of Sunday morning, its law-
abiding habits, its plea for order and organic growths, its
soft light of evenings at the fireside, and the gentle minis-
tries of wives and children crossing inward and outward
the sunny threshold of domestic life ?
*Who will join to the breadth of all this outflowing
Christian nurture the divine passion for saving souls, and
go down into all dark and slimy depths to bring up and
polish these living gems for the diadem of our Lord?
There are churches of Christ already there, and many an
earnest and true ambassador of the Master setting forth
his kingly claims. But these fortresses of truth and sal-
vation are lonely and distant one from another. They do
not stand so thickly, as here at home, that hill-top can call
to hill-top, and vale answer back to vale. They are few,
and the field is broad and the Avork mighty, and the pres-
sure great, and fateful decisions imminent.
It is one of these burdened churches that has been plead-
25*
294 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST.
ing with you and with me for this year past, and we could
not choose but hear its voice. It did not seem at first as
though that voice ought to prevail with us. And it
sought many another audience, and plead with many an-
other representative of New England life and Christianity.
But it searched and plead in vain. And out yonder the
great issues that hold all our hopes for Clirist, country,
and humanity on that deep western border were swiftly
forming and ripening, and the solicitudes of men who
carried these great spiritual burdens on their souls were
ever more and more weighty and oppressive. Could no
one be found to man this particular post and make it
strong in the eventful conflict? And when that voice, all
the more importunate because none would listen to it, fell
again upon my ear, calling in the name of Christ and the
future of Christian America, " Come ! " it seemed to me
that I heard in it diviner accents than before, and that its
counterpart called to me out of heaven, "Go ! "
Yes, it were easy to go if there were no detaining
bands. As I set my face toward the sunset, the ties of the
present tug at me, the memories of the past come back
upon me, — ties sweet and strong, memories tender, pleas-
ant, priceless.
"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you."
I remember your first welcome to me here when I had
the grief of that original parting in my soul as I was torn
from my first love, and a great doubt whether I had fol-
lowed a divine leading in coming weak and young to this
ancient and honored church, to be its banner-bearer in
coming years. Ah, many of those who shared in that
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 295
welcome are not, for God has taken them. I see in the
densest crowd their vacant places. I look wistfully for
their absent faces, my early friends and helpers. I miss
the touch of their hands and the greetings of their warm
words. But some of you remain of those whom I first
looked upon here as my people, companions, and lovers
of many years ; whose faces have never been turned away
from me ; w^hose homes and whose hearts have always
been open to me ; who have borne with me so long and
yet have not wearied of me ; to whom I have looked for
cheer and help and strength, and never looked in vain.
Your remembrance — remembrance of the living and of the
dead — I have on my heart to-day, both for tenderness and
gratitude.
I recall our early hopes and fears as we began our work
of serving the kingdom of Christ in building up this
church, and all our later eflforts and burdens in the prose-
cution of that work unto the present time. How much
better has God been to us as a co-worker and rewarder
than our expectations or our faith ! How often has he
visited us with the refreshing influences of his quickening
and reviving Spirit ! Scarce a season has passed that we
have not enjoyed something of such a visitation. Scarce
a communion Sabbath has come and o^one without addins:
some to our fellowship. In all, nine hundred and fifteen
have been joined to us since our fellowship in these labors
and cares commenced, of whom four hundred and four-
teen were newly gathered from the world. What glad,
burdened, tearful, rejoicing, intense days we have lived
through those harvest times ! How pleasant to remember
296 ALL-STJFFICIENCY OF CHEIST.
them now and to lay up their memories for the refreshing
of our immortality ! This church has believed in revi-
vals, has prayed for revivals, has labored for revivals, and
refused to be comforted unless revivals came. I do not
mean that is singular among our churches in this respect.
It would have been singular had it repudiated such pente-
costs. Be, still and ever, true to this past ! But seek to
have the home work always deep and thorough ; to have
every heart in the church broken and contrite, and newly
baptized with the comfort and power of the Holy Ghost.
We may have restricted the fruitfulness of our harvest
days by being eager to run out upon demonstrative labor,
to subsidize all agencies and activities in forward move-
ments, before the burden of our own sinfulness and the
burden of souls had brought ourselves low enough
into the dust of humility and penitence. Set a watch
here for coming days. Be not less active, but strive for
a deeper personal experience of the condemning and sav-
ing truths of the gospel in your own souls as your best
and indispensable preparation for the rescue of other
souls. There is no rebuke or reproach in this counsel.
Our summers of grace are a precious part of my thankful
heritage out of the past.
I look here upon many now in the bloom of youth, who
were laid in my arms as a parent's offering to God in that
rite which seals his covenant with believers and their seed.
The seal was affixed long ago ; the years have gone by,
each testifying to God's faithfulness, each calling upon
you to take the vows of that covenant upon your own
willing heart and consecrate yourselves to be the Lord's.
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 297
No other and later pastor can ever have such right as I
have to ask you whether you have truly entered into
that covenant relation with God, and are walking with
him in love, reverence, and obedience every day, seek-
ing unto him, serving him, and kept by him along every
youthful path? Is it so? When shall it be so? I am
a witness for Christ, my babes of years ago. You
belong to him. Give him his own.
I see those whom I have joined at the bridal altar.
There is more soberness, but not less peace, upon your
faces than on those bright evenings gone, when of twain
you were made one. I have a grateful remembrance of
being so associated with your domestic history and joys.
It is, I think, always my prayer in such official duty that
the new home may be a Christian home, that the family
altar may be built in it even on the bridal eve, and that
morning and evening incense may be kindled thereon
daily. I may question you, therefore, intimately and ten-
derly, as none other might in my place, whether the
voice of household prayer and praise is indeed heard in
your dwelling? Oh, build the altar, if it be not built ! If
it have been built, keep its sacrifice ever burning.
I search here amid the crowd for those who are so often
overshadowed in the home and in the Sabbath congrega-
tion by full-grown adult life, the little ones of our fami-
lies. It has always seemed to me that that were a most
neglectful and incomplete shepherd care that should for-
get the lambs of the flock, and most unlike the heart of
Christ. I have felt that you had a right to share in the
pastoral ministrations, not only as they sought you within
298 ALL-SUmCIENCY OF CHRIST.
the household circle, or joined themselves to the conduct
of the Sabbath-school, but as they uttered the messages of
Jesus from the pulpit on the Lord's day, I have had no
more inspiring or rewarding audiences than when your
earnest eyes and bright faces have been turned toward mc
in the house of God, to listen to his word. And in how
many friendly and festive scenes have we mingled, when
we were all young together, our faces putting off their
gravity, our feet their staid decorum, light hearts sitting
visibly on smiling lips, and every harp string of our souls
swept by the fingers of joy ! Oh, my lambs, I have
gathered you in my arms, I have carried you on my heart,
I stretch my arms out for you still ! My heart shall never
lay off that pleasant burden. I shall remember you and
write to you from afar. But you must be Jesus' lambs as
well, more than you are mine. His arms are always
stretched out to receive you. His heart is longing for
you. Make him your Shepherd, his embrace your safe
and happy fold.
Some of you here to-day — I might count you perhaps
by hundreds — are my spiritual children. I saw your first
tear of penitence fall, heard your first burdened inquiry,
" What shall I do to be saved ? " kneeled with you in your
first prayer of consecration, and caught the earliest sweet-
ness of your new song of praise. There is a tie between
us that can never be sundered. Eternity will only hallow
and strengthen it. That connection with your present
and your immortal future I would not part with at any
price earth could offer. I can never be robbed of it.
None that come after me can take it from me. I would
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 299
not stand, you would not let me stand, between you and
Jesus. If I led you right, I led you to him. He must
be nearest and dearest. He must increase, and I must
decrease. But I shall stand with you at his side here and
now, yonder and hereafter, and say to him, "I and the chil-
dren thou hast oriven me." Oh that I could add to these
the names of some not yet written here on the scroll of
the disciplehood ! My dear friends whom I have so often
invited to come to Christ, let me call you once more to
make him your Saviour and portion. How have I failed
of commending him to your love and trust ? There is no
earthly favor for myself which you would suffer me to ask
of you in vain. But when I plead for Jesus, I cannot win
you. Must that close the record of my ministry in its
effect upon you ? Is our parting of to-day ominous of an
eternal separation? Shall we meet but once more, per-
haps, before the great white throne, and then pass from
each other's presence forever? I linger yet a moment
even as I grasp your hand in parting to draw you toward
that long-waiting divine Friend, who is ready to enter into
everlasting covenant with you. This day of our weeping
together would be to me the happiest of all these years, if
I might have now the assurance that I have not preached
Christ to you in vain.
Pleasant amono^ the thankful remembrances of this
hour are the kindnesses, I have received from you all,
through these seventeen years. It would be a long story
and many pages that should recite them every one. It
would count up every smiling salutation, every hearty
hand-shake, every token simple and costly of love and
300 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHEIST.
remembrance, sympathy with me and mine in the times
of trial, tender vigils with my sick, tears that seemed to
fall as warm and fast as my own over my beloved dead,
care for my bodily health and comfort, long leaves of
absence when I was weary, permission to visit the " Sum-
mer Isles," to go abroad amid Old World wonders, even
to the sacred hills trod once by the feet of the Lord, the
city he loved, the stream in whose margin he and John
stood together for his baptism, and the generous provi-
dence that has kept my board spread and my house bright
and warm through all these summers and winters until
now. To bring back this generous past of your ministry
to me and those dearer to me than life would be to live
over again day by day the experience which has made
each season of the past, since that wintry day that
plighted our vows, a festival of your love and care.
I have written ineffaceably on the record of my heart
your ready and fervent response when the dark days of
our country's trial came, when many minds were per-
plexed and many souls fearful, and some were faltering
and lukewarm ; and the call was sounded here for all
loyal hearts to be true and steadfast, and for our young
men to go forth armed to the defence of the capital and
the flag. The young men stood up. They buckled on
the sword. They took hold of the rifle. Old men blessed
them. Fathers and mothers said " Go ! we have nothing
dearer we can give." Fond sisters gave both tearfully
and cheerfully the parting kiss. Young wives unclasped
their arms from about the necks of young husbands.
And they went forth, our fairest, our noblest, our bravest.
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 301
And you who went not remained to pray (there were
none but loyal prayers here) , remained to give your nim-
blest industry to the soldier's comfort, to forward all
bountiful supplies for the sick and the wounded and the
prisoner ; you lent your pastor for a campaign of nine
months ; you kept good courage and unfaltering loyalty
and a spirit of large self-sacrifice and triumphant hope to
the last. And the young men, our elect hundred, have
come back to share the ovations of a rescued and grateful
country, bringing with them many and honorable scars,
shattered limbs, and dismembered frames, leaving behind
many a sod stained with the best blood in their veins, —
leaving behind, alas, some of their gallant comrades whose
dust sleeps in safety and honor beneath the victorious
flag, whose names are written in our hearts and on our
country's long scroll of heroes, — names which no distant
and coming generation on our soil will willingly let die.
Oh, had you been recreant in this great crisis of our na-
tion and of humanity's long struggle, you and I should
have parted long ere this. But I thank God that the
record of this church for loyalty, patriotism, and valor
at home and in the high places of the field is without
blot or stain.
Our co-working here in this vineyard of the Lord will
cease from to-day. The official tie is severed. But that
is all. Every other bond holds. One who goes out from
the home of his kindred to far-ofi" lands does not cease,
because of such distance, from the household relation.
He is a son, a brother, a kinsman, just as truly and with
just as near a tie of blood and love as before. Nothing
26
302 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHEIST.
shall dismiss us from one another's confidence, affection,
and memory. When you think of me or hear of me on
that other shore of our common country, let your hearts
answer, He is ours. And forever, no matter how time or
distance or other and new relations may protest, I shall
call you mine. Such mutual ownership has no statute of
limitation. It never expires.
This is no plea against what you owe to my successor in
office. Your hearts are large enough to hold us both.
He is on his way to you. God has already chosen him
for you. Pray for him. Let every unseen step of his
toward this place be paved by your intercessions. With-
hold no cordiality of welcome from him. Say not, one of
you in the deepest solitude of your soul, I will never love
him as I have loved. Transfer all your kindness and
fealty. He may not be the choice of you all. Be gener-
ous and forbearing, in such case, and let your majority
draw after it and carry with it unanimity.
Be to him all that you have been to me. He cannot
wish for more. You could not render more.
Sustain him as you have sustained the ministry that
yields this place back to you to-day. Gather here as you
have gathered on the Sabbath-day whether the sun shone
or the storm raged. Go to your meeting for prayer.
Oh, keep that room below thronged with your praying
hearts, vocal with your songs of Christian, communion.
" It is your life," the life of your individual piety, the life
of this church as a power for good. Remember the con-
cert eve. Be true to Chi'ist in his longing for the out-
lying nations. Keep the nJssionary flame burning bright
on these altars and in your souls evermore.
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 303
Welcome the calls, the incessant calls, of a world-wide
charity. I have few pleasanter recollections than those
which are associated w^ith the almost weekly summons to
you from this pulpit to contribute of your substance to
relieve the wants of men's bodies and souls. I presume
I have often been urgent and importunate in such ap-
peals. My memories of them may possibly be pleasanter
than yours. But I do not believe you would recall one
such appeal and put the seal of silence upon it. I do not
believe you regret one offering which you have laid, un-
der such stress, at the feet of your Lord. Be as you
have been, an open-handed church, eyes to the blind, feet
to the lame, a mother to the orphan, causing the widow's
heart to sing for joy, and gathering the grateful memo-
rials of the ends of the earth.
Cling together. Oh, let none fall out of the ranks
now, unless by order of the Commander-in-Chief. Do
you know what one word is the deepest reproach and the
guiltiest shame a soldier can wear on the eve of battle ?
Will any of you take upon you, when the pinch comes to
this church, the name of "Deserters"? Lock arms and
stand firm. Are you friends for bright days and not for
dark days ? They are dark days that try the soul and
show what our friendships are. Stand by one another till
another hand lift the banner at your head and bear it for-
ward.
Give me your blessing and your prayers ! You will
not say nay to that request. But if you say yes, you
must do the same for that church and people to whom I
go. How am I to be blessed if they are not blessed in me ?
304 ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST.
You must love them and pray for them. Have they for-
feited their claim to this because their need is greater than
yours? There is no other church in the land to which
you will stand in so tender a relation. Take them on
your hearts from this day and bear them perpetually be-
fore God for his richest favor, and such praying will be
doubly blest, the suppliant and the subject sitting together
beneath heaven's wide-open window.
Every step forward is into the unknown. God may
accept me that it is in my heart to build for him on that
Western shore. But he may not let me build. The At-
lantic waves are first to be crossed. I may never cross
them. The Pacific crests lift themselves between. Their
white interdict may bar my way. Instead of that distant
Golden Gate, my feet may pause earlier at the gate of
pearl. Danger, disappointment, sickness, death, these
may be the near heritage to which I seem in such haste
to be gone. Say not in such issue, " He would have
done well to have stayed." That would not thus be made
certain. The willing mind is what God accepts. The re-
sults that lie beyond make no proper part of his estimate,
or of ours, of the value of obedience.
And so we take leave of one another. It does not seem
real to me yet. Is this my last Sabbath with you? Am
I preaching my last sermon here? When another Sab-
bath dawns, will its rising sun come up for me out of the
sea, and its setting sun go down into the sea? And are
none of my Sabbaths any more to lead my feet hither?
And yet it will be a short leave. God may permit us
some greetings again by the way. He will soon bring us
together never to part.
ALL-SUFFICIENCY OF CHRIST. 305
I leave with you the labors of seventeen years, «till, if
God will, to bear fruit among you. I leave my manifold
imperfections and frailties to your charity, that they may
be forgiven. I leave for your occasional watch one little
grave in the shades of Auburn, where my first-born sleeps.
I leave my memory to be cherished and guarded by you,
if you will accept the trust. I leave my love, my thanks,
my prayers. My feet may go and bear my body forth,
but I leave my heart behind.
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