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THE GARDEN OF NUTS
WORKS BY
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, LL.D.
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LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON.
THE
GARDEN OF NUTS
depositions toitf? an
Christian
on
BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
Editor of " The Expositor" " The Expositor's Bible,"
" The Expositor's Greek Testament" etc.
I went down into the garden of nuts. — CANT. vi. 1 1
/ will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. — 2 COR. xii. I
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 PATERNOSTER ROW
1905
Printed by Hazelly Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
TO THE REVERED MEMORIES
OF
JOHN MASON NEALE
AND
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON
PREFATORY NOTE
OF the two parts of this little volume, the
first was delivered as a lecture at the Glasgow
Summer School of Theology in 1905. The
expositions which follow are reprinted from
the British Weekly.
Throughout I am constantly indebted to
the works of Dr. Neale and Mr. Spurgeon,
and especially to the writings of Mr. Arthur
Edward Waite. Mr. Waite has been good
enough to help me with many valuable
suggestions.
The original translation of the poem by
St. John of the Cross has been contributed
by my friend and colleague, Miss Jane T.
Stoddart.
viii Prefatory Note
I have in preparation a history of Beh-
menism in England. In this I hope to
supply a bibliography as full as I can make
it of English works on Mysticism.
HAMPSTEAD,
October, 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE SONG OF THE OBSCURE NIGHT I
AN ESSAY ON CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM . . 15
THE STAGES OF THE INWARD WAY . . 31
MYSTICISM IN THEOLOGY AND PRACTICE . 49
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY ASSEMBLY . 67
THE GARDEN OF NUTS .... 79
THE FACE OF DEATH IN THE SUN OF LIFE. 95
ix
Contents
PAGE
CHRIST IN THE FIRST PSALM . . .109
THE OPENED SCRIPTURES AND THE BURNING
HEART 121
"WHAT ARE THESE WOUNDS IN THINE
HANDS?" 131
"THEY CAME UNTO THE IRON GATE". . 145
THE LIGHTING OF THE LAMPS . . .159
BY THE FIRE ON THE BEACH . . -173
" i THOUGHT" 187
THE ANIMATION OF OUR LORD'S SURRENDER 203
THE PROPHECY OF THE BRUISINGS . .219
THE SONG OF THE OBSCURE
NIGHT
BY ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS
With translations by Jane T. Stoddart and
David Lewis
THE SONG OF THE OBSCURE
NIGHT
BY ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS
EN una noche escura
Con ansias en amores inflamada,
Oh dichosa vcntura !
Sali sin ser notada,
Estando ya mi casa sosegada.
A escuras, y segura
For la secreta escala disfrazada,
Oh dichosa ventura !
A escuras, en celada,
Estando ya mi casa sosegada.
3
The Garden of Nuts
En la Noche dichosa,
En secrete, que nadie me veia
Ni yo miraba cosa,
Sin otra luz, ni guia
Sino la que en el corazon ardia.
Aquesta me guiaba
Mas cierto que la luz de medio dia,
Adonde me esperaba,
Quien yo bien me sabi'a,
En parte, donde nadie parecia.
Oh Noche, que guiaste !
Oh Noche amable mas que el alborada
Oh Noche, que juntaste
Amado con amada !
Amada en el Amado transformada.
En mi pecho florido,
Que entero para el solo se guardaba,
The Song of the Obscure Night 5
Alii qued6 dormido
Y yo le regalaba
Y el ventalle de cedros aire daba.
El aire de el almena,
Cuando ya sus cabellos esparcia
Con su mano serena
En mi cuello herfa,
Y todos mis sentidos suspendia.
Ouede"me y olviddme,
El rostro recline* sobre cl Amado,
Ces6 todo, y deje"me,
Dejando mi cuidado,
Entre las azucenas olvidado.
TRANSLATION
BY JANE T. STODDART
I WENT forth on a dark night,
My heart aflame with love's anxiety.
(O blessed that chance for me ! )
No eye saw my way,
For over all my house a stillness lay.
Safe went I through the dark night,
In disguise and by the secret stairway.
(O blesse'd that chance for me ! )
None saw my hidden way,
For over all my house a stillness lay.
In that night of blessing,
When nothing to my vision did appear,-
6
The Song of the Obscure Night 7
In secret, my presence none guessing,—
No light or guide was near,
Save that which in my heart was burning
clear.
But that light was guiding
More surely than the light of noonday sun,
To the place of my Love's abiding,
In which my rest was won.
And in that place was earthly presence none.
O Night, that leads the rover !
O Night more lovely than the dawn of day !
O Night, that joins the Lover
And loved in unity !
And she, transformed, with Him is one alway.
In the sure holy keeping
Of the soul's garden, where my love is
growing,
8 The Garden of Nuts
He rested and lay sleeping,
Refreshment to me owing,
The cedar-fans above us gently going.
Airs from the turret height
Played softly with the hair upon His brow.
Beneath His hand of might
My neck did meekly bow,
And all my earthly sense was fading now.
On the bosom of my Lover
I remained, and could naught else recall.
All the struggle, all the toil was over.
From me my cares did fall ;
Among the lilies I forgot them all.
When St. John of the Cross was dying in
1591, and the physician told him that the
end was near, he replied, in the words of
the Psalmist : " I was glad when they said
unto me, We will go into the House of the
The Song of the Obscure Night 9
Lord," and added, " Since you have told me
that good news, I have felt no pain whatever."
The only other English translation known
to me is that which follows, by David Lewis.
There are two French translations, one in
prose and one in verse. They differ at two
or three points from Mr. Lewis and from
each other. Mr. Lewis's translation is at
one or two places more literal than Miss
Stoddart's but does not attempt to reproduce
either the metre or the rhymes of the original.
His lines hardly ever scan with the Spanish.
W. R. N.
TRANSLATION
BY DAVID LEWIS
IN an obscure night !
With anxious love inflamed,
O happy lot !
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
In darkness and obscurity,
By the secret ladder disguised,
O happy lot !
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
10
The Song of the Obscure Night 1 1
Without other light or guide,
Save that which in my heart was burning.
That light guided me,
More surely than the noonday sun,
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none but He appeared.
O guiding night !
0 night more lovely than the dawn !
O night, that hast united
The Lover with His beloved !
And changed her into her Love.
On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
He reposed and slept.
1 kept Him, and the wooing
Of the cedars fanned Him.
12 The Garden of Nuts
Then His hair floated in the breeze
That blew from the turret.
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.
I continued in oblivion lost.
My head was resting on my Love.
I fainted, and was abandoned,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away.
BOOKS OF REFERENCE
The Works of St. John of the Cross, in two volumes,
translated by David Lewis, M.A., with a preface by
Cardinal Wiseman (Longmans, 1864).
Life of St. John of the Cross, by David Lewis
(Thomas Baker, Soho Square, 1897). One volume.
Good French translations of the Saint's writings
are La Montee du Carmel^ translated from the Seville
edition of 1702 by Alfred Gilly, 1866, and another by
Pere Charles-Marie du Sacr6 Coeur (Toulouse, 1876).
The most convenient Spanish edition of the Obras
Espirituales is that published in two volumes at Madrid
in 1872, with an introduction by D. Juan Manuel Orti
y Lara.
AN ESSAY ON CHRISTIAN
MYSTICISM
AN ESSAY ON CHRISTIAN
MYSTICISM*
WHEN John Tauler began his ministry, he
preached ofttimes in a certain city, and the
people loved to hear him, and his teachings
were the talk of the country for many
leagues round. This came to the ears of a
layman who was rich in God's grace, and
he came to that city, and heard the master
preach five times. Then God gave this lay
man to perceive that the master was a very
loving, gentle, kind-hearted man by nature,
* Lecture delivered to the Summer School of
Theology, Glasgow, in Park Parish Church, June
1905.
1 8 The Garden of Nuts
and had a good understanding of the Holy
Scripture, but was dark as to the light of
grace. Tauler ultimately submitted to the
justice of the layman's judgment, and to
the discipline enjoined by his reprover, in
cluding a two-years' silence. During that
period, he passed through intense agonies,
in which his soul was unmade and remade.
When he came forth to preach again, tears
flowed forth instead of words, but when his
speech returned at last, it was known as the
word of a man who had actually visited the
world of darkness and the world of light.
Thus runs a long-accepted story, recently
questioned in some quarters, but effective
as pointing out one great practical use of
mysticism.
It is not so difficult to define mysticism
in Scotland. The Christian mystic is " far
ben." Christian mysticism, as Frederick
On Christian Mysticism 19
Maurice has noted, springs from the words
of Christ in St. John's Gospel : " Henceforth
I call you not servants ; for the servant
knoweth not what his lord doeth : but I
have called you friends ; for all things that
I have heard of my Father I have made
known unto you." Probably there was an
hour in the life of Eckart when this passage
started out of the page full armed, and
mastered his whole being. " Friends of
God" was the designation of the Christian
mystics of the fourteenth century, members
of different orders, clergy and laymen, being
included under it.
The experience of Tauler has been often
repeated. There are many eloquent preachers
who are well skilled in knowledge, and have
a care for the things of God. But to exercised
believers it is plain that they are stranger.5
to the depths and heights of Christianity.
2o The Garden of Nuts
As Edward Irving said in his great days :
"To my certain knowledge, the atmosphere
of theology hath been so long clear and
cloudless that there hath been neither mist
nor rain these many years, and even to talk
of a mystery is out of date. But thou must
preach Christ in a mystery." The chief
practical use of mysticism is to help Christian
preachers to deepen their teaching — to preach
Christ in a mystery. I shall endeavour very
briefly (i) to describe the inward way and
its stages as apprehended by the mystics in
language as little technical as may be ; (2)
to show how mysticism affects dogmatic
theology and theological controversy ; (3) to
deal with the relation of mysticism to action ;
and (4) to explain the mystical doctrine of
the Holy Assembly, the esoteric Church. In
doing so, I shall make no attempt to point
out the many shortcomings and dangers of
On Christian Mysticism 21
mysticism. That has been done sufficiently.
We study the mystics for the most part
with a desire to learn from them. It need not
be disguised that there are great difficulties
in the way. In the first place, the mystics
are the most individual of writers. Though
there have been many more or less secret
associations of mystics, the great teachers
have worked without concert. John Wesley,
who was deeply imbued with mysticism,
though in his later life a keen critic of its
weaknesses, says of them that they do not
give a clear, a steady, or a uniform light.
He quotes Professor Franck's saying : " They
do not describe our common Christianity,
but every one has a language of his own."
Wesley adds : " It is very true, so that if
you study the mystic writers you will find
as many religions as books, and for this
plain reason, each of them makes his own
22 The Garden of Nuts
experience the standard of religion." This is
an extravagant over-statement, but it is the
exaggeration of a truth.
Then the literature of mysticism is not
easy of access. The English histories are
avowedly very imperfect. The well-known
book by Robert Alfred Vaughan, Hours
with the Mystics, is an extraordinary achieve
ment for its time, but it is entirely un
sympathetic, if not positively hostile, and
many passages will shock the lover of
mysticism. In Vaughan's mind there was
not a rudiment of true mystical feeling. His
position may be judged by his definition of
mysticism : " Mysticism is that form of error
which mistakes for a divine manifestation
»
the operations of a merely human faculty.'
The Bampton Lectures by Dr. Inge are less
unfriendly, but the tone is vigilantly critical
throughout. They are the work of an able
On Christian Mysticism 23
theologian, who is fully satisfied with his
ecclesiastical and dogmatic position. They
leave out vast tracts of the subject. We
have no treatise on the history of English
mysticism, although such a book might be
instructive and interesting in the highest
degree. Even such influential mystics as
Peter Sterry and Mrs. Lead are unnamed
by English historians. On Behmenism in
England, only two or three scattered essays
exist. I am deeply conscious of the great
imperfection of my own equipment. If it
had not been for the profound and fruitful
works of Mr. Arthur Edward Waite, by far
the deepest and most accomplished writer on
mysticism among us, I should not have
ventured to make an attempt. In what
follows I must not be held as agreeing at
every point with the mystics, and it has
always to be remembered that we are at best
24 The Garden of Nuts
but approximating when we seek to reduce
the great experience of the depths and
heights into the terminology of our humbler
daily walk.
(i) The inward way and its stages make
up the central doctrine of mysticism. All
Christian mysticism rests on the primordial
facts that we came out of the great centre, and
that our duty and rest are in that centre.
Mysticism is accordingly counsel to the
exiled. It assumes that God is to be found
and that therefore there is and can be only
one great work in life, that work being to
accomplish an individual reversion to the
fontal source of souls. The motto of the
mystic is the motto of the dying Monica,
" Life in God and union there ! " The sense
of the necessity of the Divine union, the
realisation of Christ on earth, the true,
certain, and absolute knowledge of God the
On Christian Mysticism 25
Supreme is the heart of mysticism. This
knowledge and union are only to be acquired
hardly, but they may be obtained by those
who are willing to sell all for the pearl of
great price. Deep in the hearts of all men is
the hunger for the Mysterium Magnum, said
Jacob Bohme, but few indeed will pass
through the needful suspensions, and priva
tions, and derelictions till they reach it. Yet
those in whose heart eternity has been set,
will go on. As Saint Martin says, a secret
thread holds God and the seeker's soul
together, even when the way is loneliest and
most perilous. He compared himself to a
man fallen into the sea, but with a rope bound
round his wrist and connecting him with the
vessel. " Eternity, be thou my refuge " — the
inscription on the grave of Senancour — is
the mystical aspiration. It is not necessary,
according to mystical teaching, for the soul
26 The Garden of Nuts
to leave the body in order to see God, though
an earthly end of exile is granted only to
those who have longed eagerly, and longed
early, and suffered patiently. The path is
stony and steep, but faithfully pursued it
brings to a point at last from which is visible
the whole glory of the western heavens, and
one golden moment redeems the decades of
weary years.
(2) According to mystical teaching, God
is to be found in the inward way. Here it
is necessary to say something of the relation
of mysticism and occult science, and at the
present day the occult sciences have again
come into prominence. Under the name
psychical research, the phenomena of
spiritualism, clairvoyance, hypnotism, mes
merism, and the like have been examined
anew. Many mystics are not unfriendly to
these researches. There are even some who
On Christian Mysticism 27
think there is proof that outside the visible
world there are other intellectual orders, and
that the dead of earth are there. They
incline to suppose that some connection has
been established with the occult forces of
nature and the invisible hierarchies of being.
But were this proved much more clearly than
it is, the mystic, and perhaps I may say
the Christian, would gain nothing. For
spiritualism is almost exclusively concerned
with the special department of experience
in the phenomenal world. It may be that
the phenomena are transcendent, but nothing
in the phenomenal world, transcendent or
normal, can bring permanent peace or
beatitude, or help on the way to God, At
most, spiritualism and its associates make
up a transcendental science, and between
transcendental science and transcendental
religion (which is mysticism) there is a great
28 The Garden of Nuts
gulf fixed. We must transcend the
phenomenal and the physical in order to
know God, and it is not possible that facts
in science, however extraordinary they may
be, should constitute religious truth. In fact
it can be proved that the greater mystics
avoided rather than pursued such investiga
tions. They distrusted and they even feared
thaumaturgic experiments. All such ex
periments conducted in the astral region are
accompanied with perils of the obscure night.
The astral region is the home of illusion,
a threshold which is full of strange dwellers,
and our precautions can never be too great,
nor our intercourse too rigorously guarded
with these. The interior mystics have
occasionally gone far into occultism, but their
testimony has been : " I have received by the
inward way truths and joys a thousand times
higher than I have received from without."
On Christian Mysticism 29
Even if all that spiritualists claim were made
good, Christianity would not be strengthened,
and it may even be reasonably asked whether
the establishment of spiritualistic experiences
would not injure Christianity. Has any one
been converted to an earnest Christianity
by spiritualism ? The cry still rings out
from men like Myers, " Who shall go ovei
the sea for us ? " But the answer of
Christianity is, " The Word is nigh thee."
The true end of all Christian mysticism
is union with God, accomplished in the
knowledge of God, and effected by the
love of God. In comparison with this, all
other objects are vain and unprofitable. This
union is attained by a sequence of experiences
difficult to translate into language — more or
less sealed and secret for those who have
never gone through them.
THE STAGES OF THE INWARD
WAY
THE STAGES OF THE INWARD
WAY
THE process for the return into God has one
great principle. There must be the cutting
of correspondence with inferior things and
the creating of a new correspondence with
things above.
(i) This correspondence often begins with
a changed attitude to the material universe.
To the mystic all the universe is an omen
and a sign. Everything that exists is an
outward expression of an inward thought
of God. The action of the moon on the
water may be explained scientifically, but the
moon in the nightly heavens silently flooding
the sleeping earth with splendour is a portent
from a world revealed in a luminous mist
33 3
34 The Garden of Nuts
of mystery. God is the great symbolic
teacher, and He teaches by signs which
He writes on the veil, the veil which hangs
between us and His Face, but which is
thin and penetrable, and mysteriously in
scribed on the side shown to us. It is this
that is meant by those who insist, like the
author of John Inglesant, that all nature
is sacramental. Nature is a sacrament
because it is an exterior index of an inner
grace and virtue. This is the beginning
of mysticism, and has taken hold of many
who have not advanced far within the shrine,
Thus Charles Kingsley says : " The great
mysticism is the belief which is becoming
every day stronger with me, that all sym
metrical, natural objects are types of some
spiritual truth or existence. When I walk
the fields, I am oppressed now and then
with an innate feeling that everything I see
Stages of the Inward Way 35
has a meaning if I could but understand
it, and this feeling of being surrounded with
truths, which I cannot grasp, amounts to
indescribable awe sometimes. Everything
seems to be full of God's reflex, if we could
but see it. Oh, how I have prayed to have
this mystery unfolded at least hereafter !
To see if but for a moment the whole
harmony of the great system, and hear once
more the music which the whole universe
makes as it performs His bidding ! " When
Christ came He taught in parables and alle
gories. Without a parable He spake not unto
them. Further, He established symbolical
ceremonies. I need hardly speak of the
mysticism of Wordsworth and of Tennyson.
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower — but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
36 The Garden of Nuts
Says St. John of the Cross : " Lonely
valleys are quiet, pleasant, cool, shady, full
of sweet waters. With their many trees and
the song of birds they give great refreshment
and delight to our spirit, and there is coolness
and rest in their solitude and silence. Such
a valley is my Beloved to me." The seeker
for God then finds himself at the beginning
in a world of tender and luminous parable.
(2) The second stage in the advance is
that of detachment. To apprehend the
sacramental nature of our surroundings is
something, but God is not to be discovered
in the consolations and felicities of external
nature, nor other than dimly in its symbols.
The true light is to be sought within. The
avenues of interior contemplation, of the
withdrawn state, of the hidden life, are the
way to God. There must be detachment
from the things of the earth, contempt of
Stages of the Inward Way 37
riches, and the love of the Deity. This
detachment is our guide ; it is devoid of
pride and jealousy ; it seeks to rob humanity
of nothing that belongs to it. It is an
exercise of humility carried on under an
abiding sense of unworthiness. To the truly
detached, penitence is not only the safest
road, but the sweetest and the most fruitful.
Here comes in the question of the place
of sacrifice. On this the Christian mystics
have greatly differed, and it would be easy
to give cases of mischievous extravagance.
Sacrifice there is in the pursuit of detachment,
but it may be difficult to draw a rigid line.
The true mystic is not affected by the tribula
tion of the ambitious, and the agonies of
the covetous. St. Teresa tells of a saintly
person " who by obedience had been for
fifteen years so engaged in his duties and
offices, that during all this period he did not
38 The Garden of Nuts
remember having had one day for himself,
although he endeavoured, as far as he could,
to devote some spare time in the day to
prayer, and the purifying of his conscience.
Our Lord has liberally rewarded him, for
without his knowing how, he enjoys that
liberty of soul which the perfect possess, and
in which consists all the happiness that
can be hoped for in this life ; for desiring
nothing, he possesses all things. Such souls
neither fear nor covet anything on earth ;
afflictions do not disturb them, nor pleasures
elate them ; nothing can rob them of their
peace, since it depends on God alone." What
ever of pain and surrender is necessary comes
by a kind of Divine inevitableness, and in
a desisting from the pursuit of that which
has ceased to matter. Then before he enters
on the path, the world and the seeker find
themselves mutually out of accord, and thus
Stages of the Inward Way 39
in many cases the overt act of renunciation
is not needed. Assuming the interior de
tachment indispensable to the mystic, and
assuming that the zeal of God's House has
sufficiently eaten up the heart to make sin
more or less impossible, enforced partings
may not be needful for the sons and daughters
of desire. If they are, the children will be
passed through the familiar furnaces. If they
are not, the outward accessories that hinder
entire obedience and faithful following will
be as sweetly and insensibly removed as
the great stone at the grave of Christ.
(3) The next step is attachment, the
creation of an attitude of perfect corre
spondence with Christ. This may be defined
as conversion, as the gradual satisfaction of
the hunger and thirst after righteousness
that is wakened in the soul. Now to the
mystic, Christ is the Repairer of the fall,
4O The Garden of Nuts
and His work is to reunite us to the living
act of the Divine principle. It must be
allowed that the mystic tends to say little
of the work of Christ for us, outside of us.
His thought is that the individual Christian
must live through the experience of Christ
in a union so close that each step of the
redemptive process, the life, the death, and
the resurrection, are repeated in the believer.
Says one mystic, we must " immerse ourselves
continually in His living waters, approach
the furnace of His fire, direct our own word
to that central and interior word." This
identification with Christ means touching
nothing, thinking nothing, doing nothing
which does not make for God. Christ is all
and in all. As Christ passed into Gethsemane
to accept the chalice of expiation, we must
enter into the work and sacrifice of the
Repairer and apply them to our particular
Stages of the Inward Way 41
work and sacrifice. We shall be greatly
aided in this by prayer. It is by the
strengthening of the bond with God, and by
earnest supplication that the den of thieves
within us is at last changed into the house
of prayer. When that is done, the mystic,
by the fact of his conviction, is sure of his
life entering more and more into the world
where petition is ever fulfilling itself. Answers
to prayer stand continually round him, and
that much more closely than the hills around
Jerusalem.
At this stage we might pause in describing
the ordinary Christian. It is at this point
that the vast majority rest content. They
are often very happy. They have often
that joy and peace in believing which is
the consequence of the harmonious correspon
dence with the experimental standard which
is called the will of God. Christians of
42 The Garden of Nuts
this type often drink deeply of Christ's
rest, amid the daily burdens of mono
tonous life, the dull, commonplace, pain
ful, and even desolating experiences which
the days bring with them. It is for them
mainly that the books of devotion are written,
and they have much comfort of the Scriptures,
reading them by simple faith. Excellent as
their experience is, they inhabit the cloisters
on the threshold of the temple. They are
not called to go beyond them to secret holy
places. Often they have the assurance of
mysteries beyond, but on the whole their
experience is one of content. It is at this
point that the mystic leaves them, and
presses forward to the great experiences of
rapture and dereliction.
(4) The next stage, then, is what is known
in mystical theology as the night of the
obscure illumination. It is, as all Christian
Stages of the Inward Way 43
literature testifies, the time of aridity, weari
ness, temptation, desolation, and darkness.
It is the eye of the mind turned on itself
before it has received the full illumination
of the light within. It is the time when
the heart is weary with the phenomenal,
when the joy of earth has become arid, and
there is a strong yearning for the full joy of
heaven. It is often the time when the soul
under sanctification bemoans its sin and doubts
its interest in Christ. It is sorely dissatisfied
with its own rate of Christian living. It
does not partake of the permanent peace of
God. But this is a Divine discontent, and
it is a stage in advance of those satisfied
with lower attainment. There are those who,
like Cornelius Agrippa, never get out of it.
They die under the cloud ; but God does
not leave them nor forsake them, and they
die towards Jerusalem and enter through
44 The Garden of Nuts
the gate into the city. It is at this period
that there is often in Christians a tendency
to experiment in spiritualism, and to assure
themselves by physical tokens of the con
tinued life of the dead.
(5) But there succeeds to this experience
a time when the garden of the soul is
irrigated, when the dew falls from the Ever
lasting Rose, when the will of God is
accomplished in love, joy, and peace. This
has been called the higher Quietism, and it
has also been called the time of ecstasy
and vision. These words may be too strong,
but it is in this stage of the spiritual pro
gress, a stage which often comes at an
advanced period of life, that spiritual and
physical happiness seem best to agree. It
is the sabbath of the spirit. It is the joy
of the Holy Ghost.
St. Teresa mentions four ways in which
Stages of the Inward Way 45
the spiritual garden may be watered, taking
her examples from the methods of irrigation
practised in the droughty Castilian provinces.
We may draw the water from a well, or use
the noria or water-wheel, or we may take
from a river or brook, or, best of all, the
rain from heaven may fall upon the garden.
Those who enter on the path of mysticism
must practise the first methods, which call
for toil and effort. Sometimes even the well
is dry, " but when His Majesty knows that
we are doing what we can, as good gardeners,
He sustains the flowers without water and
makes virtues grow."
What, she asks, shall the gardener do when
spiritual drought afflicts him, when he dips
his pitcher often into the well and draws
out no water ? " Let him give thanks and
take comfort, and hold it as a high grace
that he works in the garden of so great an
46 The Garden of Nuts
Emperor. He knows, too, that he is pleasing
his Lord in this, and his purpose must not
be to please himself, but his Lord. . . .
Let him resolve that even if this dryness
lasts all his life, he will not fail to carry
the cross with Christ. The time will come
when he shall be paid in full measure ; there
is no fear that his labour will be lost, for
he serves a good master. . . . Those labours
are so well rewarded that I who endured
them for many years can testify that when
I drew but one drop of water from that
blessed well, I felt that God was showing
me His mercy. I know that the toil is
great, and it seems to me that more courage
is needed for it than for any other labours
in the world, but I have seen clearly that
God does not leave us without great reward,
even in this life. The soul which has a lively
hope in God, is so lifted above the world
Stages of the Inward Way 47
and so free from its snares, that not only
is it incapable of taking hold of the world,
but cannot even reach it with its vision."
(6) Beyond that is the experience of union
which comes but to few on earth, the con
summation of the true interior existence
which is the end of union, when the soul
like Elias, is caught up into God. This is
the time of raptures and derelictions. As
there are raptures, so there must be derelic
tions in the flesh, for the soul that knows
the joy of union is plunged in night when
they are withdrawn. But of these things
we must read in St. John of the Cross, and
most of all in Ruysbroek. Those who pass
into this experience know that the soul has
an infinite capacity for joy and an infinite
possibility for sorrow. From that there is
the passage to the open and untroubled and
everlasting vision.
MYSTICISM IN THEOLOGY AND
PRACTICE
49
MYSTICISM IN THEOLOGY AND
PRACTICE
I COME next to speak briefly on the effect
of mysticism on Christian theology. The
effect is to soften hard outlines and mathe
matical definitions. Truth is many chambered.
The theologian is prone to take up house
in one chamber, and deny that there is any
door outwards into another. In consequence,
there is as much bigotry among the rationalists
as among the orthodox. The rationalist en
sconces himself in the simplest, most obvious,
most superficial interpretation of a doctrine.
He has right on his side so far. There is
truth in the aspect that has appealed to
his mind. But he is only too ready to assert
52 The Garden of Nuts
that this is all the truth, and that beyond
it there is nothing. He angrily repudiates
the possibility of advance into a deeper and
yet deeper conception of the mystery. The
orthodox theologian, as a rule, gets nearer
the heart of the truth, but stops short of
the very heart. He, too, though later, finds
a chamber where he asserts that rest is to
be found without possible advance into further
sanctities of wisdom. But the mystic knows
better. He knows that every Christian
doctrine is profounder than it seems, that
he mystery grows as the light grows, and
that only in the heart and vision of God
is there ultimate repose. When the element
of mysticism is in the mind of the theologian,
he will avoid dialectical victories, and the
attempt to stone his antagonists to death
with texts. Take, for example, the doctrine
of the Atonement. In a book not untouched
Mysticism in Theology and Practice 53
by the spirit of mysticism, Brooke's Fool of
Quality, a man ventures to speak of the
doctrine of the Atonement The Christian
replies with admirable promptitude, "You
are a villain, a thief, and a liar." The man
supports his argument by throwing a bottle
at the hero's head. The hero, upsetting
everybody who tries to hold him, rushes at
his antagonist and prostrates him by a single
blow on the temple. He then calmly sits
down, sends for a surgeon, and justifies with
admirable logic the rather strong language
which he had used. The theological con
troversies on the Atonement have often been
carried on in this spirit. It may be hoped
that a change has come, that we shall not
any longer argue with those who say that
the Atonement is exemplary or governmental
or piacular. We shall say on the contrary
that it is all three and much more. True
54 The Garden of Nuts
mysticism is a leading on from one dis
closure to another. No theorists have ex
hausted the mystery of the Atonement, and
those theorists have done best who have
frankly admitted it. There are few books
on the Atonement which have more life
than Macleod Campbell's, and its life is in
its mysticism. The great modern teacher of
substitution, the apostle Spurgeon, in his
sermon on the Miraculous Darkness, says
that darkness tells us all that the Passion
is a great mystery into which we cannot
pry. " I try to explain it as a substitution,
and I feel that where the language of
Scripture is explicit, I may and must be
explicit too. But yet I feel that the idea
of substitution does not cover the whole of
the matter, and that no human conception
can completely grasp the whole of the dread
mystery. It was wrought in darkness,
Mysticism in Theology and Practice 55
because the full, far-reaching meaning and
result cannot be beheld of finite mind.
Tell me the death of the Lord Jesus was
a grand example of self-sacrifice — I can
see that and much more. Tell me it was
the bearing of what ought to have been
borne by myriads of sinners of the human
race, as the chastisement of their sin — I can
see that and found my best hope upon it.
But do not tell me that this is all that is
in the Cross." Eckartshausen tells us that
the Atonement is the great event of the
grand and holy Assemblies which are leading
the Churches. It is all men have said it is,
but there is much more; and the more we
behold, we realise the more keenly that wis
dom lingers — the wisdom of the sanctuaries.
So particularly in the doctrine of Holy
Scripture which is now so much in dispute.
The higher critic is in these days apparently
56 The Garden of Nuts
victorious, but there are drawbacks to his
triumph. For one thing, the kind of evidence
on which he grounds himself cannot be
understood without considerable study and
reflection. It is a kind of study to which
the average mind lends itself very unwillingly.
The conclusiveness of its results depends
on an accumulation of details, and the
impatient mind of the general reader is not
apt to take the trouble necessary for com
prehending the weight of the arguments.
It will for ever appear incredible to the
uninitiated that a critic should be able to
assign different authors to one verse of the
Pentateuch. Besides, many Christians ap
proach the higher criticism with presupposi
tions which are fatal to its very existence.
They hold virtually that the application
of the principles of historical criticism to
Holy Scripture is in its nature blasphemous.
Mysticism in Theology and Practice 57
They hold that problems of authorship, age,
and truth to facts are settled beforehand.
It must be admitted also that on the general
principles which underlie the whole discussion
there is as yet only a partial agreement among
literary critics. How far the assumptions on
which much criticism is based are verified
in literary history, is still debatable. For
example, it is often argued that a certain
piece cannot be by a certain author because
it falls far below the average of his style.
To this it may be replied that hardly any
great author has escaped without sinking
far below himself in some or many of his
performances. But the mystic as such is
not profoundly concerned in the quarrel, and
he can wait with calmness the far-off day
of decision. The Christian pulpit can never
be strong so far as it depends on nervous
and inaccurate estimates of the present trend
58 The Garden of Nuts
of German theological thought, measured in
most instances by summaries of periodical
articles. The mystic knows very well that
the time for decision on many questions has
not yet arrived, and that it may never arrive.
To assume that the particular conclusions
which are favoured by the majority of
scholars at the beginning of the twentieth
century will be equally in favour at the
beginning of the twenty-first, is to be
blind to all the lessons of experience.
Criticism has changed, and will change,
but to the mystic the Word of God
remains. In so far as the higher criticism is
dangerous he meets it with the highest
criticism. He is certainly not hostile to
historical criticism, but to him historical
criticism must ever be of secondary import
ance. That the revelation of God must
be full of signs and wonders he is well
Mysticism in Theology and Practice 59
assured. That the sense intended by the
particular writer is of solitary importance
he can never believe. A literary critic so
little touched by transcendentalism as Lowell
has admirably explained that the meaning
of great works is not necessarily that which
was present to the mind of the writers. He
says : " Whether I have fancied anything
into Hamlet which the author never dreamed
of putting there, I do not greatly concern
myself to inquire. Poets are always entitled
to a royalty on whatever we find in their
works ; for these fine creations as truly build
themselves up in the brain as they are
built up with deliberate forethought. Praise
art as we will, that which the artist did not
mean to put into his work, but which found
itself there by some generous process of
Nature of which he was as unaware as the
blue river is of its rhyme with the blue
60 The Garden of Nuts
sky, has somewhat in it that snatches us
into sympathy with higher things than those
which come by plot and observation. Goethe
wrote his Faust in its earliest form without
a thought of the deeper meaning which the
exposition of an age of criticism was to
find in it ; without foremeaning it, he had
impersonated in Mephistopheles the genius
of his century. Shall this subtract from
the debt we owe him ? Not at all. If
originality were conscious of itself, it would
have lost its right to be original." In the
view of the mystic, great Divine words are
not the prize of the toiling intellect of
mortality ; they are the gift of the Eternal
Love. What concerns him is not what the
human authors who were the organs of the
revelation more or less dimly conceive to
be its meaning. He goes behind all that
to the intention of the Holy Spirit. This
Mysticism in Theology and Practice 61
the reader may find more truly than the
original writer. This idea is most familiar
in the literature of mysticism. Thus Saint
Martin came to see that there were greater
depths in his Ecce Homo than he was aware
of until he was acquainted with the writings
of Jacob Boehme. The author of John
Inglesant, a good mystic of the second order,
read a sermon preached on the meaning of
one of his minor works. He wrote to the
preacher that his meaning was different, but
he afterwards wrote that he now saw that
the preacher's meaning was the true meaning.
All mystics believe that beyond the obvious
sense of the Scripture there is often a second
sense. Passages that seemed to be history
are now properly read as parable and allegory.
Some mystics, like Pope Gregory the Great,
hold that the parable and allegory rest on
the historical facts of the Bible, and that
6 2 The Garden of Nuts
the given accounts are the more, not the less,
true literally that they have a meaning
mystical. Above all, the mystic finds Christ
in the Old Testament as the Risen Christ
found Himself when, beginning at Moses and
all the prophets, He expounded unto them
in all the Scriptures the things concerning
Himself. What was the unknown writer
of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah thinking of
when he wrote his prophecy ? Did he think
of a person or of collective Israel? It does
not matter. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah
refers to Christ. Nothing is settled by the
intention of the writer, even if that could
be ascertained.
Do men dare to call Thy Scripture —
Mystic forest, unillumined nook ?
If it be so, O my spirit !
Then let Christ arise on Thee, and look.
With the long lane of His sunlight
Shall be out the forest of His Book.
Mysticism in Theology and Practice 63
In the frank acceptance of this position I am
persuaded that the Church will find peace
during the long distress of criticism, and it
is in this way only that the interest in the
Old Testament will be revived. It is not
possible that the ordinary mind should be
able to follow the patient and intricate
processes of historical criticism — these pro
cesses which, when understood, cast so strong
a light on the progressiveness of Divine
revelation. These have a place of their own,
and are full of precious instruction. But in
speaking to the people the preacher must
take the Old Testament as it stands or leave
it alone. If an unbelieving Christian dis
parages the Holy Scripture, the mystic
protests. For him, the Scripture has its
imperfections, so to speak, as the human
body of the Incarnate Word had its imperfec
tions. Beyond that he will not go. He
64 The Garden of Nuts
believes intensely that more and more light
is ever breaking from the Word. He
believes that it should never be opened save
by hands that tremble with reverence. He
receives it into his arms as the aged
Simeon received the Holy Child. He goes
on to study it wistfully, hopefully, till death
or the Lamb of God looses the seals of the
Book.
It is perhaps hardly worth while to refute
the criticism that the mystics are not practical.
As Dr. Inge has pointed out, Plotinus was
often in request as a guardian and trustee ;
St. Bernard showed great gifts as an organiser ;
St. Teresa as a founder of convents and an
administrator gave evidence of extraordinary
practical ability ; even St. John of the Cross
displayed the same qualities ; John Smith
was an excellent bursar of his college ;
Fenelon ruled his diocese extremely well ;
Mysticism in Theology and Practice 65
and Madame Guyon surprised those who
had dealings with her by her great aptitude
for affairs. We have heard much of late
about the practical mystic, and the mystic
is great and powerful in practical affairs for
various reasons, and not least for this, that
he never stakes his all. Whatever be the
momentary issue of the strife, the mystic
is not too much discomposed. His heart is
with his treasure, and his treasure is with
Christ. He is brave to resume the fight, or
patient in retreat when the fight is plainly
ended so far as he is concerned. But the mystic
is probably not a man prominent in public
action. He is a practical man because he
is doing the one thing that is worth doing,
getting back whence he came. Those who
on this earth attain to the union are perhaps
doing the work of their brethren, and bearing
their burdens most perfectly. He is not
5
66 The Garden of Nuts
useless who is part of the activity of God.
It is not necessary that all mystics should
devote themselves directly to the service of
man, but they must be tinged and transmuted
by a vital quality of real benevolence, by
the illumination of altruistic human love.
Who is to divide the honours ? Was it Jacob
Boehme or John Wesley who did the most
work for the world ? Who can answer ? But
even that is not the true way to put the
question. What work could Jacob Boehme
have done for the world if he had attempted
the work of John Wesley ?
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY
ASSEMBLY
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY
ASSEMBLY
I COME in conclusion to the doctrine of the
Holy Assembly, a doctrine sorely needed in
these days of fierce and bitter sectarianism.
The doctrine of the Holy Assembly is a
testimony catholic to all mysticism. It is
concerned with a withdrawn brotherhood in
whose hands the experimental knowledge of
God has remained and has increased. It is
the doctrine of the esoteric Church of the
Illuminated.
As for the outward Church, mysticism
believes in it. It is the duty of every
Christian to connect himself with the out
ward organised community. In selecting a
69
70 The Garden of Nuts
community he must, of course, follow his
own conscience and preference, but certainly,
according to mystical doctrine, every one
should remain in the Church in which he
was born, unless driven out by the gravest
necessity. While respecting all other societies,
says one, we shall do well if we are led by
our angel to remain in our own Christian
society, and enter into the sanctuary of the
spirit through the door that is nearest to our
hands. " Sparta is your country, do your
best for Sparta." Mystics have often taken
a vehement part in the support and the
defence of their Churches, and they have
loyally followed in the footsteps of their
fathers, and in the track of their early
associations and discoveries. It is true that
their aid has often been lightly valued. The
whole history of mysticism shows that
mystics have often fallen out of favour with
Doctrine of the Holy Assembly 71
their Churches. Sometimes they have been
expelled, more often they have been dis
trusted and kept in the background. But
so long as they were allowed to remain they
have been obedient and uncomplaining.
They have recognised that the Church visible
is a stage on the way to the esoteric Church,
the Holy Assembly that has hoped and
worked through the ages. They have seen
that it is through the visible Church that
we enter into the company of the initiates
and the secret hope of the world. Exoteric
Christianity is true, though it is incomplete.
The outer Church, whatever its shortcomings
may be, is never to be removed from
the world. Its institutions have their
abiding place and use. There are mystics
who prefer the simplest and most austere
form of Christian worship, looking forward
to the day when love shall supersede the
72 The Garden of Nuts
Sacraments, and anticipating it. There are
also many Christian mystics who lay great
stress on the Sacraments, and advise that
the Eucharist should be frequently resorted
to as a means of grace. For those who are
helped by such things there may be ornate
buildings and ceremonial worship. It is
rarely the part of a true mystic to direct
attacks on received dogmas or existing in
stitutions.
Only, however faithful, however zealous a
man may be in devotion to the outward
society in which he was born, in which he
first repented and trusted, he will find as
he goes on that there are deep affinities,
and perhaps the deepest between him and
others who belong to other fellowships,
and are called by other names. He will
find himself inwardly tied to those from
whom he is outwardly divided. The teachers
Doctrine of the Holy Assembly 73
who speak to him most commandingly will
often be of a seemingly alien company. Is
he then to renounce them or disown them ?
Far otherwise. He is to recognise that
besides his fellowship in the outward Church,
which may mean more or less, he has a
still more precious communion in the Holy
Assembly. The door of that Assembly is
never closed. Through it there pass con
tinually men of all sects and denominations
—those wise and enlightened spirits who
know that they have not reached finality
and keep passing on through stage after
stage in search of the Absolute, the Ultimate,
the Everlasting. Whatever is external will
pass. It may serve as an organ, but it
belongs essentially to the order of accidents.
But the Holy Assembly will never pass.
The Holy Assembly where the Spirit of
Christ dwells must endure with Christ.
74 The Garden of Nuts
Where the Spirit of Christ is absent " there
is no church, but only skulls and stones."
It is one of the mysteries of Christian life
that there are not only separations between
outward societies, but often fierce and bitter
controversies, controversies in which men
fight against one another, who, if they only
knew, are at one in heart. It is one of the
chief alleviations of the sorrow of earthly
disunion that we may ever and anon come
to the surprised and joyful consciousness
that the brother who is bearing another
name and is fighting in another army is
in reality at one with us in the Mystical
Holy Church. Those who seem spectral
and far off, if not positively alien and hostile,
are discerned as the true brothers of our
hearts. Wherefore it is the wont of mystics
to claim this fellowship, and to exact
recognition " in all houses, temples, and
Doctrine of the Holy Assembly 75
tarrying places of the fraternity." In the
fellowship of the Holy Assembly is peace.
There we escape the boundless weariness
of the spirit of the world. There we may
win and wear that Rose which is the symbol
of the joy of the two Jerusalems. There
much that to those outside seems to matter
is as a whirl of dust to a wayfarer on a
high road. If our fellowship there is sure,
we can bear it, though we are cast out of
all historical and visible societies. We can
bear it if we are in communion with Christ
Himself, and if we may live and die in the
peace of Israel and the grace of the Holy
Assembly.
I conclude with the prayer of a great
mystic : " If there be in Thy Eternity before
Thee, some One Body, or kingdom of Thy
children, not a division, not a tribe, not a
party, but one that includes all, one that
j6 The Garden of Nuts
by principles and sympathies in common with
all, offers sacrifices of thanksgiving for all,
and communicates blessings to all, then I
pray, if it seem good in Thy sight, that
I may be associated with that Body.
" Or, if there be a people made up of the
innocent and the redeemed of all planets,
systems, and their heavens, who being neither
shut up in the limit of self-love, nor in the
individuality of any one heaven, but who,
heartily loving the whole outborn variety
of Thy Love and Fulness, desire to include
the utmost diversity of genius and character
in their unity, then I desire and pray in
submission to Thy Holy Will, that I may
be qualified for admission amongst that
central, all-related, all-embracing people.
" Or, if it be rather for Thy glory, and
for the good of all, that I be kept watching
daily at the gates, and waiting at the posts
Doctrine of the Holy Assembly 77
of the doors of the least and outermost
mansion of Thy Eternal House, then my
only prayer is, Father, Thy will be my
heaven. Amen."
THE GARDEN OF NUTS
79
THE GARDEN OF NUTS
7 went down into the garden of nuts to see the fruits
of the "valley ', and to see whether the vine flourished and
the pomegranates budded.
CANT. vi. n.
THE mystical interpreters expounded the
phrase " the garden of nuts " as pointing
to the prophecies, allegories, parables, and
poetry of the Old Testament. We use the
words as a convenient title for a brief series
of articles on what we believe to be an
old, true, precious, arid divinely sanctioned
method of interpretation. It is not our
object to revive the purely mystical and
allegorical reading of the Bible. To this
it has been justly objected that the history
is made a dead history, useless in teaching
81 6
82 The Garden of Nuts
faith. Whatever disparages or sets aside
the historical record of redemption, what
ever turns the Bible into a set of fantastic
puzzles, dishonours it, and makes it of none
effect. Nevertheless we are certain that the
Church of Christ is in danger of losing the
key to the wonderful and mysterious world
of Scripture. The references to the Bible
in sermons, so far as we hear and read
them, are surprisingly small. Yet nothing
is more sure than that the Church can, as
a whole, have no commentary on Scripture
but Scripture itself. The illustration of the
New Testament by the Old, of the Old
Testament by the New, is the nourishment
of faithful souls. In this respect the preach
ing of the present day has fallen far below
the level of the past. We do not exclude
criticism, for by the symbolical definition
of all Protestant Churches that the inter-
The Garden of Nuts 83
prctation of Scripture must be drawn from
Scripture itself, it is meant that the inter
pretation must derive from the genius of
the original languages, the clue consideration
of the circumstances, the comparison of like
and unlike passages.
The work of the critics, so far as it is
sound, must be good. They can do nothing
against the truth, but for the truth. So long
as they are engaged in mere processes of
destruction and dissection, there can be
nothing but trial, but the trial patiently and
bravely borne will in the end be for the
confirmation of faith. Perhaps our blindness,
our laziness, need to be punished so. It was
expedient, doubtless, that the written word,
like the Living Word, should be wounded
for our transgressions, and bruised for our
iniquities. But at present for many there
has been no true resurrection of the Bible,
84 The Garden of Nuts
and they are bewildered. Vast tracts of
Scripture, and especially of the Old Testa
ment, which were luminous and very com
fortable to our fathers, are bare desert to
the younger generation of preachers. Criti
cism has its work to do, and it serves us
especially in demonstrating that the religion
of the Bible is supernatural. There must
also come great good from understanding
the historical position of the first hearers,
and this especially in the study of the
Prophets. Believing critics have recovered
from the Prophets certain deep ideas which
will sink into the consciousness of the Church
at last, and bring forth much fruit. The
true preacher, however, is, like the Word of
God itself, independent of criticism. Some
men of genius are able to expound the
historical circumstances under which they
think a prophecy was delivered, and in the
The Garden of Nuts 85
explanation to feed the springs of life, but
we doubt whether this kind of teaching will
ever come to much. The preaching that for
real effect should be delivered with a map
behind the preacher, is necessarily of no use.
The audience does not understand, becomes
impatient and irritated, or understands just
as the sermon ends, and fails to profit by
the lesson. The great passages in the Word
of God are timeless. Take the unspeakably
tender and gracious words, " The Lord hath
called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved
in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou
wast refused, saith thy God. For a small
moment have I forsaken thee ; but with
great mercies will I gather thee. In a little
wrath I hid My face from thee for a
moment ; but with everlasting kindness will
I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy
Redeemer." The preacher may refer to the
86 The Garden of Nuts
circumstances, and explain the original
reference to the city as the bride, and the
Semitic ideas of marriage, and so forth, with
out confusing or vexing his hearers. But
these words, and many like them, are in
reality timeless. They were spoken before
the foundation of the world. Any fixing of
them down to a date and a set of circum
stances can do little or nothing to interpret
them. Mrs. Beecher Stowe, in her Old
Town Folks, tells us of a poor, ill-used,
forsaken, forgotten creature who lay trem
bling on the verge of life, and heard these
words spoken to her sinking and desolate
soul. They raised the burden from her
crushed spirit, for indeed they are enchanted
with a Divine and living power which strikes
the nerve of individual consciousness in
every lonely, agonising spirit, and are as
the voice of God to that individual. Surely
The Garden of Nuts 87
if God ever spoke to man He spoke in
these assurances that " rolled over her mind
like bright waves from the ocean of eternal
peace." But it must be understood that the
method of interpretation we seek to expound
moves in a region which criticism does not
touch. It is above and beyond criticism,
and when criticism has accomplished all its
work amid the complete unanimity of the
experts, it will be as much in place as ever.
We shall advance step by step, illustrating
by the way.
All we claim for the present is that even
as we illustrate the New Testament from
the highest literature, so, to put it at its
lowest, we may illustrate the New Testament
from the Old, and the Old from the New.
Every one will agree that both the Old
Testament and the New, whatever their
other relations are, remain as the supreme
The Garden of Nuts
triumphs of religious literature. We may
rightly claim that much more is true,
that there is a divinely intended harmony
between the Old Testament and the New,
that Christ our Lord is the end of
history, of law, and of prophecy. But
let us be content for the present with
the claim that as one book of genius may
be illustrated from another, so may the
Testaments. In Keble's Lectures on Poetry ',
one of the most suggestive of critical treatises,
he argues that poetry is as fully directed
by a superintending Providence, has its
regular sequences, and runs out its appointed
harmonies as much as history or philosophy
or the world itself. He illustrates this pro
position by many fine illustrations, tracing
the diviner doctrine through the classical
poets. We have space for but one or two
of his illustrations. He gives a new inter-
The Garden of Nuts 89
pretation of the famous Aeschylean chorus.
After quoting the lines on the omen of the
hare devoured by the pair of eagles, and
Diana's compassion for them, he proceeds :
The poet herein touches on a subject than
which few can be more gravely important, or
more full of holy religion and tender feeling, the
idea, namely, that there is a wonderful agreement
and connection uniting gods and men with the
race of birds, beasts, and other irrational animals ;
so that their very notes, gestures, and motions
should almost of necessity raise or depress the
minds of the superior beings. Accordingly it has
always been popularly believed that dogs and
horses divine, by a sort of presentiment, the
coming misfortunes of the family, nay, give
warning, as far as they can, by tokens sufficiently
intelligible.
If we use this illustration — and who would
shrink from it ? — why should we not illustrate
the text, " The whole creation groaneth and
go The Garden of Nuts
travaileth in pain together till now," from
the words of the prophet ?
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
And the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling,
And a little child shall lead them.
Keble argues that the better religion of the
Pagan world is the first indistinct vision
and obscure contemplation of truths after
wards declared, the impassioned expression
of an earnest gaze looking for the first dawn
of approaching light Thus it is not merely
poetically interesting, but gravely instructive.
What seemed an idol-hymn now breathes of Thee,
Tuned by faith's ear to some celestial melody.
We may recall in this connection Words
worth's lines upon what happened after the
gift of Christianity to men :
Arts which before had drawn a soft'ning grace
From shadowy fountains of the Infinite,
Communed with that Idea face to face.
The Garden of Nuts 91
If we may illustrate the New Testa
ment from classical literature and religion,
why not from Hebrew literature and
religion ?
There are three specific points which may
be illustrated afterwards.
(i) A chief distinction of the New Testa
ment is that it contains a detailed picture
of the Ideal Man. The character is followed
into the details of life. It is only when we
study the higher literature that we under
stand the real significance of the achievement.
There is no picture of the Ideal Man in
our literature, not even in Shakespeare. The
Ideal Man must be at once tender and
strong. Where the attempt is made at
portraiture, there is always some great de
fect. We have on the one hand helpless
ness, on the other hand imperiousness. Of
the great masculine characters in fiction, as
92 The Garden of Nuts
of the great characters in history, it may
be said :
Down the pale cheek long lines of shadow slope,
Which years and curious thought and suffering give.
It might have been added that the deepest
lines are those left by sin. Now the Old
Testament is continually picturing the Ideal.
Admit everything, if you please, that the
most advanced criticism can claim. Say,
if you like, that there is no direct reference to
Christ in the Old Testament. Even if that
be so it is incontestable that the Old
Testament abounds with delineations of the
Perfect and Only Fair, Whose face was more
marred than any man's, but had in it no
indentation of sin. By what principle can
we be forbidden to use the descriptions of
the Righteous One in the Old Testament
to illustrate the history of Christ, if we may
The Garden of Nuts 93
refer to those who remotely suggest Him
in literature ? Yet a young preacher in our
day will not shrink from speaking of Christ
as "one entire and perfect chrysolite," but
he will be afraid to say that Christ is "the
chief among ten thousand, and altogether
lovely."
(2) Our literature at its highest is made
up largely of tender, profound passages in the
intercourse between God and man, and in
the intercourse between human souls. When
feeling goes to the deepest it has a speech
of its own. Souls in agony or in ecstasy
understand one another. There is no falsity,
no exaggeration, no tawdriness in their
speech. The Old Testament is full of such
records, records of everlasting things, and shall
they not be accounted by the preacher as
jewels of the Kingdom of God ?
(3) Is it not permissible to read into
94 The Garden of Nuts
the words of the Old Testament the New
Testament meaning ? Let it be clearly
realised that the speaker was conscious only
of the Old Testament meaning, but let it
be realised also that his words are strangely
prepared to hold the glory of the New. The
intense utterances on death and life scattered
over the Old Testament have another
meaning to those who have heard the Lord
saying, " He that believeth on Me shall never
die!' who have seen death die in the immediate
presence of the Word of Life. The tem
porary deliverances on which Psalmists and
Prophets burst into song are typical and
illustrative of the true deliverance — the great
redemption which Christ accomplished when
He suffered without the gate of Jerusalem.
We propose to illustrate these points by
some detailed expositions in the Old
Testament.
THE FACE OF DEATH IN THE
SUN OF LIFE
( PSALM cxviii)
THE FACE OF DEATH IN THE
SUN OF LIFE
(PSALM cxviil)
/ shall not die, but live.
Ver. 17.
ACCORDING to the latest criticism, the
1 1 8th 'Psalm is a ^thanksgiving offered on
thej return of the Jewish army from a
victorious campaign, Israel being the speaker,
at least in various parts, and the text being
here and there unintelligible and corrupt.
However this may be, the words signalise
a great deliverance. That deliverance seems
to be a prolongation of life won from a
well-nigh desperate sickness. The New
97 7
98 The Garden of Nuts
Covenant tells us of a greater deliverance
than that, and the words of the psalm fit
that true deliverance well, the deliverance
from death to the life and triumph beyond
death — Christ's victory and transfiguration.
The mediaeval Church ordained that when
the other prayers at a deathbed had been
said, if the soul was yet waiting, the n8th
Psalm should be read. One of the martyrs
sang this psalm on the scaffold. It is
supposed that Jesus sang it as His hymn
when He rose from the table to go to the
Garden of Gethsemane. At least we know
that He stood by the right hand of God
and hearkened as one of His martyrs
sang it.
We propose to read some of its verses
in the light which Christ has thrown over
the mysteries of pain and grief and death.
Ver. 1 5. The voice of rejoicing and salva-
Face of Death in the Sun of Life 99
tion is in the tabernacles of the righteous ; the
right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.
Ver. 1 6. The right hand of the Lord is
exalted ; the right hand of the Lord doeth
valiantly.
The picture is that of a home under
the shadow of death. It does not matter
whether the home is high or low. We
know what nature tells us about death, its
advancing horror, the details so sordid, so
unforgettable, so charged with one terrible
meaning. We know the rough incredible
suddenness with which death comes on,
whatever the preparation may have been.
As the pale grey shadow creeps over the
patient face, the watchers think of the
precipice before them, and the long and
dreary moorland that spreads beneath it.
Their hearts are seething and rending, burst
and torn in the struggle. What can Christ
ioo The Garden of Nuts
do for His believers at this time of sharpest
trial ? Is His arm shortened that it cannot
save ? No, for oftentimes the Eternal Love
takes voice through the fragile body and
the fading breath. The victory of faith
over sense, of the spirit over the flesh, is
realised. A strange peace descends, a peace
through which promises and cheer pulse in,
though every nerve is conscious of pain,
and must thrill with that consciousness for
many days and nights. Though it seems
for the time as if the whole story of life,
embroider and adorn it as we may, is love,
loss, and grief, yet at the deathbed there
is oftentimes a " wind-warm " space of love,
during which the soul knows that things
are not what they seem, and that though
bond after bond is apparently being broken,
the ties of the everlasting union are tested
and hold. Words of love spring up from
Face of Death in the Sun of Life 101
the deep and secret wells of the spirit
Christ is made known to His people, and
they confess that His right hand, through
which the great nails went, doeth valiantly,
and is exalted in the waste and wreck of
death. Precious in the Lord's sight is the
death of His saints, and He is there to
succour and to save the soul He bought
with His blood.
Ver. 17. I shall not die, but live, and
declare the works of the Lord.
This is the voice of the dying. The
dying at least can sing this psalm of deliver
ance. The voice of rejoicing and salvation
is heard from them. They will not die.
They are about to live. They go to the
land of the living, the country that was
purchased by the Cross and the Sepulchre.
Spiritual writers have told us about the joy
experienced by certain believers in the
102 The Garden of Nuts
near approach of death, of the joy that
rises to ecstasy amid the fires of pain.
And still as we swept through storm and night
My heart beat lighter and more light.
A novelist of the day has told us how
a poor girl died in a little white-washed,
ruined cottage, where help was impossible,
where life was blank, blind, and dull as the
brown clay in the sodden November fields.
But the Light of the World had shone into
the dreary room. The care of father, mother,
and sister was perfect in its tenderness and
self-forgetful ness, but a mightier love warmed
the air. The sufferer lay on a stump bed
stead, and to protect her from the draughts,
an old piece of carpet had been nailed on
a kind of rough frame, and placed between
her and the door. When she saw her friend
a smile came over her face like the sunshine,
and she asked that the last three chapters
Face ot Death in the Sun of Life 103
of St. Matthew should be read. She heard
the story of the conflict, and when she came
to the resurrection, she felt that this was
the truth of death. So it was. She died,
and lay with her pale face unutterably
peaceful and serious, bound up with a white
neckerchief. Her body was laid in the
grave of the Meeting House among her
kindred, and a little mound was raised over
her. Her father tended it while he lived,
but he died, and her mother had to go into
the workhouse, and her grave became like
all the others — scarcely distinguishable in
the tall rank herbage. But she did not die
The soul of the poor servant girl had passed
away — only a servant girl, and yet there
was something in that soul greater and
higher than the sun whose rays poured
through the window. What had become of
her?
104 The Garden of Nuts
Ver. 19. Open to me the gates of righteous
ness : I will go into them, and I will praise
the Lord:
Ver. 20. This gate of the Lord, into which
the righteous shall enter.
Earth returns to earth, ashes to ashes, dust
to dust, forgotten, it may be, by all but
Christ. But the soul has sped on. For the
spirit, the everlasting doors have rolled back
upon their hinges. " Open to me the gates
of righteousness " — that is the claim of those
who have cleansed their robes, and therefore
have a right to the tree of life. It is uttered
with a holy boldness. " This gate of the
Lord, into which the righteous shall enter."
We may call the gate what we will. It may
be called the gate of death, if we remember
that it is the gate of the Lord, and that
by that gate the Righteous Himself entered.
There is a Mahomedan legend that the
Face of Death in the Sun of Life 105
bridge from this world to the next hangs
over an abyss of fire, that it is so long and
so narrow that none can hope to pass it.
But for the faithful there is an angel on
this side and on that, and they hold the
soul up between them till they enter into
Paradise. It is in Christ's company that the
soul valiantly enters the Paradise which He
regained, righteous in His righteousness,
strong in His strength.
Ver. 21. I will praise Tltee: for Thou
hast heard me, and art become my salvation.
Ver. 22. The stone ^vIlicJl the builders
refused is become the head stone of tJic
corner.
Ver. 23. This is the Lords doing : it is
marvellous in our eyes.
The threshold has been crossed, the soul
that has entered into the city is beholding
the Wonder of its wonders. The Stone
io6 The Garden of Nuts
which the builders refused is become the
Head Stone of the corner. " I will praise
Thee, for Thou hast heard me, and art
become my salvation." The spirit catches
at broken reeds no more. It sees the lilies
that flower above them. It lets the world
go and takes love. It sees Christ where
Christ should stand, the Head Stone of the
corner.
Then did the Form expand, expand,
I knew Him through the dread disguise
As the whole God. Then His eyes
Embraced me.
Ver. 24. This is the day which the Lord
Jiath made : we will rejoice and be glad in it.
When earth breaks up and heaven expands —
How will the change strike you and me
In the House not made with hands?
We shall see Christ and His Sabbath. He
said in the days of His flesh, " I will give
Face of Death in the Sun of Life 107
you rest," and He kept His word amidst the
tumults of time. We had all the rest from
Him that we would receive. Now there
is for us the unveiled Christ, and the hushed
and holy Sabbath-keeping that remaineth
for the people of God, when the tabernacles
of faith and hope fall amid the music of
eternity, and the temple of love is entered,
and all our business is the restful work of
the Eternal Kingdom. This is what comes
after the storm, the agony, the shaking, the
bewilderment of death. Further we dare not
penetrate. Here let the curtain drop.
CHRIST IN THE FIRST PSALM
109
CHRIST IN THE FIRST PSALM
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of 'water ;
that bringeth forth his fruit in his season, his leaf also shall
not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
PSALM i. 3.
WE have argued that every delineation of
the righteous is in the end a picture of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and of Him alone. God
has somewhat against all His saints, against
their own righteousness. None of them is
righteous completely except in the righteous
ness of the Redeemer. The application of
this principle gives a new life and power and
message to the book of the Psalms. We
take for an example the first Psalm. It
is true in its integrity of one soul at least,
and of none but one. Multitudes through
Ha The Garden of Nuts
grace have come near it. It blessedly recalls
them, but for its full meaning we must look
at the flame that burns behind the porcelain
sheath, and see Jesus and Jesus only.
(i) In Christ there was no scorn, no
contempt, no insolence, no taunting. One
poet speaks of
Those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never can despise.
And another has written :
For He's not a man that He should judge by the
seeing of His eyes,
He's not the son of man that He should anyone
despise ;
He's God Himself, and far too kind for that, and far
too wise.
He did not despise our world. This earth
of ours is the Valley of the Humiliation
of the Son of God. He did not despise our
nature, for He took it on Himself, and has
Christ in the First Psalm 1 1 3
carried it to the Eternal Throne. He did
not despise the meanest of His creatures.
Aristotle's " magnanimous man " used irony
with the common herd. Christ cared for
the individual. He never saw men as in
a herd. In His days at Nazareth He bathed
in the fountain of youth, and was wise in
the lore hid from a world grown old. Did
a golden dawn entrance sea and shore for
Him in that small and homely world — a
world of few ideas and little knowledge ?
Doubtless He did not miss the morning
o
glory. But He was never deceived, and
in every step of His pilgrimage till He
ascended the high and hard bed where His
work was accomplished, He was still the
same, full of grace and truth. To Him
the single life was of infinite pathos and
importance. The mystery and immensity
of the universe did not perplex Him. He
8
1 1 4 The Garden of Nuts
had come from Sion. Nor did He despair
of any human soul. To despair of a soul,
however sunken, is to scorn that soul, but
the seat of the scorner was not for Him.
He drew near to the fallen, made Himself
familiar with their misery, understood all
their wild, weary wish for the mercy of the
grave, saw how they were ground down
without help or horizon, and declared to
them a gospel of boundless hope. He
suffered them to lay their abased heads at
His Feet that He might lift them up for
ever. This was more than justice. True,
He was dyed to the depths in justice, but
He was full of pity, full of reverence, full
of love. This was the attitude of the
Redeemer towards our lost humanity, and
this was the attitude which befitted the
world's " Expectancy and Rose." He came
that the lost and erring might return and
Christ in the First Psalm 1 1 5
know the great warmth of the Divine
welcome.
(2) His life was nourished on the law.
His delight was in the law of the Lord,
and in His law did He meditate day and
night. This is the secret of peace and
labour for all saints. In the law is the
knowledge that does not pass away. The
work of the intellect searching for the truth
is devoted to the transient, and attains to
forms of thought and conceptions of truth
which are more or less perishable in their
very nature. It is when we know the Divine
law and revelation that peace comes to us.
Then we are not confused. \Ve know our
way and our work. It is when we love the
law, when we delight in it with the pure
and noble joy which exempts from constraint
and rises from the love of the law-giver,
that we are able to send the current of a
1 1 6 The Garden of Nuts
high spiritual feeling through the cares and
toils of our days. It is then that we realise
the eagerness of pursuit, the impossibility
of sloth, the inventiveness and hopefulness
of gladsome work. The stimulations of
heaven rise up within us like a well of life,
and the most trivial round of duty ceases
to be commonplace and monotonous. It
has lying upon it the glory of knowledge
and of love. It is so in this manner that
we can put from us all that hinders, and
use every atom of strength in the doing of
God's will. No great and victorious Chris
tian life has been lived apart from the loving
and constant study of the Bible, and it is
only as we study it and obey it that our
days draw after the heavenly tune.
But who of the saints delighted in the law
of the Lord as did the Saint of Saints ? It
was of Him alone that it could be said
Christ in the First Psalm 117
that He was utterly obedient. Moment by
moment, day and night, His soul stood by
its arms. He slept, but his heart wakened.
He looked into the Old Testament and saw
His own image as the stars might see theirs
in a glassy lake. We know how His life
was controlled at His moment of crisis and
agony by the law of the Lord, by the
Scriptures which He came to fulfil. That
night in which He was betrayed He refused
to speak the summons to His angel legions.
If He had spoken it the Scripture would
have been broken, and that could never be.
It was that law which He meditated in the
miraculous darkness when, that the Scriptures
might be fulfilled, He said, " I thirst." His
was not the high fervour that lets itself
go soon and easily. His was the love that
holds fast by the reality of the better
desire.
1 1 8 The Garden of Nuts
(3) This life, the life of the righteous, was
beautiful and fruitful. " He shall be like a
tree planted by the rivers of water, that
bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; his
leaf also shall not wither ; and whatsoever
he doeth shall prosper." He was planted by
the river of water, this Tree of God's right-
hand planting, this green Tree on which
men did such things, this Tree which was
hewn for our redemption, this Tree which
grows in the midst of the paradise of God.
By the rivers of water, by the eternal springs,
He lived that life of true peace, which is not
fugitive but everlasting — that life of true
peace which is not eager to catch the
happiness of every moment as it flies, which
does not fear to touch the radiance lest it
fade away, which is undisturbed by the sense
of transitoriness and hazard. The tree was
planted by the rivers of water, and brought
Christ in the First Psalm 1 1 9
forth its fruit in its season ; its leaf did not
wither, and it prospered even on Calvary,
where He dropped His Blood of love. His
was a life of fruit. Every righteous life must
end in fruit. The greenness and the beauty
are but a form of promise. The inexorable
condition on which life is given is that it
should reach forward to fruit-bearing. He
bore His fruit — in due season God fixed, and
He still fixes, the season. The long tarrying
in Nazareth, the brief ministry, the early and
cruel death, the short sleep in the grave — all
of them were timed and planned by the
Eternal Wisdom and Love. We are im
patient many times that the fruit does not
come quicker. We sigh for the promised
hour of His return. He will bring forth
fruit in due season. He will return when
the Father brings Him. But, as one said,
" God loveth adverbs. It mattereth less to
ilo The Garden of Nuts
Him that the thing should be good than that
it be well," and Jesus Himself testified, " My
time is not yet come, but your time is always
ready." Through all His earthly life we
discern a calmness and an order and a
gentle taking up of events. How should
it be other in His heavenly life with
God?
But the leaf does not wither. The beauty
is there with the fruit. The loveliness that
transcends all that is fair in morality, that
is His besides, and will be His for ever. His
years are to be filled from end to end with
the colours of the morning.
THE OPENED SCRIPTURES AND
THE BURNING HEART
121
THE OPENED SCRIPTURES AND
THE BURNING HEART
Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with
us by the way, and while He. opened to us the scriptures ?
LUKE xxiv. 32.
THE disciples whom Christ joined on their
way to Emmaus did not know Him, neither
did they know the Bible. They were walking
forlorn and bewildered from the Jerusalem
under the curse, the Jerusalem where their
Prophet had been slain. Walking in darkness,
and having no light, they little dreamed
of what had befallen them when the Stranger
spoke. Sometimes the heart sinks so low
that we imagine it will never stir and waken
any more. We are almost glad that it is
123
124 The Garden of Nuts
so, almost glad to think that the power of
feeling has been dulled by hard experiences,
and that disappointment, failure, bereavement
will never be to us again what they were
once. But we know not what is before us,
we know not when we may live again.
As for them, the Shepherd they were dis
trusting sought out His sheep to deliver
them in all places where they had been
scattered in the cloudy and dark day. But
they did not recognise Him at first. He
had laid aside the grave clothes dipped in
blood, and had put on the raiment of im
mortality. Further, their eyes were holden,
and looked earthward, and He seemed no
more to them than a man among men.
Coming as Moses came, veiled from the
mountain, so Christ coming from the grave
wore a veiled face. But as He went on
speaking to them, beginning at Moses and
Opened Scriptures, Burning Heart 1 25
all the prophets, He expounded to them the
things concerning Himself. Trouble and
travail and the setting sun were forgotten,
and the cold hearts burned as they were
wrapped in the flames of Scripture.
If we walk with thoughts and words of
Christ, He will join us in our journey.
He will open our ears and seal our instruction.
It is His manner to join those who walk.
It is His manner not to give knowledge to
His disciples that they may walk, but to
give it as they walk. When Christ reads
His word with us the letters are legible only
to those who run. In His company,
travelling by His side, we know what it
is to live by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God.
The veiled Christ and the veiled Scripture
— these go together. Over the Incarnate
Word and the Written Word alike there
i a6 The Garden of Nuts
is a veil. When Moses descended from his
converse with God, he put a veil on his
face. When Christ appeared among men
He was discernible only to the eye of faith.
Even so it is with the Scripture. A veil
lies on the Old Testament, and a veil on
the Hope of Israel. In each the human
element is recognised, but the Divine is
dim. The incarnate Word was born of a
woman. He wore the body of our humilia
tion. There is no reason to think that His
was a more than human loveliness. Indeed,
the Church, founding on intimations in
prophecy, has thought otherwise, and has
applied to Him in the days of His flesh
the ancient word, " He hath no form or
comeliness, and when we shall see Him there
is no beauty that we should desire Him."
If we will but think of it we shall see that
there must have been that in His earthly
Opened Scriptures, Burning Heart 1 27
condition of which we do not care to speak,
that which enforces upon us the fulness of
His surrender, the reality of His humiliation.
He whom the heaven of heavens cannot
contain was bound in swaddling-clothes. He
grew in wisdom and in stature. The Tree
which fills earth and heaven was once as a
grain of mustard seed. Though now He sets
at nought the grave-clothes of space and
time, yet once He submitted Himself to all
the bonds of life, and measured His existence
by days and months and years. There was
nothing, we repeat, in the flesh of Christ
whereby the unilluminated eye could discern
His divinity. His judges, His murderers,
had their way with the human body. The
anatomist could have discovered nothing
more in it than was to be discovered in the
bodies of the thieves who were crucified with
Him. Even so the Written Word is found as
128 The Garden of Nuts
a Book among books. Like the Incarnate
Word, it shares the lowliness, the infirmity,
the limitation of time. Its weaknesses may
be discerned easily enough. The critic may
have his way with it. He may dissect it
as he would dissect any other book. He
may judge it and wound it, and fancy he
has put it to death. Yet even as the In
carnate Word was the chosen tabernacle
of eternal Truth, even so it is with the
Written Word. But just as the flesh of
the Incarnate Word was to be glorified, so
it is with the spirit of the Written Word.
Neither the Incarnate Word nor the Written
Word can perish, for in both of them is
Divinity, and it is only when we discern
the Divinity that we understand them at all.
So when the Incarnate Word expounded
the WTritten Word to the disheartened
pilgrims, they gradually came to know both
Opened Scriptures, Burning Heart 1 29
it and Him. Knowing it they knew Him.
They were not wholly ignorant. The rays
of the glory had pierced the veil. Not till
the first advent was the Old Testament to
be fully understood, nor till the second
Advent will the New Testament be fully
understood. But we repeat that they were
not quite ignorant. Even amid the darkness
Love fulfilled the Law, and Hope pondered
the Prophets, and Faith rested and prayed
in the Psalms. But when Christ appeared,
when hearts turned to Him, the Old Testa
ment was explained. The veil fell from the
heart of Israel. The Apostle said, Even
unto this day when Moses is read, the veil
is upon their heart. Nevertheless, when it
shall turn to the Lord the veil shall be
taken away. The heart of the disciples was
turned towards Christ, and as they turned,
the veil that covered Himself and His
9
130 The Garden of Nuts
Scriptures disappeared. It is Christ alone
who can interpret the Scriptures. It is He
only who possesses the key to the Scriptures,
and the key to human souls. It was under
His teaching that the disciples discerned
His way and His kingdom in the Old
Testament. No man can say that Jesus
is Lord but by the Holy Ghost, neither can
any man, save by the Holy Ghost, say that
the Scripture is the Word of God. Human
judgment may discern a rare loveliness in
the character of Christ, and the excellency
of Scripture in many of its parts appeals to
a critical judgment. But the Divinity is other-
wise discerned. The disciples at Emmaus
knew before all was done that it was the
Lion of the tribe of Judah who had pre
vailed to open the book.
WHAT ARE THESE WOUNDS IN
THINE HANDS?"
"WHAT ARE THESE WOUNDS IN
THINE HANDS?"
And one shall say ttnto him, What are these wounds
in thine hands ? Then he shall answer, Those with which
I was wounded in the house of my friends.
ZECH. xiii. 6.
THERE is nothing in the world so arresting
as pain. Its outward tokens challenge a
question and provoke an answer. The deep
wounds of the soul we can only tell, as a
rule, by the marks they leave on the body.
Every human being is a secret to all the
rest unless for outward inescapable mani
festations. We are all islanded. Each
harbours that which he never can bear to
talk of. There is a flower that will not
133
'34
The Garden of Nuts
live save in the most silent and secret spaces
of the heart. Yet the inward has a more
or less imperfect expression in the outward.
What we see indicates what we cannot see
and even explains it. The anguished eyes
into which we look drive a path of light
into the questioning soul. Time leaves its
mark, or rather, perhaps we should say,
the chisellings and scourgings that have
befallen us in time leave theirs. " He was
not exactly old, he said to himself the
next morning as he beheld his face in the
glass. And he looked considerably younger
than he was. But there was history in his
face — distinct chapters of it ; his brow was
not that blank page it once had been. He
knew the origin of that line in his forehead ;
it had been traced in the course of a month
or two by past troubles. He remembered
the coming of this pale, wiry hair ; it had
"What are these Wounds?" 135
been brought by the illness in Rome when
he had wished each night that he might
never wake again. This wrinkled corner,
that drawn bit of skin, they had resulted
from those months of despondency when
all seemed going against his art, his strength,
his happiness."
When life is young and grace is fresh,
it seems as if no record were kept of the
years. But as by degrees we are tried by
unkindness, hurt by injustice, blasted by
bereavement, we come to know that our
life from the beginning is a dying life,
and the signs and prophecies of death make
themselves more and more visible. The
natural swim is against us. Then especially
we are awakened by the outward gravings
of sorrow. We seek to pierce the secret.
What are these wounds in thy hands ?
Who inflicted them ? Why did they come ?
136 The Garden of Nuts
We know that the full answer would reveal
life's last mystery. And at last we come to
understand that life which to the eye of
the flesh is always growing downward, may
to the eye of the spirit be as steadily
growing upward. As for the lives that
are really Christian, it is in pain that they
reach their truest and their best.
The appeal of the Cross is the command
ing appeal of meek and mute suffering.
" Oh, all ye that pass by, behold and see
whether there is any sorrow like unto My
sorrow." Because a sorrow is supreme, it
rivets and fixes the gaze. The sorrow of
the Cross is silent, but, as one of the
Fathers said, the silence is a clamorous
silence, detaining us, refusing to let us go
till we have listened. In the lower phases
of human passion we have felt the same
inexplicable grasp. Sometimes on the street
"What are these Wounds?" 137
we have been compelled to pause at the
sight of some wrecked figure now part of
the driftwood of humanity. What is the
story of that ruined beauty which is cursing
some nameless transgressor? The question
strikes us nearer and with a heavy blow
when it concerns our own. The death of
parents may be a revelation to their children.
They never really saw them till they were
lying cold. Then they knew something of
the long, unspoken, miserable anxieties that
channelled the dead faces in furrows for
tears. Then they knew why the back was
so bent. It was for them. " Fighting our
battles thou wert so marred." The hour of
recognition is the hour of a new birth. So
Jesus on His Cross is the Gospel, in His
awful anguish, in His meek submission, re
viled and reviling not again. To behold
Him so is the beginning of faith. Can we
138 The Garden of Nuts
read the parable ? What does it all mean ?
He is a sufferer, that we know. He is an
innocent sufferer, that also we know. Why
did He suffer ? Slowly the answer comes —
He died for me, and to know that is to
know all. The Gospel is no dogma ; the
Gospel is Jesus Christ set forth crucified
between the thieves. There is a theology
of the Atonement, but it can never be taught
to profit until the first step is taken, the
beholding of the Crucified Redeemer. Be
holding Him and taking the vision home as
the revelation of His sacrifice for the guilty,
the heart gives liberty to the teacher who
would guide it further. It says, being
broken, " Show me the mystery of His
Cross."
When our Lord appeared to His disciples
after the Resurrection, He showed them His
hands and His side. By this time He was
"What are these Wounds?" 139
on the other side of death. From the
Resurrection to the Ascension was a short
step compared to that between Good Friday
and Easter. That step had been taken,
and He was revealed as the Conqueror. He
had slain the enmity between God and His
sinning brethren. That enmity was now a
vanquished and broken thing. Henceforth
the note of power — the power of His Resur
rection — rings loudly through the New
Testament. The strength that God set at
work in Christ when He raised Him from
the dead is the theme of believers from now
to the end of time. But that strength was
the power of victorious and accepted sorrow.
He carried through the grave the strong
and full and everlasting indications of His
sorrow. His wounds were no more burning,
but their record remained, and will remain,
in the scars that are the seal of victory.
140 The Garden of Nuts
He came through the grave with the life
whole in Him. But what a life was that !
Of all the lives that had ever appeared in
the world, this was the life that most deserved
to be cherished, completed, followed, wor
shipped. It was the life rejected, purified,
persecuted, and slain. He had plucked the
victory out of the depth of ignominy and
abandonment. It is not enough to say that
after the Cross, the suffering, the blood, the
patience, there came the life and power. The
life and power were there through all the
endurance, though they blazed forth in their
glory at the Resurrection. Long after, St.
Paul spoke of having in himself the answer
of death. That is, when he was asked, How
is all this going to end? he could only say
out of his extreme need, " In death." But
Jesus had always within Him the answer
of life, as well as the answer of death. He
"What are these Wounds?" 141
refused to despair, refused to be wearied and
daunted, even when men most vehemently
rejected Him. He was always dying through
His years in Palestine, but He was always
being raised again. And so His Apostle
bore about in the body the dying of the
Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might
be seen clear in the same. So Good Friday
and Easter are not so far apart as they seem.
He carried Good Friday into Easter, and
there was Easter in Good Friday. He showed
them His hands and His side. It was as
much as to say to them, " In this new
land, where all is peace and triumph, you
are safe with Me. These wounds are foun
tains of grace, the titles of My glory, and
the seals of My power to save. For you
the rains will descend a little while, and the
winds beat, but I have not forgotten the
storm that burst on Me."
142 The Garden of Nuts
In heaven, where He and His redeemed
are together, and at rest for ever, He appears
to them as a Lamb as it had been slain.
This is what they see in the depths of the
eternal sanctities, when the second veil is
withdrawn, and they behold the true Ark
of the New Testament, and the Cherubim,
and the Mercy Seat. They, His people,
have the marks of wounds. They have come
up out of the great tribulation of earthly
life. The angels have never known a wound,
but He is a Lamb as it had been slain. No
thing has dishonoured Him or shamed Him.
It is not of the suffering that impoverishes,
but of the suffering that enriches that He
bears the traces. It is the power and the
witness of victorious arid availing sorrow
that are His through the eternal years. He
has offered up one sacrifice for sins for ever,
and the memory of that sacrifice is green,
"What are these Wounds?" 143
and its tokens are never out of the eyes of
those it has brought home to God. What
" seeming of slaying " that was we can never
tell here, but we know that it awakens and
reawakens the New Song, that it seals the
assurance that in Him all the promises of
God are Yea.
Wherefore let us not live among the tombs ;
let us be caught up to meet the Lord in the
air.
"THEY CAME UNTO THE IRON
GATE "
145 10
"THEY CAME UNTO THE IRON
GATE "
They came unto the iron gate that leadcth unto the
city ; which opened to them of his own accord.
ACTS xii. 10.
THE story of the deliverance of St. Peter
from his prison has naturally been very
precious to the mystics. One of them, a
certain monk, who had given his whole life
to the redemption of captives, could never
read the words, " They came unto the iron
gate that leadeth unto the city ; which opened
to them of his own accord," without bursting
into tears. He came upon it at length on
Lammas Day, when the iron door was
mentioned in the history of that Feast, and
147
148 The Garden of Nuts
of a sudden passed through the gate of death
and found himself delivered in the City.
We may use the words as significant of the
general deliverance of believers and of the
particular deliverance which they come to
need and receive.
Man's extremity is God's opportunity. St.
Peter had been delivered by Herod to four
quaternions of soldiers. The king meant after
Easter to kill him, as he had killed James
the brother of John. No precaution had
been omitted ; in fact, there was almost an
extravagance of precaution. Peter was sleep
ing between two soldiers bound with two
chains, and the keepers before the door kept
the prison, and between him and liberty there
were the first and the second ward, and the
iron gate. Peter had given over praying,
and was sleeping between two soldiers, as
Christ slept at last on the hard bed of the
" They came unto the Iron Gate " 149
Cross between two thieves. He was sleeping
not the guilty sleep of Gethsemane, but the
innocent sleep of trust. What did he think
of his prospect ? Did he expect to die the
death of James, and feel that this death in
a manner made his own death more easy?
Did he sleep because he knew that what
was before him on the next day would call
forth all his strength? Or did he perchance
remember that our Lord had said to him,
" Thou shalt be old," and account himself im
mortal till that word was fulfilled ? What
we know is that he was sleeping, and that
perhaps he was the only Christian in the
city asleep that night. He was persuaded—
it was no random thought — that Christ would
keep that which he had committed unto
Him.
" And behold, the angel of the Lord came
upon him, and a light shined in the prison ;
150 The Garden of Nuts
and he smote Peter on the side, and raised
him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his
chains fell off from his hands." Was this
the great angel of the Resurrection whose
countenance shone as the sun over the Re
deemer's grave ? No angel wakened Christ.
The life which He had folded up like a
vesture He took up again when the days
were fulfilled. As it is written, " I myself
will awake right early." So the Redeemer
roused Himself from the profounder trance.
But the Apostle was wakened, and the chains
fell from him, and he was commanded to
gird himself, and he obeyed. Gird thyself —
gird thyself once more— not yet has the time
come which the Master foretold when another
shall gird thee. Peter obeyed, and bound
on his sandals and cast his garment about
him, and followed the angel. It was all
so leisurely, so unfearing, and so complete.
" They came unto the Iron Gate " 151
They passed from the first and second ward
and came to the iron gate which led to
the city, and the iron gate opened to them
of his own accord, and they went out and
passed through one street, and forthwith
the angel departed from him, for his work
was done.
So great deliverances come to believers
when hope is almost dead, when the doors
are so many and so fast, and the enemies
so strong and so wakeful, that it seems as
if the way were quite closed. The days
when we have been rebuffed in every quarter
and know not what further we can do !
The time when it seems as if every effort
has been foiled and there is none other we
can make ! The day when we catch at the
last chance ! When we think of one more
succour that may be available, of one heart
left in the world that may yet pity — and
152 The Garden of Nuts
try — and fail. The day when no answer
comes to the last imploring appeal, or an
answer which is a cold and cruel refusal !
We are happy if in such an hour we can
still trust and wait patiently for the inter
position of God.
The deliverance came through prayer.
St. Peter had prayed doubtless before he
slept, but prayer was made without ceasing
of the Church unto God for him. This
was the prayer of extremity. James was
dead. It was the last night ; it was mid
night ; soon the sun would rise and bring
the day when Peter was to die. The Church
had no weapon against the army, the prison,
the mighty power of Herod, save the weapon
of all-prayer. But they used that weapon
and they prevailed. They went on with
their humble tears and pleadings, lamenting
perhaps that they could not do anything
" They came unto the Iron Gate " 153
besides, and hardly aware that they were
wielding the strongest force on earth. If
any believer be in prison he has an Advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous,
and they were pleading with the Advocate.
There seemed to be almost no hope. Peter
had given over praying, and they knew that
no man condemned to death had yet been
rescued by miracle. There was no promise
of such release. Peter might well have
died as James had died, and been numbered
with the messengers who were stoned and
the prophets who were slain. The last little
strip of blue sky was almost clouded over,
and yet they continued in the agony of their
desires. The hammer was lifted to fall upon
the bell, and yet they stood face to face
with the angel and refused to relax their
hold. They knocked till it was opened
to them.
154 The Garden of Nuts
The beseeching Church knew not of the
descending angel, but he was caused to fly
swiftly to their succour. What believer is
there who has not proved the mystery? —
Thou hast heard me from the horns of the
unicorns. When they were almost pinned
to the ground, when the breath of death
was upon their faces, they have been de
livered as by miracle. Face to face with
the Red Sea they have seen the waters part.
So men ought always to pray, and not to
faint. This is the true meaning and the
true defence of prayer ; indeed, the meaning
is the defence. The prayer that is an ex
periment is no more than a mockery. It
is impossible to pray if there is no hold
upon God, if there is not an inspired urgency
as of the Holy Ghost within us that will
have an answer. We cannot pray by
machinery or in mere words. We pray in
" They came unto the Iron Gate " 155
the true sense when the Holy Spirit pleads
within us. Then we cannot give over till
the answer comes.
They came to the iron gate. The words
express the particular deliverances of the
faithful. How often it happens that after
manifold experience of relief and emancipa
tion, when it seemed as if the way were
clear at last between us and the heavenly
Salem, we come to the iron gate. A new
difficulty intervenes, so formidable, so strange,
so intractable that it seems to turn past
experiences of grace into futility. After the
deliverance from the soldiers, after the falling
of the chains, after we have passed the
guards before the door, and the first and
the second ward, we come to the iron gate,
and feel that we are prisoners still, and that
our last state is worse than the first. It
looks as if we could never conquer it. It
156 The Garden of Nuts
blocks up all the path. We must go that
way to the city, and yet the obstacle is
irremediable. What then ? Then we must
say that God does not mock His people,
and that the grace of the past is a pledge
for the future. He who has delivered us
in six troubles will deliver us in seven. The
iron gate is not like an iron wall, and a
gate is meant to let us out as well as to let
us in. Christians cheat themselves sometimes
with the dream that at a certain stage in
their pilgrimage trial and conflict will cease.
They say, " We have fought our battles : let
the younger soldiers fight now." But the
Son of Consolation Himself has no other
doctrine than this, that we must through
much tribulation enter the kingdom of God.
If even Christ was troubled in His perfecting,
how much more must we be troubled ere
sanctification is complete ! We may be called
" They came unto the Iron Gate " 1 57
back to the front of the fight when we are
old and grey-headed and very glad of rest.
It is possible to know the Cross by faith,
but it must be known also in experience.
This knowledge, which is at first self-despair,
and then sometimes very nearly the despair
of God, is the judgment of the old nature
and the one token that we are on the royal
road. Not by visions and transports do we
come to the saving knowledge. Chains,
prisons, cords, soldiers, guards, wards inner
and outer have to be our experience, and
then if these are not enough, the iron gate.
But if only we follow the angel with the
lily who would lead us, the iron gate will
open of his own accord.
The iron gate may open on another world,
and even in the presence of death and
darkness the promise of God will be fulfilled.
It was well for James that he died. He
158 The Garden of Nuts
passed earlier to the Heart that opened for
him like a door of home. Though Peter
had wakened to his execution, still it would
have been well. When the believer has done
all and endured all and continued to the
end instant in prayer, the iron gate of death
will open to him of his own accord and he
will find himself in the city with Christ,
and know of a surety that the Lord hath
sent His angel and hath delivered him.
THE LIGHTING OF THE LAMPS
159
THE LIGHTING OF THE LAMPS
For we walk by faith, not by sight.
2 COR. v. 7.
IN the recollections of Princess Catherine
Radziwill, she tells us that she mentioned
one day to Cecil Rhodes a book called
The Martyrdom of Man, by Win wood
Reade. She added that it was uncanny,
and had caused her some sleepless nights.
Rhodes started. " I know the book," he
exclaimed. " It is a creepy book. I read
it the first year I was in Kimberley, fresh
from my father's parsonage, and you may
imagine the impression which it produced
upon me in such a place as a mining camp."
He stopped for a moment, then added in
161 II
1 62 The Garden of Nuts
a way his companion could never forget :
"That book has made me what I am."
Win wood Reade, we have been told, had
first designed to call his book The Duties
and Responsibilities of Creators. It is in its
most impressive part an arraignment of the
Divine justice. As such it has few books
that stand beside it in English literature.
But every student of French will remember
George Sand's powerful story Leilia. It is
the most memorable utterance we know of
wild doubt and a keen sense of the mystery
of things. Its genuine ardour both in feeling
and in expression carries the reader along,
and he feels sometimes that others have
been sorely tempted to utter themselves in
the same way. But for the most part,
happily, English writers have refrained from
calling God to the tiny bar of their pre
sumption. They take refuge in belief or
The Lighting of the Lamps 163
in silence, and they refuse to put on record
their half-way rebellion. They may come
to faith or they may arrive at thinking
that all thought is vanity, but even in
the latter case they refrain, and hold their
peace.
But even believers are often brought to
a stand by the mystery of God's Providence
in their own lives, and in the larger life
of the Church and of the world. Many
sorrows are strangely and swiftly ended
by the direct consolation of Eternal Love.
" I have felt," said an old Quaker two
hundred years ago, describing his experiences
of the Kingdom of God, " the healings drop
upon my soul from under His wings." For
other griefs there comes an explanation,
and the sufferers are able, in a measure
at least, to see the purpose of their ex
perience. But there are sorrows that remain
164 The Garden of Nuts
sorrows and mysteries also. They are not
cured, and they are not explained. The
deadening influence of time and the dis
tractions of busy life, and the entrance of
new friends, never quite erase them. Even
when the grief has begun to slumber, sights
and sounds will unaccountably bring back
the old pang and the vain, hungry question
ings of the time when the nights were even
longer than the days. The soul remains
unconsoled, untaught. It is no nearer a
solution now than then. Even if its
personal sorrows have been mastered and
silenced, it has suffered cruelly and perhaps
irretrievably for the causes it lived for. After
long years of labour and sacrifice spent in
bringing the triumph nearer, what was fought
for seems to lose ground, and the heart is
full of painful thoughts and vain regrets over
the discomfiture. The agony sometimes rises
The Lighting of the Lamps 165
to rebellion, as when Jeremiah tells God that
He had deceived him and curses the day of
his birth.
What are we to say to these things ? How
are we to bear ourselves in face of the un
solved and, as it seems, calamitous mysteries
of life ? It was said by one of old time,
"We walk by faith and not by sight,"
and this was true for the speaker and his
friends. Beyond the inward peace and
assurance bestowed by Christ, they had little
or nothing to point to in proof that God
was with them. In the outward life disaster
followed disaster, and defeat defeat. With
us after two thousand years of Christianity
it is not so. We have even in difficult lives
our visible encouragements and consolations.
The walk of the believer has been described
as a journey down a street by night. His
path is by a long row of lamps, and if they
1 66 The Garden of Nuts
are lighted the whole street is bright It
is bright not with the glory of the day, but
with light enough to go on by. There are
Christian lives so fortunate, so peaceful, that
they seem to have the light of the lamp at
least for every step of the path. But perhaps
there are very few of whom this can be said
in its completeness. For nearly all there are
lamps that refuse to be lighted, and will not
burn. There are experiences which refuse
to reveal themselves as sent by God. " With
one exception," says a preacher, " I have
lived to know that every time God has denied
my supplication He was right and I was
wrong ; that one exception waits ; my soul
thinks it will puzzle God to find an answer,
but we must go back on the past, and by
the lamp of the past we must try to throw
a light on the gloom of the future. With
one exception in my life God has never
The Lighting of the Lamps 167
given me pain without it having been sanctified
into a high pleasure, and sometimes He says
' Thinkest thou that I am not able to do
this ? ' And then in my present mood I
say, ' Lord, Thou art not able/ We have
frank interviews ; I will not take my hypo
crisy into the closet and shut the door upon
it, and talk to God in false accents ; I will
take my sorrow, misery, unbelief, and mo
mentary atheism, and lay it bare before the
Divine eyes, and the Divine love. He has
done wonders : His mercy endureth for ever.
I cannot say that now except by quotation ;
we must wait ; to-morrow brings its own dew
and its own dawn." Now it is true that as
time goes on it brings the explanation of much
that we thought inexplicable. We go back
humbly and light the lamp when the answer
comes, when we no more stumble over the
old dark difficulty. How often we have
1 68 The Garden of Nuts
repined and rebelled over that which we
now see illuminated, burning with God Him
self! But this is not a complete account
of almost any life, and for the larger part
of many it may utterly fail. What then ?
We cannot light the lamp of sight, but we
need not therefore have spots of our life dark
in irreligiousness. No, for we may always
have the unearthly light of faith ; that will
not fail us. With nothing but that many
have passed in great peace through a long
fight of affliction. One Comforter abides
with us for ever. The friends who gathered
round to console us with warm and eager
tenderness at the first moment of our disaster
have one by one to go away and leave us
with our shattered life. But He abides with
us for ever to build up the broken ruin,
and trusting Him we shall not walk in
darkness.
The Lighting of the Lamps 169
By faith we hold to the providence of God
even when we cannot trace it. In all things,
small and great, minute and magnificent,
there is a Divine appointment. Is there
never to be an end of any form of evil ?
How are we to explain the tremendous dis
array of events? Why are such things
permitted to happen ? There is no clue to
the maze, but by faith we understand that
God will disentangle the skein, that He is
the Ruler of our mortal life, and that some
how the turbulence and the chaos are under
law to Him. Birth and death and all that
happens between are of the Divine ordination.
We are to throw our wills and our forces
into hearty co-operation with His. We are
to fight for victory and to use the means
of healing when we suffer, but if we are
defeated, and if we are uncured, we must
still remain faithful till \ve hear the words,
170 The Garden of Nuts
" Thy warfare is accomplished." The sentinel
must remain on guard though the night may
seem as if it would never end. We are not
to be rebels and mutineers in this great
universe of God. If we are we shall suffer
doubly, for if we will not take up the cross,
the cross will take us up, and that is far
harder. We must endure, submit, acquiesce,
believe, and in the end we shall see and
understand and rejoice.
This might not have been possible if Christ
had not come and resisted unto blood,
striving against sin. Because He saved others,
Himself He could not save. God revealed
Himself in a man who was crucified on the
Cross. The secret of the universe is learned
on Calvary. All power in heaven and in
earth belongs to and is wielded by love. By
these things men live in the only true life.
They live by the Cross on which our hopes
The Lighting of the Lamps 171
are anchored, by the agony which delivers
us, by the pierced side which is the hiding-
place from the storm, by the head bowed
down in death, by the cup that could not
be put away. By these things men live the
inner life that waxes while the outer wanes.
By the weary nights, by the days of solitude,
by the gradual decay of the body, by the
sight failing for waiting upon God, by the
toils, by the defeats, by the frustrations, we
grow at last into that life which was lived
by Christ, the life of His martyrs and con
fessors, the life in which death is swallowed
up, and every carnal war is at an end.
Fearfulness and trembling may come upon
us, and a horrible dread overwhelm us, but
in the end we are more than conquerors.
Our struggle has not been wasted in a hope
less world any more than our Lord's was
wasted.
172 The Garden of Nuts
" Shall I then throw up my belief, cast
down my sword, take to believing in a devil
because God's ways are not quite clear, and
say there is no way everlasting because
that way is sometimes slippery, sometimes
a mere foot track, and often like the
way from Jericho to Jerusalem, beset with
thieves ? "
BY THE FIRE ON THE BEACH
173
BY THE FIRE ON THE BEACH
As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a
fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. . . .
festts then conieth, and taketh bread, and gtveth them, and
fish likewise.
JOHN xxi. 9, 13.
" WE men here on the shore of human
life, with just a little of its very border
appropriated, seem to be like Crusoe on
the beach of his unknown island." We are
told in the living story how Crusoe made
the best of things, set up his little tent, made
a fence so strong that neither man nor beast
could get into it or over it, and into this
fence or fortress carried all his worldly wealth.
As the days and years went on, he increased
his comforts. He went out every day to kill
175
176 The Garden of Nuts
anything fit for food. He kept a reckoning
of the days : he made tools and a table and
chair. He sowed above an acre of ground,
and he managed his fire so well as to make
it burn some pots. He even contrived to
construct a boat in which he ventured little
voyages, and the time came when he found
human company. But all the years he had
to guard himself so that no wild creature
should come in, and though sometimes with
his wealth about him he felt very secure,
the security was treacherous and disturbed.
He comprehended but a little of the land
and its mysterious and dangerous foes who
might come upon him at any moment.
Nevertheless he was for the most part
very thankful. He had the elements at
least of what the world can give. Worldly
wealth can bring us immunity from but a
few things of those that mar the life. It
By the Fire on the Beach 177
can fence us against cold and hunger and
thirst. It can give us luxuries as well as
necessities. Our house by the beach may
be not a hut but a palace, well lighted and
warmed. If we have reached it after storm
and disaster, the sense of peace may be
even ecstatic. Through what troubles many
pass even to a little quiet ! Joseph Conrad
has told us with unsurpassed force what
the sea may do. The captain may sail his
ship in a hundred happy voyages, and the
next time he may meet the storm, formidable
and swift like the sudden smashing of a
vial of wrath. He will know then what it
is to be smitten by the strong wind, that
disintegrating power which isolates attacks
like a personal enemy, and seeks to rout the
very spirit out of man. He will know for
the first time the sea as a floor of foaming
crests, on which he is tossed, flung, and rolled
12
178 The Garden of Nuts
upon great waters by a senseless and de
structive fury. Even when the air quietens
a little it is dense and unsafe. The storm
is not over. The last star struggles in the
colossal depth of blackness round the ship,
and goes out. The hurricane maddens the
seas. Well if the ship comes in worn and
encrusted and grey with salt, broken, torn,
and devastated by its journey from the far
end of the world. When the shore is won
at last there is ecstasy in the sense of relief.
There are things, says the captain, you
find nothing about in books.
So it is in human life. The beginnings
of victory after long and desperate struggle
are very sweet. To go on like Crusoe
quietly entrenching the position, steadily
winning on the land inch by inch, little by
little developing solaces and defences,
patiently amassing and fiercely cherishing
By the Fire on the Beach 179
treasure — this seems a good life for a time
after the cruel battle with the monstrous
forces of life and death. Such an existence
is exalted to its highest point by the comfort
of a presence. One beloved turns the earth
to Paradise. The companions are dear, not
for the great things they do for us or the
great words they say to us, but for the
mere sound of their voices and the mere
sight of their faces. What joy and peace
they bring ! This life by the fire on the
beach is a good life and happy. Would it
might never end ! But it does end. Neither
human contrivances nor human fellowships
can do for us more than a little. They
cannot fill the heart with peace. Indeed,
the loves of life, if this life is all, bring into
it such a sense of insecurity that sometimes
the heart ignobly questions whether it was
wise to love so well. Life is a continual
180 The Garden of Nuts
bereavement, arid the best treasures and the
best affections go down one by one into
the grave. Is that the end of them ? Are
we never to find them again ? Are we
always to be at the mercy of the scent of
a flower, or the sound of a bell, or a fading
picture ? True love, as St. Bernard says,
very deeply, gathers not strength from hope.
But for peace in love there must be hope
of a meeting beyond the sea. The storm
penetrates the defences, blows in from an
unknown region, strikes at the heart of life.
The evils that can be kept at bay by any
form of worldly position or triumph are not,
after all, the worst evils. And then the
house and the fire are by the beach. We
are within sight of the vast ocean we must
sail so soon. However highly and perfectly
the earthly existence may be organised, we
know that the buying and the selling, the
By the Fire on the Beach 181
planning and the building, the marrying and
the giving in marriage will shortly come to
an end. So that even when we are warmed
and filled we are restless and disturbed by
wants and doubts and fears. We need a
spot of peace beyond the black waste of the
gales and out of the swing of the sea.
We turn to the story of the disciples on
the beach with Christ. He spoke to them
from the shore, and out of the great deep
they brought the net full of fishes. Before
they had landed their fish, as soon as they
had disembarked on land, they saw a fire
of coals laid there and fish laid thereon,
and they saw bread also. By the fire was
the Master. They were by the fire on the
beach with Christ. That made all the
difference. That is the parable of the
spiritual life.
1 82 The Garden of Nuts
We need not dwell on the inexplicable
wonder of the story. Who made the fire
upon the shore ? Who prepared the meal,
and how did He prepare it ? Was He
already in the new kingdom which He has
made for those who love Him from before
the foundation of the world ? It does not
matter whether we can give answer, whether
we can fully comprehend the miracle upon
miracle, and the mystery upon mystery.
What concerns us is that Christ was there,
and His Presence changed everything. The
Prince of Life was slain, but He had risen
again from the dead. They were safe on
the beach, for behind the beach was the
great Christ, the Lord of all the Land, the
Saviour whom they trusted, the Saviour
who was able to the uttermost to fulfil
that trust. Herein is the secret of peace
and strength and happiness. It was gladness
By the Fire on the Beach 183
beyond all gladness to see the Lord near
them, though they knew not how He came
or how He stayed.
Faith does not bring to us more than
unfaith so far as things visible and tangible
are put into reckoning. But it gives us
peace, the peace that comes when the whole
nature rests on Christ, the peace which in
very truth passes all understanding, and
which is not an affair of reasoning, and
computation, and survey, and measure, but
a simple trusting in the name of the Lord,
a simple resting upon God. " I am with
you alway," He said, and He keeps His
word whoever may come or go. He does
not abolish the old foes, but He transfigures
them. The old world despised weakness,
and feared labour, and shrank from pain.
With Christ out of weakness we are made
strong, labour we find the pathway to the
1 84 The Garden of Nuts
blessed and everlasting rest, and we are
made perfect by the things which we suffer.
Cast down, persecuted, bereaved, we shall
often be, but never wholly overthrown, never
altogether broken, never quite failing. For
having Him with us we have His comfort
in the midst of tribulation, His peace in
the midst of war.
" You have not the strength to say ' He
is/ and you are afraid to say ' He is not.'
My poor boy, for fifty years have I not
suffered from the same pain and shall suffer
till I die. Do you imagine that I know
Him better than you— that I have discovered
what you have missed ? That is the bitter
pain that never ceases. Beside it other
tortures are as nothing. People think that
they suffer from hunger, from poverty, from
thirst : in reality they suffer only from the
thought that perhaps He has no existence."
By the Fire on the Beach 185
But we know that the Son of God is
come and hath given us an understanding
that we may know Him that is true, and
we are in Him that is true, even in His
Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God
and eternal life. When the time comes
when we must put out to sea again, He
will go with us. This is one comfort as
we sit with awful expectation on the shore.
We know what earthly companionship, frail
but indomitable, can do for us ; what thought
and resolution and purpose it may inspire.
But the dear ones go before or come after in
that voyage. No matter if He is there, to
care and to cherish and to guide through
the rough passage to the final rest.
And so beside the silent sea
I wait the muffled oar :
No harm from Him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.
I THOUGHT"
187
"I THOUGHT"
Behold, I thought, he will surely come ont to me, and
stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike
his hand over the place, and recover the leper.
2 KINGS v. ii.
THE relations between God and man are
more sweet, and vivid, and real than the
quietists would make them. To have no
choice, and no wish, and no will is to be
dead. There are those who maintain that
the human will should be slain at God's
altar, and burned to ashes at His word,
never to revive again. But the truth is that
we are to choose His will as soon as we
know it. Until we know it, we cannot help
having a preference of our own, and He is
content to have it so. More than that, the
189
190 The Garden of Nuts
will of the human child counts with the
Divine Father. In other words, prayer is
a real force. There are those, even among
professedly orthodox preachers, who in
dwelling upon the wisdom and the knowledge
of the Supreme, turn all prayer into a mere
sigh of acquiescence. But it is written that
in everything by prayer and supplication we
arc to make our requests known unto God.
Request is prayer, and the sphere of request
is the whole sphere of life. When the in
conceivable difference between God and man
is realised to the full, it yet remains true
that in prayer we make our requests ac
cording to His commandment to the God
who walked in Jerusalem, who suffered on
Calvary, who died and rose again.
Notwithstanding, even as between the
human child and the human father, so, and
much more, between the human child and
I Thought" 191
the Divine Father, there is often a crossing
of wills, and the wiser and stronger will
must rule. It is in this collision that f;iith
is most strained. We read in the beautiful
story of Naaman that Elisha sent a messc i
unto him, saying, " Go and wash in Jordan
seven times, and thy flesh shall come again
to thee, and thou shalt be clean." Naaman
was wroth, and said, " Behold, I thought,
he will surely come out to me, and stand,
and call on the name of the Lord his God,
and strike his hand over the place, and
recover the leper." God's thoughts are not
our thoughts. There is no such difference
as to make the Divine thought utterly and
always unlike and inconceivable. If it were
so, we should have no God. But as in
earthly relations the father is compelled by
love to thwart many times his child's wishes,
so God, who knows us and knows all, in
192 The Garden of Nuts
the very exercise of His love has to deny
us what we most set our hearts on, what
we most passionately desire. He answers
us indeed, but He answers us in a manner
at variance with our dreams. The lovely
mystical use of the story of Naaman may
be recalled. How many times has a human
soul agonised over the life of the dearest when
it was slipping away ! How often those who
loved life and saw before them a work to
do in this world have prayed to be raised
again from the bed of sickness ! The life
was not denied, but it was given in another
fashion. " / thought that he would strike
his hand over the place, and recover the
dying." Not so. The True Prophet led
the sufferer down to Jordan. In the waters
of death the perfect healing was found. This
was the true recovery, to wash in Jordan, to
climb up the bank, and stand on the eternal
I Thought " 193
shore in the presence of the Lord Himself.
" He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest it
him, even length of days for ever and ever."
The words have been written truly over
many an early grave.
Is this mere mockery ? It may sometimes
seem so. When the whole longing and en
deavour of the soul have been foiled, and
its priceless treasure has passed out of reach,
does it not look sometimes as if there were
no hearer of prayer? There have been
prayers so vehement that it seems as if they
must have pierced the heavens, and moved
the Divine Heart and Hand. Have we
spoken into empty space ? Is the Lord's
ear heavy that it cannot hear ? Is His arm
shortened that it cannot save? It may take
months of struggle before the most faithful
heart is able to understand, and yet to those
who cling on, there comes the assurance that
13
194 The Garden of Nuts
the answer was given in peace. We think
of all that is, and all that was, and all that
might have been. Often it is the faith of
the departed that is our mainstay at first.
There are those who even in this world
attain to that spiritual purity in which all
doubts are dissolved — not their own doubts
only, but the doubts of those beside them.
We have said in our ignorance, " Let us
make tabernacles for us here." But it is
better that they should be housed from the
storms from which we could not shield them.
They are satisfied with His likeness and with
His will. They are taken to be taught in
the higher school of God. They were taken
in love, and they are abiding in love. He
who has borne the sin of the world, and
is bearing its sorrow, leads His people like
a flock. The light may dawn slowly, and
grow gradually, but there are some who
"I Thought'' 195
even by the deathbed are able to say, with
a solemn peace : " This is the day which
the Lord hath made ; we will rejoice and be
glad in it."
There is no prayer more blessed and more
availing than the simple, disinterested prayer
for guidance. There are so many turns in
the road. Meaning the best, we may so
easily go wrong. If we have a right to
anything, we have a right to an answer when
we plead, " Show me the way." It is possible
so to realise the complexity of life that all
prayers pass, for the time at least, into the
cry to be led. Is this prayer answered ?
Yes, assuredly, but often not answered as
we thought it might be. There may be
those who always understand the reason
of God's dealings with them. There may
be those who can turn back and think of
every difficulty and every crisis, and assure
196 The Garden of Nuts
themselves that the pillar of cloud and the
pillar of fire were visible when they sought
them. But there are many who think they
see, that if at this point and that they had
made another choice, they would have had
much more sunshine and much more peace.
They see this great game and conflict of life
go by them, and they are left in a corner
unheeded. They have been kept from the
soiled and slimy path of the passions, but
they are overshadowed by trials and troubles.
They wrestle with hardness and poverty, and
yet they have done their best. Were they
guided ? The answer is that often and often
the fact of God's guidance does not become
plain until years of pain and disappointment
have passed away. Suddenly, it may be,
a light flashes on the darkness of past and
present. We see in a moment that if we had
gone down that path we should have missed
"I Thought" 197
the consecration and crown of existence.
This road which has been so rough has led
us to a summit from which we can look
round and know that we do not miss the
way — that, darkling, we were led all the
while. Often the summit is not one of
worldly triumph. It is far better than that .
It is a nearer approach to God. We have
found in the way of unwelcome duty a true
communion with Christ :
And that Thou sayest, " Go,"
Our hearts are glad ; for he is still Thy friend
And best beloved of all, whom Thou dost send
The farthest from Thee ; this Thy servants know ;
Oh, send by whom Thou wilt, for they are blest
Who go Thine errands ! Not upon Thy breast
We learn Thy secrets ! Long beside Thy tomb
We wept, and lingered in the Garden's gloom ;
And oft we sought Thee in Thy House of Prayer
And in the Desert, yet Thou wast not there ;
But as we journeyed sadly through a place
Obscure and mean, we lighted on the trace
198 The Garden of Nuts
Of Thy fresh footprints, and a whisper clear
Fell on our spirits, — Thou Thyself wast near ;
And from Thy servants' hearts Thy name adored
Brake forth in fire ; we said, " It is the Lord."
In all the rich and wonderful story of
Christian experience, there are no pages like
the records of those who have been driven
by the storm to God — by the whirling tempest
that swept away all the hopes of their life.
In the advancement of God's Kingdom our
thoughts are often strangely crossed. The
temptation is to say, " If the methods are
right, the results are sure." We are only to
do our best and wisest in dependence on
the Divine blessing, and that blessing will
come. Now, certainly we ought to be wise
in our methods. We should refuse to be
bound down by tradition and convention.
He that winneth souls is wise, and in many
cases nothing could be more foolish than the
methods of the organised Churches. But if
I Thought" 199
all our earthly plans were what they ought
to be, if our buildings were planned and
placed aright, if we found educated and
devoted men to preach in them, if we enlisted
and organised an army of zealous workers,
it does not follow that the Kingdom of God
would move forward evenly and successfully
like a prosperous business, that the outlying
territory would be subdued, province by
province, and that in a given time the people
would turn to Christ. Perplexing checks and
chills will come whatever we do. The issues
of our life will depend very much on the
manner in which we bear these checks.
Nothing is so contagious as despondency,
and if we are cast down, many will be cast
down with us. In the hour of apparent
disaster and defeat the precious seed may be
sown. It is because of the hardnesses of
God's service, because of the sudden and
200 The Garden of Nuts
fearful overthrowing of Christian plans and
hopes, that many hold back. But to make
the excuse of loving quietness and seeking
peace, and refraining from the strife, is to
lose everything. One way or other there
comes the recoil of all that. The Lord of
the Kingdom, whose name for a while was
humbled beneath every name, has taught us
the way to victory. He reached the throne
by the Cross. This was His thought, not
ours. We should have said with His
disciple, " Be it far from Thee, Lord ; this
shall not be unto Thee." But He knew, and
amid reviling foes and unbelieving friends,
He went on without flinching, without failing,
without turning back. " If Thou be the Son of
God, come down from the Cross." But He
was doing a great work, and could not come
down. We serve Him because He first
served us, and He calls us to take up His
I Thought" 20 1
cross if need be, not for an hour, but for a
life. There have been great Christian lives
which have gone on and ended in manifest
triumph. It has been given to some servants
of God to sow and reap in the daytime, and
to sit over against Jerusalem in the evening
under the palm. It has been given to a few
to witness the achievement of the end for
which they fought and toiled, but for most
there is no such experience. All things seem
to fail them but the steadfast Cross and the
hearts that clave to it through grief and
shame. It is enough.
We came not in with proud,
Firm martial footstep in a measured tread
Slow pacing to the crash of music loud ;
No gorgeous trophies went before, no crowd
Of captives followed us with drooping head,
No shining laurel sceptred us, nor crowned,
Nor with its leaf our glittering lances bound ;
This looks not like a Triumph, then they said.
202 The Garden of Nuts
With faces darkened in the battle flame,
With banners faded from their early pride,
Through wind, and sun, and showers of bleaching
rain,
Yet red in all our garment, doubly dyed,
With many a wound upon us, many a stain,
We came with steps that faltered. Yet we came !
This is a song which none but the redeemed
can sing.
THE ANIMATION OF OUR LORD'S
SURRENDER
203
THE ANIMATION OF OUR LORD'S
SURRENDER
Wherefore when He comet h into the world, He saitk,
Sacrifice and offering Thou wo^tldest not, but a body hast
7'hou prepared Me : In burnt offerings and sacrifices for
sin Thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in
the volume of the book it is -written of Me,} to do Thy will, O
God. Above when He said, Sacrifice and offering and
burnt offerings and offering for sin Thou ivouldest not,
neither hadst pleasure therein ; which are offered by the law ;
Then said He, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. . . . By
the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the
body of Jesus Christ once for all.
HEB. x. 5-10.
" I LOOK upon our Lord," said an Indian
theist, " as one whose word was, * Thy will
be done.' " This thinker spoke better than
he knew. He had in his mind what is called
resignation ; but resignation is a word that
205
206 The Garden of Nuts
does not describe our Lord's attitude to the
Father's will. Our Lord for our redemption
made the great surrender ; but He put the
whole force of His life and activity into
every moment of that surrender, from the
first to the last. His surrender was not
accomplished with a heavy sigh, as of one
worn out who says wearily in the hour of
exhaustion, " Thy will be done." His was
instead the eager and passionate fulfilment
of God's will, and into the doing and bearing
of that will He put all the richness and all
the fervour of His nature, all His tenderness,
His sternness, His sympathy, all His capacity
for joy and for anguish. He did not merely
accept the will of God when it was brought
to Him and laid upon Him. Rather He
went out to meet that loving will, and fell
upon its neck and kissed it. Christ was
open at every pore to the holy love and
Animation of Our Lord's Surrender 207
will of God. His surrender was, in the full
sense of the words, an animated surrender.
When the First Begotten entered into our
world of sense and time and sin, He did
not enter it as the rest did. Every other
child had resisted the Divine love. But of
one human life it is true not only that
it did not resist God's will, but that it
absorbed it, and was its absolute and perfect
embodiment. Of every child born into the
world we know that at a certain period, to
say the least, it will begin to transgress.
Men have striven after the ideal of perfect
goodness. They have dreamed of it often
with a passionate desire. They have
cherished their ideals with a strange fondness
and reverence ; but their ideal has never
become the real. Even of the most victorious
we must say that every crown is tarnished
and every robe is stained. We know that
2o8 The Garden of Nuts
vice is a hardy plant, that it needs no tend
ing, no encouragement. Virtue, on the other
hand, is delicate and frail. It has to be
protected with a jealous care. Fathers and
mothers lift up their hearts and plead that
their children may be kept from the evil
that is in the world, and they hardly dare
to hope for the fulfilment of the prayer.
But of one Child it was true that goodness
was in His nature the strong prevailing
element. Even ere they wrapped Him in
swaddling-clothes and laid Him in a manger,
He was clad, this Child, in the whole
armour of God. He in whom the prophecy
was fulfilled, "The ox knoweth his owner
and the ass his master's crib ; but Israel
doth not know, My people doth not con
sider," never knew what it was to forget
or neglect or disobey the will of God. The
eternal sunshine settled on His young head
Animation of Our Lord's Surrender 209
He knew what sin was, He was assailed
from the beginning by the tempter. Even
for Him there were the beckoning fingers
and the mocking tongues and the siren
songs that draw youth to its ruin. But
they never touched the force of His purity.
The Prince of this world came, and had
nothing in the Child. He was in His
Father's House, and about the things of
His Father from the dawn of life. From
His first days His Father's hands were busy
on His body and His spirit, and they
worked their will without hindrance or delay.
Nor was it otherwise as He grew up.
The Hand that grasped the robe of Mary,
that assisted with childish eagerness in
Joseph's workshop, the Hand that was after
to be laid on the children's hair and on the
leper's sore, the Hand that was to hold the
Reed of Scorn, the Hand that was to be
21 o The Garden of Nuts
nailed to the Cross, the Hand that was to
fall lifeless to the wounded side when the
nail was drawn — that Hand was from first
to last clean. He passed through the
temptations of youth, and the Wicked One
touched Him not. Others around Him
learned through misery that the secret of
misery is independence of God. He did
not need to learn this, for He was always
depending upon God, always welcoming with
an earnest delight the manifestation of God
through nature, through providence, through
the Word, through the inner communications
made to His Spirit. The knowledge of God
did not come to Him, as it comes to us, in
the valley of humiliation, for in the true
sense He was never there. The people that
sat in darkness saw through Him the great
light of God, but on Him the light shone
clear and undisturbed, and there was no
Animation of Our Lord's Surrender 21 1
darkness at all. He grew in the household
of His Blessed Mother, and He loved as
other children love. But it was He who
purified the home ; the home did not purify
Him. " Whatsoever He saith unto you, do
it," said His Mother, when he was on the
threshold of His ministry. He was obedient
unto them ; but they were obedient unto
Him. They were all at the touch of His
fingers. He knew of sin and its misery.
From Nazareth young men went into the
far country, and He heard their story, and
pondered it, and told it in the after years.
He remembered the pitiful whispers that
went round the little town. He heard per
haps broken-hearted fathers and mothers
telling the story of their children with hard
sobs and white lips. But for Himself, He
sat still in the House of God till He went
out to seek the wanderers. We see how
212 The Garden of Nuts
His heart went forth to reach and grasp
God's will when He sat among the doctors,
both hearing them and asking them questions ;
and all that heard Him saw that He had
more understanding than all His teachers,
when He went to the Synagogue, as His
custom was, when He studied the Scriptures
and discerned in them the promise and the
law of His own life. So He increased in
wisdom and in stature, and in favour with
God and man.
The hour struck at last, the hour of His
shewing unto Israel. He took up His task,
and thenceforward His life was as a fire that
burned fiercely. He healed and preached
by day ; and He prayed by night. He gave
Himself no respite. So His fervour visibly
consumed Him, insomuch that His disciples
remembered that it was written, The zeal
of Thine house hath eaten Me up. " Tell
Animation of Our Lord's Surrender 2 1 3
me, I pray Thee, where Thy great strength
lieth ? " asked one of the saints, and the
answer came in the word " Love." It was
for love of His Father and for love of His
Father's will that He accomplished these
things. It was this thought of love that
hallowed all difficulty, and made all sorrow
sweet. In this eagerness of life He fulfilled
His high task, till He was able to say at
length, " I have finished the work that Thou
gavest Me to do." The world was for Him
a wilderness. Foxes had holes, and the
birds of the air had nests, but the Son of
Man had not where to lay His head. And
yet the will of God for Him turned the
valley of Baca into a well of living water.
We understand on the lower plane of
humanity that true and great work is nearly
always done for another's sake, for one
woman, one child, one friend. The workers
214 The Garden of Nuts
may not know what keeps them cheerful
and busy till the soul they serve leaves
them. But they know it then with a strange
intensity of feeling. A modern preacher tells
the story of a ship captain who finds plenteous
enjoyment everywhere, revels in the problems
of navigation, spends long nights on deck,
rules his little crew, and feels the daily joy
of difficulties overcome. At last he comes
to the haven where he would be, and ac
complishes the purpose of his voyage. He
sails back with his new cargo after months
of work and interest and danger, and returns.
And then, what then ? He goes up on
shore, and finds a house where a little child
is living in a nurse's care, and gives all that
he has earned into the little hands of that
child, who was in reality the single cause
of inspiration of his voyage, and is the reason
why he rejoices in its success. He has not
Animation of Our Lord's Surrender 215
seemed to himself to think of her ; but she
has been at the bottom of his heart all the
long while. The thing is good because she
can receive it, and everything would have
been worthless if he had found the house
empty, and only a little grave for him to
lavish his love on. Christ surrendered
Himself to the work of God ; but He did
not wait for a summons. He did not yield a
precisely measured obedience. He ate and
drank the will of God. " My meat," He said,
" is to do the will of Him that sent Me,
and to finish His work." There was the
impression everywhere of urgency and speed
and willinghood. " Seeking me Thy worn
feet hasted." Did He labour up to His
power ? Yea, and beyond His power.
So it was in His suffering. He gave
Himself up with passion to His passion.
Resignation is but a poor word even when
The Garden of Nuts
used of Christians. It is not a word that
can be applied to Christ at all. He did not
wait to see the bitter hour creep slowly and
surely up. He went out to meet it. He
set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem.
He went forth with full knowledge, and said
to His enemies, " I have told you that I am
He." He waited, as it were, with a certain
impatience for the last spring of His life,
the last month, the last day, and at the
hour when He came to the fire and the wood
He was the Lamb for the burnt offering.
He toiled, as it were, to plan humiliation
and suffering for Himself. " I have a
baptism to be baptised with, and how am
I straitened till it be accomplished ! " " The
cup that my Father hath given Me, shall
I not drink it?" When the cup was at His
lips, He tasted death. Experience proved
all the bitterness of the bitter draught. The
Animation of Our Lord's Surrender 2 1 7
Church was wont to say that, if He had
but taken flesh, and shed one drop of His
Blood, it would have been enough for the
world's salvation. But He suffered to the
utmost. He suffered the effusion again and
again of His most precious Blood. When
He was on the Cross He refused the allevia
tion. They gave Him wine to drink, mingled
with myrrh ; but He received it not. They
urged Him to come down from His Cross
that they might see and believe ; but He
withstood the temptation. He would not
be taken down until the evening, and then
He bowed His head that it might be seen
that His life was yet whole in Him, and
dismissed His Spirit. Nothing was spared
Him, or, rather, He spared Himself nothing.
For a moment He stuck fast for us in the
mire where there was no standing. It
seemed as if His sight failed Him, as if no
2i 8 The Garden of Nuts
man cared for His soul. He needed the
outshining of His Father's face, and it was
given Him as His reward, in token that all
the labour was done, and all the warfare
over, and all the sacrifice complete. And
then, with a strong and solemn joy, He saw
the morning break on those darkened shores
of time.
THE PROPHECY OF THE
BRUISINGS
219
THE PROPHECY OF THE
BRUISINGS
/ will put enmity between thee \the serpent\ and the
woman , and beiiveen thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel
GEN. iii. 15.
THE first Messianic promise in the Bible
is in the words, " I will put enmity between
thee [the serpent] and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed ; it shall
bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his
heel." There is to be conflict, then, between
Christ and Satan, between good and evil —
perpetual conflict. In this conflict victory
will come to one side, but bruisings to
both.
Can we have the victory without the
222 The Garden of Nuts
bruisings ? As we read in his biography,
Bishop Creighton in his early years was
visited by a dream of this kind. His
theory of life, as he then held it, is . not
very clearly expressed, but perhaps we shall
do him no injustice if we say that he was
determined to be cheerful and content in
all circumstances, to do his own work, to
recognise his limitations, and so far as he
could to keep himself free of strife. He
knew that he could give to the world some
valuable literary work if he had leisure in
which to prepare it. From the sanguinary
conflicts of the world and the Church he
shrank. For one thing he had a strong
sense of the impotence of man. Man does
his best and is foiled. His defeat is not
due to the strength of his human foes, but
to the sudden interposition of a power
above. Against that power it is vain to
The Prophecy of the Bruisings 223
fight. Rather let us say that our way may
be wrong, or that the end we are seeking
will be attained without our fretting and
fuming. Leave God to do His own work,
and to control the history of His world
and His Church. Creighton based himself
upon Goethe, but he forgot apparently one
of Goethe's deepest words : " Always it is
the individual that works for progress, not
the age. It was the age that made away
with Socrates by poison ; it was the age
which burned Huss at the stake ; the ages
have always been the same." Other students
have been impressed by the overwhelming
interest and significance of the individual in
human history. Napoleon had a way of
saying, " One must set limits to oneself,"
but his life was hardly consistent with the
axiom. No doubt we may choose to some
extent the field of our activity, but the
224 The Garden of Nuts
Christian man sooner or later must fight
and be wounded. Even Creighton had to
fling aside the foils, and betake himself to
deadly earnest. Much as he disliked con
troversy, and lightly as he took up his
burdens, he too lived long enough to share
the common lot of the faithful. He did
his best to steer his ship away from the
sharp rocks of trouble, and he died ere
the battle was at its hottest ; but he died
like the rest, with wounds and scars of
Christ
But we may have the bruisings without
the victory. It is possible so to be over
borne by the pangs and losses and defeats
of the Christian soldier as to lose faith in
Divine love and providence. There is an
awful possibility of giving over prayer, of
coming to think that the Lord's ear is heavy
that He cannot hear, and His arm shortened
The Prophecy of the Bruisings 225
that He cannot save. There is a terrible
significance in this passage, which we quote
from a recent book: " Old Mr. Westfield,
a preacher of the Independent persuasion
in a certain Yorkshire town, was discoursing
one Sunday with his utmost eloquence on
the power of prayer. He suddenly stopped,
passed his hands slowly over his head — a
favourite gesture — and said in dazed tones :
4 1 do not know, my friends, whether you
ever tried praying ; for my part, I gave
it up long ago as a bad job.' The poor
old gentleman never preached again. They
spoke of the strange seizure that he had
in the pulpit and very cheerfully and kindly
contributed to the pension which the autho
rities of the chapel allowed him. I knew
him five-and-twenty years ago, a gentle old
man addicted to botany, who talked of
anything but spiritual experiences. I have
15
226 The Garden of Nuts
often wondered with what sudden flash of
insight he looked into his own soul that
day, and saw himself bowing down silent
before an empty shrine." Those to whom
prayer has been true communion with God,
and who have sought and found strength
to go on and to trust, are driven to God
by calamity, and not from God. But those
who pray what may be called merely stress
prayers — those who ask God for help in
exceptional circumstances of their life, and
seek for that help to be manifested outwardly
— are not in the real sense of the word
believers. And so when defeat or bereave
ment or irretrievable calamity in any shape
comes to them, they conclude that the
heavens are brass, and that prayer is a
delusion, and they take their way to the
grave without seeking the Divine Companion.
But even the most faithful have their hours
The Prophecy of the Bruisings 227
of doubt. Things may look for a time so
gloomy and desperate as to force even from
the believing sufferer bitter cries of misery
and despair, such as those that ring in the
Psalms and in some pages of Pascal. Zion
says sometimes, after all her experience of
God's mercy, The Lord hath forsaken me,
and my Lord hath forgotten me.
What then does the promise mean ? We
follow the beautiful exposition of Phillips
Brooks. It means that wherever Christ is
there is conflict That is the token and
foundation of hope. Wherever Christ has
been preached, the empire of evil is always
being challenged. It may be very strong
and outwardly victorious ; it may have killed
the witnesses or imprisoned them ; it may
press on unhindered to destroy by force
the opposition, but as one antagonist is
conquered another takes his place. Where
228 The Garden of Nuts
Christ has been, men will never unanimously
assent to wrong. They will never settle
down to the rest of acquiescent fiend-
worship. They will never say to the devil,
Thy will be done. Captain and soldier
may die with their faces to the foe, but
fresh campaigns are undertaken, and the
instinct of rebellion never dies. There is a
refusal to be content with injustice, and
neither by sophistication nor violence will
peace be attained. There is enmity between
the Son of Man and evil, and that enmity
never dies, never even pauses.
But the Son of Man and His legions
are bruised in the righting. There are those
who foresee the victory of right, but they
foresee it apart from all that must come
in between. They dream of a triumph won
without pain or pang, but it is a vain dream.
We cannot escape : into every life that is
The Prophecy of the Bruisings 229
lived obediently and bravely the bruising
must come. There must be confrontation
and collision and wounds. Never is the
victory of right easy or speedy. When the
soldiers begin their task in white plumes
and unspotted braveries, they may think
that all is going to go smoothly, but they
soon find that they are in march for a field
of blood. Unexpected difficulties present
themselves ; the strength of the enemy
proves formidable ; it seems sometimes as if
the tide of battle rolled backwards and for
wards, and as if there was no decisive
advance. Indeed there may often be
temporary repulses and defeats. Cavour,
under the trees of Sartena, said : " I knew
when I advised the king and country to
venture on this great enterprise that we
should meet with very heavy obstacles, and
be sorely tried, but _this battle with disease
230 The Garden of Nuts
fills me with alarm ; it is an evil complica
tion." The more Christ-like the cause is the
harder it may be. With what stress and
vehemence of hate did the evil power
attack Christ ! The attack bruises the heel,
bows the back, wrinkles the face, whitens
the hair. Nothing is easy ; things will not
go as we fain had hoped. There come
mortifying disappointments and checks and
desertions, but all these things are only sent
to discover our manhood, and we cannot
run out of them without being apostates.
After a certain stage the combatants have
to struggle on with the wounded heel, but
if they have strength from their Captain
they can continue to fight. This being so
there comes a solemn shadow on the
temporary triumphs. The highest hopes and
the loftiest rejoicings have their touch of
pathos when one thinks of what the victories
The Prophecy of the Bruisings 231
have cost, and of the battles that are sure
to follow them.
But the victory is sure because the leader
is Christ. He did not fight merely as an
example to His soldiers. His contest is
much more than an addition to the records
of heroism that keep the world alive. He
breathes His spirit into His soldiers and
He is the Conqueror. " When He fought
with sin and overcame the world's pain by
undergoing it, He merely left all other
fighters stronger because He was human
and therefore our brother. He left sin
weaker because He was Divine and there
fore our Master." Sin seemed to have its
way with Him. The serpent bruised His
heel. He was crucified on Calvary, but
dying oft the tree He set His wounded heel
on the head of the serpent. When His
hands closed in agony round the nails, they
232 The Garden of Nuts
crushed the power of evil ; and the victory
of the Master may be the victory of the
servant. Not the victory that the world
will immediately recognise : it is enough for
the disciple to be as his Master, and the
servant as his Lord. In the evening of
the third day, in the end of the life of
strenuous and grievous travail, it may seem
as if nothing had been accomplished ; and
yet the work has been done and the victory
of the servants one by one is an earnest
of the ultimate triumph of righteousness.
The time and the manner we must leave
with Him, but He asks us to throw our
selves into the conflict, and He promises us
the interpretation of reverse and delay in
the world where burdens are unbound and
wounds healed and mortality swallowed up
of life.
Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylcsbury.
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