Things eternal

BX 9178 .K3 T5
Kelman, John, 1864
Things eternal

1929.

THINGS ETERNAL

v BY

REV. JOHN KELMAN, D.D.

AUTHOR OF "AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS/ '
"THE EOAD OF LIFE," ETC.

' 1920

NEW miJF YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY WIFE

PREFACE

An old author, speaking of the journey of life, has quaintly
described Sundays as the inns where the traveller rests for
a little while and collects his thoughts, both of the road he
has travelled and of the destination whither it is leading
him. Such is the intention of these studies. They are not
sermons, but fragments or abstracts of sermons. They are
fugitive glimpses of eternal things.

While in a general way it has been found convenient to
arrange them in the time-honoured sequence of the Chris-
tian year, only a few of the more important festivals, cele-
brated either on Sundays or on adjacent weekdays, have
been selected. I have included the discarded festival of
All Souls ; for although it has been abused by superstition,
it may well be allowed to remind us of our human brother-
hood and of the claim of God upon all mankind. The first
and last Sundays of the year are the only commemorative
days which have been added to "those of the Church
Calendar.

Since the object of the book is practical rather than
critical, questions of authorship and of literal or figurative
interpretation have been rarely introduced. In so far as
disputed doctrines are dealt with, my desire is to sound a
reconciling rather than a contentious note. Far too much
has been made of our differences in matters where all theo-
ries are necessarily incomplete. The statement of truths of
eternity in the language of time must always leave o;reat
room for Christian charity towards those who state the
same truths otherwise, and the restatement of ancient doc-

vii

viii PREFACE

trines in modern terms implies no lack of reverence either
for former thinkers or their thoughts. It does imply a
profound and deepening conviction that the earlier and
the later voices are but different expressions of the same
things. The chief characteristic of the thought of to-day
is that it finds its way to abstract truth through actual
experience. In the history of the race and of the individual
there is clear evidence of the way of God with men. It is
in these phenomena of time that we see passing glimpses of
eternity.

JOHN KELMAN.

CONTENTS

Page

On the Observance of Days 13

"I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day." —
Eevelation i. 10.

Concerning Gifts ~ 18

"The gifts of the Magi."— St. Matthew ii. 11.
The Consecration of Imperialism „ 23

"He leadeth them out."— St. John x. 3.
Leadership, False and True 28

"He leadeth them out."— St. John x. 3.
The Making of an Apostle 33

St. Paul the Apostle. — Acts ix. 1-9.
Thought and Action m 38

St. Paul's Retrospect. — Acts xxvi. 19.
Loyalty to Vision 42

St. Paul's Retrospect. — Acts xxvi. 19.
Christ's Lessons in Prayer 46

"Lord, teach us to pray." — Luke 11. 1.
Preparation for the Best „ 50

"A people prepared for the Lord." — Luke i. 17.
The Preparation of Words 55

"Take with you words." — Hosea xiv. 2.
The Power of Words 59

"Take with you words." — Hosea xiv. 2.
East and West 63

"As far as the east is from the west, so far
hath He removed our transgressions from
us." — Psalm ciii. 12.

Christ Among the Transgressors 69

"He was numbered with the transgres-
sors."— Isaiah liii. 12; Luke xxii. 37.
ix

x CONTENTS

Paga

The Value of a Pageant .... - .. „..„ 75

The triumphal entry into Jerusalem. —
Luke xix. 28-48.

The Kising of Christ _ — - 80

"They have taken away my Lord, and I
know not where they have laid Him." — St.
John xx. 13.

A Song of the Morning — 85

"And he shall be as the light of the morn-
ing, when the sun riseth, even a morning
without clouds." — 2 Samuel xxiii. 4.

The More Excellent Way 90

"That ye may approve things that are ex-
cellent."— Philippians i. 10.

Strength and Joy „ — 97

"The joy of the Lord is your strength." —
Hehemiah viii. 10.

The Elusweness of Desire ~ .... 102

"The mirage shall become a pool." —
Isaiah xxxv. 7.

The Phantasmagoria of Life _ — 107

"The mirage shall become a pool." —
Isaiah xxxv. 7.

A New Polnt of View 112

"While they beheld, He was taken up; and
a cloud received Him out of their sight." —
Acts i. 9.

The Days of the Spirit 117

"It is expedient for you that I go away." —
St. John xvi. 7.

The Spiritual Doctrine of God 122

"For there are three that bear record in
heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy
Ghost; and these three are one." — 1 John v. 7.

The Spirit and the Intellect 127

"He will guide you into all truth." — St.
John xvi. 13.

The Spirit and the Conscience -.. 131

"He will convict the world of sin, and of
righteousness, and of judgment." — St. John
xvi. 8-11.

CONTENTS

XI

Page
The Unknown Christ 135

"There standeth one among you whom ye
know not."— St. John i. 26.

The Unknown Neighbor „ 140

"There standeth one among you whom ye
know not." — St. John i. 26. *

The Unknown Self m 145

"There standeth one among you whom ye
know not."— St. John i. 26.

Duty and Pleasure 15!

"Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of
Damascus, better than all the waters of
Israel."— 2 Kings v. 12.

OpInion and Knowledge „ 157

"Behold I thought . . behold now I
know."— 2 Kings v. 11, 15.

The Character of Gehazl._ 163

2 Kings v. 15-27.

God's Compromise with Man...™™. 170

"Two mules, burden of earth." — 2 Kings v. 17.
Man's Compromise with God 175

"The house of Rimmon." — 2 Kings v. 18.

The Open- Air Treatment of Souls _ 182

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills." —
Psalm cxxi. 1.

Three Views of Man's Destiny — 1. Pessimism 187

"I wept much because no man was found
worthy to open and to read the book." —
Eevelation v. 4.

Three Views of Man's Destiny — 2. The Gospel of

Healthy-Mindedness .. „ 192

"Weep not; behold, the Lion of the tribe
of Juda . . . hath prevailed to open the
book." — Revelation v. 5.

Three Vraws of Man's Destiny — 3. Love and

Sacrifice .. _ _„..„ 195

"A Lamb as it had been slain." — Revela-
tion v. 6.

"Well-Meaning Blunderers „ 202

"Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the
kingdom of God." — Luke xiv. 15.

xii CONTENTS

Page

Interpretation by the Long Result 206

"What I do thou knowest not now, but thou
shalt know hereafter." — St. John xiii. 7.

Trust in the Character of Christ™ 211

"What I do thou knowest not now, but thou
shalt know hereafter." — St. John xiii. 7,

The Exploration of the Hidden Ldte_- 215

"Your life is hid with Christ in God,"—
Colossians iii. 3.

Weariness of Responsibility..™ _. 222

"Make me as one of thy hired servants." —
Luke xv. 10.

The Heritage of Fear 227

"Thou hast given me the heritage of those

that fear Thy name." — Psalm lxi. 5.
The Claim of God 232

"All souls are mine." — Ezekiel xviii. 5.

The Religion of Humanity 237

"Jesus went forth, and saw a great multi-
tude, and was moved with compassion
toward them." — St. Matthew xiv. 14.

The Further Side of Victory 241

"More than conquerors." — Romans viii. 37.

The Transformation of Language into Ld?e 245

"The word was made flesh." — St. John i. 14.

The Reasonable View of Sent and of Forgiveness 250

Isaiah 1. 18.

The Divine Love Incarnate 255

"The love of God which is in Christ Jesus."
— Romans viii. 39.

The Second Advent „ _ - 260

"Like unto men that wait for their lord." —
Luke xii. 36.

The Groups Around the Cradle™ ~ 265

"The eyes of all wait upon Thee." — Psalm
cxiv. 15.

The End of the Tear .... 268

"It is finished."— John xix. 30.

THINGS ETERNAL

THINGS ETERNAL

ON THE OBSERVANCE OF DAYS

(The New Year)
"I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day." — Revelation i. 10.

The wonderful book of the Kevelation introduces us sud-
denly to a most picturesque and most pathetic situation.
It is Sunday in Patmos, where John is an exile condemned
to work in the mines. Sunday was a great day with those
early Christians — the Lord's Day, the Christian festival
of the Resurrection. For that brilliant fact shone behind
them but a little distance off, and once a week they laid
aside all other thoughts, and lived over again in loving
imagination the events that had changed the world for
them.

Sunday was not a holiday in the mines, but the spirit of
this redeemed man is free, and he has access to the spiritual
world. While his feet and hands toil at their dreary tasks,
he passes into an ecstatic state, suspending his connexion
with this material world, and leading him into the other
land, unseen of any eyes but his.

In this exalted state the boundaries both of time and
space are thrown down, and he moves free in a larger
world. He is back again in the morning light of the day of
Christ's rising. Again he runs to the empty tomb with
Peter; again the woman whom they have left solitary by
that empty tomb comes and tells them what she has seen ;
and again amid the evening shadows he himself hears the

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14 THINGS ETERNAL

words ' ' Peace be unto you. ' ' Similarly he escapes from the
narrow confines of the island, and shares the life of the in-
fant Church scattered along the coast-lines of the Great
Sea. He is their brother and companion, both in the tribu-
lation and in the kingdom of Jesus Christ ; with them both
in darkness and in glory. He is with them, too, in that pa-
tience of the saints which both the tribulation and the
kingdom has taught them — that wonderful patience of the
early Church, which had learned to be patient with life,
both in its present trial and its deferred hope.

Such was the spirit of the day for John — partly com-
memoration of the past, partly fellowship with the far
distant, in the brotherhood of the patient Church. It was
a day of mingled sorrow and exultation, in every sense a
very special day.

We still keep certain days apart, and break the monotony
of the year with their recurring calls to remember and to
love. There is sometimes heard a grudge against making
much of one day above another, but surely that is but a
frowsy way of thinking. Those who cherish it must be
people whose commonplace life of detail has overwhelmed
them and made them dull, till they feel at home only in
routine, and are restless and ill at ease when life grows
keener. The loss of the power to take holiday is one of the
results of the over-pressure nowadays. But even for the
work's own sake we need sometimes to stand off from work,
especialty in our religious life. The finest and most sensi-
tive instincts tend to die away or to get crowded out, even
amid religious services and duties. Indeed it even comes
to this, that we positively fear any special inspirations.
A sloth creeps upon us, and rather than risk a spiritual
awakening we willingly consent to weary ourselves with
unremitting labours, or succumb to the fascination of the
unimportant, and indulge ourselves in a succession of
casual little activities. "We deliberately prefer and choose

ON THE OBSERVANCE OF DAYS 15

Martha's part instead of Mary's, and fill life so full of
bustling services that we have no time either to think or
to aspire.

There are others who in a different spirit ask: "Why
select one day above another! Are not all days equally
days of the Lord? Rather let us raise the tone of every
day till it reaches festival height. ' ' This looks indeed like
religion, but it is not human nature. Those who are always
at high pressure grow inevitably strained and unnatural.
It is quite true that every day is a day of the Lord, for
every day is "full of things offering themselves for our
wonder, and understanding, and love, and every person
we meet is a traveller between life and death." So all the
interests of life are religious ; but we are human, and none
of us is capable of bearing more than a certain strain.
Such attempts overstrain life to a tension that is neither
desirable nor wholesome.

In a word, the spirit is tidal, and "the soul wins its
victories as the sea wins hers." The occasional and fluc-
tuating element in life is not only justifiable but essential
to healthy human nature. The tides of the spirit are
known to us all — the great reactions, the swinging tides
of feeling, interest, and energy. These are from above,
coming down upon us, unlike the pedestrian guides of
common sense and principle which direct us evenly on our
way. This does not apply merely to the ebb and flow of
sweet or tender feeling, though it includes that also.
Rather one thinks of the occasional heightening of life all
round, the intensification of its powers in moments when»
it "means intensely, and means good."

For the continuance of such exalted moods, there arc
no tabernacles allowed on the mountain-top. Life moves
best in reactions, and the occasional element is necessary
to its wholesomeness. Very particularly does this hold
true of religious experience, and it warns us against a
false conscience of spirituality. Self -analysis and frequent

16 THINGS ETERNAL

measurement of the spiritual temperature may easily be-
come morbid. Do not strain your spirit nor force your
moods, nor accuse yourself because of the ebb and flow.
All that is included in the command and trast that we
shall live our human lives.

Now this occasional quality of human nature is the ex-
planation of the common delight in the observance of
special days. Birthdays and other anniversaries, the re-
turn of friends from afar, the festivals commemorating
national and religious events, are all of them times of
spiritual rising tide. It is fitting to give them their oppor-
tunity, to set time apart, and to forbid encroaching duties.

"We have here a principle which gives its true meaning
to the observance of Sunday. Unfortunately the whole
question has come to be associated either with laws and
forcible restraints, or with the mere idea of rest, and
the cessation of the daily routine. Both of these are
negative conceptions of the day, relating to what we must
not do on it. Really such restrictions exist not for their
own sake, but in order to make room for the positive
Sunday life. That life consists of much that is keenest
and most worthy in human nature — the fellowship of
friends, thoughts of the absent, memories of the dead, as-
pirations after better life, communion with God. For the
sake of these things of the Spirit it is worth while to resist
the encroachment of week-day interests, xind the resist-
ance must be firm, for much is ever waiting to be completed,
and overlapping fragments of workaday life will make it
impossible without watchfulness to be in the Spirit on
the Lord's Day.

There is another special day, hidden from us all in
the future, when one would wish above most days to be
in the Spirit — the day of one's death. When we think
of all that death involves for believing men, we cannot but
class it amon.T the festivals of life. Its freedom from old

ON THE OBSERVANCE OF DAYS 17

bonds, its sudden new adventure, its chance for turning
the experience of life to use, its light of vision and the be-
ginning of eternal peace — surely it is a day of the Lord,
and it must be a thing to be desired that on that day He
will grant us a mood fit and becoming; that the busy in-
terests of life may die down and leave us free to go out
upon a full tide of the Spirit.

We are in serious danger of crowding out the Spirit
from the days, and this is a New Year's Day plea for homes
and hearts. Our days too often miss the rare excellence
that somehow seems their rightful heritage. We feel that
there is "something deep and satisfying, and really close
at hand, into which we cannot enter nor dwell. ' ' But can
we not find the secret of the days, and rescue the fragrance
of their departing sweetness! Our special days supply
at least one answer, if we shall but keep them special and
apart. Great experiences of the Spirit are generally de-
feated by trifles which absorb and depress us. These
trifles come to us as duties, and the minute and manifold
sense of obligation shuts out the larger vision in which
alone we may find peace. Our duties come between us
and the meaning of our lives. As year follows year and
we grow older, we see more and more clearly how much
of the higher possibilities of life we have missed and are
missing, not only through blundering and sin, but by the
attempt to deal conscientiously with an over-crowded life.
To all who feel thus, the New Year's festival brings an
unexpected message. Neglect you duties now and then.
Let things take care of themselves, and do you live your
life and follow the vision. The Lord claims certain days
as His own. Sundays He expressly claims, but in their
degree He claims also Christmas, New Year's Day, and
others. It is not a day that comes with such anniversaries,
but a Spirit : and the name of the day, if the Spirit be
wanting, is a sarcasm. It is ours to be in this Spirit on the
Lord's Day.

CONCERNING GIFTS

{Epiphany)
The gifts of the Magi.— St. Matthew ii. IV

There is no story in all the world more beautiful than
this. There is the wistfulness of long wandering about
these three strangers, star-guided across the desert. We
think, as we read, of the Moslem pilgrims who to this day
may be seen, shrouded figures upon camel-back in that
same desert, guiding themselves towards Mecca by the
selected star "at the left ear." And these are but stray
instances of man's long search for the highest he can con-
ceive.

But those ancient wanderers were generous, and travelled
that they might give. And in this very simple story we
find among other things a strangely applicable hint of the
true spirit of generosity. Christmas was a time of gifts,
and now, as we are returning from its festive season to
plainer days, it is well that we should remember some-
thing of its lessons about giving. Those men "saw, and
fell down, and gave." They did not give without seeing,
as so much modern charity gives. To put down one's
name in a list of subscribers, while one hardly knows what
is the object of the charity, is a fashionable way of sav-
ing the trouble of investigation and of sympathy, but it
is not worth the name of benevolence. Nor did they give
without falling down. Many are willing to be generous
who are yet too proud to bow down their spirit in worship.

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CONCERNING GIFTS 19

It is so much easier to give than to fall down in reverence
and humility: but liberality will not be accepted in lieu
of worship.

For Christmas is not only a time of open-heartedness
between man and man. It brings with it also the desire
to give to Christ — a desire which sometimes comes to us all,
though we do not always understand it. Remembering
God's unspeakable gift to us, and seeing the response of
those " star-led wizards on the Eastern road," we cannot
but say to ourselves: —

Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode.

And, if we may so far follow tradition, it is worth while
to remember that these men, opening their bales of treasure,
brought gifts each from his own land. The gold was from
India, the frankincense from Persia, and the myrrh from
Arabia. They did not say that these, the products of their
own lands, were common and everyday things, and set
about procuring statues from Greece or tin from Britain.
They brought what they had. So, for us all, the gift that
Christ will value most will never be that which grows in
somebody else's country. It will not be some better or
nobler thing than what you have, but just that.

Of course, in the fullest sense of the words, this means
that strange and precious gift — yourself. "Your own re-
deemed personality" is the one gift which Christ desires
and will value. Nay, your own personality, very incom-
pletely redeemed as yet. We are not what we might have
been, we are not what we ought to be, we are not what we
hope to be ; but such as we are, we may give ourselves to
Him, and the gift will not be rejected.

As to these three gifts of the story, Matthew Henry, with
his pleasant common sense, finds in them simply a "season-
able relief to Joseph" in his poverty. Ancient commen-

20 THINGS ETERNAL

tators used to find more in them than that, seeing in the
gold a tribute to a king, in the frankincense an offering
to a God, and in the myrrh a burial gift to the dead ; and
precisely the same ideas are to be found in at least one
old carol. "Whether the beautiful story as it was originally
told meant this or not, it is a venerable tradition, and it is
certainly true for us.

1. Gold — the tribute to a king. There is in us all a
response to royalty and a delight in it. The child who
worships strength, and makes a heroic figure of any famous
athlete or player of games, knows the meaning of this.
For the grown man it may stand for the secular life of
work and politics, the life most richly endowed with intel-
lectual power or social influence. It includes business
capacity, professional excellence, expertness in art, litera-
ture, or science. All this region is the royal domain of
man's secular interests, his knowledge and his power. The
reason why many people drift away from faith is that they
seek to reserve it for a special and exclusive compartment
of their life, which they choose to call " religious.' ' Had
they brought in tribute to Christ the produce of their own
region, the gold of the secular life, they would never have
drifted at all. And such tribute, offered at this cradle,
recalls to their blessed childhood lives which otherwise too
surely grow out of it into unsimple ways. It is well to
offer gold at Christ's cradle.

Born a King on Bethlehem's plain,
Gold I bring, to crown Him again,
King for ever, ceasing never,
Over us all to reign.

2. Frankincense — an offering to God. This was a fra-
grant resin exuded from the bark of a certain tree, which
formed an ingredient of incense in the ancient East. In-
cense was offered as a sweet savour to the Deity, and it

CONCERNING GIFTS 21

became^ the symbol of prayers and vows, of aspirations
and all the sweetness of man's worship. This is the com-
plement of the gold, and there are some who are peculiarly
rich in it, people who are born with a genius for religion.
It is an element in the life of all children. The tender
conscience and spiritual longings of childhood are not only
normal but characteristic gifts of the early days. On
through later years this faculty persists. Too often, in-
deed, the frankincense is laid away with the child's toys.
There is no worship any more, and the wistful and reverent
child grows into a prayerless man or woman. Yet there
are some natures so richly endowed with this that to the
end of life they cannot be satisfied with being strong and
serviceable. They must also find God, and offer to Him
a certain exquisiteness of service. They present their most
beautiful and fragrant things, and about their lives there
is ever a delicate aroma of worship. It is frankincense
that grows in their country.

But it grows in every land, and even those whose secular
instincts are strongest may return to their childhood as
they offer their gift at this cradle. They may come back
from the busy secular life with its striving to this peace ;
back from intellectual perplexities, till they are once more
among a few simple things, longing after God, and hearing
again the call to worship like bells long silent.

Frankincense to offer have I,
Incense owns a Deity nigh,
Prayer and praising, all men raising,
Worship Him, God most high.

3. Myrrh — for burial spiees. Myrrh, dropping in red-
dish-brown drops like tears, was prized for its sweet scent
— a far-away Eastern kind of scent, that would sweeten
the air of the stable while the little child lay there. But
the chief use of myrrh was for very precious ointment with

22 THINGS ETERNAL

which they embalmed the dead. Long afterwards, when
that scent rose from the gift of Mary, Jesus at once said
it was for His burial. And this odour of burial-spice was
about the cradle in the inn of Bethlehem.

There are some who know it well. They are acquainted
with grief, with loneliness, with anxieties, and bereave-
ments. They themselves have sorrowed much, and felt
the sorrow, the pain, and the death around them in the
world. Their hearts are full of a great compassion, and
their eyes are tearful. Ah, it is myrrh that grows in their
country, and that will be their fitting gift to Jesus. The
dying and the ailing folk, the poor, and the sad, and the
desolate, will know the odour of their gift. And all may
bring this also, for all must grieve and weep at times.
Only let them offer it at His cradle that so their hearts
may be kept from hardness, with a tender simplicity in
their sorrow.

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, blinding, dying,
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

THE CONSECRATION OF
IMPERIALISM

"He leadeth them out."— St. John x. 3.

It is of peculiar interest now and then to cast our eyes
back to the origins of our modern institutions, and to ob-
serve the background of our advancing civilization. "When
we examine even the newest inventions we find many traces
of the oldest occupations. We are all the children of prim-
itive huntsmen, sailors, shepherds, or tillers of the ground ;
and that remotest ancestry has an incalculable effect upon
the development of humanity to its latest day. But of all
the primitive occupations of mankind, there is none that
has done so much to make and keep life gentle as that of
the shepherd. True, the shepherd races have been wild
and rude, and in some lands the word " shepherd" has
been almost synonymous with " robber. " But the care
of lambs, and the very fact of dwelling among the flower
of the grass, have their effect. The shepherd life, like all
other phases in the evolution of the race, tends upwards
towards its ideal. Many a gentle element in our modern
days had its rude beginnings in the sheep-folds, and the
Good Shepherd ideal of tender pity for all weakness and
suffering was learned long ago in prehistoric fields.

Much, of this the world owes to the Semites, in whom
the pastoral instinct is deep as life itself. Every one
knows how close are the relations which still exist between
the Eastern shepherd and his wandering flock. On the

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24 THINGS ETERNAL

hillsides of Judea, with the subtle music of the pipe quiver-
ing faintly in the twilight, one understands all the detail
of the twenty -third Psalm and the tenth chapter of St.
John's Gospel. At Hebron a few years ago a traveller,
noticing that the sheep-folds were mere c-shaped walls,
asked a shepherd why they had no doors. He answered
"I am the door"; meaning that at night he lay wrapped
in his cloak in the open entrance. At once one understands
in that saying what Christ meant when He used it. In the
fold of faith He has placed himself between those that are
His and all the world. No sheep can wander without pass-
ing Him, nor can any ravenous beast enter to devour but
over His body. Outside are the trying things, the tempt-
ing things and dangers ; within, all is peace and safety, and
that sweet and gentle familiarity in which ' ' He calleth his
own sheep by name."

Yet the text presents another aspect of shepherd life.
In the words "He leadeth them out" our faces are turned
towards the future and the wider world. In Old Testa-
ment imagery nothing is more suggestive than the fre-
quency with which the pastoral and the military ideas are
combined, as in that splendid picture of God leading the
hosts of Israel "out of Egypt like a flock." So it ever
must be. Faith, indeed, offers a safe fold to believers, but
its shelter and quiet are not meant to last. In spite of
the desire which has expressed itself in Roman Catholic
monasticism, and in individual reactions in Protestanism
toward the secluded life, the call is inexorable.

Far from the world, 0 Lord, I flee,

From strife and tumult far;
From scenes where Satan wages still,

His most successful war;

— every one can understand the tired fighter's longing
for rest, or the shrinking of a timid and sensitive spirit

THE CONCENTRATION OF IMPERIALISM 25

from a world with which it found itself incompetent to
grapple. Yet, surely, the scene where Satan is waging his
most successful war can hardly be the place to flee from !
Where else should the Christian be? Such sentiments are
well enough for an hour of weariness when relaxation and
rest are needed, but they can never be a typical state-
ment of the Christian life. It is vain for any healthy
Christian to imagine that it can be right for him to spend
his years in nursing his own soul, and such ideals of the
devotional life are but a refined form of self-indulgence.

Forth from the casemate, on the plain
Where honour has the world to gain:
Pour forth and bravely do your part,
Oh knights of the unshielded heart!
Forth and for ever forward! — out
From prudent turret and redoubt.

For the words of Jesus are resolute though they are gentle.

He is quite determined that his followers shall go out.

Life in this world is not meant to be a sheep-fold for the

faithful; it is an affair of sterner meaning, With action in

it and adventure.

This leads us into the public life of our times, with a call
to understand and take part in its movements. We must
go out as thinkers, with fearless exploration of new fields
of truth; as workers, to take up the unfinished tasks of
the world; as soldiers to fight the long-standing evils, and
to help the weak causes of the times ; as searchers who shall
seek until they find the lost. Every such career means
risk and adventure, a strain and stress of energy and an
uncertain future. We are flung back for comfort, not
upon the warmth and shelter of the fold, but upon the
character of the shepherd. It is a more wholesome and a
more bracing comfort.

The practical meaning of all this brings us at once to
the thought of our national life and work. The idea of
imperialism is in the air, and it is of first importance to

26 THINGS ETERNAL

attain to a right conception of the trne spirit of empire.
There is no need to touch here upon the politics of im-
perialism. For British people empire is a fact, and travel
is an instinct. Never since the days of Elizabethan ad-
venturers have we stayed at home. This is more or 1
true of every nation, but it is of course especially true of
countries whose extensive seaboard has forced upon them
the work and destiny of great maritime powers. "We find
ourselves heirs to large responsibilities which we dare not
and cannot surrender. It is these responsibilites which
force upon us the question, Who leadeth us out? If we
are to go forth to the ends of the earth, whom or what
shall our flag follow? Shall it be mammon, or the mere
instinct of wandering and adventure, or the dream of
glory, or Jesus Christ? President Roosevelt in a recent
speech said : "I have the keenest sympathy with the spread
of the English empire, and I have that sympathy because
and so long as the spread of that rule means benefit to the
people over whom it goes." It is ours to see to it that in
the management of empire we prove ourselves worthy of
such praise.

Our foreign mission enterprise is one way in which we
have sought to meet these responsibilities. Let us link
on the missionary with the imperial idea, for foreign
missions are but the baptism of imperialism with the Holy
Ghost. Their enterprise carries out in modern times the
great dreams of old — Augustine's City of God, Dante's
De Monorchia, More'a Utopia, Bacon's New Atlantis.
These dreams shall be fulfilled when the kingdoms of the
world are become the kingdom of our God and of his
Christ. In this light all narrower and poorer elemenis
fall away from the missionary idea. It is no longer a piou*
and romantic sentiment, nor a matter of individual evan-
gelism conducted in picturesque circumstances. It is a
great department of statesmanship, whose end is the eon-

THE CONSECRATION OF IMPERIALISM 27

quest of the world for the empire of Jesus Christ. At
home, the already submerged masses of the community are
sinking towards despair and revolution ; abroad, vast lands
are rising into what may well become a godless civilization,
more dangerous to the world than their ancient barbarisms.
Surely the Church of Christ is called at such a time, not
merely to individual heroism, but to statesmanship of the
highest order, with intelligent strategy and concerted ac-
tion. Surely our Christian life today is to be regarded
not as a sheep-fold but as a crusade.

But there is much British life abroad outside the mission
fields. As we follow in imagination the sweep of sunrise
across the world, and think of the British men whom it
awakens in every land, we cannot but ask again. AVho will
lead them out? The lands into which thev go lie open to
the kingdom of God. By our missionary enterprise we can
do much, but we can do more by the sons of the empire,
if their standards are high and their ideals Christian, in
politics, education, industn~, and commerce. Baptize these
with the Spirit of Christ, and you shall soon leaven the
world.

For the soldier and sailor far across the seas, the civil
servant in India, the merchant in Singapore, the Chartered
Company clerk in Africa, are missionaries, either of God
or of the devil. They are giving its moral tone to the
empire, and either blessing or cursing the world. And your
offices where bo3~s are learning business, your firesides from
which your sons and daughters go forth — there you are
fixing the principles and setting the tone which they will
carry with them to far-off lands. Every business man
among his clerks, every mother kneeling beside a British
cradle, may be determining the fate of nations, and setting
the time for the coming of God's kingdom in the ends of
the earth. If your children shall go forth, as most as-
suredly they shall, it is for you to make sure of this, that
Christ, and not the enemies of Christ, shall lead them out.

LEADERSHIP, FALSE AND TRUE

"He leadeth them out."— St. John x. 3.

All great ideas which relate to the national and public
welfare of mankind, return, when accepted conscientiously,
to the field of individual life, and appear there in simpler
forms. Our first responsibility is not for our country but
for ourselves. There are dangers lying in wait for us, and
sacred places unvisited as yet, for all of which we require
a leader. So the words apply to each one's daily exit
upon the world. As your door closes behind you in the
morning, and you go forth into a new day's moral and
spiritual adventure, who leadeth you out ?

The need of guidance is obvious, and all the wise know
and confess it. Experience has taught them that they are
never intellectually competent until they are learning from
a higher wisdom than their own, nor morally free until they
are obeying orders. The attempt to go unguided, ulti-
mately leads to wavering faith, mistaken judgments, ir-
resolute and tentative movement; and sooner or later in
most cases it leads to that discouragement and darkness
in which men stand still, or turn to retrace their steps.
The case could not be better nor more beautifully described
than it is in Dinah's sermon in Adam Bede: "As soon a^
we lay ourselves entirely at His feet we have light enough
given us to guide our own steps ; as the foot-soldier, who
hears nothing of the counsels that determine the course of

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LEADERSHIP, FALSE AND TRUE 29

the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word
of command which he must himself obey." There is a
wistfulness that George Eliot would have confessed to be
almost envious, in these words that come from her pen.
Every great spirit longs for leading.

But the situation is complicated by the fact that there
are other leaderships which offer themselves. First, there
is circumstance. Many people go strolling on through life
uncommitted to a course. We see them standing at the
cross-roads, and their course seems to be determined al-
most by the direction of the wind, so open are they to
casual influence. Any passing example, any pressure of
the crowd, is enough to lead them forward, this way or
that. Few things are sadder than the spectacle of this
helpless flock with its chance shepherding and its lack of
guiding principles. You ask them why they are doing
this or that, and they answer that they had heard it com-
mended, or that something they had read suggested it. It
never occurs to them to inquire whether these were com-
petent guides, in this age of such singularly irresponsible
guidance, when every novice is shouting out advice, and
we so seldom know whether our oracular literary guides
have found their own path or not. But our Christian
faith offers a very different guidance. Those who follow
it do so in freedom, with thoughtful and deliberate choice,
constrained not by the accidental hearing of an unknown
voice, but by love and trust For their Guide, unseen but
yet familiar, goes before them, and they know His voice
and follow Him.

Others take their direction from fashion, and the custom
of society. It seems a safe guide, and indeed the reason
why so many choose it is because it saves them the risk of
originality. Yet when we analyse it we find that in the
majority of cases no one can tell who started the fashion.
At some unknown time, some nonentity chanced to do

30 THINGS ETERNAL

something, and another nonentity copied him, and so the
custom arose. In their day, nobody took these nonentities
for authorities; yet all men follow them now, simply
because they are unknown. But the very note of Chris-
tianity is that it appears erratic to the outsider. It is
original if it is anything. The Christian is a new creation,
with new ways unlike those of others. ' ' To act like men, ' '
has, from the days of the prophets, been a reproach to the
people of God. The reason again is that they have a guide
unseen by the eyes of the rest. Copying Christ, and fol-
lowing in His footsteps, they are independent or the many
paths in which others wander.

But there are also those who boast that they find their
own way for themselves. Seeking no leading from above,
and regardless alike of the opinion and the example of
their fellows, they are a law unto themselves, obeying only
their own will. This vaunted self-will is largely a delusion.
Indeed there is generally less of will in it than in almost
any other type of character. They are really dominated
by the mood of the moment, and thrt mood runs back
into the past. Not even can our ov. ^ ^ast, ihe habitual
choices which largely determine our moods, account for it.
Heredity has also to be remembered; and it is probable
that those whose moods are most commanding owe most
to heredity. Some obscure ancestor repeats his life in
them; and all the time that they are priding themselves
upon their independence, they are really following docile
in the steps of the ancient dead, going after a spectral
guide who emerges upon them from the grave. The Chris-
tian's leadership is different. He follows not the call of
the dead in his blood, but the voice of the living in his
soul. He is not held by the dead hand of heredity to the
moral and spiritual ways of the past, but with sure foot-
steps he is moving away from the past into the future and
the will of Christ.

LEADERSHIP, FALSE AND TRUE 31

" Christus dux" — and life under that aspect is a great
thing indeed. Its course is set by one decisive choice, its
direction continued in imitation of His example and under
the prompting of His spirit. He leads us out of childhood
into youth, and. that is adolescence; out of ignorance into
knowledge, and that is education ; out of the old home with
its love and preparation, into the new home with its new
love and fulfilment of tasks, and that is the man's career;
out of familiar truth and thought into new intellectual
adventure, and that is the inevitable progress of thought
which no man needs to fear, so long as upon the title page
of all his books he writes "He leadeth them out." At
last he leadeth them out of this earthly life into the un-
known and wonderful and blessed land beyond — and that
is death, no more than the old leading through new fields.

We spoke before of the leadership of Christ as the true
imperialism, but in actual experience there come times
when we are constrained to ask, Is this empire or is it
exile? For we find ourselves led out of old security into
battle and+ dang ,t out of luxurious sheltered meadows
into paths that are hard and dull, out of small complacent
successes into new and strange defeats. The waste and
risk of it all sometimes terrify the spirits of those who
follow, and they cry out upon so bitter a leading.

It is well here to remember that in a great leader two
things are requisite. Clearness is indispensable, so far as
directions go, and the detail must be absolutely plain. And,
apart from ease or difficulty, there is not any reason here
to murmur. The leading may be bitter, full of sacrifice
and suffering at times, but at least we can understand our
orders. It may be hard, but it certainly will not be doubt-
ful to those who are absolutely willing to be led. And the
second thing requisite in great leadership is unintelligibility.
A French historian wisely says that no leader can well
dispense with what he calls "an unsoundable depth." If

32 THINGS ETERNAL

we were consulted, if we always understood, faith would
be superfluous; and, for some reason or other, it is abso-
lutely manifest that here it is appointed to man to live by
faith.

And, after all, there is nothing which really concerns
us but our guide. The fact of Christ matters, and the rest
is all included in it. And for ever more He justifies His
claim to leadership, to our full-hearted trust and implicit
following. There is a firmness in those quiet eyes of His
that reassures us. This is one who knows the way, and is
master of life and death. Happy indeed are those who
trust that leading through all changes of apparent good
and evil fortune, who anticipate the life of heaven by
learning here upon the earth to "follow the Lamb wither-
soever He goeth."

THE MAKING OF AN APOSTLE

(The Conversion of St. Paul)

St. Paul the Apostle. — Acts ix. 1-9.

This is the story of one of those profoundly significant
events in history, on which the whole complexion of future
thought and the course of future progress turn. St. Paul
is one of those Titanic figures of the past about whom
everything was on the large scale, both for himself and
tor the world. Intellectually, his views of truth have
become a fundamental statement of the creed of nineteen
centuries; practically, he is the master empire-builder of
the kingdom of God in the world. He laid hold upon the
largest conceptions of his time — the Hebrew religion and
the Eoman Empire — and he transformed them into the
Christian Church.

But it was not by the natural development of his genius
that he did this. Up to a certain moment in his career,
his powers were running to waste, spending themselves
in the most futile ways. At that moment something
occurred which revolutionized his whole life, an upheaval
of the very foundations of the man. The word ' conversion •
is sometimes so lightly used that many earnest people are
inclined to avoid it. It often means simply the memory
of an emotion, which has left the man without a master,
and without a task. But the greatness of this man's nature
ensured the thoroughness of the change in him. Such a
man's conversion is a tremendous affair.

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34 THINGS ETERNAL

It is worth our while in the first place to inquire into
the events which led up to that change. For it is evident
that it was sudden only in its climax, as we may gather
even from the words "kicking against the pricks." This
is borne out by the altogether excessive zeal of the volun-
tary inquisitor. When we think what humble folk these
early Christians were — slaves, women who earned their
livelihood by trade, odds and ends of the below-stairs life
of the great Empire — and when we remember how he
rushed from house to house after them, and how everything
was at its harshest and most violent, we can see the un-
naturalness of it all. No one likes this sort of work for its
own sake, and this fiery crusade, self-imposed, is certainly
suspicious.

Who lights the faggot ?
Not the full faith; no, but the lurking doubt.

On the other hand, we know from himself that he had
already been struck tame by the discovery of the sinfulness
of coveting, and the inward nature of morality. Pharisaic
Judaism could do nothing to help him in that, but it was
a first principle of Jesus' teaching. And there was much
else in the new faith that must have strongly attracted
him. The character of Jesus, and of His followers, was
after all inexplicably beautiful, whatever one might think
about their principles. Those women with the Madonna-
like faces, those young men whose eyes were full of spiritual
light— undoubtedly they had some secret of gladness and
of serenity hidden from the ancient world. Thus he was
already more or less consciously dissatisfied with Judaism
and tempted towards Christianity.

Yet such a change meant too much for him to make it
possible that he should lightly capitulate. On the one
hand, it was unthinkable to his proud spirit that simple
people like the Christians had been right, while he and all

THE MAKING OF AN APOSTLE 35

thinkers whom he respected had been wrong. And then,
if by any chance it should be true, the ghastly alternative
was that he and his friends had seen their own Messiah,
and crucified Him. No wonder that he felt "the anguish
of a constant misgiving." It was the clash of two con-
sciences within him. It was impossible to go on for long
with this hunting of such small and defenceless game
without a pang; and yet a sorer pang threatened him
if for a moment he admitted the possibility of his nation's
crime, and the falsehood of her fixed convictions.

It was characteristic or the man to seek to settle the con-
flict by a blind and furious dash for one side. But the
journey gave him much enforced leisure when he was not
in a mood that could bear to be still. Whatever route he
chose he could not escape daily memories of Jesus and His
doings. He was no longer backed by public opinion, and
the solitary ride only gave freer course to his uncertain
thoughts. By the time he had drawn near to Damascus,
he was evidently growing feverish. No eastern travels at
high noon except upon compulsion. Then in the still hot
air, while the merciless sun beat on him and his unwilling
and sullen companions, the city burst upon his view. There
are some places where nature's beauty shames the crimes
of man : and as he thought upon his helpless victims among
those homes and gardens, a fierce reaction was inevitable.
And all this for an uncertainty! There are truths for
which we would not only die, but even kill. But such
truths must be certainties indeed.

There is no need for curious speculation as to what hap-
pened then. It was then that Paul met Jesus and felt the
attack of light upon his heart and conscience, and heard
certain plain questions that must find definite and imme-
diate answer.

Yet it is to the questions that Paul asked that day that
we turn with even deeper interest. The first of them was,

36 THINGS ETERNAL

"Who art Thou, Lord?" He had felt before that all this
persecution, this harrying of people at once so blameless
and so inflexible, was far too cheap and easy a solution.
Behind the new faith lay some mysterious power, that was
good and not evil, associated with the name of Jesus. But
though he had often before asked the question who Jesus
was, yet it had been prejudice which asked it, while now
it was conscience. He had been aggravated by the power
of the dead Nazarene who thwarted him at every turn.
Who was he, this haunting ghost, this troubler of his times?
But now irritation has given place to shame, and conscience
asks, Who art Thou, Lord? That change from prejudice
to conscience was one point in which his question sets the
type for such questions for ever.

Auother is, that he asked it of Jesus himself. He had
formerly asked it of the Rabbis of his day, and now he
might have inquired of the Apostles. But he was done with
the Rabbis now, and he expressly tells us that it was three
years before he met the Apostles. It is this that explains
his power. His truth was not a doctrine learned up by
study; it was his direct experience, his first-hand knowledge
of Jesus Christ. And here also he sets a lasting type. The
ultimate source of authority in Christian faith can never
be either the Church or the Bible. These themselves are
but the guardian and the record of a revelation made by
God to the spirit of man. And a similarly direct revelation
must give to each believer his fundamental spiritual con-
victions. Each must ask his great question for himself,
and for himself find answer.

Paul's second question is practical, "What wouldst Thou
have me to do?" As the former sets us beside the springs
of his thought, so this reveals the sources of his activity
For such a man as Paul, conversion without commission
would have been a sham and therefore an impossibility.
But the great point to notice is that it was as a commission

THE MAKING OF AN APOSTLE 37

that he received his lifework, and in that light that he
always regarded it. Before this event, he had set himself
his tasks, and no one could deny the earnestness with whicli
he performed them. Like many another strenuous man
whose task is self-appointed, the main part of his life-
work had come to be destructive. He was occupied rather
in opposing other people than in doing service to the
world. Such destructive energy is generally to be dis-
trusted when it claims a divine inspiration. There is too
much of untamed human nature in it; it is the natural
work for the natural man. "When a man receives a com-
mission from Jesus Christ, it is to proclaim some positive
gospel rather than to deny the gospel of another. And
that change from self-will to the will of Christ broke this
man's pride. The whole stress was shifted from Paul to
Jesus, and he who had once been so sure of himself, now
treasured his dependence on his Master as the choicest
thing in life. He had capitulated without reservation, and
only sought now to receive His orders. For him to live
was Christ.

THOUGHT AND ACTION

St. Paul's retrospect. — Acts xxvi. 19.
St. Paul is now looking back from near the end of his

career to the day of his great change. From that day to

this his life had been summed up in the two words, vision

and obedience. The vision of Jesus had expanded into

the theology and religion of his Epistles; the commission

had already resulted in the establishment of Christianity

along the main lines of the Roman Empire. And, because,

not for Paul only, but for all of us, loyalty to vision is the

truest expression of the life we fain would lead, we shall

think what that implies.

The first apparent view of any life is presented by its
output of deeds. The Christian life is not that of vision-
aries, it is a life of action. The first thought of those who
live it day by day is something immediately to be done.
It is this practical quality of the Christan life which keeps
it both healthy and honourable. For the soul as for the
nation, service is the highest honour. A right man's view
of his profession can never be merely that it is a means
of gain, but that it is a chance for service; and the same
thing is true of even our most intimate and private actions.

Yet this cannot be all. Every one remembers Langland's
immortal figure of Haukyn the active man, who has not
time to clean his coat. Mephistopheles is Goethe's great
incarnation of fierce and clever action wholly without con-

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TOUGHT AND ACTION 39

templation. And these are but extreme forms of what
is seen around us every day. Some busy ones have never
seen any vision at all, and these come in time to swell the
long pathetic line of the ranks of the dispirited. For la-
bour without light cannot permanently inspire. It grows
meaningless, and sinks at last to deep and sometimes cynical
discouragement. Others have seen, but there spiritual light
has died out. They are committeed by that former vision
to a course, and they have to see it through. Now they are
but poor dumb plodders, cheerlessly continuing this blun-
dering night work, in the attempt at duty which they
cannot understand.

The mystery of this failure is very deep. The conception
of life as action seems in every way so sound and healthy
that we stand aghast when we see in such instances "a
man's loss come to him from his gain." But the explan-
ation is not difficult to find. St. Paul had no magic secret
that kept labour sweet to him; he had only vision and
obedience. But he had them in that order — vision first,
and obedience following from it. It is not mere action
that is the secret of a healthy life, but action performed in
loyalty to something we have seen. All the effective activi-
ties of men around us are just processes for turning
thought into action — one's own thought, or the thought of
others. In every art and craft and enthusiasm the supreme
secret of mastery is to know what you are doing. Archi-
tecture is simply thought which has expressed itself in
stone, or else it is sheer abomination. True healing comes
not from routine prescription, but finds its sources deep
among the springs of the physician's heart and imagination
and experience. Social reform is either the most useless
dilettantism, or it is the creation of a new earth upon the
lines of a pattern already clearly seen. So it is with all
good work. It may be of many various kinds and there
may be very many different ways of doing it, but this is

40 THINGS ETERNAL

characteristic of them all, that a man is carrying out into
deed what he has seen in his mind. Vision ever goes before
action, and true action is loyalty to vision.

In a still wider application the same principle is true, for
the inward thought invariable affects the outward life and
expresses itself sooner or later there. Not that one neces-
sarily carries out into deeds all one's cherished thoughts.
Dr. Bain affirms the ' ' possibility of leading a life of imag-
ination wholly distinct from the life of action"; and Mr.
Leckie says that "a course may be continually pursued in
imagination without leading to corresponding actions."
This is undoubtedly true, but it is a thoroughly dangerous
fact. On the one hand, it produces dreamers whose dreams
are so far apart from their conduct as to rank them among
the hypocrites. On the other hand, if the dreaming be bad,
the danger is very great that in times of temptation the
man will fall. For the most part, in temptation, little
depends upon the will at the moment; we stand or fall
according to our habitual thoughts, which either hold us
back or predispose us then. And apart from that, there
can be no doubt that there goes out from every life upon
those around it, a constant and subtle influence which is
determined almost wholly by the inner life of vision — the
life of imagination and thought. Thoreau has wisely said :
"If ever I did a man good ... it was something excep-
tional and insignificant compared with the good or evil I
am constantly doing by being what I am." A man's
atmosphere and spirit are always more powerful influences
than his deeds and words.

Thus it is not suurprising that the matter on which Chris-
tianity lays most stress is vision. The thoughts and imag-
inations of the heart ; a taste for fine and clean things, and
an instinctive shrinking from their opposites; above all a
clear conception of Jesus Christ and a definitely accepted
relation between the soul and Him — these are the Christian

THOUGHT AND ACTION 41

fundamentals. Christianity has vindicated the rights of
the imagination on its own account, apart from its outward
expression; and insisted that a man may lose his honour
and respectability there, without going farther afield.
Christ amazed his contemporaries by the value He set upon
the life of vision : He shifted the centre of attention from
outward respectability to inward seeing and light.

Christianity finds men filling their minds with sordid
thoughts or foul imaginations; others, like the prophet's
servant, it finds seeing only enemies — impossibilities, dan-
gers, anxieties, discouragements, misunderstandings, diffi-
culties. Both alike are blind, and to both alike Christ's
Gospel comes as daylight. The wholesome world is all about
us, plain and normal and quiet. The sun is in the heavens,
and in his light we see light clearly. Looking unto Jesus
and walking in His light, we are no longer distracted by
the will-o'-the-wisps of earth-bound lusts, the swinging
lanterns of the opinions of others, or the poor candle of
our own mere sense of duty. Action becomes at once sure
of itself and glad when it is illuminated by vision. There
is all the difference in the world between doing that which
we have seen in Jesus Christ, and blindly doing the best
we can.

LOYALTY TO VISION

St. Paul's retrospect. — Acts xxvi. 19.

St. Pauls 's career as a Christian began in two supreme
events — a vision and a commission. To the end he goes
back to them, and traces their effect upon his future,
telling and retelling the story of his conversion. Yet no
reader of his writings can fail to see that vision blends
and alternates with action throughout his course. The
Epistles are constantly turning from marvelous lights of
revelation to most practical directions for living. Thus
from him we learn loyalty both to past and present light.

1. Loyalty to past vision. The management of thoughts
and swift imaginations is proverbially difficult, and there
is much disloyalty to the visions of the past. It is to be
seen in literature, and it is to be seen in speech and life;
and few things are sadder than to watch the degenera-
tion of lives whose course moves from light to darkness

Some are distracted by the fascinating and various spec-
tacle of the world; others are seduced by the temptations
of gain and popular applause. It is all too easy to live
by a light lower than one's highest; and the lights of
life go out one by one as we descend.

"We have all caught sight, at one time or other, of high
ideals, and many of us can remember a time when we saw
Christ in His beauty. " Loyalty to such vision is the
chief source of strength and satisfaction in a man's life."

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LOYALTY TO VISION 43

The light of life is necessarily fluctuating. Apart from
anything for which we are responsible, we are so con-
stituted as to live in a constant change and flux both of
moods and of intellectual and spiritual powers. Such
changes depend on bodily health, surrounding circum-
stances, and countless other causes which we cannot wholly
command. Accordingly it will often happen that we have
to remember what we have once seen, and to carry out
the resolutions which then we formed. These resolutions
are no longer glowing in the light of rece/it vision. They
are cold and dead sometimes, and we no longer feel their
urgency. We may even be tempted to think that we exag-
gerated the worth and necessity of them, and to say to
ourselves that the effort is not worth while. Of course
all this is still more dangerous when our own backsliding
has brought about the change of mood.

In such an hour idleness is fatal. If we cannot see to
do the highest things, let us at least do something. "If
the energy, the clearness, the power of intuition is flag-
ging in us, if we cannot do our best work, still let us do
what we can — for we can always do something. ... if
not vivid and spiritual work, then the plain needful drudg-
ery.'' But besides that there is often the necessity for
dogged perseverence in a course whose value we can no
longer see. If it seem irrational, then we must leave
reason alone and for the time being be merely obstinate.

. . . Tasks in hours of insight willed,
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.

Nay, they sometimes must be so fulfilled. It is part of
loyalty to say to our tempted and wavering spirits that
"Said word is thrall," and to go in the dark, faithful
to the tasks we set ourselves in the light.

2. Loyalty to present vision. — The grim and cheerless
course we have just described is not, however, the normal

44 THINGS ETERNAL

way of Christian living. There is a snare in trusting to
the past too much, and striving to be faithful to brilliant
spiritual experiences which are no longer any more than
memories. The Christian ideal is loyalty to a vision con-
stantly seen at the time of action. It may be necessary
sometimes to fight to-day's battle by the light of other
days, but as a rule of life that is unsatisfactory and in-
sufficient. It is good to remember God's grace in the past,
and to recall His promises for the future, but it is better
to have some clear vision at the hour. As Constantine
saw the cross on the field of battle, so we should see our
spiritual help and backing at the time of our practical
need.

Nor is this so hopeless a matter as perhaps it seems.
It is not a peculiar facult3T preserved only by those whose
natural powers of imagination are great, or whose genius
for the spiritual is exceptional. Religion is for all sorts
and conditions of men, and not for a favoured few; it
is for every day of a man's life, and not for red-letter
days only. The power of vision may be increased or les-
sened, like any other of our powers. Such dark loyalty as
we have already described, when a man is obstinately faith-
ful to an ideal which for the moment has ceased to attract
him, will certainly lead towards a renewal of that vision.
"Alacrity and readiness to discern spiritual things may
be cultivated"; and he who puts forth his energy and
lives to the full stretch of his spiritual powers, will find
that "with every advance in spiritual growth come greater
distinctness of vision, finer susceptibility to spiritual sug-
gestions, an increase power of reading spiritual signs and
indications, and a firmer hold on spiritual realities."

The conditions of such recovery and increase of vision
are mainly three. Purity is of course essential, and if
evil thoughts have blurred the vision, these must be got
rid of. Not that any direct attack will expel them ; often

LOYALTY TO VISION 45

the very effort and attention employed in combating them
seem to increase their vividness. But the occupation of
the mind with healthy interests will drive them out to make
room for better company. And the vision is nearer to
those who live keenly, with delight in the wholesome things
that work and play offer them, than to those who stand
aloof and seek for light by ascetic withdrawal. Peace also
is essential. Sometimes, indeed, the vision flashes upon
the battle-field, but that is an act of God for which we
can make little arrangement. But when life is crowded
with work and worry it is sometimes possible to "have
courage to rest, ' ' and it is not only the pure heart that sees
God, but also the quiet heart. And patience is often de-
manded if we would see — the patient attendance upon
that which is fine and good. For a time Christ may seem
uninteresting and His ideals dull. But in reality they
are the very splendour of God, and the soul that seeks
shall find. There are stars so distant that no eye can see
them, yet the photographic telescope pointed steadily to
that field of darkness where they hide, receives their in-
finitesimal shafts of light, and their images are seen upon
the plate. So, though the night be dark, the soul that
turns away from lower things and resolutely points toward
Christ, will yet see the image of the King in His beauty,
and behold a land that is very far off.

CHRIST'S LESSONS IN PRAYER

"Lord, teach us to pray." — Luke xi, 1.

The disciples had all prayed many times, and yet they
came to Jesus with this request. For they were not satis-
fied with their praying. Their hearts were full of long-
ings for which they could not find utterance, and the
silence in which they dwelt oppressed them. For answer,
Jesus began by teaching them how not to pray. It may
well be, that with such bad examples of devotion in their
synagogues and streets, the very habits of devotion which
they had formed were hampering them. The request itself
may give a hint of this, as if prayer were an art which
might be taught by rules. The Pharisees were past masters
in the art of prayer, but, in Jesus' sense, they knew not
how to pray at all. For prayer is not an art but a spirit,
and when it has become an art it has ceased to be prayer.

The immediate answer of Jesus was the Lord's Prayer,
and its first words gave them all they had a^ed. "Our
Father' ' — when He had said that He had taught them to
pray. For the whole secret of prayer is the artless child-
like spirit, with its simplicity, confidence, and love.

In the first petitions He guards prayer from the sel-
fishness which is a peculiar danger of the devotional life.
There is a kind of devotion which is so secretive as to give
almost a suggestion of something illicit, and against that
subtle error His prayer warns them. True, He told them

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CHRIST'S LESSONS IN PRAYER 47

to pray in secret behind closed doors. But having shut
the door of their chamber they are to open the door of
their heart to their fellow-men in remembrance and sym-
pathy. " Hallowed be Thy name" — and with these words
we feel ourselves at once in the great congregation of
those that worship. A vast multitude, under the shelter
of the eternal wings, is praying along with us, and we
are one with them in the communion of the saints. * ' Thy
kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven' '
— the words reveal the multitude of those that labour.
They sound the call of the morning, and the hosts of work-
ers go forth to their daily toil, as we, too, must go. Through
the honest work of the world the kingdom of God is com-
ing on the earth, and in heaven they are working too, at
tasks more worthy. So in all this part of it, the prayer
breathes the wholesome spirit of the common life of man.
"We are out among our fellows, taking part in the mani-
fold worship and labour of the world.

The second part is occupied with the two ideas of bread
*ind sin. The daily bread tells of the whole needs of the
bodily life. If a man wakes hungry, let him tell God
the thought that has thus come first. Here is a day to be
lived through and labour waiting to be done , and the man
lifts his heart to God for the necessary support which will
carry him through it. But the next thought is of yester-
day. Bread was given them, and the strength it brought
was used for sinning. The deep shame of that betrayal
needs forgiveness ; and the necessary consequence is plain,
that the forgiven must forgive. But this day must be
lived out, and yesterday's failure has warned us of its
danger. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil" — was Jesus thinking then of His own first temp-
tation, the temptation of bread, we wonder? It may well
have been so, and there are few of us who will not at once
understand His far-reaching sympathy with us in this

48 THINGS ETERNAL

dangerous life of ours, when we hear Him teach us to pray
for bread without temptation.

The Lord's Prayer was not given as a ritual or formula
of prayer to be superstitiously repeated. It was not even
given as in any exhaustive sense a " model" prayer, for
much is omitted from it which we shall often need to
ask. It is rather fundamental than complete, setting for
us on the one hand the broad and generous spirit of sym-
pathy with our fellows and their life, without which de-
votion tends to self-indulgence; and on the other hand
selecting the elementary needs of men, bread for the body
and purity for the soul.

That was his immediate answer, but he gave them two
other answers to their request. His example taught them
to pray. As they followed Him, they saw that He, who
apparently needed least, yet prayed most of all men. Con-
stantly He retired to pray upon the mountains, and all
the skylines of Palestine were marked in their memory
with spots where He knelt in prayer. While they were
toiling, and as they lay down to rest after a toilsome day,
they would many a time remember that He was praying
for them then. And that remembrance must have been
at once a conscience and a safeguard. It was a conscience,
for if he must pray, so surely far more must they ; and the
thought of His prayerfulness would often drag them to
their knees when the flesh was weak and the spirit weary.
But it was also a safeguard. The Syrians speak of the
lamps of hermits shining through the night from far seen
hill-side caves, as " hands folded in prayer." So the re-
membrance of the Master, withdrawn but not forgetting
them, must often have made the day feel safe, and taken
its terror from the darkness. There could be no better
defence than the prayers of Jesus.

But the greatest answer of all which Jesus gave to that
request lay in the simple fact that He was Himself. There

CHRIST'S LESSONS IN PRAYER 49

are some of our friends whose very presence is an influ-
ence upon us towards holy things. In their company we
feel our souls drawn nearer to God, and we desire to pray.
In the well-known picture of Satan watching the sleep of
Christ, there is something wistful in the expression and
attitude of the enemy, as if even over the foulest heart
the Saviour has cast His spell. And the disciples found
that as they lived with Jesus they turned instinctively
toward God. Every hour of His company taught them
to pray. He brought them to their best, and awakened
all their slumbering desires after God and holiness.

All these answers to the disciples' request remain. The
Lord 's Prayer is upon our lips, with its wide and generous
spirit, and its petitions for fundamental needs. His own
prayers are still for us also a conscience and a defence.
But most of all, by being what He is, He lifts the heart
of the world for ever towards its God. No one can face
the thought of Jesus without aspiring towards better
things. To remember Him is to seek after God.

PREPARATION FOR THE BEST

(First Sunday in Lent)

"A people prepared for the Lord." — Luke i. 17.

When we speak of preparing ourselves for the future, we
commonly think of some coming evil. Life is, in our
familiar and apposite metaphor, a campaign; and " it is
usual in war for the guns and the sentinels always to face
towards the enemy however far off he may be." There
is an instinctive sense of enemies in this mortal life of
ours, and every day looks forward more or less anxiously
to its to-morrow. Men have so generally acknowledged this
state of matters that there are few vaunts which have
a more honourable sound to our ears than the old Latin
one in utrumque paratus. Yet the phrase is sad. Its
•readiness for either fate suggests alertness, but has a cer-
tain desolate suggestion also : it acknowledges the possibil-
ity of the better chance, but it somehow seems to expect the
worse.

So it comes to pass that we are far more seldom ready
for the better than for the worse event. Preparedness for
the best things is rare, because we do not realize that they
need preparation, and concentrate our attention in steel-
ing ourselves against possible adversity. By so doing we
miss many of life's highest opportunities, and we find our

gain turn to loss. Many a man is prepared for misfortune

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PREPARATION FOR THE BEST 51

but not for prosperity. Defeat would have found him
brave and patient, victory makes him overbearing and sel-
fish. Loss would have drawn out his nobler qualities of
industry and determination; wealth corrupts him with
selfishness and luxurious indulgence and display.

The same thing happens in religion. Many a Parsifal
is able to combat and unhorse his enemy, and yet is stupe-
fied and blunders irretrievably when he sees the vision of
the Holy Grail. Many an adventurer like Jacob looks
back ruefully upon an hour of far-reaching promise and
spiritual opportunity, saying " Surely God was in this
place and I knew it not." The world, in the beginning of
the first century, was adjusting itself to Augustus as best
it might; but when Christ came, the world knew Him
not. We are often prepared to meet the devil: to meet
our God we are not prepared.

In the Church Year the great events of the Christian
story group themselves into cluster from Palm Sunday
to Whitsunday, breaking the routine of the daily life with
the splendid memories of Christ's passion and resurrec-
tion and the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is fitting that
before this season the Church should have set apart a prior
season of special preparation. It is true that the coming
of the Lord is not confined to any set occasions, and that
the only true preparation for it is the quiet, constant
daily preparation. Thomas a Kempis wisely says: "He
that prepareth not himself, except only when a festival
draweth near, or when custom compelleth him thereunto,
shall to often be unprepared." Yet it is wise to let the
season remind us yearly of our holiest things, and un-
doubtedly those who by the exercise of recollection have
prepared themselves, are most likely to see and recognize
the Lord when they meet Him.

Tennyson's lines are singularly appropriate to such a
season : —

52 THINGS ETERNAL

How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thought would hold

An hour's communion with the dead.

No words could more exhaustively express their thought.
But they are still more appropriate to a season of com-
munion with the Living God, as He is revealed in the events
which the Church will soon be commemorating.

First, there is the preparation of the purification of
the heart. All meditation leads that way at once. There
is much to be forgiven before we can hope to understand
and triumph, and there is much also to be changed. It is
only the pure in heart who can by any means see God, and
the evil habits of thought, imagination, and desire must
be searched out and put way. What softness and self-
indulgence, what malice and resentment, what harshness
and cruelt}^ still linger in us all! How unwilling we are
to understand the mind of Christ ; how selfish and greedy
of pleasure, how determined in our demand for our own
way. But here is a great opportunity and call to return
back to the simplicity of little children, to cast ourselves
at the outset before the Cross, and eagerly to consent to
the cleansing fires of conscience and the love of Christ.

But there is also much to understand, and communion
with God along the channels of the central beliefs of
Christendom implies much reflection. The conventionali-
ties of daily life have put our thoughts out of proportion
and perspective. Its facile acquiescences have dulled our
power of judging and distinguishing. Its false emphasis
has subverted our sense of truth. Its unwholesome moods
have poisoned our views of many things. It fuss and
crowding have distracted and confused us. Minds in such
a condition are in no sense competent for the highest
thoughts. It requires a season of aloofness, of as much

PREPARATION FOR THE BEST 53

silence and peace as life will allow, and of honest and
laborious thinking and recollection of the scattered facul-
ties, before we are fit to meet our God in communion. There
is nothing which the present generation needs so much
as discipline of the mind for serious thinking. The dim-
ness of faith, and the consequent feebleness of religious
life, are to be cured mainly by studying afresh the thoughts
of really great thinkers, and by persistently setting the
attention and holding it set in the direction of the central
truths.

But there is also necessary the boldness of divine affec-
tions. We all admit that the world is, one way or another,
too much with us. Preparation, therefore, must include
the practice of looking beyond the world, and carrying up
our thoughts and feelings to God himself. But it requires
daring to train our eyes on the Divine, and none but the
courageous in heart will succeed in doing it. For the
affections that are to find God in Christ must travel along
the two lines of our worst and of our best.

Let us offer to Him our worst, and dare to face the
worst that we may offer it, crying to Him from the depths.
It is a sorry offering, of the wreckage of broken resolutions
and desires that have been in the slime of earthliness, and
love that has wandered and come half-heartedly back to
faithfulness to Him. This is, indeed, the only place where
such an offering has any value set upon it. No other than
God would accept such things, and it requires a courageous
faith to bring them. Yet the courage will be abundantly
rewarded. There is no aspect of the glory of the Lord
so brilliant as the glory of God the Saviour seen from
the depths of shame. There is no beauty that can compare
with the beauty of Christ seen through tears of penitence.

And no less courage is demanded for the offering of
our best to God. In the discouragement of contrition
we are apt to disbelieve in any loftiness or greatness that

54 THINGS ETERNAL

we may ever have seen in life. Yet life is good and great
in spite of us and our failure, and we have not surrendered
our heritage in its nobilities. However far we have come
short of realizing it, the ideal self still floats before our
aspirations, and calls us upward. Let us offer to God the
manhood we would fain achieve, the intermittent but genu-
ine longings after holy things, the attempts to do right and
play the man in difficult circumstances.

In a word, let us face and fully recognize both our weak-
ness and our strength, our worst and our best. Let us
bring them both, a strange offering of contrasts, to His
feet; that, in our communion with Him, His power and
His love may go out upon them both, and recreate us after
His image.

THE PREPARATION OF WORDS

(Second Sunday in Lent)

"Take with you words." — Hosea xiv. 2.

This text at first sight appears startlingly defective as a
guide to men who would approach their God. Micah speaks
otherwise — ''What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?" In the fifty-eight chapter of Isaiah we have a still
more elaborate demand for various services toward the
unfortunate, as the only terms on which God will consent
to man's approach. But here we read, Take with you —
words !

Our heart sinks as we read it. The world is all deaf
and stupefied with speaking. "It is the word too much
which wrecks the majority of human schemes." We know
too well the futility of language to express the deepest
things. Words are so constantly misunderstood, and furth-
er words of explanation are so useless to remove the mis-
understandings. Especially is this true of religion, where
language has been one of the worst enemies of faith, cramp-
ing, falsifying, and embittering man's thoughts of God.
Silence is not only "the fortress of the strong," it is often
the best language of the devout. What would the Apostle
James say to this, with his scathing sarcasm against those
who gave words where deeds were required? Nay, what
did the Master say concerning those who imagined they
would be heard for their much speaking?

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56 THINGS ETERNAL

And yet what an emancipation is here! The nation
was anxious in those days before the fall of Samaria.
Distracted people were turning to idols, to the ritual of
sacrifice, to the help of puppet-kings, to alliances with As-
syria and with Egypt. The greedy gods of the heathen
were demanding offerings of gold, and hideous deaths of
children; and superstitious Israelites were thinking that
Jehovah, too, must be appeased in some such costly fashion.
Words! — by their very worthlessness they mark the sub-
lime contrast between this God and all other gods. This
is the proclamation of free grace, long before the coming
of Jesus. Already the prophet 's heart was crying, * ' Noth-
ing in my hands I bring." The whole Gospel of Christ is
here, and the marrow of Reformation theology. He who
brings only words, if they be right ones, has performed
the great act of faith. "For the Lord," as Thomas a
Kempis says, "bestoweth His blessings there where He
findeth His vessels empty. ' '

Men are to-day wondering what it is to be a Christian,
and asking anxiously what it is that God really wants from
them. This is all that He requires, and most people,
thinking that some great thing is wanted, bring too much.
He wants words, and to consent to that demand is the
only way in which we can show a whole-hearted trust in
His generous and fatherly love. There are words, which,
if we could but find and speak them, would wholly satisfy
the demand of God. Ah, those unfound, unspoken words
of faith and penitence! the whole chance of our religious
life lies in them. So the saying of the prophet stirs up our
wistfulness and curiosity about that hidden language, and
we reverse the familiar text and cry, "I would speak what
God the Lord will hear."

In one aspect the command suggests something in the
nature of a liturgy. Though the words may be our own,
yet they are to be " taken with us." Words are all that

THE PREPARATION OF WORDS 57

are asked for, yet evidently they are to be choice words,
the best that we Can bring.

No one will dispute the value of the great liturgies, in
which worship and aspiration have clothed themselves ac-
cording to their nature in fitting language. The Psalter,
the liturgies of the Eastern and Western Churches, of the
Church of England, of John Knox, have guided, dignified,
and made effective the worship of saints for two thousand
years. They admonish us as to carefulness in the expres-
sion of our devotions, for those liturgies are the living
needs of men worthily expressed. The only way to de-
fend ourselves against bad ways of expression is to cultivate
good ones 3arei'ully. We are in danger of slovenliness and
irreverence for want of thoughtful preparation.

Nor is it mere decency that is demanded. Our best
thought, our most beautiful imagination, should have place
in the ordered and chastened utterance. Above all, there
is need for definiteness of ideas, and clearness in their ex-
pression. The words must not distract us, tempting us
to linger on their beauty or to depreciate the value of
speech by exaggeration, or to lose their meaning by multi-
plying them. A few words will usually suffice, but let us
be sure that we know what they mean. We have all often
uttered meaningless generalities like the requst that God
would " bless" us. Such prayers led to nothing, and that
was not surprising. No little child asks his father to bless
him. He knows what he wants and he asks for that. So
let us first take time to say to our own souls what we have
to say to God, that our prayers may be intelligible speech,
and not vain repetition.

Thus, while the first impression of the text is liturgical,
the very fact that clearness is demanded leads us away
from formality in ritual. The words desired cannot be
a formula that excludes other expression. Principal G.
A. Smith, in a very striking passage, contrasts the prayer

58 THINGS ETERNAL

of Hosea xiv, with that of Hosea vi. The latter, for all its
beauty, is a rejected prayer. It is too artistic, too con-
sciously laboured, not sufficiently spontaneous. But this
prayer rings true, and it is answered. It is not the com-
position of a poet, but the outpouring of a conscience and
a heart.

That is the one great rule of guidance — say what you
have to say. Do not exaggerate your experience, nor pose
before your God, nor try to put yourself into a religious
attitude. Speak what words are natural and true, and no
others. Say that you are glad, and life is good and full
of love; or say, "Thy ways seem cruel to me, and the
pressure of Thy hand too hard." Say "Oh Lord, I love
Thee, yet I love Thee not"; "Lord, I believe, help Thou
mine unbelief." Say, if you must, "Except I see in His
hands the print of the nails, I will not believe." It may
be daring, it may be very foolish, but if it be the true
thing, say what you have to say. For God knows how
to deal with honest speech; and words truly spoken will
take on their real meaning, which the speaker may not
know, in His understanding.

Some of your words will be silenced, doubtless, for we
know not what we should pray for as we ought. Others
will be "punctuated and made sense of," finding their
true meaning. Others will be accepted and answered as
they stand. And new words will be given you. "Christ
. . . had the power of not merely saying beautiful things
Himself, but of making other people say beautiful things
to Him." Every honest prayer teaches us to pray better
and more wisely. For God, listening in compassion to the
broken voices of men, not only tolerates the singing, but
puts a new song in their mouth.

THE POWER OF WORDS

Take with you words." — Hosea xiv. 2.

"Words are often supposed to be futile things, and con-
trasted with deeds. It was Carlyle who identified the two.
1 ' Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-loving, ever-
working universe"; and indeed if they be genuine expres-
sions of truth, they are never futile, but always charged
with vital energy. Dr. Denney has said regarding St.
Paul's exhortation, "comfort one another with these
words'' that here the Apostle is balancing the greatest
sorrow of life against words, but then they are words of
eternal life. Even the words which a man may speak are
often of the highest value. So valuable are they that a
man may set up his barrier of words between himself and
such tremendous forces as the power of the grave and
the terrors of conscience. Such words are not the alterna-
tive to character but the expression of character ; nay, they
are part of what forms character and fixes it.

Three things are manifest as to the power of words in
our religious experience.

1. What they imply — a view of intercourse with God. —
Hosea has idolatry in mind as he writes this chapter, and
the superstitious ritual of Israel's temple-worship. The
two had this in common that they were founded on a
non-rational conception of worship. The worshipper had
in neither case any clear idea of the meaning of the service

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60 m THINGS ETERNAL

lie performed. Indeed it was characteristic of Semitic
thought that such ideas were not necessary in the least.
"What was required was the performance of certain acts and
the giving of certain offerings. "Why these were required,
who could tell? It was simply part of the accepted tra-
dition that such things should be done; and once per-
formed, there was the end of the matter. Further ques-
tioning was undesirable, and perhaps even profane. The
god who could prescribe and accept such worship was,
so far as his intercourse with men went, essentially irra-
tional. Either he was incapable of rational intercourse,
a mere mass of prejudices backed by supernatural powers ;
or he was unwilling for it, holding himself apart from his
creatures in a haughty superiority which demanded hom-
age, but despised them too thoroughly to be further in-
terested in their affairs.

But here was a new conception of God. He cared not
for mysteries but for meanings. He called them back from
formalities to the simplicity and reality of speech. He
wanted not to hear them repeating formulae, but saying
what they had to say. "When men worship God, rational
beings are in communion, and worship is the converse of
mind with mind. This is a God who can be spoken with,
and from whom men may count on an intelligent and
patient hearing. "With such a God simplicity and sincerity
are easy, for we are sure of being understood. Therefore
awe must not rob us of trust and of directness. For our
worship we should indeed prepare ourselves by selecting
our choicest thoughts; but we should bring to God also
our worst and most deplorable, nay even our most casual
and unimportant. For this is not a recitation, it is an
intercourse.

2. What words reveal — the truth about oneself. — It is
for want of bringing our secret life to expression that we
are so often self -deceived. All idol-worshippers and mere

THE POWER OF WORDS 61

performers of a religious office, come back from the de-
votions with their illusions undispelled. Those who would
leave their illusions behind them must take with them
words. For it is our own words that we have to bring, the
words that have first been "spoken in the inner man."

Thus speech is an ordeal, and the command of the text
implies self-examination. What words shall we take?
What have we to bring? The answer will reveal what
words are natural to us, and so will be test of our growth
or declension in the life of the spirit. When we try to
state to ourselves what we are and what we desire most, we
shall find startling revelations. Many states of mind are
tolerable only until they are plainly and definitely ex-
pressed. The expression will reveal the wealth or poverty
of what we have to say, of what our hearts want to say,
and so will reveal what has been happening in us. Some
will find themselves utter strangers in the spiritual region ;
others will move in it as men walking in their home fields.
When you come to words, you will at least know where
you are.

3. What they effect — a transformation of character. —
For this act of worship has the power not only of revealing
but of forming character. Words mark the point of change
from the unpractical to the practical.

In our inner life much is necessarily vague, consisting of
confused masses of feeling, embryonic forms of thoughts,
broken ends of ideas hanging loose. Some of these must,
of course, be left vague, for it will be impossible to find
language to express them. Yet some are waiting for ex-
pression to render them immediately effective. To say a
thing which we have hitherto only thought or half -thought,
is to give it the force of a part of our active life, to put it
in a position to tell definitely upon conduct. Literary
critics are familiar with the reaction of style upon thought,
and no writer who wishes to produce results can afford to

(j2 THINGS ETERNAL

neglect his style. Similarly we should all regard as an
important and momentous act the expression in language
of our thoughts. If the words we find for that expression
are exact — choice words, chosen not for their eloquence but
for their clearness and accuracy — we may look for results
in character and conduct. When the images of the imagin-
ation are focused, and our estimate of self, our sense of
sin, and our feeling of need are clearly perceived, action is
sure to follow. There is more in the idea of "making
phrases like swords" than a fine figure of speech. In literal
truth "Bright is the ring of words," and a spirit that has
found its true utterance will be irresistibly urged forward
towards conduct. The prodigal in the story had spent
many days and nights in general ideas of repentance,
desire, and intention that came to nothing. At last he
found the words "I will arise and go," and the words
brought immediate action — he arose and went.

Thus religious utterance is one of the great forces that
lead to right action. It is in the dreamy brooding silence,
when we know not what we do, that we idle and sin.
When we begin to stir our minds, to think clear-edged
thoughts and pass definite judgments of right and wrong
and to pronounce these judgments in speech, our will
leaps forward at the sound of the word, and makes fo>
righteousness.

EAST AND WEST

(Fourth Sunday in Lent)

"As far as the east is from west, so far hath He removed our
transgressions from us." — Psalm ciii. 12.

This Psalm is one of exceptional exaltation. It combines
the ideas of greatness and splendour so as to give a sense
of magnificence all through, and it blends with this an
exquisite and delicate tenderness. It is natural that such
a Psalm should have the question of sin in the heart of it.
Until that question has been faced and answered, neither
the magnificence nor the tenderness of God can be clear.
Sin is the intrusion of sordidness upon life, the stain upon
the royal garment of God. It is the harsh voice of ill-will
and bitterness breaking through the sweet music of love
in homes and hearts.

Every one who knows himself or who knows life at all
has to reckon with the fact of sin. In quiet times, when
all is sleeping, it may slumber; but whenever any part
of human nature wakens to intense consciousness, it wakens.
In the past it lies, a dead weight of fact beyond our reach.
For the future it is "only a question of time; either you
will overcome sin or sin will overcome you.'' Pride may
separate a man from sin, but his mood will change and he
will sacrifice pride to indulgence. Time and forgetfulness
may seem to leave it on the farther side of a great gulf fixed
between it and our present life. But sin can overleap that
distance, and in a moment be at our conscience and our

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64 THINGS ETERNAL

heart across a lifetime of intervening years. One stroke
of memiry, one siren-note of temptation wakening, long-
forgotten echoes of old days, and the gulf is crossed, and
all to reckon with again.

But when God enters amid the tumult of fear and hope,
of desire and renunciation, all is changed. For the past
He brings forgiveness, the mightiest proof of love. For the
future, "God has seen the saint in the sinner," and what
He has seen, the world will yet see. Then comes the su-
preme moment in a man's experience, the sudden flight
of sin beyond the farthest horizon. "A Greek poet im-
plies," says Lytton, "that the height of bliss is the sudden
relief from pain; there is a nobler bliss still, the rapture
of the conscience at the sudden release from a guilty
thought." ,

We are not accustomed to so complete a dealing, and the
Bible seems almost to exhaust language in expressing it.
We are so accustomed to tinkering with sin, to half -repent-
ances and compromise and recurrence, that few of our
moral battles are fought out to a finish and the field cleared
from the outposts of the enemy. So the colours are glaring
— "crimson and scarlet," "white as snow." God is seen
"coming over the mountains of our transgressions," and
casting them "into the depths of the sea." And in this
passage East and West stands for a corresponding sense of
extreme distance that is meant to tax the imagination. The
imaginative power and stretch of the appeal are seen along
two lines.

1. Geographical. — Geographically, East and West were
the extreme points of known distance. It was in the
temperate zone of the northern hemisphere that history
began and civilization spread. Accordingly the stretch of
ancient geography was wider between East and West than
between North and South, and the ancient maps of the
world were oblong. As thought travelled Westward it saw

EAST AND WEST 65

the dim coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, and per-
haps the mountain of Teneriffe in the farthest distance.
As it travelled Eastward, it passed through the ring of
neighbouring nations across the Jordan; saw the wander-
ing encampments of desert tribes ; then Mesopotamia, with
Nineveh and Babylon guarding its rivers; then the moun-
tains of Persia, and the dream-like lands of India and
China beyond. At the utmost limits, mountain-pillars
upheld the world, or the edge of its oval disc fell sheer
into the waters of the nether deep upon which it floated.

One can realize the wonder and relief of such a man as
this writer, as his conscience follows his imagination across
the whole enormous breadth of the world. There, where
the mountains of the dawn or sunset hardly break the
skyline with their faint and shadowy ranges — there, over
the edges of the flat earth where all things end — there, and
no nearer, are his sins. From such an one sin, and its
wages of death, are indeed very far away.

Geographically, science seems to have changed all that.
For a long time travel and exploration increased year by
year the distance between East and West, flinging out the
horizon line farther in each direction. Yet in doing so
they actually brought them together by their discovery
that the earth is round, so that a man fleeing across the
world to escape his sin must at last run into its arms.
And that is a curious kind of allegory of what our
modern thought has done with the sense of sin. Appar-
ently it has removed it. It has drawn away men 's attention
to other interests, and it has relaxed the ancient tension
of conscience. Yet, in very truth, as men escape from sin
under the guidance of scientific theory, they rush unawares
into the arms of their sins again.

Natural science has revealed the connexion between
the physical and the moral natures. Its doctrines of
evolution and heredity tend to a view of sin as natural

66 THINGS ETERNAL

tendency, defective or excessive vitality, a hereditary taint
of blood. While at first sight these explanations seem to
put sin away from conscience, yet they bring it infinitely
nearer too. Instead of being a casual or isolated product
of mere independent acts of will, they pronounce it native,
and part of the necessary system of things. With all its
ghastly consequences to the sinner and to others about him,
it has become fixed in the iron chain of cause and effect,
and it seems idle to talk of repentance or of change where
sin begets sin and doom leads on to further doom. Nay
further, some of the bolder spirits, starting from the
ancient aphorism that every vice is but the exaggeration
of a virtue, tell us that all human passions and crimes are
natural, though they are more or less in conflict with the
demands of the social system under which for the present
we happen to live. So, as in Thorny croft 's famous " Me-
dea, ' ' the snake folds the garments to the limbs, making the
form of the woman more beautiful, decadent thought in-
sists upon a human beauty in vice as an offset to the old-
fashioned beauty of holiness. Sin has come home to the
very heart and flesh of man, a thousandfold nearer than
ever. And the native love of sin welcomes the approach,
till men justify their sins like old friends and are loyal to
them as to their ancestry.

What has God to say to all this 1 Exactly the same old
words, "As far as the east is from the west." Whatever
truth or error may lie in these accounts of the origin of
sin, our faith knows only one unchanging fact — the living
God. Our conscience has to deal not with theory, but with
one great will and love. Against Him, Him only, have we
sinned. Here and now, whatever be the story of life behind
us, whatever the ultimate scientific definition of sin, we
have to met the eyes of God as Christ reveals Him. By His
command, by His forgiveness, by His redemption, He tears
Hm away from His children and holds it apart from them

EAST AND WEST 67

now as of old. When God has intervened, we repudiate our
lower nature, and lay hold on our nobler manhood. Thus,
in the Cross of Christ, we see still that great act of God,
that is ever repeated when a penitent child turns to his
'Father. It is the act of justification. Sin has not been
slurred over, nor forgotten, nor suffered merely to drift
away. "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath^
he removed our transgressions from us.

2. Racial. — East and West are not mere points in the
compass; they stand for peopled lands, and even in very
ancient times their racial distinctions were recognized.
Israel had already touched the outposts of Greece, and had
heard the young power of Eome — not indeed in any close
contact, but yet closely enough to perceive the contrast
between Europe and Asia, between Aryan and Semite.
Since then all history has borne witness to the depth of
that cleavage.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall

meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment

Seat.

The two represent different types of humanity. The East
is dreaming, the West running to and fro. The East
values a thought for its beauty and its mystery, the West
for its practical value. The East fears immortality, and
and longs for the death of desire, the West rebels against
death and seeks for life more abundant. The East lies back
in fatalism, the West stands erect in strength of human will.
Both East and West have sinned, and know it, and honour
those who live a life devoid of sin. But the standards of
moral judgment differ, and the ethical tastes are far apart.
The views of sex, of property, of the value of life, of the
rights of the individual, of the character of God, are wide
as the world asunder. An Eastern saint might be a Western
criminal, and a Western hero an Eastern madman.

68 THINGS ETERNAL

All this lends a richer significance to the text. We need
to be separated from our sins not merely by distance but by
a change of standard and desire. When God enters, and
a man deals with Him regarding sin, racial differences of
moral standard and constitutional taste disappear. Jesus
Christ, standing on that Syrian soil which has been the
historic meeting ground of East and West, changes the
views of both, and creates a higher patriotism strong as
the lower and far more true. Then men of all races,
learning the will of God and His love, take these for their
native country, the homeland of their spirit, and sin
becomes alien and foreign to them.

What is this but sanctification, in which sin is re-
moved not merely by the forgiving act of God, but
by the change of man's desire which is the work of
His Spirit? No longer regarded as merely dangerous or
foolish or wicked, it comes to be literally hateful — uncon-
genial and utterly alien to his desires and tastes.

Such is the twofold grace of God to man, discovered in
the ancient days, but operative through all the changes of
the centuries. "Look how wide also the East is from the
West; so far hath He set our sins from us."

CHRIST AMONG THE
TRANSGRESSORS

(Fifth Sunday in Lent)

"He was numbered with the transgressors." — Isaiah liii. 12;

Luke xxii. 37.

This quotation by Jesus in the upper room marks His
sense of the change which the reversal of His own fortunes4
must work for the disciples. When their master was the
popular prophet of Galilee, they had everywhere found
themselves welcome and honoured guests. Now that He
was hunted as a criminal, they would find themselves sus-
pects, regarded as dangerous to society. Thus ''numbered
among the transgressors" gives us at the outset a wonder-
ful glimpse into that great heart which, in the hour of its
supreme self-sacrifice, yet had leisure to feel His own shame
for their sakes.

To, us, as we look back through so long a stretch of time
to those days, the words are the statement of a most obvious!
fact. Whatever else may be true or untrue about Jesus,
It is certainly true that he was numbered with the*
transgressors. In what biography of the same length shall;
we find so many accusations ? He was accused of Sabbath-]
breaking, drunkenness, gluttony, blasphemy; rebellion;
against the Komans, desecration of the temple, subversion'
of the Jewish law. He was called a fraudulent agent of
the devil, a friend of publicans and sinners, an enemy of
his country and of the human race. Barabbas was ac-
counted innocent in comparison with Him, and He was
crucified between two thieves.

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70 THINGS ETERNAL

So it comes to pass that age after age, looking back, sees
Jesus embedded in the sin of the world. The Jews have
so far had their way, and have fixed upon Him ''the climax
of reproach." The believing world has seen in Him not
merely the exhibition of God's love and pity for those
stricken by sin, but His identification of Himself with
the sin that had stricken them. "Christ was not merely
made man, He was made sin for us. ' '

We have, indeed, little understanding of that great and
dark saying. It opens a vista into the nethermost mystery
of iniquity, the fathomless tragedy and reserve of darkness.
Yet, practically, we may understand it well. Where is
Christ today? It is asked by unbelievers, puzzled with
intellectual difficulties; by believers, who have lost their
first love. Where is He? Why, among the transgressors.
You have cried, ' ' Oh that I knew where I might find Him, ' '
and have sought for Him among good resolutions, respecta-
bilities, endeavours after a Christian life. Certainly He
is there, but it is not always easy to find Him there. There
is one place where you are sure of finding Christ. Take
conscience for your guide and go down among your sins.
Seek for Him among the transgressors. That Is near home
for us; it is where we all live. We have looked for Him
away from home, among dreams and ideals and so forth.
We have been claiming our inheritance among the saints in
light, yet living all the time among the transgressors in
darkness. There, in the world that conscience knows, we
may find Him.

But why ? On a winter night, walking under a scudding
cloudrack through which the full moon lit the white build-
ings of a northern city, I first heard that question. An old
man was with me — a man of singular clearness of intellect,
originality of imagination, and beauty of character. He
told me how his life had been arrested and wholly changed
by that great question, Why was Jesus Christ numbered
with the transgressors? He had not rested till he found

CHRIST AMONG THE TRANSGRESSORS 71

an answer, and here, in its three main propositions, was the
answer he found.

1. To Fulfil the Law of God.— There is no possibility
of avoiding the thought of law in this text. The word
"transgressors" implies it, and is meaningless without it.
Christ's constant aim was to fulfil the law, and his repudi-
ation of the dead letter only left the spiritual law more
binding than before.

To-day we shrink from stating Christianity in the
formally forensic terms which have sometimes expressed it.
The abstract conceptions of justice set over against mercy
seem unreal and incongruous. We fall back on the father-
hood of God, and think all our thoughts in the light of that.
Indeed the transition from legal to fatherly thoughts of
God is the characteristic note of modern theology. Yet in
this transition there is no escape from law. The law of
fatherhood shows sin not as an insult to God's authority
but as a wound to His Heart ; and so our sins are brought
rather into the light of His countenance than before His
judgment bar. Law is thus, as it were, absorbed into the
very nature and being of God. It is no longer regarded
as an external thing, either constructed or submitted to
by Him. The law of God is just God Himself, the Father.

How, then, will God deal with transgression ? Obviously
as a father he cannot leave it alone. No father dare neglect
the sin of his child. Anything like easy good nature is
impossible here, for it would be criminal. When a child
has wounded his father's moral nature, forgiveness ages a
man and draws his heart 's blood from him. So, by the law
of fatherhood, God must deal with the sin of man. It can
never be a light thing.

It is by no breath,
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death.

It was in this dreadful sense that Isaiah had already
conceived the agony of God, and that bold conception had

72 THINGS ETERNAL

arisen from human experience. There were many sin-
bearers in Israel, feeling the weight and horror of other
men's transgression. There were men who knew what it
was "to stoop, and take upon your heart as your business
and burden, man 's suffering and sin . . . to seek to lift the
deadness of men, to take their guilt upon your heart, to
attempt to rouse them to it, to attempt to deliver them
from it." It is the story of all philanthropy. All purity,
freedom, truth, good conscience, peace, have been bought
with the blood of sin-bearing men who have loved their
fellows even unto death. The law of fatherhood extends
beyond that one relation, and renders vicarious sacrifices
universal in the higher ranks of existence.

It is fatuous to ask whether this is a just law. It is far
more than just, it is divine. And all the sin-bearers of the
earth are but dim shadows of the crucified Christ, in
whom we see the sin of the children smiting full upon the
Father's heart. Calvary offers the supreme example of
God's faithfulness to His fatherhood, and reveals how all
transgression affects the Father.

2. To Get in Among Them. — The world was full of

transgressors, and yet each one of them was lonelier than

if there were only himself in it. The loneliness of sin is

the sorest and most oppressive of all forms of that strange

but well-known phenomenon, the loneliness of the crowd.

When conscience shuts the door upon a soul, the thronging

faces of its fellows are but an unreal show. In the crowded

street, in the busy market, in the companionship of the

home, the sinful soul is still alone. Jesus knew that ghastly

solitude in which the spirits of the transgressors dwelt

isolated and cut off from their fellows. He knew how they

needed Him, and He went to them. Free to go where He

pleased, He habitually went straight to the outcasts, and

finally to the cross between two malefactors, just that He

might get among them.

But how awful an experience this was, other lives than

CHRIST AMONG THE TRANSGRESSORS 73

His can but faintly indicate. A man who finds himself
for the first time in prison knows it as he looks round
upon his companions and realizes that he is now one
of these. The terrible conscience of childhood knows it,
when the first conscious battle against temptation is lost,
and the child feels himself for the first time a member of
that company of dark characters, the transgressors. He,
not content with showing compassion from a distance to-
ward the sinful, went where they were, descending into
the hell of conscience. He looked up at life from the bottom
of the pit where they lay, and each transgressor knew that
he was understood. And that marvellous companionship
endures. When conscience has been making us feel bitterly
that we are among the transgressors, He is at our side in
that dismal company. He is with us in the accursed sub-
tlety of temptation, in the shame of sin, in the sharp ache
of conscience, in the fear of consequences, in the doom of
the irrevocable past. Standing amid the wreckage of the
years, in "the woeful loss and waste of the blessings of
holiness," we are not alone, for He is there also.

3. To Reduce their Number. — As we read the Inferno
of Dante, the feeling that grows more and more overwhelm-
ing is the sense of helplessness. He talks with the tortured
spirits and hears what they have to tell, he scorns the
meaner and weeps with the nobler of them, but he emerges
from the nether world alone. He saves himself : others he
cannot save, and they remain transgressors still.

But the crowd which Christ has entered is a diminishing
crowd, its numbers lessening day by day. The Cross of
Christ is "finishing transgression and making an end of
sin." He shares with the transgressors their temptation,
sin, shame, dread, repentance ; one thing He does not share
— their helplessness. Here, among those spirits in prison,
is universal helplessness. They rebel against their evil
ways, they are ashamed and disgusted with themselves,

74 THINGS ETERNAL

they long in vain after goodness, but they remain trans-
gressors and they will transgress again. Christ stands
among them, alone only in this, that He is stronger than
transgression. Even at the deepest point of his sin-bearing
there was in him the tremendous certainty that he was
bearing sin away. Among the helpless here is the mighty
Helper, come among them not to sympathize only but to
set free.

The prophet sounds his grandest note of victory when
he says, "He has His portion with the great, He divides
the spoil with the strong." "Who, then, are the great and
strong in this world? Assuredly its sin-bearers. Those
are not the really great ones who have risen by the fall of
others, or made a desolation and called it peace; but those
who have gone deepest into the wrongs and the vices of the
world, and cleansed it from their stain. The heroes are the
liberators, who have set the world free, and taught it to
hope. With them Christ divides the spoil. Nay, rather
He is the liberator, and the best of the others but catch a
few crumbs from His table. The victory of the Cross lies
in the men and women whom it has set free from sin, the
reduced numbers of the transgressors. Every one who is
less a transgressor than before swells that victory here upon
the earth ; and in heaven it is made complete by those who,
once transgressors, are now numbered with the saints in
glory everlasting.

Here, then, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Good news!
He has fulfilled the law, the human and divine law of
Fatherhood. Better news ! He understands the worst, and
stands side by side with the rest of us, entangled in the
dark web of sin and conscience. Best news of all ! He is a
match for our sin, mighty to save. We may be free who
have been bondmen; we may arrive who have sighed in
vain for any moral progress. The life we long for lies
open to our feet, for He was numbered with the trans-
gressors.

THE VALUE OF A PAGEANT

{Palm Sunday)
The triumphal entry into Jerusalem. — Luke xix. 28-48.

This story of a pageant breaks into the history of the
passion with almost ludicrous incongruity. So much has
this been felt, that otherwise trustworthy commentators
have been tempted to allegorize the details of it, making the
ass stand for the old theocracy and the foal for the young
Church. But the Bible remains interesting and alive in
spite of its interpreters. The foal is there simply as a beast
to ride on: the ass is there, not because it stood for the
old theocracy, but because it was the mother of the foal.
In itself the whole story is, as it appears, trivial. It is a
great truth expressed in a very little way.

There are two notes of that journey to Jerusalem — the
kingdom of God and the imminent cross, Royalty and
Death. Both of these were clearly present to the mind of
Jesus, as the two parts of a deliberate and colossal scheme
for the mastery of the world. This sense of mastery is
everywhere apparent. The tone of Jesus ' speech is changed
from request to command, from avoidance of enemies to
open challenge; and every word and action indicates a
complete mastery of the situation. But the striking thing
is that He should have changed not only His tone, but His
outward policy also. He had always been particularly
averse to the spectacular, and on more than one occasion

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76 THINGS ETERNAL

had refused and avoided pageants. Why does He now
consent to one?

Assuredly it was not because of any change in His own
view of such shows. It has been well remarked that "He
stood apart from His popularity"; He never mistook it for
greatness. And if a popular demonstration of this sort
offended His sensibilities in the Galilean days, how much
more must it have jarred upon Him now, when He was
gathering together the forces of His spirit to face the
supreme event. It was a concession to human nature as
that was displayed around Him then.

Then, for the first time, such a concession was safe. His
task had been to insist upon the Kingdom, and yet to avoid
all attempts to make Him King. For over two years He
had managed the populace as a skilful rider manages a
restive horse, now drawing, and now slackening rein.
Thus He had kept a bloody revolution at arm 's length. But
now at least there was no danger of such a revolution.
There was, indeed, no time for it, for His death was distant
but a week, and He must have known it.

And there was a certain value in such a pageant, however
distasteful it might be to Him. It was certain to impress
the imagination of His disciples, who were simple enough
to set much store by such exhibitions. It painted for them
an impressive picture, which would afterwards illuminate
their faith in the royalty of Jesus ; and in the same way it
might conceivably impress outsiders, rendering them more
ready for the subsequent call of the gospel, and inclining
them to accept it.

So then we have this strange combination of the great
with the small, the eternal with the fleeting. That blending
consciousness of royalty and death is superb even from a
literary and artistic point of view. From a spiritual point
of view it is the most majestic conception that ever entered
into the heart of man. This unearthly kingdom, winning

THE VALUE OF A PAGEANT 77

its way through death to eternal and redeeming life, is
infinitely removed from the vulgarities of popular applause,
and the passing shows of festival. In it the Messiah is
seen leading men, by the path of the Cross, to God and to
their own true destiny. It is an hour when angels may
well have felt a silence fall on them as they watched.

But that solemnity was crowded with nearer watchers,
and it was characteristic of Jesus to remember them and
to gratify their poorer needs. Some were impressed by
Him simply as a worker of wonders. Some were Galilean
revolutionaries, proud of their countryman and vaunting
his prowess against the gates of the half -paganized Jerusa-
lem. The majority were doubtless peasants on a holiday,
ready for any excitement, and full of the Oriental delight
in processions and shouting. All that whimsical and motley
crowd acknowledged His royalty, yet none of them took
it seriously enough to follow it up to any purpose. They
were lighthearted and uncomprehending children, and
there was no great value in their acclamations. Yet it was
Jesus' way to speak to men, and to let them speak, in their
own language, and to accept homage according to that a
man hath. This was a childish way, but it was royalty as
they understood it. So far as it went it was well enough,
though in truth it did not go far.

This surely speaks its words to an age like our own, in
which so very many people are playing at being Christians.
Royalty and death are still before the world, in the great
and eternal tragedy of the Cross. But the crowd is ever
spectacular in heart, and Christianity has much that may
be borrowed for the colour and shouting of the passing
show. Its fine thoughts may be used to break the monotony
of colourless lives. So it is utilized in all manner of cheap
appeals. A political allusion, a much advertised religious
| picture or play, a popular preacher interesting the crowd
|for an hour— in these the multitude puts Jesus Christ for

78 THINGS ETERNAL

a moment in the center of its tableau, the successor of a
demagogue, the predecessor of an artiste.

There is not necessarily any harm in such a passing
interest in Christ ; it may conceivably do good. He still
speaks to us all in our own language, and consents to the
pageant. Only do not let any one who swells that crowd
take himself too seriously, or imagine that his approval
and applause are religion. This is only a side issue at the
best. Royalty and death are in the heart of Christ, and
we are called upon to reckon with that dread purpose of
His, each of us for ourselves. The show will pass and be
forgotten, but how do we stand in respect of mastery over
self and the world and sin? What share have we in the
royal victory of the Cross?

The King was in tears in that procession. As they swept
round the corner of the road on Olivet, and the fortress-like
mass of the city 's buildings burst upon their view, He wept.
Partly it was the city that moved Him, standing aloof in
its cold, strong superiority. In the faces of the priests,
sunning themselves by the temple walls that day and asking
haughtily "Who is this?" He saw a great lie confronting
His great truth. And He saw the inevitable end, when
that truth would conquer, and ruin and despair would end
the lofty complacency. Partly, too, it was just the pageant
itself that moved Him. The utter sarcasm of His mighty
truth hailed him with the shouting of little souls, filled His
heart with an unrestrainable compassion for the multitude
— the shallow multitude who were needing a saviour and
yet were satisfied with a procession.

Those tears of the King were the real secret of His
royalty. They were shed for love of men, and that love
is the secret alike of the kingdom and the Cross. It is
because He had the heart to weep over these things that
He is the eternal King of men. Still and for ever it is
the love of Christ that makes Him king. He is "the

THE VALUE OF A PAGEANT 79

gentlest of the mighty" — mightiest of all because of His
great compassion. He weeps over the scorners and the
shouters still — over those whose cold and haughty su-
periority stands aloof, and over those whose shallow en-
thusiasm applauds Him for an hour. But those who are
wise will pause and consider this extraordinary situation.
And His kingdom will be built up to the end of time from
the ranks alike of enemies and wayside followers to whom
the tears of Jesus have revealed the royalty of the Cross.

THE RISING OF CHRIST

(Easter-Day)

"They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they
have laid Him."— St.John xx. 13.

A great many problems have risen round the stories of
Christ's resurrection. Between the extremes of denying
all material elements and seeing in the dogma merely a
spiritual truth, and of accepting all the details of the vary-
ing narratives and attempting a reconstruction which will
reconcile them all, there are many possible dogmatic posi-
tions. Fortunately it is not necessary to wait for the truth
and inspiration of the Easter message until we have settled
such matters. Questions of physiology about the body
have really little to do with it, and discussions about the)
angels nothing at all. Two things only concern us. First,
the great assurance that Jesus who was dead is alive again
for evermore; and second, the fact that that assurance
comes to the world in connexion with some of the most
tenderly human stories ever told. With regard to the
assurance itself, it was that which seized upon Dr. Dale in
so remarkable a manner while he was writing an Easter
sermon — " Christ is alive," he said, and kept repeating it
in a kind of ecstasy whose record is one of the most inter-
esting passages in his biography. Bishop Andrewes points
us in the same direction when he says: "Our Lord makes
mention of ascending twice, of rising not at all. And it
is to teach us that resurrection is nothing, nor is any

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THE RISING OF CHRIST 81

account to be made of it, if ascension go not with it." As
to the human associations of that great assurance, none
of them all touches so deep a pathos or sends on so typical
an experience to the future as this woman 's cry. ' ' They '
— and in the very vagueness there is a bitter sound, as if
she were feeling men and things in general arrayed against
her — "they have taken away my Lord." And all the time
He was risen, and waiting to show Himself to her. Only,
when He did show Himself, it was not as she had thought
to see Him. She was expecting a dead body wrapped with
sweet spices in fine linen. She found a living friend, who
called her by her name.

Resurrection is the method of the kingdom of God.
Not by steady and unbroken progress does it advance,
but by death and rising again in new form from the dead.
So it has been in the history of the Church. Again and
again the familiar forms in which faith had apprehended
Him die and are lost to sight, only to be superseded by
some new aspect of Him, at first unfamiliar and distrusted,
at last recognized as Christ risen again. So it has been
also in the faith of individuals. Having known Him in
some particular fashion, we try to retain the vision just as
it was. Like Haliburton, like Peter before him, we "spake
ravingly of tabernacles. ' ' But God is inexorable, and we
have to learn for ourselves "what this rising from the
dead should mean."

1. History. — The Church began in a primitive sim-
plicity which was content to tell the story of the Gospels.
And, told by hearts hot with love to Jesus, that story con-
quered the world. But as the faith spread through the
Roman Empire and came in contact with the Greek
thought of the day, lawless thinking and loose organization
demanded new forms both of creed and of ecclesiasticism,
and the ancient Catholic Church arose. Doubtless there
were many simple souls who felt themselves lost and be-

82 THINGS ETERNAL

wildered among all those new institutions, and whose cry
was: "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not
where they have laid Him. ' ' Yet He was not taken away,
but risen, in a new form suited to the new situation.

But that form, too, became obsolete. The ritual, like
burial spices, seemed to hide Him in its formalities of wor-
ship, and love died away. Then came the reformation,
sweeping away much of what had once revealed the Lord
to the world, and substituting great intelligible truths
which woke the intellect as well as the devotion of the
world. But there were tender and reverent spirits to whom
the old way had meant much, and who like Luther's wife
felt the chill of the new, and the old cry was heard again.
But Christ was risen, a great Sun of Righteousness thai;
gladdened all the Western lands and brought healing in
His wings.

Yet again that living truth hardened into dead dogma,
and this time there was not even the sweetness of the
burial spices, but only dust and ashes. So there arose, first
the successive evangelistic revivals and then the broader
and more human presentation, which has taken for its
central thought the fatherly rather than the judicial aspect
of God. Again there were grave and loyal spirits who
felt the new developments dangerous, and who had to learn
that Christ was not taken away by the changes they had
witnessed, but only risen once more, to live and speak in
new times.

All these illustrate the same truth of the method of
resurrection. Phase after phase of Christian faith rises,
lives, and grows obsolete : and always there are some who
cry that the Christ of the fathers has been taken. away.
But really it is only a phase that has been taken. That
phase is dead. It has served its time and has now become
ineffective, no longer influencing conduct, stirring the heart,
or convincing the intellect. Those historic disappearances

THE RISING OF CHRIST 83

of Christ warn us against the attempt to go back and find
Him in any more primitive form of faith. They teach us
to treat forms of faith new to us respectfully, as if in them
indeed we may find the risen body of the Lord. Love at the
first found this truth, and so discovered the risen One;
and in times of doubt and change love must rediscover
Christ.

Nor is the comfort of the text only for the disheartened
believer. The victory of science has for many of its own
votaries a disconcerting aspect. Like Arctic discovery, men
press forward through untold dangers and with unquench-
able enthusiasm, only to reach some point of measureless
dreariness. Science has taken away from them their
Lord. It is not so. The facts remain, deep facts of human
need and sin and sorrow. The emphasis of these has indeed
been changed by modern thought, from the individual to
the social, from the dogmatic to the spiritual, from abstract
metaphysic to concrete experience. The claim of the new
phases is as sound as that of the old was. " There is no
real resting-place," says the late Dr. Jowett, ''but in the
entire faith that all true knowledge is a revelation of the
will of God. ' ' In the new forms Christ is not taken away,
but risen that He may reveal the Father to a new gener-
ation.

2. Individual Experience. — Here, too, Christ often dis-
appears, and those who have lost Him come to old means
of grace — doctrines, sacraments, devotions — and find them
but cold and empty cerements. Doctrinal causes may ex-
plain the change. From some, creeds have taken away
their Lord, and from others the passing of creeds has
done this. From some the rush of life and the hurry of
business have taken Him, from others the sorrows and
discouragements of the years have done it. They used
to be very sure of Him, but life has become too difficult or
too bitter,

84 THINGS ETERNAL

When tears are spent, and thou art left alone
With ghosts of blessings gone.

They know not where He is laid.

Others have lost Him through east and luxury and self-
indulgence. You used to be poorer, and Christ was more
to you then. But those worldly advantages which you
strove so hard to gain, have ill repaid you. They have
taken away your Lord, and with Him have gone peace, and
the vitality and freedom and gladness which once you
knew. In such cases it is not really Christ who has been
taken away. The Lord is there, but tears are in His eyes.
For the world has taken away your heart from Him, and
who knows where it has laid it?

In any case, in one way or another, the world has been
too much for you. Yet none of all these things have
taken away your Lord. He is risen, and He waits to
meet you, when you wander bewildered, disheartened, or
ashamed. His appearance will not indeed be exactly what
it was before. The search for truth, the cruelty of suffer-
ing, and the shame of apostacy — each works in the soul
changes which require some new aspect of the Christ. But
the wonderful thing about Christ is that He is sufficient
for life in all its aspects; and that whatever be your
experience, and however impossible it be now to regain
the exact aspect of faith which once was yours, there is
in Him all that man can ever need. He stands not where
you were but beside you where you are, and if you will
but turn and look you will find that He is risen and not
taken away.

A SONG OF THE MORNING

'And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth,
even a morning without clouds." — 2 Samuel xxiii. 4.

These were the last words of David, and they tell us his
ideal of what a King should be. But the passage is deeply
religious, and its import is far more than a conception of
royalty. It is a conception of human life with the morning
light of God shining upon it. Behind it there were the
memories of certain mornings, great in the national history.
There was that day when ' ' the sea returned to his strength
when the morning appeared, ' ' and Israel was free. Farther
back in the past there was that other morning when the
sun rose on Jacob as he passed over Penuel after his night
of wrestling. It was from such passages that pious Israel-
ites drew their thoughts of God, and worshipped with
" glorious morning face."

As Israel looked back upon such mornings, so she looked
forward to others not less bright. Weeping might endure
for a night, joy would come in the morning. The Lord
would help her "when morning dawneth." Her light
would break forth as the morning, and her righteous ones
would triumph then. It is true that some of her doleful
spirits have nothing more grateful to say than "Would
God it were evening," and there are some to whom the
morning is "even as the shadow of death." But that is
only their sorrow or their weakness, or the irritation of the
pessimist who is aggrieved by any call to rejoice. Israel's

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86 THINGS ETERNAL

usual view of the morning is fresh and healthy. It is a
call to labour and to wholesome thoughts. "In the morn-
ing sow thy seed," "Man goeth forth unto his work and
to his labour until the evening." With the sunrise has
come safety; the wild beasts are gone to their dens; the
highways of travel and of labour are clear, and the world
is open for man. Everything is alive and cool and growing.
The ground is fresh with dew, and the young grass is
springing. Man, too, wakeneth morning by morning fresh
and keen.

This morning light is on our Christian faith. We are for
ever ageing before our time. As the shadows fall upon our
work, we begin to feel that we have had our day. Yet
when we look for sunset and the dark, it is a new sunrise
that is coming : —

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light:

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.

The note of paganism is the evening light through which
it looks back to a golden age far in the past. The worship
of Buddha seems to dwell in "a land where it is always
afternoon." Christianity is essentially the religion of
the morning.

This involves many things, but above all others it is the
guarantee of health as opposed to sentimentality of all
kinds. Religion, even the Christian religion, has been re-
garded otherwise. It has been draped in close curtains of
spurious mystery, stifled with ceremonial, made to appeal
solely to the senses and emotions, until it had become
hopelessly morbid and decadent. To be bright and keen,
to be natural, to be heartily and simply human, has been
regarded as a lapse into irreligious secularity. There has
bnen indeed at times such a proud exultation in the mere

A SONG OF THE MORNING 87

world and its godless life, that faith has been driven
for shelter to the darkness of midnight assemblies. But
though Lucifer, son of the morning, is fallen, morning has
another Son greater and more abiding. Jesus Christ is
the bright and morning star. Ours is not the faith of those
who hear only the voices of the night. Its believers are
men who are singing in morning light, and that light —
sane, clear, and cool — falls on all things earthly, and reveals
them as they are.

The Christian view of history illustrates this. There is
a dreary scientific doctrine that the world is growing aged
and decrepit. It has had its day, but now its powers are
dying out, and it "goes dispiritedly, glad to finish." Nor
have there been wanting some Christian believers to en-
dorse the gloomy impression. Such Christianity despairs
of life in the present, stands marking time till the Judg-
ment Day or the Second Coming, as if that were all there
is to do. But those who have drunk more deeply of the
spirit of our faith, discover daily that old things are pass-
ing away and all things becoming new. "We are standing
not at the end but at the beginning of things. We go forth
into the world daily remembering that it is morning. "We
ourselves may grow old without a pang, for "the best is
yet to be, ' ' and our children shall see still better days than
ours. The times may be precarious and their problems
difficult to master, but the night is past and the day is
before us.

Equally true is this assurance of our individual ex-
perience. The Christian feels the stirring of a new creation
in his soul. The coming of the new life of God is not
merely an event; it is a process, and we; are daily being
created. As yet we are but in the making. If this con-
dition— this sinfulness and blindness and wavering faith
and changeful desire — were the finished product of man-
hood, it would indeed be profoundly discouraging. But

88 THINGS ETERNAL

it doth not yet appear what we shall be, though we know
that we shall be like Him. Every one who, in books or in
real life, has had much intercourse with aged saints, has
learned that the Christian need never grow old at all. It
was this that so arrests the wondering eyes of the Roman
in "Marius the Epicurean," and gives to that great book
much of its rare charm and clean fragrance. If you know
Jesus Christ, you may trust life, and go forward brightly
to its latest day. Your master has the secret of perpetual
youth.

For further detail, let us set the Christian graces in this
morning light : —

1. Faith. — There was a period in the nineteenth century
when faith was seen by many of the noblest eyes, in an
evening light. Watchers of twilight, or of darkness, the
cry echoed from poets to prose writers, "Watchman, what
of the night 1 ' ' And the answers that came back were such
as this: —

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

But the twentieth century is seeing things disentangled,
and distinguishing between essential and merely casual be-
liefs. The morning light is clear and plain, and certain
truths are visible in it. Faith is no longer groping and
faintly trusting, bewildered among a vast system of beliefs.
Its certainties are fewer, but they are absolutely certain.
The faith of to-day is not dream but vision.

Such also is its vision of good, with clearer if less con-
ventional light falling on moral questions. "Morning's
at seven," as Pippa sang. The shutters are open, and
instead of the many-coloured lanterns of tempting sophis-
try, moralists are seeing by daylight things as they are.
Such is the vision of Christ, We do not demand of men

A SONG OF THE MORNING 89

that they shall hold so complete a set of definitions. But
the progress of research has made Him stand out in clear
light among the indisputable and eternal facts, and that is
better than any completeness of theory or brilliancy of
imagination that may turn out to be a pageantry of dreams.

2. Hope. — There is a hope in evening light; that hope
deferred that maketh the heart sick. Such hope may be
a genuine Christian grace. The faintest light set in the
future by some promise of God is precious ; and beyond all,
there is the "one far-off, devine event to which the whole
creation moves." Yet for us there is a nearer hope. In
the morning, hope is immediate, and it concerns the facts
of a day that has already dawned. Christ has not only
pointed us towards a distant eternity, that may explain
and compensate for a hopeless present. He has not only
assured us that things will come right in the end. He has
made us feel that to-day life is worth while.

3. Love, in evening light, means rest, and the sweetness
of fireside converse. In morning light, love means labour.
As the doors close behind them, the workmen do not love
their homes less, but more, because they are going forth
from them to labour. So love to God in morning light is
a call to service. Do not stay brooding in close-curtained
thought, searching your soul for love to God : —

I love and love not; Lord, it breaks my heart
To love and not to love.

The day has dawned, the workmen of the world are abroad.
Go forth and join them, and express your love in labour
for God's sake.

Let us set our religion thus in the fresh and wholesome
light of morning, while the call of life is in our ears. The
evening will come soon enough, and with it rest and pensive
sweetness and softness of feeling. Meanwhile the sun
is risen ; let us arise and live.

THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY

"That ye may approve things that are excellent." — Phil. i. 10.

In this very remarkable prayer, St. Paul is guided by a
conception of Christianity as it really is, and he is express-
ing successive aspects of the world into which it intro-
duces men. The text describes one such aspect, and an
extremely important one, viz, the approvals of a life, its
unforced choices, instinctive preferences, and habitual con-
sents.

Such choices meet us as the constant necessity of daily
life. Frequently we would rather avoid the responsibility
of them, but we cannot. Our environment is infinitely
various, with its multitude of possible books, friends,
plans', attitudes of mind, thoughts and actions. Among
these there are great currents of fashion and of influence
flowing strongly in different directions, so that we not only
choose this or that in detail, but must commit ourselves
to habits and to parties which will bear us on, the saving
or destroying influences of our career.

Further, many of the problems of choice are extremely

delicate. We have to face not only the crude question of

right or wrong, but a set of standards as much finer than

these as a microscopic scale is finer than a yard stick.

1 ' We have not to distinguish the obviously good from bad,

but among good things, good from best." This is the

finesse of the game of life, in which lies the secret of all

true culture. There are a thousand little points of manner,

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THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 91

speech, thought, and action, in which both of two possible
courses are justifiable, but one is the finer course, and
belongs to the things which are excellent. This prayer is
for a type of character founded upon the habitual choice
of such things.

Obviously this first of all requires appreciation — to
know what one desires and to desire rightly. If it be
important to learn how to say No, it is still more important
to learn how to say Yes, and to say it emphatically. For,
even in so unsatisfactory a world as this, there are some
things which are excellent — things that are "true, honest,
just, pure, lovely, and of good report. ' ' There is a certain
number of such things round about us all. Some people
are turning over large heaps of them, to find the unpleasant
things below, but that does not alter the fact. If your
world of thought and choice is ugly and second-rate, that
is neither God's fault nor the world's. It is your own
fault, who have approved these things for emphasis. The
world is strewn with the good gifts of God. ' ' Here is God 's
plenty," as Dryden says of Chaucer; and the opulence
of the world is the heartening message of many others who
have found "power each side, perfection every turn." It
is a great and wise thing to look around us with chaste
desire and loving eye, and to see and appreciate the
choicest excellence.

Yet appreciation must be balanced with criticism, for
in a world like this there is a very manifest limit to ap-
proval, and criticism, no less than appreciation, is a dis-
tinctively Christian duty. Marius the Epicurean recog-
nized in his Christian friend "some inward standard of
distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various elements
of the fervid and corrupt life " around them. Even in
literature, as Pater elsewhere insists, the choicest work
depends upon the art of cutting off surplusage; and all
finest things, like the diamond, gain their beauty by sacrifice

92 THINGS ETERNAL

of precious dust. " Excellence is not common and abund-
ant," says Matthew Arnold, " whoever talks of excellence
as common and abundant is on the way to lose all right
standard of excellence."

The necessity of criticism is true even to the length of
a positive duty of hatred. Fra Angelico is famous as the
man who could not paint a devil, and no one can withhold
the tribute of reverence for so pure a spirit. Yet if there
are devils there, such a view of life as his can never be
a true picture of the world. Browning's great words are
eternally true: —

Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving.

All strong souls know what that means. It is the secret of
moral and spiritual robustness, and it is a principle which
Jesus Christ illustrated in Himself and taught to His
disciples.

Yet, while this is true, it tells in favour of appreciation
rather than against it. Our part is not to select the evil
elements for emphasis, nor is it to simply accept the world
in its breadth, going in good-naturedly with everything.
In knowledge, it is not our part to be mere ' ' pickers up of
learning's crumbs," who accumulate miscellaneous facts.
We must specialize if we are to have a message. In
character and affections, the ideal is not that of mere en-
thusiastic persons, who are friends of all the world, with a
vulgar heat of indiscriminate praise. A more austere
way of dealing with life is expected of us. Christianity is
not all kindliness and fervour. It is severely discrimi-
nating judgment also, and thought founded on knowledge.
There is no real fear that knowledge will cool love: love
is cooled rather by ignorance and carelessness.

Thus Christian character also involves selection, not only
of obvious right in contrast with wrong, but of the finest

THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 93

kind of right and that which is fittest for the special
occasion. To reject open immorality and to accept all the
rest without discrimination, is respectability, the religion
of the Pharisees. But every respectable Pharisee proves
the truth of the saying that "the good is the enemy of
the best." There is a scale of fineness among things re-
spectable, and Christ insists that we shall not be content
with a second-best, though it be good. In this way He
has produced a special type of man, more delicately sensi-
tive in choices than the rest. Such men, whose spirit
habitually dwells among the highest things, show a rare
spiritual culture, an exclusiveness, an aristocracy of spirit,
which partly explains Christ's insistence on the narrow
way and the straight gate, and the few that find it.

There are certain great difficulties in the way of those
who would seek for this excellence. In lower regions of
thought and conduct, the law judges for us, but here the
responsibility falls back upon ourselves. And at once we
have to meet with those fashions in moral and spiritual
things whose standards for the time being set the type
and frame the unwritten laws which govern the mass ot
society. In Cromwell's time strength was the ideal of
England, in Dryden's time good nature. Now it is the
courtier, now the nun, who seems most perfectly to embody
human excellence. Such fashions make a very subtle
appeal to the shame and vanity of many, who have not the
courage to be counted peculiar. To others the temptation
is to be in opposition, the revolt changing with the fashion
as subserviently as the compliance changes. Thus the chief
demand is for moral and spiritual originality; to have a
mind of one's own, and a conscience of one's own, which
will enable one to discover and choose excellence for one-
self.

A deeper difficulty in the way of seekers after excellence,
is the fact that even the best of them are to so lamentable

94 THINGS ETERNAL

an extent the ' ' familiar friends of sin, ' ' that it has become
interestingly and attractive to them, while goodness has
come to seem insipid. This is partly the fault of the good.
It makes one angry at times to see how deadly dull good
people may become : we feel that they have no right to be
so uninteresting as they sometimes are. In still greater
part this aversion from excellence is our own fault, and is
the result of deliberate or thoughtless pandering to our
lower nature. It is so easy to get into the way of counting
upon badness for interest, and imitating our cheapest
literature by presenting the lower side of life in lights
that quicken curiosity rather than revulsion. Thus we
have perverted our standards of interest, and allowed our
tastes to become corrupt, until we instinctively prefer the
lower to the higher. This holds along the whole line of
moral and spiritual choices, and it has degraded men's
attitude toward Jesus Christ Himself. Men turn from
Him, not so much because they are afraid of the fascination
of a beauty so rare, but because they have actually looked
upon Him and felt no fascination.

In the face of such obstacles we turn anxiously to inquire
as to the secret of that right instinct which will recognize
excellence and choose it. The discouraging element in all
this is that to so large an extent the reasons that lie behind
our choice seem to be so largely out of our own power.
"Taste is morality," says Ruskin; and certainly that is
true of the high moral and spiritual region. Sin, and all
preference of lower to higher courses, are emphatically in
bad taste. But then, taste is not a matter of prescribed
rules, which can be enforced or made convincing to a mind
that does not spontaneously admit its canons. Just as those
who know good art from bad are quite sure of their judg-
ment, but cannot tell why they so judge, nor communicate
their judgment to others who prefer the poorer art ; so this
moral and spiritual taste is a kind of high fastidiousness, a

THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 95

new sense, a delicate and often incommunicable faculty of
discernment. Doubtless, like the taste for good art, it arises
from obscure sources in ancestry, natural sensibility, and
education. Thus it appears to be a hopeless quest except
for the select few who possess it; as unattainable as,
the shape of features or the colour of eyes. King Arthur
pronounced the quest of the Grail too high for many of
his knights, and plainly told them that they were neither
Galahads nor Parsifals. So, for many of us, the most
excellent things seem too fine. Our want of spiritual finger-
tips and delicacy of instinct, seems to debar us from the
quest.

Yet that is not so true as it seems. Instincts may be
acquired and tastes rectified within a lifetime. These are
the last result of certain ways of dealing with life which
are open to all. Those who live worthily among plain and
ordinary issues, who train their minds to think accurately
and dispassionately, who keep their eyes open and gain
experience of the world, come in the end to a spontaneous
and immediate discernment of the lower and the higher
ways.

Still more surely is instinct affected by the moral dis-
cipline of life. He who faithfully and always chooses the
course which seems to him right, gains in moral perception,
and passes on from cruder to finer discernment. The in-
tinct for the things that are excellent is the last product
of a life that has been moulded consistently by right choices
in cases of obvious right and wrong.

But above all there is the power of love, which Paul here
has included in his prayer for the Philippians. Love may
at first sight seem a doubtful guide. Is it not passionate,
blind, and rash? Yet love is after all the only power in
all the world that is delicate enough to create the instinct
for excellence. That was Jesus Christ's secret long before
it was Paul's. He set love free upon the earth, and the

9Q THINGS ETERNAL

effects of that new love which was flooding human life
were wonderful indeed to the world, and not less surpris-
ing to those into whose hearts it had entered. For, in the
secret alchemy of God, they found that in their souls love
was transmuted into knowledge. Loving much, and know-
ing themselves greatly loved, they arrived at an accurate
and direct sense of the distinction between what was finer
and what was poorer. It is not too much to say that all
the more delicate judgments of the world have arisen out
of Christian love, which leads all who are faithful to it
towards the approval of the things that are excellent.

STRENGTH AND JOY

"The joy of the Lord is your strength."— Nehemiah viii. 10.

It was in the days of the return from Babylon that the

two leaders, Nehemiah the soldier and Ezra the scholar,

came upon the page of history. The student had been

waiting for a chance to read the law, but the time was not

yet come. Nehemiah had his rougher part to play first,

and the wondrous days of " sword and trowel" followed.

Now, that work done, the modest patriot yielded at

once to the student, and the law was read to the people.

But the faces of the multitude grew graver. An occasional

sob was heard as law solemnly followed law, and they

began to realize the conditions on which they might dwell

within the new-built walls. Finally, there broke forth the

great cry of a nation in tears.

This was disappointing enough to the two heroes. To

them the law was familiar, and all their work had been

done on those high ideals. But the crowd was ignorant,

and in the reaction after their exciting labours they were

ready for any discouragement. But the leaders knew how

much remained to be done, and that strength was needed

now more than ever. Yet there was only one way of

strength. There could be no escape from the laws which

had discouraged them. Through the law the people must

pass on to the heart of God, and there find joy. The people

were learning God's laws with consternation; the leaders

knew His character and heart. And they knew that He

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98 THINGS ETERNAL

who had given the sombre law, was joyous for evermore
At the heart of things, in the depths of the universe,
there was unfailing gladness.

There are obvious lessons here. Religion, viewed from
a distance, is ever sombre and gloomy. Faced, accepted,
attempted, it reveals daily delights. Many a man stands
shuddering at religion, who if he would but boldly face
it, would lose all his fears and weakness. For true strength
and true joy are essentially moral. It is through law, and
not without law, that any trustworthy gladness must come.
Character is the granite rock of life.

All this depends ultimately on the character of God.
There could be no possible joy for man in the worship of
Moloch. But here man reaches the enthusiasm of a divine
gladness. He has discovered the secret of the Lord, and
is filled with the " inward glee" of those who have pene-
trated behind the sorrow, the severity, and the sin of the
world, and found its God rejoicing.

But the special lesson of the text is that of the connexion
between strength and joy. Life demands of us all that
we be strong, and our hearts respond in a great longing.
To be able to fight and to labour and to wait, to be com-
petent for our tasks — what heart does not answer to the
delight in strength? Those whose strength is failing and
who feel at once their call to labour and their weakness to
achieve it, have ever longed most passionately for strength.
They think enviously and yet with a kind of glory of the
strength of others ; they take the strongest for their heroes
and imitate them as best they can. But there are many
sorts of strength, and some of them are of little worth.

There is natural robustness, mere weight of muscle, un-
impaired health, and unbroken success. This had been
the kind of strength which the Israelites had exercised
in their building. The sheer force of the work had carried
them on in the excitement of the hour, and it had been

STRENGTH AND JOY 99

enough for that labour. But now they collapsed when they
realized life's finer tasks and more exacting demands.
Such blind strength is coarse-grained, often feelingless
and inconsiderate, never delicate enough for more than
the rougher tasks.

Again there is the passionate strength of sorrow. Every
one knows the amazing feats which desperate men may
perform; and, when the first outburst of such emotion
has passed, it is still possible to be strong in a dogged,
hopeless fashion, resolute without enthusiasm. Such
strength might easily have been sought for by these Israel-
ites, now that their old strength was broken. These laws
were impossible, and there was no use trying to please
their God. Yet, in a kind of Puritanic despair they might
have gone bravely on to their doom, as many a hopeless
spirit has done since then.

It was to men standing among such alternatives that
the words were spoken. The Law-giver was also the Re-
joicer, and He would have men to rejoice in His joy and
so be strong. The very fact of being glad would restore
heartiness to them and exhilarate their flagging spirits.
But that is a poor rendering of the text. If they are
to hear the laws of their God and still be glad, it must
be because underneath the stern mask of commandment
there is a smile on the Law-giver's face. They are to
rejoice with their God while they obey His laws.

Such strength is intelligent and not blind. If we have
seen the Creator rejoicing in His works, there is something
to be glad about. Behind the joy lies not merely muscle
or emotion, but reason and right thought. As the walls
of Troy were supposed to have risen to the music of their
builders' singing, as all works of art have been defined
as the expression of their maker's joy; so men who take
their tasks from God, sharing His joy of creation, rejoice
in them and do them well.

100 THINGS ETERNAL

Such strength is also unselfish. God is blessed because
He is for ever blessing. The very meaning of the Cross
of Christ is that God 's unselfishness is for ever overcoming
the sorrow of the world. It is this generous joy, rejoicing
in doing good to others, which alone gives real strength
to character. In a world like this, where there is so
much misery, it must sometimes occur to every happy
spirit to ask whether any man has a right to enjoy himself.
He has such a right only on condition that his is the gen-
erous joy of the Lord. "We may dare to be very happy
while doing our utmost to help a brother.' '

Further, this is peaceful strength. With God there is
no spasmodic effort. The heavens are calm above earth's
strained and anxious life. The strongest forces are ever
quiet, and all fuss and restless violence of effort are signs
of weakness. In God, by faith we do enter into His rest,
and are " strong in grave peace.' ' God's peace within a
soul makes room for joy, and to be glad thus quietly is
to be strong.

Lastly, this strength is victorious; it is strength which
has been reached through weakness. God, as we have seen
Him in Jesus Christ, has conquered sorrow and death,
and revealed a joy achieved through pain, and a strength
made perfect in weakness. It is such strength that is
found in the joy of the Lord, for all our joy also has
in its heart some conquered sorrow. We can rejoice only
by overcoming, and the strength we reach thus is the
strength of victorious men.

Such is this glad strength which is to be found for
men in God. If it be available, it must be our duty to
possess it. The world has already too many of the weak
and sad in it, and has certainly no need of more. This
is a plain word to all the neurotic, and to that very much
over-indulged member of society, the weak brother. If in
any measure you have it in your choice, then it is a great

STRENGTH AND JOY 101

and urgent duty to be glad and to be strong. To swell
voluntarily the ranks of the inefficient, to add another
burden to the immense load which the heart of the world
already bears, is an unmanly and shameful thing. To all
men and women who are tempted to trade on their weak-
ness, to be exacting, to expect and demand special terms
and allowances, the great words are spoken. You have no
right to your weakness and your gloom ; arise and sing ye
that dwell in the dust; play the man and rejoice. Your
God rejoices, Christ is risen, and the hosts of heaven are
singing a new song. There is gladness at the heart of
things. It is for you to believe it and to win the victory
of faith. For those who do believe it, and rejoice in God,
out of weakness are indeed made strong.

THE ELUSIVENESS OF DESIRE

"The mirage shall become a pool." — Isaiah xxxv. 7.

The most fantastic and surely the most cruel of all natural
phenomena is the mirage of the desert. The sands of
Africa, and the clay and stones of the Syrian desert, spread
their vast expanse of tawny or leaden colour to the sun,
and the hapless traveller whose store of water has failed
Iiim, at last abandons the vain hope of an oasis. Suddenly
in front of him there is the sparkle of sun on lapping
waves. It is a lake with palm-trees, or an inland sea,
with wooded islands and their reflections clear in the waters
as the ripples die down to calm. With tongue cracked
and bloodshot eyes he staggers on towards that magic
that is fairer and more delicate than any real scenery. It
recedes before his advance, and as the fever rises he
strips off his clothing piece by piece. Afterwards they
find him, naked and dead, on the hot ground where the
waters had shone before his eyes.

In Hebrew literature there is much reference to the
desert. The usual effect of it upon Israel's thought was
to teach her to appreciate her oasis-land of Syria. It has
aften been remarked that she exaggerated the beauty and
fertility of her land, but it has to be remembered that
those trees and watersprings and mountains are seen and
described by men whose instintive sense of the surrounding
desert heightened their charms by contrast. This, how-
ever, is a bolder stroke. The writer here is thinking not

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THE ELUSIVENESS OF DESIRE 103

of escape from the desert but attack upon it. Ezekiel's
waters from beneath the altar are to reclaim the desert
of the Dead Sea. But this goes farther still, facing those
lies and delusions which are the most exquisitely tortur-
ing devices of the desert's cruel heart, and forcing the
mirage itself back to truth.

We need not pause upon the historical interpretation
of the metaphor for Israel, for the promise is of applica-
tion wide as human life. It is not the kingdom of God
coming upon life when it appears grey and worthless, to
give zest and the promise of good, that is here depicted.
It is life appearing good and full of zest that calls forth
desire, and then failing us. It is the disillusion and treach-
ery, the false promises of happiness and satisfaction lead-
ing only to disappointed hopes. We need not pose as
superior persons who are above such things. "We live
by admiration"; we need desire and the satisfaction of
desire, and we cannot be our best without it.

Well, there is no one of ripe years who is not quite
well accustomed to see the waters of his desire turn to
mirage. Some one has said that most of the pools at which
we slake our thirst are turgid. But that is not the worst.
The worst is that when we come to the pools they are not
there. This is so common in experience that the repetition
}f it sounds commonplace. Mirage is not a metaphor of
high tragedy, it is an everyday fact. We live by admira-
tion, but either we fail to reach what we have admired,
or reaching it find it no longer admirable. Either "sud-
denly, as rare things will, it vanished," or " achievement
lacks a gracious somewhat."

It is but natural that this disillusion should have called
forth voices in the wilderness. Job will ever have his
comforters, more or less wise and relevant. There are
realists who accept the situation, and appear to find com-
fort in literature and speech about the vanity of human

104 THINGS ETERNAL

wishes. Some of them are ever laboriously reminding us
of the mirage of life, and damping the ardour of young
enthusiasts with their cynicism — "Ah, my young friends,
but wait till you are as old as we are!" Nobler voices
too, there are, crying in the night of man's discomfiture
— voices from brave, dark hearts that shout courage amidst
the disillusion.

As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm,

or — "We are not meant to succeed; failure is the fate
allotted . . . but God forbid it should be man that
grumbles. " But such comfort is not enough. We do
complain; and, if we are being cheated by the false ap-
pearances of things, we are in no mood to accept the
situation complacently. Then, while we stand angrily fac-
ing the trick and sham of life, with the mocking laughter
of the universe in our ears, God's great voice is heard,
" The mirage shall become a pool." Here is a new thing
— the attack upon the facts themselves by the only one
who has power to change them. It is like God's great
way. He is too wise and true to deny the obvious fact.
The poor world has been so often cheated that it will
never trust any light-hearted comforters. But this voice
acknowledges the fact that "the world passeth away."
"What is your life? it is is even a mirage," it says. But
then it adds, " The mirage shall become a pool." It
faces the worst, and then raises the shout of redemption.
Disillusion is true, but it is not the last word there is to
say. The dream and the desire of life have proved false
for a time, but they shall yet turn out true. In them we
have touched reality, and God can yet confirm it.

The promise of life was pools of water, satisfying its
desires for health and beauty, for coolness and rest. Christ
is often misunderstood, as if he were laying new spiritual

THE ELUSIVENESS OF DESIRE 105

burdens on the poor children of desire. Really he offers
rest. He offers not another thirst for an ideal still more
unattainable, but living water which will slake the soul's
thirst. He offers not another added energy to the spirit
already tired, but the coolness of quiet waters and the
shade of the trees of God. He offers not a morbid holi-
ness but a healthful and natural life.

The disillusioned and disappointed will naturally dis-
trust such offers as these. For them the greensward is
faded, and the colour and radiance are gone out of life's
vision, leaving but the harsh monotony of the desert. De-
sire, whether granted or refused, has cheated them, until
they have finally made up their mind to deaden down its
fires : they do not intend to be betrayed again. But Christ
insists upon reopening the question. What you saw and
desired was real good, though the form in which you
sought it may not have been the best for you. But the
keen and poignant sense of life which seemed to vanish
has not really disappeared. All that you wanted to make
life perfect, God still has in store for you. At His right
hand there are pleasures for ever more.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,

When eternity confirms the conception of an hour.

And if the question still be asked, when these things
shall be, the answer probably expected is, that this life
is not all, but only the beginning. Here we are dis-
ciplined by desires, there we shall be satisfied with ful-
filments. It is a legitimate and worthy answer. One of
the most powerful arguments for immortality is just this
twofold fact, that in our desires we catch passing glimpses
of convincing and evident good, and that in many cases
these are all which is allowed us. To doubt that these are
waiting for fulfilment in some life complementary to this,

106 THINGS ETERNAL

is to pronounce all experience meaningless. But besides
that, when the love and power of Christ enter into life
here, they change the whole aspect of it. So vital and
keen a thing is faith, that those who believe find not
desire only but fulfilment of desire, and that increasing
with the years. We shall all find some things which we
have desired as pools of water turn out to be mirage.
Those are wise and happy who resist the temptation to
rebel, and who trust this great word of God's reassurance,
The mirage shall become a pool.

THE PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIFE

"The mirage shall become a pool." — Isaiah xxxv. 7.

Apart from the treachery of the mirage which offers
illusive waters to thirsty lips, there is also its confusion
of the real and the unreal worlds. East of Damascus it
may be seen for hours together, changing the grey va-
cancy of the horizon into an unceasing restless kaleido-
scopic spectacle of swiftly changing form and colour. All
sorts of familiar scenes suggest themselves to the imagi-
nation as picture succeeds picture. But the general effect
is so powerful as to defy even the sanest mind to retain
its sense of reality.

This aspect of the mirage suggests a nobler interpreta-
tion of the text than that of desire. We have, after all, a
deeper quarrel with life than its false promises of satis-
faction and happiness. We demand a stable and abiding
sense of a real world in which we are dealing with realities.
In the midst of many interests and pursuits there come
moments when the whole sense of life fails us and seems
to evaporate. Shakespeare knew the feeling well, and has
told us in words whose familiarity proves how true has
been their appeal, of life as "a tale told by an idiot, sig-
nifying nothing," and ourselves as "such stuff as dreams
are made of." Sometimes this comes as a general reaction
from our habitual trust in the soundness of our ordinary
views. Sometimes it is a sharp and sudden experience,
when some event, long looked forward to, seems unreal

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108 THINGS ETERNAL

when it comes, and in spite of all persuasions to the con-
trary we find ourselves among cloud-work, each man walk-
ing in a vain show.

The great idealists have sought to safeguard man's
belief in the reality of his spiritual experience by the
most daring philosophies; asserting, in face of all such
faintings of the spirit as we have mentioned, that the
ideas dwell in heaven, and that thought is the only reality.
Christian optimists, like Kingsley and George Macdonald,
have dogmatized on the courageous principle that such
convictions are so beautiful that they must be true. We
are grateful for all such voices, yet times of doubt recur.
Are we indeed children of eternity, lying on our backs
in the cave as Plato says, and seeing but the reflection
of things on the roof, yet knowing that the realities are
sure? or are we but ants tumbling on the huge ant-heap,
taking ourselves with an absurd seriousness, and dream-
ing great things? Do our sins and virtues, our struggles
and resistances, our joys and sorrows really matter? or
are these all but the cloud-work of the desert ? The voice of
God assure sus that the mirage shall become a pool, real
enough to live for or die for. That is what Jesus Christ
has done for the world.

Let us look at one or two details.

1. Our work often induces a sense of unreality. Weary
toilers, whether successful or unsuccessful, feel the vanity
even of finished works, and still more the vanity of unfin-
ished works. Many a man has built his tower, done
what he set out to do, and the tower falls and his labour
is lost; or worse still, his tower stands only to shame him
with its imperfection, for it is not the thing he had de-
signed. The better the workman, the more unsatisfied he
is with his finished works. And then how much has to
be left unfinished. The man's designs are greater than
the length of his life. "Ambition had set its hold on
him. He wanted to do more than there was time for.

THE PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIFE 109

Like many of us he began by thinking that life was
longer than it is."

Well, finished or unfinished, satisfactory or unsatisfac-
tory, here is God's verdict upon man's honest labour.
He approves the purpose of a life, and His approval es-
tablishes the work of our hands upon us. He understands
what you meant to do, and knows the pattern showed
you in secret, after which you have been striving. That,
in God's sight, is reality. It is work, and has eternal
value. No faithful toil can ever really be futile. This
assurance brings a man in among the abiding things, for
it tells him that he has built an house not made with hands
that is eternal.

2. Character is often a most tantalizing and lamentable
mirage. We see our goal, apparently possible and within
our reach, and across the desert we pant after it. But
which of us has attained, or is anything resembling the
man he fain would be 1 The flitting and evanescent image
of our noblest manhood often dims and vanishes. Old
temptations recurring out of due season drawn us down
from high hopes to low levels of actual conduct. Honesty,
justice, purity, even when we have reached them in some
degree, are a compromise rather than a victory. Our high
efforts end ignominously in the mere keeping up of ap-
pearances. At times a subtle doubt invades, and we find
ourselves persisting, without knowing why we do so,
in a moral struggle of whose worth we are by no means
certain.

Again God's word is that that mirage also shall be-
come a pool. One day we shall be sure with an indisput-
able certainty of the worth of the struggle, and of the
glory of moral victory. What good hope are you now
clinging to in your disgusted and disillusioned heart ? He
will "take the distorted thing in His hands and make
something gallant of it." God draws out the best that

110 THINGS ETERNAL

is in a man and confirms it upon him. Even here this
may be felt and seen ; and, beyond, we shall find that we
have been fighting better than we knew.

3. Faith, once taken to be the surest of realities, is now
discredited in many minds. It seems a fantastic dream-
land, which wakening intellect has discovered to be wild
and impossible. Old forms and securities of faith have
proved illusory. " Olympus and Sinai are deserts." The
great mirage of Christianity itself is over. Jesus Christ
remains but as the memory of a dream, a fair form in
art, a hope from which the light has faded, a star van-
ished in the night.

This mirage also shall become a pool of living waters.
In some form or other, Christian faith is going to prove
true. Where the waters that once promised refreshment
have vanished, and where now there are only deserts of
intellectual routine, streams of vital truth will flow once
more, never again to fail. Looking back when the change
is completed, you will not count it a change from reality
to unreality, but from an imperfect vision to the very
truth of God and of life. There is a faith for you which
will never need to be abandoned, a sure and eternal truth
on the strength of which you may live and die.

Each of these is but a detail in the great mirage of
life itself. The world, with the brilliance of its spectacle
and the heave and fall of its surge — we have found it out
to be but cloud, and still we gaze. Real or not, its wond-
er and its beauty fascinate us and hold our eyes. And
heaven, as you once imagined it, that last and most deli-
cate mirage of all — you used to be thrilled with its splen-
dour ; now you turn from its gaudy and inadequate cloud-
land. You have found out the earth and the heavens.

Yes, but beneath such shows of things there are realities
— the new earth and the new heaven — an earth where
life is real, a heaven where the real life of earth is made

THE PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIFE 111

eternal. For Jesus Christ is Lord of Realities, and He
is Master of earth and heaven, who "maketh all things
new." He knows how we all dream, and how futile the
dream appears on our awakening. But through it all
there remain for all of us the facts of faith and love and
service. These things are no dream, though on them also
for a moment we may lose our hold. Yet for the faithful
these will prove so real that they will give reality to all
the rest that tends so readily to fade. And at last comes
death. "After the fever of life, after wearinesses and
sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fret-
fulness, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes
and chances of this troubled unhealthy state, at last comes
death, at length the great white throne, at length the
beatific vision."

A NEW POINT OF VIEW

(The Ascension-Day)

"While they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him
out of their sight." — Acts i. 9.

The story of the life of Jesus falls into three parts, (1)
a man on earth like other men, (2) still on the earth, but
now unearthly and occasional, (3) free from the earth
and identified with the life of God. The Ascension narra-
tive marks the change from the second to the third of
these, cutting off His earthly from His heavenly life. The
stories of the days after the Resurrection tell of an ex-
perience which was indeed comforting but yet perplexing.
Men were sure that Jesus still lived, but they needed
a further assurance which would give stability and the
sense of permanence to faith. They had been living, both
before and after His death, in the constant expectation
of surprises. But now no surprise could happen any
more. Peace had come, such as can come only when the
Best is also the Highest, when the Son of God is at God's
right hand.

We need not trouble ourselves about curious questions
of detail. Scientific speculations regarding matter and
spirit are irrelevant here: critical questions and the la-
borious attempt to piece together the various accounts into
one consistent narrative are equally out of place. There
is indeed in the Gospels a manifest reserve, and even a
carelessness as to consistency of detail, which send us back

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A NEW POINT OF VIEW 113

upon the heart of the story. The eye cannot follow Him
on that day when a cloud receives Him out of our sight.
But certain things remain, truths about God and our
human life, for which the story stands. Four of these
are: —

1. Earth' }s view of Heaven. — (" Gazing up into Heav-
en.") Heaven has ever seemed a place inaccessible to
earth. The truth is, when we speak frankly, that spiritu-
ality is beyond us. The natural man has indeed glimpses
of the spiritual world, but he is incapable of sustained
or satisfying vision of it. It is not even congenial to
him. We love the earth and understand it well, but heav-
en we neither understand nor love. It is difficult to be-
lieve in, still more difficult to realize, and absolutely im-
possible to live for, leaving all for its sake.

Part of the reason for this is the want of the personal
element. Spirituality without that is always tenuous and
bleak. When a good man enters heaven, its aspect is to
some extent changed for his friends. He is there, and
the way by which he went seems open. Very different
are the sorts of entrance. Some, like storm-beaten ves-
sels, hardly struggle into port. Some, in perfect trim,
finish their voyage gaily, the white sails taking the evening
light. Some chosen spirits make us feel that for them
the heavens are impatient; and these, with their pale,
eager faces of the dying, show us far glimpses through
the open gates.

But above all the dying, Jesus Christ did this for us
when He went to His own place. As the Resurrection
silences for ever all talk of a "lonely Syrian grave,"
so the Ascension keeps us from losing Him among the
sombre mysteries of death. His future is no "grand per-
haps." He had been as a man journeying into a far
country, and now He has been welcomed home after that
long wandering. It was His design to make heaven clear

114 THINGS ETERNAL

and homely to the eyes of earth; and the disciples now,
looking upward, see Jesus Christ there and know it for
their homeland. He has absorbed into Himself our whole
thought of heaven: to die is to go to be with Christ. It
is confessedly difficult to believe in spiritual things, here
or hereafter. But it is not difficult to believe in Jesus
Christ. It is easy to believe in Him, and He is there.
Into that strange land He is thus the way, and since He
entered it earth's view of heaven has been different.

2. Heaven's view of Earth.— ("Go ye into all the world
and preach the Gospel to every creature.") Earth's view
of earth is always local. We see the part around our
feet, but from the rest we are hedged in by all manner
of barriers. But the Ascension of Jesus has taught us
the heavenly point of view for earth, at which all local
barriers are lost sight of.

There is a very intimate and emphatic connexion be-
tween the Ascension and this wide outlook and command.
In Greek and Hebrew thought alike, heaven was the privi-
leged home of a select minority of distinguished persons,
while the rest passed to a land of shadows, and the ex-
ceptional exaltation of the few made the general doom
only the more apparent. But it was otherwise with Jesus.
He came forth at first as a local Galilean prophet ; at the
last He appears in His disciples' preaching as the Lord of
the world, the King of nations. But this expansion is
directly connected with the narrative of the Ascension.
Lifted up from the earth, He draws all men unto Him-
self. He breaks up and ends all possibility of national or
local religions. He is detached from one land that He
may claim all lands and come into the sight of all. Those
who in spirit are ascended with Christ, not only see heav-
en but "overlook the world." Thousands of men and
women, brethren in far lands, came into sight that day.
The divisions of nationality, race, and class, and the

A NEW POINT OF VIEW 115

barriers of aversion, prejudice and ignorance, all were
lost sight of. This is the characteristic note of the As-
cension. We must ascend with Christ and get above the
world to see it thus.

And having seen we must go forth into the newly dis-
covered breadth of the world. All that is needed for
conviction of the worth of foreign missions, and all other
enterprises for the help of man by man, is that we as-
cend with Christ. Those who have understood the mean-
ing of His Ascension, and seen the world from the heavenly
point of view, can no longer stay at home. Provincialism
is a low thing, possible only to the earthly. By His As-
cension He taught men the cosmopolitanism of heaven's
view of earth.

3. The Power of the Unseen.— (" All power is given unto
Me." etc.) One would think that power, in the sense of
influence, must be measured by visibility. What we see
most clearly we feel most powerfully. Yet even in the
material world there is abundant evidence that the great-
est powers surrounding us are the invisible forces of na-
ture. And the access of spiritual power that came upon
Christians after Jesus was no longer visible to their eyes,
is one of the most remarkable facts in history.

When we remember the helplessness of the company of
disciples huddled together after the Crucifixion, we might
expect a paralysis of vital energy in the Church now
that its Lord had finally vanished from the earth. Left
alone, with their gigantic task among the nations, a feeble
band pitted against the possibilities and impossibilities of
the situation, surely the Church must feel its human
weakness to the point of despair.

But instead of this we find them returning to Jerusa-
lem "with great joy," competent men who were adequate
to their task. Evidently their faith had become a force
now, and that force was a sense of the power of Christ.

116 THINGS ETERNAL

Men who face great tasks are usually keenly alive to the
sense of Fate. But for them henceforth Fate was but the
will of Christ, and to be with Him in will was to be
stronger than life or death.

For us and for all men Christ's secret of power is not
visibility but exaltation. He is not seen but He is as-
cended. Lack of spiritual power is the result of unworthy
and inadequate thoughts of Christ. Let us exalt Him
in our hearts, for the more He is exalted, the greater is
the might and effectiveness of faith.

4. The Presence of the Absent. — ("Lo, I am with you
always.") The parting of Jesus from His friends really
united them to Him. The earthly life had set limits of
all kinds upon Him. He was here and not there, cut
off from His friends by absence of the body. Now, He
was free in the spiritual land. He was with them always,
not occasionally as before.

And this meant for them the setting free of love, as
only the Ascension could set it free. They needed access
to Him, for their love longed for His fellowship, and their
attempts at service often needed comfort. With His As-
cension there came upon the world a new sense of the love
it longed for made accessible. Love was the essential ele-
ment in the whole story of Christ. Mohammed died, and
the fantastic legend honoured him with a coffin hanging
in the air. That was high, but not ascended far above
the earth. It was all that could be looked for, for the
faith of Mohammed set power free but not love. But
Christ's Ascension set love in the heights for ever; and
from the heights that love for ever streams down upon
mankind. The presence of the absent is precious chiefly
for this, that neither height nor depth can separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

THE DAYS OF THE SPIRIT

(Whit-Sunday)

"It is expedient for you that I go away." — St. John xvi. 7.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is distinctive of Chris-
tianity, and essential to it. Yet it is so delicate that its
beauty and its wonder are easily spoiled by rough hand-
ling. It is difficult to deal rightly with it, and it is dan-
gerous if abused. On the one hand, hasty believers, im-
patient of its subtlety, have materialized it, conceiving of
the personality of the Holy Ghost in a crude and over-
familiar fashion. All mystery has vanished from the
doctrine for them, and it no longer answers to those in-
expressible hints and suggestions —

those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections. . . .
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized

— which it is its very office to interpret. On the other
hand, there is the revulsion from all this on the part of
those who, with an equal failure to appreciate the reticent
and secret play of the spiritual in life, have felt the crude
statements of the others to be obvious unrealities. Such
have left this doctrine severely alone, and have stated
Christianity in so wholly unspiritual a way that one can-
not but wonder if they have so much as heard
whether there be any Holy Spirit. The result in
either case is as unnecessary as it is costly. This whole

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118 THINGS ETERNAL

1

region is withdrawn indeed and occult, yet it is a region

of obvious facts of experience.

It is in connexion with these facts that we must view
the necessity for Christ's departure. Life, indeed, seemed
easy, while they had His bodily presence, but it could
never be complete. "We have deep needs, spiritual demands
so fine and intricate, that even Christ Himself in the flesh
could not satisfy them, but must rather stand between
men and their satisfaction. Let us see how this was so.

Jesus appeared in the midst of a society as unspiritual
as could well be imagined. The avowed political material-
ism of the Sadducees, and the unconscious but even gross-
er legalistic materialistism of Pharisaism, had set the
fashion of the nation's thinking, and kept it earth-bound.
Across that world Jesus flashed a great spiritual light.
It was like a lightning-flash illuminating some mean street,
and revealing unheard-of colours and forms in its deadly
regularity. Like the force of electricity, this spiritual
force which Jesus revealed had been there before, but un-
discovered and unutilized. He made men aware of a new
world, in which He Himself was living, and in which
they ought to live. It was a world of spiritual agencies
and forces, potent and available for men. The plain men
who followed Him uncomprehending, felt all this without
clearly knowing what it was they felt. In Him they saw
human life heightened, with keener possibilities and more
high-strung intensity of purpose. He was living at a
higher pressure and with a finer delicacy than they had
known in any other life.

And yet, for their sakes He must leave them. They
looked on in wonder at this new kind of life, but they
could not live it themselves. The very fascination of
Jesus kept them from it. He was, in a way, a personality
too commanding, and His way of life was too wonderful.
"While He was with them it became their habit not to

THE DAYS OF THE SPIRIT 119

face problems, but to go and tell Jesus. He bore all their
burdens and undertook their responsibilities. As yet they
were not trying to learn the finesse of the game of life,
but leaving all that to Him. So absorbing was His pres-
ence that they could not see past Him. It was ever,
''Thou knowest that I love Thee," or "My Lord and my
God," and the full hearts were at rest and asked no more.
Thus even the holiest influences may deaden spiritual
activity. St. Paul himself finds it necessary to detach
himself, and though he had known Christ after the flesh,
henceforth to know Him so no more. So for those disciples
it was worth while to lose Jesus, if they might find for
themselves the way into that spiritual world in which
they had seen Him moving. For He did not come to be
adored by men who could never reach His secret. It was
His will that those who had been given Him should be
with Him where He was.

So He left them, and the days of the Spirit began. Once
He was gone, they were in a position to review the past
and understand its meaning. We all know how death
speaks to us of our beloved, and how strangely impres-
sive is the power of that which is no more. So now they
could see His life, with its wonderful spirituality, in per-
spective and as a whole.

But when they turned from the memory of His life to
the need of taking up their own, they found that He had
wrought a change of which they had not been aware.
The still pool had been troubled by the angel. Life was
trembling with a spiritual quiver and had taken on a more
delicate significance. They were no longer occupied with
deeds and spoken words, but with thoughts, desires, and
imaginations. No longer did they wait for command-
ments; they harkened for suggestions, whispers of a spir-
itual voice that might be heard within, telling them His
mind. To these they listened and tried to follow them,

120 THINGS ETERNAL

till the instinctive voices grew clearer and more constant,
and the Spirit was in command of their lives. Nor was
this ministry of the Spirit an isolated thing, confined to
the lives of a few chosen individuals. Great tides of it
were flowing, which affected masses of men and even na-
tions. The age of the Spirit had come, and the world
felt the thrill of a life which was a new thing in the ex-
perience of men.

We can imagine something of this changed aspect of
the world. In early childhood, in times of physical weak-
ness, in rare and precious hours of silence, we all have
been aware of a more delicate but elusive world — a kind
of fairy-land hardly to be expressed. But words multi-
plied, concealing thought; health grew robuster and life
more crowded. The veil of flesh fell heavily and the vision
was lost and would not return. There must have been
for those disciples something like a re-entering of such
regions of delicate impressions. No longer did they dream
of thrones in a restored kingdom, no longer did they
expect the next miracle or revel in great hauls of fish
or super-abundance of bread. He had thrust them forth
into the difficult and wonderful region of the spiritual
life. They had to take up its responsibilities and make
what they could of it. They had to venture out upon
its tides of spirit, and count upon its mysterious powers
for persuading men. And they were able to do this in
virtue of a most strange return to childhood, a change of
spirit which had given them back the freshness of their
simplest years. Children once again, as Jesus had said
they must become, they had entered and were dwelling
in a kingdom that was not of earth.

If this be Christianity as it actually was in the begin-
ning, that fact entirely precludes all mere materialism
either of faith or of unbelief. There is more in Christian-
ity than eye hath seen or ear heard ; more than theologians

THE DAYS OF THE SPIRIT 121

have defined or rationalists denied. There is in human
nature a craving for contact with the spirit world deep
as life itself. The Greek oracles, the Alexandrian gnosti-
cism, and the many varieties of spiritualistic endeavour
after the occult in modern times, all bear witness to that
fact. It is easy to dismiss this or that development with
the word " grotesque.' ' But the Christian answer to these
cravings is not ridicule nor denial. It is fulfilment, for
the days of the Christian faith are indeed the Days of
the Spirit. And this is the record of a historic change
for which Christ is responsible. He went away and the
Spirit came.

THE SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE OF GOD

( Trinity-Sunday )

"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the

Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

—1 John v. 7.

One of the most significant and valuable changes in the
habits of theological thinking is the change from the de-
ductive and metaphysical to the inductive and psycho-
logical method. In simpler language, it was formerly the
rule to establish a doctrine apart from our human ex-
perience, and then to adapt life and thought to the doc-
trine; it is now the rule to take our human experience
with us when we are trying to understand or state all
doctrines.

In no case is this latter method more advantageous, and
indeed necessary, than in regard to the doctrine of the
Holy Trinity. If we try to build it up out of proof-texts
from Scripture, and abstract reasoning and speculation,
we shall succeed only in bewildering ourselves. The ab-
stract doctrine of the Trinity is scholastic, mechanical, and
fictitious. The popularized form of such a conception
will be either some form of tritheism, or it will be a mere
paradox with no meaning at all.

But it was not in this abstract fashion that the doctrine
originally came. It did not arise from our text, for that
text was absent from the original documents and did not
appear till the fifth century. The doctrine, as Clarke says,
" Sprang up in experience, not in speculation.,, It was

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THE SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE OP GOD 123

because men found the one God manifesting Himself to
them in three ways that they tried to conceive and state
their thoughts of Him accordingly. The abstract formu-
lations and controversies were drawn partly from Scrip-
ture; partly from the need of combating heresies which
stated the being of God in terms which were not true
to the Christian experience; and partly from the Greek
spirit which sought to rationalize and harmonize all hu-
man knowledge. But none of these was the source of
the doctrine, which arose out of the deepest hours of
communion between the souls of believers and God.

On the one hand, by the very constitution of our minds
we perceive the demand for unity in God. Apart from
this there can be no universe, no rational life at all. And
yet our social instincts, nay, the very constitution of
human nature, reveal variety in unity. Thus, on the one
hand, our thought of God could never rest in polytheism ;
on the other hand pure unitarianism has not satisfied the
demand of religious experience. The former ends in
atheism, for it has never remained credible under the test
of thought ; the later tends to a coldness of religious spirit
which has never met the need of the generality of men, for
it is incapable of adequately revealing God's love.
"We do not indeed profess to reconcile the unity and
the variety with anything like a clear or complete under-
standing. The mystery remains in which the Divine must
ever dwell. Yet trinitarian doctrine is helpful, for it saves
us from being "lost in the vague recesses of the infinite,"
or from being driven to assert that "God is too awful to
be worshipped." It keeps our manifold nature and ex-
perience at every point in touch with God.

"When, then, we ask not what God is in Himself, but
what He is to us, the answer of experience is, that we
know Him as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit. It is
interesting to remember that this is the order in which

124 THINGS ETERNAL

the revelation has been historically made. The earliest
phase of it was that of the patriarchial times Then, in
the nomad society, fatherhood was the dominant idea. It
governed law, custom, and all the affairs and relations
of life. So men, looking up towards the Divine through
their own experience, naturally found Him as the Father
— the highest expression of their ruling and guiding con-
ception. Later, when national history grew tragic with
sin and punishment, defeat and exile shattering the na-
tion's complacent life, and conscience embittering the
misery of their hearts, there came a second phase, The
suffering Servant, the stricken and afflicted One bearing
on His own heart the sins of many, and by His stripes
healing them, revealed the Son. When Jesus had been
crucified, His disciples saw in Calvary the complete reve-
lation of all that towards which the prophets had been
groping. Here was another view of God, and the life of
the world demanded it and were satisfied by it. Yet these
were not all. Prom the first there had been a sense of
the Divine inspiring and guiding the ordinary life of man,
quickening his interests and working through him in his
enthusiasms. In the days of the Apostles this inspiring
and quickening became so distinct and so powerful a phe-
nomenon, that they could explain it no otherwise than by a
third view of God as Holy Spirit. Thus in historic order,
God revealed Himself to man threefold.

In the experience of the individual the same thing is
true, and though no religious experience is coerced into
following any unbroken order of sequence, yet in general
the order is the same. The little child, whose environment
is the Christian home, naturally first views the world
under the dominating idea of fatherhood. His parents
are to him inevitably the first revelation of the Divine, and
he knows the Father. Later, when life has led him to its

THE SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE OF GOD 125

battle-fields of joy and sorrow, of sin and righteousness,
he needs more in God than he needed in the innocence of
childhood. Then it is that his whole nature craves for and
responds to the revelation of God which is given in Jesus
Christ. Farther on in the journey, when the passionate
days of youth are over, the meaning of life's work and
thought discloses itself. The continued labour and interest
of the years require an interpretation which will keep
the man strong and keen. So he finds God revealed as the
Holy Spirit.

Heine, in a memorable passage, has elaborated this con-
ception, and with that we may leave the subject. We
must leave it in mystery; but through the mystery the
great thought of the Holy Trinity shines, sufficient for
the needs of life, though still eluding the efforts of the
strongest intellect. We cannot master these conceptions
and force them into a unity of thought. We shall be
wise if we let them master us, and guide us into a life of
worship and obedience.

" Ah, my child," says Heine, " while I was yet a little
boy, while I yet sat upon my mother's knee, I believed in
God the Father, who rules up there in heaven, good and
great; who created the beautiful earth, and the beautiful
men and women thereon ; who ordained for sun, moon, and
stars their courses.

"When I got bigger, my child, I comprehended yet
a great deal more than this, and comprehended, and grew
intelligent; and I believe on the Son also, on the beloved
Son, who loved us and revealed love to us; and for His
reward, as always happens, was crucified by the people.

"Now, when I am grown up, have read much, have
travelled much, my heart swells within me, and with my
whole heart I believe on the Holy Ghost. The greatest
miracles were of His working, and still greater miracles

126 THINGS ETERNAL

doth He even now work; He burst in sunder the oppres-
sor's stronghold, and He burst in sunder the bondsman's
3^oke. He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old
right; all mankind are one race of noble equals before
Him. He chases away the evening clouds and the dark
cobwebs of the brain, which have spoilt love and joy for
us, which day and night have lowered on us. ' '

THE SPIRIT AND THE INTELLECT

"He will guide you into all truth."— St. John xvi. 13.

We have yet to consider the significance for the intellect
of the change from the days of Christ's flesh to the days
of the Spirit. We have already seen how the days of the
Spirit led men to interpret their spiritual experience in
terms of the great doctrine of the Trinity. But that is
only one instance of the general guidance into truth which
is here promised.

This promise demands close reflection, for the super-
ficial understanding of it is dangerous. There is in some
quarters a tendency towards the idea that this is some
miraculous method of gaining knowledge apart from the
ordinary ways in which knowledge is acquired — an idea
which has led to disastrous results both of intellectual in-
dolence and spiritual arrogance. Under its supposed sanc-
tion, some whose duty it was to be students following the
ordinary painstaking methods of study and research, have
imagined themselves capable of pronouncing opinions upon
matters which they had not studied, mistaking the crude
and mistaken ideas of their undisciplined minds for reve-
lations. Even practical business men have neglected the
ordinary rules and methods of business, to follow an in-
dependent guidance which has led to disastrous conse-
quences. Such attempts to leap for the top of the ladder
are really the result not of spiritual illumination but of
intellectual indolence. There are no short cuts to knowl-

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128 THINGS ETERNAL

edge, and this as true of religious knowledge as it is of
scientific, or any other department of the search for truth.
Morover, those who in this way seek for knowledge by
indolent magic instead of by honest work, cut off from the
humbling discipline of the search, are apt to grow vain
of their supposed wisdom, and arrogantly assume a spir-
itual superiority to others who are content to follow the
more patient and honest way. It is as dishonest to seek
interest upon fictitious capital in spiritual things as it is
in the stock exchange, and such spiritual arrogance is akin
to the pride of the noveau riche speculator.

It is not new facts of knowledge, gained without expendi-
ture of study, that are here promised, but something far
nobler and more valuable. The days of the Spirit are days
in which all a man's powers of thought and imagination
are quickened from within. So real is this vital agency
which Christ promised, that its effects may be seen in even
secular regions. The Old Testament is full of the record
of men upon whom the Spirit of the Lord came mightily,
producing the best results in music, in building, in decora-
tion, and along the whole line of secular activities. The
range of the Spirit's operation is as wide as the interests
and concerns of human life. The student will be a better
student, the business man more capable, if they live in
the Spirit. Even in those secular ways, no one is so trying
as the mere matter-of-fact person, and no one reaches truth
less than he. The man to whom a flower is merely a bo-
tanical specimen, to be dissected and classified, will never
be a botanist of the highest order, for he has not the Spirit.
The artist whose painting is but the following out of
mechanical rules of drawing and of colour, will ever be but
second rate; while those who gain the supreme places in
art are every the first to confess that their pictures leapt
to expression in some moment of inspiration which they
themselves did not understand. Such moments are reve-

THE SPIRIT AND THE INTELLECT 129

lations of the Holy Spirit, and that is why high art calls
forth our reverence.

But those heightened powers of the spiritual life show
themselves most of all in regard to Jesus Christ. It needs
spiritual insight to understand Him, and it was spiritual
insight alone which distinguished the disciples from the
Pharisees. To some men still His words sound common-
place, and His story is unimpressive. Others find way-
side sayings of His take on new meaning as life leads
them forward into new situations. As they read His
words, floods of light stream upon the problems of life
and upon the being and character of God. He Himself
grows more wonderful to them, and His power and love
master their passions and command their souls. They
know Him not after the flesh but after the Spirit.

There is yet a further promise — " He will show you
things to come." This does not mean the very poor and
doubtful gift of foretelling, which would again reduce
Christianity to magic and detach it from normal human
experience. It is but an expansion of the former promise,
which is not merely that we shall know, but that we shall
be guided into truth. For truth is a living thing, not
fixed and stationary but growing. Truth has a future as
well as a present, and it develops from age to age. The
growth of the Christian creed is proof of this. It did not
come to the world full-formed like the goddess from the
waves of Cyprus. It expanded from form to form, each
new dogmatic advance revealing new stretches of thought,
and leading thinkers to understand the former doctrines
more fully and to re-state them more accurately. The
oldest truth can only be rightly seen in the light of the
newest revelation. As time leads men into new fields of
inquiry, and science discovers new methods of research,
these new methods, applied to the old doctrines, bring them
out into richer and more wonderful light. And as the

130 THINGS ETERNAL

general progress of civilization lays emphasis upon new
human conditions and needs, a like change of emphasis
appears in our thoughts of God and of His ways with
men. Thus it need not surprise us that the point of view
in theology has changed and is changing. It is but the
fulfilment of the promise of Christ that the Spirit, in
guiding men into all truth, would show them things to
come.

Further, there is a counterpart in the experience of
each individual to 'the general development of truth in
the history of thought. Within the compass of each
separate life, the truth ought to expand. At first we see
it as it bears on our experience and knowledge up to that
time. But as experience grows wider, we see it in new
bearings and relations, and gradually realize what it must
involve when more completely understood and more widely
applied. This, however, is true only of the spiritual man.
The world of the Spirit is a world not of inert convictions
but of intense vitality and movement, where every belief
is a living thing, expanding and growing richer continually
under the guidance of the Spirit.

THE SPIRIT AND THE CONSCIENCE

"He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of
judgment." — St. John xvi, 8-11.

Tn these words we have a more detailed description of the
days of the Spirit — a closer view of what that remarkable
change from material to spiritual life involves for the con-
science, as we have already seen its value for the intellect.

Its significance for the conscience is implied in the
promise that the Spirit will " convict " the world. The
word does not denote the convincing of the intellect, but
rather the striking home upon the moral sense, the strength-
ening and refining of all the moral faculties and powers.
In its light the three great ethical facts of sin, righteous-
ness, and judgment, take on a new meaning.

1. Sin — There is nothing more liable to be inadequately
conceived than sin. We think of it in general as a way
of behaviour which is contrary to public rights or to pri-
vate interests or tastes, and the outwardness of our view
leads to shallowness. Yet there are time when no known
wrong has been done, and when conscience nevertheless
" trembles like a guilty thing surprised.'7 Such obstinate
misgivings cannot be suppressed without doing violence
to our moral nature, nor can they be made to vanish by
any scientific attempts to explain them away. They pre-
pare us for the finer sensibility of conscience, the more
exacting tests and the higher standards of the days of the

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132 THINGS ETERNAL

Spirit, and they enable us to understand these strange
words " sin, because they believe not on me."

It is a common fallacy to consider the regions of belief
and morals separate, in " water-tight compartments." It
is, indeed, important to guard the neutrality of intellect
against the unjust suspicions and accusations which have
sometimes been entertained. It must be emphatically main-
tained that in many cases a man's belief or unbelief can-
not be traced to his moral soundness or default. Yet that
is but half the truth. Behind our present condition of
belief or unbelief lies the history of an infinite number of
small choices of right or wrong. Those habitual and
insignificant-looking choices induce the moods which over-
shadow the life, and fix the general attitude of the soul.
When a man's mind is habitually turned away from
Christ, unimpressed by Him or even actively repelled,
that fact may indeed be discussed as a purely intellectual
phenomenon. But it is more than that. The Spirit dis-
covers in it a whole world of sin, manifest in previous
habits of choice with which it has apparently no con-
nexion.

2. Righteousness — our thought of which is also inade-
quate, for want of vital interest. We may not indeed be
willing to confess to the cynical view that righteousness
is actually a cross; but we must confess that we have to
try hard to be good, and that we have sometimes found it
a dull business, which we have had to strengthen by re-
minding ourselves that after all it pays.

The spiritual view of righteousness is that it " goes to
the Father." Christ had been for the disciples the com-
plete embodiment of righteousness, and this is His greatest
saying about it. He tells them that men will receive a
new conviction of it altogether when He goes to the Father.
It was by thus bringing righteousness into connexion with
the Father that he transformed it. One expects to see

THE SPIRIT AND THE CONSCIENCE 133

the angels ascending and descending between heaven and
earth upon the Son of man. And here is this great angel
of righteousness, seen now in its heavenly aspect.

It is when we realize that righteousness goes to the
Father that we find it has become convincing. In ordinary
views of it, we see it going to the law, to a man's good
name, to success in life ; but when that is all, we can still
hold it in suspense. But now it has become indisputable,
because it consists no longer in obeying a law but in doing
the will of one who loves us. There is no disputing that
claim. It enlists not merely the delight of all healthy
minds in cleanness, but the surrender of the will to love.
And because it is God's will to which we surrender, there
is revealed also the godlikeness of goodness. The tender-
ness of God's compassion, the strength and gentleness of
the Father's heart, all help us to realize the fascination
of righteousness. It is seen to be real, dependent on no
questions of ethical casuistry, but real as the love which
requires it. It is human, for the character of God is mani-
festly the heritage of His sons. It is attainable, and we,
too, must arise and go to the Father, whither our righteous-
ness has already gone. In this high light we see as it
were our aspirations and ideals finding their way to the
Father, and ourselves following them in growing obedi-
ence. All this changed aspect of the moral world comes
to us when our righteousness no longer stays on earth
but goes to the Father.

3. Judgment — and the reference is not so much to a
future Judgment Day as to our moral judgments in the
present life. Before the days of the Spirit, these judg-
ments are inaccurate because they are confused by the
cross-lights of the world. Conscience gives one set of
judgments, but the estimates of the world are different,
and we are tempted to accept these as the more tolerant
and comfortable. Of course there are certain glaring

134 THINGS ETERNAL

matters which are so obvious that all are perforce agreed
about them. But there are innumerable questions whose
answer is by no means clear, where right or wrong must
be settled by finer instincts. Apart from the Spirit, it
must be confessed that while both conscience and the
world are plausible, yet on the whole the world's less
stringent fashion of judging may often seem to be the
more reasonable of the two.

But in the days of the Spirit, the prince of this world
is judged. It is not merely that in this or that particular
we are led to choose the verdict of conscience against the
world. But a comprehensive judgment is passed against
the worth of the world 's judgment. It has seemed authori-
tative, and it has required courage to question it. Many a
time it has been imperious enough to silence the quieter
voice of conscience. But now those who have caught sight
of the spiritual world are set free from their bondage to
this world's opinion. All things have fallen into propor-
tion, and they see the relative values of the judgments.
The apparent lordliness of this world is seen to be a
mere delusion and a sham. No good can come of trusting
the verdict of this world which passeth away against the
verdict of the Spirit which abideth for ever. In Christian 's
invective against Apollyon, before the fight in the valley,
we have a classical example of the judgment of the prince
of this world. And we feel how the true royalty is trans-
ferred from the swaggering spirit of this world to the
quiet might of those assurances which are the work of the
Spirit.

THE UNKNOWN CHRIST

(St. John the Baptist)

"There standeth one among you whom ye know not." —
St. John i. 26.

From every point of view this scene is peculiarly inter-
esting and graphic. The valley of Jordan, with its suc-
cessive shelf-like ledges of plateau that mark the various
levels of the flood, and its pride of bushy trees and lush
water-side grass that crawls winding like a green snake
along the colourless barrenness of the wide valley, is itself
a unique piece of natural scenery. The crowds that then
filled it, drawn from every rank and from every district
of Palestine, lent their added human interest. Not often,
even in that land of crowded open-air spectacles, could
such a cosmopolitan and representative multitude be seen.
The man at the river-side was still more unique — a man
who from childhood had lived apart, taking his views of
men and things direct, and not through any of the ordinary
channels of knowledge. His mind was like his shaggy
garment and his food — unusual, simple, and primitive.
His thoughts passed through no medium of public opinion
that would tone them down to words conventionally correct.
They went forth from him as they came to him, immediate
and unsoftened by any thought of politeness or propriety.
To complete the strangeness of the scene we have him
confronted by those who represented the extreme opposite

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136 THINGS ETERNAL

of such simplicity, priests and Levites sent by the Jews
from Jerusalem. These were men who had entirely lost
their identity, merging themselves in the conventions of
a ludicrously overdone religious system. Slaves of ritual
and formulae, their minds had neither power of vision nor
of judgment. Outside the routine of words, they were
lost at once. It was the confronting of a child of nature
with men of the schools.

They were out after names, and they had come to the
very home of realities. Jerusalem was uneasy because it
could not get a name for John. All nameless things, all
that was original, unconventional, unusual, made Jerusalem
uneasy. The strain of political crisis set men's nerves on
edge, and brought to an acute point those instincts of the
pedagogue which feared and hated the undefined. So
they came with their question, " Who art thou? that we
may give an answer to them that sent us. Art thou the
Christ, or Elias, or that prophet, and if thou art none
of these, then who?" It was such questioning that drew
from Jesus the ironical sayings as to what they went out
for to see — Was it a reed shaken with the wind, or a man
clothed in soft clothing? As a matter of fact, the one list
of categories was as accurate as the other for John the
Baptist. He fitted no niche in their gallary, no shelf
in their museum. All that they wanted from him was an
answer, that they might put the right name on him and
dismiss him from their minds.

But that was not all what John wanted. It mattered
nothing to him what men called him, but it mattered every-
thing what they did with his message. So he answers,
" I am a voice crying," " I baptize with water." It was
as if he had said, " This is the wilderness, and I refuse
to come back from it to the schools. This is the place of
realities, not of fictions. I am just what you hear and
see. Let your minds play directly upon these obvious

THE UNKNOWN CHRIST 137

facts. Take me for what I am, and do justice to the facts
as you find them."

It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of
that reply, with its demand to let his " work speak for
itself without the prejudice of a name. ' ' There are always
such men of theory who look upon all departments of the
world as a museum for them to catalogue. Their whole
interest in any phenomenon is to get it properly desig-
nated, labelled, and pigeon-holed. One of Robert Brown-
ings' characteristic phrases is " knows and names," but
these men name without really knowing, and the name
becomes the enemy of knowledge. Classification is a valu-
able help to knowledge, but it is often used as a substi-
tute for knowledge. Then it becomes a mere thought-
saving apparatus, a device for stifling thought. For life
is greater than many pigeon-holes, and a soul than defi-
nitions. The first secret of true knowledge is to take
men and things as they are, without a theory, and to let
them reveal themselves. There is less need either for
names or theories than for an open and loving eye in the
search for truth. Everything, even the meanest an most
common, has hidden depths of significance, which are best
explored while it remains uncatalogued.

Yet John is not content with this keen-edged truth.
His thoughts and imagination were full of one face he
had seen in that sea of faces, and he goes on to say, ' * There
standeth one among you whom ye know not — one who
will baffle your classifying even more completely than I
— one whom it will do you little good to catalogue, but to
know whom is eternal life. ' ' And as they looked round
in curiosity it may well be that the eyes of some of them
fell upon the Carpenter of Nazareth, classed Him at once
as a village tradesman, and continued their search.

The story of Jesus Christ is a familiar story, how He
was born, lived, taught, died, was buried, and rose from

138 THINGS ETERNAL

the dead. Some believe it, and some sigh, saying that it is
a great mystery. Doubts invade their faith. Questions of
pre-existence, virgin-birth, miracles, or resurrection hinder
them from pronouncing upon it, though they know it all
so well. But both believers and unbelievers alike often
mistake knowing for defining, and so repeat the old error
of the priests and Levites. The mere ahievement of form-
ing a theory and finding a name for Him will bring a
man no nearer heaven than the arranging of specimens
in a case. Christ is neither imprisoned in history nor
in heaven, neither in the Bible nor in the Church. Faith
in Christ is not the passing of an examination in theo-
logical terms and doctrines : it is a magnificent realization
of the eternal love as it is in Him who interprets life and
reveals the Father. Christ is one that standeth among
you — the Eternal Contemporary who has never left man-
kind. The questions about Him can wait and find answer
tomorrow; but our souls may find themselves and their
God through Him today.

Many speak of Him, and put this name or that upon
Him, who do not know Him at all. But here and there
a soul discovers Him and is amazed. He is so much more
human than all that has been said about Him — so much
more human and so much more divine. That tremendous
personality is at work in our own lives and in the lives
of all about us — at work, and working for the same ends
as of old. The marriage-feast of Cana is not ended. In
a thousand homes He is turning the water of life and
love and work into wine today. The temptation on the
mountain are still in progress, and the Son of Man, in
a thousand struggling souls, is winning His victory over
self-indulgence and pride and the glory of the world which
the devil offers. The woman taken in adultery is still
hearing the incredible words: " Neither do I condemn
thee; go and sin no more." The Pharisee in the Temple

THE UNKNOWN CHRIST 139

is still being rejected in favour of the sin-smitten publican.
The cross is still on Calvary, and men are learning there
the love and sacrifice through which God wins the victory
over the sin of the world.

These things are happening. They are the only true
interpretation of human life as we find it within our-
selves and in our fellow-men. Every stroke of conscience,
every desire of better life, every generous impulse, every
victory over temptation, every sudden glory when the
spirit is set free and leaps to eternal love, every touch
of compassion, when we feel the sin and sorrow of our
fellow-man upon our own heart, and pitying him would
fain save him — there is Christ Jesus, manifest to the eyes
of those that will see. To understand these things we
have to turn to Him. To do them justice we have to
interpret them in terms of His life and words.

It is said that in the French Revolution the maddened
crowd was rushing through the corridors of the Tuileries,
bent on the murder of the Queen. A young girl was in
the front of that wild rush, and when they reached the
locked door of the royal apartment she was driven against
it with the full force of the mass of impetuous humanity
behind her. The door gave way, and she was flung bleed-
ing and unconscious forward upon the floor. When the
girl came to herself the beautiful, compassionate face of
Marie Antoinette was bending over her, the womanly
arm of the Queen supporting her, while with her hand-
kerchief she sought to stanch the bleeding of the wound.
The girl's eyes opened, and filled with tears. Then break-
ing into a passion of weeping she cried: " Oh, I never
dreamed she was like this." So poor mortals, fleeing from
their own salvation, think this and that of Christ, until the
hour comes when they meet His eyes, bending over them
in undreamed of tenderness to heal their wound. Ah,
until that hour comes, there is none of us that has ever
dreamed He was like that.

THE UNKNOWN NEIGHBOUR

"There standeth one among you whom ye know not." —
St. John i. 26.

The vicious practice of mistaking classification for knowl-
edge extends far beyond the Jews' misapprehension of
John and Jesus. It vitiates our whole judgment of our
fellows. As those priests and Levites looked around the
crowd that had gathered beside the Jordan, they were
doubtless busy classifying the people into groups accord-
ing to the localities from which they came and the trades
they followed. It never struck them that each one of
these ordinary human beings had a significance of his own,
deep as hell and high as heaven. The truest and the rarest
kind of knowledge is that which knows familiar things or
people. There is no mystery so wonderful as that which
is to be found nearest home.

One hears sometimes the more or less cynical boast
that such a man " knows men," by which nothing better
is intended than that the critic has some unkindly general-
izations regarding human weaknesses and foibles, which
he has chosen for his guidance and protection. This is
but an extreme form of the error which is here exposed.
Divide society into groups, acquire a stock of ready-made
judgments upon each of these groups en masse, and
trouble yourself no more about your fellows. Kich and
poor, sick and well, young and old, educated and ignorant,
refined and vulgar, clever and stupid — chase the indi-

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THE UNKNOWN NEIGHBOUR 141

vidual into his group, and your responsibility in judging
him is ended: as if all labourers or shopkeepers or lords
were identical with the others of their class. It is in this
way, by reason of the barricades natural and artificial
which we have thrown up around classes, that all those
huge provincialisms arise which separate man from man.
There is the national provincialism, which has its designa-
tion for all men of each nation, and keeps wars and suspi-
cions and alienations still among us. There is the social
provincialism, which takes for its units such classes as
employers and employed, and is responsible for labour
warfare and class hatred. There is the Church provincial-
ism, which asks only whether a man is a Roman Catholic,
a Unitarian, or a member of this or that one of the in-
numerable sects of Protestantism, and having branded
him with a name proceeds to praise or to condemn him.
It is incredible until one comes to think of it how deep
rooted is our habit of accepting such class-names as rigid
and final standards of judgment, to be taken as settling
our estimate of our fellow-men and our attitude towards
them.

The whole secret of social science, as of all professional
efficiency, is to end this dangerous fallacy. It is said that
a young lady, annoyed by the rudeness of some poorly
dressed girls who were passing her, exclaimed: " Such
creatures ought to be got rid of," and was answered by
her friend, " Do you know that that is just what they
are saying about you ? ' ' For indeed ' ' one half of the world
does not know how the other half lives, ' ' and all our harsh
judgments are the result of ignorance. If we really knew
them — how they live, how they weep and laugh — we would
love them all. And the great secret is to be able to put
ourselves in their places, to live their lives and think their
thoughts as if we were they. If we could take our fellows
out of their pigeon-holes and let them reveal themselves

142 THINGS ETERNAL

simply as they are, if we could look one another in the
face as man to man, we would soon solve the social problem.
There is no end to the range of practical applications
of this principle. To know men is to know their hearts,
and not their manners. Those are but few who are masters
of the difficult art of self-expression, and most men mean
a better thing than they know how to say. It is to know
their temptations, and not merely their sins. No judgments
are so cheap as those we pass upon each other's trans-
gressions. The real standard for the guilt of a sin is
the distance that had to be crossed to reach it. One,
removed by circumstances or by taste so far from it that
to commit it he would have to make a supreme and painful
effort, can be no judge of another who has but to take
one false step to fall into its abyss. It is one thing to
commit a crime to which one has no inducement, and which
is out of the whole region of one's desires. It is another
thing to fall into it upon the hundredth temptation, when
for long days one has kept off ninety and nine temptations
that were tearing the flesh and throwing their glamour
over the spirit, until at last the wearied will loses grasp
of resolution, and the thing is done.

What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.

To know men is to know their struggles and desires,
and not merely their achievements. They may be making
poor work of it, and presenting to their critics a spectacle
of almost unbroken failure and second-rate or third-rate
result, and yet they may be worth far more than can be
measured by results. God only knows the shame and
discouragement in their hearts because of those failures
that the world judges so lightly. He measures them not
by what they have done or are yet doing, but by what
they are longing for and trying. He " calleth things that

THE UNKNOWN NEIGHBOUR 143

are not as though they were," and sees and counts the
secret effort and ideal, so long as men are honestly striv-
ing to realize it.

All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount. . . .
All I could never be,
All men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

And indeed such hidden purposes and desires may one
day surprise the world with their actual achievement.
It is never safe to despise one of these little ones. They
may be waiting for their hour, in which they will humiliate
those who have discounted them. In all our knowledge of
men it is wise to allow wide margins for slumbering powers,
and to seek to discover such if we may.

To know men is to know their worth, and not merely
their defects. In every life there is both good and evil,
and we are all vexing and irritating each other in more
or less unconscious ways. Yet, thank God, we are all
helping on each other's lives also, and the general life
of man is forwarded not by immaculate people, but by-
very faulty ones, who yet have the qualities of their
defects. Those are wise who train their minds to appre-
ciation rather than to censure, who can discount annoy-
ances that they may discover genuine worth of character.
One of the commonest kinds of tragedy in life is that of
those who, while their friends are with them, see only
the disagreeable traits, and hear only the jarring discords.
When the friends are gone they discover too late how
great a gap they have been filling, and how many quiet
services they have been rendering.

So far we have been finding how much it means when
we say we know each other. It means that we have
acquired that finest art of appreciating the unadvertised

144 THINGS ETERNAL

excellences, the silent courage of unvictorious struggles,
the hidden beauties that lurk beneath the dust of
the wayside or the dead leaves of the wood. All this
means that we have learned the secret of the Lord who
looketh not on the outward appearance but on the heart.

But there is a deeper secret yet — the secret of Jesus
Christ. The usual standard by which men judge one
another is the essentially selfish one of how much the man
is worth to his critic. How much can I learn from him
or receive from him 1 How much can he give me of * l love,
amusement, sympathy!" Judged by that standard we
shall all find many apparently worthless people around us.
But if we would reverse the standard, and ask what is
their need of us instead of what is their value to us, we
should find ourselves in a new world. Instead of seeking
to exploit the wealth of the natures about us, we might
explore their poverty in the hope of enriching it. That
is the authentic note of Christ — the instinct of the saviour.
And for the saviour there can be no uninteresting people
anywhere. For him, the most impoverished lives are in-
deed the most interesting; and the less there is to receive,
the more chance there is for giving.

Those who would really know men, and taste the full
wonder of the human world about them, must leave off
complaining that no one understands them, or help them,
or cares for them. We are not here to be understood but
to understand ; not to receive but to give. Those are twice
blessed who know and practise that great rule of life.
For to them there can be no dull moment amid a world so
full of need ; and as they walk to and fro to understand
and bless their fellows, they shall have the companion-
ship of Jesus Christ.

THE UNKNOWN SELF

"There standeth one among you whom ye know not." —
St. John i. 26.

The distinction between classification and knowledge
tempts us to go one step farther, and surely every man
in earnest about his deeper life will feel that this step
(whether the priests and Levites took it or not) is not
only justifiable but necessary. The mystery of human
life reaches its depth, not in the lives of others, but in our
own; and the one among us whom we know least of all
is just ourself. " In one sense of the word it is of course
necessary, as the Greek oracle said, to know oneself. That
is the first achievement of knowledge. But to recognize
that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate
achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. "
These words of Oliver Wendell Holmes are true and
weighty. Yet there are recesses of that buried life of ours
which we may explore. We may not know the deep mys-
tery of our being, but we all may come to know ourselves
far better than we do.

We think we know ourselves well, and there is not one
of us but has catalogued himself more or less to his own
satisfaction. Yet these judgments never quite satisfy us.
Doubts invade the securest and most self-complacent at
times, as to how we look from without, and we are curious
" to see ourselves as others see us." J. B. Gough, himself
the prince of mimics, used to say that he would go a
hundred miles to see any one imitating him. And at times

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146 THINGS ETERNAL

a deeper doubt invades our security. Not only would we
correct by the judgments of others our estimate of our
own worth and place among men, but we wonder what
we really are, and would measure ourselves by greater
and more eternal standards. " I go to find my soul."
When a man goes out on this adventure, conscience
walks for guide by his bridle rein. Much of his piety
turns out to be, like that of William Law's Poenitens on
his death-bed, ''imaginary piety." He sees how shallow
and self-indulgent many of his virtues have been, and
how many motives of mere prudence or of actual selfish-
ness lay unseen behind fair deeds. He sees a multitude
of sins where formerly none were visible at all. For those
sins were guarded with excuses, and he regarded them
in the light of their history. He knew how they began,
what circumstances hemmed them in until they seemed
inevitable, how subtly they blended with innocent and even
noble aspirations. To him they are but habits and pe-
culiarities, or at the worst weaknesses or unfortunate ne-
cessities of the situation. To know yourself is to strip from
your sins their coverings of excuse and palliation, and to
know them for what they are. Such knowledge is never
flattering. It leads a man among strange companions,
until he cannot look upon a drunkard or a thief without
the sinister conviction that they are remarkably like him-
self; for the same self-indulgence and the same covetous-
ness and disregard of the rights of others, are actually
in him though they have not come out into such broad
expression. We are all worse than we think. Yet that
is not the only truth. If that lurid picture were man's
true self, and that were the last word God had to say to
life, then we might throw up the attempt altogether. But
things are not so bad as that, and there need be no such
word as despair for any man. We are all better than we
think.

THE UNKNOWN SELF 147

That is a bold word, and yet it is literally true, and
true for every man. Discouraged people, downcast after
many failures, are tempted to discount themselves and say
that they are mere nobodies and it is no use for them to
try. The late Dr. Joseph Parker, speaking on this subject,
answered such a complaint with the shout that " God has
not time to make nobodies." And in very truth we are
all bigger than that ; we all do count for something. l ' Trust
thyself:" says Emerson, " every heart vibrates to that
iron string." The downcast ones hear such a word with
amazement, having learned to distrust themselves by bitter
experience.

They need to be reminded that our manhood is but in
the making, and that we are all good for making men of.
As the caterpillar is to the butterfly, such is our actual self
to the self we may become. We have to learn to live and
think on the platform of the ideal; to repudiate ourselves
as we are and lay hold on a nobler manhood which is our
true self. We have to say every day to ourselves, " Get
thee behind me," and to keep our eyes steadily fixed on
that which we would fain be. In the great words of Walt
Whitman : —

You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you short-lived

ennuis,
Ah, think not you shall finally triumph, my real self has yet to

come forth.
It shall march forth over-mastering, till all lie beneath me,
It shall stand up, the soldier of unquestioned victory.

Thus to know oneself is to know something at least of
one's possibilities, and to believe that they are real possi-
bilities and not fictions.

This holds true for every detail of character. Some
will admit it in a general way, but will always make
exceptions in regard to those points on which they feel
themselves peculiarly weak. He who is lazy, either by

148 THINGS ETERNAL

disposition or by habit, looks on with wonder at the amount
of work his neighbour manages to get through; for him-
self, he simply has no time for it. As a matter of fact
he has exactly as much time as the other has, but he has
no idea of the amount of diligence he is capable of, nor of
how elastic time is, and how it yields to determination.
The weak man envies the strong, and imagines that strength
lies in nerve and muscle. As a matter of fact it lies mostly
in making up one's mind and keeping it made up: and
weakness in every case has an element in it of self-indul-
gence which is wholly in our power to check or to en-
courage. The besetting sin of another man is lust, and
to him the innocence of the pure in heart seems inhuman
and impossible. He does not know how purity is won,
nor how it is maintained. The control of imagination and
desire, the honour of the spirit, are things which any man
may learn and keep unstained, if he will but be resolute
and self-denying enough to do it. Another man is gloomy,
and his hard lot has embittered him. Cheerful people
provoke him, and he dismisses their example from his con-
science on the ground that they are naturally light-hearted,
and presumably shallow. The truth is that a bright spirit
is the reward of self -discipline. The misanthrope has no
idea how many smiles are at his command, nor how easily
he might escape from gloom if he would think of others
and forget himself. Another is impulsive but lacking in
constancy. Quick tempers flash in him, and undo his reso-
lutions and beginnings. Yet he has never realized that
it needs not to be so. He, too, can be patient and perse-
vere. He always yields and changes before the end of
his powers of endurance have come. He might have held
on a little longer. Some of the most calm and evenly
balanced men used to be irritable and uncertain, some of
the most dogged used to be volatile. When we are tempted
to say that things have gone over us, and to let go, it is

THE UNKNOWN SELF 149

well to remember this, and to refuse the tempter.

So far we have dealt with character in general, especially
as it meets us in our weakest point. But there is also our
strongest point — some line of special power and capacity
which we are born to find and to work out. Every one
has such a strong point, though not every one discovers
what it is ; and most men have a very strong point indeed,
so much their own that if they find it it will amount at
least to talent, and possibly even to genius. Let the
poorest of spirits be but " anointed by the occasion,"
let him fully find his life's opportunity, and he will
be suddenly transformed. Those who formerly discounted
him will find to their astonishment that it is now no
laughing matter to oppose him, for a man who has thus
discovered his strength is ever " a stark man to his ene-
mies." This is a truth especially for those who have
failed in this or that line. Such failure should be regarded
as a guide, not an eviction. It is a challenge and not a
doom. Sometimes it may mean that you are called to make
a new and more strenuous effort at the same ideal; some-
times it may point to some other venture. There is a line
which offers you your chance of greatness and victory,
whether it be the one along which your first attempt was
made or some other. What you need is to believe in your-
self. Whenever you are tempted to lament a natural de-
fect, or the limitations of circumstances, or the shame of
failure, say to your soul that you do not yet know your-
self. You have not yet discovered your own powers of
resistance, or of strength, or of tenderness. Go out again
to find your soul, and go as a man going to claim an inheri-
tance. For indeed, like Parsifal, you are " heir to this
glories you ride forth to seek."

And there is more than that. On the Castle Eock in
Edinburgh four bugles blow the last post over the dark-
ening city every night. One 31st of March long ago, it

150 THINGS ETERNAL

is said that a bugler was murdered there. The legend tells
that on every 31st of March the listeners in streets and
homes hear the ghostly sound of a fifth bugler, calling as
of old. So over our lives sound many bugles, calling us
to courage and manhood. But beyond these, at times, the
spirit hearts a fifth bugle— the call of Christ Himself from
the ramparts, " Because I live, ye shall live also."

DUTY AND PLEASURE

"Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than
all the waters of Israel?" — 2 Kings v. 12.

Few figures in the Old Testament impress us with a more
living and human interest than that of Naaman the Syrian.
He appears as one of the first gentlemen of Damascus, and
Damascus was the Paris of the ancient East. It was
famous as the chief centre of the Aramaean caravan traffic,
and consequently the commercial capital of a vast region
of land. It was famous also for its beauty, and was well
named " the Pearl," lying like a white star caught and
glad to stay in the luxuriant wealth of green that every-
where surrounds it — an exquisite oasis rescued by the
Abana from the edge of the tawny desert. From age to
age it lies there, sphinx-like in its gaze across the desert,
unheeding of the flight of time or the passing of the gen-
erations, sufficient to itself and absorbed wholly in its
own wonderful life. Add to all this the fact that for the
time being it was rejoicing in a victory over its Western
rival Israel, and you have the very place where a man
might be content with the earth, and, unlike Mohammed,
wish for no other Paradise.

At the forefront of all this stands Naaman, wealthy,
famous, victorious; popular alike with his kind and with
his servants, beloved and happy in his home. Yet upon
him has come the terrific doom of leprosy, running its
iron wedge deep into the golden dream. Suddenly the
spell is broken, and we seem to hear the sickening of the

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152 THINGS ETERNAL

music, and to see the fountains dying and the sunshine
fading out. From an enchantment life has become a
delirium. Everything has lost its reality, and the phan-
tom world about him is full of mockery.

Then he remembers a land famous for realities. It has
no such splendour of palaces and fountains, no such gorg-
eous luxuriance of Nature, no such commercial greatness
nor military glory. Yet they seem to be in touch with
deeper facts there, and to have penetrated further into
the heart of things. It is not a land to trouble with while
all is well ; but now, what can a man do 1

So he sets off on the long journey. The swift chariot-
drives through that glorious air would have been things to
remember, were a man well enough to delight in them.
The ravines of Hauran and its wide corn-fields bring him
to the long Samaritan valleys, and to the palace of the
king. But the king is pusillanimous, and the prophet
haughty. He sees only a servant and receives directions
to wash in their river. Then the leper is forgotten and
the great official remembered. He has expected pomp and
circumstance befitting his dignity, and his gorge rises at
this inhospitable land and its unmannerly ways and its
despised waters.

It was not the rivers that Naaman set in contrast, so
much as the lands of which they were the symbols and
indeed creators. Jordan, flinging its great arm round the
whole East of Palestine, cuts it out from the desert. Abana,
carefully distributed in many channels along its upper
valley, is literally the one fact which makes Damascus
possible. It is Syria as against Israel that Naaman praises.
In fierce reaction the weary and disappointed man turns
back to the streams that were his home and childhood.
He remembers " those wonderful tropic nights, when the
whole world lies in a silver dream, when the little wander-
ing airs that touch your cheek like a caress are heavy

DUTY AND PLEASURE 153

with the scent of flowers, and your heart comes into your
throat for the very beauty of life. ' ' His home and child-
hood— but the servant's words remind him that he has no
home, no childhood any more. Abana and Pharpar are
already flowing beside his grave.

In reality the rivers stood for types of a still wider and
more eternal contrast than that between the lands. For
the lands themselves were typical. The contrast is be-
tween the brilliant and alluring life of self-indulgence, and
the life of duty and sacrifice and the solemn truths of
religion. Put it at its worst, and set the witchery of the
earth over against the dullness of heaven; the poignant
beauty of life over against the chill of religion. There
come times in every life when the choice wears just that
aspect, and yet a man must choose. Which will you take
as the key to your destiny, and treat as the reality for
which the other must be sacrificed ?

Let us examine this rivalry for a little: —
1. The Case for Damascus. This has been completely
stated in the beautiful words, " Abana and Pharpar also
rose in the hills of God." Indeed all three rivers rise
within a few miles of each other's fountains, in the regions
of Hermon and lower Antilibanus. Naaman may well
have remember this, and asked why the chance circum-
stance of a river's flowing north or south should determine
the healing power of its waters. In no respect was one
river superior to the other. Jordan, where Naaman would
cross it, was as clear and sweet as Abana ; and if Jordan
never reached the sea, neither did the rivers of Dam-
ascus.

And as it was with the rivers, so also it was with the
ways of life they typified. The springs of joy are ever
near the fountain of tears. Gladness has no more neces-
sary quarrel with conscience than sorrow has. The
splendour of Damascus is ideally as divine a thing as the

154 THINGS ETERNAL

naked colourless land of Israel. In a word, it is all a
question of temperaments and moods, and to some of these
Abana is frankly more congenial than Jordan. The world
is very fair. The singers of its beauty are convincing —
Shelley and Swinburne and Rossetti and the rest. Science
and art, commerce and industry, work and pleasure — all
these stand in their own right, pleading the brilliancy of
life, its promise and its fulfilment of desire, as their own
justification. These ideals are so intelligible, so present-
able, so interesting, that, to confess the truth, when these
are at their height, the religious alternative often appears
utterly dreary. It lacks the diablerie, the subtle play and
magic, of the world. The narrowness of the way of Christ,
and the unreasonable bitterness of his cross, serve only
as a foil to the delights of the rival way. Some attempt
a compromise by some one of the many popular ways of
blending Christianity with self-indulgent worldliness —
ways which keep nearer the earth than Christ, and so
retain something of earth's glamour. Some boldly con-
front the alternative and deliberately choose the world.

We all know what that challenge means — " Renounce
the world.' ' But is not the world good? Have not the
secular and the sacred common springs in the heart of
God? Surely, according to temperament, men may decide
for themselves, and choose the way that each finds most
congenial. "Both the Greek and the Hebrew spirit reach
the infinite, the Greek spirit by beauty, the Hebrew spirit
by sublimity."

2. The Answer of Israel. Much of all this pleading may
be granted. We believe in life and we love it. We know
quite well that every good gift and every perfect gift
cometh down from the Father of lights. BUT — he was a
leper. This is not a question of general excellence and
legitimacy, but a question of power to cleanse leprosy.
When it comes to that, Abana is as useless as it is fair,

DUTY AND PLEASURE 155

and Jordan has the power to bring a man's flesh back like
the flesh of a little child.

There are facts in life which have to be dealt with,
grim facts which every man must face sooner or later.
There is the terror as well as the beauty of the world. How
does Abana deal with the tragedy of disease, and misery,
and sin ? The worship of Rimmon takes for its emblem the
pomegranate, and understands well the luscious powers of
nature while they last. But summer dies, and then comes
the weeping for Adonis. There is an incurable sadness in
nature and in all forms of nature-worship. It seems
good for the days of sunshine and of health; but when
bodies grow sick and hearts are broken and consciences
on fire with remorse, it is futile and can but weep.

Goethe describes the ancients as feeling themselves at
once and without further wanderings at ease within the
limits of this beautiful world. Marklin says : ' ' I would
with all my heart be a heathen, for here I find truth, na-
ture, greatness/ ' The answer is " the deep suppressed
melancholy " of the Greeks, the " subtle inextinguishable
sadness " which every reader of their literature knows.
Heine, who knew and loved the beauty of the world so
well, came to his mattress-grave at last; and he tells how
he stretched out his hands to the Venus he had worshipped.
But she could not help him : her arms were broken.

We are not taking back any word of what was said
for the charm of the earth. It is a genuine approach to
God, but it is irrelevant and ineffective here. We are
not " forcing a narrow judgment on an angry or a laugh-
ing world " : it is leprosy that is forcing it. Men must
face the facts, and what this fact needs is a river of heal-
ing waters that can make a man clean.

It all comes back to this one question — What is it that
you want from God? Is it but a few fresh mornings and
evenings tender with beauty? Or is it the healing of your
soul's disease and wound?

156 THINGS ETERNAL

One thing I of the Lord desire,

For all my way hath miry been;
Be it by water or by fire,

Lord, make me clean.

For that you must come back to the waters of Israel, the
" fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness. ' ' Jesus
Christ is the master of realities, and there is no point of
tragedy at which He fails and leaves men weeping. He
is no enemy of the sunshine or the sweetness of life, but
He is the victor over its terror. And for us there can be
only one loyalty. Either we must throw in our lot with
that which will inevitably fail us, or with Him who saves
to the uttermost.

OPINION AND KNOWLEDGE

"Behold I thought . . . behold now I know." — 2 Kings

v. 11. 15.

It is the story of a man who went out to seek for a magi-
cian and who found a God, exchanging thoughts for knowl-
edge.

Naaman's thoughts are enumerated in verse 11. He
had rehearsed the scene and planned out all its detail.
A lordly set of thoughts they were, and from Naaman's
standpoint entirely satisfactory and convincing. The one
suspicious element is the completeness of the programme.
It would seem as if it were not God but Naaman who
was arranging this cure.

Behind these thoughts of his lay many things. First,
his military training. He has the confidance and swag-
gering arrogance of the popular general of an oriental king.
He has the soldier's precision in thinking out schemes of
all kinds. His system is exact, detailed, consistent, thor-
ough— only, it is all wrong. " Nothing sits worse on a
fighting man than too much knowledge/ ' it has been
said, " except perhaps a lively imagination. ' ' In dealing
with the great facts of life and death we have to put away
our habit of command and our delight in arrangement,
and to accept an order of things which has been fixed
without our being consulted.

Then there was the palace life of Damascus. In those
dreaming oasis cities of the East, men's minds are drunk
with sun and blind with barbaric splendour. Life is half

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158 THINGS ETERNAL

a pageant and half a game, in which the magic of the
desert mingles and over which its spell is cast. All these
elements are here, and about the story of the jingling caval-
cade and the costly presents there is the scent of sandal-
wood and incense. There was, indeed, another side to
Naaman. The affection of the slave-girl, and the friendly
talk of the orderlies, show a kindly and humane person-
ality behind the mask of pomp and circumstance. But,
like many others, he puts away that frank human nature
when dealing with religion, and the figure we see is stiff
with the brocade of ceremony.

Also, there is the religion of Baal Rimmon, the worship
of Nature and the Sun. This worship had not then reached
its ideal forms, that gave rise to the dreams of spiritual
light and purity which fascinated decadent Rome in later
centuries. It was but a kind of sorcery, the most advanced
and daring phase of earthliness masquerading as a religion.
It was a religion with all the worship eaten out of it by
commerce and pride and superstition. It had no spiritual
side at all — no faith, no love, no obedience — but only a
glorified commercialism and the spectacular pride of life,
in which an elaborately theatrical healing was to be paid
for in so much coin.

Into the midst of thoughts that rose out of these things
falls the leprosy. The world which Naaman 's thoughts
have constructed about him appears fantastically unreal
then, but he will keep up appearances hardily. Whatever
chilling loneliness may have invaded his soul in quiet hours,
yet to the general he still is the grand seigneur, indignant
that a gentleman like him should have to conform to the
rough manners of the land of Israel. In spite of the lep-
rosy, God is not in all his thoughts. He simply desires to
utilize a local divinity and enslave him for a price paid.

It was a very natural way of thinking. It was what
he had been accustomed to, and what every one else about

OPINION AND KNOWLEDGE 159

him thought. He was constructing God out of his educa-
tion and the popular opinions, as most men have always
done. It was very natural, but it nearly cost him his
healing. The price of thoughts is easy to ignore, but it
must be paid. Countless men debar themselves from all
life's highest gifts and chances simply because they are
so set in their own opinions that they refuse to change
them, or even to consider a new point of view. No class
of men is more pathetic than that of those who tenaciously
and proudly cling to ideas of their own, and cannot find
healing for their souls. May not the price of such men's
thoughts be too high?

Naaman's knowledge comes to him with a rush of new
thoughts, supplanting the old. These, the thoughts of a
man restored from a loathsome death to fresh and clean
vitality, we may well imagine. But better than them all
was a new knowledge. Indeed the old thoughts were not
knowledge. Keligious and secular alike, they played on
the surface of things. But there had come one command-
ing certainty — There is a God. It was not merely a new
and brilliant thought among the others. It was a grand
certainty founded upon experience. Health quivered
through every nerve, and rushed through every vein of
his body, and the healed man knew the touch of God. It
was experience, the experience of healing, that brought
him knowledge. The curse of leprosy had not done this.
It had only added other thoughts, more bitter but not more
true, than the former ones. But God's healing had done
it, for that is the convincing thing that can turn thoughts
into knowledge.

There are still some whose religion is a mere set of
opinions, promiscuously gathered, and others who can
say, " I know whom I have believed." And, as a rule,
it is not misery but healing grace that has wrought this
change. The blind man of Jerusalem knew not this or

180 THINGS ETERNAL

that of the opinions that men tossed to and fro about
Jesus. But one thing he knew, " that whereas I was
blind now I see. ' ' That is no opinion, but absolute knowl-
edge given by experience. A man knows that God who
has pitied his misery and healed his disease.

Let us turn from Naaman to ourselves, and see the same
contrast between opinion and knowledge which he found
so long ago.

Our thoughts are a strange and valuable field for study.
A man's opinions rise for the most part unconsciously in
him, built up out of his education, his prejudices, his
stray reading, his intercourse with other men, and his
sense of the spirit of the age. Some, displeased with the
confusion of opinion within them, construct a system which
will serve for a more or less elaborate and consistent theory
of life. Some very brilliant constructions of this sort will
come to every reader's mind: for this is a time in which
many clever men have felt called upon to announce to
us their newly constructed religious systems. We are
startled by the novelty of every page, by the interest and
the ingenuity of it all. These men are evidently world-
builders, creators of a new universe which is no doubt in
many points a vast improvement on this one. Only — it
is not so. Theirs is not the universe we have to live in and
deal with. We may leave them alone and return to the
consideration of our own opinions.

There are several sources of error which falsify the
opinions of the ordinary man. (1) We do not know all
the facts, and the inadequate basis of fact stultifies the
whole. Our opinions are but patchwork theories of things,
pieced together as it were out of fragments which we have
overheard. (2) Self-will intrudes upon our thinking, and
we come to believe what we have determined shall be so.
(3) Desire, with its thousand earth-born longings and
regrets, forms a heated and delusive atmosphere about the

OPINION AND KNOWLEDGE 161

mind, in which things are not as they seem. (4) Most of
us are tempted by consistency, and enjoy system-building
for its own sake apart from truth. But " nothing falsi-
fies history more than logic," and when the facts do not
tally with our systems of things as they ought to do,
we are apt to cry in our folly, So much the worse for the
facts.

So we build up and dwell in that cloud-castle of opinions
which we call our thoughts. It lasts until some specially
powerful fact, like this of leprosy, comes against it. Then
all our calculations are upset. Thought falls back in
ruins before the impact of something it cannot explain,
and further thinking " can only serve to measure the
helplessness of thought. ' ' There is a great verse in Psalm
cxrx. 113, wrongly translated in our version upon whose
real meaning and mood we are prone to fall back in such
an hour — " I hate thoughts."

Our knowledge is a very different matter. There is,
or may be, such a thing as our knowledge. There is
much that can be actually and certainly known in religion,
and our minds are capable of receiving and resting in it.
In connexion with the faith we hold, there are many opin-
ions which may or may not be true, but it is not all like
that. There are men and women, not differing in appear-
ance from their fellows, who yet carry with them, about
these familiar streets and houses, the indisputable knowl-
edge of some of the most profound and far-reaching secrets
of the universe. This knowledge is given by experience,
and is " subject to no dispute." It is futile to seek to
discover the secrets of the furthest heavens with your
field-glass of opinions; but what if some great star were
to swim into sight, and discover itself to you? So many
have found it to be. While they were speculating among
the doctrines, and discussing the high-sounding questions
that it is fashionable to ask regarding God and man, God

162 THINGS ETERNAL

Himself came to them in their hour of need, and they knew
His coming and were saved. Before that memorable ex-
perience a thousand preconceived opinions flee away, and
from the pride of thought men come to the humility of
knowledge.

This is no disparagement of reason, no attack on reason-
ing and speculation. It is rather a defence of it, for the
danger lies not in thinking, but in mismanaging the work
of thinking. It is a dangerous game, this play of opinions,
and it may cost a man very dear. Had Naaman adequately
and dispassionately thought out the situation, he would
have arrived at precisely the same knowledge which ex-
perience taught him. But few men ever do thus adequately
deal with thought. Their opinions rise, as we have seen,
from a wrong basis and upon wrong principles.

But let a man deal honestly with God and life, laying
his soul quite open to whatever power and love there be
for him in God. Then, as the mighty hands reach down
for you, draw you up out of deep waters, set you on a
rock of firm conviction gained not by speculation but by
experience — then you will know. Your opinions about
God matter little — your thoughts about religion, your
arranged programme, your predetermined claim. Much of
all that will have to be discarded, all of it will have to
be revised, and thought will more frequently discover God
by its failure than by its success. But bring your leprosy
to God, and let us see Him heal it. Bring your shame and
not your greatness ; your bewilderment and not your fash-
ionable opinions; your confessed folly and not your par-
aded cleverness. Then need will find Him where self-
sufficiency must always fail. One touch of healing — a man-
hood cleansed and wholesome in heart and imagination —
sin forgiven, morbidness gone, freshness and freedom and
power returned! Behold you thought this and that and
the other clever and ingenous thing. Behold now you
know that your Redeemer liveth.

THE CHARACTER OF GEHAZI

2 Kings v. 15-27.

In the group of stories which make up the Scripture
narrative of Elisha there is much that is perplexing both
to the historical and to the moral sense. But whatever
conclusion we arrive at as to the admixture of historic
and lengendary in the story, one thing is certain. Through
the mist of years there looms out upon us a live man and
a set of typical and eternal human truths. No one ever
invented Elisha. He stands clear in his own right, as in-
disputable and strongly marked a character as ever walked
the earth. It will be well for us to listen to the story as
it is told, that we may discover those permanent revela-
tions of human life and character in which it is so rich.

This is a tale of three men, seen against a background
of sweet women and children. The three represent two
extremes and Naaman between them, a wonderfully inter-
esting and suggestive man. To-day we shall consider
especially the character of Gehazi, the extreme and almost
unrelieved type of the wicked man. But first let us look
for a little at the opposite extreme, which throws him into
so strong a light of contrast.

Elisha. — There are, indeed, two sides to this extraordi-
nary figure. His lifelong kindness to all sons of the
prophets, and the stories of the poor women of Zarepta
and of Shunem, reveal a great tenderness beneath his
shaggy simplicity. Yet his usual aspect is that of unre-

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164 THINGS ETERNAL

lenting sternness. Some of the tales show the harshness
of a pitiless cruelty, and about many of the rest there
broods an uncanny sense of occult and unkindly power.

In this story he appears in a peculiarly distant and for-
mal aspect. He heals, but without so much as looking at
the sick man. He stands utterly apart, and repulses all
attempts at familiarity. He refuses the gifts of the grate-
ful Naaman, and has no word of guidance for him in his
spiritual perplexities. The whole narrative is in the most
violent contrast with the wealth and tenderness of sym-
pathy for human suffering in which Isaiah abounds, and
in still stronger contrast with the way of Him who ' ' Him-
self took our sicknesses. ' ' It is Jordan and not Elisha
that takes His sickness away from Naaman. Nothing
could be less sympathetic or less kindly than this cold,
immaculate, and patronizing deed. With Naaman, at least,
" never dares the man put off the prophet." Austere,
faultless and aloof, he plays his impersonal part in the
destinies of nations and the lives of men, white and
cold as snow, a bloodless statute of righteousness.

And all this time a man is going to perdition at his side.
True, he is a very inferior man, the poorest of poor char-
acters perhaps — yet a man, and going swiftly to ruin.
Gehazi is shrewd and useful, a fellow of ready wit, who can
upon occasions show remarkable practical sense. He can-
not have been all bad and always bad. He is evidently a
rather commonplace type of sinner, who could understand
his master's power and rough strength, but not any finer
or more spiritual qualities. He is self-important and more
or less vain, and beneath these surface characteristics
there is a strain of covetousness, developing into a beset-
ting sin.

And ever, at his side, there was this uncompromising
whiteness, this unbending and unintelligible goodness. He
was one of those who would have needed nursing into de-

THE CHARACTER OF GEHAZI 165

cent character. He had not good taste enough to see
how bad the things were that he did. No doubt every man
is responsible for himself to his Maker, and yet something
might have been made of such a man by a little human
sympathy. He was so weak, beside one so strong, and
in part at least his ruin was Elisha's fault. To watch
a commonplace man degenerate into a criminal and then
to curse him, is hardly the whole of any righteous man's
duty. The voluble abuse of verse 26 is all very well. But
as we see the poor creature shrinking under its lashes in
fear and astonishment, we cannot but ask whether that was
all that could have been done. Purity is good, but it is not
enough. Purity should be pitiful as well as pure. Other-
wise its very whiteness may drive a man beside it to his
doom. There is a righteousness that saves and the right-
eousness that saves is that which is mingled with compas-
sion.

Gehazi. — This is that figure of unrelieved black which
contrasts with every decent character in the whole tale.
We know little of him, and it is easy to say too much.
Yet this seems clear, that his is the tragedy of a man ruined
by familiarity with sacred things.

The story puts in the forefront the crime of covetous-
ness. There is an immense quantity of silver, and ten
holiday suits, presumably such silken garments as are still
seen flashing their many coloured brilliance in the streets
of Damascus. If the prophet has no use for such things,
his vain servant has. The refusal is incredible; all the
oracles of the nations expected gifts. The man's commer-
cial instincts are in despair at such unheard of waste of
chances. He loses his head altogether, and pleads the
coming of two poor students as a sudden necessity for
two of those incongruous robes of silk, and silver to the
value of some £400 sterling.

It was of course the most transparent sort of lie, explain-

166 THINGS ETERNAL

able only by the veriest infatuation of greed. With more
forcible reason than the oriental's love of buried treasure,
he hurries his spoil off to a strong and secret hiding place
known as the Tower on the Hill. Lie after lie comes to
cover his fault in the swift chase of retribution, until the
abject soul of him is like a hunted thing, fleeing before that
terrible spirit that has outwitted his cunning as Prospero
outwits Caliban in the play. Then come the dreadful words
of doom that turn him to a living sarcasm, the white
leprosy covering the black falsehood of the heart; and he
crawls back to that Tower to look upon his silk and his
silver, and to gaze desperately down the tainted line of
his posterity.

The obvious immediate lesson is concerning covetousness.
There is a limit to the honourable possibilities of making
money, and when that limit is crossed, wealth is but
leprosy that goes on through the inheriting generations,
until a man's children's children may cry for clean poverty
again, rather than this plague.

Such was his besetting sin. But a careful reading of
his whole record will show that it lay in a character other-
wise of little worth. His loquacious vanity is everywhere
evident. His self-importance gives the impression of a
proprietory right in his famous master. His hardness
and want of compassion render him something of the bully
in stories like that of the Shunammite. Such poor vices
exhibit a low strain of character, in the depths of which
his dominant vice of greed flows on and gathers volume.
At the moment of this incident, the tragedy of degenera-
tion is complete. Granting that his nature has never been
one of any sensitiveness or refinement, yet it is evident
it has reached a quite phenomenal bluntness now. Even
as a mere matter of politics, when the diplomatic relations
of Syria and Israel hung on a hair-trigger as they did
then, such an action was sheer madness. For so shrewd

THE CHARACTER OF GEHAZI 167

a man, nothing but the blindness of a master passion could
explain so manifest a blunder. Still more striking is the
spiritual dullness of perception. He has the honour of the
prophet of the living God in his hands, but that is swept
by the board. He has just seen the most wonderful thing
in all the world, the dawn of faith in a human soul;
but the only impression which that has left with him is the
fancied vision of himself clad in coloured silk. Neither
the sneers of Damascus at Elisha, nor the effect on Naa-
man 's new-born faith, are remembered. These Damascenes
had seen and wondered at a nobler man than they had
known, a man uninfluenced by all that men most prize.
This had dragged him down, and stolen from them their
one ideal. Damascus made no such fine pretences, yet it
would hardly stoop to meanness such as this; and, after
all, honour is better than spirituality !

Such is the i ' devastating power of an idolatry ' ' to
quench one by one the lights of the soul. The degenerate
darkened spirit of the passion-driven is infinitely danger-
ous. He has no pity on the souls of men, no loyalty to
their good name. And so we see this victim of his own
evil nature, become the blow-fly settling on one of the
finest stories in literature; the ape in the sanctuary, who

Swings by his irreverent tail
All over the most holy place.

How, then, has this tragedy come to pass ? For evidently
the last barriers are down, and there is no restraint of
reverence or awe, but only the easy stride of self-suffi-
ciency, swinging along among the most tremendous myster-
ies, and a base passion let loose without restraint.

Every one knows the answer of the man on the street,
then and now. " Oh," he would laugh, " the nearer the
church the farther from grace." And in that answer

168 THINGS ETERNAL

there is a very terrible and searching truth. All contact
with holy things is inevitably of the nature of a crisis:
familiarity with them is dangerous and exacting. It is
the old danger of touching the ark of God ; it is the danger
which Meredith sees still when he sings: —

Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare.
When the first touch of awe is on the man, let him take a
thorough dealing with his soul, for if he surrender it not
then to God he will surely mortgage it to the devil. All
the supreme experiences of life have this quality of crisis.
At every point where a man feels himself brought face to
face with any high trust or responsibility, with any deep
sorrow or affection, above all when Jesus Christ confronts
a man, and he has to say Yea or Nay to the great ques-
tion of his life, there has come for him the awful hour of
fate. Let him pass through such a moment slightly, and
the sequel is sure. He will become accustomed to the most
awful and exalted thoughts, and then he will despise
them. His will be but the scene-shifter's view of the
play, looking down on the backs of the actors, and seeing
nothing to thrill his spirit. Doubtless prophets are but
men, and there are many things in the best of them to
criticize. Doubtless all supreme experiences, of respon-
sibility or sorrow or love, have some earthly elements in
them easy to disparage. But the God whom the prophets
serve and represent, however, faultily, is a consuming fire.
We are face to face with a very terrible fact here. All
ministers especially, and all who engage in work about
religion and its ordinances, must surely stand in awe of
the dangers of familiarity. Yet this is a danger also for
all who habitually hear or read or think of holy things, or
handle them in the Sacraments. If faith be shallow and
love half-hearted, if the wonder of this approach be not
day by day renewed, and all rival passions that war against
the soul suppressed, then will come the sure vengeance

THE CHARACTER OF GEHAZI 169

of sacred things profaned, and familiarity will sink into
contempt. But familiarity needs not thus to sink. If the
soul's surrender be complete, the wonder will not only
last but will increase, and each day of sacred service will
break with the freshness of a new revelation. For the
treasures of faith are inexhaustible, and the returns of
God to the faithful are fresh as the dew of each new
morning.

GOD'S COMPROMISE WITH MAN

"Two mules' burden of earth." — 2 Kings v. 17.

The figure of Naaman is set in strong contrast with those
of Elisha and Gehazi. These two are extreme types of
austerity and sordidness. They move within the narrow
lines of their limitations, uncompromising and therefore
simple. Naaman stands apart, courtier and man of the
world, in touch and sympathy with the breadth of human
life. His is a pleasant figure, like his name which means
Pleasantness. He is such a representative gentleman of
Damascus as we meet in the pages of Tancred. Everything
we read of him is attractive, and characteristic of " a
good fellow and a dashing officer." The frank manner,
the generous heart that is not without its touch of hot
temper, the ready gratitude and the warm friendships,
make a wholly lovable and delightful sketch of the man.
It is for such men that questions of casuistry and com-
promise arise, making life at once difficult and fascinating.
It was a comparatively easy matter for Elisha and Gehazi
to go on their ways — the one " splendidly unhindered,"
the other vulgarly unscrupulous. But Naaman is by far
the most interesting of the trio. It is true that our ideas of
him are more or less conjectural. We know few of the
facts and circumstances of his life. We have to divest
ourselves of many ideas and associations before we can
get back to where he stood. Yet it is evident that there
are always some whose contact with Jehovah sends them

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GOD'S COMPROMISE WITH MAN 171

to the desert, and others whom it sends back into the world,
and that Naaman is in the latter class. Jnst because he
returns to the world, we see him moving on a wider and
more perplexing field. He finds himself " on the danger-
ous edge of things, " where he has to face practical ques-
tions of far greater subtlety than those which confront
such men as the other two. Even in the space of the short
narrative before us we find what may be called a double
compromise between God and man. In the present study
we shall consider the first of these compromises, in the
next the second.

The request for two mules' burden of earth may be con-
sidered as God's compromise with man. It arose out of
an idolatrous superstition. Among the Semites it was the
universal custom to regard each god as attached to, and
limited by, the land where he was worshipped. Conse-
quently the very earth and stones of that land were suffi-
cient to draw the god to the prayer of a worshipper ; and
they were necessary, for only on some part of his own
land could he act. Other earth was looked after by other
gods. Thus, among those tribes, not only did the saints,
but the gods themselves " take pleasure in her stones,"
and " her very dust to them was dear."

It is easy to denounce this, as Matthew Henry does
in his antithetic way — " He had spoken lightly of the
waters of Israel, and now he overvalues the earth of
Israel." Yet the story does not say that the request was
refused, and we gather that it was conceded. It was a
heathen superstition, and yet like other heathen supersti-
tions it expressed a deep and abiding human instinct be-
hind the error. In later times a Jewish synagogue was
raised by Jews in Persia, all of whose stones and earth had
been brought from Jerusalem. Soil from the Holy Land
was brought in the Middle Ages for the Campo Santos of
Italy : and it is a very pathetic picture that is presented

172 THINGS ETERNAL

by those old-fashioned ships carrying earth across the seas
for the covering of the beloved dead.

The whole question of relics, and of such aids to devo-
tion as the skull or the crucifix, is raised by this ancient
practice. Some of these aids may become dangerous.
They are liable to abuse, and may have to be discarded.
Men may transfer their worship from their God to the
sacred earth, or even to the mules that carried it, and so
reverence may become idolatry of a very primitive type.

Yet this question runs far deeper than any dispute as
to form and ceremony between Roman Catholic and Pro-
testant worshippers. All alike feel that the great trial
to faith and the supreme difficulty of worship lie in the
intangibility of the object of faith and worship. God and
His spiritual life are so withdrawn and so elusive, that
at times they seem remote from our common life and
inaccessible. The woman of Samaria spoke for humanity
when she asked her question as to where man ought to
worship. The answer of Jesus forbade neither the moun-
tain nor Jerusalem, but only insisted that worship must
not be in ignorance — we must know what we worship. For
Himself, He used both the mountain and the temple for
His worship; and we may take it that for each intelli-
gent worshipper that way is legitimate and best which
makes worship easiest and most satisfying for him.

There is no escape from this question. Those churches
and sects which are farthest removed from ritual in the
ordinary sense of the word, illustrate it in their own way
quite as clearly as the churches against which they protest.
Such sects usually begin in some critical hour, when the
faith has come into bondage of some sort, and the mules
are labouring and heavy laden with their burdens of earth.
Then the spirit of freedom comes upon men, and in some
great testimony they break away and worship apart from
the old associations. Afterwards circumstances may

GOD'S COMPROMISE WITH MAN 173

change, and the testimony may become obsolete or unim-
portant, yet the sect lives on. Associations gather round
the places where men have spent their childhood, and
learned to worship ; where their fathers have made history,
and created great loyalties. Such a place becomes veritable
terra santa, holy ground, to the reverent spirit, and it
needs a very powerful conviction of duty necessitated by
the new developments, to bring men so accustomed to
worship to change or break away.

But the problem runs still deeper into the individual
life, and raises the whole question of the blending of human
elements with divine in religion. Nothing which involves
such strong emotions as those produced by religion can
fail to waken responsive notes from the varied and sensi-
tive strings of our human hearts. Our earthly life, with
its tender loves, and its poignant regrets and longings, is
very dear to us. Inevitably elements of human affection,
and countless old memories and dear associations, mingle
with even our most spiritual hours of worship. There has,
indeed, been a lamentable and persistent attempt in all the
Christian centuries to divorce the two, and to treat God's
love and human love as rivals. Thomas k Kempis plainly
tells us, ' ' Thou oughtest to be so dead to such affections of
beloved friends, that (so far as thou art concerned) thou
wouldst choose to be without all human sympathy." And
many a bitter story of meaningless and uncalled-for sacri-
fice has saddened the records of religious life. But the
whole attempt to untwist the threads of human and divine
is a huge mistake. " What God hath joined together, let
not man put asunder." Worship, stripped of all early
affections, is not for us. It is our part to take life as we
find it, and worship God by what help we best can. Surely
the reverent worshipper with his crucifix is better than the
superior person who has got rid of all such superstitions
only to stand dumb before the shrine with all power of

174 THINGS ETERNAL

worship dead in him. Still more surely it is better for
every man to see God in the light of beloved human eyes,
than to stand alone in a desolated world, trying to flog
up into vitality his purely spiritual emotions.

We judge from the story that this concession was made
to the Syrian worshipper. And still and for ever God
does consent to meet men where they are, and to accept
such worship as they can best bring. It is good for all
of us that it is so, for none of all our ways of worship
are in the least degree adequate to express either our souls
or Him. None of our doctrines, none of our forms or
organizations, are more than faulty compromises at the
best, and yet God consents to reveal Himself to man
through these.

The Sacraments are a standing proof of this. Water
and bread and wine are in all truth far enough from being
adequate expressions of regeneration and atonement. Yet
Christ reveals these greatest truths through their humble
means. Nay, the Incarnation itself is the grand concession
made by the spirit to the flesh, in which God chose to reveal
His own infinite love and grace in such a form that men
might understand these while they saw and heard and
gazed upon and handled the dear body of Christ.

Let us take all the help we can from our human life
and love. Let us accept any guidance, however humble,
that leads us to the Father. It may indeed be expedient
in special circumstances that even a man's worship should
deny itself some help and suffer some loss of vividness,
when an aid to it would be a public danger or a stumbling-
block to others. But except in such circumstances, God
will not grudge a worshipper any means of grace, so long
as he worships not that, but Him.

MAN'S COMPROMISE WITH GOD

"The house of Rimmon." — 2 Kings v. 18.

The House of Rimmon presents a different and a more
complex situation than the two mules' burden of earth.
The phrase has become the very synonym for religious
compromise, and prejudices the case from the outset.
To judge the matter justly, it is necessary to get as clear
an idea as possible of what this worship actually was.

The city of Damascus contains to-day but few very
ancient ruins. It is in the life of the streets rather than
in the stones of temples that it is the oldest city in the
world. Its great Mosque covers a site which has seen an
amazing succession of changes in worship. It rises upon
the lower walls and gateways of the Christian Church of
Theodosius. That Church in its turn rose upon the ruins
of a Roman temple, of which only one facade now stands,
grey and weather-beaten amid the newer building. In all
probability that Roman temple rose upon the site of the
far more ancient worship of the local Baal, the Rimmon
of this text.

It may well be that these successive architectures are
typical of the easy changes of faith in a city whose heart
has always been commercial rather than religious. It is
probable that even in ancient times only the ignorant would
take seriously the stories of the gods, while the educated
and cultured would be sceptical. In any case we know

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176 THINGS ETERNAL

that the religion of the Semites was a religion not of creed
but of ritual, and that to an extent which our Western
minds find it all but impossible to realize. Ceremonial
performance was the one essential feature ; its meaning was
of literally no importance whatever. Worshippers made
no attempt to speculate as to why they did this or that, or
as to what facts lay behind the performance .

If, however, we insist on pushing the inquiry back, and
asking what general ideas lay behind the rites, we shall
find in the main two sets of such ideas : —

1. The World and Nature. — Rimmon was one of the
many Baals, and Baal in general was the apotheosis of
the fructifying powers of nature. In later times the cult
was connected with that of Adonis, the story of the year,
the summer triumph and the winter death of the sun.
The Baals were lords of the wind and weather, the rain
and sunshine, the air and clouds, the thunder and storm.
Especially was Baal the sun god, source of the abundance
of light and heat, that led the seeds to ripeness in the
fertile earth. The name Rimmon, signifying the pome-
granate, has the suggestion of all this in its luscious full-
ness, and is peculiarly appropriate for the divinity that
presided over the sweet and rich life of Damascus. So
this "prince of the power of the air" stood for nature
and the life of the earth. The cult was not so much a
worship, as an appreciation of the world in all its fullness.
God, to the Damascus worshipper, was "the view" — He
was anything a man liked.

2. Nationality and Patriotism. — Rimmon was the par-
ticular Baal of Demascus, and the ritual had a large ele-
ment of politics in it. Worship was not a matter of private
faith any more than it was a matter of spiritual com-
munion. It was essentially a civic and national act. The
gods were representative members of the nation, and their
worship was official and political in its significance, in-

MAN'S COMPROMISE WITH GOD 177

volving before all else loyalty to the throne and gustoms
of the land.

Taking these two sets of ideas together, we are better
able to understand Naaman's position. Here, in the house
of Rimmon, was the world in two aspects. (1) The green
earth, the joy of life, its sensuous beauty and fullness.
(2) The national loyalty, the public office and service of
a courtier. So the question that faced him was, whether
he would retire from a world into asceticism and private
life, or whether he would remain in the world and serve
Jehovah. He no longer worshipped the world, for he had
looked beyond it and seen the face of God. But he still
appreciated its charm, and he still enjoyed its labours.
He chose the latter course. As to the detail of ritual, we
can imagine him saying to himself that a God so great
in healing would be great also in understanding, so that
the act of compromise was in one way an act of faith.

Thus the story leads us up to the general question of
compromise. Obviously there are all sorts of compromises,
good and bad; and the more complex society becomes the
more frequently such problems arise. Three tests may be
given, by which the legitimacy of compromise may be
judged :—

1. Playing two games — the compromise which involves
self-deception. The change from one religion to another
has often been marked by a lingering faith in the older
gods continuing to exist alongside the new faith. It is
thus that some scholars explain the mouse of Apollo, the
owl of Minerva, and other such relics. The new and more
splendid company of divinities had supplanted the old
totem worship of mice and owls : but after all there might
have been something in that lowly worship, and it would
be as well not to neglect it altogether. But here we have a
different case. There is no lingering belief or suspicion
of belief in Rimmon. Probably there had been little intel-

178 THINGS ETERNAL

ligent or confident faith to begin with, and now there
was none at all. The new God had swept clean away all
remnants of the obsolete Baal.

Such compromise as this double devotion is sometimes
seen, and it is always absolutely wrong. Some professing
Christians are not quite certain in their hearts that their
Christian faith is true, and they never let go their hold
on Mammon though they adopt the faith of Christ. There
is an unexpressed caution about such people, which assures
them that they will be making the best of things in any
case. It is the danger of Pascal's argument that faith
will pay best in the end whether it prove true or false,
and in mean souls this becomes the incentive to a double
life. But God will have no such divided allegiance. His
worshippers must let go all their second strings, and
swing themselves boldly out on the great venture of faith.
Let it be the finding of God or the loss of all things — there
is no room for compromise.

2. Pretence — the compromise which is intended to de-
ceive others. Naaman had settled that by his two mules'
burden of earth. It would be impossible to conceal such an
act, nor would his frank nature wish to leave anyone in
doubt as to his religious position. The attendance at the
House of Rimmon would deceive no one. All Damascus
knew what God Naaman worshipped.

Obviously no compromise is tolerable which is adopted
with a view to deceive men. There is indeed a limit to the
amount of consideration which must be given to possible
misunderstandings. If the construction which every fool
or weakling may put upon our conduct is to be taken into
consideration at every turn, then the fool and the weak
brother have become tyrants over the lives of better men
than themselves, a tyranny which no self-respecting man
will endure. With much of our lives, our neighbors have
no business whatsoever, and it need give us little concern

MAN'S COMPROMISE WITH GOD 179

if interfering outsiders misconstrue our actions. It is
certainly never worth a compromise with honesty to save
our reputation. Either let men misjudge you as they
please, if the end to be gained is worth that cost; or if
you value their good opinion, earn it honestly by denying
yourself what they will misunderstand.

3. Deliberate Sacrifice of Bight to Wrong. — Men's at-
tempt to deceive God. When a sin, acknowledged to be
such, is yet allowed on some specious plea of doing evil
that good may come; when pleasure is taken at the cost
of what seems but a slight wound to conscience, or gain
at the cost of a slight sacrifice of principle ; we have come
upon very dangerous ground. Life is far too complex for
our meddling with its moralities, and neither any pleasure
nor any gain is worth the risk of nature's subtle and sur-
prising vengeance. Nothing more surely brings on degen-
eration than such tampering with ethics and living delib-
erately below one's best lights. Those who do so come
to have the very hall-mark of the unsatisfied and the in-
effective upon them, and are rejected both by God and
Satan. No! we are not the captain of this ship: let us
steer by the course that has been set.

To return to the story, Naaman does not appear to have
fallen under the condemnation of any such unworthy com-
promises as these. On the contrary, he appears as a
very memorable gentleman, taking a man's risks and
responsibilities in a very difficult situation; trying to do
right, and on the whole succeeding. No one can think
of him without recalling Tom Brown's judgment, "I can't
stand that fellow Naaman, after what he'd seen and felt,
going back and bowing himself down in the House of
Rimmon. ... I wonder Elisha took the trouble to heal
him." Who does not honour the boy and thank God for
him ? And yet the matter is not so easy as that, and when
Tom comes to face a man's difficulties he will find that

\

180 THINGS ETERNAL

the short cut is not always the true solution, but may
sometimes be only a refusal to face all the facts. There
are illegitimate compromises as we have seen, but there
are also wise and good ones, which may save conscience
from growing pedantic, and lives which might have ac-
complished something from being wasted over trifles not
worthy of them. They may save men also from the in-
ordinate vanity of those who imagine that to shout "No
compromise" is to secure a monopoly of honesty and
courage.

For indeed life is by no means as easy as some energetic
people imagine. Those whose lot it is to live in the
world must sometimes find themselves in complicated and
delicate situations in which every course seems open to
objections. We all have our sets of rules for guidance,
rules which are safe enough for little and ordinary things ;
but some new situation arises to which these rules are in-
adequate, and which seems to call for their revisal. Alto-
gether, this is a supremely difficult world to live in, in
which there is much that we all disapprove of, and more
that we dislike.

It is largely a question of proportion in our judgment
between great and small issues, and the snare of the
unimportant may keep a man throughout a lifetime dab-
bing among trivialities. The great point is to begin, not
among the trifling details of the fringe, but at the centre.
Settle the main issues and live for these — to do the will
of God, and to make the most of your life and powers.
Plan your life on a sufficiently large scale, and with a
clear sight of the commanding objects for which you are
to live. As to the detail, it is best left to settle itself. On
the dangerous edge of things, in the finesse of the game
of life, there is much that will baffle the shrewdest mind
and the most anxious conscience. Do not try to play that
game of life as if you were God, but take the man's way.

MAN'S COMPROMISE WITH GOD 181

Accept the risks, and be sure that you will often make
mistakes in detail. Only let your eye be fixed steadily on
the Master.

To those who will dare to take and abide by this way,
strange guidance comes. They gain a knowledge, or rather
a hardly-conscious instinct, as to how they ought to act.
"With practice and obedience this instinctive knowledge
grows surer and more clear. They grow extraordinarily
sagacious. They cannot give their reasons, but they do not
make mistakes. Such sagacity cannot possibly be acquired
by attention to detail. It is the result of. a life habitually
turned towards the thought of God, and the larger aims
and purposes. In such lives is fulfilled the great promise,
"I will guide thee with mine eye."

THE OPEN-AIR TREATMENT OF

SOULS

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills." — Psalm cxxi. 1.

Much has been heard of late of the healing qualities of
the open air, and medical science has entered into a new
alliance with nature. Discarding or at least laying smaller
stress on the more complicated methods of the past, the
secret of the new surgery is cleanness, that of the new
medicine fresh air. The principle has been extended to
Sociology, and in many directions reformers are seeking
an escape from the overcrowded city life, and an open-air
treatment for social evils and miseries.

Why should we not go one step farther, and institute
an open-air treatment of souls ? The conditions are closely
parallel. Unnaturalness is the greatest evil in religious
life, as it is in life social and physical. Almost all the
dangers and enemies of the human race are bred in over-
crowded, narrow and pestilential conditions of houses,
society, or religious thought. Thus all the three fields are
one. In this crusade, physician, social worker, and the
Church join forces. They aim at the same ends and follow
the same methods. Together they are bringing forth the
captives out of the prison-house, back to nature and God's
fresh air.

Here we must avoid the mistakes frequently made by
poets who have sought to personify nature and find in it
a response to the varying moods of human life, and by

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THE OPEN-AIR TREATMENT OF SOULS 133

theologians who have found in it an analogy of the ways
of God. Nature is not like God. Her laws disclose no
moral standards. When these are introduced she appears
full not only of contradictions but of cruelties, and the
God whose character we could induce from a consideration
of the laws of nature would be as immoral as the pagan
divinities. We need something nearer, more human and
considerate, a God who can understand and suffer and love.
Indeed we are so far from the poets who seek in nature
an echo of their own inner life, as to feel that it is in
offering us an escape from ourselves that nature is most
helpful to man. There she lies, inscrutable, placid, expan-
sive ; now wrapped in mists and clouds, now sun-smitten or
attacked by the furious onset of the thunderstorm. The
craving for sympathy from her is morbid: we must find
health in her unresponsiveness, her healing want of sym-
pathy with morbid souls.

Nature is neither like man nor God. And when we feel
the burden of our over-civilized life, and the cry of * ' Back
to nature" rises, it is that we may get among the elemental,
simple things. The far-reaching primitive instincts call
us to break away. We "babble o' green fields" and hear
the call of forests and moorlands. The mighty hills shout
to us, the river woos us to her heart. And these things
are for an allegory of that wider call of nature, when we
need above all things a touch Qf mother earth, that our
spirits may find cleansing and peace, simplicity and ex-
pansiveness, relaxation and health.

1. The most obvious example of such wholesome return
to nature is in connexion with temptation and sin. Much
temptation is simply pent-up strength and vitality, seek-
ing unwholesome outlet, or the sense of beauty grown
morbid in close places, for the want of far horizons. The
selfish pursuit of wealth confines men, decadent literature
contaminates the air they breathe, and so lusts of all kinds,

184 THINGS ETERNAL

the diseases of the soul, are bred. Then the strong man
lifts up his eyes to the hills, and finds fulfilment for his
energy as a "climber of the rocks." The artist lifts up
his eyes to them, and in their colours and their loftiness
finds spiritual instead of sensuous suggestion. So the open
air works its cure, and among the wind-swept, clean, cool
hills the fever of passion ceases.

2. Just as the return to nature brings purity instead
of passion, so it brings peace instead of worry and fret-
fulness. Our life grows strained and anxious. Business
men are watching the markets, scientists their instruments ;
students are poring over their books, and earnest people
are feverishly struggling to realize ideals. So there comes
a weariness of mind, a discouragement and sense of futility,
in which things begin to look altogether desperate. We
crowd each other, too, and the air is over-breathed. We
grow tired of the faces of our fellow-men, and familiar
voices sound strident to our ears. In the entanglement of
society, where each is struggling for himself, love is lost;
while even those who are living for others find the strain
on the nerve grow tense, till it is like to cost much loss
of temper.

It is well known that for physical eye-strain the cure
is to focus the eyes on a distant object. Similarly for
mental eye-strain such relief may come. For nature is
not over-strung. There, on the mountains, men move with
elastic step. The great sweeps of landscape and skyline
have none of the fatiguing preciseness of our daily life.
The moorlands are spacious, and "over all the hills is
rest." Room and loneliness and air — a sane tolerance of
circumstances and a wide charity for our fellow-men —
these are the gifts of the open air and the hills.

3. No department of life needs the open air more, or is
more responsive to its healing power, than faith. Our
thoughts of God show the effects of closeness, and our
beliefs are apt to grow unnatural and strained. The

THE OPEN-AIR TREATMENT OF SOULS 185

Greeks of old felt this, building their temples on the
mountain-tops as if to say (as Professor Butcher has
beautifully expressed it) to their Egyptian predecessors,
"I worship in the sunshine.' ' Indeed as we read the
history of ancient religions, this liberation is everywhere
apparent. Dark idolatries are lurking in valleys and in
caves; earthbound superstitions, the offspring of an un-
wholesome fear of the unknown, people the universe with
terrors. Then suddenly we see white temples upon hills
bathed in sunlight, and we know that it is the breeze of
God that is blowing. And in the Hebrew religion, no one
can forget that remarkable succession of the discoveries of
God, moving like some great procession from Sinai to
Carmel, Hattin, Hermon, Calvary, Olivet. Which things
also are for an allegory.

(1) The gloom of morbid introspection has fallen upon
faith. As formerly we found men crowded and obsessed
by others, so here we find them haunted by themselves. In
the cloistered life of self-examination men pore upon the
evils and horrors of their own hearts. But if the heart is
deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, surely
that only shows the need of getting away from its evil
neighbourhood among truer and purer thoughts. What
is needed by those who incline to such brooding is the
wholesome neglect of themselves, their sins, their faith and
love and consistency. Leave all these alone: remember
God, and come out into the fresh mountain air of His
love and goodness.

(2) Another tendency of morbid religion is to occupy
itself with trifles and to imagine that they matter. Most
men's religion is hampered by denominational or ecclesi-
astical principles or details of ritual. All church testi-
monies and traditions have their danger. Beginning often
as liberators, they end by becoming an iron cage, cramping
alike to the intellectual and the spiritual life. We suppose
our God to be enlisted on one side of such questions as

186 THINGS ETERNAL

against the other, while really we are but measuring our-
selves against our fellow men, and importing our ordinary
rivalries and littlenesses into our religion. From such
narrow rooms, unventilated and murky, where we occupy
ourselves with misunderstandings of men instead of with
worship of God, our text calls us forth, to worship under
the broad heavens our common Father.

(3) Similarly the insistence upon dogmatic intricacies
of definition, and the search for truth by formulae, have
magnified trifles, lost perspective, and given an air of
unreality to faith. Doctrines are good so long as we
remember that the truth is greater than doctrines, and
that God cannot be defined. Truth is not, after all, in
a well, but on a mountain top. The great orthodoxy is
the open air of the healthy mind, the clear eye, the loving
heart, and the firm will. "Heaven soon sets right all,
other matters/ '

Doubtless the open air is trying to people who are afraid
of draughts, and such thoughts may seem dangerous.
They were, however, the thoughts of Jesus Christ. He
found men sitting in their close synagogues with their
fears and customs and orthodoxies, and he led them out
to the hills where the birds of the air and the lilies of the
field told them of the Father whose sunshine and rain
descended upon all. And so nature leads us beyond her-
self, and by returning to her we find our way to God.
The ancient mystical interpretation of the title of the
psalm, "A song of degrees," was "the steps by which
God leads the righteous up to the other world. ' ' So nature
sets up her ladder of Bethel, whenever any soul would rise
and trust her guidance. Through the fresher air we have
caught sight of the hills of the eternal land. The moun-
tains of earth shall depart and the hills be removed, but
God's kindness shall not depart. Nature is passing away,
but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to ever-
lasting.

THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINY

1. Pessimism

"I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and
to read the book." — Eevelation v. 4.

This is a mysterious passage in a mysterious book, but
the fact that interpretation may easily become ridiculous
should not debar us from the beauty and the power of one
of the greatest and most picturesque of Scriptural poetic
images. God is on His throne, but He is left undescribed,
and we see only His hand holding a sealed book.

There have been many guesses as to what this book
represents, some of them fantastic enough. In general it
may be safely taken to be a book of human destiny, that
long and secret scroll which is slowly unrolled in Scripture,
history, politics, science, and every other phase of actual
human life. The interpretation of the visions at the
breaking of the seals is safe for no detail, but they afford
glimpses of the general demands that time is sure to make
on men and nations until all things end with the dawn
of the heavenly life.

What concerns us especially is the group of three figures
which represent three of the main attitudes of man to
destiny. There is the weeping man, the pessimist, who
sees only the sadness of the mystery, and tends towards
despair and cynicism. Then there is the elder of Judah
with the lion of his tribe, the optimist whose one re-
source is that of energy. Finally there is the true
key to destiny; the lamb as it had been slain, emblem

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188 THINGS ETERNAL

of love and sacrifice. We may consider these in three
successive studies.

The pessimist comes first, represented by the weeping
man of the text. This man may stand for many thousands
who have stood in bitterness before the unsolved riddle of
human life. For himself, he cannot silence the questions
that find no answer. Why has he been sent here?
Whither does the purpose of his creation tend? What is
his duty meanwhile, and what is his fate to be at last?
For others, the questions are aggravated by the conditions
under which most men live. There is the pain and misery
and sin of the world ; and much of these seems so unneces-
sary, so unfair, and so meaningless. The apparent waste —
the heartless and unreasonable waste — of the wealth of
human hearts and lives, force upon him the questions,
What does God mean by making a world like this? and,
What is He going to do with it?

These questions find no answer. No man is strong
enough to break the seals and open the book. No nation
is strong enough. The national thought of Greece had
tried it in the sublime attack of its philosophies; that of
Rome in the imperial attack upon the world; while many
an Asiatic people had already sought to wrest that secret
from the mysterious hand that held it. Nay, the strong
angel himself is helpless here. The mystery of this world *s
life is baffling not only to those who dwell in the world,
but to whatever lofty intelligences look on from the spirit-
world also. All these pathetic " efforts to understand
things" fill the writer's mind with an overwhelming sense
of futility. He can make nothing of it, and he abandons
the attempt with tears.

There were other elements in this grief besides baffled
curiosity. We all learn sooner or later that many things
in this strange world are beyond our understanding, and
we come to terms with the mystery of things with as good

THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINY 189

grace as we can. But there are special elements here,
which in some degree enter into the experience of all such
seekers, and which give to pessimism its keenest point.

First of all, the dreamer had been promised a knowledge
of the future, and in this refusal there was something like
a claim dishonoured. And in us all there is the feeling
that in some sense we have a right to know. We are not
asking ±cr complete explanations, but surely we may
expect light enough to live by. We are here not of our
own choice, and we are willing to accept the situation and
make the best of it. But, so tangled is the skein of life,
it often happens that with the best intentions men make
the most serious mistakes. We want some sure guidance,
and above all we want some assurance that it is not all in
vain, and that our destinies are not, as they sometimes seem
to be, the sport of chance. We are willing to work cheer-
fully or to suffer patiently if we can only understand.
But this looks like the demand for day labour while light
is denied us, and it is no wonder though we weep.

Second, a discovery is here given of how much is re-
quired for such knowledge as we crave. "No man is
worthy to open the book." The hindrance to understand-
ing, the veil between our souls and truth is our own sin,
and conscience further embitters the great unanswered
question. The mystery of life often seems to press most
sorely on the good, but it does not break their hearts. They
find some meaning in things that consoles them and gives
them rest. But the unworthy have no such consolation.
It is they who weep most bitterly before the face of destiny,
and rebel against the way in which the unintelligible
world is made. When we are caught in the mills of God,
the nether millstone on which any soul is ground is ever
its own unworthiness.

The lessons of all this are plain. When we are con-
fronted with the blank and bitter mystery of things it is

190 THINGS ETERNAL

not well to brood sullenly on the sense of a dishonoured
claim. The book is unreadable, and we have no real right
to understand. Neither science nor religion professes to
answer all our questions. Our theories give no full ex-
planation, our visions are but glimpses at the best. "In
mystery the soul abides, " and to the end we are but "led
blindfold through the glimmering camp of God." And,
further, when we are tempted to despair and to rebel and
to malign the world, it is well to ask ourselves, Am I
worthy to open the book? What grossness, what pride,
what folly enter even into our desire to understand ? What
use have we made of the light vouchsafed to us? For
doubt is surprising only when the life is pure, and they
who know most are those who are "holding the mystery
of the fait> in a pure conscience.' '

And after all is said, however natural it be, and by what-
ever reasons we may explain it, this is an unmanly attitude
towards life. Granted that his claim seems dishonoured,
granting that he is conscience-stricken as well, still the last
word that a man has to say of life cannot be a fit of weep-
ing. Pessimism is always and in all circumstances a poor
and futile thing, and its answer to the riddle of the
universe is a maudlin answer. However hard and cruel
destiny may seem as we face it, at least let us face it
standing on our feet. Weep for your own relief if you
must, but do not let others see or hear you. We surely
cannot be justified in adding to the discouragement of the
world by any policy of wailing.

And when the discouragers stand back, and the sound
of their weeping ceases, we find that they have made room
for Christ. What we have heard is all we are going to
hear of man's unaided effort to understand things. The
other two voices which we shall hear are voices of Christ.
Jesus Christ, regarded in one point of view or in another,
is the grand solution offered by our Christian faith. He

THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINY 191

does not, indeed, profess to explain the whole mystery.
Many things remain unintelligible even to them that be-
lieve. Yet He has done more to solve the riddle of human
life than "all the ranged reasons of the world"; and be-
cause of that, the intellect of Christendom is able to rest
in faith even in the midst of strange experiences and un-
answered questions. Say what men will about Him, it is
evident that for Him the book of destiny was an open
book. He has told us what He could, and it has been
enough. He has known and told the great secret, and
interpreted our life to us.

THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINY

2. The Gospel of Healthy -mindedness

"Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda . . . hath pre-
vailed to open the book." — Kevelation v. 5.

The elder's view of the Messiah is "the Lion of the tribe
of Judah," and his boast is that Christ, in that capacity,
has been able to unseal and open the book of human
destiny. At least one of the older commentators has rec-
ognized in this elder the figure of the patriarch Jacob, and
has referred the text back to the splendid words of
Genesis xlix. 9 — " Judah is a lion's whelp; from the
prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he
couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse
him up ? "

It would seem that from early times the lion had been
a sort of insignia of Judah, a national emblem like the
Scottish and the Persian lion. Dr. Dods has said in this
connexion, "There is enough in the history of Judah him-
self, and in the subsequent history of the tribe, to justify
the ascription to him of all lion-like qualities — a kingly
fearlessness, confidence, power, and success; in action a
rapidity of movement, and a might that make Him irre-
sistible, and in repose a majestic dignity of bearing."
The same writer goes on to contrast the "rushing onset of
the lion with the craft of the serpent, the predatory instinct
of the wolf and the swiftness of the hind. ' ' This, especially
in times of oppression and adversity, gives a very fair
idea of the conception of Messiah cherished by the elders

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THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINE 193

of Israel. To their passionate patriotism He was the mir-
ror and emblem of national strength and triumph.

History has borne out the lordly boast. Judiah has been
not merely a personal but a national force in the arena
of the world's destinies. All nations have taken their part
in the grand sum total of history, but it is Judea that has
led the way, both in the understanding and in the shaping
of the destinies of the world. Disraeli has boasted that
"the most popular poet in England is the sweet singer
of Israel,' ' and that "the divine image of the most illus-
trious of the Hebrews" has been again raised amid the
homage of kneeling millions in the most civilized of the
kingdoms of Europe. When we think of what Jesus Christ
has meant already in human history, we are constrained to
confess that that gallant little nation, perched on its high
ridge of rock, has indeed unsealed the book. By the
earliest Christian missions, by the Crusades, and by the
unceasing play of Christianity upon the West, she gave its
future to savage Europe. Later, when the New World
opened its gates to the Old, it was Puritan Christianity
that gave its noblest qualities to the American race. To-
day, when for Africa and Asia the seals are being opened
in so swift and dramatic succession, the issues of the
future again depend wholly on the Judean — it will be
Christ or a godless civilization more ominous than their
past heathenism.

But the Lion of the tribe of Judah may also be taken
as the representative type of a clearly defined ideal of
character. It is the oriflamme of the Gospel of healthy-
mindedness, and the doctrine of the strenuous life. This
lion-like attack on destiny is indeed a magnificent imagi-
nation. It tells of direct attack that scorns diplomatic
cunning, of will and main force whose self-reliance waits
neither for the backing of friends nor of circumstances.
It tells us of a certain band of warriors against fate who

194 THINGS ETERNAL

by sheer force and rush of onset have carried destiny by
storm. Shakespeare knew them — men who " taking arms
against a sea of troubles ' ' would ' ' by opposing end them. ' '
Victor Hugo took them for ideal types of character, and
openly proclaimed his worship of strength. George Mere-
dith cried to us to lay hold on God with our strength, and
not with our weakness. Stanley and a host of other West-
ern adventurers are of the band. Nansen uttered this
elder's cry when he shouted, " Accidents shall not hap-
pen,'' and drove for the North.

These are the men of sturm und drang, who master and
enlist the great forces of the world. For the most part
they are plain men, not assuming virtues of greater deli-
cacy than they can understand. Always they are strong
men, who are not wearied but braced by labour and en-
durance. They are simple men, unembarrassed by the
subtle questionings which distract others. They cut through
the knots which others strive in vain to disentangle, and
their only refuge from discouragements and fears is the
refuge of action. Men of this spirit may do superhuman
things, taking the citadels of destiny by assault. Destiny
goes down before Will, and the Weird itself (so runs the
ancient Saxon song) will help " an undoomed man if he be
brave." Not even the sense of sin and failure, nor the
disheartening memory of the irrevocable past, is able
wholly to daunt such spirits. There is in strong and cour-
ageous vitality, a strange power of healing and of puri-
fying, which baffles the powers of darkness.

Jesus Christ rides at the head of that company of
heroes. He is not the opponent, but the truest of all ex-
ponents of the Gospel of the healthy mind. He matched
His strength against the religious hierarchy of Jerusa-
lem, against the vast Empire of Home, against the world,
and He has won His battle all along the line. In the
progress of the Christian conscience we see Him pitted

THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINE 195

against the slaveries, oppressions, injustices of two thou-
sand years. In the progress of Christian civilization we
see Him combating the forces of sorrow, poverty, disease,
and death. In the progress of religious thought we see
Him conquering prejudice, hypocrisy, and errors of the
mind and heart and will.

It is good to think thus of Christ and to realize His
effectiveness among the actual forces of the world. There
is a certain type of mind which, gazing too exclusively on
His tears and on His wounds, thinks of Jesus with a sort
of half -conscious pity, and associates the thought of Him
with weakness and effeminacy. But this elder comes forth
with his name of "the lion" and rescues Him from a
thousand stained-glass windows where He has hung anae-
mic before the eyes of sentimental worshippers. Here is
God's athlete, the real and eternal Herakles. Here is the
lion, bounding into the arena of the world's struggle,
terrible in His might, destroying that which He opposes.
Here is the "strong Son of God," and He is at the head
of all the daring.

There are Christians to-day who grow timid when they
realize the strength of the secular forces of the world and
the apparently irrestistible power of evil in society. It
would be well if such Christians would forget their con-
ception of Christianity as a forlorn hope, and remcrr.ber
that those who are Christ's are in the sweep of the g: it-
est of all the forces now operative on the earth. Tlu^e
are young men who, like Christoferus in the familiar
legend, love strength and will follow only the strongest.
Here is their leader. Christ has had time to prove His
strength, and to-day, after all those centuries, He stands
forth unconquered and unaffrighted. Here is the hero
of heroes, the eternal leader of the strongest and most
resolute men. He calls not for weaklings to love Him, but
for strong men to follow Him. And His call is a challenge

196 THINGS ETERNAL

to all the morbid and the idle and the soft and self-indul-
gent. You who are forgetting your manhood, in an age
that calls for universal service and the redemption of
men by men; you who are wailing over the evils of the
times and reading melancholy books; you who are spend-
ing all your strength in other service while your noblest
powers are rusting from disuse — rise up and play the man !
And you whose spirit still is manly, and who fain would
live strenuously and follow the strongest — the strongest
is among you; rise and follow Christ.

THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINY

3. Love and Sacrifice

"A Lamb as it had been slain." — Revelation v. 6.

The lion of the elder is a true aspect of Christ, and yet
there is a more excellent way. It is the way of the saint,
the divine seer and evangelist, who comes to rest upon the
vision of "the Lamb standing as it had been slain," as
the innermost secret of life and the true key of human
destiny. For there is a limit to the power of will and
courage, and sooner or later even the boldest attack teaches
us by its imperfect success that we mortals must "ap-
proach destiny respectfully."

So now we have the lamb substituted for the lion. And
it is apviov — "the little lamb" — quoted from Isaiah liii.
7, but purposely changed to the diminutive. This is the
favourite thought of that tender and far-seeing spirit who
took up the beautiful imagery of the twenty-third Psalm,
and understood so well the meaning of the words "thy
gentleness hath made me great," when he told how the
Baptist had spoken of Jesus as the Lamb of God.

A great principle is embodied here. There is a Syrian
mountain whose black basalt breaks the lofty table-land
above the Sea of Galilee. At that mountain the Crusaders
lost Palestine after one of the fiercest of their battles. On
the same spot, according to tradition at least, Jesus won
the world by his Sermon on the Mount. It is the merest

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198 THINGS ETERNAL

commonplace, alike of science and of human nature, that
the humblest approach gains the richest results. Nature
resists man's violence, but yields inevitably in the end to
his loving patience. In character, self-assertion and the
endeavour to make an impression have accomplished much ;
persecution, punishment, and coercion have done much;
but love has done far more than these. Love is the key
to destiny. Force may succeed outwardly and yet be but
a magnificent failure. Love never fails: it does its ap-
pointed work.

It was this which was the life-long task and achievement
of Jesus. In Him the world has seen love at once reveal-
ing and making destiny. For what was it in Him that led
men to understand themselves and to change into better
manhood? What was it that made that nobler life seem
no longer an impossible ideal, but their own rightful heri-
tage? It was not His courage nor His strength, not His
absoluteness nor His denunciation. It was simply His love
— that same love which cured the sickness of the land
and burst open the tombs of its dead.

That aspect of the life of Christ gives us a great counsel
to which we shall take heed if we be wise. When we
have tried to force success by sheer daring and strenu-
ousness and have failed, nothing is more natural than to
become embittered. But this reminds us that we have
not yet exhausted our resources. One power remains in
reserve, the power of love. Those are wise who, in the
dark hour of defeat, guard the springs of the heart and
refuse to be embittered. Power and will are broken, but
love remains still possible, and it is really the greatest
power of all. But the secret that lies behind all hearts
kept open and generous is deeper than the human effort
to keep them so. "We love because He first loved us."
When all things have gone against a man and he cannot

THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINY 199

repress the question whether life is worth its cost, let him
remember the love of Christ and stay himself on that
great fact. Soon such a one will no longer wonder; he will
know.

But in that master-picture of Isaiah's which is here
presented, there is a further meaning. It is not only
the lamb, but the lamb slain that we see; not only the
love but sacrifice. The lamb has death-wounds on its
body, as it stands in the first pathos of death, slain though
not yet fallen. This is indeed the kind of love that con-
quers destiny. There are many kinds of love — placidly
selfish love, good-humoured and easy-going affection, that
knows nothing of sacrifice. But this is by far too great
a task for such love. The book of destiny remains for
ever closed to selfishness.

So we come in sight of the ancient truth, old indeed as
the world though but slowly apprehended, that man must
sacrifice to destiny. To gain either the understanding or
the mastery of fate you must give up yourself. It is a
hard lesson, but it is the way in which the world is made,
and we must all learn it. It is sacrifice, and sacrifice alone,
that avails in the last resort to give either peace or victory.
Life has no power to resist self-sacrifice. One's own un-
intelligible experience and threatening future, the fate of
one's friends, the woe of the world — all these demand
sacrifice for their explanation, and that is the last word
life has to say to any man. And it is always possible for
each of us to accept the strange condition. A man can
always sacrifice himself, and until he has tried that ex-
pedient he has no right to disbelieve in life and rail against
it. While we are insisting on our right to be happy and
successful, we are still at cross purposes with the world.
When we make up our mind to give up our claim, to suffer
with the world and for it, all the perverse appearance

200 THINGS ETERNAL

of things changes, and the world proves reasonable and
good. He who of his own free determination steps forward
frankly to the cross and accepts it, has discovered a new
meaning in human life.

Behind all such sacrifices, interpreting them and in-
spiring them, stands the great self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
As we see Him moving on towards Calvary we tremble as
we realize how the fate of the world turned on that cross.
By accepting it He revealed the meaning of man 's destiny,
and He conquered it for man. The lamb slain prevailed
to open the book. The revealing power of the Cross has
showed how through suffering man is made perfect, and
changed the mystery of pain to the hope of glory, the
bitter cry to the shout of victory, and the victims of life to
the sons of God. The conquering power of the cross has
changed not only the aspect of things but the things them-
selves. Sin, borne and mastered there, is no longer a
doom but a thing doomed. Sorrow and pain are no longer
the curses of humanity, but the ministers of grace. Man
is no longer a failure and an outcast, but one who stands
above his fate, ransomed of the Lord.

These are the wonderful ways of Jesus Christ, the lion-
like hero, and the lamb standing as it had been slain.
He is accessible to men from whatever side they approach
Him, satisfying the need of one for a hero, of another
for sacrifice and love. And every one who comes to Him
finds sooner or later more than he sought to find. There
are some who come to Him for strength, full-blooded and
confident and buoyant, seeking health and happy service.
These find what they have sought, but they also find love
and sacrifice waiting for them; and though at first they
may wonder and shrink back, in the end they will know
that life can only be made perfect through sufferings —

His and theirs also. Others come to Him thinking only

THREE VIEWS OF MAN'S DESTINY 201

of sacrifice, bringing only their broken hearts and disap-
pointed spirits and shamed consciences; and these find tc
their amazement that Christ has for them also gifts of
courage and strength and gladness. Either way this is
true, that men who come to Him find always the key to
destiny in His hands. He has opened the book, and for
them no longer fate but Jesus Christ is lord and master
of their lives.

WELL-MEANING BLUNDERERS

"Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." —

Luke xiv. 15.
"Blessed is the womb which bear Thee and the paps which Thou

hast sucked." — Luke xi. 27.

We have here two instances in which well-meaning per-
sons lost their heads when they heard Jesus speaking plain
home-truths. . They have their successors in every age,
and stand for peculiarly characteristic types of the two
commonest ways of turning aside the edge of conviction.
The woman turns it aside by an emotion, the man by a
pious remark.

1. The Woman. — Women were ever quicker than men
to perceive the greatness of Jesus. In this instance we
can see the woman's rising excitement as we read the
storjr. The perversity and rudeness of His treacherous
enemies must have stung the hearts of His friends. His
reply to them, describing the miserable plight of the devil-
haunted, and the wandering of demons in the wilderness,
further heated her imagination, until perhaps she had
grown almost hysterical, and needed the relief of speech.
It was the cry of one full of delight in His human power
and more than human grace. The kind and womanly heart
of her speaks out, it may be with the passion of the child-
less or the yearning of one whose children had shamed her.
She blesses the unknown mother of Jesus, thinking how
proud she herself would have been to have borne such a
son. Her cry was the spontaneous utterance of the purest

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WELL-MEANING BLUNDERERS 203

and most natural emotion.

Yet Jesus turned it aside with pointed words about the
blessedness of those that hear the Word of God and keep
it. His words were very gentle, yet they were relentless.
He was carrying on His great work, intent upon the
supreme moral and spiritual issues of men's lives. This
inrush of emotion, distracting attention from the line of
His teaching, was in the nature of an interruption; and
He was not one who would allow the beauty or even the
kindliness of an emotion to interfere with His higher
mission.

The case is one which must repeat itself so long as hu-
man nature is what it is. Life is ever calling for a serious
dealing with the facts, and there are always some whose
answer is a flash of feeling and a dramatic exclamation.
Christ calls for thought and action, for hearing and doing,
and we are apt to offer Him this cheaper offering. Feel-
ing has its own place in life, but that is not its place. It
should accompany or follow the intellect and the will ; and
the grand mistake which many make is to place it first,
leaving will or intellect to follow as best they can its
changeful guidance. No matter how good the feeling may
be, it can never enter deeply enough into the meaning
of Christ's demand. Indeed, the better it is the more dan-
gerous it will be as a substitute for true response, for it
will be but the more plausible, though quite as inadequate.

2. The Man. — Seated at the table as a guest, this un-
named man interrupts the discourse of Jesus with a
somewhat similar remark. It does not look like an original
saying, and may very likely have been a familiar quotation
from some of the Rabbinical writings. Matthew Henry
takes a kindly view of the incident : ' ' Even those that are
not of ability to carry on good discourse themselves ought
to put in a word now and then, to countenance it and help
it forward." It is an interpretation characteristic of that

204 THINGS ETERNAL

most courteous of divines, but it is quite impossible here.
Jesus evidently regards the words as an intended inter-
ruption, and throws them aside in His very pointed par-
able of the feast and the excuses.

Quite consciously, in this case, the interjection was in-
tended to parry the thrust of Jesus' words. His speech
had been growing more and more direct and personal. It
had become an exceedingly trying conversation for the
listeners, as the guest proceeded to rebuke the hospitality
of his host. To relieve the strain this well-meaning man
changes the subject from the present occasion into the
wide and spacious future, from a particular instance to
vague generalities about which there could be no dispute.
His benignant sentiments and edifying remarks about the
kingdom of God may well have won him a grateful glance
from the uneasy Pharisee at the head of the table. Cer-
tainly the incident must have appealed strongly to any
one of the guests who had a sense of humour. It is hardly
possible for us to suppress a smile when we think how
anxiously some very proper people must have wished the
feast was over. Jesus was so explosive, so unexpected —
what would He be saying next? So this nervous little
creature comes to the assistance of his host and tries to
save the situation. But Jesus is come not to save situations
but to save souls. He has no use for edifying remarks
which turn aside His direct thrust at the consciences of
men. And this is a man who is afraid of the naked flame
of truth, and who is trying to protect himself and his
friends from Christ by what he took to be piety.

Unfortunately he has not been the last to make that
attempt. We all know the type of man who, when the
situation is becoming somewhat strained, exclaims, " Bless-
ed' ' is somebody or other! " Don't let us talk about that,
let us talk about something pleasant." This is the sort
of man who might conceivably be saved by an outburst

WELL-MEANING BLUNDERERS 205

of clean anger or even frank profanity — saved from ner-
vous timidity and bloodless want of character. As it is,
his motto is caution. Reduce Christianity to platitude,
explain away or tone down unwelcome truth, until ''the
Bible as usual means nothing particular; it is merely an
obscure and figurative copy-book. ' ' But now as then Christ
despises language so guarded that it can never give of-
fense, the expression of a complacently vegetable piety
which drags the honourable word in the mire. Think of
a man sitting at the feast of life — that feast which for
the hearty and full-blooded is a feast of fat things and
red wine — and pulling down all the poignancy and im-
mediacy of the occasion by making edifying remarks !

So the two instances are really common examples of the
practice of making excuses which Jesus so explicitly re-
bukes in the parable which follows. There the call of God
is definite, ' ' Come to My supper ' ' ; and the answer of men
is, "Nay, but let us do something else, no matter what."
Here, we have two kindly but fatuous people who will
not follow Christ's lead but will take a safer line of their
own. The great issues of life and death, of sin and judg-
ment, are under consideration — let us talk of something
else, and get back among ordinary subjects. As it hap-
pens, in the one case it is a religous emotion that is substi-
tuted for plain dealing, in the other a religious platitude.
But neither fervent emotions nor good thoughts will be
accepted. Platitudes are so easy and emotions so interest-
ing, but the facts are difficult and tragic. Life and death,
sin and sorrow, must be fought with greater weapons. The
call of Christ is to step out boldly and face the facts, pre-
pared for thought and action.

INTERPRETATION BY THE LONG

RESULT

'What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know here-
after."— St. John xiii.

Jesus met with strange treatment from His friends. This
is not the first time that we read of a feast without cour-
tesy at which He sat. But there is a peculiar bitterness
about this incident, in which we see the childish and sulky
disciples doing their best to ruin an occasion to which He
had been looking forward with a great desire. So He took,
in those hands into which He knew that the Father had
given all things, a towel and a jar of water; and the
shamed disciples felt the hands of the Master on their
feet. Judas felt them without remonstrance; but it was
unbearable for Peter, and in his characteristic fashion he
remonstrated. The answer of Jesus is the text.

So here we have one of those apparently casual sayings
which are yet fraught with far-reaching significance. The
incidental remarks of Jesus to-day become the discovery
of the Church to-morrow, and the next day they are at
once the despair and the inspiration of the noblest efforts
of mankind. " There is but one example," says Lecky,
"of a religion which is not necessarily subverted by civil-
ization, and that example is Christianity . . . There
is, indeed, nothing more wonderful in the history of the
human race than the way in which that ideal has traversed
the lapse of years, acquiring a new strength and beauty
with each advance of civilization, and infusing its bene-

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INTERPRETATION BY THE LONG RESULT 207

ficent influence into every sphere of thought and action."
Jesus used to speak of Himself as casting fire and sow-
ing seed on the earth; two thousand years afterwards, we
see the fire blazing and the seed multiplying its harvests.
It was His habit to send out wayside words which were
afterwards to give its leading principles to human life.
He summed up in Himself the purpose of the ages, and
sent out His pregnant words and deeds into the future.
All later history has been the commentary on those words
and deeds, and Christianity is better understood to-day
than it was in the days of His flesh.

So this saj^ing, and the incident which gave rise to it,
appeared at the time not only outre and even unseemly,
but also quite casual and insignificant. Their significance
was waiting for future explanation, and they were passed
on to the Church and the world for that disclosure. Look-
ing back, we can see how that simple deed of kindly
ministry became first the symbol of all service, and of
all human love that purifies and ministers; until it came
to be a symbol of the whole person and work of Christ,
revealing the meaning of the great mystery of His hu-
militation and of His Supreme service of redemption
through sacrifice.

It is this expansion which gives to this incident and
the words their peculiar value. We are always being
confronted by wayside mysteries, and a great part of
every life's experience is unintelligible. Some of these mys-
teries are small, and only serve to tempt our curiosity;
others are great and terrible enough to appal men's faith
or shake their reason. We take life wrongly when we
count the mystery in itself an injustice. There is no prom-
ise that we shall ever come to understand life at the
time, nor have we any right to such immediate understand-
ing. We are in the dark, as Peter was, and that is a
1 'reason for being sparing and modest in our censures of

208 THINGS ETERNAL

God's providence." It is not probable that people who
are confessedly in the dark shall be able usually to judge
aright.

The first and most obvious message of the words is their
assurance that Christ's disciples may safely trust the
future. It is evident that in all things God counts upon
the future and works for the long result. In His opera-
tion there is no indecent haste to finish. The deliberate-
ness of creation, as the doctrine of evolution shows it mov-
ing from the fire and vapour and molten masses of the
beginnings to the fields of grain and the peopled lands, is an
immense gain over the hurried succession of six eventful
days. The deliberateness of history is no less remarkable
and reassuring, as we trace the slow progress of civiliza-
ion and the gradual awakening of the social conscience.
And the story of the life of Jesus affords abundant con-
firmation of this heartening message. His absolute trust
in the future led to a deliberateness of action, even at criti-
cal moments, which often baffled the understanding of His
disciples. He took His time, and refused to hurry. And
when the end was at hand He entrusted himself and His
cause without hesitation to the future after His death.

Christians have caught this trustful spirit toward the
future. Hopeful speaks for Christendom when in Doubt-
ing Castle he says, " Who knows but that God, who made
the world, may cause that Giant Despair may die, or that
at some time or other he may forget to lock us in ; or that
he may in a short time have another of his fits before us,
and may lose the use of his limbs. ' ' These are wise words.
When we are very young, every trouble seems final and
without remedy. As life advances, we come to realize how
infinite are the possibilities of any situation and how rich
the years are in surprises until the sense of finality is
tempered by a never-failing last hope in the off-chance.
The future is full of explanations, and already we have

INTERPRETATION BY THE LONG RESULT 209

been often satisfied regarding matters which seemed to
admit of no solution.

It has often been remarked that in G. F. Watts' pictures,
the figure of Time is not the conventional old man, weary
and sinking to decay, but a picture of unfailing youth and
vigour. That is an essentially Christian view, and it is
abundantly confirmed by history. Time is young and
fresh, ever charged with new truth and incalculable vi-
tality. Christian faith sends us on fearlessly through the
days and years, trusting to time and taking our unanswer-
ed questions forward.

Still we say as we go, —

"Strange to think by the way,

Whatever there is to know,
That shall we know one day."

Yet that assurance is not enough, for the fact is that
life seldom fully explains itself. In order to cherish this
trust we need some deeper conviction, some root of faith
out of which this may spring. Without some such second
trust the bravest optimism will often leave the aspect of
the future ominous and dark. The text supplies this deep-
er ground of assurance in the great words what I do. In
these words Christian faith sees Christ identifying Him-
self with the providence of God, and trusts to time be-
cause it is sure of Christ. We live, indeed, in the dark,
but we believe through Christ that a divine plan is being
wrought out through all experience. If God is in it —
if He is indeed working out Christ's ends of love — then
all is well. If He is not in it we may as well give up the
game. It is either Christ or a bottomless pit of despair;
life is either "what I do," or it is the sport of devils.

Here, then, is a great saying concerning all that may
happen to those that believe. We know of a better ally
than the off-chance. God is at work upon our lives, and
our experiences are His acts. It is enough for us that

210 THINGS ETERNAL

Christ speaks of them as "What I do." Though we know
not now any more than that, we may live out our lives
without fear. Time and history form one long commen-
tary on the acts of God and on the mystery of Jesus
Christ. One day we shall look back and understand it all.
Meantime we can wait for explanations, confident that if
Christ is doing it, all is well.

TRUST IN THE CHARACTER OF
CHRIST

"What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know here-
after.— St. John xiii. 7.

In the former study of these words we found the general
principles that disciples of Christ may trust to time and
face the future without misgiving, and that the reason
for this confidence is in the words "What I do." But this
message is so surprising and so far-reaching that It will
be worth our while to trace it out in some detail.

1. The commonest application of the text is to our ordi-
nary individual experience, especially of sorrow. Many
a sore heart has found comfort in the assurance that its
pain is Christ's doing, mysterious for the present but
waiting for an ultimate explanation. The very fact of
handling on the explanation to the future is worthy of
attention. There will always be much in life that has to
be accepted unexplained — much that even our faith in
Christ does not explain. He Himself felt this with His
disciples. There were things He could not make them
understand. He used to wish He could, and we feel the
pain of suppression is such sayings as "I have yet many
things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."
Often it w^ould be no use trying to tell these things, for He
could not make us in any sense understand. We are not
yet fit to know, not big enough yet to look steadily upon
the face of life and to glory in tribulations.

Yet one thing He has told us — "I do it." And that

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212 THINGS ETERNAL

is the last word that can be said to sorrow, for it shifts
the burden from our understanding over to the character
of Christ. In this He has made Himself ultimately re-
sponsible for all that happens to us. We dwell upon the
hardness of circumstances, upon the world and the powers
of darkness, upon the our own mistakes or follies or sins.
These may indeed be the occasions of much suffering ; but
beyond these, in every hour of sorrow, there still lies the
will of God. This, after all is said, still is "What I do."

It is equally legitimate for glad hearts to apply the
words to their happiness. In very bright hours we are
almost afraid to acknowledge our belief in life, and our
happy sense of the world. Fears invade, and we ask
whether future experience will honour our faith in life;
to which Christianity replies that experience worketh not
disillusion but hope. In spite of much sorrow, life is
better than any of its first promises. The fugitive and
sudden glories change to a settled peace and sense of well-
being. The early momentary and passionate flashes of
joy grow to a constant steady exhilaration. The sense of
a "haunting strangeness in beauty" ripens into the sweet
familiarity and homeliness of love. Thus, for every whole-
some nature, young pleasures undergo their change "into
something rich and strange." Our faith in life was abun-
dantly justified, and the half was never told at first. The
years have led the happy spirit onward, exploring the
pleasures that are at God 's right hand. Our first delighted
moments gave us no hint of the wealth of goodwill from
which the Father was drawing, or the kindness of His
love. What He is doing we know not at the time, but we
understand more fully afterwards.

2. A still wider field opens before us in respect of ser-
vice. The incident in the upper room seemed slight, but
it was full of social significance. That day they thought he
was only washing the feet of a few disciples. Time has

TRUST IN THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 213

shown that He was freeing slaves, building hospitals, found-
ing charities, inaugurating social science, educating the
social conscience of mankind.

The service of man is a matter that has been but slowly
understood. At first, knowing not what he had done that
day, the tendency was to mere imitation of the act, in
voluntary humility, poverty, and ascetic discipline. But
His words foretold not imitation but development, and
told us in this sense also to trust the future, to which he
had committed his pregnant deed. This should set for us
our attitude towards new and strange developments of the
service of man by man. We cannot expect these to re-
peat endlessly the old forms of service, but should be pre-
pared to welcome in new forms the ancient works of Christ.

Nothing is more striking than the direction in which
the ideals of self-sacrifice have been moving. Beginning
with the idea of self-denial for its own sake and for the
discipline solely of the person who undertook it, it grad-
ually passed out into more and more useful ideals which
measured its value by the help it brought to others. When
we claim development for the words of Jesus we mean
that the Christian ideals of the service of man must have
room to grow, to be original, to adapt themselves to the
requirements of each successive age. Thus in each new
doctrine of economics, in each new departure in social
work, and in each new phase of civilization and philan-
thropy, men are simply coming to know long afterwards
what Jesus did that day when He washed the feet of His
disciples. And each new discovery of that sort is but a
new declaration of Christ's astonishing reversal of the
traditional conceptions of master and servant. The master
has come to mean the man who can do the best service.
He is the greatest among us who is the most sympathetic in
understanding and the readiest in helping the need of his
fellow-man.

3. The words are also applicable to the whole of what

214 THINGS ETERNAL

Christ was then doing for the redemption of man. His
enemies were bringing the cross to Him, with very definite
and clearly understood meanings of shame and cruelty
attached to it. But He took the cross out of the hands of
His enemies, made it His own, and attached to it a totally
different set of meanings from that time onward. The
church has known, as none of the twelve could possibly
know that day, what it was that He did.

A similar development may be seen in the understanding
of redemption by every one of the redeemed. "When first
Christ came to us to deal with our sins, to hear our con-
fession and to handle our sordid lives, the heart cried out
in wonder — Ah, Lord, Thou has washed my feet! "We
thought we knew what He had done; we may even have
framed a pretty complete theological expression of it ; but
in reality we did not know the richer fullness of meaning
which time was to unfold. At first, our Christian faith
had to be stated at its minimum — how little can I have
of it, and yet legitimately claim to be a Christian ? After-
wards, the soul wonders at the unexpected vistas of ex-
perence that open out before it as it advances further into
the fullness of the Christian life. At first it knows only of
the healing of the spirit 's wound ; at last it perceives with
astonishment the glory of the Lord. At the first, it is
but a hungry soul that has been fed ; at the last it stands
in the light before the throne of God, singing the song of the
redeemed.

Thus the Christian life is a very wonderful thing, a
reticent and unfolding thing. It never discloses itself
at the beginning, nor will any period of time suffice to
reveal Jo any soul fully all the meaning of the service
which Christ rendered to men. It will take a life-time,
yes all the lives of Christendom, to explain what he did
that day. What he did for us we know not yet, but we
may know more and more of it if we are faithful and de-
sirous.

THE EXPLORATION OF THE HIDDEN

LIFE

"Your life is hid with Christ in God." — Colossians iii. 3.
"Continue in prayer. — Colossians iv. 2.

These words were addressed to the Collosians, a people
peculiarly open to the attacks of incipient gnosticism. The
Gnostics sought after hidden mysteries until all the world
about them was uncanny — full of whispers, presences emerg-
ing out of the mist of dreams, wraiths of thought. Here
Paul offers them something in Christianity that will ap-
peal to such tastes. There is no need, he would say, to go
past Christ for mysteries. He, and men's relations with
Him, are the deepest mysteries of all.

The words were taken up by Christian theology in its
dictrine of the "Mystical Union." We died with Him,
and the old life passed away, the life that had been mas-
tered and bewitched by the world and directed by its
instincts. In its stead a new life was born, higher and
purer than the old, which we share with the risen Christ.
But this is no longer a comprehensible or even a visible life.
There is a secret element in spiritual communion of which
the world knows nothing. It is hidden with Christ, who
is Himself hidden in God — a very mystical conception.

Christian experience confirms this though it does not
explain it. Our faith and character are safe in that great
hiding-place — safe from enemies of doubt or of temptation
that would rob us of them. Like John Bunyan, we say

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216 THINGS ETERNAL

with full security, ' ' My Righteousness is on high. ' ' From
ourselves even is this secret hidden. No Christian pro-
fesses to understand his own spiritual experience or to
be able fully to rationalize it. It all ends ultimately in
the mystery of the Divine. The great change from sin
and the desire of sin to the grace that makes all things
new is not a matter of our own doing, nor is it an effect
of natural causes we can trace. Let anyone look back to
the great event of his spiritual new birth; he will be very
sure of God in it, but the rest will be lost in mystery.

This is indeed a theologcal doctrine, but it is no theo-
logical fiction. " The hiddenness of perfect things " is
a broad fact of common knowledge. And confessedly, the
most deeply hidden of all things is the meaning of our
own life. By many diverse methods — by hunger and pain
and love, by all our blind gropings, by our restlessness of
search, by "the infinite craving for an infinite filling" —
we are lured on towards an ultimate goal. Our life is
hid : we are out on the life-long search for it.

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life.

Thus, by its own exquisite confession, is humanity disap-
pointed in its search, until only the more strenuous seekers
retain the faith that there is anything to find. But the
Christian knows where that treasure lies. He is confident
of finding himself at last. Day by day, with recurring sur-
prise, he discovers some new aspect of that for which he
seeks, or at least some trace of it. He knows — he is the
one man on earth who does know — the secret of the buried
life. His life is hid with Christ in God.

Under this light prayer takes on a new significance and
interest. It is the search for hidden treasure. We all know
how stimulating a motif this search has been in romance.

THE EXPLORATION OF THE HIDDEN LIFE 217

Which of us has not seen the ingots shining in the light
of fires of broken wreakage on a far-off shore! Such is
the romance of prayer, in which we see the soul wander-
ing in dim mysterious regions, seeking for the hidden
treasure of its true life. There are various aspects of
prayer. It may be regarded as ritual, a matter of cere-
mony artistically correct. It may be regarded as a prob-
lem in metaphysics, opening curious questions as to the
uniformity of law. These are narrow conceptions compared
with this. The horizons of our thought and imagination
sweep far out as we think of prayer as man's search for
himself through the vast universe. This explorer — this
huntsman of his own soul — speeds along the whole line of
his activities, across the whole field of his interests, until, in
some hour perhaps of difficulty and of strain, he finds
the sudden revelation of the meaning of unintelligible ex-
perience, and of the presence of an unseen Friend. In the
heart of Christ the man has discovered his own life. He
may not be able to give reasons, but he understands and
is quite sure. He can go back now, and endure and be
glad. Or again, at times when all is in perplexity, the
very exercise of prayer shows him what he would be at.
Free from prejudices, delusions, and temptations, the mere
act of turning to the Highest gives him the truest ex-
pression of himself, the fullest and most exalted utterance
of experience. He has sought and found his hidden life.
John Knox 's great words are true : l i We come to seeke our
Lyfe and Perfection in Jesus Christ.' '

The truth of this is most obvious in regard to the high-
est reaches of life, the moral and the spiritual. A sensi-
tive and living conscience, the rich and wonderful sense
of forgiveness, moral strength and resoluteness for the
future, and beyond all the promise of eternal life in God —
these are life indeed, such as the world knows not. Yet
to-day let us rather keep to the lower ranges. For these

218 THINGS ETERNAL

higher ones are more commonly supposed to be accessible
only by learning the secret of the Lord: the lower, men
think they can explore apart from Him.

1. Physical life, in which " life " means "health."
Much harm has been done by that anaemic presentation of
the Christian life which gives the impression of something
spectral and as far as possible disembodied. It is a great
mistake to imagine that to be an invalid is in itself a
Christian grace. Certainly Jesus held no such view. The
effect of His life was on all hands to bring men back
from sickness to a condition keenly alive to the earth and
its work and charm. He rejoiced not in weakness and
disease but in the coursing of blood and the clean strength
of the body. His gospel was emphatically the gospel of
health.

Our bodily life is hid with Christ in God, and that is
among the prizes which prayer finds and secures. Not only
does the habit of prayer tend to restrain a man from
hurtful excesses. He who prays learns to hold his physi-
cal life more precious and to regard it as a sacred trust,
knowing its worth better than other men. It puzzles us
to see the vast and anxious attention which some men,
whose life is so poor and meaningless an affair, bestow
upon their health. The discovery of an infinite signifi-
cance and value for our earthly life is the only justifica-
tion for such tender care.

As to the question of the effect of prayer upon the con-
dition of one's physical health, it is a difficult question,
and anything that can be said about it must be rather in
the nature of a practical hint than of a scientific explana-
tion. Here, more than in most regions, it is necessary to
avoid the extravagances of half-educated or rash specula-
tion. Science is as truly God's gift and will as prayer is,
and any prayer which sets itself up as a substitute for
medical skill is mere presumption. Nor can prayer and

THE EXPLORATION OF THE HIDDEN LIFE 219

medicine combined effect more than a certain limited
amount. The last factor in the case is the will of God,
and our times are in His hand.

Yet prayer may be a real means of finding a healthy
life. So closely are body and mind connected, that the
very moods which prayer induces will react in health upon
the body. By prayer peace may come upon the spirit ; and
nature, hindered by tingling nerves and agitations, may
get her chance. In prayer the thought and desire, set
upon healthy conditions, may awaken the will and pur-
pose, and the chances of health are vastly better for those
who will to be well than for those who have lost heart
and energy. For the rest, the abstract question of how
prayer is answered is, and must always remain, obscure.
Sir Oliver Lodge strikes the true note when he says that
the fatalistic attitude is the unfilial one. We are but
children in such matters, and the choice is between being
"solemn little prigs, " superior to faith; or simple chil-
dren who say to their father what they want. We shall
never get beyond that to any higher thought, and if we
insist on passing on from it, it must be to a lower one. This,
at least, is true, that the life even of our flesh is hid with
Christ in God, and that in prayer we are approaching its
quickening springs.

2. Emotional life, in which "life" means harmony and
peace. The first promise of Christianity is keen vitality,
by which it at once distinguishes itself from all such re-
ligions as aim at the death of desire or the callousness of
the steeled heart. But the vitality of the feelings is apt
to produce a wild travesty of life rather than a controlled
and steady flow of fitting emotions. The daily work and
the daily battle are intended to move to the sound of ap-
propriate music of moods and feelings. Too often that
music rises to discordant shrieking, or sinks to the depres-
sion of a funeral march. At such times of random tempers

220 THINGS ETERNAL

or sullen distemper, we say "we are not ourselves," and
we say truly. Again prayer lead us to find ourselves.

That hidden life which we go to find in Christ is not
passionless. The moods are legitimate elements in ex-
perience, though they require harmony and control. When
the strain is felt, before the mood expresses itself, go to
find it as it is in Christ. There it will be safe for you
to be true to it, and frankly let it find expression. So the
depression of drudgery will become the earnest enthusi-
asm of labour. Battle will change from a squabble to a
crusade. Sullenness will change to sympathy that feels
the sense of tears in mortal things. Exasperation will
lose its blindness and yield instead a swift and brilliant
vision of the mind of Christ regarding wrong.

3. Social life, in which "life" means love and service.
Our social instincts tell us of a larger self which includes
our relations to others. Social science is doing noble work
in its efforts to understand and adjust these relations. But
in the meantime generous and earnest men are often sorely
perplexed. To suggest prayer as a substitute for sound
economics is mere cant, which those who feel the pres-
sure of present conditions will justifiably treat with scorn.
Yet that which lies at the root of all these disputes is
not details either of present injustice or of future amend-
ment. It is the spirit of men's minds towards one an-
other. In that lies our true social life.

That life of right social spirit is hid with Christ in
God. It is found neither in debate nor in legislation.
Prayer alone can find it. Those finer understandings in
which class prejudices and dislikes vanish; the discovery
of those common interests, rights and duties, joys and
sorrows, which are the same to all men; that recognition of
common worth, in which consists the real brotherhood
of men — these are the very spirit of Christ, and prayer
in the means of their discovery.

THE EXPLORATION OF THE HIDDEN LIFE 221

So, through prayer, we pass on to that widest charity
which is the true spirit of public life. Paul exhorts that
" intercessions and givings of thanks be made for all
men." Such intercession if it be intelligent and honest
will open the intercessor's heart to the sorrows of his
fellow-men. Such thanks-giving will be impossible except
to those who are prepared to right their wrongs. That is
the true hearty Christian spirit— intercessions and thanks-
giving for all this crowded world of human life. It is
not pity, far less scorn, but the true spirit of public life,
the insight and goodwill without which no man's man-
hood is complete. In prayer we go to find that life also,
hid with Christ in God.

In a word, our true life in all its relations is hid with
Christ in God. The solutions of critical problems, the
answers to great questions, require more than painful
thought. They require that we be our true selves to think
and act truly among them. By prayer we go to seek and
find our true selves in Him. In His will is our peace, in
His favour our life, in His love our power of loving wisely
so that we may rightly serve our generation.

WEARINESS OF RESPONSIBILITY

"Make me as one of thy hired servants." — Luke xv. 19.

The motive for these words has been variously understood.
Some have accused the prodigal of lingering self -righteous-
ness; as if he were demanding to work for his living,
too proud to receive anything on charity. Others have
taken them to be a promise of new obedience, in which he
asked for a chance of showing how genuine was the change
of heart. More usually they have been understood to
be simply an expression of humiliation and of shame. He
had forfeited his sonship, and entertained no idea of com-
plete restoration. He could only hope now to be admitted
as a servant into the house where he had once lived as
a son.

No doubt this last is the view that is truest to the story.
Certainly there is no ground for the suggestion of self-
righteous pride or the desire for wages. But there is a
further suggestion in the words, which takes us far in
among the facts of human nature. The request was not
the mere consent to a disagreeable position chosen because
it was the lower place. It was a positive choice of that
position, as the one which he preferred to occupy.

He asked for hired service because he was sick of free-
dom. There had been a time when freedom was the only
thing he wanted. The desire of it had led him away from
his home to the far land. The routine of home, the tedious-

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WEARINESS OF RESPONSIBILITY 223

ness of that dull person his elder brother, the restraint
of a younger son living in his father's house. — these had
become intolerable to his young blood. He heard the call
of the sparkling world beyond the horizon of the home-
stead. There a man might live without restrictions and
go as he pleased.

He went, a lad lighthearted and easily seduced. He
found his freedom, and did what he liked. Soon all guid-
ance of his affairs was gone, and he was whirled along in
a rush of pleasures, the mere sport of circumstances and
of lusts. Freedom is a noble thing, if it be accompanied
by a clear mind and a powerful will that keeps its self-
control. Freedom is a grand ideal to dream and boast
and sing about. It is claimed as the native right and
heritage of every man, and it seems little short of sacri-
lege even to qualify that claim. Yet it must be qualified
if it is to be anything but a misleading and dangerous
fallacy. It is true in the sense that until he has attained
to liberty no man has reached his ideal manhood, or in
any full measure come to his own. But it is not true
that for all men, or for many men at their present stage,
full liberty is a right which it is just for them to claim,
or which it would be safe to grant them. To be free to
say what one likes and to do what one likes is not the great
matter: but, as Matthew Arnold was reminded us, the
great matter is that what one says and does when free
shall be worthy and fitting. Meanwhile the very facts of
education and of civilization are standing proofs that only
by learning to obey can men attain to a condition in
which freedom is safe in their hands. Premature freedom
is both a dangerous and a costly gift.

So this prodigal had claimed his freedom before he was
capable of managing it, and it had utterly wrecked his
life. Now he is, as well he may be, afraid of it, afraid
to trust himself.

224 THINGS ETERNAL

Me this unchartered freedom tires;
I feel the weight of chance-desires.

He genuinely and ardently longs for some one to control
him, and it is this change of heart that redeems the inci-
dent. Otherwise the return, as a last resort when all else
is impossible, bears the inevitable stamp of meanness.
While the prodigal is still confident and cheerful about
his prospects of living a better life in future, the case
is hopeless. But the meanest return as a last resort when
all else has failed, is redeemed from its meanness by that
loss of self-confidence which is the test of true repentance.
Here, his confidence is broken indeed. His shame has
led to a complete self -distrust. Mr. Huxley expressed the
wish that he could be wound up each day like a watch,
and so be sure of going rightly. Such a wish cannot in-
deed form a standard for any normal condition of life.
A far more normal standard is Emerson's injunction,
' ' Trust thyself, ' ' which we have already quoted. But here
the words of the shamed adventurer are natural and right.
They are the expression of that passionate longing for a
master and a guide which comes when shame has brought
distrust of self. The prodigal, desire for a better life, can
find no hope of it but in a stronger will and a sounder
judgment than his own to come between him and tempta-
tion. His heart cries out the cry of the humble : —

Shew me what I have to do;
Every hour my strength renew.

This then is the mood of the returning prodigal, who has
his speech prepared for the meeting with his father. But
that speech was never uttered. Our programmes of re-
ligous experience are never carried out literally There is
a better way than we in our shame had thought of, for
God is always better than our thoughts, or even our de-
sires. When father and son have met, there is no longer any

WEARINESS OF RESPONSIBILITY 225

word of hired servants. Fear, shame, distrust of self,
the burden of responsibility, are all swallowed up in love.
One sight of the father's face, the great embrace of the
beloved arm thrown around his rags, the tears that fall
upon his neck — these settle all the problems which in cold
blood we settle otherwise.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with

might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of

sight.

Self -distrust even has passed, for love has found a na-
tural and happy solution. No hard responsibilities, to
which our moral character is inadequate, are thrust upon
us; no unbearable lonely freedom is given us to manage
rightly. The responsibilities of life in the father's house
are different from those of the far country. For the
father is there, and we have learned at last to love him,
and that love has become a far more commanding law than
hired service can ever know.

That is the beautiful old story, and there are multitudes
who to-day understand it only too well. Their adventure
in life has not been successful, and now a great longing
has come upon them for rest from responsibilities which
they have failed to meet.

Some come to this when sin has proved vain. They
have tried self-will, and refused to follow the precepts by
which others live. At last they have found out what
incompetent fools they were, and how impossible a matter
life becomes when it has revolted against its ancient laws.
This is an inevitable element in true shame and penitence.
Life has proved too much for them. Its very positions of
honour and of trust condemn them, as they realize their
failure, and they are overwhelmed by a hopeless sense
of their own moral and spiritual inadequacy.

Others reach this state of mind rather from a sense of

226 THINGS ETERNAL

the sheer difficulty of the situation. Their constitution and
their circumstances are not equal to the tasks they have to
face. Life grows more and more perplexing, and its re-
sponsibilities more burdensome. They have come to this
that they often cannot tell the right course from the
wrong; and now they are too tired to face the situation
and are utterly depressed by the sense of their own incapa-
city.

At such times the soul cries out for a master and a law.
Give us our orders and we shall obey them. Let the com-
mand be definite, the direction unmistakable, and we shall
not rebel. However hard the conditions may be, they can-
not be so intolerable as the weary and futile attempt to
choose and govern.

But God insists. He will give no external law written
on tables of stone. He will write his laws only on our
hearts. He will not call us servants even in answer to
our prayers. He has called us friends and sons of his
household, and he will not consent to any less honourable
relation.

But then the love which Christ brings and reveals makes
all the difference. That love is indeed the fulfilling of
the law, as all those that are labouring and heavy laden
may discover. They are not indeed permitted to lay
down their burdens, but they find God bearing their bur-
dens with them. Love changes the look and the feeling of
all things. No responsibility is intolerable when in the
Father we have found also the Master and the Guide.
Under that lordship of love — full of allowances, rich in
encouragement, tender with compassion — we can find heart
to face anything that life sets before us.

THE HERITAGE OF FEAR

(All Saints.)

"Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear Thy name."

Psalms lxi. 5.

There is a continuity in the history of religion which
binds together the most widely diverse ages and types
of thought. Each phase, with its peculiar emphasis, exists
not only for the truth it can declare and the character it
can produce at the time, but also for its contribution of
permanent elements to the growing faith.

There is nothing so characteristic of primitive religious
ideas as fear. " Terror is everywhere the beginning of
religion, " and the process by which terror is exchanged
for reasonable and loving communion is one of the most
instructive studies in the world. Science has its part in
this process, reducing steadily the region of the unknown,
where man's terrors mainly dwell. But religion is the
supreme agent of enfranchisement, and while growing
knowledge is steadily reducing fear, perfect love will ul-
timately cast it out. In the Old Testament we see this
increasing emancipation. Fear of God is the obvious back-
ground, but with increasing frequency and boldness the
voice of prophecy cries to man "Fear not." The same
process may be discerned in later times, with their tran-
sition from the gloomy and spectral night of mediasval
dogmas to the daylight of the reformation, and again from
the harsher and more judicial forms of sixteenth-century
doctrine to the kindly light of God's fatherhood which is
the characteristic form of faith to-day.

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228 THINGS ETERNAL

But nothing which has entered into the faith and been
a vital element in the Christianity of strong men of the
past, has ever been in vain ; nor have any such superseded
elements ever been wholly discarded. They enter into
the very essence of the faith and give to its future forms
some of their richest and most valuable qualities. Fear is
gone, in its crude and ancient sense, but the heritage of
fear is among the most priceless parts of our inheritance
from the past. , ,

The inheritance of fear is manifold. It is worth our
while to examine it in some detail: —

1. Fear itself persisting. — Fear, we said, is gone; but
that can never be completely true. It is a dangerous
world, whose territories are but half -explored as yet, and
he must be but a foolish traveller who walks on light-
heartedly with his eyes on the clouds. The consequences of
wandering and of stumbling are manifest continually in
the dooms of the lost and the fallen. Science has con-
quered superstition, and civilization has cleared the road
of life from many dangers that formerly beset it. Yet
the result of this has only been to make men realize more
fully the tremendous seriousness of the physical and social
consequences of evil, and so to concentrate fear in the
region of inward rather than in that of outward dangers.
Here the most recent science is at one with the most an-
cient religion, and the Greek tragedies and Hebrew judg-
ments are seen even more inexorably than of old working
themselves out in our modern hospitals and laboratories.
For the wise man, human life is still ringed round with
dangers of which he is aware, and which he is wise enough
to fear. And his religion will still bear the mark of this.
Religion deals with things as they are, not with things as
our desires or fancies paint them. There is no use in try-
ing to adapt Christian faith to light-minded people, or to
translate the thunders of Sinai or the voices from the

THE HERITAGE OF FEAft 229

Cross into the language of little souls. A religion that
did not retain some elements of fear would ipso facto dis-
prove itself.

2. Fear has a rich inheritance for the future, and when
a people has ceased to fear it has little to hand on. Its
children are born bankrupt of much that has made life
most worth living to the past. Without the depths of
repentance or the heights of reverence, such an age may
call itself Augustan, but it is hastening towards the
revolution. But the elements of fear that enter into any
generation's thoughts of God appear in the next genera-
tion for the most part in new forms. By the same strange
alchemy of God, which changes the decay and death of
this year into the fruitful harvests of next, the fears of
the past are changed into the knowledge and character of
the future.

Knowledge is part of the heritage of fear. The work
of science is obviously this transmutation. The fears of
to-day spur men on to acquire the knowledge of to-mor-
row, and most knowledge is thus literally the heritage of
fear. But still more profoundly is this true of that knowl-
edge of God which is the essential element in religion.
The good-humoured little gods of modern Bohemia and
modern Philistia are very pretty, but they are not real.
If men know the true God at all to-day, that knowledge
was found for them by former men who feared. If we
know Him more humanly than the fathers, at least let
us not forget that all that is greatest in our thoughts of
Him came to us from them.

Character, too, is part of our heritage of fear. Charac-
ter is a very complex thing. It cannot be created within
one or even many generations. It is built up and enriched
by countless elements which have entered into it in the
past, which have been absorbed, and disappeared only to
reappear in the richer and finer quality of the character

230 THINGS ETERNAL

of future ideals. In a light age there is much talk about
love and joy, but often these are slight, facile, and ineffec-
tive. The only joy and love that are trustworthy are
those which spring from roots struck deep into the soil
of the pasts, where they fed on sterner virtues. The ele-
ment of fear out of which it grew gives to joy the qualities
of repose, permanence, and gentleness: to love it gives a
rich and passionate depth, a strength and patience which
were impossible without it.

3. Deliverance from Fear. — Courage itself, and an un-
shaken and habitual fearlessness, are part of the heritage
of fear. There is no sure or worthy deliverance from fear
but through fear. By dealing reverently with the thought
and conscience of the past, by full realization of the aw-
fulness both of human nature and of God, fear may pass
into joy and love that retain the notes of reverence and
of steadfastness in our religion. It has been said that
the land is blessed which has no history. In truth
that land is more blessed that has a history, graved in the
iron rock. But once fear has been transformed into rever-
ent joy and steadfast love, we find ourselves delivered
from all that manifold bondage and torment which beset
the life that has dealt less thoroughly with the ancient
terrors. In a word, the choice is offered us between one
great fear and a thousand little ones; between the fear
of God, and countless fears of evil, of to-morrow, of yes-
terday, of our fellow-men, and of the mysterious region
within the shadow of death.

Thus by fear we may escape from fear. " Live out
the best that 's in these and thou art done with fears ' ' — it
is a great and true saying. But that "best that's in thee"
includes God in thee. Face Him and settle the issues of
life with Him — then there is nothing left to fear. The
great art of religion is that of centring all our fear in
God. Fear is then lost in reverent love and trust, and

THE HERITAGE OF FEAR 231

the world around is swept clear of terrors. For such a
man dreads nothing but the loss of the God he loves; he
has now no longer any hesitation about " making the
devil his enemy/' nor bidding defiance to the trooping
shadows of conscience and of mortality. For his faith no
longer floats loosely on the surface of his dreams and his
desires, but has reached bottom, and rests on the nether
rock. Such is the final heritage of them that fear God's
name.

THE CLAIM OF GOD

(All Souls)

"All souls are mine." — Ezekiel xviii. 4.

The Bible is full of the demand for service to God, the
demand for service resting on the fact of ownership. Two
out of many such passages may be taken along with the
text. In Isaiah xliii. 1, we have the words, " Fear not, for
I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name ;
thou art mine," spoken by " the Lord that created thee
. . . Him that formed thee." The grand idea of the
servant of Jehovah, traced back through a wonderful his-
tory of redemption, ends thus in the thought of creation;
and the naming of Jacob asserts that individual and par-
ticular client-relation which is so characteristic of Hebrew
religion and so rich in meaning and suggestion. The
other passage occurs in Acts xxvn. 23, when Paul, during
the shipwreck, speaks of "God, whose I am, and whom I
serve." At such a time as that, the question, Whose am
I? is of first importance. In fair weather we are tempted
to claim our souls and bodies for our own; but when the
timbers are starting, and the ship is driven before the
tempest, we are fain to renounce the ownership of prop-
erty we are so helpless to defend. If at such a time a
man knows that he belongs to God, then the winds and
waves matter little, and the impressionable sailor-men feel
the power and shelter of one who knows whose he is.
Nowadays, when every one is proclaiming his "inalien-

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THE CLAIM OF GOD 233

able rights," and with loud voice asserting his claim on
life, the other question, as to who has a claim to us, is
often forgotten. Yet it is the more important, and even
the more practical question of the two. Disciples of cul-
ture speak much of ' 'fulfilling oneself" and "obeying one's
nature," but they do not always realize that the very
essense of such fulfilment and obedience is to find one's
master. Genius has been often defined, but no definition
is satisfactory that does not include a sense of mysterious
ownership. The supreme touches of the artist, which
change his picture suddenly from death to life, are in a
real sense the coming of the Holy Ghost upon him. He
is no longer his own man ; he is for the moment ' ' carried, ' '
possessed. So it is in music, in craftsmanship, in speech.
It is not in any pride or self-sufficiency that a man can ever
achieve the highest greatness. It is when " by stooping
we climb to His feet." The man may not know what has
happened when his work leaps thus towards the ideal of
beauty or truth, or perfection. Really it is the claim of
God, who stoops over his workman and whispers to his
soul, "Thou art mine."

There are, however, rival claimants for the souls of men,
and each of these may, by the soul's consent, put for-
ward a claim that life will honour. Not Judas only, but
every man born, goes at last to his own place.

1. The world.— Lite begins in an unworldly simplicity
which accepts the situation without thought. But as child-
hood passes into youth, the world becomes more and more
a shining and alluring fascination. The joy of life, the
"green fire" of nature, press their demands. The intoxi-
cation of the "crowded hour of glorious life" proclaims
and presses the imperative of earth. At first earth woos
the soul surreptitiously, fawning, whispering " Be thou
mine." With hardly a flicker of definite consciousness or
will, the soul answers "Yes, dear earth, I am thine. " Until

234: THINGS ETERNAL

the man appears with his shameless creed cf following his
nature, subject to no other will.

Such a man has mortgaged his destiny. To be claimed
by the world and to lose the faculty of escape from it
is the ghastliest of all dooms. For the sweet voice that says
"Thou art mine" changes its tone. It loses its softness
and becomes terrifying, until at length its hoarse reitera-
tion sounds the knell of the dying aspirations of the spirit.
In his Easter Day, Robert Browning has shown that ap-
palling transition from delight through satiety to despair.
Nothing could be more dreadful than the sickening re-
turn of the days, when the soul that has lost taste for all
but earthly things, at last grows sick of them; when the
swine before which we have thrown our pearls, turn again
and rend us.

2. Sin. — There are in some lands, beautiful green spots
that promise refreshment to the weary traveller, but he
lingers on them to his death, for their beauty is poisoned.
So he who grants the claim of the world finds that it
leads directly to a further claim and a lower. You never
meant to pledge yourself to more than pleasure, but you
find yourself before you are aware committed to sin. Like
the man in Victor Hugo's story, it was the cave you
wanted, but the devil-fish wanted you. Sin, once com-
mitted, claims a man. He has sold himself, and he be-
longs to sin. This is no imaginary horror, it is happen-
ing around us every day. There are men everywhere who
are surfeited with sin and yet committing it. They chose
it lightly, and now they are filled with their own way.
The sin they loved once they have long hated, but they
do it still.

3. Death. — The surefooted shadow of death comes on
at a measured interval after sin, and when sin has done
with a man it leaves him to this next claimant. It is no
theological fiction, but a patent fact of life, that "the soul

THE CLAIM OF GOD 235

that sinneth it shall die." Sin is the sting of death, the
paralysing sting, that leaves a man's heart and conscience
and will flaccid, helpless, with no power to stand nor to
resist. Sorrow, disappointment, and death come to all,
but only to the unforgiven soul do they come with a
claim. Debemur morti — we are due to death. There is
no use of rebelling when with heads down they are
marched off to that which claims them — their lord the
worm.

That is life, not as religion makes it, but as it finds it.
What then can religion do for so dire a situation? It
sounds out a new claim, challenging all the rest. "To be
the property of God is the essence of religion." So the
form of this divine claimant strides in upon our ruined
human life with His great voice, "All souls are Mine."
The world hears it, that pleasure-house that has become a
prison ; and He breaks its gates of brass, and cuts its bars
of iron in sunder. And the world, where once stood
the prison-house, becomes the garden of the Lord. Sin
and Death hear the footfall and the voice. They drop their
victim and flee away, and remorse and temptation follow
in their train. "The wages of sin is death, but the gift
of God is eternal life. ' '

You who have sold your souls for naught until now the
habits of your sins have bound you ; you who are surfeited
with earth, and to whom the thought of things above this
world has become a fainter and fainter dream ; you, whose
bodies and souls have felt the growing tyranny of sin, and
whose eyes have caught sight of Death, waiting visibly
for your coming — listen to that great voice, "All souls
are Mine — your soul is Mine." The key of your soul hangs
at God's girdle. You belong inalienably to Him. ,

There is the solution of the whole ghastly mystery of
life. However terribly those former claimants may have
fastened their hold upon you, they have no right to you,

236 THINGS ETERNAL

for you are God's. From the first, deep in the hearts of
them, men have known that this was so. Even the classic
heroes proclaimed themselves under the protection of a
god. The faith of Israel set men free by publishing the
claim of Jehovah. But not till Christ had come did that
divine claim reach its full power and winsomeness. There
was that about Him which seemed always to claim men
for His own. It is only those who do not know Him that
can criticize Him. When you know Him there is nothing
for it but to be His. By His life and by His death, by
His speech and by His deeds, by His infinite compassion
and His mighty power to save, Christ claims us for His
own.

To obey that claim is to reach a new thought of life's
responsibilities that will stand a man in good stead through
evil days. " The lighthouse keeper on his rock sits in his
solitude and watches his little flame. Why does he not
let it die away in the night as other lights in the distance
die? Because it is not his light. He is its keeper, not its
owner. The great power that watches that stormy coast
has set him there, and he must be true. ' ' So does the man
who knows Christ's claim upon him stand on the high
vantage-ground of life. The tides of the world surge
around him, the blasts of sin and the cold rain of death
beat upon his tower. They would claim him for their
own and quench his light of life. But the light shines on,
for there is another who has said to his soul, "Thou are
Mine."

THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY

"Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved
with compassion toward them." — St. Matthew xiv. 14.

Nothing is of more importance than the love of humanity
as a whole. Many thinkers of the last and the present
centuries make this the central demand, and indeed the
one essential principle, alike of morals and religion. In-
deed this love of collective humanity has, by a strange
irony of fate, become the chief rival of Christianity. The
old individualism of our love one to another, and in its
idealized form of our love to God or Christ, has been su-
perseded by this wider and more general command of
affection, " Write me as one who loved his fellow-men."
No one denies the generosity and the beauty of such
an ideal, nor do we in any degree underrate the value
of it. Yet our heart sings as we draw nearer, for we find
that it is precisely the most impossible of all demands.
The plain and brutal truth is, as Mr. Mallock has pointed
out, that the great majority of our fellow-men are not in
the least degree interesting to any of us. We do not
know them, nor has our imagination any hold upon them
whatever. An accident involving death and suffering
varies in its interest for us in inverse ratio to the dis-
tance of its scene from our familiar region. The same
thing is true of distance in time. We are, told to live for
posterity, and in a general way we consent to legislate in
view of far-reaching effects, and cherish public sentiments
against the obvious propagation of disease and so forth.

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238 THINGS ETERNAL

But how rare is any actual self-denial in view of the
needs of far-distant generations. How few of us think
of our successors beyond, say, the third generation, with
imagination of the fact that they will have to face the
same temptations, dangers, and necessities which we are
facing, and that the results of our conduct will be of im-
mense moment to their lives. In this diminishing intensity
of compassion, we see love running to waste in collective
humanity (and the leakage is not stopped by spelling
Humanity with a capital letter), filtering away among
the multitude until it disappears. Evidently what is
wanted is a love of men that shall be backed by powers of
imagination and sympathy which we must simply ack-
nowledge that we do not possess.

But the Christ of Christian faith did possess such pow-
ers, and He has laid the conscience of them on the world.
He had compassion on the multitude. Every life inter-
ested Him, distant as well as near. It is a curious ques-
tion how far this comprehending imaginative sympathy
extended, what limits His human nature must have set
to its scope. Yet in any case it is is evident that here we
have an altogether unheard-of stretch of sympathetic in-
sight. It is indeed this fact that lies in the depths of any
intelligent doctrine of substitution — an illimitable power
of putting himself in the place of others so as to be in
any true sense " the propitiation for our sins; and not
for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."

This compassion still lives on, and is as powerful to-day
as at the first. Cicero confesses that, with the writings
Plato before him, he can feel the thrill of the hope of
immortality; but when the book is closed, the ideals fade
into thin ghosts again. But it is not so with Jesus. The
most potent of all the forces of salvation at the present
hour is the conviction held by great multitudes of men
that Jesus still understands their perplexities, and bears

THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 239

upon His heart their burdens of sorrow and of sin. The
only tolerable justification for the continued exist-
ence of the Christian Church is the persuasion
that Jesus is now incarnate in it for the same
ends of compassion and of healing. The function of the
Church is compassion for the multitude — to seek out and
to understand and to save the individual. To distinguish
him from the mass, and look upon his sorrow and his sin ;
to discover and to pity the average man, to love him, and
to find out that bright point in him which is not common-
place, and to draw out the best that is in him. No service
to society could be more economically valuable than that,
and the Church may justly claim to have performed that
service more than any other agency. It was Christ who
taught the world the lovableness of the average man, and
it is Christ who is slowly leavening society with the same
conviction. No further question is needed to awaken
compassion for the lowest of men than this, that he is " my
churl for whom Christ died."

Surely here we have something absolutely divine. This
universal care and tenderness inevitably send us back upon
that God who created natural affection. Those eyes that
thus search the world, that search history, and discover
the souls of countless insignificant individuals, and bring
them out into the light of love — surely such scrutiny is
beyond the range of human vision. The longer we con-
sider it, the more we think of the all-seeing eye of God.
At first sight it may seem a far-fetched apologetic, but
it will bear reflection. There is no question that an increas-
ing compassion for the multitude, and an increasing con-
science of their well-being has come upon man through
Jesus Christ, and it would be difficult to find anything
more expressly revealing the image of the Father. If
there were to be a revelation at all, surely it must be
something of this sort, so pre-eminently Godlike is Christ's
compassion for the multitude.

240 THINGS ETERNAL

Thus we find that the Gospel of Humanity and the
Christian faith, so far from being rivals, are actually
one and the same. Until Christ came, the love of humanity
was no more than a theoretical and high-sounding subject
for dialectic or for dream. It was He who changed it
into an actual force in the world, and set its strong leaven
working in the race. It had to work against innumer-
able prejudices and hatreds between individuals, classes,
and nations. Still more serious was its opposition from
the dead mass of selfish indifference which might well have
seemed unconquerable. As a matter of fact it has not
yet conquered more than small and isolated parts of the
field. But it is at work. Man is already ashamed of his
class hatreds and apologetic about his indifference, and
everything which calls itself a Gospel of Humanity is at
least sure of a sympathetic hearing.

But when any such Gospel disowns its origin, and poses
as a new thing better than Christianity and about to
supersede it, that Gospel is cutting itself off from its own
sources of supply. Without the inspiration of Christ, it
will soon cease to be of anything but an academic interest.
For the simple fact is that we need Christ in order to
love collective humanity and to discover the lovableness of
its innumerable individuals. " It is because Christ lived
that I believe in humanity,' ' as Mrs. Lynn Linton told an
earlier generation of humanitarians. And indeed Christ
is far easier to believe in. It requires the mysterious
power of His personality, the force of His example, and
the compulsion of His Spirit to enable men to have com-
passion on the multitude in any adequate or effective sense.
We can love the world so as to save it, only so long as we
are convinced by Jesus Christ that God so loved the
world.

THE FURTHER SIDE OF VICTORY

"More than conquerors." — Romans viii. 37.

No metaphor is more popular than that which represents
life as a battle, nor is any exhortation more certain to stir
our blood than the call to victory. Yet conquest is not
the Christian ideal. It i§ a richer promise which Christ
offers :-^

And there the sunset skies unseal'd,

Like lands he never knew,
Beyond to-morrow's battlefield,

Lay open out to view
To ride into.

At first this seems overdrawn, but the more we think
of it the more convincing it is. Even for its own sake,
Christianity would need to have a higher promise than
mere conquest. In many fields, victory is to be had other-
wise. Every man who does his work is a conqueror, and
the world is full of such men. For our sakes also, mere
conquest is not enough. Ascetic Christianity may give a
man the cheerless mastery over himself, which is yet very
far from the gaining of the ideal life. And for the sake
of others we must be more than conquerors. All con-
querors, in fact, are bound to be more than conquerors.
Those who do not accept the stern condition will soon
lose even that which they have gained. After gonquest

r<24iy

242 THINGS ETERNAD

come higher responsibilities, for in the battle with evil
either within our souls or around us, we must redeem that
which we have overcome. It is not enough to make a
desolation and call it peace. Life must cease to be our
enemy and become our friend. So the true Christian con-
queror is not merely a man with a brilliant deed behind
him : he is one who has entered into a new and wonderful
world, full of the rich fruits of victory.

Beyond conquest, the first fruit of it is peace. Thero
is a noisy victory that is as restless almost as the battle
was. But this conquest is a thing which ought to quiet the
life, giving it a silent grandeur of repose. The rapture
of release is natural at first, but it should soon pass intc
a settled confidence in which faith and character will grow
and ripen.

\ Gladness also is offered to the Christian victor. Not}
only shall he be able to keep the enemies of the soul at
bay, or with strong hand to suppress them. Freshness and
vitality of spirit are with him also, both to enjoy his own
life and to gladden others. The man who wrote this
text was one who would undertake to rejoice in anything
whatsoever. He rejoiced in hope and he rejoiced in tribu-
lation. He was, in the quaint, exhilarating phrase of an
old commentator, " well, and merry, and going to heaven/ '
We owe it to God, to ourselves, and to those around us
that we shall not only be strong but rejoicing, men who
" had faced life and were glad."

Love is a still richer spoil of victory. Conquest is apt
to be loveless enough. Fighting tends to harden, and many
a victor over life can only be said to tolerate the life he has
mastered. He is master of himself, but the old illusions
are gone. There is no heat of admiration, nor any kindli-
ness of judgment, but only a brave, austere, and cheer-
less spirit, withdrawn from his fellows and reverencing
rather than loving God. But this is not the typical vie-

THE FURTHER SIDE OF VICTORY 243

tory of faith. If the Christian has conquered, he has also
loved. He has seen a love that overcame all things and
subdued the world, and his own heart beats faster as he
remembers that he too is " a man greatly beloved." So
he has conquered in a heat of generous affection, and the
wonder of that love remains, glorifying the life beyond
the battle-field.

Such are the things that lie beyond mere conquest, and
the secret of them all is Christ. Christianity has been well
described as " a magnificent realization." There is a
protagonist who fights in all our warfare, and our con-
quests are part of the great campaign. Every Christian
knows the meaning of the gods on their white horses who
fought in the battle of Lake Regillus. Our victory is not a
little narrow personal affair; it is part of the mighty
conquest in the war between heaven and hell on the battle-
ground of earth. So much is this the case that our
victories surprise no one so much as they surprise our-
selves. " Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory,"
for even after the hardest fighting the victory is a gift.
So, through all the dust and smoke of battle, there is
visible the form of the son of God. Our fellowship with
Him is so great and wonderful a thing that beside it any
victory we may gain sinks into insignificance. We are far
more than conquerors. We are men who have discovered
the peace and joy and love of Christ.

There is always danger in very high ideals, and there
may be some who shrink from such thoughts as these with
a sense of wistfulness and discouragement. When we
think of our fighting — how often we have been beaten,
recreant, ashamed — our conscience protests that God
knows it is difficult enough to conquer, and the weary
spirit complains, " Why torment us with talk of some-
thing more ? a plain, honest victory would be good enough
for us!"

244 THINGS ETERNAL

Ah, but this word " more than conquerors " does not
presuppose a completed victory. Many a man feels
acutely how far he is from anything like full victory, and
yet he has found peace and gladness and love. For Christ
is generous with his soldiers, and His grace is wonderful
beyond all reward. Long before we are conquerors, we
are more than conquerors; and that generosity of Christ,
if a man will but understand and receive it, will nerve
his heart and strengthen his fighting arm in the day ©f
battle.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF
LANGUAGE INTO LIFE

(First Sunday in Advent)

"The word was made flesh." — St. John i. 14.

The one supremely significant fact in the universe is, to
quote Dr. Peabody's fine paraphrase, " the transformation
of language into life. ' ' We see this transformation in three
different moments. There was the creation at the begin-
ning, when great vitalizing words of God took form in
created beings. Again there is the same transformation
in all human work and morality to the end, when man is
hearing words of God within him and is transforming
them into deeds and finished products. But between these
two there stands the stupendous fact of Christ, interpreting
the first and inspiring the second.

1. Creation. — It is matter of general consent that the
universe as we know it had a beginning. As thought
travels backward into the great silence before that begin-
ning, it must needs discover a moment when the eternal
thought found expression, and the universe began. The
word became flesh. God spoke, and the thing spoken
stood out as a created fact. " The universe is God's
language. " The unspoken word is all that might be; the
spoken word is all that is. This is the meaning of those
wonderful stories of Genesis, in which we see all things
coming forth in their mighty evolution in answer to the

words of God.

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246 THINGS ETERNAL

That is the Christian view of nature and the universe.
It is not an eternally grinding machine, nor is it a dream-
picture woven of mist. It is a real universe, in which
God's language is transformed into life. The great words
were spoken, and there are the mountains and the fields
and the seas, and the ships upon the seas and the cities
of men. It makes all the difference in the world whether
as we stand in the midst of all these things we hear only
a jangle of meaningless sounds, or whether we hear the
word of the Lord. Listen to that word in the summer
fields and sunshine, in the winter storms and the voice of
the tossing seas. Listen, too, in the crowded streets,
the throb of machinery and traffic, the bustle and
the gentle speech of homes. In new thought and adven-
turous policy, in great loyalties to ancient institutions;
in the voices of teachers in schools, of preachers in
pulpits, of business men in offices, of shopkeepers in shops ;
in the heart-beatings of the lonely and the sobs of the peni-
tent— everywhere creation is the word become flesh.

2. Jesus Christ. — The word had been spoken in an
unknown tongue. We heard it, and saw its incarnate
forms, but we did not understand. Science was patiently
deciphering it, retranslating it back from life to language ;
endeavouring from the manifest facts of the universe to
spell out the meaning of the Word of God. But science
finds it difficult, and conscience and love find it far more
difficult to understand. The divine Word has seemed to
change and suffer in the process of becoming flesh. Its
meaning is obscure, and it seems to have been mingled
with much other speech that is not divine.

Many had tried to interpret it into human speech.
Psalmists, prophets, philosophers had tried; but their
words died away, leaving fainter and fainter echoes in
man's conscience. They had written their interpretation,
but God's word can never find full expression in a book.

TRANSFORMATION OF LANGUAGE INTO LIFE 247

Language must be transformed into life — and not, this
time, the general life of the universe, but our human
life — that we might understand. So " the word became
flesh." The meaning of life, the purpose of God in crea-
tion, became intelligible in Jesus Christ. His whole speech
and conduct and being interpreted the world. When men
saw Him they said, Life ought to be like that : God is like
that.

Take three of the words of God, and let us see their
transformation into life in Christ: —

(1) Holiness. — The word was familiar, for there was
abundance of ethical speculation and of conscience too.
But holiness was dead and buried in formal rules of con-
duct, paralysed by man's universal failure, and hopelessly
unattainable. But here was holiness splendidly alive,
spontaneous, free, and natural. Here it was not merely
attainable but actually attained. Jesus Christ — that was
what God had meant by conscience, what conscience had
tried to say; that was what ethical science had seen afar
off, but never reached.

(2) Love — the most fascinating and yet the most elusive
word of God. Men heard it in their own hearts and
homes, but it was uncertain or sinister, and always pre-
carious, being threatened both by life and death. That was
human love, and the divine love was but a remote and
dim whisper of possible goodwill, if things turned out to
be as one sometimes almost dared to hope. But here
was love at once stronger than death and simple as the
laughter of a child. Men saw its patience, its responsive-
ness, its facility. They felt its tenderness, its understand-
ing, its healing power. Here is God's heart, seen in the
heart of a man. Here is what all true love actually means.
The word Love had become flesh.

(3) Death — that last sad word. Every death before had
been recognized as a Word of God, but how unfriendly

248 THINGS ETERNAL

and how harsh! Since Jesus died, men have know what
God means by His great word Death, for the death of
Jesus has interpreted the whole of life. In the light of its
love and sacrifice we look with new eyes upon sin, de-
spair, forgiveness, restoration. And that death has re-
interpreted death itself, giving to it surprisingly rich
and blessed meaning. All the wonder of the eternal life —
its rest, its renewal, its reward, its higher service — all
these were included in the meaning of the word death,
when in Christ language was translated into life. Truly
man may say to the spectre, at the grave of Jesus,

Thou hast stolen a jewel, Death,
Shall light thy dark up like a star.

All this, and far more than this, is included in the
meaning of " the word became flesh." Flesh, the tempted
and tempting thing, weak and suffering, subject to all
contingencies and liable to all risks — flesh was used to
express adequately and for ever the meaning of God's
word of creation.

3. The third stage of this incarnation has yet to be
considered. The text is a command that the word shall
become flesh again in every Christian life. The transla-
tion of language into life is the great act of religion.

We are familiar with the idea of the incarnation being
perpetuated in the Bible, the Church, and the Sacraments.
But besides these, each life around us is a Word of God,
a special purpose and design realized in flesh in its degree.
This thought surely gives new meaning to our intercourse
with those who do business with us or live beside us.
" There Ts but one temple in the world," says Novalis,
" and that temple is the Body of Man. . . . We touch
heaven when we lay our hands on a human body." An-
other has said: " The body of a child is as the body of
the Lord; I am not worthy of either." How reverently,

TRANSFORMATION OF LANGUAGE INTO LIFE 249

gently, purely should we treat one another if this indeed
be so.

But most especially in ourselves must language be trans-
formed into life. We all hear many words of God. The
worship of the Church, its songs and prayers, its readings
and thoughts, and the inward response to these in desire,
aspiration, and resolve; these words are to become flesh
in us when we return from our worship to our daily life.
And also there are other words which our spirits hear
from day to day. What has life been saying to you?
What has your experience meant? What lessons has God
been trying to make you understand ? Some of it we can-
not understand, and all that is required of us is that we
shall walk among these unknown voices of life, erect and
brave and self-respecting and gentle. ' But there is much
that we understand quite well. It is the Word of God,
spoken clearly and in familiar language by the voice of
life.

But that word has yet to become flesh. There are count-
less words of God in the knowledge and conviction of us
all which are as yet no more than words. These are waiting
for their incarnation in our character and influence, in
our daily work and service of man and God. The works
of our hands are God's word fulfilled in us. We who can
work are born that certain great words we have heard in
our secret souls may become flesh in deeds. Rise then
and do the work that thy hands find to do. In this living
fashion speak out what is in thee. So shalt thou also be
a Word of God incarnate, an expression of His mind in
living HesK.

,THE REASONABLE VIEW OF SIN
AND OF FORGIVENESS

(Second Sunday in Advent)

"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." —
Isaiah i. 18.

This passage brings the fa«ts of sin and its removal into
the light of reason. It is a point of view more familiar to
the Greek than to the Hebrew thought, and when the
Hebrew prophet describes God as reasoning with men
concerning sin we may expect some startling truths.

1. Views of Sin. (1) Unreasonable Views. — The people
had thought of sin as a light matter that could be easily
compounded for with sacrifices and prayers — that was
their irrationality. It is repeated by clever modern people
in many variants, each of them some device for getting
rid of the old spectres of conscience which once terrified
mankind. They have discovered that vice is but virtue
run to seed, part of the evolution of character, an un-
pleasant necessity involved in human nature. Above all,
they insist that the whole subject is in bad taste, and that
the proper course is to call it by some respectable name
and say no more about it.

That view would be reasonable but for the facts of the
case. But what means this indestructible conscience, this
blood-red spectre that cannot be laid? That is fact, and
there are those who would give all they have to persuade

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THE KEASONABLE VIEW OF SIN 251

themselves that it is mere imagination. "We are told to
cultivate the power of living in the present. Laugh and
forget ; and ' ' let the dead past bury its dead. ' ' Yes, if
the sinful past were dead! but it is alive, and it will not
stay underground.

(2) The reasonable view — " Scarlet and crimson/' That
is the fact of sin — glaring, blazing, unconcealable. Nay
more, these are the colours of newly shed blood. The ref-
erence is to verse fifteen, where the people are accused of
violence and murder. Like Lady Macbeth they have the
stain of blood on their hand, and the ' damned spot ' will
not wash out.

Such language offends our ears. What have we to do
with this? we are no murderers. Are we not? What of
the slain innocence, the aspirations and pure hopes and
desires that once were ours ? What of the strength of will,
the tenderness of conscience? What of the happiness of
friends, their trust and love? Habits of evil have mur-
dered our freedom; desires of evil have murdered our
moral sanity and balance; temptations we have welcomed
have murdered the chances of to-morrow. We have
stricken our own souls, wounding them to death.

But why go thus among the graves and let loose the
spectres? The answer is plain; we are not doing this, it
is reason that is doing it. " Scarlet and crimson " are
the words of reason to eminently respectable people. Much
is dead in you and me, and we are its murderers. That
is the truth about sin ; and, that being so, this is the only
reasonable way to think of it. Come, then, and be reason-
able. All the perfumes of Arabia — all the sweet theories
of a tasteful generation that strews with flowers the
grave of its murdered conscience — will not sweeten this
little hand. Our sins are scarlet and crimson.

2. Views of the issue. (1) Unreasonable. — If this be the
true view of sin, the true view of its issue would appear

252 THINGS ETERNAL

to be ghastly enough. It must be suffering, hopeless and
unrelieved. The context shows the people of Israel bat-
tered by punishment, one mass of disease and pain. Yet
all that had failed. " Why should ye be stricken any
more? Ye will revolt more and more." They had been
punished in vain. The blows had been unexplained, for
there was no knowing in them. As blow fell after blow,
they simply took what was given, sullenness sinking to a
fatal despair. Nothing could be more unintelligent or
farther from reason than that. It was not the despair of
the conscience-stricken but the despair of the brutish. Had
conscience stung them to desperation, had they been aware
of the colour of their sins, there would have been reason
in it: but this was wholty irrational, a dumb misery that
unintelligently accepted the situation.

The counterpart of that despair is to be found in our
modern pessimism. It professes to be reasonable. It
founds upon philosophy and science. It knows the heredi-
tary taint in the blood, the imprisoning environment and
the tremendous odds against virtue. It knows also that
man's sin is sure to find him out. It is not " done when
'tis done," but it is only beginning then. It will work
out its course through vain remorse and tightening bonds
of habit, and deepening gloom. The wages of sin is death
— " wages," nay the prize, the best thing sin has to give.
The only relief that pessimism has to offer is that this
cannot go on indefinitely. The increasing horror of the
rapids is so great that the swift plunge will come as a relief
at last. This is widely held to be the rational view of the
situation, and it would be so, but for one fact that it has
left out.

2. The Reasonable view of the Issue — " They shall be
white as snow . . . they shall be as wool. ' ' The words
maintain the vivid sense of colours, and contrast with the
gleaming blood, the snows of Hermon and the fleece of

THE REASONABLE VIEW OF SIN 253

young lambs. They bring us back to the austere cleanness
of nature which formerly had seemed to judge the mur-
derer by her cold and inexorable contrast.

This is very startling; if we could believe it it would
be very comforting; but by what straining of language
can it possibly be called reasonable? It contradicts the
whole record of history and goes in the teeth of science.
It is altogether too good to be true in face of the facts.
Why mock us further by speaking of reason here?

Because of the omitted fact. Pain is not match for sin,
but love is more than a match for it. The omitted fact is
the fact of God. This is a record of His reasoning with
man. He is neither compelling man 's will nor condemning
his transgression. He is appealing to his intelligence,
urging him to take all the facts into consideration, and
the fact of God above all other facts. If God be God, there
must be some other issue, and the very fact that He is
reasoning with men is full of the suggestion of hope. God
has some way of dealing with sin which at the same time
paints it in the most violent colours and yet entirely re-
moves it. If God knows all and yet says this, then hope
and not despair is rational, for the most reasonable thing
in all the world must surely be to trust the character of
God.

So the whole argument runs back at last to the love of
God. He, who knows the depth of sin, knows also the
height of His own forgiveness and the power of redemp-
tion. All the reason is on His side, for if God indeed is
offering to take sin away, the only reasonable course must
be to accept the offer and let Him do it. This reasoning of
love is indeed the greatest mystery in the universe. It
does not explain the tremendous paradox of life, but it
explains all we need to know. It leaves us on the one
hand with the dread reality of sin, and on the other with
the equal reality of pardon and deliverance. It faces all

254 THINGS ETERNAL

the facts of perverse will and the destruction that it leads
to, but it brings in the greater fact of the irresistible power
of love that masters all.

By Jesus Christ this tremendous challenge was accepted,
and the facts set against one the other. The belief in re-
demption is entirely reasonable, for the thing has been done.
The new fact of God's love has been tested, and the hosts
of the redeemed are God's answer to man's greatest ques-
tion. Sinful men, generation after generation, looked
in despair at the scarlet and crimson of their sins; and
behold they stand in white — white as snow and wool —
before the throne. That is what Love can do and has
done. God has proved His case.

THE DIVINE LOVE INCARNATE

(Third Sunday in Advent)

"The love of God which is in Christ Jesus." — Romans viii. 39.

Who is Jesus Christ? and what has He done for men?
The answer of Christian faith is, He is God manifest in
the flesh, who for us men and for our salvation lived on
earth and died upon the cross and lives for evermore.
Yet there are many to whom such formal definitions are
valueless because they have not any sufficiently definite
meaning in relation to our common experience of human
life. Even those who are prepared to accept the formula,
feel only too keenly how little they really understand it.
" Christ Jesus," says a thoughtful writer, " was in out-
ward seeming like other men; His divinity is discerned
only by spiritual grace. " That is true, and it is worth
our while to inquire along what lines human nature is
open to this spiritual grace, so that seeing Christ along
them we may discern God in Him.

God, the Divine spirit at work in the world, can only
be discerned by man along such channels as are open to
man, and the common description of the three main chan-
nels as power, thought, and love, will be a sufficiently clear
and comprehensive one. From the first, the forces of na-
ture were obvious and impressive, and man ex-
pressed his sense cf these in primitive idol-worship. Jus
civilization advanced, the ideas of order and intelligence
were perceived more and more clearly, revealing wisdom

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256 THINGS ETERNAL

as well as power in the Divine. Last and highest, as family
affections grew deeper and more refined, love was recog-
nized as an essential, and indeed paramount, quality of
God.

He who undertakes to manifest God in the flesh, then,
must work along these lines, combining and as it were
epitomizing in himself the power, wisdom, and love of God.
Apart from such a manifestation, God is discovered work-
ing out His ends slowly in the processes of nature and of
human life. He is to be seen in the whole life of field
and tree and beast and bird, and in all the lives of men,
being in a sense incarnate in creation. But — so complex
is creation — such manifestation must always be incomplete
and inaccurate, and the great necessity must be for a
manifestation of the life of God in a series of typical
events within the limits of a single human life. It is this
that Jesus claims to have done. He was that mysterious
being who had power thus to sum up in Himself the entire
process of God's life in man. He achieved in one short
lifetime the exhibition of the character and action of the
eternal God.

As to the power, there can be no question that in Him
history records a quite unique display. Whatever theory
may be adopted in regard to the miracles, it is abundantly
evident that here was One who laid mighty hands upon
the individual lives with which He met, and that in His
healing and helping energy men recognized the epitom-
izing of forces which would have otherwise been seen only
in lengthy natural processes. Still more does His power
reveal itself in that grasp of mental and social phenomena,
which, through the agency of the early church, utterly
changed existing society, set for the world new ideals,
and set free within it new forces whose operation waited
its time, but was irresistible when that time had come. And
this is but the chief example of those immense supplies

THE DIVINE LOVE INCARNATE 257

of reserve power which we are aware of in reading His
life and words. One feels always that there are wide
margins of possibility beyond the actual deeds recorded,
and that His forces of character and influence are never
put forth up to the edge of their field of exercise. He is,
Himself, fully aware of this, and very frequently speaks
of powers which He might have exercised, but restrained.
Once, indeed, He exclaims, " All power is given unto me
in heaven and in earth.' '

Similarly the thought of God is revealed alike in His
sayings and in His life. The wonder of the speech of
Jesus is not its novelty, but rather a sense of familiarity
and recognition which it awakens. It is as if we had
known this before, though we had never been able to express
it. Fragments of conviction, broken and imperfect intui-
tions and impressions about moral and spiritual things,
spring into living knowledge when we have heard Him
speak. It is as though the thought of God, which had
been striving for utterance in the process of life, had ex-
tricated itself from manifold contradictions, and stood out
clear and convincing, as final truth.

But most especially does the love of God manifest itself
in Christ. It had been seen before Him, in all human love,
in families and among friends. All love is of God, as we
are told so emphatically in the first Epistle of John. But
at best human love could give but a confused idea of divine
love, and in some cases it must lead rather to doubt than
to assurance. For love on earth is often divorced from
wisdom and from power, and then its folly and its ineffec-
tiveness lead rather to scepticism than to faith. If it is
to reveal the divine love in any credible or consoling fash-
ion, it must be brought back into relation with thought
and power.

It needs thought and wisdom. It is often blind and

258 THINGS ETERNAL

uncomprehending, a mere passion not far removed from
the senses, and utterly unfit for any confidence in so com-
plex an engagement as human life. Such unthinking and
unwise love is one of *the commonest of man 's curses on the
earth. In a world like this it is not enough to love; we
must love wisely. And instead of mere uncomprehending
emotion, love needs a deep insight, a vast stretch of imag-
ination, ingenuity, and conscience, to make it valuable or
even safe.

Not less does human love require power. As Butler
said of conscience, " Had it strength, as it has right; had
it power, as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely
govern the world." But as a matter of fact, love is con-
stantly mastered on the earth. Selfishness, arbitrary cir-
cumstances, poverty, the lapse of time, all are seen to
conquer it. Finally death comes, and love in passionate
rebellion struggles in vain against that enemy. In view
of these things there is many a life in which love, con-
fessedly the most precious of human gifts, is yet also the
weakest.

But the love of Jesus was illuminated by knowledge and
fortified with power; it was strong as it was wise. He
saw and understood those whom He loved. His insight
penetrated to the depths of man's folly and sin, recon-
structed his scattered ideals and insecure principles, in-
terpreted him to himself, and so taught him to love dis-
criminately. Similarly His love was strong enough to
accomplish that which human love can only desire and
long to do. His miracles are not recorded as mere dis-
plays of power, but of love that was strong enough to
cope with human sorrows. Faced by death itself, that
love did not fail. It was stronger than death. Love was
thus set free by Christ as an actual and effective force
in the midst of human life with its needs and its perplexi-

THE DIVINE LOVE INCARNATE 259

ties. That wise and powerful love is among us yet. And
in it and in its effects we see God, and understand not
His love only, but also His wisdom and His power. And
the more carefully we observe its contact with life at the
acutest points of man's suffering, temptation, and wretch-
edness, the more clearly we see in Jesus the setting free
of the eternal wisdom, power, and love upon the earth.

THE SECOND ADVENT

(Fourth Sunday in Advent.)

"Like unto men that wait for their lord." — Luke xii. 36.

Few doctrines have suffered more at the hands of their
friends than that of the second coming of Jesus Christ.
The Scriptures which relate to it have in them much of
the spectacular, which is obviously there for the sake of
vividness and not of literal prophecy. To understand the
details a considerable knowledge of the history of sym-
bolism would be needed, besides a wide acquaintance with
Persian and the later Greek literature. Unfortunately the
boldest dogmatists in this region are frequently those
most inadequately equipped for the task, and the popular
attempts at interpretation and forecast are to be wholly
distrusted. Amid references to the clouds of heaven, the
sound of a trumpet, and so on, we lose ourselves at once.
Even the word " descend " presupposes a system of as-
tronomy now held by no one, Equally impossible is it
to reach any sound conclusions as to the time of a second
advent. Those who are curious about prophetic signs and
portents may find them in every age. Such interpreters
forget the largeness of history and the smallness of our
knowledge and experience. They foster a morbid curi-
osity, whose effects upon the credulous are sometimes very
mischievous. In the wise words of Godet, the Church
" has nothing else to do, in virtue of her ignorance (from
which she ought not to wish to escape) than to remain in-
variably on the watch."

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THE SECOND ADVENT 261

The great fact which remains, when we have detached
ourselves from entanglements of detail, is the fact of Christ
in the future as well as in the past. Of that w« muat
assure ourselves, for the question rises, Has Christianity
a future with Christ in it ? All great and fascinating ideals
have a tendency to leave behind them the conviction that
they will return. One has only to remember the legends
of Arthur, Barbarossa, and Napoleon, to find examples.
In a sense the legend is true. Many of man's designs are
greater than the length of his life, and the demand for the
continuance of anything which has once shown itself vividly
effective and satisfying is part of our instinct of immortal-
ity. All the incompleteness, also, which men lamented in
the work of those other heroes, is here also. The New
Testament bears all the marks of an unfinished story.

But in the personality of Jesus Christ we find the ele-
ment which distinguishes this from all other stories, and
Which guarantees a sequel with a literal certainty very
different from the merely ideal truth of the other ex-
pectations. From such passages as the text — and
there are many of them — we see the conviction of a return'
firmly seated in His own consciousness, His claim to be
the Messiah, and His identification of Himself with the
kingdom of God, necessarily include a doctrine of return.
He began that kingdom and reign, and He obviously meant
to complete it. Men who saw and understood its beginnings,
recognized in them the very truth of life, the real meaning
of history, towards which all the past had been feeling its
way. They felt that this ideal state of things must and
shall be completed, and they perceived that such comple-
tion would be impossible without Him.

Then His death became evident in the immediate future.
He sought no escape, but deliberately accepted it. Beyond
His death He perceived the unconquered evil forces of the
world working out their dark miseries for mankind. Yet

262 THINGS ETERNAL

all this never for a moment shook His faith in the kingdom
of God. Nay He linked on the thought of His death with
the coming perfection of the kingdom, and saw, in death,
not the thwarting of the kingdom, but a necessary incident
in its coming. He felt in Himself the redeeming and
renewing power that would yet recreate the world.

As to the form in which He expressed this, He was
content to use familiar Old Testament figures and symbols.
For the detailed interpretation of these we have, as has
been already said, no key. But the central meaning is
perfectly clear. The kingdom of God is coming. Essen-
tially, this is the promise that righteousness shall triumph
on the earth, and become universal, full of judgment and
at the same time full of gladness. But all this always
centres in Himself, so that He is as essential to the future
as to the past of the kingdom, and both are inseparably
identified with His presence.

When our faith seeks to follow in His footsteps, and we
repeat for ourselves the process of His thought, we find, to
begin with, the conviction of the worth of righteousness
supreme among our convictions, To see this once is to be
unable ever to see life otherwise again. This kingdom of
God is the very truth and meaning of life; and our con-
viction of the worth and reality of righteousness compels
us to believe in its ultimate victory. But then, for us,
righteousness is wholly identified with Christ. Literally,
"He is our righteousness, ' ' and when we think of right-
eousness we think of Him. Hence, when we think of it in
the future, we cannot omit Him from the thought. Christ
has made Himself absolutely indispensable to us, and
absolutely certain also. The fact that meanwhile He is
withdrawn from sight is a mere incident of no essential
significance. Looking back and forward, we see right-
eousness and we see Jesus.

This sets for us the principle that in watching for His

THE SECOND ADVENT 263

coming we shall find the real signs in the region of ideas
and in the progress of history. Even now we see the
kingdom of God gradually taking over the king-
doms of the world. Christ has slowly mastered the
conscience of mankind, and every advance in public or
private morality is a new triumph. Again, in individual
lives, every conspicuous moment of experience is insepar-
able from a new revelation of Christ to the soul of the
believer. If in any measure we are conquerers, it is
" through Him that loved us." Thus, as every Christian
heart knows, " Christ has come because He is here," and
every new year ' ' rings in the Christ that is to be. ' ' And,
as we look forward to the future, all these lines of public
progress and of private experience culminate in a point
of time when Christ will be manifest again. In our present
state we have always the sense of being "absent from the
Lord," but everything around and within us tells us that
the absence is only for a time. We are sure that we shall
yet see Him face to face. For us individually, indeed, this
climax may mean the vision that death will bring. But
for the world it means more than that. Christ has ap-
peared at the beginning of the kingdom, and Christiandom
looks forward to a time when the gradual victory will be
completed, and the Son of Man will be manifest on the
new earth He has remade.

Meanwhile the practical results of this great hope are
evident. It inspires those who believe with an undying
faith in the future. For them, Christ is in the future,
and there is all the difference in the world between a
religion which merely tells a story of the past and one
which makes for a future da}r. We trust the future, and
wait for it in faith and patience, because we see Christ
there victoriously doing His will, and that vision wakens
all that is bravest in us as we wait. Further, it puts a new
meaning: on the daily facts of life when we recognize

264 THINGS ETERNAL

Christ's coming in them. The climax is still to be waited
for, but the coming is here and now, transforming all things
for those who have eyes to see.

For the ultimate reunion, and for the daily coming of
Christ alike, one fact only is certain. His coming is ever
unexpected. The Christ we are waiting for is one whose
habit it is to surprise the world. It is this constantly
reiterated warning which discourages our curiosity as to
details. By studying curious Scriptures you may think out
a plan and fix a date, and that will be the hour when ye
think. But it is in the hour when ye think not that Christ
is to come. And the practical lesson is that we be so alert as
to be always ready to recognize Christ in unexpected
ways and at unexpected times. We expect Him in the
clouds of heaven; he is coming along the streets of earth.
We expect Him in some great way; He is coming in a
thousand little ways. Only by alertness shall we over-
reach surprise; by standing with the lights of faith and
love and joy trimmed and burning, and the loins girt so
that we are strong and unhampered for immediate service.

THE GROUPS AROUND THE CRADLE

(Christmas Day)

"The eyes of all wait upon Thee." — Psalm cxlv. 15.

The one thing which is evident above all others in the
artless Christmas stories of the New Testament, is their
unconscious grouping round the cradle of significant and
representatives figures which taken together, bring the
world to gaze upon the wonder of Christ's coming. Like
the symbolic groups round some statute they stand or
kneel before Him, forming one prophetic picture of His
manifold influence upon the world. In the beautiful words
rendered familiar by the music in Gounod's " Nazareth/'
we have the local shepherds, the far-travelled kings, and
the wind among the pine trees ; excellently telling the same
truth, and adding only that sense of nature also finding
her interpreter in Him, which Milton expressed so nobly
in his Hymn on the Nativity.

First there are the parents, linking Him in at once with
Israel's royalty and peasantry. Joseph the carpenter
brings Him among the working men and disappears, hav-
ing rendered this service. The working man shall receive
from Jesus abundant repayment for that carpenter's care.
Mary brings womanhood to the cradle, as Raphael and
Eossetti have so exquisitely understood. Her pure soul
has been astonished and grieved with centuries of worship.
But one of the main reasons for her worship was that as-
ceticism had taken the love of woman from the conscience

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266 THINGS ETERNAL

of man, and it was by the compulsion of an eternal human
need that she came back in this strange fashion. But, while
the worship must pass, the gift she brought remains —
purity and love are where Jesus is from the beginning.

The Roman Emperor is there, for it was the census that
brought the babe to Bethlehem. Drawn, like so many thou-
sends, by that Emperor's will along the roads of Palestine,
they little thought how strong a link it was that then was
forged. Rome shall reckon with that babe yet, and the
greatness of her Empire shall pass over to His Church.

The angels and the shepherds are intentionally united
in one group. Highest heaven and lowliest earth, separated
by all the fears and superstitions of the past, are one at
last in this welcome. The shepherd's pipe had sounded
many a day and night among those pastures, and its only
response had been the bleating of the sheep and echoes
from the rocks, or the songs of rough voices. Yet it had
sought wistfully — who can resist the wistfulness of it? —
for some other answer. Now the songs of the heavenly
choir respond to it, and its wild music finds what it sought.
For in Him the wistfulness of earth that yearns upward to
the mystery of the stars finds at length an answer; and
humble men discover unknown friends in heaven.

Anna and Simeon bring their hymns of welcome, and
aged arms enfold Him in the temple. No Pharisees are
there, .nor Sadducees — none of the sophisticated lords of
religion. But the worship of the world is there. In that
temple, and in many another, where the piety of the world
came to pray, empty arms had been stretched out towards
the unseen *God. But in Him worship was to find what it
had sought, and to understand its own mysteries at last.
Its God had hidden Himself, and the world of worshippers
had been seeking for Him. Now that they found Him it
was in the flesh of a little babe. And they understood that
God is nearer than they had dared to hope. Men would

THE GROUPS AROUND THE CRADLE 267

look upon their children's faces, and touch them rever-
ently, and God would be sought and found, not in the
distant heaven, but here in the lives of men upon the earth.

The Magi come from far lands, guided by a star, with
precious gifts in their hands. For this is to be no national
hero merely, nor local revelation. He is for the world, and
the Gentiles shall come to His light, And the wisdom of
the world shall come to Him also, and find the sciences open
for their exploration. Guided by a star, they will travel
through astrology to astronomy ; through fantasy to knowl-
edge. And while science flourishes in His days, more and
more will it return to the cradle again, confessing that the
highest knowledge is beyond its ken, and seeking that from
Him.

Lastly, what is this evil face looking over the shoulders
of the Magi? Herod, with his cunning eye, and his mur-
derous heart, is there. Without that last figure the group
were incomplete. It would tell of a world too fair and too
harmonious. But the world we know has sin in it, and
the undertone of the shepherd's pipe and the angels' song
is a bitter cry that will not be comforted. The babe has
drawn to His cradle not only the worship and the wisdom
of the world, but its tragedies of sorrow and of sin. That
touch completes the picture, casting among the shadows
of the stable the deeper shadow of the cross.

Thus, around the manger of Bethlehem, all the world
meets, bringing the manifold interests of humanity to
Jesus Christ, that He may interpret and command them.
The unseen world presses in also, for here heaven finds its
Revealer Who shall indeed make it visible to the earth ; and
hell, astonished, drags its loathsomeness into the light in
a vain attempt to match itself against its destroyer. Surely
this is the night of all the days and nights, the birth in
which all creation is new born.

THE END OF THE YEAR

"It is finished."— St. John xix. 30.

The closing year draws us to this text. There are two
senses in which we use the word " finished*' ' and the death
of Jesus illustrates them both.

1. Finished, meaning come to an end. — There was indeed
much that came to an end when Jesus died, and there was
much that had sore need to find its ending. In the words
there is a sigh of infinite relief. His sufferings were over.
In the deepening swoon of death, the pain of His wounds,
and the excruciating weight and drag of the body on the
hands, were already fading away. Behind these, the malice
and enmity, the heart sore and broken with reproach, were
behind him; soon, on the bosom of the Father, all these
would be but a dream of the past. Behind that again, the
growing sense of failure and disappointment as men re-
jected Him and all He had to offer them — that too was
gone for ever. But behind all else, there were great
shadows fleeing from the thrones from which they had
oppressed mankind — sin and sorrow and death were fin-
ished too.

For us also the close of every year brings much to mind
that we would gladly be done with. Every year nails
some part of humanity on its cross, but now the crucifixion
of this year is finished. Each of us has his own share of
things that never seem to come to an end. The long vexa-

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THE END OF THE YEAR 269

tions and the unhealed wounds, the struggle and the sin-
ning— how eternal they seem to be at times. So that at
this season there are many hearts who feel like Childe
Roland,

Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed; neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,

So much as gladness that some end might be.

Well, at the poorest, there is at least always this to say,
"It is finished" — you have gone through it and are done
with it.

The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

There is a great art in letting the past be past. Leave
the cross of last year in that year, and do not take it over
into next year. Perhaps a release awaits you, and happier
days. Perhaps you shall have to go on with the same
pain and battle. But do not take over the accumulated
bitterness of the past; face only the burden of the day.
And if anyone has taken his suffering selfishly, and himself
become a cross to others, let that at least be finished and
not again begun. One of the greatest things that Jesus
Christ did for men was to finish things, and let the past be
past. He permits us to be done with certain things for
ever, and He shows us how to do it. His cross has "fin-
ished transgression and made an end of sin," and what
He has finished we may leave behind us.

And yet, though we may find some consolation thus in
the very fact of ending, the feelings with which we greet
the end are never wholly feelings of relief. There is a
certain regret in our hearts as we part from even the
saddest days, Part at least of the reason must be that
with these days there must end so much priceless and
irrevocable opportunity, so many chances of courage, pa-

270 THINGS ETERNAL

tience, and heroism. The end of all such earthly chances is
coming soon, we know, to us all ; and not a whole eternity
of blessedness can give us back the lost opportunity of
this difficult human life. On the boundless fields of God
the soul will wonder at its want of patience. The longest,
hardest life will seem so short a span, so possible a
situation to have faced well. If the man most afflicted in
the world knew that he had only one day more of it, how
quickly that day would pass. Oh that we might catch the
sense of haste before the rushing swiftness of the sunset
hour reveals it.

2. Finished, in the sense of completed. — For we use
the word in this sense also, indicating the accomplish-
ment or perfecting of work. There is a difference between
finishing a thing and merely getting through with it ; and,
as has been finely said, this is the difference between the
artist and the artizan.

The life of Jesus seems like an incomplete life. We
would fain have had that short space of three years ex-
tended. It seems in every sense fragmentary and broken
off. Yet in this, as in so much else, further thought re-
verses the first impression. The last word of Jesus is,
as Matthew Henry says, " A comprehensive word and a
comfortable one."

The work of nature never seems finished : it is an untidy
world. The rocks, the sea, the seasons of the year — how
rough-edged they all are! how lacking in what man calls
finish! In the tumble of nature all things are groaning
and travailing in pain together, and nothing is ever ex-
actly perfected. Yet through all this rough story of evo-
lution, nature is making for some goal. Through lesser
forms she reached forward till at last she found herself
in man. Man in his turn is perfected in Jesus Christ,
who Himself was made perfect through suffering, and
found completion on the cross.

THE END OF THE YEAR 271

History tells the same story. The divine order in his-
tory is by no means so apparent as some light-hearted
people think. This is the problem of all great historians ;
and some of them, baffled by the confusing play of innu-
merable details, have denied that progress is to be seen
in history. Yet the deepest meaning of history is man's
attempt to find himself and to find his God; and these,
sought in vain through unnumbered generations, were
found at last in the Cross. All that the world had strug-
gled and waited for was reached in that climax, in which
love solved the problem of human life.

Thus on Calvary, not only was the life of Jesus per-
fected, but the whole struggle of nature and of history
found that towards which it had reached forward. It
was the triumph of weakness over brute force, of truth
over error, of righteousness over sin, of love over hatred,
of hope over fear, of gladness over gloom. This was the
great redemption, of which Christ had said to his Father,
" I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do,"
and the last words from the cross are a shout of victory
as well as a sigh of relief.

For us, the hope of completing our human task is vain.
And yet there may be more completeness in it than at this
season we dare to hope. If we have been honest and faith-
ful, we have certainly been building better than we knew.
God is building His house not made with hands out of what
seem to the human builders broken fragments, hopelessly
incomplete, but these find completeness as parts of His
large design. So let us close our year in hope. The whole
enterprise of living is a mystery. It is our part not to be
its architects but its masons and labourers, whose eyes are
upon the Master-builder in faith and loyalty, and whose
hands are doing with their might the work that is given
them to do.

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