The Master's questions to his disciples

From

Dr. John F. Patterson's

Library

Given to me by

Mrs. Spencer G. Harvey

June 1925

BS 2419 .K6 1904
Knight, G. H. 1835-1917.
The Master's questions to
his disciples

THE MASTER'S QUESTIONS

TO

HIS DISCIPLES

"He to whom the Eternal Woed speaks is delivered from a
multitude of opinions." — Thomas k Kempis.

T

he Master's Questions to
His Disciples ^ -h .|-

By the

REV. G. H. KNIGHT

NEW YORK

A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON

3 AND 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET
1904

.^x OF PRi/vcr^

JUN B 1999

y/

CNWIN BEOTHEES, LIMITED, THE GEESHAM PEESS, WOKING AND LONDON.

PREFACE

The Questions which our Lord addressed to His
disciples at various times are here gathered
together from the Four Gospels, and arranged to
form the basis of a series of meditations for those
private hours, whether on the Lord's Day or on
other days, which every Christian heart dehghts
to set apart as silent hours with God.

These meditations, being meant for Christians,
have been written in such a personal form that
each reader may adopt them as his own.

I have purposely omitted all those often deeply
suggestive questions which Christ addressed to
the general multitude, to the undecided, and to
His open foes; and have confined myself entirely
to those which He addressed to His own disciples
and friends. I have also purposely called them
'' The Mastek's Questions," rather than " The
Questions of Jesus," in order to emphasise the
truth that one of the greatest needs of the day
is that Christian men and women should realise
for themselves, and exhibit to others. His absolute
sovereignty over them^ as the supreme Lord of the
conscience, the will, the affections, and the life;
and should in this way prove, not merely their

vi PREFACE

love to One who has redeemed them, but their
surrender also, to One who, because He has re-
deemed them, claims them for Himself, and says,
*' Follow Me."

The treatment of these in this volume is not
Critical; neither is it greatly Exegetical ; but
almost wholly Devotional and Practical.

In such a volume there cannot, obviously, be
any organic unity : there can only be variety.
The Master's questions, asked, as they were, at
different times, and in widely differing circum-
stances, are so distinct and separate from each
other that they resemble, not leaves and flowers
springing out of the same stem, but rather pearls
threaded on one string.

Their very variety, however, invests them with
a peculiar interest : for, as will be seen, there is
hardly any department of life or of experience
which they do not cover ; and there is in them
a wonderful mingling of warning and of comfort,
of keenest heart-searching and of Divinest con-
solation.

If the blessing of the Great Master Himself shall
accompany the reading of these chapters, and any
of His disciples be thereby led to a higher faith,
a larger trust, a deeper self-scrutiny, and a heartier
consecration, my aim in writing them will be
attained.

Gaeelochhead.

CONTENTS

PA6B

1 V

Y

NOT WOBRY, BUT TRUST ....

" Is not the life more than meat ? and the body than raiment ?
Behold the fowls of the air : they sow not, neither do they reap,
. . . yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not
much better than they?" — Matthew vi. 25-30,

II

CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER ....

"If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven
give good things to them that ask Him ? " — Matthew vii. 11 ; '^
Luke xi. 5-8. v^-

in

SUBMISSION IN PRAYER . . . . IG

" What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will
he give him a stone ? or if he ask a fish, will he give him a
serpent ? " — Matthew vii. 9, 10.

IV

CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP . , . . 23>^

•' Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed ?
and not to be set on a candlestick ? " — Maek iv. 21.
vii

vlii CONTENTS

V

FACE

JUST ESTIMATES . . . . . 31 ^

" Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? "

Matthew vii. 3.

VI

AN INFALLIBLE TEST . . . . .38

" Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? "

Matthew vii. IG.

VII

SAVOUELESS SALT . . . . .45

" Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt has lost its savour,
wherewith shall it be salted ? " — Matthew v. 13.

VIII

NOT FEAB, BUT TRUST . . . . 52 ^

"Why are ye fearful, 0 ye of little faith?" "Where is
your faith ? " •' How is it that ye have no faith ? " "0 thou
of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? " — Matthew viii.
26 : Luke viii. 25; Mark iv. iO; Matthew xiv. 31. .

IX

THE NICKNAMED CHRIST . . . . 59 '■

" If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how
much more shall they call them of His household ? "

Matthew x. 25.

X

DULL MINDS AND MEMORIES . . . .66

"Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? ... Do ye not
remember?" " Know ye not this parable ? How then will ye
know all parables ? " " Are ye also yet without understand-
ing? "—Mark viii. 17-21 ; Mark iv. 13; Matthew xv. 16.

s/

CONTENTS ix

XI

PAGE

THE HIDING OF HIS POWER . . . .73

" How many loaves have ye ? " " Whence shall we buy bread,
that these may eat ? " — Matthew sv. 3i ; John vi. 5.

"WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?" . . .80

"Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?" "But
whom say ye that I am ? " — jMatthew xvi. 13, 15.

XIII

THE CIRCUMSPECTION OF THE FREE . . .87 ^

" Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute ?
of their own children, or of strangers ? " — Matthew xvii. 25.

XIV
DIVINE SHEPHERDHOOD . . . . 94 "^

"Doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the
mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray ? "

Matthew sviii. 12.

XV

SMALL BEGINNINGS AND GREAT ENDINGS . . 101 v^

" Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree,
believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these."
— John i. 50.

XVI
HARVEST HOPE ..... 108

" Say not ye. There are yet four months, and then cometh
harvest ? " — John iv. 35.

XVII
WISE STEWARDSHIP ..... 115 ^

" Who then is a faithful and wise servant ? " — ]Matthew xxiv. 45.

X CONTENTS

XVIII

PASS

UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS .... 122

" Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that
were commanded him ? " — Luke xvii. 7-10.

XIX

HEROIC CHRISTIANITY ..... 129 '
" What do ye more than others? "—Matthew v. 47.

XX

PROFESSION WITHOUT PRACTICE . . . 136

" Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I
say ? "—Luke vi. 46.

XXI

NO CROSS, NO CROWN ..... 143

" Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to
be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? ' '

Matthew xx. 21 ; xx. 22 ; Mark x. 36.

XXII

SWORD AND FIRE . . . . . 150^'

•' I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be
already kindled ? " " Suppose ye that I am come to give peace
on earth ? "—Luke xii. 49, 61.

XXIII

DELAY IS NOT DENIAL .... 157

•' Shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night
unto Him, though He bear long with them? . . . Neverthe-
less, when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on
the earth?" — Luke xviii. 7, 8.

CONTENTS xi

XXIV

PAGE

BLINDNESS ...... 164

" Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into
the ditch ? "—Luke vi. 39.

XXV

THOUGHT-BEADING . . . . .171

"What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the
way ? "— Maek ix. 33.

XXVI /

UNTHANKFULNESS ..... 178

" Were there not ten cleansed ? but where are the nine ? "

Luke xvii. 17.

XXVII

THE ALL-SUFFICING CHRIST .... 185
" Will ye also go away? " — John vi. 67.

XXVIII

PROFIT AND LOSS ..... 192'-^

" What is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and
lose himself, or be cast away ? " — Luke ix. 25 ; Matthew xvi. 26.

XXIX

A SERPENT IN PARADISE .... 199

"Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil ? "

John vi. 70.

XXX

COURAGEOUS CALM . . . . .206'

" Are there not twelve hours in the day ? " — John xi. 9.

xii CONTENTS

XXXI

PAGE

A SPECIALISING FAITH. .... 213

" Believest thou this ? "—John xi. 2G.

XXXII
TENDERNESS ...... 220 '

•' Where have ye laid Him? "—John xi. 33, 34.

XXXIII

THROUGH FAITH TO SIGHT .... 227 "'
"Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou
shouldest see the glory of God ? " — John xi. 40.

XXXIV

SUBLIME DEVOTION VINDICATED . . . 234 V

» ' Why trouble ye the woman ? for she hath wrought a good
work upon me." — Matthew xxvi. 10.

XXXV
THE SERVANT-MASTER ..... 241

"Whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that
serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat ? but I am among you
as he that serveth." — Luke xxii. 27.

XXXVI
THE GREAT EXAMPLE ..... 248 '
" Know ye what I have done to you ? " — John xiii. 12.

XXXVII /

ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT DEPTH. . . . 255

"Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake?" "Do ye now
believe ? "—John xiii. 88 ; xvi. 31, 32.

CONTENTS xiii

XXXVIII

PAGE 4^

NEAR AND YET UNKNOWN .... 262

" Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou nob
known me, Philip? . . . How sayest thou, Show us the
Father ? "—John xiv. 9.

XXXIX

THE MORNING OF JOT ..... 269

" Do ye inquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while,
and ye shall not see Me ; and again, a little while, and ye shall
see Me ? " — John xvi. 19.

XL

A NOBLE TESTIMONY ..... 276

«' When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked
ye anything? " — Luke xxii. 35.

XLI
ICHABOD ...... 283

" Seest thou these great buildings ? "— Maek xiii. 2.

XLII

GETHSEMANE-SLEEP ..... 290

'♦What, could ye not watch with Me one hour?" "Why
sleep ye?" "Simon, sleepest thou ? "—Matthew xxvi;.40;
Luke xxii. 46 ; Mark xiv. 37. ^^

XLIII

A traitor's kiss ..... 297

" Friend, wherefore art thou come ? " " Judas, betrayest thou
the Son of man with a kiss ? "—Matthew xxvi. 50; Luke
xxii. 48. ^'

xiv CONTENTS

XLIV

PAGE

HIMSELF HE WOULD NOT SAVE . . . 304

" Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He
shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?"
—Matthew xxvi. 53.

XLV

THE VICTORY OF FAITH .... 311

" The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink
it?"— JoHNxviii, 11.

XLVI

TEARS WIPED AWAY ..... 318

" Woman, why weepest thou ? whom seekest thou ? "

John xx. 15.

XLVII

AN EVENING WALK ..... 325

" What manner of communications are these that ye have one
with another, as ye walk, and are sad? "—Luke xxiv. 17.

XLVIII

OPENED EYES ...... 332

" Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter
into His glory ? "—Luke xxiv. 25, 26.

XLIX

CHRIST EVER THE SAME .... 339

"Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your
hearts ? "—Luke xxiv. 38, 43.

L

THE THOUGHTFULNESS OF CHRIST . . . 346

"Children, have ye any meat? "—John xxi. 5.

CONTENTS XV

LI

PAQE

THE DEEPEST QUESTION OF ALL . . . 353

" Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these ? "

JoHH xzi. 15.

LII

A SINGLE EYE ...... 360

" What is that to thee ? follow thou Me."— John xsi. 22.

NOT WOEEY, BUT TEUST

"Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither do they reap,
nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are
ye not much better than they ? Which of you by taking thought can
add one cubit unto his stature ? Why take ye thought for raiment ?
... If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and
to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe
you, 0 ye of little faith ? "—Matthew vi. 25-30.

I AM sure there must have been a beautiful smile
on the Master's face as He spoke these tender
and cheering words to His disciples about simple
trustfulness in the Father's care. The perfect
trust of His own heart must have been looking
out of His eyes straight into theirs as He spoke
to them about the birds and the lilies, and said,
"Are not ye much better than they?"

What He forbids here is not foresight, but fore-
boding, which is a very different thing ; not a
prudent care for to-morrow, but that distracting
and faithless anxiety which anticipates to-morrow

2

2 NOT WORRY, BUT TRUST

tremblingly, always imagining the worst. '' Do
not look out upon your life," says the Master,
*' with this tormenting and useless fear, but rather
with the calmest trust ; and that just because the
God of your life is your Father which is in heaven.
He is the God of the ravens and the flowers, but
He is infinitely more to you. He is Father, and
not merely God. The eye that bends over you is
a Father's eye ; the heart that compassionates you is
a Father's heart ; the hand that provides for you
is a Father's hand ; and He loves His children as
He does not love His birds and lilies. These
sometimes lack and fade, but He loves His own
children far too well to let the?n " want any good
thing."

Here, then, is my Lord's simple, all-sufficient
recipe for a safe and happy life, " Leave every-
thing to the love of your Father in heaven ; be as
a child in His house, and let Him do all the house-
keeping for you." No being on earth is so abso-
lutely free from anxiety as a little child. How he
is to be provided for he does not know. Where
his next meal is to come from he cannot tell. All
that he knows is that loving hearts are caring for
him, and so he feels sure they will not let him
starve. That is really how God would have 77ie
feel. A child in my Father's house, a child of
His love ! What more do I need than just to be
sure of that ? With this great Father to care for
me, is it worth my while to wear my life out with

NOT WORRY, BUT TRUST 3

restless anxieties that, even at the best, can do
nothing to secure for me the happiness I seek?
The teaching of my Master here is that God, as
every wise and loving Father does, makes pro-
vision for His children's need before the need has
arisen. The world was full of bird-sustenance
before a single bird was in it. It was full of
flower-sustenance before a flower was born. He
did not create the birds and then cage them some-
where till He could provide an atmosphere. He
did not create lilies and then force them to lie
aside till He had leisure to provide their soil. His
rule was life-sustenance first, and then the life that
needs it. Now, if He has already provided for all
my possible needs, I do not need to ask Him to
create supplies for me. They are waiting for me —
He knows where — and He will bring them out of
His treasury just when my need has come.

So then He would raise me out of that self-
tormenting anxiety, that sees difficulties and trials
on every horizon, but never thinks of lifting the
face to the blue heaven overhead; that always
takes the darkest view of things, and is half angry
with any one who suggests that the picture may
have a brighter side ; that turns the whole joy of
life into a pile of ruins, and invites every passer-by
to come and look upon the desolation. That is not
only folly, it is sin ; and will inevitably lead on to
greater sin, to bitter discontent, to murmuring
against both God and man, to a hard "fretting

4 NOT Worry, but trust

against the Lord." And yet, what multitudes of
such careworn and unhappy souls there are !
Sometimes, as I pass along a crowded street, I
note the faces of those I meet, and am surprised
to see so few that tell of a calm and happy heart
beneath it. I see traces of many other things :
hard lines that tell of avarice, of irritability and
bad temper, of pride and vanity, of gay indiffer-
ence, of lust and vice. One here and there bears
marks of thought and energy, of high purpose and
strenuousness ; but few have the peaceful, restful
look of a soul that is tranquil and calm. Surely it
cannot be the will of God that such burdens should
be made out of daily work, or such heavy loads be
carried by anxious-minded men, when they might
so easily be set at liberty, if they would only give
God their burdens, and get, in exchange. His peace.
There is, of course, a whole class of anxieties
which I cannot ask God to carry for me or help
me in : the cares that I needlessly and even
rebelliously make for myself ; that do not come to
me from Him at all, but are manufactured out of
my own pride and self-will ; cares that I persist in
carrying, though He is asking me to let them drop.
But since all the worries of life have to do either
with lawful or with unlawful things, there is no
need for my heart being burdened with either kind.
If my anxieties are about lawful things, my Lord
offers to relieve me by carrying them for me ; and
if they are about unlawful things, I must, for my

NOT WORRY, BUT TRUST 5

soul's life, lay them down at once; and if I am
ever in doubt to which of these two classes I must
refer some anxiety that is pressing me hard, the
quickest way of solving the doubt will be to take
it to the Lord Himself on bended knee. There is
nothing like the ordeal of honest prayer for testing
the righteousness of earthly solicitudes. How
often would that ordeal reveal the truth that a
large proportion of them are due simply to pride,
or self-indulgence, or self-will !

These questions of the Master's also suggest that
a large number of troublesome anxieties arise, not
out from evils of my own maJcing, but from evils of
my own imagining. The chief things that darken
the outlook are things that never happen ! Fear
of trouble is always harder to bear than trouble
itself. For real trials I have the promise of my
Father's help. For my own dismal forebodings
He makes no provision at all. There seems to be
also a suggestion here, that it is often in the small
tilings of life that I need most my Father's care ;
and that, if nothing is too great to be cast upon
His love, nothing is too insignificatit either.
Nothing that troubles the heart of the child can
be a trifle to the heart of the Father. When my
Master says, "Your heavenly Father knoweth
that ye have need of these things," it is of life's
necessities, not of its luxuries, that He is speaking.
I can live without the luxuries, and be completely
happy without them, yes, and safer too ; for out of

6 NOT WORRY, BUT TRUST

the pleasant warmth of the fire of luxury there
often creep not one, but dozens of deadly serpents
and fasten on my hand — pride, avarice, selfishness,
and many more ; but bread and raiment I must
have if I am to live at all. The promise is limited
to what my Father knows I really need, and when
He withholds the other things I ask, I am sure I
do not really need them, else they would be given.

Dr. Payson, of America, gave a beautiful
testimony to this upon his dying bed, when he
said : " Christians might save themselves much
sorrow, if they would only believe what they
profess to believe, that God can make them
perfectly happy without any of these things they
think essential to their joy. They imagine that if
such and such a blessing were taken away, they
would be utterly miserable ; whereas God can make
them a thousand times happier without it than
they are. He has been depriving me of one thing
after another all my life, but He has always more
than supplied its place ; and now, when I am lying
here a helpless cripple, I am not only happier than
I ever was, but happier than I ever expected to be :
and I would have saved myself much sorrow if I
had only believed this twenty years ago."

My whole life, to its latest hour, is to be one life
of trust ; and I thank God that He who has
redeemed me is not my sin-hearer only, but my
sorrow-hearer and care-hearer too. If I have
trusted Him with my soul, I may surely trust Him

NOT WORRY, BUT TRUST 7

with everything else. If I am trusting Him for
eternity, I may sm^ely trust Him for time. If I
trust Him for my everlasting home, I may surely
trust Him for my journey to it. But the misery is
that, though I am always asking Him to drive, and
telling Him that He alone can do it, I all the time
persist in seizing the reins myself ! It is strange
and sad how constantly I betray my unbelief. My
very prayers are often full of it. I look up and
say, " My Father who art in heaven," but only
because the " Lord's Prayer " begins in that way,
not because I have any vividly real and comforting
sense of being His child in very deed. I listen to
the sweet consolations that come from my Master's
lips, but the echo of them in my heart is wonder-
fully poor and thin. I commit my way to Him in
beautiful pious phrases that would befit the ripest
saint, and immediately proceed to take my own
foolish way notwithstanding. Need I wonder that
He gives me only a partial peace, when I am giving
Him only a partial trust ? Need I wonder that
when He gets from me only a half-confidence. He
gives me only a half -joy?

Would that I had more of Martin Luther's
simple faith, who, in a time of much distress,
looking out of his window, and seeing a blackbird
sitting on a bough and singing its very best in the
midst of pelting rain, said, " Why cannot I too sit
still and sing, and let God tMiik for me .^ "

II

CONFIDENCE IN PEAYER

" If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things
to them that ask Him? " — Matthew vii. 11.

" Which of you shall have a friend, and shall goto him at midnight,
and say unto him. Friend, lend me three loaves ; for a friend of mine
in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him ?
And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not ... I
cannot rise and give thee. Though he will not rise and give him,
because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise
and give him as many as he needeth." — Luke xi. 5-8.

The Master's question is an argument, and the
argument is what is called an a fortiori one.
It is from the less to the greater; from a poor
earthly love to a rich heavenly one ; from a love
that, at the best, is ignorant, to one that is
altogether wise ; from an imperfect to a perfect
compassion. The love of the best of fathers
here is only a poor reflection of the love of the
Father who is in heaven, but it is a reflection of
it for all that. " If you can love your children so,

CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER 9

must not He who implanted that love in you feel
the same ? If you, being evil, can do that, shall
not He who is infinitely good do as much, and
even more ? " So then the foundation on which
Christ rests all His teaching about prayer is the
real Fatherliness of that great heart in heaven to
which I make appeal. It was always to a Father
that He looked up. The Fatherhood of God was
to Him the most blessed and most sustaining of
all thoughts. The word "Father" was ever on
His lips. He scarcely ever spoke either of God or
to God in any other way : " I thank Thee, Father,"
"even so, Father," "Abba, Father," "Father,
glorify Thy name," "Holy Father," "Righteous
Father." That was the habitual tone of prayer in
Him ; and that was the secret of His perfect calm
and trust.

Most of the difficulties often felt regarding
prayer come from not thinking about God as
the Master did ; from not realising the tender
love of His Fatherly heart and the infinite power
of His Fatherly hand. If I think of Him simply
as a Ruler or a Judge, I will have little confidence
in prayer and little joy : but that one word
"Father" gives me both reality and gladness in
my prayer-intercourse with Him. Just because
He is a Father^ I can be sure He will listen
sympathetically to my cry of need. Just because
He is a wise Fathe7\ I can trust Him to answer
the cry in the wisest way. Just because He is a

10 CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER

perfect Father, I can believe that He must have the
best of reasons for sometimes refusing my requests.
I can say '' Thy will be done," not merely because
it is an Oimiipotent will which I cannot resist,
nor even because it is a lioly will which I ought to
acquiesce in however hard, but because it is a
Father's will, the will of one whose only aim it is
to make His children pure, as the first thing, and
happy, as the next. When I know the Father as
Christ did, I shall pray as He did, and get my
prayers answered too, as His always were. The
Apostle John says : "I write unto you, little
children, because ye have known the Father. '^ It
is only by being as a " little child," simple-hearted,
full of faith, that I can know the Father well
enough to " assure my heart before Him," when I
pray.

Whatever may be said about my general
Christian life, must I not confess with shame
that this must be said, that it is far too little a life
of prayer ? The wonderiul 2yrivilege of prayer I do
not sufficiently recognise ; the comforting help of
prayer I do not sufficiently enjoy. I would be a
holier and a happier Christian if I had more of
what an African convert called " the gift of the
knees." When I think of it, it is really a mar-
vellous thing that sinful men should be allowed to
speak to the High and Holy One ; that all, with-
out exception, may tread the open pathway to a
"throne of grace." It is only my familiarity

CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER 11

with this truth that bhnds me to the wonder of it.
If there had been only one spot on earth where
God and man could meet, what thousands of
sufferers and sorrowers would be always setting
out on pilgrimage to reach it ! What willing
expenditure of time and wealth there would be to
get to it even for a day ! If there were only one day
in each year on which, at that one spot, the God of
heaven gave audience to weary men ; or if, like
Bethesda's pool, it were a place where only the
first comer could carry a blessing away, what
wistful waiting round it there would be ! what
feverish haste to be in time! what hot contention
for the nearest place ! How infinitely precious
health and wealth would be, as giving the best
chance of reaching that one spot ! What terrible
misfortunes feebleness and poverty would be, as
precluding any hope of getting there at all !

But what is the actual fact ? There is no such
solitary sacred spot, no such special hour. The
whole world is His audience-chamber ; His ear is
never shut : and yet how few of the world's
millions do really ask Him for anything ! How
much that passes for prayer is only like the
reciting of a charm ! how much is merely
mechanical duty ! how few even of those who
really pray, pray to Him as to a Father ! Surely
He may complain of 7?ze, that I who profess to
know him so well, yet speak to him so seldom
and ask of Him so little. For His love will give

12 CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER

me not only what I ask, but far beyond it too.
Even a deep earthly love grudges nothing : but
the love of my Father in heaven, soaring infinitely
higher and sinking infinitely deeper than the most
self-sacrificing human love ever did, has a " length
and breadth and depth and height " that passes
knowledge. It is ready to do for me not only
what I ask, but '' exceeding abundantly above all
I can ask or think." Oh, the marvel of it ! How
much can I find it in my heart to ash in some
great stress of difliculty or of pain? how much
can I ask for others dear to me as well as for
myself ? Can it be that God is able to give me
not only all that, but " ahove^^ all that,
^^ abundantly above" it, ^^ exceeding abundantly
above" it all? And how much can I tliink of as
possible for my heart to receive? Can it be
that exceeding abundantly above my thoughts
as well as above my prayers He is ready
to bless me every day ? Then let me never grieve
or dishonour such a Father by doubting His love
or distrusting His power.

If I could somehow gather up and measure all
the golden sunlight that is falling silently over the
world to-day, falling on the wastes of desert sands,
scattered over the desolation of northern ice,
flashing from the waves of a hundred seas, running
about the mountains, spreading over the plains,
sending innumerable rays into secret places, filling
the cup of every flower, shining down the sides of

CONFliDENCE IN PRAYER 13

every blade of grass, resting in beautiful humility
on the unloveliest things, the sticks and straws
and dust of the street, and even the putrefaction
of death, gilding the thatch of the cottage, hght-
ing up the prisoner in his lonely cell, making a
rainbow out of every passing shower, giving itself
without stint in its grand abundance everywhere —
if I could somehow gather all this up, and measure
it, and tell how great it is, then perhaps I might
be able, but not till then, to understand the
exuberant riches of love that are waiting for me
to draw upon in my Father's heart and the
infinity of the blessings that are in my Father's
hand, ready to fall into mine, when I ask Him to
send them down.

And I must be asking every hour. In constant
prayerfulness my only safety lies. Life is full of
surprises ; I meet temptation in the most unlikely
places. I have sometimes sudden perplexities of
conscience about right and wrong. I am uncertain
how to say just the right thing, or how to act just
in the right way. There is often no time for de-
liberation. I must act and speak at once, where a
mistake may have far more serious issues than I
know. My only resource, then, must be a child's
cry for a Father's help, a lifting up of my heart to
Him in the very moment of the difficulty, with a
prayer for light and strength. Good Nehemiah
could not only " pray to the God of heaven "
secretly, but get an answer to his prayer in that

14 CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER

short interval that separated his hearing of the
king's question from his necessarily immediate
reply. Prayer will cut many a knot that my own
hands cannot untie : and the quickest way to the
blessing I am seeking will always be round by the
throne of grace. For the true idea of prayer is not
simply petitioning, it is rather consulting God.
Often I need more than a presenting of request.
I need a consultation with my Father in heaven —
telling Him frankly how I feel, and asking Him to
tell me how He feels about it too. The effect of
such a consultation may be to encourage me to pray
for that special thing with more assurance than
ever ; or it may be to make me cease from asking it
because I am convinced it is not according to His
highest will for me. But either way the object of
the consultation has been gained. In either case I
get what an old Greek writer calls " the silence of
the soul" — that holy silence that ceases from
urging the will of the flesh, because it worships
only the sweet will of God.

Do I feel as if that were a poor result ? Would
I wish for more ? Let me remember that, in ask-
ing my Father to do His will for me, I am only
asking Him to give me what is really the highest
blessing to myself.

"He knows, and loves, and cares;
Nothing that truth can. dim :
He gives His very best to those
That leave the choice to Him."

CONFIDENCE IN PRAYER 15

And if the Master's question about the " friend at
midnight " seems to contradict this teaching, let
me remember that He did not make that churlish
householder a type of God, or mean to say
that God, selfishly unwilling to be disturbed by
a cry of need, could yet be persuaded by mere
ceaseless importunity. The contrast^ not the
similarity, was the point of His parable. "If
the persistent knocking of a needy friend can
prevail even with one who is both angry and
annoyed, how much more will the filial confidence
of a needy child be responded to by a loving
Father? Therefore "ask, and ye shall receive —
knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

Ill

SUBMISSION IN PEAYER

" What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give
him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?" —
Matthew vii. 9, 10.

These questions are in the same line as the last,
but they suggest an additional and most profitable
thought. The Master supposes that a child will
ask only for what is good, and says that, in that
case, no loving father would mock his confiding
little one by offering him what would sting or kill.
But I can turn his question round another way,
still keeping to its essential meaning, and put it
thus: "if his son asks a stone, iynagining it
to be bread, or a serpent, supposing it to be a
wholesome fish, will he grant a request so foolish
and so ignorant as that ? " Thus I am led to the
larger teaching of my Lord, which is, that my
loving Father will give me only what He knows is
really good, that I must let Him deal with my
prayers in His own wise way, and, for my good, say

16

SUBMISSION IN PRAYER 17

'' No," to some of them ; and, looking back to-day
upon my past experiences, must I not confess that
the granting of some of my impassioned and eager
prayers would have been the cruellest thing my
God could have done to me ?

It is not wonderful that I should need a Father's
refusals as well as a Father's gifts. The heart
always gives a bias to the judgment ; and since it
is my own judgment of what is good that guides
me in any definite request, I necessarily make
many mistakes in prayer, so that multitudes of
things which my unwisdom seeks, the wiser love
of my Father denies. *' I beseech Thee, show me
Thy glory," said Moses to Grod. " You are asking
for death," was God's reply, *'for no man can
see My face and live." " Take away my life,"
said the petulant Elijah, depressed and weary,
" for it is better for me to die than to live."
But had that prayer been granted, what
would have become of his glorious translation in
the chariot of fire, which was surely a far more
triumphant close to such a noble life as his than
an unseen death in the wilderness would have
been ? " Grant that these my two sons may sit,
the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy
left, in Thy kingdom," was the prayer of the
mother of James and John. What a depth of
meaning was in the Master's gentle reply, " Ye
know not what ye ask" ! I look at His own picture
of the King in His kingdom, with the sheep on the

3

18 SUBMISSION IN PRAYER

right hand and the goats on the left, and think
what the granting of that petition would have
been ! It is no proof of our being special favourites
of God that all our desires are given. Israel cried
for flesh, and "He gave them their request " ; but
it was destruction to them instead of life.

What impassioned prayers for a renewed lease
of life have been uttered in sick-rooms, and even
on sick-beds, by those who did recover, contrary to
all hope, but lived only to ruin themselves by sin !
How many a father and mother have bent over
the couch where a loved child was lying at the
point of death, and prayed, with unsubmissive,
frantic eagerness, to have that young life spared ;
only to find that the child, given back to them as
if by miracle, brought down their grey hairs with
sorrow to the grave, leaving them the bitter wail,
" Would God that you had died, or that we had
died instead of you, twenty years ago ! "

It is possible to ask even for spiritual blessings
which it would be hurtful to receive at once. It
is possible to ask for more grace, only to increase a
pride of grace. Pride is a most subtle traitor ;
and what are really cravings of "the flesh" may
sometimes be mistaken for yearnings of "the
Spirit." The "Shibboleth" of Gilead and the
" Sibboleth " of Ephraim are so much alike that
only an experienced ear can detect the difference
between them ; and not only so, but God may
often withhold a blessing sought, till the heart has

SUBMISSION IN PRAYER 19

first been emptied of all self-glory, and made
humble enough to receive with safety so great a
gift. " Did you get low enough to be blessed?"
was the question once asked by a saintly man,
when speaking to some who had gathered to pray
for a revival in the Church. ^^ Loio enough to he
blessed " — that is what God is often waiting for,
before an answer to my prayers can come. " Lord,
give me loftier views of Christ," is the cry of some
eager heart ; and God says, " Yes, I will ; but first
you must have deeper and more humbling views of
yourself." " Lord, use me to do great things for
Thee." "Yes, but are you completely willing to
be only the tool, and not the hand that moves it ? "
" Lord, I would fain be full of the Holy Ghost
and of power ; wilt Thou make me a brilliant lamp,
giving clear and steady light?" "Yes, but I
must first empty you of all your own oil, and so
make room for that fulness of the Spirit to get in."
Then, too, the Lord may deny me the thing
that I imagine would greatly increase my useful-
ness, not only because I am not ready enough to
receive it, but because He has in view some ivliolhj
different and better way of using me, of which I
know nothing yet. When Paul prayed earnestly
and insistently for the removal of the afiliction
which he called a " thorn in his flesh," it was not
because its rankling pain affected his personal
comfort, but because it hindered his power for
serving the Master. Its removal, therefore, seemed

20 SUBMISSION IN PRAYER

a thing for which he could legitimately pray ; and
he had no hesitation in pressing the case, " I
besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from
me." But the thorn was not removed. His
heart's desire was granted in a better way. The
Lord said to him " My grace is sufficient " — you
need nothing more — " My strength is made perfect
in weahiess.^^ There are two ways of helping a
man whose weakness cannot bear the load he has
to carry : one is, to diminish the burden ; the
other is, to strengthen the man. Paul's way
would have been the first of these. His Master's
kinder and wiser way was the second. His bodily
infirmity was to be left as it was ; but it would no
longer be felt to be an impediment to his success,
however it might still be a pain : for the power of
Christ would so rest upon him and increase, that
his Master would be more glorified in him than
ever before.

How many things there may be in my life too
of which I would fain be quit, that I might better
serve my Lord ! How often I have said, " Were
I only free of this impediment or that, how much
more effectively I could work for Him ! Were I only
possessed of larger leisure, were I only in better
health, were I stronger physically to go out on
works of mercy, had I only a more persuasive
tongue, were I only more free from the worries of
my temporal concerns ; or, were I only out of the
atmosphere of utter worldliness which I am daily

SUBMISSION IN PRAYER 21

compelled to breathe, free from that perpetual fire
of sneers which burns me whenever I try to be
true to conscience and to God, how gladly and
how effectively I would then work for Him." Yes,
so I have imagined the case. That is just how
Paul felt when he pictured to himself the vigour
and the joy of a thornless life. And to me there-
fore comes the same answer from my Master's lips,
" My grace is the only thing you need ; that grace
will come to you sufficient for every hour ; and
when you carry the riches of heaven in a poor
earthen vessel, all the more clearly will it be seen
that the excellency of the power is of God and not
of you." In this way, as in so many others, I
learn to subscribe my own Amen to the words —

*' Good when He gives, supremely good ;
But good when He denies :
Ev'n crosses from His sovereign hand
Are blessings in disguise."

Can I not remember to-day a time, now perhaps
far in the distance behind, when I prayed intensely
for the passing away of some great trial that
threatened to darken all my life ? I prayed, not
selfishly or for my own comfort, but for the greater
glory of God by me. I knew that it could be over-
ruled to my oivn personal sanctificatio7i, if it came ;
but I could not see how it could possibly be made
a help to me in serving Christ : and so, for His
sake, I prayed that it might pass. But it did not

22 SUBMISSION IN PRAYER

pass. I had to drink the bitter cup. There was
no escape. I drank it suhmissively — that was all
I could do. I could not take it joyfully. And yet
I have lived to see that even for my power to serve,
my Master's way was infinitely better than my
own way would have been. Ah ! my wise and
loving Father knew that when I thought I was
asking bread, I was asking only a stone, and He
was kinder to me than my prayers.

Let me listen, then, as I hear an experienced
disciple echoing most exactly the voice of the
Master Himself, " In everything by prayer and
supplication let your requests be made known unto
God, and the 'peace of God that passeth all iindej'-
standing shall keep your hearts and minds through
Christ Jesus." It is as if he said : " You have the
largest liberty in prayer, ask what you will — and
yet I do not say to you that all your requests will
be granted you : this I say, that you will get some-
thing even better still, your prayer of trust will
at least calm the tumult in your breast. It will
make you of one mind with your Father in heaven
about the thing that troubles you. It will bring
you into quiet rest, the rest of an absolute con-
fidence in His perfect love. That is really the
best thing even God can give ; and, whatever else
He refuses, of this gift you may be sure."

IV
CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP

" Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed ? a-nd
not to be set on a candlestick ? " — Mark iv. 21.

I AM, first of all, to be a light-receiver, and then a
light -diff user. I cannot shine for Christ until He
shines into me ; but no sooner do I receive His
divine illumination myself than I am expected to
illuminate the darkness round about me. My dis-
cipleship is to be real, that is the first thing — and
visible, that is the second. "Ye are the light of
the world," said the Master to His Disciples. God's
plan is to save the world by human agency. It
might have been otherwise. He might have
entrusted to no other hands but Christ's the
bearing of His message of Life, and He might
have continued Christ's personal presence in the
world till the work was done. Or He might have
given it into angelic hands, as the only created
hands fit for a work so great. But no angel was

23

24 CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP

ever sent to preach the gospel to a sinner. It is to
men, themselves redeemed, that the work is given
of preaching, by lip and life, redemption to the lost.
By man came death, and by man must come the
resurrection of the dead. It is high honour to be
called to continue in the world the shining that
Christ began. It is honour, blessedness, respon-
sibility all in one.

Let me remember, in my own Christian life,
that the sole end for which a candle is lit is to
give light to those that would be in darkness
without it ; for, too many Christians seem to
think that their own personal life is the only thing
they need to care about. To preserve their own
light is all they seek : and the natural consequence
is that thus safe-guarding the light under a bushel,
their candle grows dimmer gradually, till it dies
from want of air. A self-included discipleship is
a very useless one ; but the danger of it is that it
will soon cease to be a discipleship at all. One
of the old prophets spoke of the coming of a
day when a man should '■^ no more teach his
brother, saying, ' Know the Lord,' for all shall
know Him from the least to the greatest." Surely
that expression " ?io more " is equivalent to saying
that that is what every Christian is expected to he
doing now. Yet, practically, most Christians seem
to live as if that day had already come ! Does
not this explain to me the deadness of the
Church, as well as the darkness of the world?

CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP 25

How many a once-illuminated soul has to admit
that "its lamp has gone out " ! Astronomers tell
us of worlds that have lost their fires. They
burned brightly once. Now they are cold and
dark. Their very existence can only be known
by a mathematical computation ; for they are in-
visible to the eye. Many a Christian too has lost
his light-giving power; and none but the Great
Astronomer who numbereth the stars, can see him
in His firmament at all. It was a solemn word
my Master spoke when He said, "From him that
hath not shall be taken away that which he
hath," for one of the penalties of refusing service
is to be denied opportunities for service after-
wards.

It is strongly suggested by my Lord's question
that the darkness which God means each en-
lightened soul to illuminate is the darkness
immediately surrounding itself. He places His
candlesticks just where He means His candles
to shine. With the sphere of my work as a light-
giver I have nothing to do. God arranges that.
My business is simply to shine where I am. The
light is needed everywhere ; in the palace as much
as in the hovel, in the homes of the rich as well
as in the cottages of the poor, in schools of the
cultured as well as where ignorance is dense.
Thank God, He has lighted candles in all sorts
of positions, both lofty and low : and where each
is, there He means it to shine, illuminating the

26 CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP

darkness round itself. The glowworm that burns
its feeble lamp among the grass is doing God's will
as truly as the star that hangs its lantern in the
sky : and he whose holy, sweet, consistent life
makes him the light of his own humble home is
doing there a work of which an angel might be
proud, in which the loftiest of seraphim would
count it an honour to be employed. The light
that burns at the Goodwin Sands is not seen at
Land's End — and does not need to be; but it
serves its own purpose where it is, I need not
complain because my light is so feeble that it
cannot send its radiance to Africa or China or
Japan. To light a much smaller area than that
is all that may be required of me to my dying day.
I have to make it my business to be steady in such
shining as my Master calls me to, and leave the
rest to Him. If He wants me some day to en-
lighten Africa, He will have a candlestick ready
there to set me on.

It seems further suggested here that this work
of enlightening the world's darkness is easy work —
to this extent, at least, that it requires no effort
for a lighted lamp to shine. All that is needed is
room for its beams to spread. ^'' Let your light
shine," says the Master. It will shine if you only
let it shine. Keep it trimmed, and let it shine —
remove obstructions from before it, and let it
shine. No matter, therefore, what the candle-
stick may be that holds the light : it may be a

CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP 27

very lofty one or very low ; it may be a very
splendid one, or only of coarsest and commonest
make ; but be it of brass or earthenware, of
silver or of gold, that makes no difference to the
light. A candle will not shine any better in a
gold candlestick than in one of tin. If my light
burns clear, it will shine with equal effect whether
I am a Daniel in the palace or only a Mordecai at
the gate.

Yet let me remember that the hindling of the
light is only part of the work that needs to be
done. The other part is the sustaining and
nourishing of the light when kindled : and if the
first part is God's, the second part is mine. The
light that shines openly has to be nourished
secretly : for it is by a secret process, a process
which escapes the eye, that the flame draws up
from the enclosing fat the fuel that feeds its life.
The process is continuous, but it is secret all the
time. If my light is to shine with steady lustre,
glorifying Him who has enkindled it, it must be
fed continuously out of the fulness of Christ.
Much secret fellowship with God, much prayer-
ful intercourse with Him, communication uninter-
rupted between my soul and heaven — nothing
else than this will maintain my light, even though
Christ Himself has kindled it. If the world ceases
to know me as a bright disciple, I may depend
upon it that the reason is that my private inter-
course with Christ has been interrupted, or has

28 CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP

come to an end. To live U2oon Christ in secret is
the only way to live for Christ in public. It
is only in ''the secret place of the Most High"
that 1 can gain that fulness of grace which will
keep my candle burning steady and clear. I must
watch, therefore, lest by indolence, or negligence,
or worldliness, my prayer-life become a fickle
and inconstant thing, and so my candle burn too
low to be of any use. I need to watch, too, lest I
allow obstacles to get in the way of its light. The
world cannot quench the flame ; but I myself may
hide it. False shame may hide it. Conformity to
the fashion of the day may hide it. The fear of
man may hide it. If I am to do all that my Lord
expects me to do as a light of the world, I must
be more consistent in my personal life and more
bold in confessing Him before men. It must never
be sufficient for me that my discipleship is known to
Him. He wants it to be known " to all men" too.
My Father in heaven is not to be the only one
that sees my good works. He cannot be " glori-
fied" unless men see them also. Let me watch
against these hindrances to my shining, the
worldliness, the fear, the shame, the false reserve
that so often mar the testimony of my life, and
seal my lips as well, keeping me silent when I
ought to speak.

This question of my Master's may well go
keenly home to my conscience when I ask my-
self honestly, "What man has ever felt the

CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP 29

gracious influence of Christ, from his intercourse
with me ? What unconverted friend have my
character or words ever impressed ? What sinful
one have I ever sought to save ? Men have gone
to a lost eternity from my very door, men whom I
recognised every day in the street, and I never
warned or expostulated with them, because a
cowardly reticence or a false propriety kept me
dumb. Friends, dear and loved, have lived in
close intimacy with me under my roof, and have
now gone far from me to distant lands, or have
crossed the boundary from which there is no
return; and I never opened my heart to them
or got them to open their hearts to me on the
great matters of eternal importance to us both."
I may well be ashamed to look my Master in the
face as I tell Him this.

How shall I repair the wrong ? How shall I
become more truly a light to the darkened at my
side ? I need for this a closer fellowship of spirit
with Christ Himself. I need to talk with Him and
have Him talk to me as He did to the disciples on
the Emmaus road, who said, "Did not our hearts
hum witliin us as we listened to His voice? " Then,
but only then, will I myself be "a hurning and a
shining light." I must know Him better, love
Him more, be more concerned for His glory, more
thoroughly in touch with Him as to the great pur-
pose of my redeemed life, which is, to be a witness
everywhere to Him who has redeemed me. Then

30 CONSPICUOUS DISCIPLESHIP

I shall shine for Him, and my light shall bear
witness to His.

This shining will cost me something. All light
means an expenditure of force. Both fat and wick
must be consumed in burning. But can I grudge
the expenditure ? must I not rather glory in it,
when, in proportion as I am expended in His
service I am myself transfigured by the flame
that consumes?

JUST ESTIMATES

" Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? " — Matthew
vu. 3.

Theee ought surely to be nothing very difficult in
the exhibition of that generous and considerate
spirit which this question of the Master's shows
to be the only right one for a Christian ; but if it
were exhibited always, what a mass of uncharit-
ableness and censoriousness and bitterness would
instantly disappear ! There is hardly any one who
is not ready enough to do the work of extracting
motes from his brother's eye ; but if it should be
suggested to him, in the mildest way, that it would
be well to have the large beam extracted from his
own eye first, that he may see to do it, he would
resent the suggestion as an insult. But what the
Master here says is that all censoriousness has its
root in blindness. There is almost a touch of
humorous sarcasm in His words, " Then shalt thou

31

32 JUST ESTIMATES

see clearly to pull out the mote " ; for it is only
because we think ourselves irreproachable, or
nearly so, that we are so hard upon the faults
and deficiencies of others.

Here, then, my Master gives me what is really
an axiom, or first principle, on Christian living.
" Before you condemn your brother from the height
of your own rectitude, look narrowly into yourself ;
do not loftily condemn any man unless you have a
keen sense of your own liability to err, either in
the same way as he, or in some other way equally
abhorrent to the purity of God : and remember
that the same charity you are asked to show will
be needed for yourself." What has been called
the Golden Eule is, '*Do unto others as you wish
others to do to you." But another rule, equally
golden and equally divine, is this. Do unto others
as you would have God do to you. ''If ye forgive
not men their trespasses, neither will your Father
who is in heaven forgive you your trespasses."

The doctrine of human depravity is sometimes
called a cruel doctrine. So far from that, the
whole beautiful edifice of Christian charity is built
upon the recognition of it. For if I set out with
assuming that all men are naturally good, and that
right living is easy, and then demand that they
shall always act in accordance with that assump-
tion, my judgments of them are sure to be unjust
and hard. But if I begin by remembering the
taint of evil that infects us all, that all are

Just estimates 33

weakened and debased by tendencies inherent in
them, and then make up my mind to treat them
in accordance with that fact, I lay at once a
foundation for all that is generous as well as just
in my estimate of their faults. I treat children
tenderly because they are children. I treat the
sick with greater forbearance than the strong
because they are sick. I put myself willingly out
of the way of the blind, the deaf, the lame, because
these infirmities appeal to my magnanimity. If I
expand that rule till it covers moral weaknesses
as well as spiritual ones, I lay the foundation of a
charity wide and tender as that of God Himself.

There is a mighty difference between the way in
which I am at liberty to deal with sin and the way
in which I must deal with the sinner who falls into
the sin. I may strike as hard as I please when
denouncing the sin ; but when the thing I am
dealing with is a sensitive, human heart, my stroke
must have more than faithfulness in it. It must
have tenderness as well. For any one who has
fallen low, the way back to uprightness is steep
enough. I need not, by hard reproaches, make it
perpendicular.

Then, too, I am to bear in mind the constitu-
tional differences between different men. We do
not all see alike, nor feel alike. Our mental habits
and our passions are not all alike. We are all
temptable, but not all temptable in the same way.
The sins of one are not the sins of another. Some

4

34 JUST ESTIMATES

are, by temperament, cold and passionless ; others,
also by temperament, fiery, impulsive, hot. The
special sins of some men are sins of " the flesh" ;
of others, sins of "the spirit." We have all our
characteristic sins ; and it is by no means true
that those forms of sin which the world agrees to
condemn are worse in the eyes of the Holy One
than those which it never visits with its con-
demnation at all. I cannot be just in my esti-
mates of men unless I estimate by a divine, and
not merely a human, rule.

I am to treat men, too, not according to what
they might be, but according to what they are;
and in condemning them for what they are, I must
ask how they have become what they are. Have
they not been subjected to evil influences that
never surrounded me ? Have they not been
assailed by temptations from which God's mercy
has kept me free ? And am I sure that even while
I condemn them, they may not be "repenting in
dust and ashes " ? I dare not forget that Christ
my Lord, the Infinite Pity, Himself declared that
some of the most degraded upon earth may be, in
a self-abasement known only to Him, nearer the
Kingdom of God than those who, in a self-
righteous pride of purity, look down upon them
with contempt. I see the fallen only as they now
are:^ The previous causes that made them what
they are I seldom know. There are men whose
virtues are really more the result of good early

JUST ESTIMATES 35

training, good surroundings, and good health, than
of any careful determination to do the right ; and
there are other men whose failings are due more to
evil education, vicious surroundings, poverty, and
bad health, than to any determined love of sin.
There are in some men Christian excellences
which it cost them almost no trouble to attain,
for these are simply the fruit of a disposition
naturally sweet. There are in others blots and
disfigurements of character which are due chiefly
to some diseased heredity, against which they may
be struggling more faithfully than I know ; for it is
only the unsuccessful struggles which I see. There
may thus be far more of the grace of God in some
very imperfect men than there is in others beside
them who appear to be much better Christians.
It is strange how little I can know of the daily
struggle with evil that is going on in the breasts
of some of my closest friends; and stranger still
that, knowing so little, I can be so harsh and
unfeeling in my judgments of them as I some-
times am.

A very large proportion of the heart-burnings
that often separate chief friends come, not from
real injuries done on either side, but from the
imagination and imputation of evil where no evil
was meant. The origin of many a long-standing
strife can be traced to no higher or worthier source
than this, an appearance of evil on one side and
an uncharitable judgment on the other. The

36 JUST ESTIMATES

sensitive spirit was wounded by some omission of
usual civilities, some reported fragment of conver-
sation, some harmless little pleasantry or jest, some
incident that looked like a studied affront. The
slight " appearance of evil " was magnified till it
wore the aspect of a deliberate insult ; and so an
estrangement began and lasted for years, the inno-
cent cause of it being all the time completely
unable to say why it should have lasted for a
single day. The evil of this is great. The sin
of it is great. It stands among the " works of the
flesh" under the title "evil surmisings " ; and it
is emphatically condemned by Christ, who said,
" Judge not, that ye be not judged " : for the man
who suspects every one else is generally to be
suspected himself. That accurate knowledge of
human nature on which he prides himself, and on
which he grounds his suspicions, has generally
been gained at home. The sins he sees are like
his own reflection in a glass.

I am sure there must be a great deal more of
righteousness, and striving after righteousness, in
the world than I sometimes dream. I too easily
take it for granted that everywhere the devil is
king. I forget that, even in dens of ignorance and
vice, God knows of many in whose hearts there is
a great disgust at sin, and great longings for the
purity that is so hard to reach. Abraham, on enter-
ing Gerar, among the Philistines, said, " Surely the
fear of God is not in this place." It was a grievous

JUST ESTIMATES 37

mistake. The true "fear of God" was at that
moment not in Abraham, but in Abimelech, whom
he thought a heathen out and out. It was Abime-
lech who played the part of a thoroughly upright
man. It was he who was a child of the light.
Abraham was for the moment a child of the dark-
ness, and proudly condemned, without a hearing, a
better man than himself.

I am not, as sometimes advised, to *' err on the
side of charity," for I am not to " e?T " in any-
thing. The teaching of my Master is not " be
indifferent to other men's faults, for all men are
much the same." I am to be just as well as
generous. But if I always judge in charity I
shall not err. True Christian charity is often, like
Mahomet's road to Paradise, a narrow knife-edge
keen as a sword-blade ; and this narrow edge has
the yawning precipice of bigotry on the one side
and of indifference upon the other. I must not
fall into eithe?' : and therefore when I do discover
some mote in my brother's eye I will look humbly
for the beam that may be in my own ; and remem-
bering that those whom I most sternly judge may,
at that very moment, be more sternly judging
themselves, I will try to learn from my Master
that Divine charity of which He Himself was the
finest example ; I will learn from Him to play
more nobly than did the elder son in His parable
the elder brother's part.

VI

AN INFALLIBLE TEST

" Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? " — Matthew
vii. 16.

What an attentive reader of nature my Master
always was ! What open eyes He had for the
Father's teaching in it ! What a deep significance
He found in common things! How clearly the
Father's works spoke to Him of that Father's
righteousness, as well as of the Father's love !
He drew comfort to Himself, as well as gave
comfort to others, by His tender way of looking
at the lilies and the birds. I might be holier and
happier too if I resembled Him more in this. All
nature should speak to me as it spoke to Him.
He has already made nature read me a beautiful
lesson of trust : now He makes it read to me a
lesson of zvise discrimination. In this far-reach-
ing question of His, He is teaching me how to
judge of many things that perplex me, through the

38

AN INFALLIBLE TEST 39

difficulty of separating truth from error and of
deciding whether some special thing is right or
wrong. He tells me to decide the matter by
noting the effect which it produces. That cannot
be a bad thing the fruit of which is always good.
That cannot be a good thing the natural fruit of
which is evil. Let me look at the world, and at
my own life in the world, and judge of both by
this infallible test.

Let me think of the folly of expecting sweet and
wholesome fruit from trees that cannot, by any
possibility, produce it. I am making plans for my
future, perhaps starting in the world ; and I have
some great ambitions which I would fain see real-
ised. I am planning for the finest grapes : let me
look well, then, to the kind of trees I am planting.
Am I planting thorns in the hope that they will
yield me by and by the sweet clusters I am long-
ing for ? It is only the devil who promises grapes
from thorns : and he has never yet fulfilled that
promise to any man, and never can.

My Master does not say, ''Do men expect to
gather grapes from thorns ? " for He knew well
that, strange as it seems, that is exactly what
thousands do expect. His question is, ' ' Do they
ever succeed in finding them ? " The thorn-bushes
of dishonesty, trickery, self-indulgent vice, and
other sorts, are planted thick in their life-field ;
and they calculate confidently on seeing sweet
fruit hanging on them ere long. They do not call

40 AN INFALLIBLE TEST

them thorns. They give them some other and
finer name, which hides their real character. In
the new catalogues of moral horticulturists the
plants are vaunted as not being the old hurtful
sorts, but shrubs entirely different ; and the
ignorant, foolish heart is beguiled into the idea
that the old-fashioned laws of God have been
changed, in these later scientific days, for some-
thing better. Yet the old unanswerable question
still remains to be faced, "Do these trees, call
them by what name you will, ever really give you
grapes, or reward you for the trouble of planting
them ? "

My own experience can surely confirm my
Master here. Many a time I have planted in my
life-garden what I thought would turn out to be
good fruit-bearing trees, and to my shame and
sorrow I found them to be thorns and nothing else.
Sin often promised me much, but it always deceived
me. " I sinned, and it profited me not." Look
back as far as I may, I cannot point to even one
sinful act or habit that ever did me good. What
pleasure may have been in it for the moment was
always followed by keener pain ; and since I have
known some of the sweet satisfactions of righteous-
ness, the joys of the pure in heart, the peace that
fills a soul renewed, I can only ask myself, in
amazement at my former blindness and folly,
"What fruit had I then in those things of which I
am now ashamed ? " Let me listen to my Master,

AN INFALLIBLE TEST 41

and listen also to my own memory which says
Amen to all my Master's words.

And if, as may be the case, I am perplexed by
the fact that all my endeavours to live rightly so
continually fail, let me honestly ask if the reason
for that fact be not this : that the tree itself is not
good, else the fruit would be good ; that the defect
is not in my efforts, but in the very nature that
puts the efforts forth ; that I have not, what 1
must have if my efforts are to be successful, a
renewed nature to begin with ? For all my striv-
ings to live according to godliness, before I am
thoroughly changed in my whole spirit and mind
and feelings by the grace of God, will only be efforts
to hang good fruit on branches whereon they never
grew.

But I have here a test for trying other things
than my own personal life. My Master's question
helps me much when I am perplexed by the
constant attacks made upon my Christian faith,
and things which, from the beginning, have been
dear to Christian men. I hold, with the Church of
all the ages, that the Scriptures are the Word of
God, but I am staggered sometimes in my faith by
the confident attacks that are made upon them ; I
am told that I am quite behind the times, and that
my old-fashioned beliefs are now exploded for ever.
Well, I have only to think of all that this Word of
God has done for the regenerating, the uphfting,
the sweetening of the world wherever its holy

42 AN INFALLIBLE TEST

influence has been allowed free play. I have only
to think of how it has been an enlightener of
ignorance, a rebuker of sin, a healer of corruption,
a deliverer of the oppressed, an uplifter of the
degraded, a guide to the wanderer, a help to the
weary, a comforter to the sad. I have only to
remember how it has been God's message of
highest love to men, speaking of salvation to the
sinful, of peace to the tried, of hope to the despair-
ing, of life to the dying, of heaven to the bereaved.
I have only to think of all this, and ask how that
can possibly be a bad tree that has always yielded
fruit so sweet.

If I am perplexed with arguments tending to
overthrow the sacredness of the Sabbath Day, I
think of the beautiful clusters of ripe fruit that are
gathered from it by every one who has it growing
in the midst of his worries and his cares ; and I
say confidently. That tree is good.

I hear ridicule poured upon missions to heathen
lands. They are condemned as useless, and even
hurtful to the "child of nature," the picturesque
and happy savage. I am told that Hinduism is
as good a religion for India as Christianity is
for me ; that Buddhism is quite sufficient for all
the spiritual needs of Mongolia and Thibet ; that
Confucianism is for a Chinaman a better guide
than the precepts of Jesus Christ; that Moham-
medanism is as good for the Arab and Turk as my
own rehgion is for those that live under western

AN INFALLIBLE TEST 43

skies ; and my answer needs only to be this
practical one, "by their fruits ye shall know
them." I see the kind of fruit brought forth by
these religions, and I see how unspeakably bad it
is. My answer to those who praise Hinduism is
simply "India! " My answer to those who extol
Buddhism or Confucianism is " China! " My reply
to the apologist for Mohammedanism is " Africa ! "
By their fruits of evil I judge them all.

There are things at home too which sometimes
perplex me not a little. What am I to say about
the Tightness or wrongness of much that seems
clearly opposed to the mind of Christ, and yet is not
only tolerated but approved by large numbers who
bear His name ? What is to be my judgment, for
example, about the theatre ? I need nothing else
to test it by, than the fruit it has always brought
forth. It is defended as a great "school of
morals " ; but if so, I ask how it has been con-
demned, by the wisest and best of every age, as
immoral in its effects; not by Christians only,
but by heathen themselves. I ask how it is that
the " teachers of morality " on the stage are never
found taking part in more evident means of pro-
moting morality off the stage ; how the theatre has
always so strong an attraction for the worst classes
of every community ; how the most corrupt and
profligate find there a congenial home ; how so
many have dated their life-ruin from their first
entrance into this "school of morals"; and how

44 AN INFALLIBLE TEST

it comes to pass that every theatre-lover who
becomes a converted man and an earnest Christian
immediately gives it up ? History tells me, the
confessions of its own votaries tell me, my own
observation tells me, that its fruit is always evil ;
and I will not call by the name of grapes what
grows upon so rank a thorn-tree as that. In this
case, and in a hundred more, the Master's incisive
question helps me out of more difficulties than I
could believe.

Yet let me learn one thing more. I cannot help
thinking that in my Lord's own divine husbandry
of the soul there is such a thing as making me to
gather grapes from thorns and figs from thistles.
He finds it necessary sometimes to punish my
waywardness by doing to me what Gideon did,
when he "taught the men of Succoth with thorns
and briars " ; but His sorest chastenings of my
pride and foolishness yield such fruit of righteous
holiness, when I am " exercised thereby," as to
become blessings in disguise. No thorns planted
by my own hands can ever yield me good. But
the Lord can use them in a different way; to
scourge me with when I rebel: and then "His
chastenings serve to cure the soul by salutary
pain." I have sometimes already got blessing out
of my own thorns in this strange way. If He will
bring me more of it yet in the same way, till I
am wholly His, I will only praise His name.

VII
SAVOUELESS SALT

" Ye are the salt of the earth : but if the salt has lost its savour,
wherewith shall it be salted? " — Matthew v. 13.

My Lord tells me, in this striking way, how great

a privilege is given me ; and also how terribly I

may fail of being what He expects me to be. The

world is corrupt ; not one part of it only, but all ;

and I am to be in it as a purifying power. I am

to make my contact with the world a sanctifying

thing. My quiet, noiseless influence is to be a

pungent, penetrating influence for good on every

part of its complex life which I touch.

I am reminded by this that if I am to be a

healer of the world's corruption I must myself be

different from the world, myself renewed divinely

in spirit and in aim. What heals corruption must

be entirely different from, and opposite to, the

corruption which it seeks to heal. I must have

not merely a better form of the world's life, but a

divine life. Have I this ?

is

46 SA1;^0URLESS SALT

Then, next, I am reminded that if G-od has put
His divine life into me, it is that He may use me
to communicate hfe. I am called to be a " saint " :
that my saintliness may make some others a little
more saintly too. He works in me first, but only
that He may work hy me next. I am to be His
willing servant to promote the righteousness of His
kingdom in other souls. But He warns me faith-
fully that my salt may lose its savour, and so my
power to influence the world for good may pass
completely away. Let me ask myself if this
deteriorating process may not be already begun,
or even be far advanced towards loss irreparable.
Let me, with a jealous fear of savourlessness, look
well to my own spiritual life.

For the beginning of the loss is sure to be found
in the carelessness of my own personal walk with
G-od. If, on an honest review, I am forced to feel
that I have declined in my spiritual force, I am
sure to find the secret of that decline in another
and more private one which has been going on
perhaps for long, a decline in the fervour of my own
heart-fellowship with Christ. If I have to confess
that my zeal for my Master is not so intense as it
used to be, that my love to Him prompts me to less
than it once did, that my conscience is not so keen
and fresh as once it was, that my whole spiritual
vision is now very dim ; I may easily discover
the reason. It is because I have now far less
delight in secret prayer than I had in earlier

SAVOURLESS SALT 47

days. I do not read the Bible now with the
old hunger for heavenly food. I do not read
it with the same delight, or reverence, or insight,
or submissiveness of spirit. I have grown greatly
*' out of touch " with God ; and so, though I still
keep far away from any participation in the ways
of vice, the world's sin does not move me to pity
or to prayer or to efiort as once it did. I still use
all the accustomed forms of Christian speech, but
without much fervour of heart. I still hold to the
saving truth ; but it is dimmer and hazier to me
than once it was. I stand for all the doctrines of
the faith as much as ever ; but there is no joyous
ring in the tone with which I utter or defend them.
Though I can argue for them as before, the warmth
of them is gone. My intellect may be as clear as
a frosty night, but my heart is just as cold.

If I wonder how this can come to pass in any
Christian life, my Master hints at the cause of it
in His metaphor, the salt. If salt ever loses its
savour, the loss is due to outside influences. It
would remain for millenniums with all its inherent
qualities unimpaired, if it were not exposed to sun
and rain, or to the dampness of the cellar in which
it lies. My Lord would thus suggest to me that
my chief danger is that the subtle influences of
the world around me may affect me gradually till
they have robbed me of all my power for Him.
The influence of my social ivorld may affect me
thus. It beckons me to share its pleasures. I go

48 SAVOURLESS SALT

into them at first with a secret repugnance to
much that I see. Soon I will go without any
repugnance at all. The good opinion of my little
world will gradually be more attractive to me than
the approval of my Master ; and I will compromise
my allegiance to Him for the sake of standing well
with it. I will become a casuist before I know,
saying to myself that it is good to make the
Christian discipleship as attractive to the world
as I can, and that, for that purpose, I must meet
the world half way. I promise my remonstrating
conscience to use for Christ the influence I thus
may gain over unchristian friends. I flatter myself
that I will take the world by the hand and lead it
back to Him. But soon I too surely find that the
drag is all the other way. I do not gain the
world, but the world gains me ; till at last I dare
not open my mouth to speak of my Master at all.
If I did, I would be met with its contempt for my
inconsistency. The world would do with me what
it does with savourless salt, " trample it under-
foot."

The influences of the intellectual world may also
affect me injuriously. I may "lose my savour "
through the action upon me of that subtle but
strong force which is called " the spirit of the age,"
the general trend of cultured thought which sur-
rounds me like an atmosphere from which I cannot
get away. When I hear a sceptical science boasting
that it has destroyed all common religious beliefs ;

SAVOURLESS SALT 49

when I hear doubts cast upon everything that I
have been accustomed to accept as the truth of
God ; when they meet me in the literature I daily
read ; when my newspaper is full of them ; when I
hear them even from the pulpit on the lips of
professed servants of Christ ; I can hardly escape
a certain cooling of my faith at least : or, if faith
still survives, I am tempted to hide it lest I should
be thought to be "behind the age." I may still,
in spite of all objectors, believe in the value of
prayer ; but I do not pray with the same childlike
simplicity and confidence in my Father as I used
to do. I may still believe the Bible to be, in some
limited sense, the very voice of Grod ; but, after
hearing it attacked on every side, even by men who
profess to honour it, after being told that criticism
has shown that it was not a supernatural gift, but
only one of the world's many literary growths, with
errors on nearly every page, its voice is not the
same to me in tone or comfort or authority as it
used to be. I have got into the damp, and my
spiritual life is like salt that has lost its savour.
Let my Master's question, then, come closely home
to me, ere this degeneration of my life ends in
utter loss.

Still further, it is suggested to me by this
metaphor that, as salt, however pure and pungent,
can do no good unless it is brought into actual
contact with corruption, I am not to content
myself with sitting apart and lamenting the evil

5

50 SAVOURLESS SALT

of the world, or with shutting myself up in a
secluded sanctity, leaving the world to its doom.
I am to see that my salt really touches the evil
that is round about me. How is it, then, with my
Christian influence over what is nearest to me —
my own friends, my own family-circle, my own
home ? Does it hallow everything there, or try to
do it ? How about my children : their food and
drink and dress ; the kind of education I am giving
them ; the kind of companionships I allow them
to form ; the kind of books I allow them to read ;
the kind of places I allow them to frequent ; the
kind of amusements I encourage them in ; — am I
training them for the ivorld, and according to the
maxims of the world ? or for Christy and according
to His maxims and His law ?

How about my friends ? Can they see so much
of the Christ-spirit in me that they feel my presence
to be a really sanctifying force ? Surely it is worth
a great deal for me so to live as to get my Master
better loved and served by even one single soul.
Am I doing this ? Let me take heed lest, while
the world praises me because I do not disturb it,
my Master should condemn me for unfaithfulness
to Him ; and lest, though saved myself, I should
be saved only as one drawn out of the fire, barely
escaping with life, and having no "works to
follow" me, far less to accompany me ; receiving
no honour or reward at the Master's hands.

The great need of the day is not so much of

SAVOURLESS SALT 51

earnest evangelists to preach the gospel by their
lips as of earnest Christians to preach it by their
lives ; for the world is far from being a holy world,
only because the followers of a holy Christ are so
far from being sufficiently holy men and women.
The quiet influence of a sanctified life will often
do more good than a hundred sermons. Every
lover of music knows Mendelssohn's " Songs without
Words." My life as a Christian is to be a " sermon
without words." I may put Bible texts upon the
walls of my house, or have them lying, beautifully
illuminated, between the pages of my devotional
books ; but if my whole daily life were manifestly
a following of my Lord, I would make myself a text
for other eyes to read ; a far more effective way,
after all, of showing to every friend and visitor
" whose I am and whom I serve." I would
seek to be not merely a Naphtali, " giving goodly
words," but a Joseph, " a fruitful bough, whose
branches go over the wall.^^

VIII
NOT FEAE, BUT TEUST

"Why are ye so fearful, 0 ye of little faith? " — Matthew viii. 26.
" Where is your faith ? " — Luke viii. 25.
" How is it that ye have no faith ? " — Mark iv, 40.
"0 thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ? " — Matthew
xiv. 31.

Often does my Master need to speak in this way
to me. When I am confronted with some great
difficulty from which I cannot extricate myself,
or am involved in troubles for which I am not
responsible, especially when they come upon me
unexpectedly and suddenly, how easily I, too, lose
faith in God, as if He were carelessly leaving me
to perish. Yesterday, I was sitting on the quiet
hillside, and there was not the faintest sign of
coming storm. How happy and contented I was
in the feeling of my Master's presence and the
hearing of His voice ! His great love seemed
brooding over me, and I was resting under it,
"quiet from the fear of evil." To-day, in the

52

NOT FEAR, BUT TRUST 53

wild storm that has burst upon me, yesterday's
peace seems only a dream. I seem to have lost
everything ; not only peace, but hope as well ; not
only hope, but my very faith itself. I have still
my Master with me, but the calmness of my trust
in Him is gone. I almost accuse Him of forget-
ting me, and I think, " What can even He do for
me if He is asleep ? "

I had seen enough of His power and love at
other times to banish every fear, and when He put
His " new song into my lips " I felt as if I never
could distrust Him for a moment, come what
might. But the sudden whirlwind shattered into
fragments that poor faith of mine that seemed so
strong. I never knew how poor it was till it was
tested by this storm ; and now I hear my Lord
rebuking me for my faithlessness, wondering at it
while He rebukes it, saying, "Where is your
faith?" He expected better things than this from
me. I have disappointed Him ; I have wounded
Him by my unbelief. "You could trust Me," He
says, " when all was bright, but you cannot trust
Me when the first darkness falls." It goes to His
heart to find me such a poor disciple.

This failure of my faith, just when I need it
most, shows me that I have never yet taken firm
enough hold of His promises ; never looked deep
enough into His heart of love ; never realised
enough the power of His glorious hand ; never
given Him full credit for being what He assured

54 NOT FEAR, BUT TRUST

me He would be. What I called my faith in
brighter times was not really faith at all, but only
that vague happiness that is born of sunshine, and
dies the moment the sun has set and chill darkness
falls.

How very glibly I have sometimes talked of
*' walking by faith and not by sight," as if it were
the easiest of all things, the very alphabet of
Christian experience, a sort of spiritual truism;
instead of being, as it really is, one of the last and
highest of spiritual attainments, a thing that can
be learned only through long training and at great
cost. It is very easy to go on rejoicingly with
God when He, every moment, makes the smoothest
of pathways for my feet; opening Red Seas by
miracle as soon as I reach them ; sending manna
from heaven as soon as I am hungry ; making the
hard rock yield me a gushing stream as soon as I
faint with thirst. But when I "see not my signs,"
when He gives me none of these tokens of His
care, but rather leaves me purposely without them
to find what manner of spirit I am of, still to go on
as happily as if I saw them all — still to believe the
love that hides itself, still to trust where I cannot
understand — that is the only faith worth anything,
the only faith that " overcomes." " Little Faith"
may be a sincere enough disciple, but he is always
an unhappy and discouraged one. "Great Faith"
is a prince with God, a conqueror not only over
sin, but over fear.

NOT FEAR, BUT TRUST 55

The Master seems to teach me by these storms
on the lake, that the sore troubles that break over
my life do not always, or often, come as punish-
meyits for some sin, but rather as discipline for the
deepening of my trust. The disciples were sur-
prised by sudden storms when they were in the
way of duty, simply obeying the Master's command
to cross the lake ; and that fact seems to say to
me, " Do not argue that, when some very sore and
unlooked-for trial comes on you — in your body,
your home, your business, your reputation, or
whatever else — you must have been somehow
grieving your Lord and compelling Him thus to
chastise you. It need not be a punishment, but
only one of His strange ways of raising you to a
higher conception of Him, and to a nobler faith.
This sevenfold heated furnace is not kindled by
" the wrath of the King," but by His love ; and
the meaning of it will be clear when the faith
that has endured it is purified by means of it, and
shines out a finer faith than it was before. Some
one has said that "Providence, like Hebrew, needs
to be read bacJcivards.''^ It is the end that explains
the beginning. I can wait for God's explanations
till heaven comes ; meanwhile, " I will trust, and
not be afraid."

Looking at that second storm, where Peter's
faith and fear were both called out, the one by the
Master, the other by the waves, it gladdens me to
see that the Lord did not rehulce His trembling

56 NOT FEAR, BUT TRUST

disciple till He had saved him first, and that He
laid hold of Peter before Peter could lay hold of
Him. It is always so. It is the Lord who begins,
as well as completes, the saving work. I do, and
must, cling firmly to my Deliverer's hand ; still,
my security lies not in my grasp of Him, but in
His grasp of me. My grasp, however firm, may
soon relax; but His hand is never weary and never
weak. In that my safety lies.

I think, too, with joy, of the exceeding tender-
ness of the Master's rebuke when at last He
uttered it. He did not say, " Wherefore didst
thou come, if thy faith could not hold out? " He
only says, " Wherefore didst thou doubt 1 " The
Lord of the soul never says to any man, " You
have trusted Me too much." He did not say
to Peter, " 0 thou of no faith," only " 0 thou of
little faith," for He saw some faith there; and
though a strong faith wins His strong encomium,
even a weak faith gladdens His heart. Still, weak
faith misses much that great faith always enjoys.
John Bunyan, in his inimitable " Pilgrim's Pro-
gress," pictures many varieties of little faith.
Besides " Little Faith " himself, there is " Eeady-
to-halt," and " Feeble-mind," and "Fearing," and
"Despondency," and "Much-afraid." He has
given so many portraits of that family just because
the family is so large, and some of them are to be
met with almost everywhere ; and though they all
got into the Celestial City at the end, they suffered

NOT FEAR, BUT TRUST 57

terribly by the way, from obstacles that a stronger
faith would have easily overcome. " Great Faith"
lives in the tropics, and has a perpetual summer ;
'' Little Faith's " years are like Norwegian years —
very short summers and very long winters ; his
harvests can hardly be reaped, the storms are wild,
and his music is chiefly in the minor key. Surely
little faith is not what might be expected from one
who has so great a Lord ! There is such an
infinity of grace and power in Him, that He
expects the heart that trusts Him at all to trust
Him to the uttermost ; at least. His blessed way
of lifting me out of all my discouragements is
this— a loving whisper, *' Wherefore didst thou
doubt?"

When I see my Master, as I hope to do, in the
land beyond the sea, and begin to recount, as I am
sure to do, the wonders of His love to me when
I was crossing to it, when I " praise Him with
unsinning heart," and tell Him that the most
wonderful of all surprises is just to find myself in
heaven beside Him after all, a heaven I some-
times hardly hoped to see, I think He will have
nothing to say to me but this, '' 0 thou of little
faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ? Was I not
well able to keep My promises to thee ? Where-
fore didst tJiou doubt i Has not all the darkness
passed, as I said it would ? Wherefore didst thou
douht ? Did I not tell thee that ' My sheep can
never perish ? ' Wherefore didst thou douht ? Has

68 NOT FEAR, BUT TRUST

not death itself been made to thee the gate of
heaven, as I said it would ? Wherefore didst thou
doubt ? Am I not proving to thee here, in the
glory and the gladness, proving to thee for the
thousandth time, that ' him that cometh unto Me
I will in no wise cast out ? ' Wherefore didst thou
doubt ? Dost thou not now see that all the paths
of the Lord were mercy and truth ? 0 thoio of little
faith, wherefore didst thou doubt .^ " If this will
really be my gracious Saviour's love-welcome to
me at the last, and if all my doubts of Him will
end on the other shore, I will try to end them even
here, and say, as I look straight to His blessed
face, '* Lord, I believe ; help Thou my unbelief."

•' When I ill darkness walk,
Nor feel the heavenly flame,
Then is the time to trust my God,
And rest upon His name.

Soon shall my doubts and fears

Subside at His control,
His loving-kindness shall break through

The midnight of the soul.

Blest is the man, 0 God,

That stays himself on Thee;
Who wait for Thy Salvation, Lord,

Shall Thy salvation see."

IX

THE NICKNAMED CHEIST

" If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how
much more shall they call thera of His household ? " — Matthew
X. 25.

This question comforts me. It even ennobles me.
To be a sharer in "the reproach of Christ" —
what greater honour could fall to me on earth than
that ? This carrying of my Master's cross is a link
between me and Him. I have sometimes almost
envied Simon the Cyrenian his privilege of help-
ing to carry the actual cross on the way to Calvary :
but I see that it is given to me to '' take up the
cross daily " and carry it after Him, '' so filling up
that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ " ;
and I envy Simon no more. What he did o?ice I
can do every day.

What scandalous misrepresentations my Lord
had to endure, not merely from His angry and
contemptuous foes, but even from His well-meaning
friends ! I recall how, once, His own mother and

59

60 THE NICKNAMED CHRIST

His brethren, unable to understand His absorbing
devotion to His Father's work, afraid that He was
kilHng Himself by His protracted labours of love,
and fearing that He was exposing Himself to
danger from plots devised to take away His life,
sought to "lay hands on Him," and hurry Him
away into a place of safety, saying, " He is beside
Himself." They wanted to shield Him from
violence by the cruel suggestion that He was not
responsible for His acts! "He is in league with
Beelzebub," said the Pharisees. " No," said His
friends, " but His strange ways of acting, so unlike
those of any other Kabbi in the land, show that
He is not quite Himself ! " How much my Lord
had to endure from blinded men ! The Incarnate
Wisdom was defended from the charge of being a
demoniac by the excuse that He was a lunatic !

If I am faithfully following in my Master's steps,
I will sometimes have similar misrepresentation to
meet ; but I may console myself by remembering
that "it is enough for the disciple to be as his
Lord." Neither Christ nor Christ-like men can
have much of popularity in a world that despises
both ; and the more closely I tread in my Master's
footprints, the less of this popularity will I share.
If true to my Lord, I must exited the hatred of
"the world," and not be disconcerted when it
comes. Sometimes an inexperienced Christian is
alarmed at it. Called suddenly to oppose the
world, after having been long sheltered in the safe

THE NICKNAMED CHRIST 61

rest of a Christian home, the intense hatred and
scorn which a decided stand for Christ calls forth
comes upon him as an unwelcome surprise, and
he either falls before it, or wonders that a Master
who said, " My yoke is easy and My burden is
light," gives him so heavy a cross to bear. Some-
thing of this sort may fall to my lot soon. Let
me fortify myself beforehand by considering how
hel;pful the opposition of the world may prove
to be.

For one thing, it will help me to realise more
distinctly that I belong to Christ. It will only
assure me that I am of the Master's " household " :
for if I were not, the world would let me alone.
So if I am not spared the pain of the cross, I am
not denied the blessing of it either.

For another, it will make my separateness from
the world more clear to others as well as to
myself. Whenever I find that completely worldly
men delight in my society, and that I delight in
theirs, I need no other proof of the unsatisfactory
character of my own spiritual life. The disciple -
ship of an unworldly Christ must be a Church
Militant, not a Church Quiescent ; and so long
as it is so, " all that will live godly in Christ
Jesus must suffer persecution."

No doubt the timid, indolent, self-seeking, time-
serving disciple, who is silent in the presence of sin,
who never disturbs the composure of the world
by word or act, who never by his own godliness

62 THE NICKNAMED CHRIST

of life condemns the world, will be not only
unmolested, but even praised as a beautiful
specimen of what a charitable, tolerant, broad-
minded Christian ought to be ! But true
" witnesses " for God's righteousness the world
cannot endure to-day, any more than it could
endure the Supreme Witness nineteen centuries
ago. It will persecute them now just as it did
then ; if not with material fire and sword, at least
with weapons quite as keen, and whose wounds go
deeper far — with slander and scorn and ridicule
and that quiet, contemptuous, social ostracism
which, to many sensitive hearts, is the hardest
thing of all to bear.

If I do not earn, to some extent, the same
opprobrium that bespattered my Lord, I may well
begin to ask myself whether my discipleship is so
bold and thorough-going as He expects it to be.
The world likes best a religion that has its claws
cut and its teeth drawn ; that is simply orna-
mental, and offends nobody. But if my religion
is one that gets the praise of completely unsanctified
men, because, as they say, it is so reasonable and
sane and moderate, always " kept in its proper
place," never making any protest against iniquity
and wrong ; I may surely ask myself, with serious
concern, whether that is the kind of religion under
the power of which my Master lived and died, or
the kind of religion that should satisfy me as His
disciple. Eather let me count it an honour to be

THE NICKNAMED CHRIST 63

nicknamed ^' picritanical " because I cannot stoop to
the level of those whose only notion of " pleasure "
is utter frivolity or vice, whose only idea of
** liberty " is unbridled license to sin. Let me
pray, with deepest earnestness, that my Lord may
never need to say to me, " the world cannot hate
you, but Me it hateth, because I testify of it that
its deeds are evil."

Still, let me remember that the comfort of my
Master's words belongs to me only if the hatred of
the world which I endure is really a hatred of my
godly uprightness; if, when I am ''persecuted,"
it is really "/or my righteousness^ sake." For a
disciple of Christ may be disliked by the world on
quite other grounds than that. There may be
something in his bearing which needlessly exas-
perates men, instead of conciliating them. In the
tone with which he rebukes sin there may be,
consciously or unconsciously, an arrogance which
destroys the power of his rebuke. Some foolish
utterances of his own he may insist upon being
received as the very truth of God ; or his argu-
ments in support of the truth may be absurd and
weak ; and opposition to him excited by such
defects as these he must not call opposition to
God. He may be disliked and hated for some
glaring faults in his own character, and not "for
Christ's sake " at all. Not every earnest Christian
is ivise. Even thoroughly genuine men may so
act that "their good comes to be evil spoken of."

64 THE NICKNAMED CHRIST

It is needful, therefore, before claiming for myself
the comfort of this word of my Master's, to be well
assured that it is really His reproach I bear ; that I
am carrying His cross, and not merely one of my
own making. But if I am "reproached for the
name of Christ, happy am I : the spirit of glory
and of God resteth upon me, and He is glorified."
One other thought suggests itself. The men
that sneered at Christ have ceased their sneering
long ago, and never will sneer again. The Christ
they mocked came forth from that fire unharmed,
and has been for long centuries on the throne of
heaven where angels worship Him and saints
adore. If my cross be heavy, I have not very far
to carry it : and five minutes of heaven will more
than compensate all. " Christ and His cross ^^^
said Samuel Eutherford, " go hand in hand to
heaven's gate, but they part company for ever at
that door : within the gate are only Christ and
His glor2j.^^ To carry my Master's reproach for a
few short years is all He asks, and He will repay
me with everlasting honour. Surely the carrying
it may be my joy ! It has been beautifully said
regarding Simon the Cyrenian, who carried with
Christ the heavy cross of wood, that when he
began that walk along the Via Dolorosa he could
have told to a pound the weight he had to lift ;
but ere he had finished the journey to Calvary,
he had forgotten that there was a cross upon
his back at all. If I bear the Master's cross

THE NICKNAMED CHRIST 65

unwillingly, I will talk plenty about my " sore
affliction"; but if, by companying with Him, I
catch something of His Spirit, know something
of His grace, and see something of His glory,
I will forget my own pain, and only rejoice in the
privilege of suffering "with Him."

Oh the sorrow of it, that I have borne so little
for Him who bore so much for me ! Let me stir
myself up to a truer discipleship : and then —

•'If on my head for Thy dear name
Shame and reproach shall be,
I'll hail reproach and welcome shame,
If Thou remember me."

X

DULL MINDS AND MEMOEIES

" Why reason ye, because ye have no bread ? Perceive ye not yet,
neither understand ? Have ye your heart yet hardened ? Having
eyes, see ye not ? and having ears, hear ye not ? and do ye not
remember? When I brake the five loaves among five thousand,
how many baskets full of fragments took ye up ? . . . and when the
seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments
took ye up ? . . . How is it that ye do not understand ? " — Mark
viii. 17-21.

" Know ye not this parable ? and how then will ye know all
parables ? " — Mark iv. 13.

" Are ye also yet without understanding? " — Matthew xv. 16.

The great Master had to suffer not only from
*'the contradiction of sinners," but from the
obtuseness of His own disciples. And yet how
gently He dealt with both ! If I am sometimes
irritated by slowness of comprehension in those I
am seeking to lead into truth, let me think how
patiently He dealt with those He had been teach-
ing for more than eighteen months, and seemingly
in vain. He was grieved with their obtuseness
and forgetfulness ; one might say He was dis-

66

DULL MINDS AND MEMORIES 67

appointed with it ; but He was not angry. He
did not give up the work in disgust or despair.
He quietly taught them for the twentieth time,
what they had not taken in at any of the previous
nineteen. Still, there was something pathetic in
His rebuke. It saddened Him to see that they
could not understand the simplest forms of His
teaching, and could not rise above the lowest level
of thought. '* Why reason ye because ye have no
bread ? Do ye not remember ? " They could not
profit by a wonderful past. They seemed not able
to use their eyes and their ears. His nine con-
secutive questions about the miracles and the loaves
showed how accurately He remembered all. He
could recall the smallest details ; the varying
numbers of the people that were fed ; the varying
numbers of the loaves and fishes ; the two different
kinds of baskets ; and the differing number of
baskets, proportioned to their size. No detail had
faded from His recollection. Why should all have
made so small an impression upon them ? Why,
above all, should they imagine that He was always
troubling Himself about the small earthly matters
that troubled them ? Would they never rise to
His level of concern, to His absorption with great
spiritual realities, instead of living so far down
among merely material ones ? And again , would
they never come to see that to Him the inward
was infinitely more than the outward ? that what
He looked chiefly at was not the washing of the

68 DULL MINDS ANt) MEMORIES

hands but the cleansing of the soul? ''Are ye
also yet without understanding as to this ? " He
says. Was their unworldly, heavenly-minded
Master a complete enigma to them still, after all
these months ?

But am I so very different from these disciples ?
Does He find no blind eye or deaf ear — no dulness
of memory and understanding in me ? For many
long years He has been showing me the wonders
of His love, and I see them not. He has been
speaking to me with many a voice — sometimes
sternly, sometimes encouragingly, sometimes warn-
ingly, always lovingly ; and I hear Him not. When
I am disheartened, I forget His power, and I
forget my own experience of His power. I am
worried and troubled, as if I had never known
what it was to have Him supplying all my need.
It is because I " do not remember " that I doubt ;
because I " do not remember " that I sin; because
I " do not remember" that I fear. Each new
emergency lands me in new perplexity, because I
*' do not remember." This is 7ny great failing too.
Must I not be grieving and disappointing my
Master just as these disciples did ?

But I must ponder His question about His
parable, as well as these questions about the
miracles. " Know ye not this parable ? " He asks,
''how then will ye understand others?" It was
a very simple one, but they could not read it ; and
He says, with a sort of sadness in His tone, " how

DULL MINDS AND MEMORIES 69

can I teach you My deeper things, if this is too
deep for you ? " Let me take home to myself the
truth that, without a Divine illumination, even the
simplest divine things will be only mysteries to
me. All parables are pictorial illustrations of
truth ; and it is often easier to understand a
picture than the letterpress. But it is not illits-
tration only that I need ; I need illmnination too.
If the Spirit of truth does not unfold the truth to
me, I shall never see it. To the things of God
even the most soaring genius may be completely
blind; its flashes of intuition, even, tell nothing.
The sea of Divine truth is one whose shallows,
equally with its depths, it cannot fathom of itself.
" The natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God." But more than that : " they are
foolishness to him, neither can he know them ; for
they are spiritually discerned." When I have
difficulties about the interpretation of the Word, I
will pray for this Divine illumination first of all.
I will not ask the commentators what my Master
means. I will go directly to the Author Himself ;
and His promise to me is that I shall not go in
vain. '' The Spirit of truth," He says, " shall guide
you into all the truth."

But in the last of these questions the Lord
came even closer home to His disciples' hearts.
There was another thing yet He wondered at : their
slowness to understand that His kingdom's right-
eousness concerned itself more with inward purity

70 DULL MINDS AND MEMORIES

than with merely external obediences. When the
formal, punctilious Pharisees rebuked them for
eating with unwashen hands, and He defended
them by expounding that the real purity was purity
of heart, they could hardly take in a doctrine so
revolutionary of all their accustomed modes of
thinking ; and the grieved Master had again to
say to them, " Are ye so without understanding
also?" "Do even ye not yet perceive that the
real seat of evil is the evil heart, and that if the
heart be not cleansed, all cleansing of the hands
will go for nothing ? " The scribes lived only upon
ceremonies. Jesus lived upon Truth. That was
the essential difference between Him and them;
and it roused His righteous indignation that the
leaders of the people, the scholars and the theo-
logians of the day, were teaching others that reli-
gion consisted in a punctilious round of mean
trivialities, that could be attractive only to the
meanest souls.

I glory in having a Master who always looked
beneath the surface, and brought Eeality into view.
He never attempted to " save appearances " at the
expense of truth. He said " the kingdom of God
is within you " ; " what your hearts are, that you
yourselves are, and only that." And I cannot but
think how terribly, if He were visibly amongst us
to-day. He would thunder upon the world these
scorching exposures of His, and tell it that rehgion
is not a poor affair of meats and drinks, of ritual

DULL MINDS AND MEMORIES 71

and music, and sacerdotal magic, nor even of alms-
giving and benefactions and worship where wor-
ship is in the fashion ; but of purity of soul,
sanctity of life, and complete consecration to the
will of God. " Washing your hands ! " He would
say, "as if that were enough, while, all the time,
you are soaking your souls in secret pollution ! "
And how He would set fire, too, to those poor
controversies that so often divide His Church :
controversies about things as unimportant to its
great mission as the washing of hands was to the
service of God. Alas ! how slow His disciples still
are to learn that they cannot be on the way to the
kingdom unless the Life of the kingdom be within
them ! and how many that would pass for Christians
are strongly disinclined to seek that this kingdom's
Life may be so fully in them as to be the great
controlling force ! When He asks them, " Wilt
thou be made wliole ? " they say, " No — somewhat
better, certainly, but not completely wliole.'^
Nothing would more utterly disconcert them than
that Christ should set them completely free from
every land of sin ! But if my worldliness is soul-
deep, and my Christliness only skin-deep, the
world may applaud me, but Christ will not own
me for a day.

Do all disciples understand their Master even
yet ? Do I understand Him well enough to see
that my chief concern every day must be to look to
the state of my affections and desires, and that

72 DULL MINDS AND MEMORIES

my chief effort every day must be to be pure
within ?

One other thought suggests itself to me — a very
comforting one. Absolutely perfect is my Lord's
knowledge of all the impurities, and lusts, and
deceits, and falsities that lie concealed in every
human heart ; and yet (wonder of wonders !) His
knowledge of this dark and deep depravity does
not chill His love. He knows the very worst about
me ; He sees me to be inherently more vile than
I ever saw myself to be ; He knows not only all I
have been, and all I am, but all that I yet will
show myself to be till sin is expelled from my
heart for ever. And yet He undertakes to be my
Kedeemer from it all ! Only when I realise this
blessed truth can I look my sins in the face, though
humbled and broken-hearted because of them ; for
then there comes to me the glad news of God,
that " where sin aboundeth, grace aboundeth still
more."

XI

THE HIDING OF HIS POWER

" How many loaves have ye ? " — Matthew xv. 34.

" Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat ? " — Johk vi. 5.

The first thing I notice here is my Master's deep
compassion for every human need; not for the
highest only, but even for the lowest of all.
" Jesus moved with compassion " is His enduring
name ; a name that explains His life, His teachings,
and His death as well. It was out of compassion
for the sinful, that He came ; out of compassion
for the ignorant, that He spoke ; out of compassion
for the sorrowful, that He wept ; out of compassion
for the wayward, that He rebuked ; out of com-
passion for the sick, that He healed ; out of com-
passion for the lost, that He died : and it is out of
compassion for His weak and weary and tempted
and discouraged brethren that He lives in heaven
" making intercession " still. A com;passionate
Christ is the Christ I need. Even among earthly

73

74 THE HIDING OF HIS POWER

friends the compassionate friend is the one that I
need oftenest and need longest too. A clever friend
suits me well enough now and then ; an amusing
friend may be good for my lighter hours ; an
argumentative friend may help me when perplexed.
But all these fail me in my deepest needs ; they
even become wearisome when my heart is sad. It
is my Master's infinitely tender compassion for my
wants, for my infirmities, for my temptations, and
for my griefs, that attracts me to Him and binds
me to Him most.

Here He was compassionating the souls of that
great multitude, speaking to them His '' wonderful
words of life " ; but He was compassionating their
bodies too, giving them His wonderful food from
" a table in the wilderness." Let me seek to be
like my Master in this, as in all things else.
Carrying to these hungry ones the greatest of all
messages. He yet remembered that they had
nothing to eat : and the best sermon will fall flat
on one who is perishing for lack of food. That
cheap religion which leaves a tract at the door of
the poor, where it ought, first of all, to have left a
loaf of bread, or a sack of coal, was not my
Master's religion. He was touched with a feeHng
of the infirmities of the starving as well as the
sins of the lost.

There are philanthropists in plenty who go to
the other extreme, quick to relieve the hungry or
the sick, but with little or no sympathy for their

THE HIDING OF HIS POWER 75

spiritual needs. Caring for the hody they under-
stand, but caring for the soul seems only waste of
energy and time. These two kinds of philanthro-
pists are often suspicious of each other. Each
cries out that the other is working on wrong lines.
It would be a dark day for the Divine kingdom in
the world if the Church should forget that the
spiritual needs of men are really the deepest and
most pressing ; but it too often lays itself open to
the scorn of the world by forgetting what its
Master did, and leaving to unchristian men the
work of practical sympathy which ought to be dear
to itself. There was really much force in the
remark of the son of a very miserly Christian who
prayed for the poor, "Father, I wish I had your
meal-barrel, and then I would answer your own
prayers."

But I see here more than my Lord's beautiful
compassion : I see also His bountiful hand. I
see the infinite resources of Divine Power that lay
behind the tenderness of Divine Love. My own
compassion, when it is deep, continually outruns
my resources. I would help thousands : I can only
help one or two. In Jesus Christ the resources
were always equal to the compassion ; and it was
just His perfect consciousness of possessing these
resources of secret power that kept Him calmly
going with His higher work till the fit moment
came for bringing them forth. It was not the
Master, but the disciples, that first alluded to the

76 THE HIDING OF HIS POWER

difficulty of providing food for that hungry multi-
tude. They came to Him with a hint that He
had been too absorbed in His spiritual work to
note the lapse of time, and that really He ought
to think of it, and send them away. So the dis-
ciples seemed to be more considerate than the
Master was ; but only because they did not know
either His thoughts or the infinite reserves of His
power. The utmost of their compassion was,
" send them away to buy." He looked at them
quietly, and said, " They need not depart; give ye
them to eat." I would like to have seen their
faces as He said that ! They thought themselves
extremely benevolent in making their little sugges-
tion. All they got for it was a quiet rebuke for
distrusting Him. Alas ! how prone are all disciples
still to come to the Lord with their poor sugges-
tions, as if He needed to be reminded of what is the
best thing for Him to do ! Surely He knows well
when the sun is going down and when hunger
will become distress. Let mo leave my Master
to manage everything for me, knowing that He has
the best of reasons for all He does and for all He
seems forgetting to do ; both for His interventions
and for His delays : for He never brings out to me
His resources till I am at the end of mij oivn.

The Lord's question to Philip was not for infor-
mation. " This He said to prove him, for He
Himself knew what He would do." He always
knows how every emergency of mine is to be met,

THE HIDING OF HIS POWER 11

He knew, from the first, toJiat He would do on that
green hillside, and Jioiv He would do it. He knew
the power that was in Himself ; and so He went
on calmly with His heavenly work till the right
moment came for revealing that power. By His
question He was not asking food from Philip ; He
was SLsking faith. The answer He wanted would
have been, " Lord, all things are possible unto
Thee; speak the word only, and this multitude
shall be filled." But poor Philip could only begin
to calculate and reckon up the cost in earthly
coin ! Very thoroughly did the question '' prove "
that disciple, and prove him to his shame. Does
not my Lord often confront me with difiiculties
just to prove whether I have sufficient faith in
Him or not ? He has always a good reason for
everything He does, or delays to do ; and though
the reason may be a merciful one, it is frequently
a humbling one as well. For loss of health, for
the miscarrying of my plans, for the emptying of
my home, for the frustration of my hopes, for the
baffling of my selfish schemes He has always a
reason: and the reason may be this, to "prove"
whether I know Him so well as to trust Him
right through all. I will try, henceforth, to see
written by His hand, over all the strange and inex-
plicable trials of my life, this great inscription,
*' this He did to prove him " ; and then I will
write with my own hand beneath it, ''I will trust,
and not be afraid." I will call even the barest

18 THE HIDING OF HIS POWER

wilderness in my life by a new name, " Jehovah
Jirah," for I am sure to see how wonderfully there
"the Lord can provide." My own resources may
be very small ; only a few loaves and fishes. But
He can make them suffice, and more than suffice,
for everything. The poorest Christian upon earth
might lay his head down peacefully upon the
pillow every night, with more than the comfortable
feelings of a millionaire, if, after thinking of his
little stock, and realising how poor it is, he would
only add to it, " and Christ, and Providence, and
my Father in heaven, and the power that can
supply all my need, and the Love that never
fails."

So, too, in all my work for the Master, even the
high spiritual work in which He may call me to be
a sharer with Himself. He asks me, in that work,
to reckon up my resources — not to make me feel
how great, but how poor they are ; and so to
throw myself, in utter helplessness, upon His great
"power that worketh in me"; a power great
enough to bless my little store, till it feeds even
thousands who are perishing for lack of the
heavenly Bread. It is not my strength, but my
weakness that the Master uses most. It is not my
sufficiency, but my insufficiency ; not my fulness,
but my emptiness that is the condition of all
success. Sometimes I may feel surprised that my
study and preparation, and all my mental furnishing
produce so small an effect : and I may find the

THE HIDING OF HIS POWER 7^

reason to be this, that I was too strong and too full
for God to use. I was like King Uzziahwho " was
marvellously helped, till he was strong, but when
he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his de-
struction, for he went into the temple to burn incense
upon the altar, and the leprosy rose up in his fore-
head before the priests in the house of the Lord."
So long as he was weak, and knew his weakness,
he was safe ; but with the consciousness of strength
came the presumption that led him to his fall. I
may get too strong for God to dwell in me, too
strong for God to use. "He giveth His power to
the faint.'' It is to them that "have no might,"
and know that they have none, that He " increaseth
strength." I can never have too little faith in my
own resources : but I can never have too much
faith in my Lord's. The hands I stretch out for
Him, as well as the hands I stretch out to Him
must be empty hands. Only by what He puts into
them will a single soul be blessed.

XII
"WHAT THINK YE OF CHEIST ? "

" Whom do men say that I the Son of man am ? " — Matthew
xvl. 13.

" But whom say ye that I am ? " — Matthew xvi. 15.

These are still the most living questions of the
age. "What think ye of Christ?" is a touch-
stone that tries everything else. What I am
towards Christ, that is my real character before
God. Character, condition, destiny, are all
wrapped up in that.

As they came from my Master's lips these
questions were profoundly pathetic ones. He had
just been " alone, praying." Burdened with the
unbelief in His mission that met Him everywhere,
He had been pouring out His heart in secret to
the Father; and what the Father whispered to
Him had been very sweet : and yet it would com-
fort Him a little to get from these disciples who
knew Him best, some hearty Amen to the Father's
voice ; and so, leading up to the greater question

"WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?" 81

by a smaller one first, He asks, "Whom do vien
say that I am? and whom do yeV

I notice, in their answer to the first question,
an indication of how greatly the generality of
the people resj^ected the Master. They had only
good to say of Him. The Pharisees could say
nothing too bad about Him. They called Him
a Samaritan, a blasphemer, a drunkard, a devil ;
but the general community had only good to say of
the Wonder-worker and Wonder-speaker who
moved amongst them so unostentatiously and so
beneficently, day after day. Looking at the
manysidedness of His character, the mingling in
Him of a holy zeal for righteousness, and a
gracious tenderness to the sinful and the sad, they
had different names to give Him ; but all of them
great names, names of honour and respect. Yet
that did not satisfy Him. It would have more than
satisfied any of the disciples to be regarded so ;
but He claimed more than mere wonder, and liking,
and respect. To be admired and followed as being
even the wisest and best of men was not enough
for Him ; for He claimed to be Divine, and I find
that it cheered the heart of my Lord to get from
Peter's heaven-taught reply a recognition of that
truth ; to get from him not admiration merely, but
adoration too. '' Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God."

All honest hearts, in so far as they know Christ
at all, do still respect Him, at the least. "He

7

82 "WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?"

was a good man," say most. " He deceived the
people," say only the few, and these few the men
that know Him least. Bousseau pays Him com-
pliments. Goethe thinks Him a gentleman of the
first water. Renan extols His beautiful humanity.
Thousands in our own day acknowledge Him to be
an "ideal man." But none of these will admit
Him to be anything higher than that. He is
indeed a very serious difficulty to the race. In the
first century He was a great perplexity; He has
been a great perplexity ever since. Interest in
this wonderful Christ cannot cease ; but the leaders
of the world's thought still find Him an insoluble
problem. They cannot account for Him on any of
the principles which alone they will admit. He is
so evidently unique that they cannot classify
Him. He is so many-sided that they do not
know what shelf in their museum of heroes to
put Him on.

For, to some He is only the historical Christ,
a great and noble figure of the early time, a
pattern man ; and what they give Him is only
the same hero-worship they give to many besides.
To others He is not even so much as that. He is
only a j^oetic Christ, a sublime beneficence with a
halo round His head ; too ethereal to have been
ever actual ; a beautiful dream or myth of ages
long gone by. They treasure Him as the creation
of devout fancy. Their imagination worships
Him, but that is all. To some He is a democratic

"WHAT THINK YE OF CHIRST?" 83

Christ, a reformer, a revolutionist, a man whose
teachings, if carried out, would upset all the
ordinary evil conditions of society and bring in
the golden age of brotherhood in all the earth.
For that they enthrone Him and bow the knee,
but for nothing else. There are some to whom
He is only the theological Christ. He aids their
speculations. He answers some of their doubts,
He helps them to round off their theological
beliefs ; but it is merely intellectual supremacy
they concede to Him. He moves their intellects,
but never touches their hearts. There are others
again to whom He is infinitely more, to whom He
is, above all things else, the atoning Christ, the
sinner's Christ, the uplifter of the fallen, the
redeemer of the captive, the restorer of the
strayed, the Saviour of the lost. These not
only admire and reverence Him, they worship
Him as well. They know and love Him, first as
the sinner's Christ and then as the disciples'
Christ. He is first the Christ of personal need,
and then the Christ of personal experience ; first
a Christ whom faith receives, then a Christ
whom love obeys. A Saviour first, and then a
friend, and then a Master, and for evermore a
Lord.

When I read the story of this Christ I see Him
to be not merely the Highest and the Best in a
long line of saintly souls, but standing out above
all other men, in character absolutely unique.

84 "WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?"

I cannot but see that His absolute sinlessness
is a glory that none else can share, and is sufficient
of itself to place Him far outside the circle of mere
humanity. I cannot but remember next that this
pure, sinless one declared Himself to be the very
Son of God. But such a claim, unless it were the
simple truth, could not have been made by such a
one as He ; could only have been the raving of a
fanatic, self-deluded and vain. I listen to Him
saying, " No man cometh to the Father but by
Me"; and I ask, Who then is this that claims a
place in the universe such as that ? No higher
claim was ever made by human lip; and if the
claim was not warranted by truth, then He who
made it was only an impostor after all. I cannot
forget, either, how He made Himself the court of
last appeal, saying, " I am the Truth " ; and how
He died for this crime only, that He '' made Him-
self to be equal ivith God.'' As I think of all ithis
there is but one conclusion possible. Either He
was infinitely more than the " best of men," or
He was greatly, disappointingly, less. Less He
certainly was not. Therefore more He must have
been. Unless I can worship this Jesus I cannot
reverence Him as the best of men. Unless I can
give Him my adoration I cannot give Him my
respect. But, like Thomas, I fall at His feet and
say, " My Lord and my God.''

Looking steadily, then, at my great Master
to-day, I would ask myself what kind of Christ He

"WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?" 85

is to me. I would also ask what kind of witness I
am to Him when He calls for my testimony to
Him, and asks whether that testimony is borne by
my lips alone, or by my life as well. " What dost
thou say I am to thee ? and how art thou saying
it ? Dost thou say it secretly, as if it were a thing
of which thou art half ashamed ? or dost thou say
it openly, with the joyous tone of one who glories
in confessing it ? Does thy whole life say, and say
unmistakably, ' This Christ is my Eedeemer and
my King?'" Let me look honestly at all the
outgoings of my daily life, and ask whether they
are in any worthy degree a living testimony to
Him. What am I the better for having Him
as my acknowledged Lord? What is He the
better for having me as His acknowledged disciple ?
Is He a real living Christ, in me who am a
real living man ? Is He a Christ whose image
can be seen in me, and whom, through me, the
world can better believe in, and better love ?

My own personal experience of Christ is the
only thing that will enable me to bear effective
witness to Him. No man can have another
man's Christ ; and no man can live upon another
man's experience of Christ. God's Christ must
be a Christ to vie as though He had never been a
Christ to any one else ; and He must be a living,
indwelling Christ, and not an historical Christ
alone, if He is to be my reigning King. Let
my testimony to Him not be a thing reserved

86 ''WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?"

for high occasions, but a daily thing. Even
Peter's noble confession of his Lord was too
soon belied by cowardly denials. How could
the man who cried out so enthusiastically, *' Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God," a
few months afterwards say, " I know not the
man" ! Mine be a heart that will beat truer to
my Lord than that. Mine therefore be the daily
prayer, '* Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe."

XIII
THE CIRCUMSPECTION OF THE FREE

"What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the
earth take custom or tribute ? of their own children or of
strangers ? " — Matthew xvii. 25.

No one can read the story in which this question
Hes without a feeling of profoundest reverence for
the great Master's deep humihty, and also for His
tenderness to those that were blind to His glory.
It is not merely His humiliation that is here ; it
is His humility when enduring the humiliation.
" Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He
became poor," so poor that He had not enough
even to pay the small temple-tax ; and that was
wonderful. But He did not complain of His
poverty, or feel it hard that He should have to
suffer so ; and that was more wonderful still.
Then, too, when Peter, in his usual thoughtlessly
impulsive way, had almost compromised his Master,
his Master did not compromise liim or show him

87

88 ^HE CIRCUMSPECTION OF THE FREE

up. He did not so much as rebuke him for his
hastiness, and tell him that he could not have
pondered much his own recent confession, '' Thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God," else he
would have seen the inconsistency between such a
confession, and the answer he had just been giving
to the collector of the temple-tax. The meek and
lowly Lord only asked him gently, when he came
into the house, " Do kings levy taxes upon their
own children, or upon strangers ? Should not the
children be free ? "

I cannot but like Peter for being so jealous of
his Master's honour. " Doth not your Teacher
pay the temple-tax?" they said. It was not an
ensnaring question, like many others. It was
purely official, and even courteous in its tone, for
they may have supposed this Teacher claimed to be
exempt, as the Rabbis generally did ; and Peter
answered off-hand, '' Of course He does, for He
does everything that is right." But he had much
to learn about his Master still. He needed to be
taught the divine dignity of his Lord, as he had
not apprehended it yet. So, very gently, Jesus
asks him, "What thinkest thou, Simon? is it
fitting that He who is the Lord of the temple, of
whom the whole temple speaks, should be asked to
pay dues for the service of the temple ? and could
He who came to be Himself the ransom for all
other souls be asked to pay what meant a ransom
for His own?" And yet He did it; and, in so

THE CIRCUMSPECTION OF THE FREE 89

doing, placed Himself again, where, at His baptism
by John, He had placed Himself already, in the
position of a sinner, one of the sinful race He came
to save ! It was profound humility this — taking
upon Himself all the humiliations of the law, to
** redeem them that were under the law " — willing
to be reckoned among sinners if He could thereby
take any stumbhng-stone out of a sinner's way, or
get, by that means, a readier access to a sinner's
heart. " They do not understand," He said, " that
I am really Lord of all; and if I were to claim
exemption on that ground, they would only say I
was giving a fanatical excuse, and was really
irreligiously indifferent to the honour of God ; so,
lest we should cause them to stumble and mis-
conceive, go thou to the sea, and find there the tax-
money for Me and thee."

I must ponder this wonderful "lest we offend
them." It explains the whole life of my wonderful
Master ; for that life was, from first to last, a giving
up of His divine rights, a willing sacrifice of all
that He might have claimed as His due, in order
to become, through self-renunciation, a Saviour of
the lost. So He is here, by His example, teaching
me that, in my relations with other men, I am not
to think simply of my own rights, but to consider
how insistence on my rights may injure those who
neither understand me, nor sympathise with me
in my claims. I am to think, not only of the
inherent lawfulness of many things I do, but also

90 THE CIRCUMSPECTION OF THE FRElE

of the possible harm they may do to less instructed
or prejudiced men at my side. My liberty, as a
child of God, whom ''the Son hath made free,"
may give me, in a hundred things, the right to do
what for the sake of others, I must forbear to do.
It can never be the only question for me, "Is this
lawful in itself?"; I am bound to add another
question, " Will it injure, in any way, those who
see me do it?" Some one has well said that
" thousands do harm by the use of unlawful
things ; but tens of thousands by the unwise use of
lawful things " ; for nowhere does the devil build
his little chapels more cunningly than close under
the shadow of the great temple of Christian liberty.
A thing in itself completely right and good, may
be, in its effects on others, completely evil ; and
therefore, for me a Christian, completely wrong.

I am not to torment myself with unnecessary
scruples and imaginary sins : but if I am ever
in danger of " letting my good be evil spoken of " ;
if I care only for the abstract truth of things, and
become so indifferent to an " appearance of evil "
that my indifference leads others astray, I am
bound to surrender my liberty. My right must
not lead others wrong. No man "liveth to him-
self " alone; and no man is to " put a stumbling-
stone in his brother's way," even though he him-
self is agile enough to over-leap it : for his weaker
brother may attempt the leap and fall.

So, then, when the Master said, " If any man

THE CIRCUMSPECTION OP THE FREE 91

will come after Me, let him deny himself," I think
He meant not only " Let him deny his own
jjassions,'' " Let him deny his own ambitions,^' ^^ Let
him deny his own ivill,'' "Let him deny his own
ease,'' but also, " Let him deny his own rights,
and so be My disciple." Surely it ought to be to
me a far higher joy to walk in the footsteps of my
self-sacrificing Master, than to gratify myself. If I
can, and do, give thanks for my Christian liberty,
I can give God even higher thanks for His grace
that enables me to give up my liberty, whenever I
can thereby remove a single stone of prejudice, or
misconception, or temptation, from a brother's way.
I will not surrender my conscience for any man,
but I will gladly surrender my rights, if, by doing
so, I can better serve my self-forgetting and self-
sacrificing Lord. For, what is the good of a
religion that lets me look down upon men who are
in darkness, and only congratulate myself that I
am in the light? I must have a religion of
practical sympathy with the blindness of men, of
tender care for their prejudices, of love strong
enough to help them to the uttermost against their
temptations and against their sins.

And yet how slow I am to feel as my Master
felt ! How indignant I sometimes feel if my rights
are not given me, if I am not recognised and
appreciated as I think I ought to be ! How easily
I stand upon my dignity, if I am not treated with
due deference ! How hard it is for me to be always

92 THE CIRCUMSPECTION OP THE FREE

clothed with humihty, as my great Master was !
How little inclined I often am to give up what
ministers to my own comfort, or ease, for the sake
of being helpful to the weaknesses of others ; or, to
'* seek not mine own profit, but the profit of many,
that they may be saved " !

Perhaps it would help me to settle many
doubtful questions regarding matters affecting my
practical life were I to bring them to such a test
as Christ's example here ; and to ask, not simply,
*' Can I do this without any harm to myself ? " but,
*'Can I doit without harm to others?" What
would my own honest verdict on my daily life be,
if I were to lay it alongside of the example and
precepts of my Master, and by that high standard
judge what its character and complexion really are ?
Let me learn to weigh everything in His perfect
balance — my business and my recreation ; my
getting and my spending; my reading and my
conversation ; my food and my drink ; my enter-
tainments and my dress ; my public life, my social
life, my domestic life, my private life ; my friend-
ships and my correspondence; my speaking and
my listening ; the glances of my eye, the tones of
my voice ; my words to others, my words about
others ; my silence as well as my speech. Let me
faithfully test all this, asking whether it is, all of
it, " to the glory of God," as was everything, how-
ever small, that my Master did. '•^ All to the
glory of God!'' — What a grand idea! What a

THE CIRCUMSPECTION OF THE FREE 93

magnificent thought, that I can add to the glory of
God by my obedience and my self-sacrifice, even in
trivial things ! But, " all to the glory of God ! " —
What a thunderbolt that is, to be sent crashing
through my self-pleasings, overturning everything
that stands in its way !

"IIow shall I follow Him I serve?

How shall I follow Him I love ?
Nor from those blessed footsteps swerve,

Which lead me to His seat above ?
To fault, to grieve, to die for me

Thou camest — not Thyself to please —
And, dear as earthly comforts be.

Shall I not love Thee more than these ? "

XIV
DIVINE SHEPHEEDHOOD

" How think ye ? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of
them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and
goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray ? " —
Matthew xviii. 12.

Some of the Master's most beautiful and most touch-
ing words sprang out of what was causing Him the
deepest pain. The bruising of Hig spirit only
made it exhale its sweetest perfume on all around.
The pain that produced this exquisite parable of
Divine Love was occasioned by that unsubdued
pride in His disciples which made them eager for
pre-eminence in place and power; wanting to know
which of them would be highest in the kingdom
He had been telling them of. Jesus, casting His
eye over the ceaseless, foolish strifes of men, and
this new illustration of them, seemed to be saying
to Himself, ' ' What a world it is ! What a selfish
world ! What a proud world, too ; every one tramp-
ling others down, to get a little higher up! Even

94

DIVINE SHEPHERDHOOD 95

My own disciples no better than the rest ! " It
went to His heart to see it. So, to shame them out
of it, He began by setting a little child in their
midst, and saying, " You want to be high? Well,
then, be as low as this little child" ; and then, to
bring them down from their pride still more. He
lifted for a moment the veil that hung between them
and the invisible world, and showed them the
highest and holiest of created beings, serving joy-
fully and humbly the very weakest of the world
below them ; and He finished by telling them again
how He, the Lord of angels, had come to men just
to do the same — to humble Himself for the seeking
and saving of the lost. " You are seeking to be
great," He says, " remember that the greatest is
the lowliest and most self-effacing of all."

My Lord is leading me here into a ''great
deep," His own heart of grace. He is bidding me
think of two marvels of that grace, the wonder of
which only grows the longer I meditate upon them.
His utter lowliness, and His infinite love. If there
be any truth in the idea that this poor earth of ours is
the only one of all the million orbs of the sky that
sin has wrecked, I can see one reason, at least, why
" He took not on Him the nature of angels," but
"was found in fashion as a man." He was
leaving the ninety and nine worlds that were sin-
less and sheltered and safe, to go after the one
wanderer, the one that needed Him most. He
" came, not to be ministered unto, but to

96 DIVINE SHEPHERDHOOD

minister"; and therefore He came not to any
world that was sinless, but to the world that was
" lost " — not to the largest world, but to the world
which had the largest need : and He thought
nothing too hard, and nothing too humiliating to
do for the saving of it. This was His own all-suffi-
cient reason for the Incarnation, and all that
followed it. He was *' humbling Himself, even to
death," for the saving of the lost. Divine love is
humble love. It is the humblest of all love ;
humbler, even, than a mother's love. It is a love
that can die gladly for the most unworthy child ; a
love that can take the poor, degraded, ruined one
to its breast, even when, with all the energy of a
rebellious nature, that lost one is spurning the love
away, and saying to the tenderest Heart in all the
universe, " Get thee hence." The only adequate
measure of love is the sacrifice the love will make.
The highest form of love is love unto death ; and
the grandest illustration of love, in its intensity of
self-sacrifice, was that given all along by Jesus of
Nazareth ; so that the beautiful idea of an old
German mystic is strictly true, "I seem to see a
rich vessel, laden with the love of God, sailing for
thousands of years across the world's sea, till at
last it anchors in the harbour of Bethlehem, and
discharges all its treasures on the hill of Calvary."
The wonderful thing about this Shepherd's love
for the wandered sheep was that He was seeking
them while they were not seeking Him — when

DIVINE SHEPHERDHOOD 97

there was not even a feeble cry for help, for they
did not know that they were lost. He sought
them, not when they were repenting, ashamed,
afraid, but when they were still wandering farther
and farther astray. He went out seeking them in
all sorts of places, by all sorts of means ; and He
sought them one by one. It mattered nothing to
Him what kind of sheep they were. I do not hear
Him say, " What man of you, having a hundred
sheep, if he lose tlie best of them, doth not go after
it?" He went, with equal eagerness, after the very
worst. He did not say, "It is only one, and will
never be missed." Any one was as dear to Him as
the other ninety-nine. And it was not the loss as
felt by the sheep, but His own loss that moved Him
to the search. The wandering of even one brought
a pang to His own heart, which seemed to have its
origin in a keen sense of missing what had been
precious to Him. It is really in this feeling of loss
on the part of God that I find the explanation of
the great sacrifice He made, in the gift of His Son,
to have that loss repaired. When man fell away
from Him, He missed what had been His joy — the
praise and honour of human lives, the affection of
human hearts ; and the whole mission of His dear
Son was just one long echo of the words, " How
shall I give thee up, Ephraim ? How shall I deliver
thee, Israel ? My heart is turned within Me ; My
repentings are kindled together." Does not the
sense of loss at the beginning of the search corre-

98 DIVINE SHEPHERDHOOD

spond emphatically to the joy at its successful
close ? " Yerily I say unto j'^ou He rejoiceth more
over that one sheep than over the ninety and nine
that never strayed." He loves it now all the more
for the pain He had to find it. How deep my
Master here lets me look into His very heart ! He
seems to say that infinite love will go to any
distance, and endure any toil, for the saving of one
sheep — that Almighty Power will think its utmost
expenditure of power both recompensed and
glorified by the saving of one sheej).

Then, too, when He finds the poor lost one half
dead. He does not beat it for having strayed ; He
does not simply lift it to its feet and leave it to
find its own way back ; He knows that no sheep
ever finds its oivn way bach. It can wander, but it
cannot return. Still less, does He angrily di^ive it
home. He lays it upon His shoulder and carries
it the whole way home. Weary Himself, He lifts
it, and returns triumphantly with the lost one in
His arms.

It may well thrill my heart to remember how I
was once a lost sheep — foolishly, yet utterly, lost —
and how the Lord of love came seeking ine, and
found me, and lifted me with His strong hand so
that I am now at home again, and safe. Let me
praise my Shepherd for all that He has done, and
praise Him, also, for all that He is going to do to
keep His recovered one, and feed it till it gains new
strength to follow Him without wandering any more.

DIVINE SHEPHERDHOOD 99

But let me think, also, of my great Shepherd-
Master as an example to myself : for the work He
gives me to do is just His own work — to seek and
save the lost sheep round me, one by one. He
never spoke of "lapsed masses." He spoke of
''lost souls." His love was an individualising
love, and His methods were individualising too.
I do not read of many conversions through His
discourses to the multitudes (though there must
have been such), but I read of conversions when
He spoke to one Nathanael near his lig-tree; to
one Nicodemus in the garden privacy ; to one Levi
at the seat of custom ; to one Samaritan woman at
Jacob's well ; to one Zaccheus at Jericho. Perhaps
I can imitate Him best by taking a way like this ;
having first of all, an intenser pity for the lost,
and next, a hopeful earnestness in seeking them,
" despairing of none."

There may be some lost ones in my own family,
or among my dear and intimate friends, loving and
kind, but, for all that, strangers to the renewing
grace of God, and therefore " lost." There may be
others living in close neighbourhood to me,
meeting me every day, talking with me, united to
me by a thousand different interests, yet plainly
living " without Christ," and therefore " lost." Do
I seek to save any of these lost ones whom I know
so well ? Do I ever let them see that I am con-
cerned about their souls ? or do I maintain, on the
highest of all matters, a silence deep as death?

100 DIVINE SHEPHERDHOOD

Am I afraid to speak ? Am I ashamed to speak ?
Am I delaying to speak till some better moment
comes ? What, then, if a pang of unavailing
remorse should seize me at the last, when they
have gone for ever from my side, and I can only
reproach myself for having been so unlike my
Master in seeking to save ? " Deliver me from
blood-guiltiness, 0 God!"

XV

SMALL BEGINNINGS AND GEEAT
ENDINGS

" Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest
thou ? thou shalt see greater things than these." — John i. 50.

KiGHTLY to understand the meaning of this question
to Nathanael, I must look at what can be gleaned
of the spiritual history of the man to whom it was
addressed. It is clear that a long secret preparation
for welcoming the Christ had been going on in
Nathanael's heart. He had long been a devout
student of the Scriptures ; a man, too, of much
prayer ; a man accustomed to deep heart search-
ings, that he might be absolutely sincere in his
personal walk with God ; a man, therefore, com-
pletely open to the truth, and waiting for it. But,
in addition to that, he had very recently been
passing through an experience more than ordinarily
deep ; laying bare to God, with more than usual
fervency the innermost secrets of his soul : and

101

102 SMALL BEGINNINGS AND

this had been so entirely a secret between himself
and God, that, when Jesus said, " When thou wast
under the fig-tree, I saw thee," there instantly
flashed upon him the conviction that the Eeader
of the heart was there. These words of Jesus
were like a telegraphic cypher, unintelligible to all
else, but full of deep meaning for him.

The key to that secret experience of his is given
in the words " Behold ! an Israelite indeed, in
whom is no guile." Under the fig-tree's friendly
shade, secure from observation, he had evidently
been laying bare his whole heart to God, and
asking from Him some token of peace. Perhaps,
devout reader of the Scriptures as he was, he
may have been meditating on the thirty-second
Psalm, ** Blessed is he whose transgression is
forgiven, whose sin is covered, to whom the Lord
imputeth not transgression, and in tvJiose spirit
there is 7io guile " ; and saying to himself '' Oh, that
this blessedness were mine ! " If, then, I may
suppose that just when he had been saying so to
himself, he was suddenly interrupted by Philip
coming to him, and calling him to see the very
Christ they had both been long looking for, how
amazed he must have been that the first greeting
of Jesus took up the broken thread of his unspoken
thoughts, and told him that what he so longed for
was already his ! " How knowest thou me to be
an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile?" "I
saw thee under the fig-tree." That was enough.

GREAT ENDINGS 103

The whole truth flashed upon him in a moment
then — " this Reader of my most secret thoughts
must verily be the Christ."

Fittest type, surely, this man, of the kind of
disciples the Master not only receives, but rejoices
over, when they come and follow Him. The
precipitancy of his hasty word to Philip, " Can any
good thing come out of Nazareth ? " was redeemed
from its error by its very sincerity. It was due to
Philip's own mistake ; and if it was an error of
education and prejudice more than anything else,
it did not deepen into the sin of offence and
rejection, as it did in so many other men ; for he
was sincere to the very core, a genuine truth-
lover, who, welcoming first the truth about himself,
was soon rewarded by learning the truth about his
Saviour too.

Nathanael's open confession of the Lord followed
close upon the Lord's open confession of him.
Christ made no secret of His opinion of this disciple ;
and the disciple made no secret of his opinion of
Christ. I think there was something beautifully
significant, too, in the fact that Jesus did not go
to seek Nathanael under the dark shadow of his
fig-tree, but waited till they both stood in the
sunshine, that there He might reveal Himself as
the Light of Life. Whosoever seeks Christ in the
darkness, will find Him in the light. Whosoever
prays in secret to Him who seeth in secret, will find
the Father reward him openly.

104 SMALL BEGINNINGS AND

And how does Christ reward this " helievest
thou ? " He says " Thou shalt see, "and '' see greater
things than these." TJiis was the first promise
Jesus ever gave to any man, and it really embraces
all He can teach any man still ; but it was given,
not to the most talented, or intellectual, or pro-
found of His disciples, but to the most simple-
hearted of them all. Is not that always the
Master's way ? He manifests Himself most fully to
those that manifest themselves most fully to Him.
He lays open His secrets to those that most per-
fectly lay open theirs. Those who have an opened
heart will soon have also the opened eye.

The Lord seems here to be promising to all such
simple and guileless hearts a larger discovery of
the wonders of His grace in the new region they
have only begun to explore. " Believest thou that
I am the Omniscient One, able to read the secrets
that lie within ? Thou shalt see Me to be also the
Omnipotent One, able to unfold the secrets that
lie without. Thou hast been showing Me thy
opened heart ; I will show thee My opened heaven.
Thou hast been confessing evil things in thyself ;
thou shalt see gracious things in Me. Thou hast
been discovering worse and worse things in thyself ;
thou shalt see better and better things in Me :
thou shalt see that, in Me, earth and heaven are
no longer two, but one ; where I am, there is ' the
house of God, and the gate of heaven ' ; by Me
the angels of prayer and praise are ever going up ;

GREAT ENDINGS 105

by Me, the angels of grace and blessing are ever
coming down." The Lord, therefore, is here
teaching me that though faith must always go
before sight, it is sure to be rewarded by sight ere
long; that, if I begin with the ''believing," the
*' seeing " will come. I will be able to speak from
experience soon of the things I begin by taking
upon trust. Believing on the testimony of One
who does see, I shall see for myself.

It was the powder of Jesus to read the heart that
led Nathanael to the conviction that He was the
Son of God. It is the power of the Scriptures to
search my heart that convinces me that they are
the Divine Word of God. No other argument is
so sufficient as that. This is a book that, like no
other, searches me through and through, probes me
to the bottom, lays me bare. It seems to know all
about me, for it writes down all my experiences ;
it utters all my feelings ; it shows me what I am.
I need nothing more to convince me that it is God
Himself who speaks of me, and speaks to me here.
I read it with amazement first, but soon I read it
with more than amazement; with thankfulness
and joy. For, if it begins with showing me my
sins, it soon shows me " greater things than these."
I am taught by this heart-searching Word what it
is that I, a sinner, need — what it is I am half un-
consciously seeking for ; and soon I discover that
what I need is a Saviour, and that in the saving
Christ of whom it tells, all I need, and all I am

106 SMALL BEGINNINGS AND

longing for is found. It speaks to me of pardon ;
it brings to me the message of peace ; it opens
heaven itself to my wondering eyes ; and the
farther on I go, I am always finding in it " greater
things" than at the first I could have believed it
possible for me to know. Once I could not see
how any real intercourse between me and God
could come. To reach God seemed impossible.
Strive as I might, I could only struggle upwards
to Him a little way, for my ladder of endeavour
had so many broken steps that my further progress
was barred. It was equally a mystery to me how
God the Holy One could have any intercourse with
me. But I see it now, for this book tells me of
the " Son of Man," who is Himself the perfect
ladder joining earth to heaven. He is the one
medium of communication between the two —
between earthly need and heavenly aid. By Him
I ascend to God. By Him God descends to me.
By Him my prayers, like angel messengers, go up.
By Him the angels of grace, and power, and
peace, come down.

All this I had to take as a matter of faith at
first, but soon it became a matter of experience
also ; and still, the more I look, the more I am
able to see. Like the practised astronomer, whose
disciplined eye can see a small star in the sky,
where, to others, there is only a space of dark;
like the worker in mosaics, who can detect shades
of colour unappreciable by the unskilled ; like the

GREAT ENDINGS 107

Laplander, who can easily distinguish a white fox
upon the snow ; or like the sailor, who can recog-
nise a distant ship where the landsman sees not
even a spot on the horizon's edge, I get something
like a new power of sight from the practice of the
feeble seeing with which I begin. What once was
invisible becomes wonderfully clear. I walk by
faith, but faith issues in a larger sight. This is
the Master's way of educating me for the beatific
vision at the end — ''Believest thou? Thou shalt
see greater things than these."

I must plant a Nathanael fig-tree beside my
house, wherever that house may be, and under
the shade of it have more of Nathanael's self-
scrutiny, and Nathanael's prayerfulness. Let this
disciple assure me, from his own experience, that
whoever so humbleth himself shall be exalted ;
and that the Lord is more gracious to the broken
heart, than it can itself believe.

XVI

HAEVEST HOPE

" Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest ?
behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields ; for
they are white already to harvest." — John iv. 35.

This was one of the Lord's moments of joyous
expectancy. Early in His great work the Father
gave Him a poor Samaritan sinner's soul, as an
earnest of thousands yet to come. His heart was
leaping with the gladness of hope, as He saw the
men of Sychar flocking out to Jacob's well ; and
He felt sure that the Father who had sent Him to
" sow in tears" was going to give Him soon the
"joy of harvest" too. It was the month of
January. The recently-sown corn in the valley of
Shechem was already bursting the earth in a
wealth of green. The disciples, as they came
along from buying bread, had noted it, and had
been saying, one to another, " Four months hence
there will be a rich harvest here " ; and Jesus,
knowing this talk of theirs, said, " Yes, but I can

108

HARVEST HOPE 109

tell you of another kind of seed that ripens even
faster than that. I know of seed that was sown
only to-day, and yet, see! there is the harvest-
field already white : the crowds are coming out of
Sychar even now."

This saying of the Master's reminds me how
constantly He lived on a far higher plane than the
best of His disciples could reach. He was always
moving, in thought, among the great spiritual
realities, of which things below were only the
shadows and the types. When they were thinking
of meat for the body. He was thinking of, and
feasting on, a "meat" more blessed and more
sustaining far ; while they were talking about a
harvest of grain. He was thinking of a harvest of
souls. Tliey were like men far down in a valley
whose outlook is limited and poor; He was like
one living on a mountain-top, where the horizon is
heaven. Perhaps one reason why I, so often, do
not understand my Master when He speaks, is this,
that He is using His own heavenly language, the
grammar and even the alphabet of which are still
half strange to me ; and perhaps one reason why I
so poorly imitate my Master is that I am not
accustoming myself to climb to that heavenly
height where He habitually lived. Why do I not
see what my Master saw ? Is it not because I do
not rise high enough to my Master's side? Would
I be so earthly-minded if I did ? Would I be so
self-pleasing if I did? Would I be so disheartened

110 ■ HARVEST HOPE

if I did ? If I could always sow, as He did, with
faith and love and hope like His, might not I, too,
see my harvest the very day the sowing was begun ?
1 will let Him take me up to His own mountain of
vision to-day to show me what He sees, for He is
speaking for my encouragement, and very specially
for my encouragement when I am seeking to be a
" fellow-labourer with Him unto the kingdom of
God."

He tells me here that no faithful sowing of the seed
of the kingdom can ever be in vain. " God's seed is
sure to come to God's harvest," even though only
"after many days." I cast it into the ground, and
go my way. It is lost to my view. For all I can
tell, it may have perished. But God's care of it
begins just where my care of it ends, and He will
see to its reappearing in due time. I have often
no means of discovering the fruit of my most
faithful efforts and most persevering prayers for
other souls ; and when the soil is poor, and the
season is bad, I get sometimes into a mood of
depression that verges on despair. But my Master
would have me consider that though no fruit has
followed yet, and even though none ivill follow it
so long as I am on earth to witness it, yet when I
do see it, either in the world beyond or looking
from the world beyond, I may find a harvest whose
exceeding richness will be a glad surprise. It is
with present duty, and not with future results, that
I have alone to do. This wise Master may be only

HARVEST HOPE 111

training me to larger faith and longer perseverance
by denying me a sight of the harvest I am longing
for. He Himself has told me " to pray and not to
faint," to work, " despairing of none " ; for in the
sowing of heavenly, just as in the sowing of earthly,
seed, " the husbandman must have long patience,
till it receive both the early and the latter rain.'"
The full harvest will not come without them both;
and sometimes the " latter rain " does what the
" early rain " could not. The early rain of family
instruction, in loving words and quiet influence,
may need to be supplemented by a latter rain of
drenching afflictions before any real growth of the
buried seed appears. Long lying dormant through
the hot season of unclouded prosperity, it gets its
baptism of life when the clouds of trouble break
over it in heavy floods. The appeals that were
unheeded so long as all was bright are listened to
and yielded to when the dark hour of sorrow
comes. It is wonderful how often God's seed is
quickened by falling tears. But, soon or late, the
harvest of the faithful sower is sure.

But my Lord encourages me by telling me more
than that. He tells me that I may reap not only what
I myself have sown, but what others have sown long
before me ; that others may reap what I am sowing
to-day ; and that though the sower and the reaper
may never meet on this side heaven, they shall,
in the great harvest day, " rejoice together " over
the harvest, in the producing of which they both

112 HARVEST HOPE

had had a share. And He tells me yet again that
I may get a harvest from my own sowing sooner
than I think. At the very moment when I am
saying dolefully, " Months yet must pass before
the harvest can be mine," He may be saying,
" Look ! the field is already white." Let me take
home this loving encouragement from His lips.
He may be seeing with joy the workings of His
grace in souls that I think completely dead.
Where the very utmost I can hope for is that the
seed is beginning to take root. He may see that the
beginning was past long ago, that the preparatory
processes are already finished, and that I will reap
almost at once.

Perhaps in my work for God I may be wronging
Him, as well as discouraging myself, by looking
only far ahead for fruit. The faith that can calmly
wait is good, but the faith that can expect a rapid
ripening may be better still. God is honoured
when I expect not only great answers, but speedy
answers to my efforts and my prayers. Moody
used to say that God never does any great thing
by a despondent man. The very largest hopeful-
ness is one condition of success for all labourers in
God's field. Without this, their work will be only
a grievous burden, instead of being what He means
it to be, a glory and a joy. One of these despond-
ing sowers complained to Spurgeon that he saw
almost no conversions through his ministry. " Do
you exjject conversions from every sermon you

HARVEST HOPE 113

preach ? " was the reply. " Oh no," said the poor
worker ; '* I could not venture to look for anything
like that.'' " Well, well," said the great preacher,
" according to your faith, be it unto you."
" Attempt great things for God, and expect great
things /ro77i God," was the watchword that started
missions to India. But He is honoured by a faith
that, when He calls for service, goes immediately
to work, and looks for immediate as w^ell as great
success. If I am looking to the future at all for
my harvest, it is rather a near future than a distant
one of which I ought to think. Perhaps the law
may hold in my labour for God, as in my personal
life before Him, that I get just what I am working
for. If I am working for a late harvest, I will get
it ; but if I am wor'ki7ig for an early harvest, I
7na7j get that too.

When I am looking doubtfully and despondingly
at my prospects of success, the whisper of my
Master comes to me that many a soul about which
I am concerned may be far more ready to respond
to my appeals than I suppose ; and when I look
farther afield, over the great unsaved world, the
vast world of heathenism and superstition and
ignorance and cruelty and sin, and its millions
seem to me so hardened in their indifference to
God that long years of ploughing will be needed
to make so much as a beginning for the sowing of
His seed. He whispers to me again to be of good
courage and good cheer, for even now there are

9

114 HARVEST HOPE

thousands of weary and heavy-laden hearts there
longing for His rest, stretching out their hands in
their darkness, feeling after Him, if haply they may
find Him, and far more ready to welcome His
messages of love than my faint-heartedness and
fears believe. I thank Thee, oh my Master, for
these great words of Thine, " The fields are white
unto the harvest even now."

XVII
WISE STEWAKDSHIP

*• Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord hath
made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? "
— Matthew xxiv. 45.

" If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon,
who will commit to your trust the true riches ? and if ye have not
been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that
which is your own ? " — Luke xvi. 11, 12.

These questions are all about my stewardship ;
and though I have been for long years under the
teaching of my Lord, His lesson for me to-day is
as much needed as ever — that I am not my own,
but His ; not my own master, but His servant
only ; not a possessor, but only a steward ; and
that for even the smallest thing entrusted to me
He will reckon with me soon. I often, like Peter,
to whom first my Master spoke these words, take
gladly enough His promises of honour in His
kingdom ; but all the time give little heed to the
warning that accompanies them, that unfaithful-
ness to my stewardship will cost the losing of

116 WISE STEWARDSHIP

the reward. Not one of the disciples needed that
warning more than Peter did ; yet he was the one
who heeded it the least. I am too like Peter every
day. The work of a steward is responsible work.
Life should be more to me than a scene of easy-
going self-indulgence. The work of a steward is
diffictdt work. I need to be wise as well as faithful
in it. But it is also blessed work ; for it will bring
me now the sweetest of all satisfactions, and here-
after the greatest of all rewards. Let me, there-
fore, think seriously of the trust which this Master
has put into my hands.

Mtj oivn soul is a sacred trust. All that I am,
as well as all that I have, is to be used for Him.
I am bound to cultivate my soul, that it may not
lie a waste. I am bound to discipline it, that it
may not be full of briars and thorns. I must care-
fully guard it from the spoiler's foot. It ought to
be a garden where my Lord can walk. I am
bound to consecrate all its emotions, all its affec-
tions, all its ambitions, all its endowments, to
glorify and gladden Him. When I go up to
render my account He will ask me what I have
done with the things He put into my hands ; but
He will also ask me what I have done ivith myself.
Could I say, " Lord, thou didst send me forth with
a handful of seeds ; here is my garden full of
flowers for Thee " ?

My souVs tenement^ the body, is also a sacred
trust. I am to keep it pure too : not yielding any

WISE STEWARDSHIP 117

one of my members, eye or ear or mouth or hand
or foot, a servant to iniquity, but to hohness. And
I am to keep it strong as well as pure. The laws
of health are the laws of God ; and to disregard
them, even in the pursuit of what is right and
good, is sin. Suicide does not become guiltless
because the process may be slow. I am to " pre-
sent my body a living sacrifice, holy, and accept-
able unto Him."

My eartlily avocation is also a sacred trust ; and
I am to engage in it as responsible to Him. If I
cannot use it for His glory, it is not lawful for
myself ; and if lawful, I am still to feel that I
can lawfully carry it on only as a steward for a
Master in heaven. He speaks to me not only of
a kingdom of heaven into which I may go, but
of a kingdom of heaven that must come into me,
and rule me, and sanctify me every moment of
my life ; and I could make my little world almost
heaven-like if the gracious sovereignty of my
Master swaj^ed me every hour. I am not asked
to do heavenly work ; but to do my earthly work
in a heavenly way ; and the commonest work, if
done under my Master's eye, will be blessed work,
be it what it may. I am to sanctify my ordinary
pursuits ; not to run away from them. The truest
piety does not consist in being absorbed in the in-
visible, but in being godly in the visible. From
monks and hermits God never got much honour,
nor the world much good. It is devoutly to be

118 WISE STEWARDSHIP

hoped that many of those water-logged ''saints"
that Hved their useless lives, slowly rotting in
damp stone cells and caves, were taken to heaven
when they died ; but surely they were amongst
the poorest of all human commodities ever taken
in. I am to be in the world, though not of it ;
and only by serving my brethren can I serve my
Lord.

My joosition in life, too, is another trust given
me to use for Him. If I ever weakly say to my-
self that I would do much more good were I only
in a better position for doing it, I must remember
that the only possible way of proving that to be
true is my doing all the good I possibly can in the
position I occupy now. But, if a servant of God
at all, I can be His servant anywhere, whether,
like Abel, I am a keeper of sheep ; or, like Obadiah,
a courtier ; or, like Daniel, a statesman ; or, like
Luke, a physician ; or, like Zenas, a lawyer ; or,
like Cornelius, a soldier ; or, hke Erastus, a city-
chamberlain ; or, like David, a king. I can
sanctify my own small home, if I cannot correct
all the evils of the State. I can weep with some
lonely mourner, if I cannot dry all the world's
tears. I can talk to a few, if I have no vocation
to preach to the many. I can give Christ some of
my time, if I cannot give Him my gold. I can
be, at least, a lamp in my own dark street, if I
cannot be a star in the sky. I have just to do the
good that lies nearest to my hand — "whatsoever

WISE STEWARDSHIP 119

my hand findetli (not seeJceth) to do " ; and to do
it just because it is given me to do. My Master's
will, my Master's approval, my Master's love,
should be enough.

My time, too, is a sacred trust. Every day of
my life, as well as every faculty of my soul, belongs
to Him. To trifle with a master's time is the
besetting sin of workmen everywhere ; and it
seems not to be regarded as in the least a
wrong. But to trifle with God's time is to waste
what does not belong to me ; and that must be
quite as sinful as to seize, for my own purposes.
His goods. For, ojpportunities of usefulness are a
sacred trust. How sinfully I often let these slip !
How shamefully I let cowardice, procrastination,
fear of men, love of ease, shrinking from the cross,
and other things of a like kind, prevent my seizing
the chances that come to me of speaking a word
in season, either of gentle expostulation or of
sympathetic love !

Then, too, the trials and sorrows of life through
which I am sometimes led must be looked upon as
among the most sacred of the trusts committed to
my hands. Very seldom do I regard them so. They
are thought of as hindrances, not as helps. But if
the great Master gives to one servant abundant
wealth, to another high position, to another rich
endowments of brain, He sometimes gives to one
whom He greatly loves a sore and lengthened
trial, that out of it He may get something for

120 WISE STEWARDSHIP

His praise. He sometimes seems to say, ''I will
give you a painful sickness or infirmity to bear for
weary years ; or bereavements in quick succession,
emptying both heart and home ; or losses and
privations which will make your life what men
would call only a dreary struggle with misfortune
— but I will do all this just that you may show
how My sustaining grace can keep you calm, how
My love wdthin you can make the wilderness to
blossom as the rose ; how when Hagar's bottle is
spent God's fountain comes into view ; how out
of the eater there can come forth such meat as
it is worth any pain to be able to taste ; and you
will be a witness to Me even in your suffering,
a better servant in your utter weakness, than
hundreds who are strong and glad." The effect
of all kinds of affliction is twofold — differing
according to the character of those who suffer it.
It is like the twofold effect of fire. Some men
come out of it as bricks do, only the harder for
the burning. God's chosen ones. His trustful
ones, come out of it as gold does, the purer for
the heat — and not only the purer in themselves,
but the better fitted for being fashioned into
vessels of honour for the Master's use.

To realise this stewardship of mine, in all its
length and breadth must make life to me a
solemn thing, for I know not how soon my Lord
will call for an account of my stew^ardship, and
show whether I have been faithful or unfaithful

WISE STEWARDSHIP 121

in it. But how it sivipUfies life, to regard all of
it as stewardship to Christ! If I make this my
aim, if this is the " one thing that I do," I will
find that glorifying my Master takes up all my
hours ; and then His omnipresence will be a
precious reality to me. I will live hourly as under
His eye, and the thought of it will overshadow
me like the wings of the cherubim. My heart
finding Grod, where my creed declares Him to
be — that is, everywhere — I will live so near to
Him that I shall never be ''out of touch" with
my Father in heaven. Glances of love will be
always going up from me to Him, and glances
of love will always be coming down from Him
to me. I would seek, therefore, to live every
day as I would have my Master find me when
He comes — with all my accounts in perfect readi-
ness for His inspecting eye ; and if He will only
say to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant,"
I shall be satisfied for ever.

XVIII
UNPEOFITABLE SEEVANTS

" Which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say
to him by and by, when he is come from the field. Go and sit down
to meat ? and will not rather say to him, Make ready wherewith I
may sup, and gird thyself and serve me till I have eaten and drunken
and afterward thou shalt eat and druik ? Doth he thank that
servant because he did the things that were commanded him ? I trow
not. So hkewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which
are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have
done that which was our duty to do." — Luke xvii. 7-10.

My first thought, on hearing this question of my
Master's, might naturally be, " This is a hard
saying." It seems to represent Him as an incon-
siderate taskmaster, mercilessly exacting, concerned
only about His own ease, utterly unconcerned
about mine, and grudging me even the smallest
recognition of my service, serve Him as un-
weariedly as I may. This seems to me the more
strange because Luke alone records it, that disciple
who had so keen an eye and ear for all that was
most loving in His Master's acts and words, and

122

UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS 123

always brought His exceeding graciousness fully
into view.

And yet, on farther thought, I see that the
Master's design in the parable is not to show what
He is, but what I am, and ought to feel myself to
be. It is not to teach me the verdict I should pass
upon Hwi, but the verdict I should pass upon
myself. His relation to me is not one of contract,
but of ownership. I am what Paul so gladly called
himself, the "bondslave of Jesus Christ." I am
not hired to do just so much, and no more. I
belong to this Master absolutely. He has "bought
me with a price," and has a right to all my time,
and all my exertions too. I have no claim on Him.
I have no right to be rewarded for my service ; and
I must have no self-complacency, as if I had done
something very extraordinary, when I have done
" all that it was my duty to do."

A slave could never say or feel that his work was
done. He had to keep himself at his master's call,
by night as well as by day ; and I am to be always
at my Master's call. Though the call may come
at the most inconvenient time, I am to rise and
obey. He makes no contract to pay me " for over-
time " ; for my whole time is to be His. I am to
to be always working, always waiting, always
watching ; and I am not to complain of this, as if
it were a species of martyrdom. I am never to feel
as the bargaining disciples felt, when they said,
"Lo, we have left all and followed Thee : what shall

124 UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS

we have therefore?" I am to remember that I
am wholly His, to do with me what He will ; and
so I am neither to pity myself for anything I bear,
nor plume myself on anything I do. Even when
I have done my very best I am to feel that I
might have done far more. I am to lament that I
have served Him so poorly, at the very time that
I gratefully acknowledge His own sustaining grace,
without which I could not have done even that.
The safeguard against all self-complacency is to be
the deep conviction that, at my longest and my
best, I have done no more than it was "my duty
to do."

There is this to be remembered, too — that, apart
from any question of reward, the very surest way
to spoil my work is to grow proudly self-com-
placent over it. Indeed, my work will begin to
deteriorate the moment I am satisfied with it.
A great painter said sadly once, " My powers are
failing; and what convinces me that they are is
this, that I am now satisfied with my productions,
as I never was before." Let me listen to my
Master's warning against the subtle foe to all
sincerity, and to all progress as well. " After ye
have done all, say. We are unprofitable servants,
having done only that which it was our duty to
do."

Is it very hard for me to feel like that ? Have I
sometimes hard thoughts of my Master for
demanding from me so much as that ? Then let

UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS 125

me remember that the whole complexion of my
service is completely changed the moment I
realise that I am not to work for wages, but out of
love, and that the rest and release I often crave
(not from unwillingness to go on, but from my
natural weariness when I have to meet incessant
calls), if not given me here, is to be given indeed
in the new world where "His servants rest from
their labours," and yet — strange paradox — "serve
Him day and night in His temple," their work
being only joy, and their weariness for ever past.
I am a servant, and yet I am a son. I am a
son, and yet I cannot cease to be a servant also.
The better son I am, I will be the better servant ; and
if it is my love that constrains me to serve, I will
not ask impatiently how long the service is to go
on. Instead of complaining that my work is never
done, I will rather rejoice that I can never be out
of His employment ; that, as soon as I have finished
one work given me to do. He has some new work
ready for me to undertake. Perhaps I too often
lose the bright glow that ought to shine as a halo
round simple duty. Someone has said that the
noblest word in the English language is " Duty " ;
and certainly " duty " should appeal to me more
powerfully than it often does. Duty should be as
dear to me as Love. It was so with my Master.
He gloried in being just the unresting servant of
the Father. To do the Father's will down to the
smallest detail, as much as to finish the Father's

126 UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS

work in the great sweep of its grandest issues, was
His only aim ; and because He served from love,
the hardest service was to Him a joy. Should not
the " same mind be in me that was in Christ
Jesus " ; and would not " His joy thus be fulfilled "
in me?

This is really the only cure for that feeling of
worried depression and disappointment that comes
now and then on even an earnest worker for
God ; comes oftenest, perhaps, to those who are
most earnest. Really it is caused by nothing else
than seeking my own will instead of His. If there
is toil in my work, has not His will appointed the
toil ? If there are disappointments in my work,
does He not include the disappointments in His
plan for me ? What Mary, the mother of the Lord,
once whispered to the servants in the house at
Cana, is the best of rules for me, " Whatsoever He
saith unto you, do it." If He bids me labour on
through all the heat, and only begin fresh labour
when the cool of the day has come, let me say at
once, " the will of my Lord be done." If He bids
me, like another Paul, " depart far hence to the
Gentiles," and serve Him among the heathen, let
me go at once, however strongly I would prefer to
stay and serve at home. If, when I am burning
with a desire to follow Him in greater things. He
only says to me, "Return to thine house, and tell
them what great things I have done for thee," let
me do it, without grudging myself the loss of the

UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS 127

honour of being with Him in His larger works. If,
in the midst of fruitful work in some Samaria, He
says to me, "Arise, and go down by the way of the
south which is desert," let me go willingly even
though the "desert" should mean to me, not
different activity as it did to Philip, but a sick-bed
with long years of pain ; let me make no complaint,
whatever my Master may call me to do or to bear ;
sure that wherever I follow out my Lord's com-
mands, I am following my Lord Himself, and He
will be with me still. That will be an end of
every worry and of every fear.

And yet, for my comfort, let me think that there
is another side of the picture than that which alone
is presented here. The Master, liere^ is speaking
only of what the feelings of the servant should be ;
but He spoke at another time of what His own
feelings about His servants' work will be shown at
last to be. " Blessed are those servants whom
their lord, when he cometh, shall find watching :
verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself^
and make them to sit down to meat, and will come
forth and serve tJiem.^' If He did not " thank the
servant " once, and the servant therefore thought
Him cold and hard, he will reverse that judgment
of his Master afterwards. Though I call myself an
unprofitable servant, it does not follow that He will
call me so. Though I serve Him simply out of
love, looking for no reward, it does not follow that
there shall be no reward. I did not want to be

128 UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS

" thanked " for my service. My only aim was just
to be "approved," to be '' accepted of Him"; but
He will not let me always want an outspoken com-
mendation : He will give me even more than that.
" He will make me sit down to meat, and serve me.''
Is it so, that whatever I do for Him He will do for
me ? that if I love my Master He will love me ?
that if I honour my Master He will honour me ?
that if I serve my Master He will serve me ? Then
I understand how, when He says at last, "I was
an hungered and ye gave Me meat, thirsty and ye
gave Me drink," and the humbled servants, more
humbled by His praise than even by their own
defects, say, " Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered
and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee drink ? " He
should not only say, " Inasmuch as ye did it to the
least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me," but
should entrance them with the exceeding magnifi-
cence of the reward reserved for them, " Come,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the
foundation of the world."

XIX

HEEOIC CHEISTIANITY

"Wliat do ye more than others?" — Matthew v. 47.

" If ye love them that love you, what thank have ye? for sinners
also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them that do
good to you, what thank have ye ? for sinners also do even the same.
And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have
ye ? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again." — Luke
vi. 32-34.

Most searching questions these for my quiet
hour to-day ! They are both very broad and very
deep. They cover the whole expanse of my daily
life, and yet they lead me up to such heights of
Christian feeling as I almost despair of being able
to reach. The Master expects His disciples to be
not only good, but supremely good ; not merely as
good as others, but better than the best of others.
He expects to see in me higher aspirations, tenderer
feelings, kindlier affections, purer love, more gene-
rous hands, than He finds in other men. I am
not to take on any aws of superiority ; and yet I
am to be superior to the general morahty of the

10 129

130 HEROIC CHRISTIANITY

world. I am not to shut myself up in pharisaic
coldness, " saluting my brethren only." I am not
to be niggard in my sympathies, helping those only
who may in turn help me. I am to carry out in
everything the spirit of my Lord, who said, " When
thou makest a feast, call not thy friends, nor thy
brethren, nor thy rich neighbours, lest they also
bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee :
but call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind ;
and thou shalt be blessed ; for they cannot recom-
pense thee ; but thou shalt be recompensed at the
resurrection of the just."

Moreover, I am to keep down all pride and all
resentment. I am to think kindly of those that
most harshly judge me, and are bitter in their
feelings towards me. I am to speak generously of
the men that speak disparagingly of me. I am to
love genuinely those that are most opposite to me
in character; who are successfully out-distancing
me in business or in fame ; those even whose
material and family interests most clash with mine,
and who are vindicating at law what they suppose
to be their rights against me : who have spoken
cruel words about me, have slandered me, and
injured me in every possible way. I am not to say
" an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." I am
to love my enemy, to drop a branch, at least, of
the sweet-smelling tree of kindness into the waters
of his bitterness, if so be I can heal them, and
turn his Marah into such an Elim as my own.

HEROIC CHRISTIANITY 131

Still farther, I am to be absolutely superior to
that party-spirit which, under the guise of a greater
sanctity, does mischief everywhere. I am to be above
it, so far as my oivn nation is concerned. I may
be a patriot, but I am not therefore to look down
on other nations with contempt. I am to be above
it, so far as my race is concerned. The duskiest
skin may enshrine a noble soul. The blackest
African may have a very white heart. " God hath
made all men of 07ie blood,'' and I must not
"call any man common or unclean." I am to be
above it, so far as mi/ own religion even is con-
cerned. I may thank God that the true light has
come to me, but I am not to laugh at the supersti-
tions from which His mercy alone has set me free ;
or to despise the dim gropings after light which
can be seen in heathen lands. I am to be above
it, so far as my own ecclesiastical denomination
is concerned. I am to love all that are Christ's, be
the Church in which they find their spiritual home
as different from mine as it may. All pride, all
jealousy, all fiery denunciation, all chilling con-
tempt, all grudging of neighbourly help, all looking
for some reward in kind before I stretch out a
generous hand — all this I am to know absolutely
nothing of. In my private and personal life there
is to be a crushing down of all that pettiness
of temper that would make me both ungenerous
and unjust. In my domestic life there is to be
a tenderness, forbearance, harmony beyond what

132 HEROIC CHRISTIANITY

are found in ordinary homes. Family frictions
are to be oiled by family love. In my business
life there is to be a keener sense of absolute
integrity than is felt by others beside me. In
my social and public life there is to be a
magnanimity that will never irritate by quick
reproaches nor misrepresent an opponent's words ;
a generous appreciation of all that is best in
those from whom I differ most. This my Master
expects of me. I am to do " more than others."

This is His ideal ; and a life like this it must be
my aim to reach. But can I reach it ? It seems
too high an attainment ever to be realised. In any
ordinary mood of mind I am apt to regard such
teaching as this as being unduly strained and
exaggerated : a very beautiful ideal, but not to
be taken as a working law for the life of every day.
It seems too romantic ; not sufficiently homely : a
rule that cannot be obeyed till the golden age of
the millennium has come. I say to myself " This
is more than can be expected of flesh and blood; "
and that is true. But then my Master is not
speaking to me as to " flesh and blood," but as to
one who has been both redeemed and renewed.
Do I say to myself, " this looks too much like the
bondage of law, and I imagined I was free from
law ? " It is true that I am not under the law but
under grace ; yet, just because I am under grace,
I should feel that to be a constraint to all practical
holiness far stronger than mere law could put upon

HEROIC CHRISTIANITY 133

me ; and I have, in addition, the promise of grace
sufficient to help me in obeying my Master's com-
mands. He never gives any command without a
corresponding promise of help.

If I ever think that both I and the world must
wait for some brighter millennial day before such a
life as this can be lived by any of us, I have just
to remember that, if ever such a day does come, it
will be then precisely that the impossibility of ful-
filling these precepts will begin ! for then there
will be none who hate me and whom I must love :
none who persecute me for whom I must pray. It
will be impossible for me then to love my enemies,
for no enemies will be left for me to love. So then,
it is here and now that I must obey these precepts
of my Lord ; and if they seem to demand of me a
perfection of Christian feeling which it will be im-
possible for me to reach, let me consider that if I
on that account, or on any account, refuse them,
I am really rejectingHimself as the great Lord of
my life ; and that I cannot have him as the Bedee7ner
of my soul, unless I have Him as the Master of
my soul as well.

This keeping of His commandments is the only
proof of my love to Him ; and it is the fruit of
love as well. " He that hath My commandments
and keepeth them," says Jesus, "he it is that
loveth Me," — there is obedience as the proof of
love ; but next He says, " He that loveth Me not,
keepeth not My sayings " — there is obedience as

134 HEROIC CHRISTIANITY

the fruit of love. If I do not obey Him, I do not
love Him. If I do not love Him, I cannot obey.

Living so high a life as this is the only way in
which I can honour my Master before the world.
It does not care much for religion in the creed;
but it always respects religion in the life ; and I am
in the world as a soul redeemed, for this purpose
only — to win the world's regard for my Redeemer,
by what it sees in me. And what will be my
reward for doing it ? I can seek no greater
reward than what He promises to me ; that I
shall thus be like God Himself ; I shall be a *' child
of the Highest" — a true copy of " My Father who
is in heaven." God loves His enemies. If He
could not do that. He never would have loved me.
My best reward for loving my enemies is that thus
I am resembling Him. " To render evil for good
is devil-like ; to render evil for evil is beast-like ; to
render good for good is man-like ; to render good
for evil is God-like ; " and what better reward, what
finer honour can be mine, than to be like my God ?

Alas ! that my resemblance to Him is so faint !
Sadly must I echo the words of a saintly man of
old, who, reading the Sermon on the Mount, said,
"Either these are not the precepts of Christ,
or I am not a Christian." The very world that I
am called to be superior to often puts me to shame.
I see the great sacrifices willingly made by heathen
to their false gods — I see the beauty of philan-
thropy in men who utterly abjure the Christian

HEROIC CHRISTIANITY 135

name — I see how devotion to science can break
down the barriers of social caste ; and I ask myself
with shame, " What do I more than others ? " I
serve a nobler Master — why should I so often show
a poorer life ? Let my shame lead on to penitence,
and my penitence to a new self-consecration. Let
me be more evidently, by my lowly self -forgetting
love, a witness to Him whose lowly self-forgetting
love redeemed me for Himself.

XX

PEOFESSION WITHOUT PKACTICE

*' Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say ? "
-LxjKB vi. 46.

A QUESTION SO sharp and piercing as this might
make me think that it is meant only for those who
are consciously insincere in their professions, but
not for me. But on one occasion my Master said
" to His discijjles first of all, Take heed and beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hijjyocrisy."
'' To His disciples first of all ! " Do they then need
to be so specially warned against hypocrisy ? Is
that a danger to which they, above others, are
exposed ? My Lord knows what is in man. The
seeds of all evil are lying dormant in the heart-soil
of even the best of us, and only need favourable
conditions to spring into noxious life ; and these
baleful seeds may often find their opportunity of
life in soil that has just been cleared, though their
very existence there would never be suspected.

136

PROFESSION WITHOUT PRACTICE 137

Perhaps this may be truer of the seeds of insincerity
than of some other kinds; for, as Milton says,
"Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible
except to God alone.'' I must therefore hear my
Master speaking to myself, when He puts so sharp
a question as this.

For I cannot easily escape the down-dragging
influences of the world round about me, which
often dull the sensitiveness of my conscience, and
make me excuse much that, in my better and
higher moments, I feel to be inconsistent with a
really whole-hearted discipleship. I see that multi-
tudes do call Jesus Lord, and yet do not the
things which He commands ; and then I begin to
ask myself whether I have not been interpreting
His commands too strictly ; and whether the same
looseness of obedience which satisfies others may
not be sufficient for me. I see that many follow
Christ — in the Churches at least — with a profession
of love to Him, and a professed acceptance of His
lordship over them, who, if I do not misjudge
them, are actuated by far lower considerations.
I see that some call Jesus Lord for the sake of the
worldly advantages they can reap by wearing the
Christian name. It is an unquestionable fact that
even quite worldly men have so great a faith in
the genuine Christian character, that they will
trust a Christian where they would not trust any
one else. A worldly master will choose, by prefer-
ence, a Christian servant in his home or a Christian

138 PROFESSION WITHOUT PRACTICE

clerk in his business on the ground that he is likely
to be served more faithfully by them than by any one
else. Time was when even a negro slave, if known
to be a Christian, would bring a higher price on
the auction-block. But all this only leads many
to put on the appearance of discipleship, and call
Christ their intimate friend for the benefit of His
name ! Alas for the wide ruin that has frequently
overtaken too confiding hearts, after entrusting
their hard-won savings to the keeping of men
whose profession of Christian devotedness was
very loud, and who on that account were trusted
to the uttermost, but showed ere long that they
only " wore a cloak to deceive " and were " hypo-
crites " at heart !

I see, too, that some men make great profession
of zeal for Christ in order to increase their reputa-
tion and advancement in the CJmrch. They are
but the modern representatives of the ancient
Pharisees, whose zeal for religion only tried to
hide their love of the praise of men. For the
Bible is no collection of fossils. I am not walking
through an old antiquarian museum when I pass
through the Gospel galleries and look at the men
who lived twenty centuries ago. I am rather in a
gallery full of mirrors, each one of which gives me
a reflection of myself. Both Pharisees and Sad-
ducees are walking the world to-day. They are
sometimes, both of them, walking in the secret
passages of my own heart. It ought to be a very

PROFESSION WITHOUT PRACTICE 139

affecting thought to me that the same eye that
detected the unreaHty of professed rehgion in these
ancient days must be detecting everywhere the
same thing still, and may be detecting it in me ;
and that a man may spend a long life professedly
in the service of Christ and go down to his grave
lamented as though a pillar of the Church had
fallen, and yet be found, when all is revealed, to
have had no higher motive than to "do well to
himself." The very world has often a keen eye
for the inconsistency between profession and prac-
tice. It is not the genuine Christian, but the sham
one that it despises and condemns. Much more
does the true-hearted, genuine Master Himself:
and what would be the effect if He, who once
drove out of the temple all the profaners of His
Father's house, should go through every congre-
gation of worshippers to-day, removing from it all
w^ho do not follow Him for His oion sake alone ?
How many a sanctuary would be left with very
few worshippers indeed ! In such a case would I
be one of those left with Him? Let me look
honestly and seriously into this.

Our forefathers were, perhaps, too introspective
in their general religious life, sometimes morbidly
so. They were always plucking up the young
trees and examining the roots to see if there were
really life and growth within them ; and they ran
a great danger of killing the tree. But we now go
to the opposite extreme ; and even where the leaves

140 PROFESSION WITHOUT PRACTICE

are falling ofi and no fruit ripens we seldom think
of digging deep to find out the reason which lies
out of sight. This tendency of the day affects me
unconsciously ; and I am too ready to take my
discipleship for granted because, when all the
multitude is crying " Hosanna," I cry " Hosanna "
too.

If anything should be unmistakably clear to me,
this ought to be, that the precepts of my Lord are
absolutely opposed to nearly all the maxims of the
world in which I move ; and that to serve two
masters so utterly at variance must be a thing
impossible. But if I " call Jesus Lord," and do
what others say ; if I try to make the promises of
Christ my comfort and the maxims of the world
my rule ; if I give Christ my worship and the
world my heart; if I would retain Christ as my
advocate, but make the world my friend ; if I pay
Christ visits of ceremony, but feel that the world
is my home ; if I say that Christ has new-fashioned
me to be a child of Grod, but still walk according
to the fashion of the world from which I profess
to have been delivered; if, for the joy of my
spiritual life, I look to Christ, but for the law of
my social life I look to men ; may not this piercing
question from my Master's lips bring me to my
knees before Him in shame and penitence and
prayer ?

Let me beware of showing in myself what
Bunyan has so caustically satirised in " Lord

PROFESSION WITHOUT PRACTICE 141

Fairspeech," "Mr. Talkative," "Mr. Facing-
both-ways," and " Parson-two-tongues." Let it
never be said of me "the voice, indeed, is Jacob's
voice ; but the hands are the hands of Esau."
This Master of mine differs from all others in this,
that He claims to be the supreme Lawgiver as
well as the only Saviour ; and His rule must be
absolute over my outward, as well as my inward,
life. His demand of me is that I should obey
Him in everytliing. It is sometimes said that His
precepts cannot apply to this present day ; that
the whole circumstances of society have so changed,
that His rules of life cannot be carried out except
at the expense of a dislocation of the whole social
life of the day. But this is not a condemnation
of the precepts. It is a condemnation of society.
It is said, again, that if an attempt were made in
business matters to carry out the principles of the
Sermon on the Mount, men might as well give up
business altogether. But that, too, is not a con-
demnation of the Sermon on the Mount : it is a
condemnation of the business. Christ was legis-
lating, not for that distant age alone, but for every
age; and if a man cannot prosper in worldly
business and grow rich, too, while faithfully
obeying this Master's commands, he had better
cease trying to be rich at all ; and thousands of
men could rise up to-day and witness against this
slander upon their Lord, telling how they have
found by experience that success came to them

142 PROFESSION WITHOUT PRACTICE

just in proportion as they honestly carried out the
whole of their great Master's law.

Yet, alas ! when I look at myself and see how
small is the obedience I often give to His com-
mands ; when I think of the poor measure in which
I surrender to Him the government of my life,
and not of my life only, but of my feelings and
tempers and ambitions and thoughts ; when I ask
myself to what extent I do really " seek first His
kingdom's righteousness," letting my own ambitions
sink down into their proper place, I seem to hear
Him say, even as I bend before Him in secret
prayer, " Why callest thou me Lord, and doest
not the things which I say ? " Would that all the
most secret things of my soul were under law to
Him as well as the open things of my life ; and
that I could feel habitually, as the old Greek
sculptor felt, who, when carving carefully the back
of a statue of his god for a temple niche, and being
told that he needed not to be so particular about
the hacTi^ since it would be fastened into the wall,
replied, " The gods can see in the w^all."

XXI

NO CKOSS, NO CEOWN

"What wUt thou ? "—Matthew xx. 21.

" What would ye that I should do for you ? "—Mark x. 36.

" Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to
baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with ? " — Matthew
XX. 22.

A MAEVELLOUSLY gentle way, surely, of rebuking the
ignorant pride of these disciples, and of their
ambitious mother as well ! There was no harsh-
ness in the Master's tone, either to her or to them.
I do not wonder at His exceeding gentleness to
her, for in the whole gospels I do not read that
He ever spoke harshly to a woman; and then, she
was a mother, and He knows the mother-heart.
But I do wonder at His great gentleness with her
place-hunting sons. I would not have been sur-
prised if He had then and there indignantly
exposed their presumption to the gaze of all,
tearing off their masks, and revealing all that He
saw in their foolish hearts. But He only shows

143

144 NO CROSS, NO CROWN

them an infinite pity — " Ye know not what ye
ask."

No doubt there was something better in them
than coarse self-seeking, and He saw and appre-
ciated the kernel of good that lay within the husk
of their ambition — a real faith in His coming glory,
a real love to Himself, and a real desire to be
always as near to Him as they could get. But
after all it was not just their own nearness to Him
that fired their hearts. It was the wish for a near-
ness more intimate than any of the other disciples
would enjoy. It was not just nearness of affection^
but rather nearness of position in the coming king-
dom— such a nearness as would mark them out as
special favourites of the King. They had not the
face to put it exactly in that way. To come out
with the naked truth, in all its shamelessness,
would have been too much even for them ; and
they seem to have had a dim sort of conscious-
ness that there was something wrong, for they put
their request at first in very general terms, "We
would that Thou shouldst do for us whatsoever we
shall desire." They wished to catch the Master,
and bind Him beforehand by a trick. " Surely,"
they say, " it cannot be supposed that ive would
ask anything wrong ! " This way of putting it,
however, only showed how utterly unfit for any
high place in a kingdom of truth they were, as a
little before they had shown their unfitness for any
power in a kingdom of love. A few poor Samari-

NO CROSS, NO CROWN 145

tan villagers had churlishly refused their Master a
welcome as He passed ; and instantly these " Sons
of Thunder " were for calling down fire from heaven
to consume them ! " Alas," said the pitying Christ,
" ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." In
the same way He answers them now : '' Eulers in
My kingdom you wish to be ! So fully convinced
of your fitness to rule that you would pledge Me
beforehand to give you its highest seats ! Beauti-
ful rulers of My kingdom of love and peace you
would be, with your fire from heaven ! Quite
able, as you think, to reign with Me, are you able
first to suffer with Me ? Can you gladly crucify
yourselves, like Me, and stoop to intensest agony
and lowest shame, that out of these you may rise,
like Me, to a kingdom and a throne ? " He knew
them better than they knew themselves, for only a
few days more and they failed outright. It would
not have been so wonderful if they had fainted in
drinking their own cup ; but they fainted at the
very sight of Him drinking His.

I would listen, therefore, to this question of my
Lord's whenever, growing discontented with my
allotted place or work, I am eagerly reaching out
my hands to grasp what may satisfy an unholy
ambition. All hands are not steady enough to
carry a full cup. All hearts are not humble
enough to be entrusted with great power. There
is not a Christian living to whom the complete
management of even a very small portion of the

11

146 NO CROSS, NO CROWN

Master's kingdom could be safely committed for
a single day. When Augustine was asked what
is the first thing in the Christian life, he replied,
" Humility " ; asked what, then, was the second,
he said "Humility"; and asked what the third
is, to that also he replied "Humility." Most
rightly so ; for though I carried all other Christian
graces in my heart, and lacked humility, I would
be like one who carries a precious powder in a box
without a cover on a windy day. No one ever said,
" Master, give me the highest place," whose soul
was not thereby evidenced to be full of that foolish
pride that always precedes a fall.

I must remember, too, that the honours of the
kingdom do not go by favouritism. They need to
be won, and they cannot be cheaply won. They
are won by long endurances, many sufferings,
hard self-crucifixions, bitter tears. When one of
Napoleon's generals asked him for a marshal's
baton, "It is not I," said Napoleon, "that make
marshals ; it is victory." So says the great Cap-
tain of Salvation too. The prize is "to him that
overcomes." It is not the mere camp-follower,
neither is it the man who is a soldier only on
parade ; it is the conqueror in hard fight who
shall sit upon the throne beside his conquering
Lord. If I wish to be a white-robed palm-bearer
before the throne on high, I must first be a blood-
bespattered sword-bearer in many a conflict here.
Even Christ Himself cannot change that law. If,

No CROSS, NO CROWN 147

by a mere act of good-will, He could raise every-
one of His disciples to a throne, His love and
grace are great enough to do it ; but the law of
spiritual gravitation is absolute. In a very deep
sense every man goes " to his own place " — the only
place for which he is fit. If the Christ-spirit is
more perfect in me, and the Christ-life fuller in me
than they are in some beside me, I shall have a
greater nearness to my Lord, both here and here-
after too. But not otherwise. He has no favourites.
There is no such thing as arbitrary selections and
preferences in His kingdom. And really Christ-
filled souls never lust for rank or distinction of any
kind. They only desire to be like Him in humble
service. That gives them the only nearness they
seek. He is the Highest because He made Him-
self the lowest. He is on heaven's throne because
first He stooped to Bethlehem's manger and Cal-
vary's Cross. He is Lord of all because, first. He
became servant to all. In me, too, self-humbhng
and even self-crucifixion can alone prepare for or
ensure the honour that is eternal.

Therefore it is that He comes to me and says,
"You want to be made a great saint, and think
you have only to ask for that, and the saintliness
will be given you at once ; nay, but are you wilhng
to have the heavy trials, the long temptations, and
the slow, patient victories, by which alone great
saints are made ? You would fain be, like Jacob,
a prince with God, but are you prepared to wrestle

148 NO CROSS, NO CROWN

for your princedom till you go halting on the
thigh ? You ask for a very full assurance of God's
love, a brightness of faith that no cloud can dim.
Well, are you willing to be deprived of the whole
sunshine of your world-life first, that in the dark-
ness you may see the stars which day conceals ? "
Self-sacrifice looks a God-like thing in Jesus
Christ — a noble thing in Paul ; but — in myself 1
Ah, there it often looks too hard to be endured !
For, besides the difficulty of beginning such a
life, there is the further difficulty of continuing in it,
even when it grows harder with the years. When
Jesus said to His disciples, "Ye are they who
have continued with Me in My temptations, and
I appoint to you a kingdom as My Father hath
appointed unto Me," they seem to have imagined
that the whole of the warfare was past ; and so He
needed to add that the throne was for those that
followed Him, not only in what they had already
given up, but in what they would still have to bear.
" My baptism of blood," He said, " is before Me
yet ; will you share it ? You have left all, but will
you hear all ? You have given up your oiun cup of
earthly joy, will you drink My cup of earthly suffer-
ing too ? " The inexorable law for all disciples is
this : if no cup, no kingdom ; if no baptism, no
throne ; if no Bethany (the house of sorrow), no
Jerusalem (the vision of peace). James never
thought he would have suffering to pass through
ere his crown was won — suffering that made him

NO CROSS, NO CROWN 149

fall a martyr for his Lord beneath Herod's sword.
John never calculated on long years of banish-
ment on Patmos ere he should see the chariot that
would take him home. But, by things they did
not desire, they reached the thing they did desire,
and, like thousands more, they found their ever-
lasting profit in the losing of their prayers.

Well will it be for me if, when any lusting after
high things stirs in me, I hear my Master remind-
ing me that the only high things it is safe for me to
seek are the high attainments of holy feeling, holy
living, and holy fellowship with Him. These best
gifts I may covet earnestly, for against this kind
of covetousness there is no law. I am safe in
wishing to be as a star that excels in glory, if
only I mean by that, to be a bright reflector of
the image of my Lord.

XXII
SWOED AND FIKE

" I am come to send fire on the earth ; and what will I, if it be
already kindled ? " — Luke xii. 49.

" Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth ? I tell you,
Nay ; but rather division." — Luke xii. 51.

I CAN easily understand the astonishment of the
disciples as they heard their Master unfold, in
varying phrase and metaphor, the terrible dangers
lying in front of them — dangers on which they had
not calculated when they began to follow Him. I
can imagine this astonishment expressing itself in
their very looks, till Jesus, seeing it, only empha-
sised the warnings already given : " Have you really
been supposing that such a mission as Mine will
leave the world to slumber on in peace ? Have you
really been thinking of a bright and easy path to
victory ? I tell you. Nay ; peace is only the far-
off issue ; the nearer issues will be strife and war."
It must have come upon them as a terrible dis-
enchantment, this picture of the enmities and

150

SWORD AND FIRE 151

commotions that would inevitably be produced by
His great cleansing and redeeming work. Yet
His fore warnings were the fore warnings of love,
a love that would not let them be taken by
surprise when all unprepared.

But could there be a more striking proof of the
searching character of His gospel than is given in
these questions of His ? The Gospel that would
eventually destroy the world's strifes would begin
by kindling fiercer discords than it cured. Hallow-
ing and beautifying all human relationships even-
tually, it would begin by rending asunder even the
sacredest of all. It would be like the new wine
which bursts the old bottles ; the cleansing fire
which first turns corruption into a blazing wreck ;
the terrible tornado which is needed to sweep
pestilence away, before the fever-smitten world can
be brought back to joyous health. For Christ
must always be a great Destroyer before He is a
great Restorer ; and the Lord is not afraid of the
storm of frenzied opposition which He stirs in the
earth. To timid and ignorant men, the strifes and
hatreds occasioned by His gospel seem only death-
jpains^ and they cry out that all is lost. To Him,
they are only hirth-^ains, through which the
glorious, golden future is being born. They only
show "the whole creation groaning and travailing
in pain, waiting for the manifestation of the sons
of God."

In this question of my Master's, therefore, I find

152 SWORD AND FIRE

what I often greatly need — a corrective to the
desponding thoughts occasioned by witnessing the
slow progress of His kingdom upon earth. He
gives me here a key to what is most perplexing
and discouraging in the history of the Church.
In looking at the world still, I am to see only the
process of preparation, not the grand result ; and
since I can see that the process exactly corresponds
to His predictions I can be sure that the predicted
end of the process will also come. All the com-
motions of the world are only parts of His plan
and "the end is not yet." In ever-varying ways
the world is seeking to be its own Messiah, for
men will try their own ways before settling humbly
and gladly to God's ; they try their best to make
their own Messiah's kingdom before they will
accept the Lord's. But as each of its efforts in
succession fails I know that it will soon be at the
end of all its resources and be ready for the long-
rejected, patiently-waiting Christ, whom it will at
last accept as its King of Righteousness and King
of Peace.

So I am not " disturbed or shaken in mind " by
what I daily read and hear of the enmities excited
by His gospel in heathen lands, or of the outcries
raised at home against all who would stand forth
for God, and fight the cold self-interest and greed
of gain that so bitterly oppose every effort to purify
either national or social or domestic life. This is
only a proof to me that my Master's words are

SWORD AND FIRE 153

being verified, and that assures me that His other
words about the ultimate victory of truth and
righteousness will be verified as well. What if God
is only slowly developing a far-reaching plan by
which He will make the world sicli of its follies,
weary of its strifes and sins, and so wean it from
them all and draw it to Himself ? Every coming
of Christ seems in its process to contradict its
result. The devil dies hard, always. When the
evil spirit was exorcised by Christ's omnipotent
voice, it tore the man from whom it was about to
go — tore him by a worse paroxysm than ever, seek-
ing to kill him in the very act of leaving him. That
is often seen, both in the healing of the individual
soul, and in the healing of the world at large.
Wherever Christ comes, He comes by processes
that seem to contradict the very purpose of His
coming. I must therefore "judge nothing before
the time." When the Lord cometh He will show
that all has been done in the only way it could be
done, for permanent blessing to men and eternal
glory to Himself.

I can find here, too, a probable reason for many
" overturnings " in my own personal life ; for there
must be a breaking up of all delusive peace that I
may find the true. I cannot enter the kingdom of
peace except through "tribulation" of some kind
— tribulation outwardly or tribulation inwardly —
tribulation that seems at its coming to portend
only disaster and ruin. I needed once the sharp

154 SWORD AND FIRE

sword of the Spirit to cut deep into my proud self-
righteousness and lay bare the secrets of my soul.
I still need the fire of trial to purge away my
earthliness and burn up corruption within me ; for
if *'a man's foes are those of his own household,''
his very worst foes are those of his own heart;
and only by a complete overturning there, can the
way be prepared for Christ to reign as the Lord of
my life, and bring His own blessed purity and peace
into me for ever.

Then, as to God's dealings with me in the
outward things of my life, there is nothing strange
in the fact that they should often be like fire and
sword, if the issue of them is to be the joy of holi-
ness and the vigour of spiritual health. I speak
too often of the " mysteriousness " of suffering;
for, any mysteriousness that may be in it arises
from this alone, that my will and God's will, my
aim and God's aim, do not run together, but are
opposed to each other at every point. If I am
planning and working for one thing, and God is
planning and working for a wholly different thing,
there must be trouble and collision as the result.
If I make it my chief aim to be successful in the
world, to get out of it what it can yield of comfort
to me, to gratify as far as I can all my natural
likings, to pass as pleasantly as I can through my
threescore years and ten, leaving all higher con-
siderations completely out of view; and God is
wishful to make me rather fall in with His idea of

SWORD AND FIRE 155

what my chief end in life should be, viz., to glorify
Him by an obedient spirit and make these earthly
years a preparation for the service of the everlast-
ing ages, these are two completely opposite schemes
of life, and it is no wonder that when they clash
there should be trouble and unrest. But there is
no "mystery" in it. The trouble is inevitable so
long as my will and God's will do not run together.
All those sharp dealings with me that make the
world less attractive and God more ; those strokes
of His that, just when I have filled my cup and
am about to drink it, dash it suddenly from my
lips ; that, just when I have made my golden calf
and am about to worship it, shatter it in pieces
before my eyes ; that, just when I have settled
comfortably, saying, " Soul, take thine ease,"
desolate my home and overturn my happiness at
a blow — all these things, mysterious, perhaps, if
only my earthly peace comes into view, are easily
accounted for when I see that it is not my earthly
peace that God is working for, but a peace more
satisfying, more pure, more lasting by far ; and so
I learn to welcome the "sword" that slays my
selfishness and the "fire" that purges my sin, for
I know that God's " thoughts towards me are
thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give me His
expected end." Would that I could make it my
honest prayer that this purifying process may go
on till it is complete !

Then, as to the coming of His kingdom in the

156 SWORD AND FIRE

world at large, let me ask myself if I enter suffi-
ciently into the intense eagerness of my Lord to
see that established everywhere at whatever cost.
Let me ponder His words, " I have a baptism to
be baptized with, and how is my soul straitened
till it be accomphshed ? " ''Oh, that this destroy-
ing yet purifying fire were kindled everywhere and
burning everywhere to-day ! " Do I so long for
the reign of purity ? Am I as willing to suffer if
only it can be hastened ? Is the sin and misery
of the world as great a burden on my heart as they
were on His ? Can I send the prayer, " Thy
kingdom come," like a fire-ball crashing through
all my own ambitions, and burning up whatever
stands in that kingdom's way ? It is a searching
question ; let me not shrink from putting it — am I
not willing merely, but eager for that kingdom's
coming and ready to suffer anything in order to
bring it nigh ? Oh ! to be more like Him, both in
His zeal for God and in His love to men !

XXIII
DELAY IS NOT DENIAL

" Shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night unto
Him, though He bear long with them ? I tell you that He will
avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh,
shall He find faith on the earth ? " — Luke xviii. 7, 8.

It can hardly be doubted that the Master was

speaking here, not so much of prayer for personal

and private need, as of prayer for the coming of

His kingdom in the earth. This, therefore, is His

encouragement to me to continue steadfastly in

intercessory prayer. He tells me that, though I

am to be " always ready, not knowing what hour

my Lord may come," I am not to be disheartened

or dismayed if His coming is long delayed, or if

He seems to turn a deaf ear to my importunate

cry ; for the incessant cry will bring a glorious

answer, which may come " speedily," or, as His

Word seems to mean, '' suddenly," when least

expected, and with an overwhelming power pro-
is?

158 DELAY IS NOT DENIAL

portioned to the length of the delay. So I am
" always to pray, and not to faint."

I must stir up my heart to take a larger share in
this kind of prayer than I have been accustomed
to do. The glory of my Lord demands this. The
command of my Lord impels to this. The interests
of my own soul are bound up with this. I cannot
expect large answers to my private prayers if I
forget the interests of my Lord in other souls than
my own. Self-centredness in prayer is as hurtful
as selfishness in anything else.

It was said of Christ in ancient prophecy
"prayer shall be made for him continually." It is a
wonderful honour given to me, that I should pray
for Christ, as much as He prays for me ; and yet
how little in this do I resemble Him ! There is
no work I can do on earth more like the great
work He is doing in heaven ; for '' He ever liveth
to make intercession." When I pray for the
sinful that they may be converted to God, I am
imitating Him who said, " let it alone this year
also, and if it bear fruit, well." When I pray for
relatives and friends, I can speak of them as He
did who prayed for "those whom thou hast given
me." When I pray for the holiness of the Church,
I am only echoing the great high-priestly prayers of
the seventeenth of John. It was said of Him
"He shall not fail, nor he discouraged, till He ha,ve
set judgment in the earth." Surely I am likest
Him when I pray undiscouraged, too; and here

DELAY is NOT DENIAL 159

on earth keep on, as He does in heaven, " expect-
ing till His enemies be made His footstool."
Would that I could imitate more closely the
unresting but unhurrying, always working and
always interceding Christ ! But I cannot say
what Thomas Scott once said, *' the duty of inter-
cession is that one in which I have failed the
least ; " for it is perhaps that in which I, and most
disciples, fail the most.

To help me to it, let me remember three
things : first, that Christ Himself has shown me
the order in which my prayers should move, by
teaching me to put first '' Thy name be hallowed.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in
heaven," and only after that, "give me my daily
bread, forgive me my sins." Surely I am wrong
when I put that last which He puts first, and
make those things my chief petitions which He
makes only secondary ones. Secondly, that Bible
records show God honouring intercessory prayer
by larger answers than those given to personal
ones, and perhaps for this reason, that there is less
of selfishness in them. Thirdly, that every great
revival in the Churches has begun in intercessory
prayer, and been sustained by that all through.
Never has there been a great revival or advance,
but intensified persevering prayer has ushered it in.
Never has there been this interceding prayer, but
revival has come as the answer to it. Franklin
hit the truth when he said, " Kindle the dry sticks

160 DELAY IS NOT DENIAL

and the green will catch." If the Church is
kindled, the world will be ; and the kindling comes
by prayer.

It does seem distressingly slow work, this work
of winning the world for Christ by effort and
prayer. To any other eye than the eye of faith
it must look hopeless work ; for only the spell of a
delusive optimism can prevent me being appalled
at the real condition of the world ; a thousand
millions of the race still strangers to any form of
Christianity ; two-thirds of nominal Christendom
lapsed into an apostasy hardly better than
paganism ; and of the remaining third only a
meagre proportion really spiritual Christians. If
I look at the small results gained in the centuries
that are past, and then begin to calculate how long,
at the same rate of progress, the victory of Christ
will be delayed, there is little left for me but
despair.

But my Master's words encourage me. His
" speedily " may not be mine, if to Him a
thousand years are as one day is to me. The
crowning victory viay be only on the horizon yet.
Still, He has Himself anticipated all my doubts by
going to the right hand of power, and pleading
there as he asks me to keep pleading here. If I
make the fact that past prayers have not been
answered a reason for ceasing to pray any more,
that would only prove that the past praying had
not been the praying of faith. To real faith, the

DELAY IS NOT DENIAL 161

delay of the answer is only an evidence that the
moment for answering is nearer than it ivas.

It is good to be grieved that God is still so
widely dishonoured as He is. He still sets His
" mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and
cry for all the abominations that are done in the
city." It is good to be thus in sympathy with His
own feelings of grief over the sins of men. But if
it is good to " sigh," it is better still io pray. The
"sighing" is a thing that ends with itself. The
"praying" begins the restoration. And the prayer
that brings the blessing must be prayer that is not
afraid to ask great things from God ; that does not
think it is asking too much, when it asks all that
the promises of God contain, all that the merits of
Christ have purchased, all that the Father's
infinite love can bestow. It is my Christian
privilege and my Christian duty in one, to be so
emphatically and perseveringly a "remembrancer
of God," that before I have passed away from life
below, I shall have prayed often^ specifically, and
by name, for every friend I have on earth, for every
interest of Christ in any land, and for every nation,
country, tribe that the great world contains. Inter-
cession should be as an atmosphere that bathes me
every hour. When I read the news of the day,
and am saddened by the ever-recurring tale of
crime, and vice, and misery, and sin, in every city,
and almost every village of the land, why should
not a silent prayer accompany the reading that

12

162 DELAY IS NOT DENIAL

grieves my heart? When writing to an absent
friend, why should not my letter be sealed with a
prayer ? When passing along the street, witness-
ing some act of cruelty, hearing some swearer's oath,
marking some drunkard's reeling steps, why should
I not instantly pray for these sinful ones as well
as mentally condemn them ? Even when seated
in the house of prayer, why should not supplication
for those beside me there, for the preacher, that
power from on high may accompany his word, for
the hearers, that a bow drawn at a venture may
find its mark, be going up to God from me,
unknown to any one else ? would not my own soul
thus grow into a truer fellowship with my Master ?
Would I not myself grow much in tenderness and
in zeal ?

The Lord's closing question, when speaking about
prayer, not, perhaps, addressed to the disciples
so much as to Himself — a soliloquy rather than a
question — " nevertheless, when the Son of Man
Cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" suggests
the sad possibility that a faith such as will keep
on, praying and expecting in the face of every
delay, will almost have disappeared from His
disciples' hearts, before the great hour strikes in
which all past prayers will be answered to the full.
It is a pious imagination that both the world and
the Church will grow gradually better before the
appearing of the Lord. He Himself does not seem
so to think. He rather hints that the last days may

DELAY IS NOT DENIAL 163

be the worst, that faith in His promise will almost
disappear, that the world will be more madly
defiant than ever, as in the old days of Noah
before the Flood ; and that His disciples will be
fewer and more discouraged than ever, just before
He comes to " avenge His own elect," and answer
the cries of centuries. His word "speedily" should
rather be translated " suddenly"; and hints at His
coming being of the nature of an ^onexi^ected, as
well as an overwhelming blow. Just when all the
world is saying " where is the promise of His
coming ? " He will arise, and show Himself, and
the light of His face will be as a judgment-sword.
I need not, therefore, be alarmed when things
seem to be only growing worse ; I know by that
that His coming must be nigh, and I will be one
at least of His " remembrancers " who " give Him
no rest " till He has set up His glorious kingdom
everywhere, as He alone can do.

XXIV
BLINDNESS

*' Can the blind lead the blind ? shall they not both fall into the
ditch?"— Luke vi. 89.

A QUESTION this that came out of the Lord's deep
pity for the rejectors of His words. There was
nothing in it of superciHousness. There was only
an infinite compassion. The disciples, officious
and fussy as usual, said to Him, " Knowest Thou
that the Pharisees were greatly offended by that
saying of Thine about defilement of the soul being
a much more serious thing than defilement of the
hands ? " Poor simple souls ! They were going
to teach their Master caution ! They were afraid
He was becoming too outspoken, and too regard-
less of the possible consequences of denouncing
Pharisaic hypocrisy as He did. They hinted that
it was not wise, or safe, to excite enmity in that
way ; and would seem to have suggested that He
should do something to conciliate these proud

164

BLINDNESS 165

rejectors of the truth ; should soften down the
truth a little, and take off the keenness of its edge ;
for the Master said, " No, let them alone ; it is not
conciliation they need, it is opened eyes : they
are utterly blind, and yet profess to be leaders and
guides ; and they are accepted as such, because
the men that defer so to their leading are as blind
as themselves. I pity them for it; but their anger
does not touch Me in the least. I know the secret
of it — they know not what they do : they count
God's wisdom foolishness because they have not
the seeing eye."

I cannot but note, in this, my Master's sublime
indifference to the opinion of men : but I note,
too, that underneath that there was an infinite
compassion ; and I would need to be very Christ-
like in this pity, before I can venture to take that
attitude of calm indifference to the opinion of the
world about me. Nothing is easier than to
assume an attitude of superiority to the opinion
of other men, in mere self-complacent pride. If I
am encased in a lofty conceit of my own superior
insight, and have an egotistical idea of my
superior knowledge, I may too easily call myself a
" defender of the faith," while I am only a
defender of my own self-importance. I need
much of my Master's humility, and much of His
divine compassion too, before I can adopt His tone
of calm indifference to what the world may say of
me. Before I condemn the blindness of others, I

166 BLINDNESS

must be very sure that I myself do see : but,
having my Master's spirit, I may be as careless
about the world's anger as my Master was.

Let me seriously ponder my own need of a
thoroughly-opened eye if I am not to be what He
condemned, " a blind leader of the blind." I may
be called to be a preacher of divine truth : I may
be a teacher of the young; I may be a parent,
called to instruct my children in the things of
God ; I may be simply one friend giving advice to
another in some perplexity of conscience, some
difficulty of faith, some doubt as to the path of
duty. In any of these capacities it is sadly
possible that I may only lead astray, unless I
myself am unmistakably and consciously and
continually taught of God. For even the smallest
of these things I need wisdom from on high,
since a mistake of mine may be most seriously
hurtful to other souls. Mistakes in lower matters
than these may be trivial, however great the loss
thereby incurred, compared with mistakes in
matters of the soul. Mistaken advice on some
matter of worldly business may be fraught with
consequences deplorable enough, if, in these, I am
a "blind leader of the blind." My unwise and
incompetent advice may lead a trustful friend to
bankruptcy. Mistaken advice even in questions
of science, or literature, or art — the advice of an
incompetent guide — may be serious too in many
of its effects. Yet these are only trifles compared

BLINDNESS 167

with the danger of misleading souls in the matter
of their relations to God. In this region my
blindness may be absolutely fatal : and I must
seek, therefore, daily, the clear vision of a Spirit-
opened eye.

Having that, I may comfort myself with the
thought that, if my report of what I see is re-
jected by those that cannot see, I am faring no
worse than my great Master did. Like Him, I
may " possess my soul in patience," and pity the
blindness that I cannot cure. For the world is
blind to the things of God. '' It receiveth them
not, neither can it know them, for they are only
spiritually discerned." Only spiritually-minded
men can see spiritual things. It is as true to-day
as it was twenty centuries ago that '* the god of
this world has blinded the minds of them that
believe not." The reason why they are " alien-
ated from the life of God " is the " ignorance that
is in them, through the blindness of their hearts.'"
Clear intellect and a blinded heart may sometimes
go together : but really, in the things of God, if
the heart is blinded the intellect is blinded too.
The brightest genius, able to see with marvellous
penetration into the secrets of creation, will be
utterly blind to the mysteries of grace and god-
liness, if unenlightened with the Light of Life :
like the great Earl of Chatham, who, after listen-
ing to a sermon by Eichard Cecil on the agency of
the Holy Spirit upon the believer's soul, declared

168 BLINDNESS

he could not in the least understand what the
preacher meant ; and, asking if there were any in
the congregation who did understand it, was
surprised to be told of poor, unlettered men and
w^omen to whom it was all not only completely
clear, but also a message of purest joy.

I may possibly be able to remember the time
when these things w^ere mysteries to myself :
when I almost ridiculed the truth I was then too
blind to see. Let me, therefore, be tender with
the blinded world around me; and only pray that
its eyes may be opened, as mine needed to be, to
see the glory of what it despises now. My own
truest life is " hid," and cannot be understood by
unspiritual men. The sustenance of my soul is a
"hidden manna." I have "meat to eat that the
world knows nothing of." The "name on the
white stone " is one that "no man knoweth save
he that receiveth it." " The world knoweth us
not, because it knows Him not " ; and I cannot
make the world see the secret that makes my life
so wholly different from its own. I cannot even
describe it : for the very language I would need
to use would be as unintelligible to the unspiritual
as a foreign tongue. My secret joys and my
hidden sorrows are alike mysterious to them. My
lamentations over sin in myself and in others, and
my raptures of joy over fellowship with God, are
utterly strange to them. They hear me speak of
them, and cannot understand what I would be at.

BLINDNESS 169

The strength and comfort I find in prayer they
know nothing of, for prayer to them is only a
dreary and useless formality. When I talk to
them about the sanctification of the Sabbath, it is
nearly impossible to get from them the slightest
sign of any true appreciation of the blessedness of
a day devoted to higher communion of spirit with
God. To them it is only a weariness for which
they must seek distraction. Any sacrifices I
make willingly :;!or Christ are foolishness to them.
My resolute abstention from all that would be
inconsistent with the will of an invisible Master
they call ridiculous scrupulosity or bigotry. What
appears to me only simple obedience to God's holy
will they deride as a " being righteous overmuch."
They " think it strange that I do not run with
them in the same excesses in which they find
their pleasure " ; strange, because they cannot
so much as comprehend feelings and ambitions
higher than their own. The reason of it all is
this, that they are "blind." I will not be angry
with them, or even greatly surprised. I will only
pity them, and pray that they may see. It is not
more light that the world needs : there is plenty
of light. It is an opened eye to see it. Light
is the remedy for darkness, not for blindness.
Heaven's light may be condensed into a point of
surpassing brilliance by a burning-glass ; but if a
blind eye is exposed to it not a whit will that eye
see : it will only be consumed. It ought to be my

170 BLINDNESS

daily prayer for myself, " Lord, that my eyes be
opened"; and my daily prayer for the world too.
"What a pitiable condition," says one, "is the
world in ! its own guide^ and that guide stark
blind ! "

XXV

THOUGHT-EEADING

" What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way ? " —
Mark ix. 33.

This was not a question for information^ but for
conviction. The Master had been going on before,
preoccupied with greater things ; and the disciples,
lingering behind Him and knowing He was too far
off to overhear them, began a talk which they
fancied would remain a secret among themselves.
How taken aback they must have been by His
sudden question as they sat together in the house,
*' What was it you disputed about on the way ? "
They *' held their peace " ; and no wonder.
Shame sealed their lips. But He did not need
to wait till He was told. He showed them in a
moment that He had been reading them all the
time. His action here reminds me of Elisha
when his servant Gehazi ran after Naaman to
get from him the reward his master had refused

171

172 THOUGHT-READING

to take, and returning, stood before his master
unabashed. "Went not mine heart with thee,"
said the prophet, "when the man turned again
from his chariot to meet thee ? " and then pro-
ceeded to tell the astonished servant all that had
been in his thoughts as he came back, "buy-
ing olive-yards and vineyards, and sheep and oxen,
and men-servants and women-servants," with the
product of his sixfold lie. " Thought-reading "
with a vengeance, that !

But this is how I must think of my Master too.
I like to feel that He is a gracious, tender, pitying
one ; but do I think sufficiently of Him as a keen
heart-searching one as well ? I like to think of
His eyes as eyes of compassion, eyes that wept,
eyes from which tears of sympathy dropped at
Bethany, and tears of sorrow on Olivet as He
gazed down upon the doomed Jerusalem. But
what a holy heart-reader too He is ! " His eyes
are as a flame of fire." For three-and-thirty
j^ears He walked about the world, an unsuspected
reader of all the thoughts and feelings of every
one in the crowds that met or followed Him.
Even His disciples little knew the sharpness of the
glance that pierced all the motives and ambitions
of their souls. How terribly disconcerting it
would have been to them had they known that
their Master's eye was always looking them
through and through ! How terrible it would
have been to Judas had he known that all his base

THOUGHT-READING 173

treachery had been detected by that eye as soon as
it was conceived ! How disconcerting to Peter
had he realised that his base cowardice had been
detected before a single word of denial had passed
his lips ! How great a blow it would have been to
James and John had they suspected that their
proud ambition had been seen by their Master's
eye, before the least suspicion of it had occurred
to any of their brethren !

But this thought-reading, heart-searching Christ
is looking me through every day as clearly as He
looked through any of thein. Surely, if I only
realised that fact I would be holier than I am.
Alas ! my Master's omniscience is often to me a
doctrine only, and not a reality. It has a place in my
creed but hardly any in my conscience. If " every
imagination of the thoughts of my heart " is known
to Him as soon as it is known to myself, it is a
marvel of divine mercy that He bears with me as
He does, or suffers me to remain in His disciple-
ship for a single day !

Most men prize the seclusion of liome because
there they are so greatly free from the scrutiny of
unfriendly eyes ; and in their own private chamber
in that home they feel more secluded still. It is a
relief to them to be able to retreat to it and feel
that there there is not a single spectator watching
them. They have, perhaps, some little secret
plans which they can ripen there, some private
hobbies which they can cultivate there, some

174 THOUGHT-READING

invention which they can perfect there, or they
can read books there which they would be half
ashamed to be seen reading publicly ; they can
gratify there any secret craving they may have
for intoxicating drink. Something or other,
whether lawful or sinful, makes that secret
chamber free from prying eyes, a luxury or a
relief. If I ever feel so, let me remember that,
strictly speaking, I have never a single hour of
such seclusion. I am always watched. All that
I even think there is completely known. And
known to whom ? It would be a terrible enough
answer to that question if it were only this, " to the
Jioly dead " : if I should see those who have passed
on within the veil looking down on me, and
reading me as they could never do before; if I
should think of a father, a mother, a husband,
a wife who died believing in my truth and purity,
now seeing me with the mask torn off. Yet if
these were the only spectators looking me through
and through, their inspection could be endured
somehow. If the spectators were even holy angels,
that also could be endured. But the Witness of
my most secret life, who is every moment reading
me as an open book, is the Christ whom I profess
to follow, the Christ whom I profess to love above
all, the Christ who died for me on very purpose to
have me as true and pure as He Himself is, my
Saviour and my Master in one. Must not His
look, as He sees my heart-faithlessness and sin, be

THOUGHT-READING 175

a look of the same kind as He cast on Peter in the
judgment-hall when that poor disciple had so
cruelly denied Him — a look, not of mere scrutiny,
nor of anger, nor of regret, but of wounded
affection ; the grieved look of one who is experienc-
ing the keen agony of witnessing the utter faith-
lessness of a friend who had often professed to be
the truest friend He had.

How many a crime would have been prevented
had even the eye of a child been in the room or on
the paper when the act was done ! Should the
eye of a child have such power as that, and my
Master's eye have no such deterrent power over
me? When Latimer was being examined before
Bishop Bonner, at first he answered somewhat
carelessly; but, hearing the rustling of a pen
behind the tapestry on the wall, and perceiving
that all his words in what he thought a secret
chamber were being taken down, he became much
more prudent and cautious in his replies. Oh for a
more constant sense of the invisible pen in the
invisible hand of Him who, though behind the
veil, has eyes that pierce not only it, but my own
heart too, who too often live as though I were
unwatched by any except myself !

The thought of His unsleeping eye ever watch-
ing over me is comforting enough ; but how do I
feel about the inspection of an unsleeping eye that
is always looMng into me ? That might well be
a terror to me as it was to the prisoner in the

176 THOUGHT-READING

narrow cell which had one small opening in the
door behind which a sentry stood, whose eye was
never taken off the prisoner for a moment, night or
day. At first it was only a trifling annoyance, but
as days and weeks wore on, it became an intoler-
able torture to the mind ; for that glaring eye
pursued him round the cell ; it was never shut
and never turned away ; its glare became an agony,
and led to madness in the end. The eye of the
invisible Christ is as truly ever upon me. Dislike
it as I may, that remains a fact. Let me realise it
as a fact, and live so that I shall not fear its glance.
If there are thoughts in my mind, at which, when
I realise what they mean, I myself would blush;
emotions of the heart at which I tremble and
recoil ; movements of will that alarm me because I
see what a deep depravity they reveal, how much
more would I be ashamed, if I but remembered,
" Tliou understandest my thoughts afar off, "or heard
my God say to me, " I know the thoughts that come
into your mind, every one of them " ? Let me ask,
therefore, what the eye of my Master sees in my
heart to-day : faith or faithlessness ? love or
coldness ? a striving after nobler things, or con-
tented declension ? He sees every motive actuating
me, every feeling that sways me. How much,
then, does He see done from love to Him ? how
much from love to myself ? how much for the sake
of winning the praise of men ? how much from a
concern for the glory of God? Is the look He

THOUGHT-BEADING 177

bends on me to-day a look of sorroio for my world-
liness, of surprise at my unsteadfastness, of grief
for my forgotten vows ? or is it one of ajpproval for
my constancy, of encouragement for my timidity,
of love for my true though imperfect love to
Him?

If in answering such questions I am covered
with shame, and shrink from the glance that
reveals my sin, let the place into which I shrink
be the shadow of the cross. An infinite atonement
alone can comfort me when I really see myself.
But the Holy One is the Forgiving One, and is
"ready to forgive." Let me tell Him all, and
then He will show me the riches of His grace.
But sin must be confessed by the sinner before it
is pardoned by the Judge. It is only when I deal
honestly with my sin that God deals tenderly with
me.

13

XXVI

UNTHANKFULNESS

" Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine ? " — Lukb
xvii. 17.

What chiefly impresses the listener here is not
the wonderful exhibition of the Lord's jjoiver, in
healing these lepers without a touch, without any
outward sign, without even a word commanding
the disease to depart ; nor His equally wonderful
Omniscience, His certainty that, on their way to
the priests, the cure had actually taken place : but
rather His grieved disappointment, arising from
the unthankfulness of the healed. Accustomed
though He had long been to the ingratitude of
men, this new exhibition of it went to His heart.
He wanted no honour for Himself. It was His
Father's honour He was concerned about. He did
not say, '* there hath not returned to thank Me,
except this stranger"; but "there hath not
returned to give glory to God.'' It was "the

178

UNTHANKFULNESS 179

Father dwelling in Him who did the works " ;
and to see Him dishonoured by" His own," while
an outsider, a Samaritan, gave instant thanks,
was a sharper sorrow to the Lord than any despite
to Himself. This thanklessness of the healed was
one of the many " sufferings of Christ " ; and yet
how meekly He took it ! The harshest thing He
said about it was only " Where are the nine ? "

I, too, am amazed they did not hurry back, like
the one Samaritan, to throw themselves gratefully
at their great Healer's feet. Perhaps what held
them back was fear of the priests, who were
angry enough at Christ already, and would not
hesitate to vent their rage on any who spoke well
of Him, a rage which the Samaritan stranger could
afford to despise; or possibly they may have
said to themselves, "Time enough for thanks
when we have first proved the permanence of the
cure"; or perhaps, like thousands everywhere,
they were so full of the thought of now being able
to get back to their homes and businesses, so
absorbed by recalling their happy past, and vision-
ing a still happier future, that they had no further
thought to spare for the gracious One who had
set them free. But I seem to see a truer reason
for it still. The 7iine had thought only of His
w^onderful poioer. The poor, despised Samaritan
thought also of His deep compassionating love,
a love that pitied and healed even him ; and it is
love alone that ever leads to thankfulness. There

180 UNTHANKFULNESS

was no sense of obligation in the nine. They
almost felt that, being Jews, they had a sort of
claim to any blessing that others of Israel were
receiving at this Prophet's hands. The poor
Samaritan could claim nothing, and his sense of
obligation was all the deeper for that.

This feeling in the nine is not yet extinct among
men, though it takes a slightly different form. It
is one of the cant phrases of our day that every
man, be his personal character and habits what
they may, has a right to live, and to live in the
enjoyment of what he calls a living wage; and
that if he cannot get that for himself, the State
must provide it for him. Essentially this is pure
irreligion, and proud irreligion too ; for when
analysed it makes God the debtor and man the
creditor, who may say to God, '' Pay me that Thou
owest." No man ever comes into his right posi-
tion as a sinner before God till he feels himself
ivortliy of nothing^ and is therefore tlianhfiilfor any-
thing. Jacob's way of it was the only befitting
way, *'I am not worthy of ^the least of all the
mercies which Thou hast shown unto Thy servant."
I may have rights as against my brother man, but
I have no rights as against my God. I can only
be an everlasting bankrupt debtor to His free love.

Well, I condemn these unthankful nine ; but
let me ask if I am not too like them myself.
Mercy infinitely larger and more wonderful than
they received, has come from my God's hands to

UNTHANKFULNESS 181

me. Blessing upon blessing has been falling over
me, not for one day merely, but all my life through.
I am "crowned with his loving-kindness and
tender mercy." "I cannot reckon up in order
His benefits : if I should declare and speak of them,
they are more than can be numbered." Yet where
has there been any thankfulness or thanksgiving
in me commensurate to these countless gifts from
Him ? If He were to show me, as He alone could
do, the ivliole of the " great goodness " with which
He has been enriching me ever since I was born,
my life would seem only one great golden chain
of mercies, link clasping link, each hour a link,
and each day lengthening the chain, a chain of
blessings all undeserved, but all most generously
given. And yet, must not His verdict upon me
be that sad one passed upon King Hezekiah, '■'■ He
rendered not again according to the benefit done
to him, for his heart was lifted up " ?

I am not only indebted to a Father's care, I
am indebted also to a Saviour's grace : a most
compassionate Saviour, who brings me better than
all earthly gifts, who brings me pardon, healing,
life within ; whose hand of love holds out to me
bright hope and heavenly comfort, rest, holiness,
and peace ; a cleansing of my soul from its foul
leprosy of sin ; the new health that is only the
beginning of a health that will last for ever. I
may well say, " Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and
forget not all His benefits."

182 UNTHANKFULNESS

But " all His benefits " ?— how shall I set them
down? In any attempted enumeration of them
I would know neither where to begin, nor how to
end. " What shall I render to my Lord for all
these benefits of His grace, so infinitely grander
than the best blessings of His earthly care ?
The only coin I can pay Him in is that which
comes from His own mint. I can give to Him
only what He first gives to me, but I will try
to pay Him in the only way He wants — hy the
^praise of a devoted life; for if thanlisgiving is
good, thanJcsliving is better still. My Lord has
kept nothing back from me; I will keep nothing
back from Him. My Lord gave His whole life for
me ; I will give my whole life to Him. My Lord
died for sin ; I will die to sin, for His dear sake.
He rose from the grave for me ; I will rise out of
the dead things of the world for Him, and "walk
in newness of life." He sJioived Himself alive
from the dead ; I will show openly that I am
risen in Him. He is working for me still, using
the " all power" given Him, in my behalf; He is
preparing a place for me ; I will work for Him, I
will use all my power in His behalf, I will prepare
a larger and worthier place for Him in this heart
of mine. He is ever interceding for me, I will
ever intercede for Him ; I will bear His interests
on my heart, as He is bearing my interests on His ;
I will plead daily for His coming to His kingdom
upon earth, as He is pleading for my coming to

UNTHANKFULNESS 183

His kingdom in the heavens. My Lord paid all
His vows for me. He vowed to give Himself an
atonement for my sins, and make my salvation sure :
how well He paid the vow! There was no
repenting of it, no drawing back when the payment
was an agony ; and He did that " in the presence
of all the people," for all heaven saw it andrejoiced.
" Now, I will pay my vows to Him, and I will do it
in the presence of all the people," for all shall see
that it is no vain boast that I make when I say,
" 0 Lord, I am Thy servant for ever, for Thou hast
loosed my bonds."

If there is one thing more than another that
must make me "return to give glory to God," it is
the remembrance of what a loathsome, hopeless
leper I was before He healed me. This " purging
from my old sins" I must never forget. It will
keep me humble, but it will keep me praiseful too.
If I am now a " child of God," I must never forget
that once I was only a " child of wrath, even as
others." If I am now a stone in the living temple,
I must never forget " the rock out of which I was
hewn." If I am now one of His vessels of honour,
fashioned by Himself and for Himself, I must
often think of " the hole of the pit out of which I
was dug," when there was '' no difference " between
me and the rest of the clay. If I am now one of
the Good Shepherd's flock that shall "never
perish," I must often recall that in the days of
my foolish rebellion I " wandered upon the

184 UNTHANKFULNESS

mountains, lost. All that I have ever been or done
is worthy of sorrow and shame ; but what God has
done for me is worthy of an endless song. My
gracious Lord has long been lifting my burdens
and bearing my loads ; and He promises to go on
doing it to the last — " Even to your old age, I am
He ; and to hoar hairs I will carry you.^' He is
worthy of His hire ; and all the hire He asks is the
grateful praise of the soul that He is carrying.

XXVII

THE ALL-SUFFICING CHRIST

•' Will ye also go away ? "—John vi. 67.

Did the Master ever ask a more jpatlietic question
than this ? I recall, in connection with its under-
tone, how a good man once said, when thinking of
the base treatment to which God is subjected by
an unfeeling world, " I feel such a pity for God."
Strange though the expression may be, I am in-
clined to echo it in thinking of the treatment my
Master met with, when, after His long and loving
outpouring of truth to the crowds that followed
Him for loaves and fishes, they would not let it get
a lodgement in their hearts at all. They had no
fault to find with Him as a man, but His spiritual
teaching was both too lofty for their low sym-
pathies and too humbling for their proud, worldly
hearts. The sovereignty of God, the need of
having this Christ as the very food of their souls,
the giving of His flesh for the life of the world —

185

186 THE ALL-SUFFICING CHRIST

these things offended them just as the same things
are offending thousands still. As they listened they
were first considerably interested, then greatly
astonished, then absolutely enraged. Their pride
rose up against doctrines that humbled them so
much, and they pretended not to understand what
really they understood well enough, but only
heartily disliked. With an air of superiority they
said, " Who ever heard such absurdities as these?
This Man give us His flesh to eat ! He is only
befooling us with talk like that." And so they
" went back, and walked no more with Him."

This defection of theirs was only natural. Even
Christ Himself could not have been surprised at
it. But how greatly it saddened the meek and
patient Lord I can see in the very tone of His
question about it to the Twelve, " Will ye also go
away? " He was not doubting them. His words
might be more accurately rendered, " Yoic do not
wish to go away, do you ? " And there I see the
human heart of the Master longing for their out-
spoken sympathy at a very discouraging time.

Still, it was meant to test them; and right nobly
did Peter answer for them all, " Lord, to whom
shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life ;
and we believe and are sure that Thou art that
Christ, the Son of the Living God." That was
Peter at his very best. That quick, eager, un-
hesitating and undoubting reply came from his
very heart. He was now a better disciple than he

THE ALL-SUFFICING CHRIST 187

had been. He had learned much by that wonder-
ful experience of his on the water of the lake, in
the storm of the day before. All the next day,
too, as he listened to his Master's words, he had
been lifted into higher regions of faith and dis-
cernment than he had ever reached till then ; and
all his thoughts were at last focussed into one
bright spot of loving trust and glad assurance,
" Lord, there is none else for any of us to go to
now. To leave Thee would be, for all of us, only
blank despair."

There are times, in my life, too — perhaps to-day
is one of them — when I seem to hear my Master
putting His pathetic question also to me, and
when I would need to be able to answer it for
myself as Peter did. In an age like this, when
doubt is everywhere, when remorseless hands are
busy with attempts to pull down the most sacred
and venerable beliefs, when the air is loaded with
the mephitic vapour of sceptical reasonings, and I
must breathe it whether I will or not ; when covert
sneers as well as open assaults on the faith meet
me in books and magazines; when "culture"
ridicules me as being behind the age, and these
repeated shocks produce an unsettlement within,
loosening the stones of my faith-temple, if they do
not overturn them altogether, so that I seem to
have no longer the old comfort and the old cer-
tainty and the old rest that were once so sweet, I
may surely ask myself, as Peter did, "Supposing

188 THE ALL-SUFFICING CHRIST

that I give up my faith in Christ, as I am tempted
to do, what will I put in its place ? Whom will I
put in His place ? What substitute for Christ and
the old gospel will I find? What other message
of peace will I get that will meet my need and
satisfy it so well? If Christ is henceforth to be
nothing to me (for if I doubt Him in one thing I
must doubt Him in all), what other friend is there
to whom, in my sin and sorrow, I can as safely and
as comfortingly cling ? "

I may ask those, too, who would shake me out of
my old faith in the Word of God, "What other
light do you propose to put, or suggest may be put,
in the place of this, that will bless the world one
ten thousandth part as much ? If you take away
from me my faith in the reality of this Christ, if
you will no longer let me think of Him as an
atoning Saviour, and thus deprive me of all the
brightness which has long illuminated my darkness
here, and all the joyous hope that stretches away
beyond this life altogether, how do you propose
to compensate me for the loss ? Will any other
gospel, or other faith, or other hope do as much
to cheer me, to ennoble me, to draw out all that
is finest in devotion and loftiest in aim ? " Let
me ask all this, and think what the only possible
answer to such questions must be ; and then,
though I may be shaken somewhat for a time
by the assaults I have to face, I will be sure, ere
long, to return joyfully to my old rest and say.

THE ALL-SUFFICING CHRIST 189

** Lord, to whom but unto Thee can I go ? " Even
if the attacks sometimes made upon the old gospel
seem so strong that I begin to fear that the founda-
tions of God's city have, at last, been greatly
undermined, the power of these attacks to unsettle
me will be gone when I confront them all with
this one question, " What other creed, what other
gospel, what other hope will be so good for living
men to live by, and dying men to die upon, as the
old, long-tried, marvellous gospel of the crucified,
risen, reigning Christ — that old gospel which still,
in spite of a thousand attacks, is proving itself in
the experience of tens of thousands of sinners, to be
the only cure for a broken spirit, the only balm for
a wounded conscience, the only pillow for a dying
head — the gospel which is old as the very Fall, yet
new as the new song of the New Jerusalem — the
gospel that tells me what I can never tire of
hearing on earth, and what I shall know in heaven
when it comes, that Christ is enough for me^ and
that Christ is all ? "

This also suggests to me the surest way of
overcoming those doubts regarding my personal
salvation which often trouble me so much: *' Is
this Christ whom I have believed really trust-
worthy enough for me to risk my whole eternity on
His bare word ? " He often seems a dim and
shadowy Saviour. I am not so sure, as I once
was, that it is He that speaks, or that He speaks to
me, when He gives the promises on which I lean.

190 . THE ALL-SUFFICING CHRIST

The voice is like one that comes out of an infinite
void — a dream-voice, and not a real one at all.
Then, too, it sometimes seems as if I needed
something more than His simple promise to assure
my heart. I once thought that was enough, but I
also thought that by this time I would have had
far more comfort, and more holiness too, from
believing it than I yet have reached ; and since
the past has thus disappointed me, I am not so
sure as I used to be that the future will not
disappoint me too.

In such a mood of mind I need not argue with
my doubts, for argument will not end them. Let
me rather just listen to the sorrowful question of
my Master, " Will you also go away ? Supposing
that I fail you, to whom else will you turn ? "
That will show me my sin, my ingratitude, my
folly, sooner than anything else. I cannot go back
to my old life in the world, for I have proved by
experience how unsatisfying that would be. I
cannot shut out all thought and be indifferent ; I
know too much for that. I cannot take refuge in
infidelity ; my conscience is too awake for that.
But, on the other hand, I cannot face the Holy
Judge I have to meet without a righteousness
infinitely better than my own is, or ever will be,
without an advocate to clear me at the judgment
bar, as this Christ offers to do. Well, if He will
not be enough for me, who will ? Who will be
a sufficient substitute for this Christ if I give

THE ALL-SUFFICING CHRIST 191

Him up ? That question will bring me back to
rest.

Two things were turning-points in Peter's life :
his Master's sorrowful question and his Master's
sorrowful looTi. The question decided him to
remain with Christ ; the look decided him to
return. And lying behind his immediate feelings
on both occasions was the great undoubted fact
of his own personal experience of his Master's
love and grace. When I am shaken by speculative
difficulties I will take refuge in my personal exjperi-
ence of my Lord. I know what He has done for
me and in me. I could not deny that if I wished.
And if He ever sees me hesitating in my faith and
says, '' Will you also go away ? " I will exultingly
reply, *' No, not for a thousand worlds. ' Thou,

0 Christ, art all I want, more than all in Thee

1 find,' ' my Lord and my God.' "

XXVIII
PEOFIT AND LOSS

" What is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose
himself, or be cast away ? " — Luke ix. 25.

"What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and
lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his
soul ? " — Matthew xvi. 26.

There are at least two great surprises in these
questions of the Master's. The first of them is
that such questions should be addressed, not to
utterly irreligious men, but to His own disciples.
Do disciples^ then, need to be warningly questioned
thus ? Are even they so liable to love the world
in such a way that they may be in danger of losing
their souls? But it was to disci;ples that He
spoke those other words so closely akin to these,
" Take heed to yourselves lest at any time your
hearts be over-charged with surfeiting, and
drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that
day come upon you unawares." The Lord sees

192

PROFIT AND LOSS 193

danger where I would see none. He understands
my weakness better than I understand it myself.

Then next, it is a surprise to find that the great
Lord was applying these questions to Himself !
They were called forth by Peter's rash outburst,
after being told of the coming Cross, " that be far
from Thee ; this shall not be unto Thee." Never,
to his dying day, would Peter forget how his
Master turned upon him, and said: "Get thee
behind me, Satan ! thou savourest not the things
that be of God, but the things that are of men."
The rebuke was terrible. The revelation of Peter's
hidden prompter was terrible too. But was there
not in both, a back glance to His own temptation
on the mountain-top, where Satan offered Him
''the whole world" as the price of His soul?
'' all this will I give thee if Thou wilt fall down
and worship me." The same Satanic proposal
came from Peter also. His Lord recognised its
parentage in a moment, and felt, '' Here is the old
temptation over again " ; and so He said to Peter,
"What would it profit Me if I should, in your
ivay^ gain the whole world, and lose My own
highest and noblest life thereby ? " To save the
lower life at the expense of the higher would
have been no gain to Him^ any more than to
any of His followers, but only everlasting loss;
and therefore He says, "Be you all of the same
mind with Me in this : Whosoever wills, at all
costs, to save his life, shall lose it ; but whosoever

14

194 PROFIT AND LOSS

wills, for My sake, to lose his life, shall find it.
For Me, and for you, self-sacrifice, obedience even
unto death, is the way to honour and blessedness
eternal ; and the only way." How clearly, here,
Christ recognises the higher life in man, which
may either triumph over the lower life, or be killed
by it. "Lose yourself ^^ He says, "in the lower
meaning of self, and you gain yourself in its
highest meaning, its everlasting one. Seeking
the life of the flesh, you lose the life of the spirit,
— seeking to save what you call yourself, you lose
what is really yourself, and are cast away."

These are deep sayings, and can be understood
only by the sanctified feeling of a heart thoroughly
renewed, and beating in perfect sympathy with the
feelings and aims of the heavenly Lord. I must
read them looking straight into the eyes of Jesus
Christ Himself. They only reiterate the great
saying — "If any man will come after Me, let him
deny hwiself, and take up his cross daily, and
follow Me." That is the unbending, unchange-
able, unrepealable statute-law of Christian dis-
cipleship, to the end of time. I cannot alter it
or soften it down. I would not, though I could.
For what it tells me is that self-denial is only a
closer imitation of Christ. He calls it a " coming
after " Him and " following " Him ; and He Him-
self, therefore, was showing the example which all
disciples are to copy. He was always carrying His
cross ; not once only in Jerusalem's streets, but

PROFIT AND LOSS 195

daily, hourly, all His life through ; and what He
asks of me is this, that I should carry my cross in
the same spirit in which He carried His, planting
my feet in His footprints.

It is very plain, then, that this Master is abso-
lutely honest. He scorns the gaining of disciples
by false pretences. He will not cheat me into
following Him by rose-coloured pictures of His
service, which experience will falsify soon. With
absolute sincerity He warns me, from the first,
that it will not be easy for me to go after Him,
that it will cost me much. But then. He asks me
to do nothing that He has not done Himself. It is
a great test this — '' let him deny himself." I must
deny my own self-estimate^ else I will think myself
too good to suffer for Christ. I must deny my
own loisdom, else I will be too prudent to suffer
for Christ. I must deny my own ease, else I will
be too slothful to suffer for Christ. I must deny
my own interests, else I will be too worldly to
suffer for Christ. I must deny my own fears, else
I will be too cowardly to suffer for Christ. It is a
great test ; and I am to do this "daily " ! How can
I follow a Master who asks so much as that ? To
take up the cross once for all would be easy com-
pared with the taking it up every day afresh. And
yet, if the dailiness of the self-sacrifice seems, at
first, to intensify the pain of it, — looked at in
another light, it greatly diminishes the weight.
It is only the daily cross, to-day's cross, that I am

196 PROFIT AND LOSS

asked to bear. My Master does not ask me to set
out by bearing all the crosses of the next twenty
years, or even of the next week. Indeed I have
not, to-day, to carry even the cross of to-morrow ;
and for my " daily cross " there will be given me
"daily bread" to strengthen me. That dailiness
of the sacrifice which seems to make it harder is
the very thing that makes it easier. He is a good
Master after all.

I see, however, that Christ has another question
still, which is not merely a repetition of the pre-
vious ones, rather a farther question springing out
of them. He begins by asking what I would be
profited if, after labouring to gain all that the
world can give of pleasure, comfort, honour,
power, and sinking my higher life in the search
for that, the world passes away from me, or I
from it, leaving me only the bitter sense of an
everlasting loss. But next, He asks me another
question ; whether, on discovering this beyond the
grave, I will be able to give God anything m ex-
change for my soul, that it may be delivered from
the woe into which my self-loving life has brought
it, any ransom-;price for my forfeited "life"; and
my only answer to that second question must be,
that in such a case I could have nothing of
sufficient value to offer, nothing that He could
possibly accept. The loss I suffer has this tre-
mendous characteristic, it caimot he retrieved.

In making plans for life, seeking to accomplish

PROFIT AND LOSS 197

some ambitious schemes that are to gratify my
love of the world, I must face the solemn possi-
bility that in gaining these I may lose myself,
lose all that is noblest in me, till my soul has
become shrivelled, withered, dead. But I am
not to limit the range of my self-denial to the
greater things of life. I must let it come down to
every form of the self-life, not merely to love of
wealth or power or fame, but to much smaller
things than these. The great occasions that call
for very great sacrifices of self are comparatively
rare ; but there are small occasions occurring every
day that demand it, where the sacrifice is quite as
difficult. It may need much self-denial for a rich
man to lay his money at Christ's feet, or for one
who is in the fair way of becoming rich to re-
linquish the prospect, if the way in which the
wealth is to come is one that conscience con-
demns ; but it will often need quite as much self-
denial to do so small a thing as to suppress a jest
lest it should pain some one that hears it, or keep
back some clever witticism lest it should bring
sacred things into contempt. It may need great
self-denial for one to leave house and kindred,
and spend all life as a herald of the Cross among
savage tribes ; but it may be quite as real a self-
sacrifice to remain at home and stand out there,
boldly protesting, by word and act, against the
sins of the day, at the risk of making himself
unpopular, and even of losing some friendships that

198 PROFIT AND LOSS

he fain would keep. In every home, in the
smallest things, there is large room for self-
denial, and a loud call for it too ; and say what
we may about the self-denial needed in all true
Christian discipleship, no life is, after all, so
blessed as that which is fullest of devotion to the
will of God. Say what we will about earthly
joys, no life, after all, is so ^poor a thing as that
which is devoted to these alone. It has " dis-
a]);pointmenV' written upon it while it lasts, and
"failuee" written on it in largest capitals when
all is done.

Let me bear in mind that if ^^self-preservation
is the first law of nature,^' self-sacrifice is the
first laiD of grace. In the school of Christ, self-
denial is the first thing taught ; and it is also the
last thing thoroughly learnt. " Teach me, 0 God,
to do Thy wilV

XXIX

A SEEPENT IN PARADISE

** Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil ?"-
John vi. 70.

It was in a noble burst of love and loyalty that
Peter replied to his Master's question, "Will ye
also go away " ? by saying for himself and all the
rest, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the
words of eternal life ; and we believe and are sure
that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living
God." His charity included all the rest of the
little band. He thought every one of them must
feel as he did himself. But the Lord saw deeper
than Peter did, and said, " You cannot, all of you,
echo these words of faith ; there is one of you who
even now has thoughts of going away ; one who,
professedly My disciple, is a devil at heart."

The apostasy of Judas was, even then, far on its
way to the final betrayal, yet he did not " go away "
at once. He sheltered himself, for the time, under

199

200 A SERPENT IN PARADISE

Peter's confession, and remained with the Master,
apparently as true as any of the rest. Better
would it have been for him if he had gone away !
It would have been more honest ; and there might
have been the hope that, like the prodigal son,
he would ere long have returned, humble and
penitent, to the Master's side. But hypocrisy,
pride, and covetousness were a threefold cord that
held him fast ; and under the power of it he kept
among the disciples still. Does this show that
even false-hearted men can resist temptation ?
Not so. It only shows that a sufficiently powerful
temptation had not yet come. Some men are not
to be bought so cheaply as others : but all radically
insincere men have their price; and those who
keep up longest the profession of being true fall
more tragically than others, when they do give
way.

This was the Master's first intimation to the
disciples, that they had a traitor in their midst ;
and very startling to them must have been His
words, " One of you is a devil." His long dis-
course had been gradually winnowing the mis-
cellaneous crowd that followed Him, till only
twelve men were left. Now, He puts these twelve
under His winnowing fan ; and lo ! one of them is
a devil !

A very solemn thought presses on me here. The
same sifting by the Word and by Providence is
still going on ; what if it should be with the same

A SERPENT IN PARADISE 201

result? What if the Lord, who is ** searching
Jerusalem with candles," whose '' eyes are as a
flame of fire," as He looks down upon His great
professing Church, gladdened by the faith of some,
saddened by the hypocrisy of others, should find,
not one traitor in every ten thousand — that would
be sad enough — but one traitor in every twelve ?
Let my question about this be, not " Lord, who is
it " ? but " Lord, is it I "? for I would need to look
well to the reality of my own discipleship if one
like Judas could fall so terribly — a man who had
long been in the very closest companionship with
Christ, who had known Him as few did, who had
been commissioned as an apostle, and had been
endowed, like the rest, with gifts of healing and of
miracle ; but a man who deceived the whole of
them, and, worse than that, deceived himself.

Most depraved men have some things about
them that relieve the blackness of their souls, some
" good points " that even great wickedness in other
directions does not quite obliterate. But I search
in vain for any of these in Judas. I find in him no
trace of generous impulses, or tender sympathies,
or gentle emotions; nothing but a cold, sordid,
calculating selfishness, without anything to relieve
its hardness. Few men have ever perhaps been
more intensely bad ; and yet he had not been
always so. In the light of his later years it is
strangely affecting to think of him as a little child
over whose infant face a mother's eyes had often

202 A SERPENT IN PARADISE

bent in love, and whose responsive smiles had often
gladdened that mother's heart; and then, as a
bright and clever boy, giving promise of a manhood
that would be beautiful and good. A great appear-
ance of good must have been in him when the
Lord chose him as one of the Twelve ; for not one
of the other eleven so much as suspected him of
wrong, till very near the end. Whatever produced
it, the deterioration of his character outwardly
must have been rapid; though inwardly it had
been only gradual and slow. The seeds of his
future sin were long lying dormant in his soul ; but
they only waited the favourable circumstances of
temptation and opportunity to spring to life and
bear their noxious fruit. His essentially worldly
heart had, at first, pleased itself with the hope of
wealth and power in the kingdom which the
Master spoke of setting up. But as the months
went on, he saw that his glowing anticipations
would not be realised. This Christ was preparing
for deaths and not for a throne ; and the world-
loving heart of Judas was first disappointed, and
then enraged, at the spirituality of his Master's
aims ; till in the heat of his passion he formed the
deliberate purpose of sacrificing that Master to his
revenge. Even when the anger cooled, the resolve
remained, just as the lava that is poured red-hot
from the volcano hardens into rock ; and in that
mood of mind he was capable of anything. It only
needed the farther thought that, since Christ would

A SERPENT IN PARADISE 203

fall into the hands of His enemies in any case, he
might as well profit by what was unavoidable, — to
make him ready to sell him for anything He could
get. It is easy to trace the process. Wounded
self-love, passing into disappointment, went on to
positive anger, and ended in malicious revenge.
No wonder that Jesus said of him, *' One of you is
a deviV \ for both the feelings and the acts of
Judas were absolutely Satanic at the last.

And yet he was not an absolutely abnormal
monster of iniquity. His sin was exceptional sin,
only because the circumstances were exceptional
circumstances. Thousands of professed disciples
in the Church to-day, are already sinning in heart
as Judas did, and ready to put the heart-disloyalty
into act, if it should seem to be for their worldly
interest to do so. I am not judging uncharitably ;
for I cannot shut my eyes. When I see conscience
and faith sacrificed for some lucrative position ;
when I see men trading upon their loud profession
of the Christian name, getting themselves thereby
implicitly trusted in the administration of other
men's means, and gambling with these means for
personal profit, bringing ruin on thousands who
thought them incapable of wrong : or when I
see some who began their disciple-life seemingly
earnest, spiritually-minded, prayerful and true,
gradually become so ensnared by love of the world
as to lose not only all that earnestness in religion,
but rehgion itself, till they are as hard and dead as

204 A SERPENT IN PARADISE

ever Judas was, I think, with a shudder at the
heart, that this may be the case with many whose
inward hypocrisy not one eye detects but the eye
of Christ ; I think, with alarm, how easy it is to
open the door for Satan to " enter in," till he has
made a very devil of the heart that thus '' gives
him place " ; and I ask myself again, " Is it I ? "
For, though I may not — if I am really the Lord's
I cannot — fall away as Judas did, I may yet fall so
low as greatly to dishonour my Master, before He
lifts me up and " restores my soul." I may thank
God that being " in Christ," and not merely with
Him, I cannot perish ; that He will keep me from
a final apostasy, seeing that I am " born of God,"
as Judas was not; that I love Christ, as Judas never
loved; that I can say, "I know whom I have
believed," as Judas never could ; and yet, I may be
left to fall, by my own sin, so low as to make me
almost indistinguishable from a castaway. If it is
impossible to say how far heavenwards a mere
pretender can soar, it is equally impossible to say
how far hellwards a truly regenerated man may
sink. I may fall back so terribly from my " first
love " as to make it doubtful to myself, and to
every one else, if I ever had it. Though still a
child, I may become such a fallen child, as to make
it impossible to prove my sonship to any. " Say
not," says an old writer, " that thou hast royal
blood in thy veins, and art born of God, unless
thou canst prove thy pedigree by holiness of life."

A SERPENT IN PARADISE 205

I may not be *' a devil," as Judas was ; into his
awful sin I may never fall ; and yet my Master's
solemn question may well make me examine my-
self, and consider how easy a thing self-deception
is. Just because I know that I have "received a
kingdom which cannot be moved," I am to serve
God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear.''
Just because a sure " promise has been given me
of entering into His rest," I am to ^^ fear lest I
should come short of it." Blessed is the man that
feareth alway " — " Thinking I stand, I must take
heed lest I fall."

XXX

COUKAGEOUS CALM

" Are there not twelve hours in the day ? "—John xi. 9.

The Lord is revealing to me, in this simple way, the
deep secret of His own perfect peace. The disciples
thought Him running into danger without due con-
sideration, and would have kept Him back from it :
" Master, the Jews sought of late to stone Thee,
and goest Thou thither again? " But He calmly
put the idea of danger aside, when it was a question
simply of fulfilling the work given Him to do.
"My life," He said, "is, every moment, in My
Father's hands; it will be long or short just as
My Father wills ; I can go fearlessly wherever He
calls Me to go. With possible dangers in My path
I have nothing to do. They will not shorten, by
one hour, the time given Me for finishing His work.
My only danger would lie in refusing that work
through fear. To order My own life would be, even
for Me, to plunge Myself into darkness at once;

206

COURAGEOUS CALM 207

but so long as I am doing My Father's will, it is
fullest daylight with Me ; and I run no risk."
There spoke the faithful servant, and the trustful
Son. "No hand can touch Me till My work is
done."

Once before He had looked at that work from
another side, the shortness of the time for doing it
in. "I must work the work of Him that sent Me,
while it is day; the night cometh when no man
can work." The swift passing of time and oppor-
tunity was, even for Him, a call to be up and doing ;
and His eagerness to complete His work grew in
intensity the nearer the end came. It could be
seen in His very looJiS. The disciples, as they
watched Him, were awe-struck by His preoccupied
expression, arising from the tension of His spirit.
" They were amazed, and as they followed Him they
were afraid," as if they said, *' What can this
intense eagerness to go forward portend?" It
could be detected also in His words, *'I have a
baptism to be baptised with, and how is My soul
straitened till it be accomplished!" "Straitened,"
as if kept in by bonds of time and space which
He willingly would break ; almost chafing at the
restrictions which He fain would overleap.

But here. He puts the matter in another way.
" My work is not yet done, and My Father will
take care of Me until it is." In these two
sayings lies Christ's deep secret for faithful
service ; a blending of intensest earnestness and

208 COURAGEOUS CALM

calmest trust. " I must not, by indolence or self-
indulgence, lose one moment of the short time
granted Me for doing My Father's will — and I must
not, by cowardly fear, try to add one moment to
My allotted time." Good Kichard Baxter puts the
matter well : —

" Lord, it belongs not to my care
Whether I die or live ;
To love and serve Thee is my share,
And that Thy grace must give.

If life be long, I will be glad,

That I may long obey :
If life be short, should I be sad,

To soar to endless day ? "

The more closely I read the Gospel story I am
sure to be the more struck with the significant fact
that Jesus never adopted any suggestion made to
Him by others, not even by His best disciples.
Even they were always interfering with Him, and
seeking, as it were, to keep Him right ! When
wearing Himself out with labours of healing mercy
prolonged into the night. His friends went out and
sought to lay hands on Him, to make Him cease.
" He is beside Himself " they said. When Mary,
at the marriage-feast of Cana, said to Him, *' They
have no wine," she evidently felt she was making
a kind suggestion, that He should supply the lack.
He only answered, '' My time is not yet come."
Peter, hearing Him speak of His coming death,
began to rebuke Him, saying, ' ' This shall not be

COURAGEOUS CALM 209

unto Thee." James and John wanted Him to let
them avenge the slight the Samaritan villagers had
put upon Him. " Our Master," they said, " is not
standing upon His dignity enough ! " *' Depart
hence and go into Judea," said His brethren, " that
Thy disciples also may see the works that Thou
doest." They thought He was hiding His light !
" Send the multitudes away to buy bread " said the
disciples on the hill-side over the lake. They would
let Him see how considerate they were, if He was
not ! When some " brought young infants to
Him that He might touch them and pray," the
disciples rebuked the intruders, and expected His
thanks ! But He only said, " Suffer the little
children to come unto Me, and forbid them
not." When the woman of Tyre besought eagerly
His mercy on her daughter vexed with a devil,
again the disciples interposed, " Send her away,
for she crieth after us " ; it was really more than He
or they should submit to, to be troubled thus ! So
here, too, they wanted to save Him from being too
rashly careless of His life ! It was all well meant,
but in a blundering sort of way ; as if they could
guard His health. His honour, His life better than
Himself. Every suggestion He calmly put aside.
He tooTv suggestions only from His Father in heaven.
The will of the Father was His sole guide at every
moment of the day; and therefore, though there
never was a life more crowded with ceaseless
activity than His, there never was a life more

15

210 COURAGEOUS CALM

calm. He seems absolutely free from haste and
excitement on the one hand, and from worry and
distraction on the other. Perpetual interruptions
by cavillers never discomposed Him. Carping
objections never irritated Him. Popular enthu-
siasm never carried Him away. Popular clamour
never disturbed Him. The thought of possible
danger lying in front never dismayed Him. He
lived in absolute trust, because He lived in abso-
lute obedience ; and so He had absolute peace.
Even in the very bitterest hour of darkness He
could say to His disciples ^^ My peace I give unto
you " — a peace that came from such an absolute
oneness of will with the Father about everything,
that nothing could shake it, even for an hour.

I am sure many disciples, I myself among them,
need to remember the Master's question, " Are
there not twelve hours in the day ? " Some forget
it through laziness ; and some through fear ; and
some through fussiness. Some disciples, too indo-
lent and self-indulgent, act as if every day had
twenty hours instead of twelve. They are never
in dead earnest about their Master's work. They
take things very easily. They are almost asleep ;
at least they are only half awake. They never
seem to feel the need of being busy in the work
given them to do. " God works slowly," they say,
and in that way they excuse their indolence !
Other disciples, of a nervous temperament, are
always fuss7j in their work for God. They seem to

COURAGEOUS CALM 211

think there are only six hours in the day, not
twelve. They are all on fire, and seem to have
discovered the secret of perpetual motion. They
are never calm enough to cool, for they are never
at rest. They do not think enough of the quiet
mountain-tops where the Master found refreshment
to His soul, after labour all the day. They seem
never to realise that the pauses of life have their
high uses, of an invigorating kind. And so their
fussy energy soon expends itself, and the cold fit
of depression succeeds the fever-heat of excitement
in which they have been living too long. A cease-
less rush of outward activities makes it impossible
for them to retreat often enough to the quiet
chamber of meditation and prayer, and so their
strength soon decays. "It is the pace that kills."
But other disciples still may forget their Master's
question about the twelve hours of the day, through
fear. The whisper of His spirit comes to them,
urging to some particular thing to be done as work
for God, and instantly they see a thousand diffi-
culties in the way — the sneers of the world, the
coldness of friends, the risk of losing the good
opinion of some whose good opinion they value
more than the smile of their Lord, the probability
that they will suffer in their earthly interests,
through their dependence, in business, on the good-
will of an ungodly master. These, and many such
things, rise up like lions in the way. They have an
uncomfortable vision of much suffering in store for

212 COURAGEOUS CALM

them : " Jews ready to stone them," if they go on ;
and fear unnerves them for the task.

The picture all these different sorts of disciples
need to keep looking at is the picture presented
here — the unresting^ unhasting, unfearing Christ.
In these three things lay the deep secret of His
wonderful life. He was unresting in His work
because He felt He must finish the work the
Father had given Him to do. He was unhasting
in the work because, waiting continually upon the
Father's will, He never sought to do more than
" the work of each day, in its day." And He was
unfearing because He knew His life was in the
Father's hands. One of our hymns speaks of
" courage rising with danger.' ' To Christ, and to
any Christ-following soul, there is never any danger
at all. " If I live, Christ is with me; if I die, I
am with Him."

XXXI
A SPECIALISING FAITH

" Believest thou this ? "—John xi. 26.

My Lord and Master comes very closely home
to me with His questions. He will not let me
content myself with generalities ; He goes into
minute details. He is not satisfied with my covi-
'preheyision of the truth ; He asks, ^^ Believest thou
this ? " He will not let me shelter myself from
His home-thrusts by adherence to the Church's
creed ; He wants to know my own creed —
" Believest thou this ? " and He will not be content
with my believing mere elevientary truth. He
leads me up to the highest truth, and asks
"Believest thou this r'

In His whole conversation with Martha of
Bethany the Lord was leading her — and in this
story of it He is leading me — to a higher concep-
tion of Himself. She had already a high concep-
tion of His love, for she felt that just to tell Him
of her need, without asking anything, would bring

213

214 A SPECIALISING FAITH

Him to her side. She had a high conception of
His power, for she knew that He, if only there,
could easily rebuke that sickness, and bring back
her brother to health. She had also a high
conception of His peculiar intimacy with God,
for she said that she knew God would deny Him
nothing He chose to ask. But she needed a higher
conception of Him still, as having the Eternal
Life in Himself so that He could give it out
wherever He pleased; nay, as being the Eternal
Life; and therefore He said to her, "7 am the
Eesurrection and the Life, he that believeth in
Me, though he were dead^ yet shall he live.
Believest thou this ? "

I see, then, that Martha's sorrow was so over-
whelming, just because she did not know enough
of her Master. Had she but known Him in the
fulness of His glorious power, her sorrow would
have been at an end ; and so I see that the reason
I so often remain uncomforted in the great sorrows
that fall on me is this, that I do not know my
Lord as I ought to do. I believe in Him a little,
but I do not believe enough. I trust Him greatly,
but I do not trust Him absolutely. I realise His
love, but I very dimly realise the infinite power
that is behind the love ; and therefore when He
wishes to bring to me the highest of His conso-
lations, He utters to me now one and now another
of His largest and grandest promises, and says,
''Believest thou this?"

A SPECIALISING FAITH 215

There are great regions of consolation in my
Master's words which I have hardly explored as
yet, and great treasures waiting for me in that
unvisited land, of the very existence of which I
am still completely ignorant. His saving power I
know, but His strengthening power I do not know.
The vital truths of His gospel I know, but the
exhilarating and uplifting truths I take hold of
very feebly at the best. I feed upon the bread of
life, but the luscious fruits in "my beloved's
garden" I hardly ever taste. So I am weak
where I ought to be strong, and sorrowful where
I might be full of joy.

Martha's two mistakes are just my own mistakes
every day. First, she was looking far into the
future; and Jesus comforted her by speaking of
the present. I, too, am often heavy-hearted
because I am looking only for a future salvation,
not realising it as a thing that belongs to me here
and now. I have a quiet hope of being welcomed
at the last, but no joyous assurance of my full
'' acceptance in the Beloved," even now. If I
were only safely past all temptation, and happily
done with my own unsteadfastness, I would feel
absolutely secure ; but I cannot feel any security
just yet. My Lord pities me for this. He sees
that I do not understand Him yet; and so He
says to me, " He that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into condemna-
tion, but is passed from death to life. Believest

216 A SPECIALISING FAITH

thou this ? " " My sheep shall never perish, none
is able to pluck them out o£ My hands. Believest
thou this'} " My doubts on this point surely dis-
honour my Saviour. If I have returned home as a
repentant prodigal, and have been received by a
Father's close embrace, why should I talk as if I
were not sure I have been really forgiven ? Why
should I hang my head in my Father's presence
instead of looking up into His face through my
tears of shame and joy? Why should I go away
doubtfully, only wishing it were true, when my
Saviour says to me, " Son, be of good cheer ; thy
sins are forgiven thee " ? Why should I answer
Him, *' I know that they shall be forgiven me in
the Eesurrection at the last day," when He is
telling me that " the Son of man hath power on
earth to forgive sins," and asking me once again,
"Believest thou thisV

I see that a second mistake of Martha's was that
she was looking too far afield as well as too far
ahead, thinking of what concerned the indis-
criminate mass of men, the world's millions every-
where, instead of looking at what was close at
hand and concerned herself. Looking only at the
general resurrection of all the dead, which is in
itself by no means a specially consoling truth, she
missed the very meaning of her Master's words,
'' Thy brother shall rise again."

Perhaps it is in this very way that I, too, miss
the special comfort of many of my Lord's words to

A SPECIALISING FAITH 217

me. I read His great promises in so poor and
narrow a way that they do not unfold to me their
full consoling power. The Christ who is so
wonderfully near to me I remove to a distance,
and so allow myself only a few drops of His
consolation now and then, while He would
willingly give me the comfort in a stream flowing
at my very feet. I believe that He was a propi-
tiation for the sins of the worlds but do I make
that general truth a specific and personal one, and
believe that, therefore. He was a propitiation for
me ? To say that it is my privilege to possess
complete gospel-peace is not to say enough. It
is my dictif to possess it. The will of the Lord is
that "my joy should be full." I not only may,
but, more than that, I ought to be " filled with all
joy and peace in believing." I dishonour my
Saviour if I put aside His hand and refuse to take
the blessings He offers me, because I think them
too great for Him to give, or for me to receive.

There must be thousands of disciples in all the
churches, of whom it can only be said that they
are just alive. Their pulse is feeble. Their
strength is small. Their songs have no joyous
ring. There is none of the brightness of God's
fair sunshine in their souls. That poor experience
is certainly better than nothing; just as a sick
man is better than one dead. But when the great
Christ restores a man, it is not from death to sicJc-
linesSy but fro7Ji death to all the fulness of strong

218 A SPECIALISING FAITH

and happy life. I would like oftener to hear my
Master say to me, " Friend, go up higher," higher
in faith, higher in experience, higher in joy, and
higher in praise. Tears for sin are good ; but
praise for the pardon of sin is better. It is good
to fall at His feet, daring no more than to touch
His garment's hem ; but it is better to go higher
and lean upon His arm ; and better still to sit
down with Him even now in heavenly places,
without any misgiving as to my right, through
His grace, to be there. It is good to take the
lowest place and be as the dogs that gather the
falling crumbs ; but better far to sit at my Father's
table, as in my Father's house, and eat the
children's bread. It is to this that I am called.
My Master tells me that all is meant for me, and
asks " Believest thou tJiis ? "

So, too, with all the trials and worries of my
daily life. His way of comforting me under these
is just the same, bringing a wide and general truth
so closely home to my heart that I feel it to have
a very special and personal application. When I
say that I believe that on the whole, in a general
sort of way, "all things work together" for my good,
He asks, " But do you believe that of every smallest
item in the great sum ? " Let me consider this.
Can I go over all my troubles, the smallest and
the greatest alike, and say of each, " this is
working for good to me " ? Do I believe that that
heavy loss I had a few years ago, that accident I

A SPECIALISING FAITH 219

met with last year, that bereavement I suffered
six months ago, that trial I had last week, that"
anxiety that troubles me to-day, that keen vexation
I met with yesterday, that bitter disappointment
I had the day before, has really, each in its own
way, and each in turn, been working for my good ?
I believe that the love of God arranges and over-
shadows my life as a whole ; but how about that
love resting equally on each day and hour and
moment of that one life ? Am I believing this ?
I will be very still and listen as my God says to
me, " I will never leave thee nor forsake thee ;
Believest thou this ? " " Commit thy way unto the
Lord, and He shall bring it to pass ; Believest
thou this ? " Help me, 0 Master, to say " Amen.
Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief."

XXXII

TENDERNESS

" He groaned in the spirit and was troubled, and said, Where have
ye laid him ? " — John xi. 33, 34.

The peculiar interest of this question lies in the
fact that in it, for the first time, Jesus gave the
sorrowing sisters a proof that He was really feeling
with them in their deep grief. Up to this point
He had been speaking down to them from His own
calm height; speaking lovingly, but still as One
above them. Now He puts Himself on their own
level, sharing their sorrows, mingling His own
tears with theirs.

I see here how intensely human Jesus was,
although divine. He spoke to them with the
tears of sympathy welHng up into His eyes — tears
that, the next moment, fell silently, but copiously,
over all His face ; and it is a most significant fact
that this Gospel of John, which, more than the
other three, reveals the true Deity of the Lord, is

TENDERNESS 221

that one which, more than the others, reveals His
perfect humanity as well.

From anything He yet had said to the sorrowing
ones, it could not have been inferred that He had
personally felt deeply the death of Lazarus. He
seemed not to look upon their sorrow as a real
sorrow that needed sympathy; and though this
can be explained by His knowledge that the death
was soon to be turned into glorious life, still there
is little trace of any very deep feeling with the
natural grief of the sisters, who, of course, knew
nothing of that. But the deep feeling had been
there all the time, and it was Mary's wild out-
burst of sobs and tears that prompted Him at last
to show what had been hidden under His exterior
calm. These tears of hers brought home to him,
as one might say, with new vividness, the fearful-
ness of the curse that sin had brought upon the
world, and that was making such havoc in it. He
had known that all along, and seen it too in the
case of others. But this was the first time that it
came closely home to His personal affections, as
witnessed in the small circle of His best-loved
friends ; and it so " troubled Him " that He
" shuddered with indignation " at the great foe
who had been the cause of it all. He saw here
the work of sin in all its length and breadth, and
from this His thoughts would go out to all the sin-
cursed world. He would see, as in a swift vision,
the same scene repeated daily, hourly, over all the

222 TENDERNESS

earth ; would see, in one flash, all earth's desolated
homes, all its weeping mourners, all its gloomy
graves, and all its falling tears — tears, most of
them, which no resurrection would dry up, no
comforter's hand would wipe away. He would
see that even Lazarus would need to die again,
and the same tears fall over him once more. He
would see, too, that even this great miracle of love
He was soon to work would only prompt His foes to
deeper sin, in plotting His destruction afresh. He
would see that some of the very bystanders who
were to witness His miracle would turn against
Him; that He would need to pay with His own
life for this giving back of life to the dead. What
wonder if, having this swift vision of the fearful
work of sin, He shuddered at it, and was indig-
nant at it, as being not only the destroyer of holi-
ness, but the destroyer of joy ; and then, in haste
to put an end to the weeping of those He loved so
well, said, "Where have ye laid him? Let me
end your sorrow now at once."

It is good for me to have '' such a High Priest "
as this, who is " touched with a feeling of my
grief," and can enter into my sorrows as if they
were His own. Strange, perhaps, that He should
so feel in the presence of a death that, in ten
minutes more, was to be turned into happy life !
But all my sorrows are, in His sight, " but for a
moment," and yet He weeps along with me when
I am in the midst of them. He mingles His own

TENDERNESS 223

holy tears with those of mine, which, next moment,
He wipes away. It is good for me to see that my
Lord does not grudge me the tears I shed over the
grave where my loved one lies. It is forbidden me
to murmur ; but it is not forbidden me to mourn.
I am only not to mourn " as those that have no
hope." My tears may be sanctifying tears, and it
helps me much when I see that my Lord Himself
was not ashamed to weep. Divine enough to dry
the tears of others, He was yet human enough to
shed tears Himself.

For I see in my Master more than simply a
human Christ — I see an emotional Christ ; and
with this picture of Him the world cannot dis-
pense. There is a strange fascination for some
minds in that superiority to all emotion which has
for ages been canonized in the Eomish Church as
the very height of saintliness ; that crucifixion of
all natural feeling, which is thought to be essential
to the soul's dwelling amid heavenly raptures and
ecstatic devotions. Her wonderful pictures of
ascetic and half-angelic saints, cut off completely
from all the feelings of common men and women,
and living in a higher perfection of the spiritual
nature than can be reached amid the ordinary joys
and sorrows of life, have always been the most
powerful attraction for sentimental minds to the
Church of Eome. But assuredly the spiritual taste
must be sadly corrupted if it is imagined that any
such icy separation from human sympathies is a

224 TENDERNESS

nobler style of living than was shown by Him who
mingled freely in the homes of the people, entering
into their joys, sharing their griefs, eating at their
feasts, taking their little children into His arms,
weeping at their graves. When will even Christians
cease from thinking themselves wiser than their
Master was ?

But I learn from Him yet more. His emotional-
ness of love suggests to me that the current religion
of the day is greatly deficient in the elements of
patJios and spiritual tenderness. It concerns itself
with the maxims of Jesus rather than His tears.
The Christ of the age is a teaching and a working
Christ rather than a weeping one.

The characteristics of discipleship chiefly insisted
upon are strength of principle and activity of
zeal ; but spiritual emotion is at a discount. It
is called weak sentiment. It is a thing most men
rather despise. The earlier Church had far more
of this tenderness than we, and it worshipped
tenderness more. The old galleries are full of
pictures of Christ, but they show Him chiefly as
crowned with thorns, as weeping in the garden, as
laid in the tomb. Our own forefathers had more
of it too. The religious life of even fifty years ago
was more suffused with tenderness than it is to-
day. There was emotion in the preaching that
made weeping in the pew. Communion tables
were often wet with tears. It would certainly
not be good to get back into the old gloom so often

TENDERNESS 225

associated with the thought of the suffering Christ ;
but it will be an unhappy day for the Church when
the weeping, agonising, dying Christ shall cease to
be impressive, and nothing be left us but Christ as
a divine philosopher. For with the loss of spiritual
tenderness there comes a loss of sensitiveness and
delicacy in spiritual perception. We tend to be-
come, not hardened exactly, but stiffened in our
sympathies, and thus the heautifying graces of
the Christian life are neglected for those that are
merely strong. A very lethargic age needs most
the stimulus of Christ's consuming zeal ; but a
busy, practical age like ours needs much the
corrective of Christ's silent tears. There are
thousands of Christian men who pride them-
selves upon their freedom from emotion ; but they
would be a thousand times better Christians if
they had a good deal more of it. For we are
uplifted by our emotions even more than by the
intellect. Some of the most sanctifying expe-
riences lie in the region of the feelings ; but hard
prosaic work too often clips the wings, and quite
unfits us for seeing Abraham's mystical city while
we journey, or Jacob's angels when we sleep.

It is a most precious glimpse into the heart of
my Lord that is given me in the words that tell
how, immediately after asking "Where have ye
laid him?" ^^ Jesus ^vejjt.'' The translators did
well to make a separate verse of that, and if that
short verse had not been in the Gospel story how

16

226 TENDERNESS

large a part of the consolation of my Master's
humanity would have been lost ! Let me thank
God for my Eedeemer's tears. The " Man of
sorrows " is the man for sorrowers. The weeping
Saviour makes me glad. My tears are often tele-
scopes to let me look more clearly into the far-off
land, where tears shall never come. It comforts
me to see that He thinks tenderly even of the rest-
ing-place of my dead. If He asks me, "Where
have you laid your loved one ? " I will answer,
*' Come and see," for I will not go alone, even to
weep there. I will take my Lord along with me,
and I will listen to Him as there He tells me of
the glorious life that is only a little way beyond.
If my Lord goes with me to the grave I can look
at it calmly, even through still falling tears, as His
holy ground, where He is keeping one of His loved
ones safe till the breaking of the day.

XXXIII
THEOUGH FAITH TO SIGHT

" Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest
see the glory of God." — John xi. 40.

This was the Lord's tender way of comforting a
very sad-hearted disciple, from whom, after weary
waiting and disappointment, hope seemed to have
fled for ever. Four days before, He had said " This
sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God,
that the Son of God might be glorified thereby" ;
and these words, spoken first beyond Jordan, He
had sent as a message of hope, while He Himself
still lingered far away. No doubt, on coming to
Bethany, He had repeated them Himself to her.
But the dead body, with corruption already begun,
seemed to give them the lie, and as she looked at
the grave, her faith staggered under the blow.
Jesus did not argue with her ; He just calmly put
all her objections aside. She was looking at the
difficulties in the way. He never so much as

227

228 THROUGH FAITH TO SIGHT

alluded to difficulties. He simply took her in
heliind the difficulties, and bade her think of His
Almighty Power, and trust Him to the last. " Said
I not unto thee ? Well, I say the same thing still."
I read these words with deepest joy, not because
of what they tell me about Martha, but because of
what they tell me of her Master and mine. I
see the absolute trustwortliiness of my Christ.
I see His claim to be trusted ; but I see more. I
see His right to be trusted to the uttermost ; and I
see that He is infinitely worthy of that trust. Had
Martha only hiown her Lord sufficiently, no doubt
would have troubled her poor heart for a moment.
Before I really know Christ, it is difficult for me
to trust Him utterly; but, once known, it is
impossible not to trust Him. This is a secret that
the great Apostle Paul had well learned, when he
said " I know whom I have believed." He did not
say "I knoMV that I have trusted Him''; he said
" I know Him on whom my trust reposes ; I know
His character to be the infinitely trustworthy
one " ; and this was a thing that could never need
reconsideration. It was a settled matter. " I know
whom I have believed " ; not, "I know one whom I
may trust, as soon as necessity arises"; nor, ''I
know one whom I will trust when things come to
the worst " ; nor, " I know one whom I inust trust
as my last resource, when all others fail " ; but,
" I know Him to whom I have already surrendered
my trust, whom I have trusted once for all, and who

THROUGH FAITH TO SIGHT 229

will keep me safe for ever. I trust Him because I
hioio Him. I hnow Him to be one who will never
go back upon His word." Was it not just to this
that Jesus sought to bring the weeping Martha ?
" Said I not unto thee ? What I have once said, I
will never unsay." It seems to me that, for all the
high purposes of faith, it is easier for me to know
Christ than to know any one else, or even to know
myself, and that for this simple reason, that
neither I nor other men are ever two days alike, but
He changes not. When I see Christ at all I see
what He will always be. Looking at myself and
men is like looking at the ever-changeful sea.
Looking at Christ is like looking at a great
mountain-peak, the same at all seasons, the same
by night as by day. Mists may cover it for a time,
but when they lift, it stands out absolutely as it
was before. Knowing Him thus, 1 7nust trust Him
evermore.

" Said I not unto thee ? " was a rebuke as well
as an encouragement. It was like what He said
to PhiHp, " Have I been so long time with you,
and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip ? " What
my Master wants from me above all things else is
a simple faith in what He has already said to me.
There is nothing He takes such loving pains to
teach me, but nothing I am so slow to learn, as this
absolute and unquestioning faith in Himself : and
to all my difficulties, He has but one reply ^^ Believe,
and thou shalt see." If He delays to fulfil some of

230 THROUGH FAITH TO SIGHT

His words, and I begin to think He cannot possibly
fulfil them now, I will remember that the blessing
is delayed, only that it may be a more enriching
blessing when it comes. I think often of my
Lord's anticipating love, the love that foresees
my need, and provides beforehand for it ; but I
will think, also, of His tarrying love, the love that
keeps me long in the darkness, and seems to
disregard my cry. I know that if He lays some
heavy trial on me, it is because He loves me ;
for the more precious the jewel, the more cutting
it gets from the lapidary's hands. I will believe
that if He continues the trial, it is still because
He loves me ; that if He seems only to heap fresh
fuel upon an already scorching fire, it is because He
loves me ; that if, when I call Him to my Bethany,
He lingers among the hills of Gilead, it is because
He loves me ; and I will believe that at last He
will explain it all, "it was for the glory of God,
that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."
At the right moment for me, as well as for Him,
He will reveal that glory, and turn my sorrow
into joy; for —

♦'His wisdom is sublime,
His heart is ever kind ;
God never is before His time,
And never is behind."

Martha soon saw the glory of God of which
her Master spoke. She saw it in the Master
Himself, who proved Himself to be the Lord

THROUGH FAITH TO SIGHT 231

of Life ; and she saw it also in the glorious
results that followed her brother's restoration
from the grave : " Many who came and saw
the things which Jesus did, believed on Him " ;
" by reason of Lazarus, many of the people believed
on Jesus." When I am mourning over a loved
one's tomb, not seeing what possible good can
come out of my heart-breaking bereavement, let
me believe that God may have mercy to others
in view, when He sends this sorrow upon me ;
that this may be the beginning of an awakening
to true and blessed life in some whom all my
appeals have hitherto failed to touch. Many a
death-bed has been the birthplace of weeping souls,
and over tears below, the angels of heaven have
rejoiced, because the lost have been found.

Let me learn, therefore, from my Master's
question, " Said I not unto thee that if thou
wouldest believe thou shouldest see ? " and from His
echo of them in His latest benediction, " Blessed
are they which have not seen, and yet have
believed," that my heart may be most at rest
when I simply believe what my Master says, and
because He says it. My difficulties, whether
speculative or practical, will not be solved by
this, they will simply ^;as5 out of vieio. I will
get in behind them, and then find that they need
never have disturbed me. They will be like the
towering battlements of a city where I fain would
find my home. At first, I think they can never

232 THROUGH FAITH TO SIGHT

be passed unless I assault them by force, and all
my efforts to do that fail. But at length I
discover that no assault is required, for the city
gate opens to a gentle knock ; and when once
within, I can look upon the great walls from the
other side, and see that the fortifications which so
alarmed me are now my defence.

Let me learn, also, to deal with my own dis=
couragements as Jesus dealt with Martha's, and
put the things which I believe over against the
things I see, and so find rest. If any simple-
minded Christian were asked the secret of
his peace, he would say, ''I just believe what my
God tells me, and I am at rest. What I see or feel
does not disquiet me, because I set over against it,
what, on His authority, I believe. I see enough of
sin in me every day to make me cry, 'chief of
sinners ' ; but I believe so fully in the forgiveness
of sins, that I know ' to me there is no condemna-
tion.' I see, in my outward lot, a thousand things
that trouble me ; but I believe, notwithstanding, that
' all things work together ' for my good. I see sin
covering the earth, and Satan appearing to triumph
everywhere ; but I believe his destruction is as sure
to come, as it is that Jehovah reigns. I see the
sick bed, and the coffin, and the grave of some
dearly loved one whose going from me has left me
desolate ; but though I see death, I believe in Life ;
though I see the tomb, I believe in resurrection
from the tomb ; though I see and feel the sundering

THROUGH FAITH TO SIGHT 233

of sweet earthly bonds, I believe in the cementing
of still sweeter heavenly ones. I do not see the
blessedness of heaven, the white robes, the palms,
the harps of gold ; and yet I am not disheartened
because I cannot see them, for I believe so surely
that God has promised them, that to me they are
as the most real of all real things. I can praise
Him for all that He is going to do, as truly as for
all He has already done, and say ' Glory to Thee
for all the grace I have not tasted yet.' And if,
when first in heaven, I should for a moment or
two be utterly amazed that such a sinner as I
should be a ' partaker of His glory,' I think my
tender Lord will just repeat to me His old question,
even there: ^ Said I not unto thee, that, if thou
wouldest believe thou shouldest see the glory of
God ? "

XXXIV
SUBLIME DEVOTION VINDICATED

" Why trouble ye the woman ? for she hath wrought a good work
upon me." — Matthew xxvi. 10.

Maey's anointing of Jesus in Simon's house has
been beautifully called " a lyric prelude to the
tragedy of Calvary," for that tragedy was very
near. In a few hours more her Lord would be in
the olive-press of Gethsemane, bruised under the
heavy millstones, till "His sweat was as drops of
blood falling to the ground" ; and in a few hours
after that. He would be hanging on the Cross, the
Sacrifice for the sin of the world. True to her
character always, Mary was sitting at her Master's
feet, drinking in His words, till the deep love of
her heart quite overflowed, and by the symbolic
outpouring of her fragrant oil she showed how
gladly she would give her very best to Him who
had given so much to her, who had been to her
so great a Saviour, so great a Teacher, so great a

231

SUBLIME DEVOTION VINDICATED 235

Comforter, so great a Friend. In this beautiful
story, and in the question of the Master, I see
three things : firstly, love most touchingly sym-
bolised ; secondly, love misrepresented and grudged
by an unloving heart ; and, thirdly, love nobly
vindicated and immortalised by the Master Him-
self.

Perhaps the most prominent feature in this
disciple was her unlimited power of loving. All
disciples must be supposed to love their Lord, but
all do not love Him equally, either in the same
ivay or to the same extent. Few love as she did,
and so to the heart of Jesus she stood above them
all. She was His ideal disciijle^ if one might call
her so — the disciple whose love more nearly than
any other's corresponded to what a disciple's love
should be — a love in which there was no mingling
of unworthy elements, as there was so often in the
love even of a Peter and a John.

And yet, poor soul, till Jesus vindicated her
she had been half suspecting that she had been
indiscreet ! Every one was crying out against
her, and, hearing the clamour, she feared she
had made some mistake. For Jesus said, " Why
trouble ye the woman ? You are not only con-
demning this loving heart, you are causing it
pain." He knew well how love of that deep type
is a sensitive thing, and though not killed by want
of sympathy, is wounded and chilled.

" To what purpose is this waste ? " they cried.

236 SUBLIME DEVOTION VINDICATED

That is always the tone of hard, prosaic men.
Men of the Judas type cannot see anything noble
in actions that are prompted only by love. There
is a sort of superior disdain in the way they speak
of such things. "Yes, very romantic, no doubt,
but very sentimental and very useless too. Eeally,
these people ought to calculate more closely what
their schemes of philanthropy will cost. They are
schemes from which there will be no return. If
they choose to throw away their money on them
that is their own affair, but the whole thing is a
dead loss."

But the love the great Lord and Master most
delights to see is a love that does not calculate by
earthly profit and loss at all, a love that simply
gushes out of the grace-filled heart, spontaneous
and free. Great love never calculates the expense
of showing it. If I ever find myself summing up
the exact cost to myself of some love-token I am
giving to a dear friend, I may be sure that my love,
though genuine enough, is not very deep. An
absorbing love scorns cold arithmetic.

Love, of Mary's warm, impulsive type, does
sometimes make mistakes, and yet, practically,
it accomplishes far more than that cautious
wisdom which is also very cold. The men and
women who have done most for the honour of
their Lord and the good of the world have not
been of the cold, calculating type, but had their
hearts aglow with a great pity and a great com-

SUBLIME DEVOTION VINDICATED 237

passion; and that love set them on doing what
none else ever thought of doing or knew how to
do. A loving heart is more original than the
cleverest brains. There is a sort of genius in
love for discovering original ways of doing good.
Mary's act was exceedingly original — far too
original and unique for the colder disciples at her
side. The world rings with praise for "original
thinkers.'' Would that there were the same praise
for original worJcers and original giver's ! If any
one wants to be " original," let him copy perfectly
the example of his Master. That will soon make
him the most unique Christian in all the world.
It seems worthy of note that Mary did not con-
sult with any of the other disciples before taking
this way of showing her love. If she had, they
would all have dissuaded her from it, and with
great show of wisdom would have proved to her
how useless it was. She consulted only her own
loving heart, and yet proved that she was wiser
than them all.

The Master's vindication of her act was complete,
and it was also beautiful. They said it was mean-
ingless and a waste. He showed them in a
moment that it was neither the one nor the other :
*' She has wrought a good work on Me ; she is
anointing Me beforehand for My burial." He saw
deep into Mary's heart, saw that what He had so
often said about His speedy death had sunk into
7ier heart more than into any of theirs, that she

238 SUBLIME DEVOTION VINDICATED

had prepared a tribute of affection for the day in
which He would be lying dead, and that then the
thought had come to her, "If His death is to be
a death of violence and open shame, it may be
impossible for me to do this then, but why should
I reserve my offering of love for the coldness of
death ? I will anoint Him now ; better that He
should have my token of affection while living
than only after He is gone." She thought that
He at least would understand all this ; and here
He showed how completely He did — showed that
He had been reading her loving thoughts, and had
been gladdened by what He saw.

*' Waste ! " said the Master ; '' nay, this will be
the seed of a harvest world-wide, the germ of
charities innumerable to the end of time, of offer-
ings to Me, in the persons of My poor brethren,
greater far." Has not that alabaster box drawn
forth the offerings of millions from Pentecost till
now ? Has not the sweet odour of that ointment
perfumed not only the small chamber at Bethany,
but the whole great temple of His Church in every
land ? Let me think of the ever-unfolding good
that may result from even one devoted act, still
more from one devoted life. Without aiming at
fame, or thinking of it in the least, it may surely
be a stimulating thought that my good may live
on after me ; that my holy influence in the world
maybe a seed that "bears fruit after its kind";
and that the world may be the purer and the

SUBLIME DEVOTION VINDICATED 239

sweeter for having had me in it, though only for
a few short years.

The carping objectors to Mary's gift stand now,
even in the world's eyes, just where, to the Master's
eye, they were standing then — on a far lower level
than the humble woman whose only question was,
" How best can I show my love ? " It is surely a
most significant fact that when Judas spoke of
that act he called it *' perdition " ; " this waste of
the ointment" is (literally rendered) " this ^;e7TZi-
tion of the ointment " — not only waste, but utter
loss ; and that word of his has been made to cling
for ever to himself ! To latest ages he will be
known as " the Son of Perdition^' : his whole life
a waste and an utter loss ! So true is it that " by
thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words
thou shalt be condemned."

Let me listen thankfully to my loving Master as
He defends from calumny the poor disciple whose
heart He knows. Let me also serve Him with my
best, and serve Him in my own way, whether other
disciples condemn me or not. But let me, as I sit
and listen to His comforting voice, bethink me
whether I am doing for Him what might call for a
like approval. Can I take gladly all He gives to
me, and then, when the next appeal to help Him
comes, grudge Him the smallest token of my
thankfulness ? As I hear Him say, " She hath
done what she could," let me honestly ask, Am
I also doing all I can ? Am I saying to myself,

240 SUBLIME DEVOTION VINDICATED

" If my Lord and Saviour were only here, I would
lavish on Him all that can show how truly I am
His " ? Then let me listen still as He meets that
profession of mine, "The poor ye have always with
you, and whensoever ye will, ye can do them good ;
and inasmuch as ye do it to one of the least of
these My brethren, ye do it imto Me.''

XXXV

THE SEEVANT-MASTER

" Whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth ?
is not he that sitteth at meat ? but I am among you as He that
serveth." — Lukb xxii. 27.

When I look into that upper room where Jesus and
His disciples were met, two wonders stand out to
view ; the shameful strife among them for the
highest place, and the deep humility of the Master
that made them all ashamed. Saddened exceed-
ingly He must have been to see that they had
even yet so very imperfectly learned His spirit;
but there is no angry expostulation on His lips, no
flash of holy indignation in His eye. He simply
says, "Look at Me; am I striving for any pre-
eminence ? Am I seeking the highest place ? I
might rightly do it, but am I doing so ? I am
among you as He that serveth you all."

How can I ever understand this wonderful
humility ? The great Christ, whom John after-
wards in vision saw ''holding the seven stars in

17 241

242 THE SERVANT-MASTER

His right hand," stoops to use these hands in
washing a sinner's feet ! Knowing that the
Father h^idjyut all tilings into His hands, He took
a towel and girded Himself to do the lowest and
the lowliest service to these pride-filled men !
And He is just as willing to do the same for
me to-day. I call Him Master a7icl Lord,
and I say well, for so He is. But is He my
servant also ? Yes, even so. But for this, I had
never been saved; but for this, I could never be
kept; but for this, I could neither be fitted nor
admitted to sit down with Him at last.

" Among you as He that serveth." That single
expression sums up the whole work and the whole
character of this great Lord of my soul. It tells
me of His servant-faithfulness, and it tells me of
His servant-lowliness as well. " Making Himself
of no reputation^' ! Could there be anything
lowlier than that ? The Lord of Heaven putting
Himself on the low level of His lost creatures, to
redeem them, carrying their burdens for them,
washing their feet, taking on Himself their sick-
nesses, bearing their sins ; and then, after speaking
nothing but truth and love, and hearing Himself
called "a blasphemer" for speaking it, after doing
nothing but good, and hearing Himself called " a
devil" for doing it, willing to die at their cruel
hands as the vilest of sinners dies, willing to be
hissed out of the world by the very men He came
to save — there never was humility like that !

THE SERVANT-MASTER 243

That was a depth of self-humiliation to which
only Divine Love could stoop ; but that aged
Christian must have learned very fully what
Divine Love is, when to the question, Do you
not think it wonderful that the Lord of glory
should have stooped so low for you? she replied,
*' No, it was not wonderful for Him to do it, for it
ivas just like Hivi.'^

When I think of Jesus as the Serving One,
I must begin by thinking of Him as a true
and faithful servant to God, and only through
that, being a loving servant of men. This servant-
hood to the Father He was always speaking about :
" I must work the work of Him that sent Me'' ;
" As my Father gave Me commandment, so I do " ;
" I am come not to do My own will, but the will of
Him that sent Me"; "I have finished the worJc
Thou gavest Me to do.'' He who ''sprang out
of Judah " seemed on the Cross itself to echo
the words of Judah regarding Benjamin, '^ Let
me abide a bond-servant to my lord, and let
Benjamin go free " ; for that was really the place
He took, the humiliation He was willing to
accept, " made under the law to redeem them
that were under the law." Like Jacob, who
gained his bride by serving for her. He took
the servant's place, did faithfully the servant's
work, and then claimed His wages — the bride He
had been serving for.

And it was out of this servant-hood to God that

244 THE SERVANT-MASTER

there came His servant-hood to men. A friend of
sinners ? Yes. A Saviour of sinners ? Yes ; but
more than that ; a servant of sinners too ! He
gathered romid Him just the men that needed to
be served, and He spent His life in serving them.
When in the synagogue of Nazareth He opened
the book of Isaiah, and read His commission, " the
spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He hath se7it me
to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach dehverance
to the captives, and recovering of sight to the
bhnd, to set at liberty them that are bruised," He
was rejoicing in the work of being a servant of
sinners; and what a consecration of the Holy One
for His merciful '' ministry " was this ! gathering
together the children of sorrow, and poverty, and
sickness, and sin, and fear, men with withered
hearts and wasted lives and despairing souls, and
calling all of them to His ministry of healing,
as to a Bethesda whose angel never was absent,
whose waters never were still. As I read the story
of His life, I see that He never for a moment
thought either of His own dignity or of His own
ease, if there was a single help-needing one beside
Him to be served in any way. Hungry Himself
He fed the poor. A man of sorrows Himself He
lifted the burdens of the sad. Weary Himself He
went on serving the sick till far on into the night.
I see Him one day, serving a guilty sinner at
Jacob's well, drawing the living water for her out
of His own deep well ; another day, serving a

THE SERVANT-MASTER 245

sorrowful one at the gate of Nain ; again, serving a
tormented one at Gadara, breaking the demoniac's
chains ; at Capernaum, Jerusalem, Jericho, serving
the lame, the dumb, the blind. It was all one to
Him who needed the service of His love, and
whether the help needed was for the body or for
the soul. Whosoever, wheresoever they were, He
served them gladly and He served them all.

Me, too, He has been serving lovingly all my
years. Bearing my heavy burdens has been His
patient daily work for me, from the first hour
I asked Him to do it. Carrying my messages
to the throne and bringing back to me the answers
that my Father gave, that also has been His
servant-work in my behalf for many years ;
washing the garments and the feet that I have
soiled by sin ; preparing daily my heavenly food
and setting it before me; lighting for me my
chamber lamp, — His smile of peace ; spreading
for my weariness a couch of quiet rest, — the assur-
ance of His love. It has been aU a servant's work,
and He who has been doing it is my great heavenly
Lord ! He has been serving me long ; He is
serving me still; He tells me He will serve me
to the very last. And even when heaven comes
His servant-work will be continued there, for I
read with wondering joy those words of His,
*' Blessed are those servants whom their Lord,
when He cometh, shall find watching; verily I
say unto you. He will gird Himself and make

246 THE SERVANT-MASTER

them to sit down to meat, and ivill come fortli and
serve them.^^

If this is my Lord's chosen work, I cannot ask
Him to do too much in my behalf. Never is He
better pleased than when I give over into His
hands every burden that oppresses me, not only
the burden of my sins, but the burden of my
sorrows and my cares. Close beside me every day
is this strong serving Christ, who gives me the
privilege of using Him, as the centurion made use
of the servants under him ; for I have but to ask
Him to "go for me, and He goeth ; to come to me,
and He cometh ; to do this for me, and He doeth
it ! " What an infinite honour is put on me by
His grace, to have this glorious servant of the
Father waiting to serve me, and always glad to be
asked to do it ! I would be both holier and
happier if I alloioed Him to serve me as fully
as He longs to do ; if I oftener asked Him to bring
out to me the treasures of heaven to which
He has access always ; if I oftener asked Him
to fill my empty vessels as well as to wash my
earth-stained feet; if I only gave Him all my
burdens to carry, the great and the small alike, as
He is so willing to do. Let me think of Him
to-day as standing ready to do for me what the
servant in His own perfect parable did for the
restored and wondering prodigal who was at home
in the Father's house, — to "bring forth the best
robe and put it on me, to put a ring on my hand

THE SERVANT-MASTER 247

and shoes on my feet." If He is to '* save me to
the uttermost," it can only be by serving me to the
uttermost. I must let Him do the whole work of
saving me and sanctifying me, and not merely
some of the more difficult bits of the work that I
cannot do myself, and so when I hear my great
Servant-Master saying, " If J wash thee not, thou
hast no part with Me," I will say eagerly to Him,
" Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and
cleanse me from all my sin."

XXXVI

THE GEEAT EXAMPLE

" Know ye what I have done to you ? " — Johk xiii. 12,

Yes, my Master ; in this great act of love, Thou
hast given me a great examjple ; hast upHfted me
with a great consolation ; and hast warned me of
a great danger, which I am too apt to forget. My
Master's example teaches me to be willing to lay
aside every thought of personal superiority, if I
can do the humblest of my brethren good. If my
brother needs it, I am, even literally, to wash his
feet ; but, whether it be by washing his feet, or
filling his hand, or drying his tears, or covering his
infirmities, or forgiving his faults, or praying for
his soul, I am to imitate my Lord's perfect low-
liness and perfect love. Some of my brethren
have defects that detract from the beauty of their
Christian character, failings that irritate and
annoy me. Close contact with these brethren is
somewhat disagreeable. They are, as I often say,

243

THE GREAT EXAMPLE 249

''difficult to get on with" ; and I am tempted to
let my irritation get the better of my love; to
think of their soiled feet, congratulating myself
that my own are clean ; to take my stand above
them, parading, instead of covering, the infirmities
that are so disagreeable to me ; and virtually
saying to them, "Wash thy feet clean, before I
will sit with thee." " Nay, but," says my Master,
" ye ought to wash one another's feet. Remember
how defiling the dust of the world is to you as well
as to them ; none can pass along its miry roads
without soiling his feet ; instead, therefore, of
proudly telling your brother to wash his feet, do
you wash them ; do not condemn him simply,
forgive him rather, and so be liker Me."

How beautifully has the curse of Canaan^ " a
servant of servants shall he be to his brethren,"
been turned by my great Master into the blessing
of the Christian and his glory too, through likeness
to Him who took the curse upon Himself, and
became servant to all ! My only way of rising
is, like Christ's, to go down. The post of lowliest
service is the post of highest honour. The towel
with which He wiped His disciples' feet far out-
shone the purple that wrapped Caesar's limbs.
Shame to me that I should ever speak of lowly
work in an obscure and humble sphere as " be-
neath my talents," or "beneath my dignity,"
and so should shrink from the disagreeable ele-
ments connected with some of the lowlier forms of

250 THE GREAT EXAMPLE

Christian service, forgetting that the glorious
Christ laid aside His glory to save a world the
hatefulness of whose sin must have been, to His
feelings of repugnance, infinitely greater than the
hatefulness of the lowest dens of vice can be to
me. If the spirit of my Lord is in me at all, I
shall be glad to do the meanest of all services to
the meanest of all my brethren, and feel as Abigail
did when she said to David, " Let me be a servant
to wash the feet of the servants of my Lorcl.^'

But, as I ponder my Master's words at this
feet- washing, I see that He has given me a great
Christian consolation too. I find that, in what
He said to Peter, *' He that is washed needeth not
save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit";
for, literally, what He said was this, " He that has
been in the bath needeth not save to wash his
feet." In the bath the whole body had been
cleansed; but on the way from the bath to the
feast-chamber the sandalled feet would become
soiled again ; but only the feet ; and there was,
therefore, no need for a repetition of the bath.
My Master, transferring this to the region of
spiritual things, speaks to me of two cleansings,
both of which are needed; but one of which is
needed only once, the other constantly. If I
think of my whole life of faith as a single day,
then, in the morning of that day, there is the
bath of regeneration; that is where my new
Christian life begins. At the evening of the day

THE GREAT EXAMPLE 251

there is to be the feast of heaven ; and between
these two, lies the whole of my life-walk on earth.
I am sinning ever, and need ever to be washed
afresh from fresh pollution of the feet ; but I do
not need for this a repetition of the hath. When
I washed in the "fountain opened for sin," I was
regenerated once for all. This it is that gives me
the right to be called a "child of God." I was
then "born from above," and that privilege, as
it cannot be lost, does not need to be repeated.
However true it be, sadly true, that the soiling of
my feet goes on — for daily contact with a pol-
luting world cannot but leave some defilement on
me, which mars my peace, as well as spoils my
purity — and however true it be that from this
daily defilement I must be daily cleansed by daily
grace and daily forgiveness ; it still remains a
blessed fact that when I was regenerated I was
regenerated once for all — and have been ever
since, and will be for evermore, a child in the
Father's house, having an assured position there,
of which my infirmities do not deprive me ; so
that if, at any moment, my feet were only
cleansed, I would be " clean every whit," would be
as thoroughly " without spot and blameless," even
here, as I will be when the sanctification of my
whole soul and body and spirit is at last complete.
And there may be such moments in my life, if I
am trying honestly to keep in fellowship with
God — moments when all the sin of the daily life is

252 THE GREAT EXAMPLE

so completely forgiven, and the holiness of my
feelings and life is so perfect through the indwell-
ing of the Holy Ghost, that, if death were to come
just then, no further washing even of the feet
would be required before entering the palace of
the King, and feasting with the undefiled.

Such moments will probably be rare. The
holiness of such moments will probably be lost
again very soon. Still, the possibility of being in
such a state, occasionally at least, cannot be denied,
if these words of my Master are true, "He is
clean every whit." And, if so, I can easily see
how, when death comes, and the feet that have
been often washed before are washed for the last
time, and pass in beyond the possibility of being
defiled again, I should be, that moment, ^^pre-
sented faultless in the presence of His glory, with
exceeding joy " — so faultless that I can bear to be
in the presence of His glory, without shame and
without fear. That " the souls of believers, when
they die, are made perfect in holiness, and do
immediately pass into glory," is, therefore, not
merely the language of a human confession of
faith; it is the verdict of Christ Himself.

Yet, let me not forget to listen to my Master's
great caution too. His question, '' Know ye what
I have done to you?" shows me that, however
truly regenerated at the first, there is no disciple
that does not need, thereafter, a daily cleansing
from daily sin. This was what He suggested so

THE GREAT EXAMPLE 253

vividly by washing these disciples' feet. But I
may, perhaps, understand the Lord to point here
to a still deeper truth, one that does not lie so
much upon the surface as that. The " feet " may
represent to me the lower activities of life ; and
His warning may be that it is in the realm of
lower things, rather than in that of the higher,
that my chief danger of defilement lies ; not so
much in the lofty exercises of spiritual worship
and work (though even there sin may defile), as in
the lower sphere of secular affairs, my daily con-
tact with earthly things. To walk undefiled
through the whole round of my social or commer-
cial or political life is more difficult than to be
holy in the sanctuary and the chamber of prayer ;
and yet, do I not condemn myself more for failures
in the loftier departments of my Christian hfe
than for failures in these lower ones ? Do not
my habitual confessions of sin refer more to short-
comings in my intercourse with God^ than to
failures in my intercourse with men } " Look to
your /ee^," says Jesus, " let them be as clean as
your hands and your head." Let me be well
assured that, if my Master is dishonoured by me,
it will be in the smaller things of life, or at least
in the lower levels of life, rather than in the
higher. It is in his contact with the world, and
in his love of the world, that nearly every disciple
finds his chief danger to lie, and therefore it is in
the ordinary, rather than in the extraordinary,

254 THE GREAT EXAMPLE

duties of life, that he needs most to guard his
inward purity. And past cleansings cannot be
enough. These will leave untouched the life that
has gone on beyond them. Life to every man
is a constant novelty. New temptations are
always rising up, and old ones confront him in
new shapes. If I try to live merely on the
strength of grace given me long ago, I will cer-
tainly fall. A daily cleansing I must have for
daily sin ; and daily grace is as needful to me as
daily bread.

XXXVII
ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT DEPTH

" Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake ? Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, the cock shall not crow till thou hast denied Me thrice." —
John xiii. 38.

" Do ye now believe ? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come,
that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me
alone." — John xvi. 31, 32.

What a sad outlook upon the disciples' faithless-
ness is revealed in these questions of the Master !
They all meant honestly what they said ; but He
knew them better than they knew themselves.
Beneath their ardent impulsive and quite sincere
professions of devoted love, He saw an instability
they never suspected, and knew well that in the
testing hour their fancied strength would be only
a broken reed. The sad failure of these disciples
speaks loudly to all disciples still, and says, "let
not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself
as he that putteth it off." It will be well for me
to think of this more seriously than I do.

255

256 ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT DEPTH

No fewer than four times had Peter, especially,
been warned of his weakness, and of the sin into
which that weakness would lead him, and yet he
was so blind to his weakness, so proudly confident
of his strength, that his fall came as unexpectedly
to himself as though he had never been warned of
it at all. There is no more humiliating page in
the gospels than that which tells how Peter's pride
led on to his threefold denial of the Master he yet
loved so well. One would have thought that the
very minuteness of Christ's foreknowledge, " thou
shalt deny Me thrice,''' and '* this night,'' and even
" hefore the cocJc crow," would have startled Peter
out of his dream of self-confidence. But nothing
dies more hard than self-conceit ; and so the
strongest of all became the weakest of all, in that
hour when danger on the one side and his cowar-
dice upon the other, combined to ruin his steadfast-
ness. No one knows how terribly far he may
depart from truth, and honour, and Grod, if left to
himself. Peter went far upon that awful road ;
and, but for the grace of God, and his patient
Master's prayers, he would have gone farther still,
till he had ended in an apostasy as complete as
that of Judas himself.

Many a fortress has been taken by assault, not
on its weakest but on its strongest side, because
it was thought to be so impregnable there that no
special watch against surprise on that side was
required. It is said that it is the strongest

ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT DEPTH 257

swimmers who are oftenest drowned at the coast,
when disporting in the summer sea ; because an
overweening confidence in their power of endurance
makes them venture too far out, and the fatal
cramp seizes them, ere they know. Alas ! this
self-confidence has often proved to be my deadliest
foe. I have ventured boldly where I ought rather
to have shrunk back timidly. I have fancied
myself superior to the very temptation that over-
powered me. I have fallen because I was so
foolishly certain I could stand. I have looked at
sin in others, and have congratulated myself that
in that direction at least there was no fear of my
being overcome, and only by some sad experience
of a fall I have been brought to acknowledge the
truth that " Blessed is the man that feareth
alivayy For, if Satan can but ruin me, it matters
nothing to him in what way he does it, whether
by openly seducing me to become a brutish sen-
sualist, or by flattering me into the fond belief that
I am an established saint.

There is much food for serious thought in the
strange fact that nearly all those good men, whose
sins are recorded in the Book of God, failed pre-
cisely in those directions in which at other times
their chief strength lay. Abraham, who so con-
spicuously walked by faith — '* faithful Abraham,"
— fell, by want of faith, into a double prevarication
and lie. Moses, the meekest of men, forfeited his
place in Canaan through a passionate word.

18

258 ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT DEPTH

Solomon, the wisest of men, was guilty of the utter
folly of bowing down to idols. Barnabas, the
lovable peacemaker, had an angry quarrel with
Paul. Peter the bold, was cowardly enough to
deny his Lord. But, just as the seeds of fever
are lurking in all manner of unsuspected places,
and only await favourable atmospheric conditions
to develop into widespread epidemics, so the seeds
of evil are latent in every heart, and only require
the favourable conditions of temptation to become
open sins ; and thus, integrity at one moment in a
Christian life is no absolute guarantee for integrity
the next. In thinking of these disciples' self-
ignorance, and the Master's knowledge of their
inherent weakness, I see from what a height, and
to what a depth, a fall is possible ; and I hear the
salutary caution coming to myself, '* be not high-
minded, but fear." If I were to put a new heading
to each page of the Bible histories, there are few
indeed that would not need it to be this : " Pride
goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit
before a fall."

The Master's prediction was terribly verified in
the case of all these disciples, very specially so
in the case of Peter ; and I can find two reasons
for his fall which come closely home to myself.
First of all I see that Peter was false to himself
before he was false to his Master. An acted lie
preceded the spoken ones. He had put himself
in a false position in the High Priest's hall, and.

ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT DEPTH 259

to escape close scrutiny, had tried to pass himself
off as one of the capturing band. He began by
being ashamed of any connection with his Master,
and, after that, a farther fall was not only easy,
but inevitable. He gave a sad illustration of the
progress downwards in evil so sharply described in
the first Psalm. Beginning by " walking in the
counsel of the ungodly," he next " stood in the
way of sinners," as though he were one of them,
and ended by '' sitting in the seat of the scornful,"
for, cursing and swearing, he said, " I know not the
man." Entering into temptation with a proud
step, he found, as every one is sure to find, that,
being left to himself, he fell.

Then, secondly, he had not calculated on meeting
just the hind of temptation that actually came.
When he said so valiantly, "I will lay down my life
for Thy sake," he was thinking only of a fight with
the sword ; and he felt he could do that. He did
draw his sword in the garden, and would have
fought on to the bitter end, had not his Master
said " Put up thy sword." If Christ's kingdom had
to be won by arms, Peter would easily have led the
van. But he never expected the kind of tempta-
tion, so dreadfully prosaic and mean, under which
he fell. He had never even thought of such a
thing as that, with no glamour of heroism about
it at all. It is often so. I am often like one who
is occupied with an enemy in front, and suddenly
awake to the fact that the enemy is hehind. I

260 ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT DEPTH

fortify myself against defection, by arguments based
on the supposition that danger will confront me
only at some definite time and in some definite
way, and when it appears in a way and at a time
completely different, my unguarded faith gives
way. I need to ponder this disciple's own advice,
"Be sober, and be vigilant. ^^

And now, if Peter's fall cautions me, Peter's
restoration comforts me. He was a true disciple
at heart ; and the Grood Shepherd never loses any
of His sheep. The bitter tears of the penitent
disciple, and his Master's reinstatement of him
in his forfeited place, prove that. Yet let me not
think or say that a fall like his matters little, if
recovery and pardon follow it. A genuine Chris-
tian's temporary fall has often ruined many whom
his repentance could not save. The growth of
evil from the sowing of one evil seed he cannot
prevent ; and no more bitter thought can sadden
a restored backslider's heart than the thought
that, by his declension and fall, he has done harm
to other souls, which not even his remorseful tears
and prayers can ever undo. Though it be a great
truth that came afterwards from Peter's lips, that
I am " kept, through faith, by the power of God,
unto salvation," there is a truth deeper than that,
viz., that my faith itself needs a keeper, else it
will not resist the temptations of a single day.
There is certainly no necessity that a Christian
should fall. My life of faith might be a life of

ENTHUSIASM WITHOUT DEPTH 261

victory all along, if I only allowed the Holy Spirit
of God to have full possession of me. If the grace
of Christ is allowed free course within me, it will
be impossible for me to sin. I shall never take a
false step. But it is just there that the infirmity
of my faith reveals itself. It is so difficult to keep
every channel of the soul free for the inflow of that
grace — and with failure there, all other failures
begin.

Whenever, therefore, I am tempted to flatter
myself that from some kinds of temptation I am
in no danger at all, let me remember Peter's pride.
When I think I can do, even for an hour, without
watchfulness and prayer, let me remember Peter's
fall. And if, for the sake of anything on earth, I
am tempted to be ashamed of Christ, let me
remember Peter's tears.

XXXVIII
NEAE, AND YET UNKNOWN

'• Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known
Me, Philip ? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father ; and how
sayest thou then. Show us the Father ? Believest thou not that I am
in the Father, and the Father in Me ? " — John xiv. 9, 10.

Pathetic questions these ! What a tone of grieved
disappointment there is in them ! All these long
years of closest companionship with Him, all His
teachings, all His wondrous works gone for so little !
It saddened the Lord to find how unspiritual in
understanding Philip still was ; how he and
all the rest were still so utterly blind to the
real glory of Him in whom the Father had been
walking beside them and speaking with human
voice. " Ye have already seen the Father," said
Jesus ; and they only lifted up amazed faces, and
asked, " Where ? " '' When ? " " How ? " " Slioto
us the Father and it sufficeth us," said wondering
Philip. He wanted some ecstatic vision which

262

NEAR, AND YET UNKNOWN 263

might help him to reahse what " going to the
Father " meant. If he could only get one glimpse
within the veil, all his doubts would be at rest.
Little though he suspected such a thing, he was
as yet on no higher spiritual plane than the thick-
witted Pharisees who asked " a sign from heaven "
that they might believe. This very unspiritual
disciple was still walking by sight instead of by
faith, and so he had missed seeing the very truth
he had been longing for. " For three years," said
Jesus to him, " the Father has been before your
eyes. When you listened to My words you were
hearing the Father's voice ; when you watched My
works you were seeing the Father's hand. You
have already seen, in Me, all that you will ever see
of the Father on this side of heaven ; perhaps all
you will ever see, even there. I and the Father
are one. I am in the Father^ for I have no
word, no will, no act of My own apart from Him ;
and the Father is in Me, for all that He is, I am."
There is unquestionably a profound mystery
here, the deepest of all mysteries ; a mystery
whose depth cannot be fathomed by any man.
But then I am not required to fathom it. I am
asked simply to believe it on the authority of Him
who is the Absolute Truth. Even Christ does not
propose to make my understanding of it plain. He
appeals to His works to prove it ; but, ultimately,
my acceptance of it can only be an act of trust.
Philip's mistake was not that he could not solve

264 NEAR, AND YET UNKNOWN

the mystery, but that he did not see there was any
mystery to be solved. The Lord Jesus had been
to him little more than a wise human Teacher, a
dear earthly friend. He had no conception of such
a thing as a God-man. He knew of a Father, he
knew of a Son, but he never for a moment
imagined they could be one and the same. And
there was much to justify his view. Jesus had
often spoken of Himself as " coming from " and
" going to " the Father. Himself standing beside
them on earth, He had taught them to look up and
say, '' Our Father, which art in heaven^ They
had seen Him lift His own eyes to heaven and
pray to His Father there. And with that side of
the truth so prominent, it was difficult for them to
see its other side, or to know what He could mean
when He called Himself " the Son of Man ivho is
in heaven.''^

This deep mystery is one before which I am
dumb — that the Son of man should say " Thou "
to the Father, that the Father should say " Thou "
to the Son, and yet that that Son should say, " I
and the Father are so one that I am in the Father
and the Father in Me ; he that hath seen me hath
seen the Father " — it is high ; I cannot attain
to it.

And yet my perplexity may somewhat disappear,
if I think of the life of Jesus upon earth as being
simply the invisible and omiiijjresent God putting
on a visible form that only enfolded a presence

NEAR, AND YET UNKNOWN 265

always there, but made itself capable, for a short
season, of being seen ; for the scriptural concep-
tion is not God and Christ, it is " God m Christ."
I really know God only in Him. Perhaps I shall
never know Him in any other way ; perhaps my
only vision of God to all eternity may be "in the
face of Jesus Christ." But where reasoning
staggers, a simple faith can stand ; and this is my
faith, that seeing Christ, I see the Father ; having
Christ, I have the Father also. " Emmanuel, God
ivith us,''^ is a truth over which self -wise men will
stumble to the last ; but it is a truth at which
simple hearts never stumbled, and never will.
This " mystery of the kingdom of heaven," like
all others, is " hid from the wise and prudent, and
revealed to babes."

Whenever, therefore, I listen to my Lord, I will
listen uyon nuj hiees. I will ivorsJiij) Him who speaks
to me of His wondrous glory, and I will ponder the
comfort of this truth as well as its glory; for if the life
of Jesus was just the human life of God, how very
near the Most High has come to me in His Son !
how perfect a revelation of the heart of the Most
High is given me in the words and acts of the Son !
If I have not the consolation of knowing that my
Saviour is very God, I lose the whole comfort of
His life and death and reign and coming again ; I
am robbed of the one thing that sustains me in the
fears and doubts and discouragements of my own
life here. It is no barren dogma this ; it is not

266 NEAR, AND YET UNKNOWN

one which I may receive or let alone without
damage to my hopes. If my Saviour be not the
Eternal God, I could not be safe or happy for a
day. The mystery of it I confess, but a God
whom I can perfectly fathom would be no God to
me ; a religion without mystery would not satisfy
me, or give me rest. There is rest, however, for
me here ; for this mysterious union of the Father
and the Son draws out and deepens my confidence
in both. I am not perpetually asking whether
Christ's words are really the Father's voice, or
whether Christ's promises, as from the Father,
will be honoured by the Father ; for my faith rests
in this: "I and the Father are one," and so I
make my anchor fast within the veil.

And yet how slow I am to realise all that this
means to me ! My Lord may well say to me what
He said to Philip, " Have I been so long time with
you, and yet hast thou not known Me ? " Surely
I have never known Him as I ought, otlieriuise
God ivould not seem to me, as He sometimes does,
so unsympathetic and cold; a God enthroned in
majesty in some distant heaven, but not near
enough or human enough to care much about me,
or be a real helper to me in my need.

I do not know Him as I ought, otherwise I would
not misjudge Him as I do. He has been infinitely
tender and loving in all my past experience of
Him. Why cannot I trust Him still ? In times of
bewildering doubt, arising from crushing grief, He

NEAR, AND YET UNKNOWN 267

comes to me and says, *' Hast thou not known Me
in the past ? Why not believe Me again to-day? "
Eeally to know Him is to know a love that never
changes and never fails. To doubt that love in
new emergencies is only to prove that I have never
known Him in the old.

I do not know Him as I ought, othenvise I
would not be so luorld-loving as I am. He shows
me, in His own life, what my chief aim in mine
should be : not to be great, not to be popular, not
to be rich, but "to do the will of my Father who
is in heaven." I call myself by His name ; I
profess to *' walk even as He walked," to '' have
the same mind in me that was in Him ; " and yet
how sadly different my self-pleasing, world-loving
life from His ! Do I really know my Master even
yet, when I am straining my energies to secure all
that the world can give, or w^orrying about the
future, measuring my poor resources to see if they
will meet all manner of imagined evils lying in
front ? Let me think more of my unworldly
Master, who simply lived upon the Father's care,
and for the Father's glory. Let me see Him
bending over me and saying, with heavenly pity
in His tone, " Poor, troubled, doubting, anxious
one, hast thou not known Me yet ? "

I do not know Him as I ought, othenvise I would
not doubt His forgiveness after fresh sin, as I often
do. Sin daily saddens and shames me ; and it
sometimes seems as if He could not go on for-

268 NEAR, AND YET UNKNOWN

giving me day after day, but must be wearied out
with me and give me up. But I do not hnow Him
if I think He will. He who gave His disciples a
rule for their forgiveness acts upon it Himself,
"not until seven times, but until seventy times
seven." I long, too, to be free from the power of
sin. I struggle and resolve and pray, but all in
vain. The old failures constantly recur, till hope
of victory is quenched. In this case, also, let me
hear my pitying Lord saying, " Hast thou not
known Me yet as One who can save to the utter-
most, and give, not pardon only, but perfect
victory as well ? ' '

I do not know Him as I ought, otherwise I would
not dotiht that He will " deliver me from every evil
worJc, and preserve me to His heavenly kingdom."
Oh, for a deeper knowledge of all that this
Almighty Christ can do!

XXXIX

THE MOENING OF JOY

"Do ye inquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while,
and ye shall not see Me, and again, a little while, and ye shall
see Me?" — John xvi. 19.

Some of the Lord's questions were meant to rehuTie
curiosity, but some were meant rather to excite it.
Many of His sayings were purposely enigmatical,
that dull hearts might be stirred up to ask what
His meaning really was. "What He had just been
saying was a riddle to them ; and though a riddle
is always simple when we have the key, it was
precisely the key to this one that none of them had.
He did not rebuke them for their ignorance. He
knew that they could not solve the difficulty, and
so, as He saw them puzzling helplessly over it and
awed into silence in His presence, so that they did
not dare to ask Him what He meant. He was filled
with compassion for them, and introduced the
subject Himself. And yet, as I read His words, it
seems strange that He gave them no farther light.

269

270 THE MORNING OF JOY

Was it not because a few weeks more would show
them, on Olivet, what "going to the Father'
meant ? and because the chief thing that puzzled
them. His seven-times repeated " a little while,"
was such a small thing after all? All the great
matters He had been discoursing about passed over
their heads, but when He came to matters of
chronology, mysterious appearances and disappear-
ances, they were awake enough, and interested at
once. They were only children yet, and put
childish questions, to which He would give no
answer then. A few weeks more, and all would
be plain ; but meanwhile they must wait.

The Church of to-day has need to take this
lesson home; for the same foolish eagerness to
know the "when" of the Lord's coming, and to
puzzle over questions of chronology and dates, is
too rife among disciples still. Let me rather think
of the great purpose of His appearing, and help
that on, than perplex myself with bewildering
speculations and guesses about the Jwur.

But what did the Master really mean by His
"little while" of absence, and His "coming
again " ? I cannot think He was referring only to
the three days that would elapse till they saw Him
risen, and "were glad"; for His "going to the
Father " was to take place before the sight that
would turn their sorrow into joy. I cannot think
He meant that they would have a spiritual vision
of Him after Pentecost ; for the " not seeing " and

THE MORNING OF JOY 271

the " seeing" were evidently to be the same hind
of sight, not physical in one case and spiritual in
another, but both of them the seeing with the
bodily eye. It is just this, indeed, that continues
to make His promise cheering to me, and to all the
Church till earth's latest day. The seeing of the
Lord is still its " blessed hope," and mine ; and so,
when He tells me that His absence will be only for
" a little while," the great hope springs to life
within me, that His " glorious appearing " may be
far nearer than I think; for He does not reckon
time by earthly years, and that may seem to Him
exceedingly short which seems to me almost
unendurably long.

I will " comfort myself, therefore, with these
words." As I listen to this kindly au revoir, "I
will see you again," I will think of Him as one who,
in taking leave for a season, leaves His heart
behind Him, and will not be absent one moment
longer than He must; one who, all through the
years of absence, continues loving those He has
left behind, continues thinking, planning, praying
for them, and is every day anticipating the joyous
hour when. His heavenly work being as gloriously
"finished" as His eartldy work was. He will be
able to " come again and receive them to Himself,
that where He is they may be also." I will think
of Him as not really absent, after all, but near me
still, far nearer than He could have been had He
remained below ; but I will also think of Him as

272 THE MORNING OF JOY

soon to show Himself to my bodily eye, when the
" redemption of the body " has come, and I have
an eye that can bear the blaze of His glory and
" see Him as He is." It is a blessed hope ; and
yet I echo the words of one who loved Him well,
" Thou callest it a little while ; 0 my Lord, it is a
long, long little while ; come, Lord, come quickly."
Why should I so desire the speedy coming of my
Lord ? He gives me one reason for that when He
says "Your sorrow shall be turned into joy" : and
I think He means not only sorrow for His absence,
but all sorrow, sorrow of every kind, sorrow in life
and sorrow in the soul ; those sorrows especially
which only His coming can take finally away : the
sorrows that come from the presence of sin on the
earth, and the dimming of His glory by a scornful
world and an unfaithful Church.

I cannot but anticipate eagerly the passing away
of all sorrows from my own personal life, and the
finding of these not merely succeeded by joy but
^^ turned into'' joy; so that the very things that
now cause my tears shall be the subject of my
songs. But this will come to me the first moment
I am within the veil, when I will be able to look
back and read the hieroglyphics of God's love,
which now I can but dimly understand. I will see
clearly then what here I cannot always see, the
golden thread that ran underneath the darkest
portions of the web of life, a thread that, though
often hid, was never broken from first to last.

THE MORNING OF JOY 273

But this, after all, is a thing that concerns my-
self alone. There is another and even higher joy
awaiting me, which can be mine only when my
Lord comes back to reign — the joy of seeing a
world from which all sorrow has been banished,
because sin, the cause of the sorrow, has been
everywhere destroyed. It is not my own personal
release from suffering that makes me long for that
bright day. It is that the ivliole world's release
will be accomplished then. The world is a long
way yet from being the blessed dominion of G-od's
Christ ; and, if I do not misjudge them, many
Christians do not seem to be much distressed by
that sad fact. It needs one to be in fuller
sympathy with Christ than contents most of His
disciples, to feel acutely the dishonour done to
Him by the world's sin, or to be really saddened by
the slow progress of His kingdom. Yet there are
some — let me be one of them — who know how
depressing is the thought of this, and how vain
the struggle for Christ's supremacy seems to be ;
prayers, efforts, tears alike as if thrown away ; sin
as rampant as ever ; Satan seated as securely on
his throne as ever ; the tares growing everywhere
faster than the wheat ; till the cry of their hearts is
a half-despairing "how long, 0 Lord? how long?
Are the kingdoms of the world ever, at this rate, to
become the kingdom of Thy Son ? "

But the blessed hope shines out, that what all
human effort cannot do, Christ Himself is coming

19

274 THE MORNING OF JOY

to do. I know that there will be wonderful things
accomplished yet by increasing faith and prayer :
that there will be marvellous outpourings of the
Spirit from on high ; that there will be displays of
His converting and sanctifying power on a scale so
large as to make all previous displays of them
look poor. Still, all these will not make earth a
heaven, nor even a satisfying miniature of heaven.
It will need the sweep of Christ's own judgment-
sword to purge the world finally of its sin, and
bring in the righteousness and peace that will
endure for ever. I, and all who love Him, are only
like King David, eager to build God's temple, but
not permitted ; and all that He says to us is this :
" Thou didst well that it was in thine heart."
But Solomon, the "Prince of Peace," is yet to
come, and ^' He shall build the temple of the Lord,
and He shall bear the glory." It is a joyful hope
that I may live to see it ; at least I know that I
shall die to see it : for He shall come ; and then
the long sin-cursed earth shall be the " new earth "
where the " new life " shall be complete, the " new
name" shall shine out on every face, and the
" new song " shall be on every lip. As I think of
this my heart is glad, and I ask Him how I can
hasten that day ; how I can work on earth as He is
doing in heaven, "expecting till His enemies be
made His footstool." For if this is meant to be a
comforting hope, it is meant to be a quicJcening
hope as well. " Seeing I look for such things,

THE MORNING OF JOY 275

what manner of person ought I to be ? " I would
not have my Lord surprise me, either in my sleep
or in my slothfulness. I would not be *' ashamed
before Him at His coming." It was a good rule
given for a holy walk, " live as if you were sure to
die to-night " ; but I think an even better rule
would be this, " Live as if your Lord would come
before to-morrow." Let me learn to "watch and
pray that I may be accounted worthy to stand
before the Son of Man," and echo the words of
John Milton, written amid the distractions of his
troubled time : —

•' Come, Thou that hast the seven stars in Thy right hand,
Ke-light the golden candlestick that has long been dimmed ;
Appoint Thy chosen priests to minister before Thee ; come
Forth out of Thy royal chamber, 0 Prince of all the earth,
Put on the robes of Thy imperial majesty, take up the
Universal sceptre which Thy Father hath bequeathed
To Thee ; for the voice of Thy Church is calling for Thee,
And all Creation sighs to be renewed."

XL
A NOBLE TESTIMONY

" When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked
ye anything? And they said. Nothing." — Luke xxii. 85.

It was a noble testimony these disciples bore to
their Lord and Master, and it was hearty too.
He had just been acknowledging that they had
been faitliful to Him, " continuing with Him in
His temptations," and now He asks if He had not
been faithful to tliem. He had sent them forth
to the kingdom's work in the same condition as He
went to it Himself, in absolute dependence on the
daily providence of God : and all their wants had
been supplied ; for He had never lost sight of them
for a moment, and it was He that inclined the
hearts of others to be kind to them. They had
not always shown themselves to be trustworthy
disciples ; but He had always shown Himself to
be the most trustworthy of Masters, and when He
asked them if His promises had not come true,
they gladly answered "Yes."

276

A NOBLE TESTIMONY 277

He is calling for a like testimony from me to-
day ; and I, too, can give it joyfully. Sadly though
I have failed in my duty to Him, He has never
failed in His love to me. Long ago I said, "He
is my Shepherd, and I shall not want " ; now, after
years of experience, I can say " Goodness and
mercy have followed me all the days of my life."
"Not one good thing has failed of all that the
Lord spake concerning me ; all is come to pass."
I remember how, once, I stood at the gateway of
my life, looking out into the strange, untrodden,
unfamiliar country in front, which I would soon
need to cross. I looked out with vague guess-
ings and fond hopes, with ardent wishes and
whispered fears ; but I put myself trustfully for
all the journey into the keeping of my Lord ; and
He undertook the work both of guidance and of
provision : and now I see how wisely and lovingly
I have been led, how good and patient with me He
has always been, forgiving my foolish fears, over-
ruling my mistakes, " crowning me with loving-
kindness and tender mercy " all along. Always
over me were the wings of His love. Always
underneath me were His " everlasting arms."
I can give thanks to this Lord of my life, " for
He is good and His mercy endureth for ever " ;
and as one of the " redeemed of the Lord" I will
^^ say so.'' If He wants my testimony He shall
have it with my whole heart: "I have lacked
nothing."

278 A NOBLE TESTIMONY

If I do not praise my God sufficiently, if ever
my heart-song is hushed, if my praise-harp gives
out no music because of broken strings, it is
only because I have such a treacherous memory
for the gentle ministrations of His continual care ;
because I let a few occasional sorrows obscure His
abiding goodness ; and because I do not get low
enough to feel that I am not worthy of even the
smallest mercies of His holy hand. There has
been enough in my life to make material for mur-
muring if I dwell only upon the darkness; if I
forget the great wonders of His love, and magnify
the small troubles that have now and then been
mingled with them ; but there will be more than
enough to make me ashamed of a single murmur-
ing word if I only think back, and see how tender
and pitiful and good my God has ever been.
According as I look at it, I can make my review of
life either bright or dark ; and there are facts for
both. But then the facts that feed my gloom are
only partial and superficial ; the facts that call for
praise are deep and everlasting.

I do not wonder at my God complaining, as He
so often did, of that old people whom He led
through the wilderness for forty years, that they
were always forgetting His goodness when any fresh
trial came ; for that has been my sin too. They
complained of sufferings, but really theirs was not
a suffering life by any means. It was full of
strange mercies from first to last. Bread fell

A NOBLE TESTIMONY 279

daily to them out of the heaven above them ; a
river of cool water followed them for their thirst ;
they had the merciful shadow of the overspreading
cloud to temper the heat and glare of the desert,
and its mighty gleam of fire to brighten the camp ;
" their raiment waxed not old upon them, neither
did their foot swell, these forty years " ; and yet a
few occasional privations of needless luxuries made
them cry out as if their God had done them a
bitter wrong !

That has been my folly too. If my Grod were to
recount to me, from His unfailing memory, all that
He has done for me in the years that lie behind
me, I would be both amazed and shame-stricken at
my forgetfulness of His love ; and if He were to
ask me whether I have lacked any one thing of all
the good He promised me, I could only " abund-
antly utter the memory of His great goodness,"
and say " I have lacked nothing."

Can I not trustfully anticipate a continuance of
this great goodness still ? The logic of faith is
this, " He hath been with me in six troubles, and in
seven He will not forsake me." There are rich
manifestations of my Lord's goodness which He
has never shown me yet, but which He is keeping
in reserve ; and He will give me all of them
according to my need : as Bunyan quaintly puts it,
'' The Lord has many bags of mercy lying by Him,
the seals of which He has never broken yet." My
testimony to-day, as I look at part of my life, will

280 A NOBLE TESTIMONY

be my testimony at the end, as I look at the whole ;
and therefore I will ask my grateful memory to
help me to a trustful hope. " I have lacked
nothing," and I am sure I never shall. Though I
cannot see even one day's march ahead, *' I will
trust and not be afraid."

Pilgrims through time, unlike pilgrims through
space, must necessarily be ignorant of the region
in front. There are no maps of it to consult, no
reports from previous explorers to study. There is
not even a mount of vision to which, like Moses,
one might climb to see the land afar. My future
upon earth is to me all unknown. I only know
that if I have the hidden secrets of God in front of
me, I have the wings of God to overshadow me, the
hand of God to lead me, the presence of God to
cheer me, the great Lord, to whom past and present
and future are all alike, to be my guide and guard
for ever.

A celebrated German mystic used to write in the
albums of his friends, " He to whom time is as
eternity, and eternity as time, is delivered from
all strife." The saying looks enigmatical, and was
meant to be so; but the meaning is clear. He
who possesses the love and care of the changeless
God has eternity even here ; and knowing that the
same perfect love is over both, he will be delivered
from all strife. The strife of outward trouble will
not move him, and from the strife of a restless
heart or discontented mind he will be completely

A NOBLE TESTIMONY 281

free. Abiding in God he will be lifted out of time
into God's eternity, which knows nothing of time,
and so have the peace of that eternity even now.
To feel all this is part of the daily bread of heaven
which my Father in heaven gives me to eat. To
think of His love as being anything lower than
this is to dishonour Him. To say on bent knee,
" My Father," and then, rising up, to live as though
mine were an orphaned life; to say, "I believe in
His love, but it is only in heaven ; I believe in His
power, but it stops short at the stars ; I believe in
His providing care, but that was limited to the
old Scripture saints," what can be more dishonour-
ing to my Lord than this ? The largest hopefulness
of future goodness is the only valid conclusion
from my experience of His goodness in the past.
I will not care much for the roughness of the way
if He gives me "Shoes of iron and brass." It
will not matter much what the days may bring, if,
" As my days, my strength shall be." Trials many
I may have to face; but only my unbelief can
make them calamities. All will not be dark —
nothing will be dark, if from the shining of His
face I have the Light of life.

And why should I be anticipating evils, instead of
blessings, when such a God is mine ? Is life to be
filled with mournful sunsets only ? Are there to be
no beautiful sunrises too ? The coming days stand
before me, like empty vessels waiting to be filled.
If I myself fill them up with my forebodings and

282 A NOBLE TESTIMONY

alarms, what they hold will be bitter enough. But
if I suffer God to fill them, they will overflow with
the good wine of His joy. And when, at last, the
journeyings are over, the wilderness is passed, and
the fights are done, and my loving Master, in the
good land beyond, asks me to look back and say
whether on earth, while serving Him, I ever
lacked anything I did really need, my thankful
lips will have only this to answer, "Nothing."

XLI
ICHABOD

" Seest thou these great buildings ? there shall not be left one stone
upon another, that shall not be thrown down." — Mark xiii, 2.

Few words ever fell from the Master's lips more
sadly pathetic than these. He had just left the
temple, never to enter it again. The crowds came
next day, as usual, expecting to hear Him once
more ; but He was not there. His last appeals had
been made. He would never again speak to them
either of their sins or of His own grace. Their
house would thenceforth, as He said, be " left unto
them desolate." Desolate indeed it was, when He,
the glory of it, had gone away, leaving it to its
doom ; and desolate utterly it has been ever since.
The Jews themselves have recorded that just forty
years before the final destruction of the city, the
temple-lamp suddenly and mysteriously went out.
Fitly so, when the True Light had been quenched
by rejection of its shining.

283

284 ICHABOD

This coming doom, however, no eye but His
could see. To every other eye such a doom
seemed utterly incredible. The very disciples who
had just listened to His sorrowful and tearful
lament, " 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest
the prophets, and stonest them that are sent
unto thee, how often would I have gathered
thy children together as a hen gathers her brood
under her wings, and ye would not ! if thou hadst
known, even thou, in this thy day, the things
that belong to thy peace — but now they are hid
from thine eyes " ; even these disciples could not
take in the idea of its doom. They pointed to the
''great buildings," built to defy the hand of time
itself, buildings "adorned with goodly stones and
gifts," and said, " Is all this magnificence to perish
utterly ? Even if the city be doomed, surely that
temple will be spared : it has been, for ages, not
merely a splendid, but a sacred place; surely
nothing will be suffered to harm ity But to the
Lord Himself the mere magnificence of the temple
was nothing. When it ceased to be a true temple
of true worship for true hearts, it was, to Him,
simply a great ruin. Already, to the eye of the
Master, its glory was a vanished thing, and soon the
desolation of it would be irreversible and complete.

I would like had it been possible for Him to tell
what glorious vision of the might-have-heen it was
that passed before His eye, but could not pass His
lips, when He said "Oh if thou hadst known" —

ICHABOD 285

and stopped ere the sentence was complete. Can
I venture, reverently, to imagine it ? If Jerusalem
had but known her Saviour, and known her day of
visitation by that Saviour's grace, how different
might have been the fate of her and of all her
children ! Perhaps then the temple might have
stood for ages, might have been standing yet, as
the grand metropolis of the kingdom of God on
earth. He, as the Lamb of God, might still have
been offered up, but without cruel hands being
dipped in His blood. He might Himself have
ascended the altar, as the Priest-victim for men,
and offered Himself up in fire from heaven. Moses
and Elias might have again appeared beside Him,
proclaiming the accomplishment of the purposes of
God; and Jerusalem, as the scene of that "recon-
ciliation," might have been enthroned in imperish-
able glory to the end of time. It is perhaps only a
baseless fancy ; but if anything like this was the
vision that flashed for a moment before His eye, I
can perhaps understand better His prayer to escape
the shame of the cross : at least, I can see what
pathos there must have been in His tone as He
said, " Of all this magnificence there shall not be
left one stone upon another, that shall not be
thrown down."

How constantly still does the Lord look far
beneath the glittering surface of things, and write
*'Ichabod " upon the pretentiousness of a religion
that is satisfied with what is outward only — noble

286 ICHABOD

architecture, stately ritual, ravishing music — but,
wanting everything really spiritual, is only a super-
refined earthliness after all ! It is a ruin, even
before it is destroyed.

It was a most significant walk that Jesus took
through the temple courts on the evening of the
day when He had been welcomed by the hosannas
of the crowd. The story is very simply told. " He
entered into the temple, and looked round upon all
things," and then went out. No word was spoken ;
He only " looked" at all that were there and at all
that was going on. But what a keen look it was ! a
look that missed nothing, that read the secrets of
every soul ! How little did priest or Levite suspect
that He was noting the hoUowness of all their
pretended religion and mentally pronouncing it a
sham !

But if that same Christ were to go through the
pews of many a house of worship to-day, would He
not have the same feelings there as He had in
Jerusalem's temple nineteen centuries ago ? Not
only of many a magnificent cathedral with long-
drawn aisles and intoning priests, but of many a
less pretentious church, where nothing but the
strictest orthodoxy is preached, and where all the
conventionalities of decorous worship are scrupu-
lously observed, might He not feel and say that the
religion of the worshippers is not a religion of the
spirit, but only of the flesh ?

This prediction of Jerusalem's doom may there-

ICHABOD 287

fore be a salutary warning to all Churches still.
Their glory and their very existence will pass
away if they cease to be real meeting-places
between God and human souls, or if Christ, as the
one Foundation of a sinner's hope, is refused the
place He desires to fill. No substitute for Christ
as the accepted Lord of the worshippers can save a
church from perishing miserably as a useless and
God-dishonouring thing. Not wealth and costly
gifts, not learning, not gorgeousness of ritual, not
beauty of ceremonial, not splendour of architecture,
not sublimity of music, not even crowds of wor-
shippers can save it from becoming, like Jerusalem's
temple, spiritually dead, if Christ, in the glory of
His redeeming work, is put into the background,
whatever may be put in front.

When the Saracens invaded the lands where
apostles had laboured once, they found plenty of
magnificent churches, with beautiful and stately
services, and all the outward signs of a large pros-
perity; but they found no longer any preaching
of Christ and of His Cross as the one atonement
for sin. In spnhol, the Cross was everywhere. It
shone on the top of gilded domes ; it blazed upon
the altars ; it sparkled on the vestments of the
priests ; but in the lyreacliing, the Cross was
nowhere. What rang out from sacerdotal lips was
salvation by the sacraments, not by Christ ; access
to God through a human priesthood, not through
Christ ; acceptance with God by human merit, not

288 ICHABOD

by Christ ; and so the sword of the destroyer was
unsheathed to sweep these Christless Churches
away. But no Church has ever died, or can die,
where Christ Himself, in His peerless glory, has
been the joy of all the worshippers. Even the
meanest barn, where the presence of Christ is
felt, is a nobler temple than the most gorgeous
cathedral without that can be.

I cannot but remember another thing that led to
the old temple's doom. Both at the beginning
and at the end of His ministry the Lord Jesus
indignantly rebuked the spirit of merchandise that
had invaded the temple court, and turned what
should have been a "place of prayer" into a
" den of thieves." Is there anything that, in this
day too, more tarnishes the honour of God's house
than the worldliness that infects it, eating out its
spirituality, defiling its purity, hindering its testi-
mony, and making it the laughing-stock of the
profane ? "When I think of the deference paid in
the churches to mere worldly rank and wealth, the
dependence placed on mere worldly attractions, the
worldly devices by which funds are raised for the
work of the Church, — even sometimes, as I have
seen, by theatrical performances and fancy-dress
balls, — I ask myself sadly what my Lord must think
of this profaning of His house, and how He would
speak of such things if He were here with His
scourge of cords in His hand ; I ask myself if such
churches are really filled with His Spirit as they

ICHABOD 289

profess to be, really depending only on Him, as
they profess to do, really seeking His glory above
all else, as they tell the world they are. How can
He walk in His temple if the world is welcomed to
walk there too ? Oh that His Church everywhere
might be greatly purified by His Spirit of holiness !
Then would that Spirit be upon it as a Spirit of
Power. If I cannot do much to bring a holier day,
I can at least keep praying that the Lord would be
a spirit of burning to consume all this sin, lest He
come as an avenging fire to consume the Church
itself, in which His glory is so sadly dimmed.

20

XLII
GETHSEMANE-SLEEP

" He findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye
not watch with Me one hour ? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into
temptation: the spirit indeed is wilUng, but the flesh is weak." —
Matthew xxvi. 40, 41.

" He Cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter,
Simon, sleepest thou? Couldest not tJiou watch one hour?" — Mark
xiv. 37.

" Why sleep ye ? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." —
Luke xxii. 46.

I AM here on holy ground. I will put off my shoes
in reverence. I am looking into the Holy of
Holies, where all is mystery. The darkness hides
my agonising Lord ; but out of the darkness
comes to me His voice, solemn yet marvellously
gentle, compassionate exceedingly even in its
rebuke. I see here sin and grace lying very close
together ; the disciple's sin, the Master's grace. It
is an affecting revelation of the inherent weakness
of the best disciples. Had I been there I would
probably have been no better than they.

What He wanted them to do was no great thing,

•290

GETHSEMANE-SLEEP 291

merely that when He was withdrawn from them in
lonely prayer for Himself, they should watch against
surprise, and pray for strength to endure whatever
might be at hand. They were to watch with Him,
not over Him. He had to go through this agony,
as all others, alone. He never at any time asked
His disciples to pray for Him. He never even
prayed ivith them, though He constantly prayed
for them. He does not now ask them to inter-
cede for Him, only to pray for themselves. All
life through He was as One apart, doing a work
in which none could bear Him company. He
often asked their faith ; He asked their love ; He
asked their si/mpathy ; but He never asked their
prayers. He only showed them, by word and by
example, how to pray.

How sad His heart was under the olive-trees
they could not know ; but the sadness was
deepened when, coming back to them for a
moment, He found them so little like Himself as
to be all asleep. A sin of infirmity, no doubt ; but
what a revelation of the infinite distance separat-
ing Him from them ! This sleep could perhaps be
explained, naturally enough, by reaction of mind
after the tense excitement of the day — the pas-
sover and supper in the upper room, the long
discourse, the wonderful prayer they heard Him
offer, the hymn they had together sung, the walk
in the darkness to the garden, and the slumberous
murmurs of the night wind in the olive-trees ; and

292 GETHSEMANE-SLEEP

yet it takes me by surprise. I could have expected
something better than this. The Master evidently
expected something better too. Even His generous
excuse for them does not hide His disappointment.
Even the palliation that they were " sleeping for
sorrow " does not hide it either, for there is an
accent of surprise in His words, " Why sleep ye ? "
" Simon, sleepest thou ? "

It is strangely full of warning to me that the
three men who here could not watch for one hour
were the same three who had been, more closely than
any, associated with the Master many times before :
who, alone of the band, had been with Him on the
holy mount, and had seen His glory there ; who
alone had been witnesses of His power in raising
the daughter of Jairus to life ; one of them, too,
the man who had made loudest profession of
willingness to die for Him ; another, the man who
most profoundly loved Him, and at the supper
leaned upon His breast. But the secret of their
unwatchfulness is clear enough. They had never
yet completely taken in what He had so often said
to them about the coming cross. They could not
even yet bring themselves to believe that He
would really die — die so awfully, die so soon.
And they were also completely ignorant of their
own weakness. They credited themselves with a
valiant faith that existed only in their own imagi-
nations. They were full of the self-security and
self-confidence that always precede a fall.

GETHSEMANE-SLEEP 293

I see here, then, that there are some disciples
from whom the Master expects more than He does
from others, and that these are just the disciples
who have had the loftiest privileges, and have
made the loudest profession of loyalty and love.
I see, too, that as I am never more likely to err
in judgment than when I think myself most wise,
so I am never more ready to slip with my feet than
when I am saying, " J shall never be moved." I
have had far greater privileges than even Peter
had. If I am unwatchful, and let my Lord's
interests be betrayed, He may with even more
reason say to me, " Sleepest tlioiiV

I cannot always say, " I sleep, but my heart
waketh," for often my heart is drowsier than my
frame. I sleep sometimes from self-indulgence,
not from weariness. I sleep because I cease to
feel acutely the danger that may be near. My
sleep is too often the sleep of earthly-mindedness,
in which I have pleasant dreams, but they are all of
earthly, and not of heavenly things ; visions indeed,
but not visions of a glory that excelleth, only of
the world that passeth away. When I think of
my indolence in my Master's service, of my indif-
ference to His glory, of my self-indulgence when
He is calling for the sacrifice of self in His behalf,
I am forced to feel that I am not living my life,
but sleeping it away. Well for me that my Master
does not sleep when caring for 7mj interests, as I do
when entrusted with His ! If my Lord were not

294 GETHSEMANE-SLEEP

more mindful of His promises to me than I am of
mine to Him I would be undone for ever.

I see again that Jesus conquered His temptation
in the garden by meeting it zvith prayer. The
disciples succumbed to their temptation because
they met it without ^irayer. In a temptation to
rebellion against the Father's will, the Lord's re-
source was prayer. In a temptation to cowardice,
that ought to have been theirs. Prayer would
have made them conquerors, as it made Him ;
and therefore when temptation of any kind, from
any quarter, in any form, at any time, comes to
me, I will listen to my Master's voice, " Why
sleepest thou ? Else and pray." No temptation
to any Christ-dishonouring act would ever over-
power me if it did not find me powerless through
sleep of soul. If my conscience is asleep, if my
love is asleep, if my godly fear is asleep, I fall an
easy prey.

I cannot but remember, as I read the story of
the garden, that the disciples who failed so utterly
there had just risen from the first Communion-table
in the quiet upper room. The voice of the Master
there must have been still ringing in their ears —
not only His voice of love, but also His voice of
warning — '' All ye shall be offended because of Me
this night.'' And yet, if I condemn them, let me
think how often I have risen from my communion-
fellowship with Him and almost immediately have
been overpowered with the sleep of unwatchful-

GETHSEMANE-SLEEP 295

ness ; how often I have fallen from my high
estate, just after drinking in afresh the sweet
assurances of His love, and pledging myself afresh
to be true to Him. How disastrous such sleep has
always been to me ! Its first effect was to make
me an easy prey to the new temptations that
assailed me ; and its next effect was to make me
doubt the reality of that communion with Christ
which at the time I thought so genuine and so
precious to my heart. For the same tempter who
tells me one day that I need not be so very sensi-
tive and watchful now, because I am secure in my
Eedeemer's love, will tell me next day, after I have
fallen, that I never belonged to Christ at all, and
that my supposed communion with Him was all a
delusion, else I would not have fallen again so
soon. A tempter first, he will be an accuser next,
and will echo in scorn what Jesus said in sorrow,
" Could you not watch one hour ? "

And now let me consider that I must do for my
hrethren what the Lord asked these disciples to do
for Him. I must guard them from danger. I must
give them warning of the coming of the foe. I
must also soothe them by my kindly sympathy.
But I cannot do this if I am asleep myself. I am
to be "my brother's keeper" if I cannot be my
Lord's. The guardianship of every brother's safety
is laid upon me as a sacred charge. If I cannot
now serve my Master Himself, I can serve Him
in His hrethren. Even to go and sit beside a

296 GETHSEMANE-SLEEP

suffering or a tempted brother, and help him by
my sympathy, if I can do no more, is a sacred
duty, and it ought to be to me a sacred joy.
Sadly I have to reproach myself for failure even
in this. My compassionate Master may excuse my
sleep, but I cannot excuse myself ; for this privilege
of watching beside my brethren I often lose because
I am too self-indulgent to trouble myself to do it.
Let me think more of the joy that may be mine if
faithful — the joy of hearing the Great Master one
day say to me, " Inasmuch as thou didst it to
one of the least of My brethren, thou didst it
unto Me."

XLIII
A TEAITOE'S KISS

" Friend, wherefore art thou come ? " — Matthew xxvi. 50.
"Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" — Lukk
xxii. 48.

This was Christ's last effort to win the soul of
Judas, and save him from himself. The tone of
His questions to the traitor was not a tone of
indignation at the foul affront, so much as a tone
of sadness over one for whom He had already done
so much, and all in vain. For three whole years
the gracious Lord had been striving with Satan
for the possession of this poor soul ; but all to no
purpose. It would not be won. Judas had long-
before come to an understanding with the devil ;
and it was in the upper room that the final bargain
was struck. Judas really committed suicide in
that upper room ; though none but Jesus knew the
dark tragedy that was being enacted there. There
it was, in that sacred place, that he conclusively
shut his heart against the Christ who would have

297

298 A TRAITOR'S KISS

saved him, and opened it wide for the devil to
come in, for it was there that he finally sur-
rendered his will to the great deceiver ; and
whosoever absolutely determines upon a sin has
really done it, whether he puts his hand to it or
not. In the lives of most men there conies some
decisive moment when both God and Satan seem
to be awaiting the choice to be made, both of them
saying "that thou doest do quickly"; and that
single decision, that absolute surrender of the will,
may settle the soul's destiny not for time only, but
for eternity as well.

It is affecting to recall how much the Lord had
done to touch the conscience and win the heart
of this man, all in vain. Many of His most pene-
trating words must have been meant specially for
Judas; such as His warnings against " covetous-
ness," His making " the deceitfulness of riches "
one of the things that choke the good seed, His
saying " How hardly shall they that trust in riches
enter into the Kingdom of Grod," His constant de-
nunciations of "hypocrisy," His doom pronounced
on Capernaum, " exalted to heaven, cast down to
hell," His pungent question, "If ye have been
unfaithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will
commit to you the true riches ? " His solemn
forewarning, " Woe unto that man by whom the
Son of man is betrayed; good were it for that
man if he had never been born." It is difficult to
believe that Judas had not sometimes a twinge of

A TRAITOR'S KISS 299

conscience as he listened to words like these.
But he silenced their voice within him, and steeled
his worldl}^ heart, till he " sold himself to work
iniquity," even before he sold his Master.

It seems to me a most significant fact that Judas
never called Jesus ^^ Lord " as the other disciples
did. When they said, ^^ Lord, is it I?" he said
only, ''Master, is it I ? " or " Teacher, is it I? "
*' No man calleth Jesus Lord but by the Holy
Ghost " ; and Judas had banished the Holy Spirit
from his soul. So, too, it seems very significant
that when Jesus said, ''Friend, wherefore art thou
come?" He used a word that had no note of
affection in it. When He said to the rest, "I
have called you friends,'" He used a word of real
affection ; and when He said, " our friend Lazarus
sleepeth," He used a word which meant, " our
dear one " ; but when He spoke to Judas he used
quite another word, one that meant only "com-
rade," or " companion." Yet even that word,
recalling as it did the close intimacy of past years,
might have touched any heart that had not passed
the possibility of softening ; and when the mournful
question followed, " Judas, betrayest thou the Son
of man with a Jciss ? " that was an appeal which
only a thoroughly hardened heart could possibly
have withstood. I see now what the Lord meant
by saying, " one of you is a devil " ; for none other
could have done a deed so vile.

What marvellous long-suffering and meekness

300 A TRAITOR'S KISS

the ill-treated Master showed in submitting to that
hiss ! and submitting to it without the least trace
of indignation at the insult ! Any other would
have turned away his face, that it might not be
polluted with such a kiss ; but this Divine sufferer
could meekly stoop to endure even so base a thing
as that, and feel only pity for the poor soul that
was finding death upon His lips. The severest
thing He said to the traitor was only a reminder
of the long years of grace he had abused, and all
the saving love that had been lavished on him,
only to be trampled under foot. And yet how
solemn that expostulation was ! To betray Him
after a kiss would have been bad enough ; but to
betray Him by a kiss was infinitely worse.

As I listen to my Master's last words to this
poor, infatuated soul, many serious thoughts may
be awakened in my own heart. They suggest to
me how often, even still, the Son of man is
" betrayed with a Jciss.^^ When I hear a rejection
of His true Divinity covered by warm acknowledg-
ments of the beauty of His humanity ; when I see
the enemies of His Godhead still admiring the 77ian;
when I listen to the deniers of His Divine glory
lavishing encomiums on the graciousness of His
life, or speaking of the nobility of His self-sacrifice
as a martyr for truth, while scorning the idea of
His death being a real atonement for sin ; I am
forced to call all this by its only right name, a
"betraying of the Son of man with a kiss." For

A TRAITOR'S KISS 301

many a rejector of Christ can be wonderfully com-
plimentary all the time. The sword with which
he fights against Him may be adorned with gems
and inlaid with gold ; but that does not make its
thrust any the less a sin. He may be rejected
with the most polished grace of phrase, as well as
with a coarse and vulgar sneer, but the rejection
is the same. It makes no difference to the guilt
of a man, whether he casts God's laws behind him
with a curse, or with the most courteous apologies
for not obeying them; and men who begin with
the coldly courteous rejection, often end with the
coarsest blasphemies. For all evil grows ; and it
may sometimes grow so portentously that the heart
will come to say, as Judas really did, ''Evil, be
thou my good."

I see, too, here, how sins of various kinds are
closely linked together, one drawing many others
after it. It is possible to speak of a man as " a
man of one book," or " a man of one ambition " ;
but no one can be called " a man of one sin." If
he has one, he has more. The verdict of the
unseeing world upon a man who has "gone
wrong " sometimes is " that is his one fault,"
"that is his one bad habit." It is never so. If
he has one bad habit open enough to meet the eye
he is sure to have many others that lie out of
sight. I never yet came upon a piece of waste
ground that had only one weed growing on it. If
there are weeds at all, I am sure to find them of

302 A TRAITOR'S KISS

many sorts, though some of the smaller may be
hidden by those of larger growth. So I see that
the covetousness of Judas was linked to worldly
ambition; that worldly ambition was linked to
deep hypocrisy ; that hypocrisy led on to revengeful
hate; that revenge led on to treason; and that
treason led to suicide at the end. Let me beware
of the small sins that lead on to greater ones, of
the secret sins that lead to o;pen ones, of the heart-
defilement which will soon be life-defilemeyit too.

One other thought arises now. Supposing that
this last attempt of the Lord's to win Judas had
succeeded, and the betrayer, stricken with remorse,
had fallen at his Master's feet and sought forgive-
ness even at that eleventh hour, would not He
who pardoned the thief of the cross have pardoned
the thief of the garden, too ? Would not G-eth-
semane have had its miracle of grace as well as
Calvary ? Had sinning Judas wept like sinning
Peter, he need not have gone away and hanged
himself in dark despair, for the very Christ he so
sinned against would have shown that He could
''abundantly pardon" the very worst, and save
even one who was but a few yards from the mouth
of hell. But what awful memories that poor lost
soul must have carried with it into the eternal
world ! memories not only of all that it had done
against the Lord, but of all that the Lord had
done to save it, and done in vain ! It is hard to
say which will be the bitterest thought to the lost

A TRAITOR'S KISS 303

beyond the grave — the threatenings that have been
fulfilled, or the promises that might have been
fulfilled, if only they had listened to love's pleading
voice. For, every one who is shut out of heaven
is shut out by his own act alone, and will stand
outside the gate, not only self- destroy ed^ but self-
condemned; and no more bitter thought will any
man have then than this, ** through all my life
below, my God was seeking to draw me to heaven,
throwing round me the cords of a most wonderful
and patient love ; and yet I broke these cords one
by one and cast them all away, and up to the very
last was resisting, not the anger, not the rebukes,
but the mercifulness, the grace, the love of Him
who can now say only this, I loould have healed
thee and thou loouldst not be healed.^'

XLIV
HIMSELF HE WOULD NOT SAVE

" Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He
shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels ? But how
then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? " —
Matthew xxvi. 53, 54.

Most wonderfully here does the Lord's complete
submission and self-control stand out against the
impulsiveness of His rash, though loving, disciple.
Peter condensed into one furious blow the im-
patience that had long been manifested in reckless
words. His Master, though knowing that the
infinite resources of heaven were at His call,
would not avail Himself of them even in that hour
of bitterest humiliation. The traitor's kiss had
been given. The Divine Lord was at last seized
by sinful hands and bound. Yet, even then, He
would not use His Divine power to free Himself
from the cords that He might heal the severed ear.
He only turned to the soldiers and said, " Suffer ye

304

HIMSELF HE WOULD NOT SAVE 305

thus far " ; " let My hand be for one moment free,
that I may do one more act of mercy yet."

Peter knew nothing of his Master's infinite
resources. That keen but dehcate spiritual vision
which can enable its possessor to "endure as see-
ing Him who is invisible," was wanting altogether
to Peter yet; and he had not yet, for all the
Master's iteration of it, understood the truth that
'* the Son of man came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for
many." But the Master Himself had been living
in the invisible all along ; and even in this dark
hour He felt how near Him God's invisible host of
angels was. *' More than twelve legions of angels,"
He said, " would appear immediately at My call,
one defending legion for each of you eleven, and
one for Me; and other attacking legions for
smiting down the foe. Both you and I would be
surrounded by a force against which all earthly
forces would break in absolute dismay. I have but
to pray My Father, and this dark garden of
Gethsemane would be as full of shining ones as
the streets of the New Jerusalem itself."

I read this story and a new feeling comes to me
of the wonder of that self-abjuring love that took
my Eedeemer willingly to the cross. I see the
deep meaning of His words, *' No man taketh My
life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself." The
cross of Calvary, not a flaming escort of angels, was
the way home which the Father had appointed for

21

306 HIMSELF HE WOULD NOT SAVE

Him ; and tread that dolorous way He would. A
single prayer would have saved Him from the
shame, but He had said before, "He that loveth
his life shall lose it ; " and so that prayer He would
not suffer to pass His lips. It was not even in His
heart. The task which He had accepted in His
glory, and for which He had left the glory, was to
conquer sin by calmly submitting to bear the
penalty of sin. He never was, and could not be,
the " victim of circumstances." At any moment
He could have proved that He was above all
circumstances and all the powers of evil. But
that would have defeated His purpose ; and there-
fore not one hair's-breadth would He go out of the
road appointed by the Father's will with His own
consent. A mere martyr, overpowered by circum-
stances. He could not be. In its willinghood of
self-surrender lay all the virtue of His life. In the
glimpse He gives me here of the angelic hosts that
could have freed Him in a moment from pain, and
shame, and death, I see how absolutely perfect
His self-renunciation was.

In any crisis of my life, too, I can pray the
Father ; but there are many times when I will not
ask release from suffering, but only power to suffer
uncomplainingly and trustfully as well. My Lord
Himself once said — I would seek grace to say it
after Him — " Now is My soul troubled, and what
shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?
(No, I will not say that, but,) Father, glorify Thy

HIMSELF HE WOULD NOT SAVE 307

Name." It may be that, in like circumstances, to
me also there may come a voice from heaven say-
ing, " I have both glorified it, and I will glorify it
again."

My Lord did not pray for release from pain ; but
He did pray. Even then He was gaining strength
through prayer. And He did not say to Peter, " I
can pray to God." That would have been more
like one who was thinking only of a mighty
Potentate in heaven. He said, " I can pray to My
Father " ; for that had in it the element of perfect
trustfulness and rest. To say in my troubles,
*' this is the will of God" is true, but cold. To
say, "this is rtiy Father's will" lets me feel the
warm embrace of a Father's arms, and see a smile
upon a Father's face.

Let this be my grand resource in difficulty of
every kind ; for, though my Master's life lay upon
a plane infinitely higher than mine, that is no
reason why my feelings should not be parallel with
HiSj however far below. Persecuted, I can pray.
Misconstrued and slandered, I can pray. In
danger I can pray. In the death chamber I can
pray. By the grave of my loved ones I can pray.
I can never be anywhere that prayer will not
sustain me, if it does not extricate me. Indeed, I
will not ask extrication ; I will only ask submissive
trust.

There may be more than one G-ethsemane in my
life ; how shall I meet them ? I cannot ask or

308 HIMSELF HE WOULD NOT SAVE

expect deliverance by supernatural means ; no host
of angels will come at my command. I might
gain deliverance if I simply gave up the conflict
in despair ; but that would not be victory, it would
be only everlasting loss. I will take rather my
Master's way. I will ^ray myself into peace; and
then the victory will be sure.

Now let me think of the reason given by my
Lord for not offering that prayer, " How, then, shall
the Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? "
What profound obedience to the Word of the
Father as well as to the will of the Father was
there ! It was written in the Scriptures, " Awake,
0 sword, against my Shepherd, against the man
that is my Fellow, saith the Lord of hosts ; smite
the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall
be scattered abroad." The fulfilment of that
Scripture fell due that night in the garden, and
the Shepherd was ready to be smitten to death,
rather than that the word of the Father should
be falsified. " To redeem the world by dying for
it," He said, "is the way appointed for Me; who
else can redeem it if I draw back ? " Peter little
thought when he drew his sword to prevent his
Master suffering, that he was fighting to prevent
the redemption of the world ! Well, if I fight
foolishly to prevent my own sufferings, I may,
perhaps, unconsciously, be hindering the coming of
untold blessings to myself, and to others besides.

Let it draw me more to the Scriptures which

HIMSELF HE WOULD NOT SAVE 309

Christ so thoroughly understood, so greatly
honoured, so passionately loved, to see how, all His
life through, they were His inspiration to duty, His
comfort in sadness. His encouragement in trial.
No one ever needed the Scriptures less ; but no one
ever prized them more. They were the very food
of His soul ; they were also the weapon by which
He '' overcame the wicked one." In the Scriptures
He found a picture of Himself, and He set Himself
to the work of fulfilling that picture, and presenting
it in His own living form to men. All that the
Scripture declared He would be, He was ; all that
the Scripture said He would do for the Father,
He did ; just as all that the Scripture said the
Father would do for Him, the Father did. His
whole life was one long dependence on the
Father's words — His commanding words and His
promising words alike. The very words of the
Book were dear to His heart. By the very
words of it He confjuered the Tempter thrice.
By the words of the Book He confuted His
foes. He showed them their ignorance of the
Book, and made them see truths lying in it
that they had never seen before. In the very
words of this Book He poured out His cry of
forsakenness upon the cross. In the very words
of it He commended His soul into His Father's
hands.

Let me, too, live upon the Scriptures ; they will be
my most nourishing food. Let me, too, find in the

310 HIMSELF HE WOULD NOT SAVE

Scriptures a picture of myself, of what I am by
nature, of what I am by grace, of what I ought to
be as a redeemed child of God; and a picture
of all that I must willingly endure in order to be
" perfected " as my Master was. Then I will not
murmur at the discipline I must pass through.
When trials come, and sorrows darken down, I
will remember how it is writteji that *' through
much tribulation I must enter the kingdom " ;
and over against my sometimes weary longings
for speedy relief, I will lay these words of my
patient Master, " But how, then, shall the Scrip-
tures be fulfilled that thus it must be ? "

XLY
THE VICTORY OF FAITH

" The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it ? "
— John xviii. 11.

To how many thousands of suffering hearts has this
question of the suffering Master's come as heavenly
balm ! If He, the sinless One, could say that, and
with reference to such awful soul-agony as His,
how much more may I say it, when any less
affliction comes to me ! There was here not so
much a cry of pain as a shout of victory. Grad-
ually, as the fierce struggle went on, the Lord
was gainiiig strength, not losing it. His first feel-
ing was not so calm, or so victorious as His last.
At first He had been able only to say, " Father, if
it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." Soon,
however, having got from the Father some intima-
tion that it was 7iot possible, He changed that
prayer for a higher one, " If this cup may not pass
except I drink it, Thy will be done " ; till finally

311

312 THE VICTORY OF FAITH

He could rise higher still, " The cup which My
Father giveth Me, shall I not drink it ? " First,
it looked only a cup from the cruel hands of men,
but soon a cup given Him by the hand of the
Father. There was first, the " strong crying and
tears to Him that was able to save Him from
death"; then the "learning of obedience by the
things which He suffered"; and then the victory
and perfect peace.

Shall I ever, on this side heaven, be able to
fathom the mystery of this great Gethsemane
struggle ? or the mystery of the help that came to
Him, when "there appeared an angel from heaven
strengthening Him " ? " Strengthening,'' ' but how ?
What could any angel do, or say, to Him who
was the Lord of all angels still ? Only one thing
is completely clear, that His victory was the
victory of faith, and was gained by agonizing
jjrayer. But if so, what potent weapons these
must be, that could make even Christ stronger than
He was ! What momentous necessities for my
own Christian life must these be, that even Christ
could not do without !

The dominant note of this prayer for Himself
was " Father," the same that sounds so clearly in
the model prayer He taught His disciples to use.
So, then, the God that, in Gethsemane, was smiting
the faithful shepherd and not the guilty sheep,
was a "Father" still; and this prayer, like the
other, I can use when an}- darkness falls over me,

THE VICTORY OF FAITH 313

which I cannot pierce. Any suffering that comes
to me must be entirely different from His sufferings
in this respect, that mine are all deserved, for I am
a sinner. My cup must often be a cup of real
chastisement, as Christ's was not ; and yet, even
so, I can accept and drink it uncomplainingly,
since it is brought to me by a "Father's"
hand.

I may not be able to connect my suffering with
any particular sin for which it is a chastisement,
(though sometimes I can), but a real trust in my
Father is quite independent of my ability to see
any reason for His dealings with me. I trust
Him, not because I know His meaning, but
because I know Himself. I may say of some men
that I know them too well to trust them ; but God
is always trusted in proportion as He is known.
Those who have known Him longest trust Him
most. " Do you see any special reason for this
sore trial ? " was the question once put to a very
afflicted man; and the answer came immediately,
" No, but I am as well satisfied as if I saw a
thousand; for my Father's will is the perfection
of reasons." The one thought, " It is my Father
who is giving me this cup to drink," stills every
murmur in heart or lip. As I take it from His
hands, I can hear Him say, " What I do thou
knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" ;
and that "hereafter" may be not only the here-
after of eternity, but a hereafter in time. My own

314 THE VICTORY OF FAITH

future life on earth may explain the present pain,
when I find how rich a blessing the cup has
brought. " Afterward, it yieldeth the peaceable
fruit of righteousness " ; but God's '* afterward " is
not necessarily the afterward of heaven ; it may be
an afterward on earth, long before heaven comes.

Samson's friends quarrelled with him because
they could not understand his riddle, '' Out of the
eater comes forth meat." Many of God's friends
are apt to quarrel with Him for the same reason.
But the explanation of the riddle will not be long
deferred, if faith accejpts the sorrow which it does
not comprehend. *'I have heard of the patience
of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord" in
afflicting Imn. It was a very bitter cup he was
made to drink, and the reason for having to drink
it he could not understand. He said, " I was not
in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet,
yet trouble came." It was as much as to say,
*' If I had been flattering myself that no evil could
touch me, it would not have surprised me that such
calamities should come to rebuke my pride; if I
had been ' settled on my lees,' it would not have
seemed strange that I should be 'emptied from
vessel to vessel ' ; if I had been saying ' Soul, thou
hast much goods laid up for thee for many years,
take thine ease,' it would not have been wonderful
that God should show me my folly by blows like
these ; but I was not secure, and proud of my se-
curity, and ^jet trouble came." It was all a mystery

THE VICTORY OF FAITH 315

to him. ''Why should God thus set me as a mark
for all His arrows ? Why should all these sorrows
meet on me?" And yet, in that darkest hour,
surveying his desolated home, and not knowing
but farther suffering might be near, his faith could
say, '' Let God send me even bitterer griefs, I will
not complain ; though He slay me outright , I will
trust in Him." That was his willingness to drink
the cup which a Father gave him ; and soon he
saw "the end of the Lord," for "the Lord gave
Job twice as much as he had before."

I will take any cup of bitterness that is prepared
by my Father's hand, not only because it is my
Father's will that I should drink it, but because I
know what it will bring me "afterwards." Eliphaz
the Temanite was right, " Happy is the man whom
God correct eth.'^ All God's chastenings are meant
to be corrections ; meant to put things right within
me, to cure, to heal. Even God Himself cannot
put into me the fulness of His blessing, till He has
first emptied my heart to receive it ; and sometimes
He cannot empty the heart till He has first emptied
the life. But He will kill nothing in me that is
not better dead. He will make no wounds except
such as are sure to lead to stronger health. It is
in this way that " He healeth my diseases, and
doth my soul redeem."

Every heart has " its own plague " ; every soul
has its own " disease " : and the Great Physician
mingles the ingredients of every cup in exactest

316 THE VICTORY OF FAITH

adaptation to each patient's need; whether it be
that pride is uplifting the soul, or vanity inflating
it, or covetousness weakening it, or some vice
enslaving it, or worldliness filling it. I may well
let Him take His own way of removing these
things that both hinder my usefulness and destroy
my peace. When the cup is put into my hands, I
may well ask myself, "Is there some sin in me,
undiscovered yet, which my Father means thus to
cure ? Are there some desires of the flesh or of the
mind remaining still unsanctified, which this bitter
medicine is meant to heal ? I would fain be healed
at any cost ; and if this is the way in which healing
is to come, I will bless the hand that puts the cup
to my lips."

Would any man seriously complain, if, after a
storm has destroyed his crops, he should go forth
into his field to see the devastation, and find that
what he thought a storm of hail was really a
shower of precious stones, and pearls, and gold,
leaving him a richer man by far than he ever
expected to be? But this is what my Lord's
chastenings often are. They leave behind them a
richer blessing than they took away. I may often
lose deep joys by being afraid of deep sorrows.

Let me learn from my sinless Master, how to
accept the bitter cup, which, if in any sense, and
for any end, needed hy Him, is a thousand times
more needed hy me. Let me echo the words of
one who suffered much: *'W"hen the flail of

THE VICTORY OF FAITH 317

affliction smites me, I would not be as the chaff
that flies in the smiter's face, but as the corn that
lies at his feet."

"Pain's furnace-heat within me quivers;
God's breath upon the flame doth blow:
And all my heart in anguish shivers,
And trembles at the fiery glow ;
And yet I whisper ' As God will,
And in His hottest fire am still.

Why should I murmur ? for the sorrow
Thus only longer-lived would be;
Its end will come ; and may to-morrow,
"When God has done His work in me.
So I say trusting, ' As God will,'
And, trusting to the end, am still."

XL VI
TEAKS WIPED AWAY

" Woman, why weepest thou ? whom seekest thou ? " — John xx. 15.

Maky Magdalene was the first of all the disciples
to visit the tomb where her loved Master had been
laid. None loved Him more ; none could less bear
the thought that she should not see Him again.
She stood outside, in the dark before the dawn, and
wept. She tve;pt because the grave was empty, but
she soon learned to rejoice because it was empty,
for her Lord was standing at her side, "risen, as
He had said."

Meanwhile that tomb was not quite so empty as
she thought. Two angels were there, where the
body of their Lord had lain — two of that unseen
band of heavenly witnesses that were always close
beside Him, but showed themselves for a moment
or two, only at each great crisis in His life — at
His birth, at His temptation, at His wrestling in
Gethsemane, at His resurrection from the grave,

318

TEARS WIPED AWAY 319

and at His ascension into glory. But she hardly
thought of them, though she conversed with them
as naturally as if a talk with angels had been one
of the commonest occurrences in her life. She
hardly thought of them, or why they should be
there. Her whole heart was busy about one thing
only — the finding of her Lord ; and that one
absorbing purpose blinded her to everything that
otherwise would have seemed unusual. But that
Lord was nearer than she knew, and His question
as the Eisen One, though exactly the same in
words as the question of the angels had been, was
far more tender in tone : " Woman, why weepest
thou ? whom seekest thou ? "

These are the first recorded words of Jesus to
any disciple after He had risen from the tomb ; and
they suggest to me the infinite tenderness of His
compassionate heart. If it seems strange that
Mary did not at once recognise her Lord, but
'' supposed Him to be the gardener" of the place,
I must remember that it was still only the grey
dawn, in which everything is indistinct, and that it
was not the old form or the old features or the old
expression of her Master that she saw. They were
the form and the face of the '■^glorified Jesus,'" not
those that had belonged to His humiliation life,
and which she had so often studied closely, and
remembered well. The face that had been deeply
marked with lines of suffering, the face that of
itself proclaimed Him to be a man "acquainted

320 TEARS WIPED AWAY

with grief," the prematurely-aged face that made
the Jews mistake Him for a man about fifty years
of age — that face, and all else pertaining to His
low estate, He had now left behind Him for ever.
When He rose from the dead all trace of the long
curse He had been bearing as He was "taking
away the sin of the world" had vanished utterly;
and though there was still enough to prove Him
to be " that same Jesus," there was so great a
difference, too, that many who had known Him
once, failed to recognise Him afterwards. The two
disciples on the Emmaus road thought Him only
some passing "stranger"; and when above five
hundred brethren met Him by appointment on a
mountain in Galilee, most of them "worshipped,"
but " some doubted.'' No wonder, therefore, that
even Mary did not immediately recognise Him in
the garden. Even His question did not reveal
Him. " Supposing Him to be the gardener," she
seemed to think, " here is another asking me that
same question, ' Why weepest thou ? ' How do
they all not know that I cannot but weep when
my loss has been so great ? " It needed the
Master's " calling her by name " to make her sure
that it was really He. But there was a very deep
sympathy on His side, meeting that deep love
on hers ; and I see this, in the fact that His first
greeting in His risen life should have been to her
rather than to any else.

Indeed, the order in which He manifested Him-

TEARS WIPED AWAY 321

self to the different disciples is one of the most
beautiful illustrations of His tender thoughtfulness
to be met with anywhere. Keasoning on the
matter beforehand, I should certainly have con-
cluded that His specially commissioned apostles
would have been the first to be greeted by the
Eisen Lord. But it was not so. Not to them,
nor to any of their sex, did He first appear. It
was to a woman, the weeping Mary, who was
probably the most broken-hearted of all the little
band. Well, surely He will appear to the apostles
next ? No ; not yet — only to one of them, and
that one, not John who loved Him most, and alone
had the courage to stand beside Him at the cross,
but Peter, the disciple that had grieved Him most,
who had denied Him shamefully, but who had
been weeping hot tears of penitence ever since.
Now, then, surely the turn of the rest will come ?
No ; there are other bruised hearts that must get
healing first — two sad and weary men that were
going away home like stricken deer to die alone,
saying, "We trusted it had been He who should
have redeemed Israel." The other disciples had
some comfort from the angels' words ; these had
none ; and not till these most disconsolate ones
had been made to sing for joy, did He turn to the
ten who were gathered trembling in the upper
room, and show Himself to them as the Living
One who had conquered death. It was all so like
Himself to go first with eager love to the souls

22

322 TEARS WIPED AWAY

that needed Him most. I see, therefore, that the
more sorely I need Him, the sooner He will come
to me. " He will not break the bruised reed," and
He will not let any other hand break it either. If
I am lying bruised and wholly unable to bring my
own strength back. He will gently lift me and
tenderly nourish me till I am strong once more ;
and the poor reed that He has saved from breaking
will then once more, in the blessed sunshine, show
forth His power.

The question of Jesus to Mary implied that her
weeping was due to her ignorance of a blessed fact
that would have made it useless ; and my weeping
at the grave of lost joys, or lost hopes, or lost
ambitions may often be the same ignorant and
useless thing. God has always much better things
in store for me than those which I have lost, and
if I only knew all that He does of the case, I might
find that I have been weeping over loss, where I
ought rather to have been giving thanks. I am
often weeping over losses that turn out to have
been no losses at all. The tears that fall at the
grave of my affections, or at the grave of my
ambitions, may often be, like Mary's, only tears
of ignorance ; and I may soon discover that '' God,
having provided some better thing for me," gives
me what not merely compensates for the loss, but
goes infinitely beyond it, too. If I were to erect a
tombstone over each of the things I have mourned
losing in my blind and foolish grief, I would soon

TEARS WIPED AWAY 323

be unable to read the inscriptions I engraved upon
them, for very shame !

The question " Why weepest thou ? " may also
come to me as a corrective of the often-recurring
but vain wish that I had seen and known my
Lord in His earthly life, as the first disciples did.
I am conscious sometimes of a regretful feeling as
to this. It seems difficult sometimes to realise my
Christ. I speak of Him to others ; I speak to
Him in prayer ; and yet all the time I can hardly
help wishing that I could picture Him to myself
as a Christ whom I had actually seen. It is a
disappointment to me, and seems a loss, that I
can know Him only by faith. To have " seen the
Lord" I often think must have been a supreme
privilege from which I am debarred. To have
gazed upon His face till every feature was stamped
indelibly on my memory ; to have listened to His
human voice so that I could recall every varying
tone ; to have as clear a conception of His person
as I have of some dear absent friend — this, I
sometimes think, would have been a privilege
beyond all others, for my heart. And then I think
how easy it must have been for a trembling
penitent to fall at His feet and be assured of His
forgiveness, if an actual human voice said, "Be of
good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee ; " how great
would have been the comfort of feeling that there
was no room for doubt, of being able to say, "It
is Himself that speaks, and He speaks to me : "

324 TEARS WIPED AWAY

whereas now He appears to me a Saviour vague,
shadowy, and dim.

Yet this would be only repeating Mary's mistake.
Better far, after all, for me, that I know Him
only as the exalted Christ, no longer a poor man of
sorrows, but the Lord of glory, a Saviour who can
be every moment at my side — nay, a Saviour who
abides within me, a Master who teaches me every
day, a Lord whose resurrection life becomes my
very own, a Eedeemer who is really far more
intimate with me than He was with any who
knew Him in His life below, and more tender,
more sympathising, more able to help than the
dearest earthly friend ever was or ever could be.
I can say as I looh up to Him what I could not
have said as I looked round about for Him,
" Whom, having not seen, I love ; in whom, though
now I see Him not, yet believing, I rejoice with
joy unspeakable and full of glory."

XL VII
AN EVENING WALK

' What manner of communications are these that ye have one with
another, as ye walk, and are sad ? " — Luke xxiv. 17.

The exquisite story of the evening walk to Emmaus
is one of which no Christian heart can ever tire.
It is one of the most beautiful and graphic stories
which the gospels contain. Some one has likened
it to the tender after-glow sometimes to be wit-
nessed when the sun has set ; but I would rather
think of it as the early freshness of the morning
when the sun has newly risen, and the earth is still
bathed in its dew-tears which in a few moments
more will pass completely away. Possibly the
feeling both of evening and of morning may be in
it, for though to the sad-hearted disciples it
seemed as if the sun of their hope had set for
ever, it was, unknown to them, the Lord's resur-
rection day ; and as from Him the gloom had
already disappeared, so from them, when His risen

325

326 AN EVENING WALK

glory broke upon their sight, the gloom would
disappear for ever, too.

I can easily understand how Cleopas and his
companion should be so sad, and also how they
should wonder at the stranger's ignorance of what
was making them sad. They were walking mourn-
fully homeward, under the shadow of a greatly per-
plexing mystery, with only a very faint gleam of
hope breaking through the cloud of their despair ;
and, heart-broken as they were, they almost
resented what seemed to be a stranger's ignorant
indifference. I know the feeling. When some
great sorrow has crushed me into the dust, I am
so absorbed with the keenness of my loss, that I
cannot conceive how all beside me do not feel the
grief acutely too. I would rather they did not
speak to me at all, than coldly ask me what I am
sorrowing for. But I think I understand my
Master's feelings too, and see that, though He
knew well the secret of their sadness. He wanted
them to tell it out, that He might lift it off for
ever, in the one blessed moment when He revealed
Himself.

A solemn, heart-searching question suggests itself
here. Would I like my Lord and Master to over-
hear all my conversations with the friends who
go beside me on life's way ? If He were to break
in suddenly on some of my talks, and say " What
manner of communications are these that ye have
one with another ? " how ashamed before Him I

AN EVENING WALK 327

would sometimes feel ! And yet, He is always a
listener to my speech. Dare I allow myself, in
even an intimate conversation, to utter anything
— any bitter word, any untruthful slander, any
ungenerous insinuation, any unseemly jest, any
impure remark — which it would cover me with
confusion to think He has overheard? Must I
not set a watch, every hour, upon my lips, because
the Holy Christ is so close beside me, listening to
all I say ?

Yet, as it was in the character, not of a reprov-
ing, but of a sympathising, friend that He spoke to
these disciples, let me think of Him as ready to
sympathise with and comfort me, when I walk sad.
It often does my sore heart no good to tell its
sorrow to any earthly friend. To talk over all the
incidents, all the hopes, all the disappointments,
all the discouragements, all the ^^might-have-beens "
connected with it, only deepens the gloom. I need
a tviser friend than any just like myself can be, a
friend who understands what perplexes me, a friend
who Himself sees and can show to me " the bright
light that is within the cloud," a friend who has
not merely the love to sympathise with me, but
the poiver to help. Just such a friend is this great
Christ, who sometimes seems a stranger, but,
coming to me and chasing my gloom away, reveals
Himself as the very Lord who said " Ye shall weep
and lament while the world rejoices, but I will see
you again, and your sorrow shall be turned into joy."

328 AN EVENING WALK

He comes to me unhidden. It is just His love
to me that brings Him to my side. He comes
unrecognised at first ; for to me, as to these sorrow-
ing ones, He wears ** another form " than that in
which I had known Him before. My eyes, Hke
theirs, are sealed with grief, are so "holden " that
I cannot know Him in that new form to be the
same as ever. He walks beside me, and talks with
me, and makes " my heart burn within me ; " and
yet, for a time, there is no " lifting up," till, in a
moment, somehow, the scales fall from my eyes ; I
know Him ; and ere He goes. He leaves with me
His own deep, wonderful, satisfying, and unlosable
peace.

It may help me in my sorrows to think of that
Emmaus-road in the falling shadows, with two
gloom-covered men walking sadly on, and the
unknown Jesus for a third. When my heart is
crushed by some sore blow, I am apt to think no
one ever went along so dreary a path before. But
I see footmarks in it, which tell me that many
another wayfarer has been already there. I see
the path strangely blessed with a companionship
that wonderfully soothes me, and I see that I will
not want, for long, some thrilling word that will
change my grief into a song. When I look at the
thick dust of that Emmaus-road, I seem to see
" treasures hid in the sand," for it tells me what
riches of comfort lie waiting for me in my dreariest
paths, what unexpected joys may be only a very

AN EVENING WALK 329

little way ahead, and how soon the dirge I am
waihng out in a sad minor key may be exchanged for
a burst of praise. I have heard that caged canaries
learn their sweetest notes in the dark. I am sure
many of my darkest hours have been the birth-
place of my highest songs. It was often just
when the water in my bottle was completely spent,
and, Hagar-like, I felt that I could only lay myself
down to die, that my eyes were opened to see the
flowing spring that had been close beside me all
the time, although I knew it not. When I go
mourning without the sun, a few words from the
Eisen Lord can easily put everything right ; but I
often need the darkness in order to appreciate the
light.

How like the Master it was, to go after these two
sorrowing ones on the very day of His triumphant
resurrection ! He thought it worth while to walk
seven miles, and spend two hours in the work of
comforting two obscure, lowly, dejected disciples.
The tenderness of His love comes out in that.
But it seems to me a most significant fact that
the Lord, after His resurrection, s]joJce only to dis-
ciples. He had nothing more to say to the world.
He had said to it all that He was sent to say, and
done for it all that He was sent to do. His work
for it was finished, but not His work for His own
disciples. When His great work of testimony and
of snfferi?ig was over, His tender work of comforting
still went on.

330 AN EVENING WALK

And He seems never to have spoken, as the
Kisen One, to any but sorrowing disciples. To
Mary and the other women weeping at the tomb ;
to Peter overcome with self-reproach ; to those
two going to Emmaus ; to the ten shut closely
in the upper room in fear ; to Thomas, sad because
he wanted to believe and could not ; to the nine at
the lake-side, dispirited with a night of fruitless
toil, still more dispirited because their Master had
not come to them, as He said He would ; to the
five hundred in Galilee, and to the eleven on
Olivet, all of them sad because it was a scene of
leave-taking, the parting with One whom they
would see on earth no more. Every recorded word
of the Eisen Lord was a word to the sad, whether
their sadness arose from sin, or trial, or disappoint-
ment, or unbelief, or fear. And He spoke only
comfort : nothing else. Never a word about their
sin ; never a word of reproof ; only words of good
cheer, unfolding His own glory, and their glory in
following Him. Living Himself in the joy of
victory. He only wished them to be sharers in
that joy.

This tender Christ is with me now. Many a
surprise visit I have had from Him already, and
they are only foreshadowings of the still greater
surprise He is preparing for me when He shall
come to disappear no more, when my eyes shall no
longer be " holden that I cannot know Him," but
I shall " see Him as He is." What a vision that

AN EVENING WALK 331

will be — not to see Him as He tvas, weary, worn,
shamed, rejected of men, acquainted with grief,
but to see Him as John in Patmos saw Him,
the crowned King of heaven ; and to see that
the Christ upon the throne is just the same
as the Christ of my faith, the Christ of my
prayers, the Christ of my communions here ; to
see that the hand that holds the seven stars is
just the hand that was laid in blessing on the
heads of little children ; that the face shining
above the brightness of the sun is just the face
that drew sinners to His feet ; that the breast girt
with the golden girdle is just the same as that on
which John leaned his happy head ; to see that
His glory has made no change in His heart — that
is the vision reserved for me when my journey
along the dusty highway is at an end, and I reach
the home from which He will " vanish " no more.
Keep me, 0 Saviour, till I see Thee there !

XLVIII
OPENED EYES

" O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have
spoken ! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter
into His glory ? " — Luke xxiv. 25, 26.

I AM ready enough to echo my Lord's rebuke of
these two disciples. Certainly they ought to have
better understood the Scriptures, for these Scrip-
tures spoke clearly enough. There was a culpable
ignorance in these men, a blindness of heart that
He could not excuse. But am I so different from
them myself ? Do I myself not often fail to see
truth that is clear, fail to grasp the promises and
rest believingly in them ? Do I myself always see
that " suffering " is the way to " glory " — the only
way ? Why do I doubt and despair, when things
fall out to me exactly as my God has, a thousand
times over, told me they must ?

The Lord spoke to these disciples of a necessity
for His sufferings ; and that necessity was two-fold.
There was a necessity that the Scriptures should

332

OPENED EYES 333

be fulfilled ; but there was also a necessity in the
very nature of the case. The whole teaching of
the Scriptures, from first to last, had been that the
Christ should be a suffering, before He was a reign-
ing, Christ. The prophets, with one voice, had
spoken of "the sufferings of Christ, and the glory
that should follow.'^ Sometimes the picture of
the Sufferer was clearer than the picture of the
Conqueror. Sometimes, again, it was the glory
that was largest to the eye. But both were there ;
and only ignorance of the Scriptures could have
hid them from view. Jesus knew the Scrip-
tures as none else had ever done. The Word of
God had all along been the very life of His soul.
His one answer, to caviller and tempter alike, had
been " It is written"; and here, in talking to these
two, His testimony to the 8cri;ptures was, that the
Scriptures had been only one long testimomj to
Him; for He found, and brought out to view,
in all the Scriptures, the things concerning
Himself !

How strange it must have been for Christ to read
this book, finding absolutely nothing in Himself of
the sins which it rebuked, but finding everywhere
glimpses and hopes and predictions of the coming
one who was Himself! As He read the sacred
page, the world of all time lay before His eye, like
a lost and helpless man gazing with upturned face
to the sky, looking for the advent of some great
Deliverer, a Kedeemer who would conquer sin by

334 OPENED EYES

"bearing" it, who would vanquish death bypas-
sing through it, who would suffer to the uttermost
that He might save to the uttermost, and then
would reign in the glory which His obedience unto
death had won ; and, all along, He could say, as
He read, " This Scripture is to be fulfilled in Me."
I would learn from my Master to reverence more
deeply, and to ponder more believingly, this divine
Word of God, in which I can see not only things
concerning Hmi, but things concerning myself
as well. I need to watch lest, in a busy age, the
Scripture should cease to be the constant nourish-
ment of my higher life ; lest I hurry off to my
business in the morning, too pressed for time to
study it, and come in at night, too tired to do it ;
and lest all kinds of literature eagerly read should
destroy my relish for it, and so my soul should
starve, even with God's rich bread within my
reach. I need to remember that a careless reader
of the Bible never becomes a close walker with
God ; and that if I read it seldom, I will soon not
care to read it at all. It becomes distasteful only
when little read. It grows in interest to the heart
that loves it, and is always freshest to those that
study it most deeply, and know it best ; and that
just because the Christ to whom it bears witness is
an inexhaustible Christ, and the soul-experience
which it describes is an inexhaustible theme.
Hidden wonders start out perpetually to view,
when I hear it speak of my own heart with its

OPENED EYES 335

longings and its sins, and when I hear it speak of
Christ's heart, with His unfathomable grace. But,
for this, I need always to offer the old prayer,
" Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold the
wonders of Thy law." If it ever seems dull and
meaningless, it is only as the stained window of a
cathedral looks dull and meaningless to one wJio
stands outside. To see its beauty, I need to enter
the sanctuary first, and then look at the window
from the iiiside, to the light beyond. The splen-
dour cannot be discerned till two requisites meet,
a seeing eye, on the one hand, and a shining light
on the other. Scripture becomes to me a glorious
transparency, only when I hold the record up be-
tween my opened eye and the light that shines
from heaven. But if my eyes are open, I will (as
Bishop Watson said) see only two things in it from
first to last, " a revelation of the gracious heart of
God, and a revelation of the wicked heart of man ; "
and I shall see the God of the gracious heart
reaching out His hand to the sinner of the wicked
heart, and offering to give him life and peace and
holiness through His Son.

Now, let me remind myself that the same Scrip-
tures that showed my Lord and Master how needful
it was that His path to glory should be one of suffer-
ing, show me that a share in that glory can come
to me in no other way; that " through much tribu-
lation I also must enter into the kingdom." The
whole of the reasons for this I do not yet know ;

336 OPENED EYES

but I see enough to show me at least the end
which God has in view. It is only one of many
mortifying proofs of what rebellious and intractable
children of the heavenly Father the best of dis-
ciples are, that even He whose name is Love can
find no other way of bringing them to a perfected
immortality except a life-long discipline of sorrows
and pains. Even my own experience has been
enough to teach me that ''suffering" is the
school in which I learn the deepest secrets of
my Saviour's love, the fire in which my heart-evil
is most thoroughly purged away, the Gethsemane
where, most of all, I discover the preciousness and
the power of prayer.

By the discipline of suffering I learn better to
understand my Lord ; but by it, I learn also how
to sympathise with other sufferers. Only one who
can speak feelingly from his own experience is of
much use as a comforter of the sad. There are
some round about me in the world to-day, whom I
could almost wish to see more afflicted than they
ever yet have been ; for then they would be more
tender-spirited, less cold, less censorious, less hard,
— and, to lose a good deal of their hardness would
be a blessing not only to themselves but io many
beside them whom their unfeelingness deeply
wounds. That hardness can be taken out of
men only by the furnace-heat. Sons of Thunder
can be made anywhere. Barnabases, sons of
Consolation, can be made only in the fire. The

OPENED EYES 337

keenest suffering, therefore, appointed to me, may
be only my apprenticeship to the sacred office of
being a comforter to some sad hearts beside me.

In this path of suffering, too, (and it will be good
to remember this), I am only treading in the foot-
prints of my Lord. He, also, was " made perfect
through suffering." He gained thereby a greater
sympathy with tried and sorrow-wounded men,
and became thus a Saviour more perfectly equipped
for His saving work. In some strange, mysterious
way, even He ''learned obedience by the things
which He suffered." How that could be, I cannot
know; but this I see, that if I am to be "con-
formed to His image " I must go through the fire ;
for though God had one Son tuitJiout sm, He never
yet had a Son loithout suffering. Indeed, chasten-
ing is part of the peculiar heritage of all sons and
daughters of God. The great Husbandman does
not prune the brambles outside His garden-wall,
but He does the fruit trees within. Better far to
be His wounded trees than the unwounded thorns
of the wilderness. If what Israel's " sweet psal-
mist" said is true, "Blessed is he whose iniquity
is forgiven," and if what he also says is true,
"Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, 0
Lord," then the pardo7ied man who is also a,
chastened man is doubly blest.

I think Bunyan must have well understood this
when he described the valley of humiliation as "the
best and most fruitful piece of ground in all these

23

338 OPENED EYES

parts ; there, our Lord Himself had once His
country house, and He loved much to be in it ;
and though Christian had the hard hap to meet
Apollyon there, yet I must tell you that in former
times men met angels there, found pearls there,
yea, met there with the Lord Himself, who has left
a yearly revenue to be expended on all pilgrims
for their maintenance while in it."

To suffer may be hard; but to " suffer ivitli Him^^
can never be hard : and, to be " glorified together "
— who can tell the ineffable blessedness of that !
Yery beautifully said Samuel Eutherford, writing
to a much-tried friend, "Faint not, the miles to
heaven are few and short. There are many heads
lying on Christ's bosom, but there is room for yours
among the rest.''

XLIX
CHEIST EVER THE SAME

" Why are ye troubled ? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts ?
behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself : handle Me, and
see. . . . And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered. He
said unto them. Have ye here any meat ? And they gave Him a piece
of a broiled fish . . . and He took it, and did eat before them." —
Luke xxiv, 38, 43.

So then, though now the Lord of Glory, their
Master was showing Himself to be the same
tender - hearted, loving Friend as ever. The
gathered disciples were afraid of Him, as, indeed,
they might well be, not knowing Him perfectly as
yet ; for they were not merely a dispirited com-
pany, having had no visit from Him as they had
hoped, and a trembling company, fearing the
vengeance of the crucifiers of their Master, but
a conscience-smitten company too, deeply conscious
of their sin in being ashamed of Him, and con-
cluding that if He were really risen, as they had
been told. He would now be ashamed of them.

339

340 CHRIST EVER THE SAME

How wonderful, then, it must have been to them,
that as He mysteriously passed through the bolted
door and stood in their midst. His very first word
should be, " Peace be unto you ! " Not a word of
rebuke, not a word recalling the shameful past,
not even any waiting till they had confessed their
sin. The sin had already been put behind His
back. He had nothing now but His love to speak
to them about. The God of peace had brought
again from the dead the great Shepherd of the
sheep ; and the first thing that Shepherd did was
to comfort His little flock, saying, ^^ Peace be unto
you ! "

He had not said '' Peace be unto you ! " to the
luomen whom He met at the grave. They had not
deserted Him, as the rest had done ; and tliey did
not need forgiveness for forsaking Him. But to
those who did need it, and were fearing it would
never come. He brought it as His first message,
and brought it in the same old way, without
anything to suggest how keenly He had felt their
sin ; speaking to them as if it never had been there,
and then proceeding to remove all fear and doubt
at once, by giving them, first the evidence of
hearing^ and then the evidence of sight, and then
the evidence of touch, and next the evidence that
came from seeing Him actually eat and drink, thus
'' by many infallible proofs " convincing them that
He was really " that same Jesus " whom they had
known and loved and followed in days gone by.

CHRIST EVER THE SAME 341

Let me be very still as I listen to the words that
tell me that this Lord and Master is, to me also,
the "same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." To
rid me of all my misgivings. He tells me, first, that
He is no longer a dead, but a living, Christ ; and
He tells me, next, that though He has " entered
into His glory," He is " the same Jesus " as of old
— the same in tenderness and the same in grace. I
would be a brighter Christian than I am, if I
thought of Him as the living Christ. I sing with
joy —

" My faith looks up to Thee
Thou Lamb of Calvary";

but perhaps I think, not too much — I cannot
do that — but too exclusively of the Christ that
died, and not sufficiently of the Christ who
lives and reigns, and is now my living Advocate
and Friend for ever. At least, Paul seems to have
thought so when he spoke of the consolation of
knowing the " Christ that died, yea rather is risen
again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also
maketh intercession for us." The life of my Lord
did not end nineteen hundred years ago ! Just
that He might be not a local Christ, or a Christ
for one age alone, He rose into that unchanging
life that knows no periods, no epochs, no time, but
is an Eternal Now ; and He is with me to-day.

Some Christians seem to be living only upon a
joast Christ, and some only on a future Christ. I
would seek to live upon a lyresent Christ, and find

342 CHRIST EVER THE SAME

my comfort and my sanctity in that ; and all the
more when I remember that the past the present
and the future are all in the one great Lord who is
"the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever," so
that my faith can cling to the Christ who died, my
love rest satisfied in the Christ who is risen, and
my liope expect with joy the Christ who is to come
again; for, to the heart that knows Him, He is
really " all," not merely the alpha and the omega,
hut all the letters betwee7i.

My faith in Him as the Christ of history is con-
firmed and intensified when I see that He is the
Christ of experiejice also — a Christ whom tens of
thousands have tried, have trusted, have rejoiced
in, have found an all-sufficing Redeemer and
Friend. All down the ages. He has been doing
in His invisible risen life, the same wonders of
grace and power that He did, in visible form,
in Judea and Gralilee centuries ago. How many
millions of crushed hearts since then have heard
Him say just what He said of old, " Come unto
Me and I will give you rest ; " how many a sinful
soul has heard Him say, " Be thou clean ; " how
many a penitent has heard Him say, as distinctly
as He said it to the dying thief, " To-day thou
shalt be with Me in Paradise!" To how many
a bereaved one He has repeated His old consola-
tion, " I am the Resurrection and the Life ! " At
how many an Emmaus has He made Himself known
in the breaking of bread ! How often has He said

CHRIST EVER THE SAME 343

to trembling and dispirited ones just what He said
in the upper room, " Why are ye troubled ? and
why do thoughts arise in your hearts? " All down
the ages His voice has been heard s^eaMng peace,
and His presence has been felt hestowing it.

Have I not myself had experiences of His grace
that I cannot dispute, experiences I would not
part with for a thousand worlds ? I recognise in
His words of old the very tone in which He has
spoken to my own heart many a time. To me the
Christ of history and the Christ of experience are
one — " that same Jesus " ; and I see that instead
of its being difficult for me to trust this Christ
whom I have never seen, because His earthly life
now lies so far back in the past, it is becoming
every day easier to do it, because the number of
those who have trusted Him and found Him true
is increasing every day. He stands before me now
in a glory He never had before, a Saviour whose
grace has been tested and experienced by ''a
multitude that no man can number, out of every
kindred and nation and people and tongue." He
is not now, as He once was, a poor " Man of
sorrows, acquainted with grief," rejected and
despised ; He is a great Redeeming Lord into
whose hands millions have put all that they
counted most dear ; on the faith of whose promises
millions have lived blessed lives and died trium-
phant deaths. Thousands have died for Him ;
thousands more ivoidd have died for Him if He

344 CHRIST EVER THE SAME

had asked them to do it. How much easier it is
for me to trust this Christ, when I see how milHons
have trusted Him before me, than if I had been
one out of a very few that had discovered Him to
be worthy of trust at all ! It is no new experiment
I am called to make when summoned to follow a
Christ like this. The bridge by which I am urged
to cross the surging flood is no new structure,
untested, and possibly insecure. It has been
trodden already by the feet of ten thousand times
ten thousand heavily-burdened men, and it has
stood the strain. Not one plank has started these
nineteen hundred years. Surely I may plant my
feet where so many millions have already planted
theirs. Let me often go back, in adoring thought,
to the place where Jesus died ; but let me also
think of Him steadily as the Living One who dieth
no more, and who is with me still. I will think
much of Jesus on the cross, but, if I can, I will
think even more of Jesus on the throne above, and
Jesus in my heart below. Then the tone of my
Saviour's question will be very sweet, " Why art
tho2i troubled, and why do thoughts arise in tJiy
heart, if I am beside thee every day ? "

The thoughts that arise in my heart may be
doubting thoughts, anxious thoughts, regretful
thoughts, remorseful thoughts, but I will let this
thought be as the sun that banishes the mists,
" My Lord is with me still." If I am " troubled "
with thoughts of my sin He tells me that He "rose

CHRIST EVER THE SAME 345

again for my justification," that He bore my sin
upon Him into the grave and left it there, and now
to me " there is no condemnation." If I am
"troubled" by the chafing of my sorrows and
cares, He tells me that what He rose from the
grave to give me is His perfect peace. I will just
sit still and let His peace eome in. If I am
"troubled" with the thought of death, and my
lying in the grave. He tells me that He passed
through it too, and consecrated it for me by lying-
there Himself ; so that " because He lives, I shall
live also." I will therefore " fear no evil," but let
the Conqueror of Death take me by the hand and
lead me through. My grasp of Him may then be
weak enough, but His mighty grasp of me defies
both death and hell. With the Risen One as my
Life I cannot perish ; and if I believe that Jesus
died and rose again, even so them also that are
laid to sleep by Jesus, God will bring with Him;
and I " comfort myself with these words."

THE THOUGHTFULNESS OF CHEIST

" Children, have ye any meat ? " — John xxi. 5.

The beautiful story, in the midst of which this
question lies, shows me again the graciousness
of my Master in a most attractive way. The
disciples had gone to Galilee, as they were com-
manded to do ; and while waiting for His promised
coming to them, had betaken themselves, for
present needs, to their old craft as fishermen.
This, too, was in accordance with His instructions
that, until Pentecost set them absolutely free for
their spiritual work, they would need to rely upon
their own resources. That, of course, did not
hinder them from daily expectation of His coming.
Their days were given to that, and their nights to
providing for their earthly wants. Possibly, as
the days went by and He did not come, they began
to be discouraged by hope deferred, and had almost
given up the expectation that had cheered them at

346

THE THOUGHTFULNESS OF CHRIST 347

first. At least, it is certain that an appearance
of their Master on the morning of that day was
the last thing they were looking for. Yet it was
just when least expected, and when they needed
Him most, that He stood beside them, and gave
them a new proof that He was the same thoughtful,
considerate, and Almighty Friend they had long
known Him to be.

It is worthy of note that, in speaking to them
from the high ground on the shore. He did not
call them teJcnia — "My little children" — as He
used to do. That was a sacred word — a word
which would have recalled the upper room so
vividly as to betray Him at once. He only said
faidia — " Young men " — or, as we, in our col-
loquial, would say, "boys" — that being the
customary word of greeting from any stranger
passing by. The Master's disclosures of Himself
are only to faith and love ; but, just to evoke the
faith and love, He veils Himself, and puts on the
air of a stranger.

But I have here a beautiful illustration of how
interested my great Lord is in the smallest things
of my daily need. He comes to me just when I
am busy with my humblest duties ; He anticipates
my wants ; He cares for my body as well as for
my soul ; He can think of my requiring sustenance
after long labour and weariness ; and He provides
that first, before He speaks to me of higher things.
His loving thoughtfulness shows Him to be my

348 THE THOUGHTFULNESS OF CHRIST

brother-man — a brotherly Christ who is deeply
interested in the common business of my life, and
who sits down beside me as I eat what His own
bounty has provided, and what His presence sancti-
fies and cheers. That fire on the coals and that
abundant haul must have seemed to these disciples
to say — and they say it to me — " With Me to care
for you, you will never want : be sure henceforth,
that when you go forth to serve Me, I will look
after the supplies." The soldiers of this King will
never be allowed to starve. He Himself will attend
to the commissariat.

This story tells me, that, when engaged in my
lawful calling, the Master is not ashamed to come
to me in my homely work and coarse attire ; but
it also tells me, that in that earthly calling, even
my largest experience will not bring me success,
till He directs me to it. " The race is not to
the swift, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men
of understanding, nor favour to men of skill."
Unless the Lord fills the net, the scholar, the
preacher, the merchant, the tradesman, the states-
man, may toil all night and catch nothing. And
very powerfully is it suggested to me here, that
His interposition often comes just when human
effort has completely failed. Indeed He lets the
failure become absolutely disheartening, on very
purpose to prepare the way for manifesting His
power. It would have been just as easy for Him
to fill tbat net during the night as in the early

THE THOUGHTFULNESS OF CHRIST 349

morning ; but then the disciples would have
attributed their success to themselves and not
to Him ; and He lets human helplessness be at
its worst before He gives His richest and His best.
He gives His best, too, in unlikely places, as well
as at unlikely times. Very rarely have my best
blessings been found just tvJiere I was expecting
them, or just as I was expecting them either.
I have found a blessing come to me in sick-
ness that I never found in health. I have
found it in some dark trial, though I missed it
when the world was bright. I have found it one
day in the same house of prayer where, on hun-
dreds of previous days, I had found nothing for
my soul. Some verse of Scripture that I had
known from my childhood, that was quite familiar
but yet had no special interest for me, came to my
mind in some critical moment of my life, and
instantly became luminous with the light of God —
a message that brought me rest at once. God
often finds men where they are not expecting Him.
They miss Him in their accustomed life at home ;
but, for some reason or other, of business or of
health, they go abroad, and in a foreign land that
hand lays hold of them which they had long
resisted here and shaken off. He "leads the
blind by a way that they know not." His ways
of grace have the same inscription as His ways
in Providence, "past finding out."

This is the Divine side of the matter ; but I

350 THE THOUGHTFULNESS OF CHRIST

must not forget that there is a human side of it
too. The grace-side the Lord keeps in His own
hands alone ; but the dutij-side, the prayer-mdQ He
leaves in mine. Just because He so lovingly con-
cerns Himself with all my smallest affairs, He
would have me consult Him about them all. I
am quite ready to consult Him about the great
things of life. I am eager to consult Him about
the perplexing and sorrowful things, but the minor
things of daily routine I think I can manage
myself ! And yet how often have I seen a long
train of events, which changed the whole course
of a human life to its latest hour, set in motion
by some trivial, unforeseen, "accidental" occur-
rence, on a day that, when it began, seemed just
like any other day, with no special danger in it,
and no special significance attaching to it. A few
words spoken, a hasty bargain made, a casual
introduction on the street, or in the house of a
friend, the writing or the receiving of a letter — a
hundred such things as these may easily change the
whole colour of a life, so that the memory of the
day on which they happened w^ll be either a life-
long joy or a lifelong regret; and yet, when the
day began, there was nothing to forewarn what the
issues of it would be.

It is no wonder, surely, in view of this, that
God's command to me is " In all thy ways
acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths."
But if He promises to guide me not only in the

THE THOUGHTFULNESS OF CHRIST 351

broad liighivays of my life, but in its smallest and
obscurest imtlis^ because even in the smallest I
need to be led, it is the least He can expect that
I should ash Him to do it. I cannot but think
that these disciples on the lake must have prayed
for the Master's help, as they remembered how
marvellously He had filled their net three years
before. I cannot but think of them as saying one
to another, " Oh, that the great Master were with
us now ! " There were many strong heart-longings
at least, in that weary night, and if these aspirations
were not definite prayers they were the next thing
to that ; and by the w^atchful, gracious Master they
were taken as prayers and answered to the full.

Once more, I see here that God's rich blessings
are sure to be very liumhlmg to the heart that
receives them. There is nothing like the exceed-
ing abundance of the Lord's goodness for making
a man feel his own un worthiness. An awe and
silence fell on the disciples as soon as John said,
"It is the Lord." They could only wonder and
adore ; and was not that a preparation of them
for bearing the great success soon to be given
them as fishers of men ? When that success came,
they would not thank themselves, but only Him.
It is sometimes said that great spiritual success,
like great earthly success, tends to make the heart
proud ; and that one so honoured will need great
grace to keep him low. Ah ! the success itself
will humble him, if he is a true man of God at

352 THE THOUGHTFULNESS OF CHRIST

all. To think that God should so bless liim^ sinful
as he is — that of itself will make him lie very low,
and give God the glory. Let me so honour my
Master all along ; and then, when the long night
is past, and in the early morning of the Eternal
Day He provides for me the feast upon the shore,
I shall not doubt whose voice it is I hear, whose
love it is I taste. I shall know in a moment that
"it is the Lord" — for none hut He could do so
gracious a thing as that — my Lord and Master
thus fulfilling to me His promise, " I will sup with
him, and he with Me," and saying on the shore of
heaven, just what He said on the shore of the Syrian
lake, " Come and dine."

LI

THE DEEPEST QUESTION OF ALL

" Simon, son of Jonas, lovcst thou Me more than these ? " —
John xxi. 15.

A DEEPLY affecting question this ! and the shame-
stricken Peter must have felt it so ; for, though it
gave him the opportunity of a new and very sin-
cere declaration of love to his Lord, it could not
fail to remind him, gently yet keenly, how his
former protestations had been belied. But it is
worthy of note that when Jesus asked, " Lovest
thou Me more than these ? " Peter made no refer-
ence to the " more than these" in his reply. He
was done now with all boastful comparisons. He
would not now even hint that he was a better
disciple than the rest. Too humble now for that,
he only said, " Thou knowest that I love Thee."

The Master's use of the old name " Simon,"
instead of the new name, '' Peter," was suggestive
of much. It was not to imply that he had for-

24 353

354 THE DEEPEST QUESTION OF ALL

feited all right to the new name; but it was a
gentle reminder to him of the weakness which had
led to his denial ; and it would recall to him the
Master's words hefore his fall, when He purposely
abstained from giving him the name that implied
firmness and strength, but used instead the old
name, " Simon," which bore to " Peter" the same
relation that ^^ Jacob'' (the " supplanter ") bore to
''Israel'' (the '^ prince of God ") — " Simon,
Simon, Satan desired to have thee, that he
might sift thee as wheat, but I prayed for thee
that thy faith might not fail."

Very lovingly had Jesus already assured the
penitent disciple of His forgiveness. One of the
first messages He sent as the Eisen One was a
message specially to Peter. One of the first
private interviews He gave to any disciple was
given to Peter ; and from that interview he must
have come away knowing himself to be a fully
pardoned man. Still, the use of the old name
here again must have gone to Peter's heart,
making him think, with new shame and sorrow,
of his old self-confidence and pride.

But all his pride was now thoroughly killed.
He had learned, at last, to take the lowest place,
which is the only safe place for any man to take.
Probably, none of the eleven did love the Master
so deeply as he ; but he would not say so, or even
think so, now. He had profited by his terrible
fall. He had grown greatly in grace since then,

THE DEEPEST QUESTION OF ALL 355

grown in knowledge of himself, as well as in
knowledge of his Lord; and all he now said
showed him clothed in that beautiful humility
which is one of the surest marks of maturity in
the school of Christ. He was "grieved," indeed,
when, for a third time, Jesus asked him, " Lovest
thou me ? " for that looked as if the Master was
still suspicious of him; but there was no anger,
no irritation, in Peter even then. He only said,
with eager voice, " Lord, Thou knowest all things ;
Thou knowest that I love Thee." Such a restora-
tion from backsliding as had been vouchsafed to
Peter is always sure to make an exceedingly
humble soul. There is no more tender, humble
heart to be found anywhere than the heart of a
recovered backslider. It is at once a humble and
a joyful heart ; humble, because its sin it can
never forget ; joyful, because God has forgotten it
for ever. The joy of pardon never destroys
humility. The joy and the humihty go hand in
hand.

But now, let me take this as my Master's
question to myself ; and see how deep it goes, not
only into my feelings, but into my life. For it is
not, "Believest thou Me?" or " Understandest
thou Me ? " or " Confessest thou Me ? " or " Obey-
est thou Me?" or even, '' Servest thou Me?"
It goes closer home. It is, " Lovest thou Me ? " ;
and all these other things may be where love
is not. Again, He does not ask, "Lovest thou

356 THE DEEPEST QUESTION OF ALL

My word?" or '' Lovest thou My work?" or
" Lovest thou My brethren ? " He asks, ** Lovest
thou Me ? " And yet again, He does not ask,
"Art thou in the company of those that love
Me ? " He will not let me shelter myself by
losing myself in a crowd who all profess to love
Him. He brings me out into the light, to stand
alone, and asks, "Lovest tJio2i Me?"

What answer shall I give? It is easy, in a
glow of enthusiasm, to say, " Lord, thou knowest
that I love Thee," but how difficult it is to sJiotv
my love in unmistakable and practical ways ! I
am often finding myself in circumstances where
my love to Him is tested, and severely tested, too.
I am often so placed that I must choose between
following Him and following the world that is
utterly opposed to Him — between openly confess-
ing Him and meanly being ashamed of Him. A
real confession of my love to this Divine Master
will sometimes cost much self-denial: the loss of
the world's love, for the sake of keeping His ; the
loss, perhaps, of some of the world's high honours
and rewards, if I stand true to Him ; the loss,
even, of the love of friends who are dear as my
very life. I may have to suffer things as painful
as the cutting off of a right hand or the plucking
out of a right eye. And yet, when My Master
asks me to show, in this way, my devotion to
Him, He does not argue with me ; He only says —
and that implies everything — *' Lovest tJiou Me ?

THE DEEPEST QUESTION OF ALL 357

I made myself of no reputation for thee ; Lovest
tJiou Me ? I hid not My face from shame and
spitting for thee ; Lovest thou Me ? I died for
thee ; Lovest thou Me ? He that hath My com-
mandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth
Me ; Lovest thou Me ? " That is all He says ; but
surely it is enough. When He shows me sins
that must be relinquished, if I am to enjoy His
fellowship ; when He shows me that the way to
heaven is too narrow for the great burdens of
worldliness that I want to carry on my shoulders ;
and, pointing to all the attractions of the broad
road which He wants me to contemn, asks me if I
am willing to make a complete surrender, He only
puts it thus, ^^ Lovest thou Me?" For what He
wants from me is a practical expression of my
theoretical love, an expression in act, as well as on
the lip; and, though it may be a hard, it will
always be a blessed, answer, if I can give it,
" Lord, thou seest all things, Thou seest that I love
Thee."

And others ought to see it too. My love to
Christ ought to be a visible love. Let me ask
myself, therefore, what proofs of my love to
Christ I am giving in my daily life. From my
demeanour and conversation in my home would
any one gather that I love my Lord and Saviour
with an ardent love ? If I never talk about Him
as worthy of love, how can others believe that I
regard Him so ? If I never boldly take His part,

358 THE DEEPEST QUESTION OF ALL

when His laws are despised, or His authority is
contemned ; if I see, and do not rebuke, the sins
that dishonour and grieve Him, how can I make
good my profession of loyal love to Himself ? If
I never think of Him or speak of Him as a dear
friend, who is gone away for a time, but is soon
to come again ; if my heart never thrills with joy
in the hope of His "glorious appearing," so that I
am setting everything in order to meet His eye,
how can I prove my possession of that love to
which separation is a sorrow ? Do I make my
love to Him as plain and incontrovertible as He
makes His love to me ? I have never to ash Him,
" Lovest Thou me ? " If I did. He would answer
in a moment, by pointing to the ^roof He gave of
that, and say, " Behold My hands and My feet."
He bears in His glorified body the " print of the
nails," proofs of His wonderful love to me. But
what a contrast between that love and mine !
His so strong J and mine so weak ; His so change-
less, and mine so fickle ; His so active, and mine
so indolent ; His so open, and mine so secret ; His
so ardent, and mine so cold !

Nothing but meditating on His love can tho-
roughly kindle mine, or make it glow as a living
fire. It was that alone that stirred the heart of
Peter ; and that alone can stir this heart of mine.
I cannot force myself to love Christ. Love never
comes that way. I think of His love to me, and
then my heart goes out to meet that love of His.

THE DEEPEST QUESTION OF ALL 359

My Love goes out, just because, first of all, E.is
love has come in.

Would that I could both feel and show that
'* the love of Christ constraineth me, to live not
to myself, but unto Him." That would be my
daily victory, as well as my daily joy : for, far
stronger than the power of fear is the sweet power
of love. It is possible to give up sin, and make
sacrifices for God, by saying, " The fear of hell
compelleth me " ; but that will only make life a
burden, and each act of sacrifice a pain. When I
can put it quite otherwise, and give as my motive
this, "the love of Christ constraineth me," my
heart is light, and every sacrifice a joy.

" Lord, it is my chief complaint,
That my love is weak and faint;
Yet I love Thee, and adore ;
Oh for grace to love Thee more 1 '

LII

A SINGLE EYE

"Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this
man do ? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come,
what is that to thee ? Follow thou Me."— John xxi. 21, 22.

In this last question from my Master's lips, I find
one of His most comprehensive directions for my
Christian life. He carries me away beyond all my
speculative and practical difficulties by saying
" What is that to thee ? ", and He sums up all my
duty in the simple words, " Follow thou Me."

As meant for Peter, there was a manifest allusion
in them to his former boast, ** Lord, I will follow
Thee to prison and to death." The Lord went
back to that old profession, and said, *'You
remember how you wished to follow Me; well, I
take you at your word, you shall not only die for
Me, but die lilie Me too." How accurate a record
does this Master keep of His disciples' professions !
Never does any protestation of loyalty fall from

2C0

A SINGLE EYE 361

me, but He will remind me of it some day, and
claim a fulfilment of it.

It might be supposed that Peter's question about
John arose from a feeling of jealousy, but it was
rather the fruit of curiosity, springing out of the
ardent affection that bound these two men together.
John and he had long been the closest of friends ;
and Peter, with a vision of suffering before him,
wonders whether, in the future as in the past, he
will have the companionship of John: "What
shall be the lot appointed for liim ? Shall we still
be together, or shall I henceforth be without the
help and sympathy of my dearest friend ? " There
was no jealousy ; only affection. But the tone of
the Master's reply shows that Peter was still, as
he had always been, too much of a "busybody in
other men's matters," too fond of looking after and
managing others, just as he had more than once
tried to manage the Master Himself. There is an
accent of rebuke, therefore, in the question " What
is that to Thee ? "

But, leaving Peter, let me carry this question
into every department of my own life — my specula-
tive life on the one hand, and my practical life on
the other ; for it will not fail to be a helpful guide
in both. One thing, at least, comes very clearly
here to view; that the main business of every
Christian is with himself. With the destinies of
others, and even with the duties of others, he has
very much less to do than with his own.

362 A SINGLE EYE

Some men, of ardent, energetic temperament,
seem to have very exaggerated ideas of the extent
of their responsibihty. They seem to live only to
keep all other people straight. No heresy can any-
where be broached, but they must rush to the front
and expose it. No iniquity can anywhere be
practised, but they must drag it into the light to
condemn it. God made them keepers of their own
vineyards, but they spend all their time in looking
after other men's vines. Unquestionably there is
something noble in this temper ; but there is some-
thing quixotic too ; and Christ seems here to teach
that He imposes upon no man such a responsibility.
The world is sadly full of evil, scepticism, infidelity,
superstition, immorality, on every side. What, then,
am I as a Christian to do ? Simply to obey my
Master's command, " Follow thou Me, — protest
assuredly, where a protest must be made, to clear
yourself of all complicity in sin ; protest where a
protest is needed to save a brother, and to put a
wrong-doer to shame ; but before all that, be thou a
true disciple, whoever may be false ; be thou thyself
a holy example of justice and mercy and purity
and truth, though all the world should be only
a sweltering mass of impiety, and impurity, and
wrong."

The application, however, of the Master's words
may legitimately be carried farther than this.
There are many things I may wish to know, which
really do not concern me much ; and which I had

A SINGLE EYE 363

better leave in the obscurity where God has left
them, till the breaking of the day. My curiosity
would sometimes like to be able to read the course
of His future providence, not only regarding myself,
but also regarding the world at large. I try to
construct out of dim prophetic intimations, an
exact picture of the future history of the nations
of the earth. I am tempted to read the *' Book of
Eevelation " as if it were a sort of time-table and
almanac combined ; and try to find there the exact
day when the battle of Armageddon will be fought,
the precise hour for the rapture of the saints, the
very minute of the final victory, when the Lord
*' shall descend from heaven with a shout." Follies
like these bring a sober forecasting of future perils
into disrepute, and do incalculable damage to
faith. The Master's words need to be remembered
still, ''It is not for you to know the times and the
seasons which the Father has put in His own
power"; and so, from all fantastic speculations
about the destinies of the world's kingdoms and
thrones. He brings me back to the safer region
of humble duty, saying " What is that to thee ?
Follow thou Me."

The present course of God's providence, too, may
sometimes disquiet and perplex, when the thoughts
revert, not only inquiringly, but complainingly, to
the seeming injustice of His ways. Why is one
home almost exempt from sorrows, while another
beside it is overwhelmed by a constant succession

364 A SINGLE EYE

of them? Why are the young, with all life's
possibilities opening out before them, so often cut
down before they have been able to accomplish any-
thing ; and the aged, whose work is past, kept
lying for years in uselessness, like stranded hulks
dropping to pieces by slow decay ? Why does
death take away the stay of the home just when
dependent little ones need most a parent's care ;
while others who have long been tottering on the
edge of the grave are left to linger on, a burden to
themselves ? Why are the great riches of the
world not more equally divided ? Why is gold
poured into one man's lap, while hundreds of far
better men than he, are, in spite of all that industry
and prudence can do, perpetually defeated in the
race? Many a true-hearted Christ-follower feels
that surely there is something wrong in all
this. For, say what he will about the compensa-
tions which God provides in present enrichments
of grace, say what he will about the grander
recompenses of eternity, it is no easy thing for a
crushed and defeated man to be still, and keep
all murmuring down. But if anything will help
him, this question of the Master's will (for He
knew well what a crushed life means), '' What is
that to thee ? Follow thou Me."

This same question may suffice to carry me over
difficulties connected with doctrines of the faith
that rest upon unrevealed mysteries behind them.
If I am perplexing myself with such things as the

A SINGLE EYE 365

fall of man, the sin of the angels, the salvability of
the heathen, the locality of heaven, and of the
spirits in prison, the decrees of God that seem
to destroy the free will of man, or that great
problem that presses with equal force on the brain
of the wisest philosopher and the heart of the little
child, why God permitted the entrance of sin into
the world at the first, and why He permits its
dominion still ; I can not only calm myself by the
reflection that probably these are depths that no
created mind can sound ; but still more by the
voice of my heavenly Lord, who does not explain
any one of them, but says, " Leave mysteries to
God, and do thou thine own work of following
Me."

It is very unimportant for me to know how many
will be saved at last ; but it is immensely import-
ant to make sure that I am saved myself. It is
quite unessential to know whether there is hope
for the heathen who have never seen the Light ;
but it is all-essential to make sure that I,
seeing it, do not perish through despising it.
It matters little whether or not I know how
sin began ; but it matters greatly whether I
am accepting the grace that takes sin away.
Should I refuse to enter the lifeboat that waits
to rescue me from the burning ship, till I satisfy
my curiosity about the origin of the fire ? What
my Lord and Master promises me is not a perfect
insight ; but a ijerfect rest. I may well be content

366 A SINGLE EYE

to be ignorant of what He has not seen it needful
to reveal. At least, the power of perplexities to
unsettle me will be over, when I listen obediently
to His voice saying, ** What is that to thee ?
Follow thou Me."

In the region of practical discipleship too, let
me get guidance from these words. The difficulty
of making a true stand for Christ in the world is
always a real one ; but sometimes it becomes
exceedingly acute. When I am laughed at for
my scrupulosity by nearly every friend beside me ;
when, not only in my larger social circle, but in
my own family, I meet only with coldness or
sneers ; the force of the current drags me down
against my will, and I am sometimes nearly swept
oS my feet ; I begin to feel that it is, perhaps,
presumptuous in me to take so lofty a tone. All
round me think me '' fanatical," and tell me I am
"righteous over much," till I begin to doubt
whether I am right in determining to be so
separate from the world's ways, since all I seem
to gain by it is the nickname of a "bigot," and
a "Pharisee."

Just in that mood, let me listen to the great
Master's voice, " What is that to thee ? Follow
thou Me " ; and that will nerve me at once. The
"offence of the cross" is still as great as ever;
"All that will live godly in Christ Jesus must
suffer persecution " ; "A man's foes, still, are often
those of his own household." But what finer field

A SINGLE EYE 367

could I desire for showing how true my heart is
beating to Christ than just this one where, if I
follow Him at all, I must follow through thorns
and briars that tear me at every step ? To all my
discouragements, and all my doubts. He has but
this one reply, '' Friends may misjudge you, the
world may revile you, your own brethren in the
Kingdom may not sympathise with you, but what
then ? I, your Lord, had once to stand alone, un-
befriended, misjudged, ridiculed, for you; will you
be afraid to stand alone and be scorned for Me.
What is all that to thee ? Folloio thou Me.''

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