__________________________________________________________________ Title: Things That Matter Most: Devotional Papers Creator(s): Jowett, John Henry (1817-1893) Print Basis: New York: Fleming H. Revell Company (1913) CCEL Subjects: All; __________________________________________________________________ THINGS THAT MATTER MOST By J. H. JOWETT, D.D. The Whole Armour of God 12mo, cloth My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year. 12mo, cloth "There is something to think about each day. It is scriptural, spiritual, stimulating." --Herald and Presbyter. Things That Matter Most Devotional Papers. A Book of Spiritual Uplift and Comfort. 12mo, cloth The Transfigured Church A Portrayal of the Possibilities Within the Church. 12mo, cloth The High Calling Meditations on St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians. 12mo, cloth The Silver Lining A Message of Hope and Cheer, for the Troubled and Tried. 12mo, cloth Our Blessed Dead 16mo, boards The Passion for Souls Devotional Messages for Christian Workers. 16mo, cloth The Folly of Unbelief And Other Meditations for Quiet Moments. 12mo, cloth SENTENCE PRAYERS for EVERY DAY The Daily Altar A Prayer for Each Day. Cloth Leather Yet Another Day A Prayer for Each Day. 32mo, cloth Leather A new large type edition. Cloth Leather __________________________________________________________________ Things That Matter Most DEVOTIONAL PAPERS By JOHN HENRY JOWETT, M. A. Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 Wabash Avenue London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ PREFACE I HAVE ventured to call these devotional papers by the general title, "Things That Matter Most," for, although they are concerned with many themes, I think that in every instance, we come face to face with some supreme interest of the soul. The mountains are never below the horizon: they are always in sight, and they dominate the plains. It is surely well in these days of incessant movement, movement which so frequently means strain rather than strength, that we have interludes when the soul can correct her conscious and unconscious wanderings by the contemplation of the serene and majestic things of God. It is in the ministry of these interludes that these meditations are now published, and I heartily hope that in this way they may be helpful to those who read them. J. H. J. NEW YORK. __________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS I. THE ILLIMITABLE LOVE OF GOD 9 II. LOVERS OF GOD 21 III. FORGETTING GOD 30 IV. SPIRITUAL ABILITIES 38 V. CHRIST'S HABIT OF PRAYER 46 VI. THE THANKFULNESS OF JESUS 53 VII. THE MAGIC TOUCH 61 VIII. THE BEQUEST OF PEACE 67 IX. SEEKING THE BEST 76 X. WITHERED HANDS 85 XI. THE THORN REMAINS 91 XII. THE SONG OF MOSES AND THE LAMB 98 XIII. WAVE AND RIVER 106 XIV. THE GUIDING HAND 112 XV. THE MIDNIGHT PRESSURE 120 XVI. CAPITAL AND INTEREST 125 XVII. BRUISED REEDS 132 XVIII. INFIRMITIES IN PRAYER 138 XIX. THE FRIENDS OF JESUS 145 XX. CONTACT BUT NOT COMMUNION 154 XXI. THE MORNING BREEZE 160 XXII. NO BREATH 166 XXIII. BLINDING THE MIND 171 XXIV. THE SOUL IN THE MARKET 180 XXV. TERMINUS AND THOROUGHFARE 186 XXVI. THE DESTRUCTION AT NOONTIDE 192 XXVII. THE BENEDICTION OF THE SNOW 197 XXVIII. NEEDLESS REGRETS 203 XXIX. WISE FORGETFULNESS 211 XXX. PREJUDGING CHRIST 217 XXXI. RIVERS OF LIVING WATER 223 XXXII. OUTSIDE THE WALLS 229 XXXIII. HONEST MORAL JUDGMENT 234 XXXIV. THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM 240 XXXV. THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 248 XXXVI. KEEPING THE ROADS OPEN 255 XXXVII. A FRIEND OF THE SUSPECTED 262 XXXVIII. THE HIGHER MINISTRIES OF HOLIDAYS 270 __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ I THE ILLIMITABLE LOVE OF GOD WHAT is the biggest thing on which the human mind can be exercised? In what can we most easily lose ourselves in the overwhelming sense of the immeasurable? There are the vast lone spaces of the stellar fields, peopled with countless worlds, crossed by mysterious highways, with stars as the pilgrims, ever moving on their unknown journeyings. We can lose ourselves there. There is "the dark backward and abysm of time," opening door after door in ever-receding epochs, back through twilight and dawn into the primeval darkness, where the inquisitive mind falters and faints. And we can lose ourselves there. There is the appalling wilderness of human need, beginning from my own life, with its taint of blood, its defect of faculty, its dreary gap in circumstance and condition, and repeated in every other life in every street, in every city and village and country throughout the inhabited world. And we can lose ourselves there. And then there is the deadly, ubiquitous presence of human sin, in all its chameleon forms--well-dressed, ill-dressed, blazing in passion, mincing in vanity, and freezing in moral indifference and unbelief. All these are stupendous themes, and the mind that ventures upon them is like the dove that ventured upon the waste of waters, and, soon growing weary of wing, returned to the place of its rest. But there is something more majestic than the heavens, more wonderful than the far, mysterious vistas of time, more pervasive than human need, and more abounding than human sin. The biggest thing with which the mind can cope is the infinite love of God; and all our sanctified powers, and all the ministries of holy fellowship, and all the explorations of eternity will never reach a limit in its unsearchable wealth. The biggest thing you and I will ever know is the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. There will always be "a region beyond," and for the already wondering eyes there will always be a new surprise: "The height, and depth, and length, and breadth, and to know the love of God, which passeth knowledge." 1. Let us reverently gaze into the height of the love of God. In love the scale of height is measured by the degree of purity. The height in the scale of diamonds is determined by an analogous standard. A diamond is of the "first water" when it is without flaw or tint of any kind. And love is lofty in proportion to its brilliance. Love can be deteriorated and degraded by the tint of jealousy. It can be debased by the tint of envy. It can be vulgarized by a strain of carnal passion. These earthly elements may be mixed with the heavenly substance, and its spiritual value is reduced. So that the first test to apply to any love is the test of purity, which is the test of height, the test as to how far it is sublimated, and separated from selfish and fleshly ingredients which dim and spoil its lustre. Now it is here that the Scriptures begin in their revelation of the love of God. They begin with its brilliance, its holiness. "In Him is no darkness at all!" How would that be as a description of a diamond? "No darkness at all!" Nothing sinful in His love! But more than that. Nothing shady in it, nothing questionable: nothing compromising or morally indifferent! No darkness at all; no blackness of faithlessness; no twilight of forgetfulness; "no night there!" And thus it is that, when the Book guides us in the contemplation of the eternal love, it first of all leads us into the contemplation of the eternal light. Always and everywhere this is where we begin. If I listen to a psalmist, he leads me into the holy place: "Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy hill; for the Lord our God is holy." If I listen to a prophet, I am led into the same sacred precincts: "The high and lofty One whose name is holy." If I listen to the mystic seraphim of the Old Testament, I hear them cry one to another, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts." If I listen to the songs of the Apocalypse, I find them burdened with the same theme: "They rest not day and night saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty." If I reverently listen to the Master in His secret communion with the Unseen, I hear Him say, "Holy Father." And if I listen to the prayer which He Himself teaches me to pray, I am led immediately to the holy glory of the Lord: "Our Father . . . hallowed be Thy name." Always and everywhere this is the beginning of our contemplation. We are led away into the light, into the unshadowed brilliance, into the holiness of God. If, therefore, God's love be symbolized by a mountain, its heights will be clothed in the dazzling whiteness of the everlasting snow. Love's heights are found in love's holiness. "God is light," "God is truth," "God is love." From this primary teaching I wish to adduce two inferences. And the first is this. The force of love always depends upon its height. We find the analogy in water. The force of falling water is determined by its height. In an English home, if your shower-bath is lazy and loitering, chilling you rather than bracing you, your remedy is to raise your cistern, and in the increased height you will get the requisite tingle. The tonic is born in loftiness. It is even so with love. There is a type of love which has no vigour because it has no height. It is a weak, sickly sentiment which just crawls about you. It is low, and therefore it has no enlivening force. It is mixed with earthly elements, and therefore it has no heavenly quickening. It enervates, it does not invigorate. The more holy love is, the higher it is, and the more fraught it is with vitality. How, then, must it be with the love of God? Born in holiness, it has power enough to waken the dead. Have you seen an Alpine river, born amid the snows, and rolling gloriously through the vale? That is the figure we need: "And I saw a river of water of life, clear as crystal," proceeding from "the great white throne," out of the unshadowed depths of eternal holiness. "There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God," and the holy power of that river is determined by the holy heights in which it is born. And the second inference is this, that the ultimate ministry and goal of love is also determined by the height of its holiness. Once again seek your analogy in water. Water rises no higher than its source. Water can lift no higher than its source. It is even so with love. Our love can never raise a loved one higher than the love itself. There are aspects of that law which are altogether staggering. Take the love of a parent for his child. Our own tainted love will not lift our child into purity. Our own jealous love will not lift our child into an unembittered disposition. Our own envious love will not lift our child into moral serenity. Our love will not lift above its own level. That is the solemn responsibility of a lover, that if the love be low it will scarcely lift the beloved one above the plains. If we want to lift higher we must heighten our love. How, then, is it with the love of God? His love, so glorious in holiness, can raise to its own level, and lift us into "heavenly places in Christ Jesus." "They shall sit with Me on My throne." "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." God's love imparts its own loveliness, until one day we too shall be "altogether lovely." From the supreme height of the fells, on the island of Arran, there comes rolling down the granite slopes a gloriously alive and vitalizing stream. They call it "The White Water," and it is well named. It gleams on the slopes like the whitest foam. Out at sea, when everything else was obscure, I could see the white water running on its ceaseless errand. And oh! the loveliness of its bequests, and the unutterable beauty of its dells and glens! It feeds the bracken, it nourishes the stalwart heather, it moistens the retiring fern. The White Water endows its haunts with its own loveliness. And the white water of the eternal love, ceaselessly flowing from the holy heart of God, brings with it power to make everything lovely, and at last to present everything spotless before the throne. 2. Let us gaze into its depths. Let me link together detached sentences from the Word, that in their associations we may discern what is meant by the depth of the love of God. "The high and lofty one whose tame is holy." . . . "He is gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner!" "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God, and went to God . . . began to wash the disciples' feet." "And one cried with another, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord!" . . . "Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more!" All these are suggestive of what is meant by the love-depths of our God. And on these I want to build this teaching, that it is only the really lofty that can truly reach the really deep. The arm that can reach far upward is the only arm that can reach far downward. It is only holy love that can deal with humanity's deepest needs. A low love has no depths of service. Low love is a thing of compromise, and has no dealings with extremes, whether of holiness or of sin. Pharisaic love had no height. "I thank Thee I am not as other men are." That is not loftiness: it is superciliousness; it is not the vision from the snow-white hills. And because Pharisaic love had no height, it had no corresponding depth; and when the Pharisee saw One descending into the deep pits of human need, he cried in self-respecting amazement, "He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners!" Holy love, crystalline love, goes down and down into human necessity, and is not afraid of the taint. Sunbeams can move among sewage and catch no defilement. The brilliant, holy love of God ministers in the deepest depths of human need. God's love is deeper than human sorrow, and how deep that is my appointed lot gives me daily and deepening experience. But drop your plummet-line into the deepest sea of sorrow, and at the end of all your soundings "underneath are the everlasting arms." God's love is deeper than death, and there are multitudes who know how deep grim death can be. "Just twelve months ago," said a near friend of mine a week or two ago, "I dug a deep grave!" Aye, and I know it was deep enough. But the grave-digger's spade cannot get beneath our Father's love. God's love is deeper than the deepest grave you ever dug! "And entering into the sepulchre they saw an angel," and you can never dig into any dreary, dreary dwelling of death which is beyond the reach of those white-robed messengers of eternal love. Yes, God's love is deeper than death. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" And God's love is deeper than sin. One night, when I was recently crossing the Atlantic, an officer of our boat told me that we had just passed over the spot where the Titanic went down. And I thought of all that life and wreckage beyond the power of man to recover and redeem. And I thought of the great bed of the deep sea, with all its held treasure, too far down for man to reach and restore. "Too far down!" And then I thought of all the human wreckage engulfed and sunk in oceanic depths of nameless sin. Too far gone! For what? Too far down! For what? Not too far down for the love of God! Listen to this: "He descended into hell," and He will descend again if you are there. "If I make my bed in hell, Thou art there." "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." "He bore our sin"; then He got beneath it; down to it and beneath it; and there is no human wreckage, lying in the ooze of the deepest sea of iniquity, that His deep love cannot reach and redeem. What a Gospel! However far down, God's love can get beneath it! Stronger His love than death or hell, Its riches are unsearchable: The first-born sons of light Desire in vain its depths to see, They cannot tell the mystery, The length, and breadth, and height! 3. Let us gaze into its breadth. Here again. I want to say that the breadth of love is determined by its height. Low love is always very confined and exclusive. Lofty love is liberal and expansive. Low love is like a lake; lofty love is like a river. We can imprison a lake within our own estate; we cannot imprison a river. It will be out, and about, and on! And sometimes we foolishly try to imprison the love of God. "We make His love too narrow by false limits of our own." Men have tried to appoint social limits, and national limits, and ecclesiastical limits, and credal limits. We may as well try to break up the sea into allotments as to "peg out" the love of God. The love of God is as broad as the race, and nowhere is there a single man in any clime, or of any colour, in congested city, in tropical jungle, or on a lonely frontier-line where a pioneer has built himself a primitive home--nowhere is there a single man, woman, or child who is orphaned of a place in the eternal Father's heart. "If He lose one He goeth out!" . . . O love of God, how broad! 4. And what of its length? There is no end to it. To what length will it not go? "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." To that length! "Becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross!" To that length! "Goeth after that which is lost until He find it." To that length! God's love is as long as the longest road. God's love is as long as the longest day. God's love is as long as the longest night. God's love is as long as life. God's love is as long as eternity. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." "Love never faileth." __________________________________________________________________ II LOVERS OF GOD I WANT to guide the thoughts of my readers to the soul's love for the Lord, and the fitting words must be pure as light and simple as childhood. Not that the subject is simple. There is no subject more delicate, more intangible, more elusive. It is ever the simplicities that most easily evade our intellectual grasp. What more simple than the love of a little child, and yet how spiritual, and therefore how infinite! And so it is when we come to a theme like the soul's love for our God. We feel awkward and clumsy, as if we were dealing with tender and sacred refinements, and we lack the requisite softness of hand and foot. We have not the delicacy of soul for approaching the exquisitely shy and retiring genius; and even if we see her beauties and her manners afar off, we have no fitting speech wherewith to describe her charms. For themes of this kind require not only very rare and special powers of vision, they require an almost equally rare and unique vocabulary. If we are going to speak about the love of the saints, those to whom we speak must not be made to gather like students in a herbalist's museum; they must feel as if they were out in the sunshine, among all sweet and natural things, amid enticing perfumes and lovely hues. They must not be as though they were studying the laws of physics in the classroom, but as though they were basking in the cheery heat rays of the enlivening sun. In our time there have been two men who could move about this field of the soul's love with the incomparable ease of master-lovers--Spurgeon and Newman, and I always repair to them when I want to put a bit of edge on my own sadly blunt and ineffective blade. Both were deeply intimate with the delicate ways of the soul, and with the love-songs of the soul; so much so that when they began to speak about it the warm, luscious words and phrases of the Song of Solomon became their spontaneous ministers of expression. The dictionary cannot help us in our quest. The dictionary attempts its definition, but when the definition has been given we feel it is a birdless cage, and the sweet, living songster is not there. Here is what the dictionary says: "Love, an affection of the mind excited by qualities in an object which are capable of communicating pleasure." There you have it! But does any young lover or old lover recognize the withered thing? It is not only withered--it is imperfect and broken. I think we must admit that definitions do not take us very far. To try to put love in a phrase is like taking a bit of tender seaweed out of the water; it becomes featureless mush in the hand. When I turn to the New Testament no definition of love is given. Everywhere there are signs of love's presence, and she is always engaged in ennobling and beautifying service. Her works are manifest, but the worker herself is elusive. Where she moves there is indescribable energy; there are powerful ministries of purity, and diverse experiences are drilled to a common and beneficent end. Everywhere wildernesses become gardens, and deserts are rejoicing and blossoming as the rose. But one thing is said, and said very clearly, and it is this--the way to love our fellows is by becoming lovers of God. "The first of all commandments is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." Everywhere this is taught--love for God is the secret of a large, beneficent, and receptive humanity. How, then, can we become "lovers of God"? First of all, we must consort with the God we desire to love. We must bring our minds to bear upon Him. Love is not born where there has been no communion. There must be association and fellowship. I know that there is "love at first sight." Yes, at a glance the soul leaps to its other half, and completes a union appointed in the deep purpose of God. And I know there is "love at first sight" with Christ. It is even so with multitudes of little children. It is even so with older people; the road of their life has suddenly swerved, circumstances have brought their souls to a new angle, and there He stood, and their soul was in love with Him! But even this first-sight love needs the sustenance of careful communion. That is just what so many of us deny our souls. We do not give ourselves time. We must bring back something of the quietness of the cloisters into our own turbulent life. We must recover something of the seclusion of the monastery, the ministry of fruitful solitude. We must make space to contemplate the glory of the Lord, and especially those characteristics of the Divine life which are fitted to constrain our souls into strong and tender devotion. Says St. Francis: "The death and passion of our Lord is the gentlest and, at the same time, the strongest motive which can animate our hearts in this mortal life; and it is quite true that the mystical bees make their most excellent honey in the wounds of the lion of the tribe of Judah, who was killed, shattered, and rent on Calvary. . . . Mount Calvary is the mount of Divine love." But the communion must be wider than this. Let me give another quotation from another of the old mystics: "Have the Lord devoutly before the eyes of your mind, in His behaviour and in His ways, as when He is with His disciples, and when He is with sinners, . . . setting forth, to thyself in thy heart His ways and His doings; how humbly He bore Himself among men, how tenderly among His disciples, how pitiful He was to the poor, how He despised none nor shrank from them, not even from the leper; how patient under insult; how compassionate He was to the afflicted; how He despised not sinners; how patient He was of toil and of want." But our meditation upon these high things must be real meditation, the meditation that deepens into contemplation, and absorbs and possesses the glory. Our souls must gaze upon the glory until something of the sense of sacred ownership steals upon them. Political economists have recently been saying very much about "the magic of property." The phrase suggests the new and deeper interest we have in things when they become our very own. And when we begin to even faintly realize that God has given Himself to us, and we can truly and reverently use the words "Our Father," "Our Saviour," life becomes the home of wondrous joy and inspiration. "He loved me, and gave Himself for me." And, in the second place, we must consort with them that are lovers already. It is well that this should be through personal intercourse, if such happy privilege come our way. But if this immediate fellowship be denied us, let us seek their company through the blessed communion of books. Let me name one or two of these great lovers of God, and quote a few of the love phrases by which they describe their high communion. Let us make friends with John Woolman, and hear his speech laden with phrases of this kind: "A motion of love," a "fresh and heavenly opening," "the enlargement of gospel love," "a love clothes me while I write which is superior to all expression," "the heart-tendering friendship of the Lord," "the descendings of the heavenly dew." And let us make friends with Samuel Rutherford. I might quote nearly everything he has written. Let this suffice: "Christ enquired not, When He began to love me, whether I was fair or black. . . . He loved me before the time I knew; but now I have the flower of His love; His love is come to a fair bloom; like a young rose opened up out of the green leaves, and it casteth a strong and fragrant smell." "If I had vessels I might fill them; but my old, riven, and running-out dish, even when I am at the well, can bring little away. . . . How little of the sea can a child carry in its hand! As little do I take away of my great sea, my boundless and running-over Christ Jesus." Would it not be a good thing for us to drop some of our reading to spend an hour in communions like these? And then let us seek the company of Andrew Bonar: "I felt something of that word," "my soul longeth, yea, even fainteth," "and I lay down this night intensely desiring to feel constrained by the love of Christ." "I have been getting remarkable glimpses of Divine love in answer to earnest prayer that I might know the love that passeth knowledge." And I feel I must give my readers a little extract from one of this great lover's prayers: "As we get into the enjoyment of Thy love may we find that we need scarcely any other heaven, either here or hereafter, only more of this love and the continuance of it." And we must make friends with Horace Bushnell, a man of the most masculine intellect, and yet with one of the tenderest hearts I know in devotional literature. Read these words, written on the shores of Lake Waramaug, in the evening of his life: "The question has not been whether I could somehow get nearer--nearer, my God, to Thee; but as if He had come out Himself just near enough, and left me nothing but to stand still and see the salvation; no excitement, no stress, but an amazing beatific tranquillity. I never thought I could possess God so completely." "God comes to me--so great, benignant, pure, and radiant. What a wonder is God! What a glory for us to possess Him! "Is there any wonder that these were among his last words: "Well now, I am going home, and I say, the Lord be with you, and sin grace, and peace, and love; and that is the way I have come along home." There are many other great lovers whose names might have been mentioned, and whose friendship it would be well for us to cultivate. The doors of their hearts are always open, and their fellowship is always ready. But these will suffice. Let me mention a third method by which we shall be helped to become lovers of God. I think we ought to sing the songs of the great lovers, songs that will create and nurse kindred dispositions in ourselves. I mean songs of this kind: "O love that will not let me go"; "O love of God, how strong and true"; "Jesus, the very thought of Thee"; "Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts"; "Let all men know that all men move under a canopy of love." Songs of this loveful, soaring kind will lift our souls to heaven's gate. The ministry of the lovers' songs is not fully appreciated in the Christian life or they would more frequently be upon our lips. Bird trainers train their little choristers to sing through the medium of other birds whose song is rich and full. And we, too, can train ourselves to become lovers of God by singing the songs of those whose love is passionate and matured. __________________________________________________________________ III FORGETTING GOD THERE is one word of God which runs through the Scriptures like a sad and poignant refrain, "My people have forgotten Me." "Forgotten" is an intense and awful word. It surely expresses the final issue in human alienation from the Divine. Open and deliberate revolt against God shows, at any rate, some respect to His power. And even formal prayer, empty though it be, offers some recognition of God's existence. But to forget Him, to live and plan and work as though He were not, to dismiss Him as insignificant--this is surely the last expression of a separated life. People are never really dead so long as they are remembered. The real death is to be forgotten. How, then, do we come to forget God? In what sort of conditions is this appalling forgetfulness brought about? I wish to quote two or three descriptive words from the Scriptures in which I think some of these cases are described. "Afraid of a man that shall die, and forgettest the Lord thy Maker." The fear of man destroys the nobler fear of God. I suppose that one may say that two commanding fears cannot occupy the soul at one and the same time. One fear can drive out another. The fear that is created by the cracking of a whip can drive out the fear which possesses a shying horse when he sees some unfamiliar object upon the road. If a fire break out on a cold wintry night, the fear of the flames can drive out of the soul the fear of the frost. It seems as though one fear draws to itself the energies of the mind, and other fears are left with no sustenance. A big tree in a garden-bed sucks into its fibres the juices of the soil for many yards around, and other growths are starved, and they wither and die. So it is with "the fear of man." It drains to itself the mental energy and devotion which ought to feed the fear of God. A politician who is moved by fear of man, and who tacks and trims to avoid his hostility, can never retain an efficient thought of God. So it is with a minister who is afraid of man; his mind is not filled with a vision of "the Lord high and lifted up." But, indeed, the same is true of anybody. If the barometer we consult for our guidance is the opinion and conventions of man, God Himself will be nothing. If we are always consulting man, moved and governed by his expediencies, God will vanish away. "The fear of man is a snare," and the power of the snare is found in its fascination to allure our minds from the Lord of Hosts. "Afraid of a man that shall die, and forget-test the Lord thy Maker." And here is another type from the portrait gallery of the Bible. "Thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the Rock of thy strength." Here is a forgetfulness that is born when we have recovered from some weakness. Pride of strength makes us forget the rock out of which we were hewn. This is a most common and insidious peril. Our weakness helps our remembrance of God; our strength is the friend of forgetfulness. Perhaps this is most apparent in our physical weakness. In our weakness we remember the Lord, and the dim things of the unseen come clearly into view. But when our strength is regained the vivid vision fades again, and is sometimes entirely lost. And so our strength is really our drug. It is an opiate which ministers to spiritual forgetfulness. And so it is with every kind of strength. Frailty in any direction makes us lean upon the power of the Almighty, and in every frailty our remembrance of Him is keen and clear. But our strength helps to create a feeling of independence, and we become unmindful of our God. And therefore it is that a man who never knows weakness has a stupendous task in maintaining communion with God. People who never know what it is to be ill have so many more barriers to overcome in their fellowship with the Unseen. And here is a third Scriptural type of spiritual forgetfulness. "They have gone from mountain to hill, and have forgotten their resting-places." It is the figure of a flock of wandering sheep roaming away over the distant hills and mountains. They have gone from one place to another, and in the range of their goings have forgotten their place of rest. Their very vagrancy has made them insensible to their real home. That is to say, their vagrancy has induced forgetfulness. Now I think this word is very descriptive of much of our modern life. It is a vagrancy rather than a crusade. We go from "mountain to hill," and from hill to mountain. We are always on the move. We are for ever seeking something else and never finding satisfaction. We get weary and tired with one thing and we trudge to another! We are here, there, and yonder, and our lives become jaded and stale. But the extraordinary thing is that in all our goings we forget our resting-place. "Return unto thy rest, O my soul." Yes, but we turn anywhere and everywhere rather than to this. Our lives can become so vagrant that God is exiled from our minds. It seems as though there is something in vagrancy that stupefies the soul, and renders us insensitive to our true home and rest in God. When I first came to New York, during the first few months of my ministry, .I was continually asked by people, "Have you got into the whirl?" The very phrase seems so far removed from the words of the psalmist, "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters." Not that the psalmist luxuriated in indolence, or spent his days in the fatness of ease; the rest was only preparative to a march. "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness." But from the march he returned to his resting-place. But we can be caught in such a whirl in our modern life that we just rush from one thing to another, and we forget the glorious rest that is ours in God. I think the enemy of our souls must love to get us into a whirl! If once we are dizzied with sensations we are likely to lose the thought of God. "They have gone from the mountain to the hill, and have forgotten their resting-place." Let me give one further example from the Word of God. "According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten Me." Here is a rich pasturage, and in the enjoyment of it there is born the spirit of forgetfulness. And surely this is the stupefaction of abundance. In Southern France, where attar of roses is distilled, a very curious ailment imperils the workers. The very abundance of the rose-leaves induces a sort of sleeping-sickness. And surely it is even so in the abundances that are sometimes given to man. They are prone to sink him into the sleep of spiritual forgetfulness. A man's devotion is apt to dwindle as he becomes more successful. Our piety does not keep pace with our purse. Absorption in bounty makes us forgetful of the Giver. We can be so concerned in the pasturage that the Shepherd is forgotten. Our very fulness is apt to become our foe. Our clearest visions are given us in the winter-time when nature is scanty and poor. The fulness of the leaf blocks the outlook and the distance is hid. And the summer-time of life, when leaves and flowers are plentiful, is apt to bring a veil. And the very plentifulness impedes our communion. These are some of the types of forgetfulness which are mentioned and described in the Word of God. Is there any help for us? There is a very gracious promise of the Master in which I think all these perils are anticipated, and in the strength of which they can be met and overcome: "He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." Here is the promise of a gracious minister to the memory, strengthening it in its hold upon the unseen. I suppose that one of the most urgent needs of the common life is the sanctification of the memory. If the memory were to be really hallowed it would forget many things which it now remembers, and it would certainly remember many things which it now forgets. We are apt to retain worthless things, and destructive things, things that ought to have been dropped and buried and left in their graves in past years. But we carry them with us to our undoing. The ministry of the Holy Spirit will deal with this unwise retention, and will make a memory leaky where it is wise for it to lose. But, more than that, it will strengthen its powers of spiritual comprehension, and will enable it to keep hold of the unseen and the eternal. What should I most like to remember? I should like to remember with unfailing constancy the glorious, holy Being of the eternal God. I should like to remember the unspeakable ministry of His grace, which worked in my redemption in Christ Jesus, my Lord. I should like to remember the benefits of His daily providence which shine along my road in unfailing succession. I should like to remember the eternal significance of transient events, and hold the lessons of yesterday's happenings to guide me in my march to-day. And when new occasions and new duties arise, and I am face to face with novel circumstances, I should like to be reminded of those words of the Lord Jesus which would give me the needful illumination: "He shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." __________________________________________________________________ IV SPIRITUAL ABILITIES THE apostolic life abounds in suggestions of power. It is not only that there is power in some particular direction, there is basal executive force which gives impetus to everything. The life is filled with "go" and "drive" and strength of character and conduct. Power resides behind every faculty, and every disposition, and every form of service. The life is efficient and effective. It is as though a man had a fine equipment of tools, but his hand is weak and trembling, and suddenly there is given to him a mighty strength of grip, and he is able to seize upon every tool and make it accomplish its appointed purpose. "Ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you," and that energy empowered everything, and gave intensity and strength in every exercise of the apostle's life. Let us look at one or two directions in which this holy power was revealed. The apostolic life was distinguished by the strength of its relationship to God. It was powerful in its ability to believe. We can do nothing more vital to any man than to encourage and strengthen his finest faith. When our faith in the Highest is limp and uncertain everything lacks assurance. When there is lameness in the movements of the spirit our conduct can never be firm. And therefore did the Holy Spirit energize the early apostles in their supreme relationships, and steadied them in their faith. Now, faith is first of all an attitude and then an act. It is primarily a spiritual posture which reveals itself in moral obedience. And to be rich in faith is to possess a poise of soul which steadily contemplates and rests in the love of God, in sunshine and in shower, and through all the changing seasons and temperatures of our years. When the soul is thus quietly steadied in this spiritual assurance, its faith is expressed in manifold holy . ministries of hope and love. This ability of faith is one of the radiant characteristics of the early Church, and it was the creation of the Holy Ghost. But just as apostolic life was empowered in its relationship to God, so was it quietly empowered in its resistances to the enemy of God. There are two phrases used by the Apostle Paul, in which this sovereign ability is described, "able to resist the wiles," "able to quench the darts." I do not know any third way in which the enemy of God approaches the souls of men. He draws near to us in wiles, he dresses himself in all kinds of flattering guises, he exercises himself in deceitful mimicries, he uses glosses innumerable. He disguises the ugly by throwing about it a seductive limelight. He hides his destructiveness in bowers of roses. The Boers used to send their ammunition about in piano cases; and this is a fitting symbol of many of the stratagems of our foe. He comes to us as an angel of light, hiding the lightning which is his peculiar equipment. He makes the broad way fascinating, while the narrow way often appears repellent. The entrance to the broad way is marked by a glittering crown, while a heavy cross is hidden not far away. The entrance to the narrow way is marked by a cross, but the crown of life is not far away. And so, all through the generations, this wily antagonist has been seeking to ensnare the children of God. He uses attractive euphemisms. He deceives us by grand speech. He makes us think we are striding out in glorious liberty when we are really moving in servitude. Now, one of the great distinctions of apostolic life was the power to discern and resist the insidiousness of the foe. Their eyes were anointed with grace, and they were able to pierce the mere appearance of things and to discriminate between the holy and the profane. They could distinguish mere ease from holy peace, and all transient flimsiness from the things that abide. And this vigilance and strength were the equipment of the Holy Ghost. He kept the soul awake and vigorous, and they were not taken by surprise. But another apostolic ability is expressed in the kindred phrase, "able to quench the darts of the evil one." For sometimes the enemy comes to us in sudden flame, and not in seductive light. He leaps upon us in an irritation rather than steals upon us in some soothing consolation. Some inflammatory suggestion is flung across the threshold of the mind, and our life is all ablaze. The fiery dart finds congenial material and life is consumed with unholy passion. A spark from a passing engine can kindle a fire which can destroy a countryside; and the spark of an infernal suggestion, or the merest hint of criticism, or some transient incident can convert the soul of the unwary into a house of unclean fire. Now, these early apostles had a power to quench these darts. It is a wonderful equipment to be kept so cool and quiet in disposition that when the inflammatory thing is thrown it finds nothing congenial and speedily dies out. This is the ministry of the Comforter. Breathe through the pulses of desire Thy coolness and thy balm. And this "cooling" is the blessed service which the Holy One fulfils in the souls who entertain Him as their guest. But there is still a third kind of power distinguished in apostolic life in relation to the evil one. It is "mighty to the pulling down of strongholds." Every generation is face to face with established devilry. Castellated wrong rears itself on every side. There are great vested interests built upon iniquity. Vice lifts itself in very proud mien. Wickedness builds itself a lofty palace. Injustice girds itself with legality. Mischief is formed by a law. There are strongholds of iniquity. Every great reformer has levelled his attack upon a stronghold. There were many in the days of the early Church, and a great many still remain; and our power of assault, definite in aim and invincible in attack, is to be found in the indwelling and fellowship of that mighty Advocate who is Himself also the Minister of our peace. There is a third great relationship in which the New Testament describes the power of those who are in communion with the Holy. Ghost, and that is their power in their relationship to the children of men. "With great power gave the apostles witness." That is an ability which distinguished the early Church, the power to arrest the indifferent by the proclamation of spiritual truth, and by the confession of spiritual experience. Their words were weighted with the significance which crashed through opposition. How empty our words can be! The Turks have been deceived into using empty cartridges, and the ministers of the kingdom are often victims of a like deception. We indulge in empty words, and the men on the strongholds laugh at our impotence. There is nothing more tragical than the employment of forceless speech. But when there is life in the word, how tremendous is its passage! "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." They do not drop like dead lead, or like dead feathers; they go forth like living ministers endowed with the terrific life of God. The Holy Spirit is the indwelling Partner who fills our cartridges, who endows our speech, and makes our words the very vehicles of heavenly power and grace. Wing my words that they may reach The hidden depths of many a heart. There is one other power which I should like to name, which is mentioned in the apostolic record: "Able to comfort." Is there any gift more gracious than this--to have a wallet filled with oil and wine, that when we meet the bruised and the fainting we can minister healing and inspiration? Is there any more beautiful ministry to which any child of man can be called? To be able to speak words that console, to have a presence that heartens and cheers, to give a witness that lifts the despondent into the light of hope; this may be the privilege of all the friends of Christ Jesus. They may have a ministry in time of sorrow like that of sunlight falling upon dark clouds. They may go down the gloomy ways of men, lighting lamps of encouragement and hope. "Able to comfort!" They have the power to apprehend the ailment and the sorrow, and they have the equipment to soothe and to bless. "Ye shall receive such power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you." I feel that all this is only as a little handful of the abilities mentioned in the Word of God as distinguishing those who are the companions of the Holy Ghost. I return to the word with which I began. Spiritual power, as given to us by God, is executive power, lying behind all our faculties and dispositions. It is a fundamental dynamic, and in it everything finds its strength. Here, therefore, we must place the emphasis in our quest of a stronger life. We must seek the communion of the Holy Ghost. This is the originating fellowship in which vision is born, and ideals are realized, and in which the soul is adorned with the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. __________________________________________________________________ V CHRIST'S HABIT OF PRAYER I WANT to consider Christ's habit of private prayer. In the first place, it is very significant that He prayed at all. Jesus of Nazareth had every form of strength which men associate with masculine life. He had strength of body. He had strength of mind. He had strength of purpose and will. He had marvellous strength of affection. He had strength to move amid foul conditions without catching their contagion. He had extraordinary strength of patience. He was absolutely fearless in the presence of hostility. He was calm and undaunted when assailed by official religion. He had every form of strength which men count admirable. And this man prayed. He was constantly praying, and He was the strongest who ever trod the ways of men. I want to consider two or three occasions in His earthly life when we find Him at prayer. First of all, then, I find Him in prayer when temptation drew near. I am not now thinking of that early experience in His life which is known to us as the Temptation. I turn from that desert experience to another which came to Him in the thick of His ministry, after the purpose of His redemptive ministry had been revealed. I choose the hour which preceded the Transfiguration. Nothing is said about the tempter; but unless I utterly misread the incident, and misinterpret the secrets of common life, the temptation was fierce and acute. The Lord had manifested His love. He had declared His gracious purpose. He had sealed His testimony with His deeds. Already He was shedding His blood in sacrificial service. And with what results? The horizon was blackening with omens of rejection. The storm of hostility was brewing. The air was thick with suspicion, derision, and contempt. Unfriendly eyes glared upon Him from every side. "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." And just then, when the elements were gathering for tempests, I read these words: "He went up into a mountain to pray." And why did He go? Before Him there stretched the darkening road to appalling desolation. Yonder loomed the cross. And this was the temptation which, I think, approached His soul: "Is it worth while?" Should He go on to night and crucifixion, or there and then finish with translation? Reverently I believe these were the alternatives in those days of gathering gloom. Should He choose an immediate re-entry into "the glory which I had with Thee before the world was," or a re-entry into the world of resentment where dwelt the evil spirits of malice and rejection? Should He finish there or go on to the bitter end? "He prayed," and while He prayed He made His choice. He would go down to the scene of rejection, down to the waiting multitude, down to the envious eyes, down to the malicious designs, down to the cross. "And as He prayed the fashion of His countenance was altered." And no wonder! We are always transfigured when we make choice of the Divine will. There came a voice to Him saying, "This is My beloved Son." "And they came down from the mountain, and much people met Him." Have we not known a similar hour, as far as our own limitations would permit? Have we never been tempted to ask i f a certain bit of blood-demanding work was worth while? Have we not had pointed out to us the flippancy of those we tried to help, their indifference, their levity, their contempt, and have we not felt the enticement to lay the task down? There is that bit of work we have tried to do on the City Council. We have laboured for years. We have been exposed to the insults of contested elections. And there is our quiet home, with the wife and children, and the slippers and the books. Shall we choose the abode of comfort, or return again to difficult service? Shall we put on our slippers or stride out again on the heavy, thorny road? Just at seasons like these and at that juncture Jesus prayed, and while He was on His knees He made His choice. Let us look at the Master again in the habit of prayer. "And He healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils . . . and He departed into a solitary place and there prayed." But what need was there to pray just then? He was most evidently engaged in doing good. The newly-opened eyes of the blind were radiant with thanksgiving. The once lame man leaped as a hart. The Master abounded in good works, and some measure of popular favour rested upon Him. Then why go apart to pray? First of all, He retired to pray in order to provide against nervous exhaustion. All this healing, all this giving, all this sympathy meant large expenditure of vital power. "Virtue is gone out of Me." And, therefore, He prayed in order that His vital resources might be restored. There is some work that cannot be done without resort to Divine communion. When the soul is drained in the ministry of sympathy, there is nothing for it but resort to the springs, and there is nothing which so readily and powerfully restores a man like drinking the water of life. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." But there is a second reason why our Saviour prayed when He was in the midst of successful public work. He prayed in order to make His soul secure against the perils of success, against "the destruction that wasteth at noonday." Success may bruise the spirit more than failure. Heat can ruin a violin quite as effectually as the chilly damp. Prosperity slays many a man whose health was preserved in adversity. Robert Burns was never the same after the glamour of Edinburgh. And so I think our Lord prayed in the hour of popular favour lest His very success should maim His life of service. And there is significant counsel in His practice for all the children of men. When we are busily successful, let us pray, and we need not "be afraid for the arrow that flieth by day." There is one other occasion in our Master's life of prayer to which I want to lead the thoughts of my readers. "Now it came to pass in those days that He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God. And when it was day He called unto Him His disciples, and of them He chose twelve." There was a night of prayer, and then there was a great decision. Our Lord took time to pray before He made a momentous choice. We in our own degree have similar choices to make, both in our individual and corporate life. We have to choose our careers. We have to make choice of turnings in the ever-winding way. We have to choose our representatives in the City Council and in Parliament. We have to choose ministers and deacons, and in a hundred other ways serious decisions have to be made. Why should we pray? We must, first of all, pray in order that big considerations might possess the mind. We are prone to live amid small motives, tiny purposes, belittling prejudices, partial and lop-sided ambitions. And there is nothing kills little things like our prayers. If we take our politics into the realm of prayer, it is impossible for us to remain wretched partisans. We may give a party vote, but our vision will reach beyond the bounds of party, and through a party triumph we shall seek the extension of the kingdom of God. When we pray we move into the realm of big things, big motives, big sympathies, big ideals. The biggest outlooks come to us when we are on our knees. And so, when we are making big decisions, let us find time to pray, in order that the matters may be greatly decided, and that all little and belittling intrusions may be effectually destroyed. And so, if we are truly wise, we shall surely pray. To cease to pray is to build up the windows of the soul, to close the ventilators, to shut out air and light, to immure the soul in an atmosphere devoid of inspiration. And yet it is possible so to pray that the spirit of prayer shall determine all our purposes, and all our purposes shall be fit to steal into our prayers. A friend said of Dr. Westcott that "he read and worked in the very mind in which he prayed, and his prayer was of singular intensity." That is a great and gracious attainment, and I think we can all share the wonderful triumph which mingles prayerful aspiration with common toil. __________________________________________________________________ VI THE THANKFULNESS OF JESUS I WANT to lead the meditation of my readers to one of the private habits of our Lord--His habit of thanksgiving. Everyone who knows the New Testament knows how the apostolic life abounded in praise. It runs like some singing river through all their .changing days. And where did they learn the habit? They had got it from their Lord. The Master's habit must have made a profound impression upon them. There must have been something very distinct and distinctive about it. We are told that the two disciples, journeying to Emmaus after the awful happenings in Jerusalem, recognized their risen Lord when He began to give thanks. "He was made known to them in the breaking of bread." They knew Him by His gratitude and by the manner in which He expressed it. He was recognized by His praise. Let us recall two or three examples of this shining habit of our Lord. "And Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks." That is to say, He took commonplace, common bread, and associated it with God, and it was no longer a commonplace. He gave thanks, and in the recognition the common was revealed as the Divine. The ordinary meal became a sacrament with the Unseen Presence as real as we apprehend Him at the table of the Lord. Now, a man who feels the divine relationships of bread will have a very transfigured road. The man whose praise is elicited by loaves will also be thankful for the cornfield, the sunshine, the dew, and the rain, for the reapers who gather the corn, for the touch of God in the labourer, and for the millstones which grind the corn that makes the bread. He who took the loaves and gave thanks would also give thanks for the common lily of the field, the daisy of His native land. Indeed, I think we may truly say that the Master's habit of praise made every common thing radiant, and every wayside bush became aflame with God. He breathed His music of gratitude through the commonest reeds. Now unless His disciples can do the same, unless we can touch and feel God in the commonplaces, He is going to be a very infrequent and unfamiliar Guest. For life is made up of very ordinary experiences. Now and again a novelty leaps into the way, but the customary tenor is rarely broken. It is the ordinary stars that shine upon us night after night; it is only occasionally that a comet comes our way. Look at some of the daily commonplaces--health, sleep, bread and butter, work, friendship, a few flowers by the wayside, the laughter of children, the ministry of song, the bright day, the cool night--if I do not perceive God in these things I have a very unhallowed and insignificant road. On the other hand, the man who discovers the Divine in a loaf of bread, and lifts his song of praise, has a wonderful world, for divinity will call to him on every side. I do not know how we can better begin to cultivate the Master's habit than by beginning with daily bread. Because if we begin with bread we cannot possibly end there. If we see one commonplace lit up with God, other commonplaces will begin to be illumined, until life will be like some city seen from a height by night, with all the common lamps in the common streets burning and shining with mystic flame. So let us begin with bread. But let us give thanks reverently, not with the sudden tap and the sharp, superficial sentence of a public dinner. Let us do it quietly, apprehendingly, with an effort to realize the presence of the awful, gracious, merciful God. And let us do it without formality, and seeking deliverance from the perilous opiate of words. Let us change our phraseology, let us sometimes bow in silence, and share the significant, worshipful stillness of the Friends. Let us watch our Master again and listen to His praise. "I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." Our Master thanks the Father that spiritual secrets are not the perquisites of culture, that it is not by cleverness that we gain access into the Kingdom of Grace. He gives thanks that "these things" have not been made dependent upon academic knowledge, that they are not the prizes of the merely clever and acute, but that they are "revealed unto babes." Now, mark this: Out of six men only one may be clever, only one may have the advantage of knowledge, but all six may have the elementary simplicities of a child. All cannot be "knowing," but all can be docile. All cannot be "cute," but all can be humble. All cannot be "learned," but all can be trustful. All cannot attain to mental sovereignty, but all may sit on thrones of sovereign love. And it is upon what all may have that our Lord fixes His eye; it is the common denominator for which He offers His praise. He takes bread, the commonplace of life, and gives thanks; He takes the child, the commonalty among men, and gives thanks. He offers praise for the commonplaces and the commonalties. He gives thanks for the things that are common to Erasmus and Billy Bray, to Spurgeon and John Jaspar, to Onesimus and St. Paul. To give thanks for commonplaces makes a transfigured world; to give thanks for commonalties makes a transfigured race. The one unveils the world as our Father's house; the other unveils the race as our Father's family. Now, would it not be good to exercise ourselves in that form of praise? Would it not be wise to allow our minds to rove over the race of men irrespective of class and condition, and search out the commonalties and sing our song of praise? One thing such praise would do for us. It would preserve in our minds a vivid sense of the relative values of things. We should recognize that academic learning is not to be mentioned in comparison with loneliness, that carnal power has not the holy standing of meekness, and that mere eminence is not to be counted in the same world with love. What we may have in common with the poorest and most ignorant is our most precious possession. Look at the Master once more. "Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me." The Master gave thanks before the miracle was wrought, while the dead was still lying stiff and stark in the tomb. He offered praise not for the victory attained but for victory about to be won. His song was not for what He had received, but for what He was about to receive. He gave thanks before the dead marched forth, and before the mourners' tears were dried. The doxology was sung at the beginning and not at the end. "Father, I thank Thee . . ." "And when He had thus spoken He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth, and he that was dead came forth." The sound of praise thrilled through the call that awaked the dead. Have we learned the habit? Is that the gracious order of our thought and labour? Sometimes we thank God for food we are about to receive. Do we thank God for power we are about to receive? Do we thank God for victory we are about to receive? Do I go forth in the morning to the warfare of the day with thanks for coming victory filling me with exhilaration and powerful hope? Did I rear my altar of praise before I took my sword? Is that how I go to the pulpit, thanking God for victories about to be won? Is that how I go to my class, quietly confident in the coming of my Lord? Is that how I take up the work of social reform? Is the song of victory in the air before I enter the field? Can I begin to sing the song of harvest home as I go forth to sow the seed? Am I sure of God, so sure that I can sing as soon as the struggle begins? That was the Master's way. It was first the thanks and then the miracle. And so Jesus assumed that His prayer was answered before He addressed the dead. And the significance of the act is this. To gratefully assume that prayers for power are answered opens the entire being to the full and gracious influence of the answer. Gratitude opens the channels of the whole life to the incoming of the Divine. There is no mood so receptive as praise; it fills the soul with the fulness of God, and the indwelling God works wonders, even to the raising of the dead. I have given these three examples of the Master's habit of thanksgiving. It is our great wisdom to follow in His train. All manner of things are promised to the grateful heart. Thanksgiving is to be a minister of vigilant sight; "watch in the same with thanksgiving." Thanksgiving is to be a stimulant to a jaded and weary soul: "Be not drunken with wine, . . . but be ye thankful." Thanksgiving is to be a beautifier of the regenerate soul. Ten lepers were purified, only one was beautified; "he returned to give thanks." And, lastly, thanksgiving glorifies God. It is by the brightness of our praise that we offer the best witness to the goodness and power of our God. __________________________________________________________________ VII THE MAGIC TOUCH WHO does not remember the fascinating fairy who filled our childhood with wonders, and whose magic wand used to change worn-out shoes into silver slippers, and tattered, ragged garments into princely attire, and dust-heaps into gardens full of bright and perfumed flowers? How we followed the gracious fairy in her transforming ways! But fairyland is gone, and fairy wonder is dead. Our years have passed, and life has become sombre with care, dashed with sorrow, grey with disappointment, and withered and blighted by sin and shame. If only something analogous to the romance of childhood could steal back into the sombre years of manhood! If only out of the unseen spaces some mystic spirit would appear who could transform dulled and blighted character, and transform dulled and blighted circumstances, how busy he would be! Well, here is an announcement of His coming, and this is what He claims to do! "To give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." It sounds like the evangel of some gracious magician. It will be well worth while to consider His ways. "Beauty for ashes," and the beauty here suggested is the coronet or diadem of a bride. Some humiliated, sinful soul, soiled with self-abuse, worn and torn, wearied and ashamed, is flinging the ashes of her penitence toward heaven, and letting them fall upon her head. Those ashes are the emblems of a burnt-out and wasted day, and she is flinging them towards the heavens in open confession of her shame, if, perchance, the dead embers might be made to glow again. And what does the gentle Lord offer this depressed and tainted soul? He offers her the coronet of a bride. He will make the dejected exile the wife of the Lamb. The poor, wearied drudge of sin is to be honoured by becoming the consort of the Holy God. What, then, is there in the figure? There is the wonderful love and devotion of the eternal, loving God. God loves the most wretched, dejected, sin-blasted soul on earth, and lie would encircle that soul with the diadem of the bride! If that be true, the love of God is the biggest thing we can think about, and the most wonderful theme in human speech. If we only realize that love on the authority of His Word, life will be illumined and glorified with a far more wonderful light than that which fills the soul of a young girl when first she hears the whispered word that tells the story of a pure and manly love. "Oil of joy for mourning," and this is coronation oil, consecration oil, the oil significant of the endowment of regal authority and power. Who are to receive coronation? Those whose souls are filled with mourning. The mourning is the cry of defeat. It is the wail of the failure. It is the moan of the broken. It is the pathetic cry of the disordered, the men and women who have fallen, who have succumbed in moral and spiritual calamity. That is to say, the good Lord offers the crown of restored sovereignty to the children of moral disorder. He offers restored regality to those who have "gone to pieces." He offers coronation to those who have lost their crowns, sovereignty for those who are bruised and broken. "He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill, that He may set him with princes." He will transform the slave into a monarch. "He crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies." "The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness," and the heaviness is that of dimness and failing light, light trembling on the verge of eclipse. There are people whose lives are like that. There is no heat about them, and no radiance. They are cold, dull, cheerless, funereal, shut in by encompassing gloom. And the Magician comes, and He offers to change that gloomy, sombre attire for the garment of praise. For heaviness He will give buoyancy, the joy of the bridal feast for heavy-footed woe. Surely this. bright, regal, bridal attire is what is lacking in the religious life of to-day. There is something wrong with our nobility when it is not crowned with radiance. There is something wrong with our goodwill when it does not bear the hall-mark of good cheer. There is something wrong with our communion when we are not "children of light." When the bridal attire is missing there is little or nothing about us to suggest that we are the brides of the Lamb. How are men and women to know that we are of the King's household if we do not wear "the garments of salvation"? How can they believe that we have gazed upon the Divine glory if we do not wear the splendours of "the garment of praise"? I remember two significant sentences in one of Robert Louis Stevenson's letters, which express the common judgment of the world: "I do not call that by the name of religion which fills a man with bile. If a man is surly, filled with a dull and bitter disposition, if he be sombre and melancholy, how can he witness to the glories of the eternal life?" And the other sentence is this: "I will think more of his prayers when I see in him a spirit of praise." Stevenson wanted to see common gratitude before he received the witness of a clamant piety. If our religion does not clothe us in the refinements of common courtesies it will fail to win the interested attention of the men of the world. A fine spiritual grace, nobly worn, is a great witness for the Lord. The distinction between the Church and the world ought to be found in the difference of their habits. The elect ought to prove their relationship by the beauty of their moral and spiritual attire. Do we believe that the transformation is possible? Have we full confidence in the power of the Great Magician? Do we believe that He will exchange a coronet for ashes, joyous sovereignty for sullen despair, and a garment of radiant cheerfulness for the spirit of gloom? If we do not believe it, where is our gospel? If we do not believe it, where is our life? The Almighty God can transform the most ungracious and unwelcome life. When He touches barrenness, "the wilderness and the solitary place become glad, and the desert rejoices and blossoms like the rose." And so we can in this great faith confront all the deformities of our time. Only in the Lord Jesus can these deformities be made straight. When legislation has done its utmost, when education has had its last word, the waste place will still remain, and only by the immediate personal Presence of the Great Magician can it be made beautiful as the paradise of God. __________________________________________________________________ VIII THE BEQUEST OF PEACE "MY peace I give unto you." These words gain immensely deepened significance from the circumstances in which they were spoken. When we put them into their surroundings they shine like a radiant gem with a foil of dark background. When the Lord spake these words He was not resting in the domestic love and quietness of the home at Bethany. The air was thick with rumours, and the betrayer had gone out, and was even now engaged in his treacherous mission. Even Peter's loyalty threatened to surrender to evil popular will. Crucifixion was not twenty-four hours away. Christ's enemies were at the very gate. It was in circumstances like these, turbulent and stormy, that our Lord quietly claimed to be in possession of deep and mysterious peace. "Peace I leave with you." The form of the speech is that of a customary salutation or farewell. "Whatsoever house ye enter let your peace be upon it." But our Lord's speech is widely different from the common convention. People had fallen into the habit of saying "Peace" as we have got into the habit of saying "Good-morning" or "Goodbye," and there was as little vital content in one as in the other. The salutation had lost its sanctity. It had become a formality of life. The customary speech was used just to break an awkward silence; the Lord's was used to renew and enrich the heart. The conventional speech was idly ceremonial; the Lord's was a gracious achievement. At the best, the popular speech was an expression of affability; the Lord's benediction was an invaluable bequest. When He said "Peace," there was something accomplished, something done. It was not an affair of empty words; it was a glorious transaction. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life." The salutation was, therefore, vital and effective; it was a holy minister, conveying inconceivable treasures to the hearts of men. "My peace I give unto you." What is the nature of this peace? First of all it is rightness with God. When the Lord Jesus Christ brings His own peace into the hearts of men, they become inherently sound by becoming fundamentally at one with God. It is very significant that the radical meaning of the original word is suggestive of union; two sundered things are brought together again. And the gift of peace means a recovery of healthy fellowship between the soul .and the eternal God. Now let it be understood at once that the gift of peace does not imply perfection. There may be a general "rightness" in the relationship between man and wife, and yet there may be an occasional misunderstanding, even a temporary outburst of temper, while nothing fundamental becomes crooked or perverse. A general "rightness" or healthiness of the body is consistent with an occasional chill or superficial scratch or pain. There may be a temporary derangement while the heart is as sound as a bell. Our Lord acknowledged this possibility in His own gracious teachings. Men may be essentially right with God who are not yet by any means perfect. Even a man who has been bathed "needeth to wash his feet." And so peace consists essentially in this innermost "rightness" with God. The general life tends toward the highest. Its primary ambitions are fixed upon the good pleasure of God. There is intimacy of fellowship. There is an open road. There is a ladder of communion, on which the angels ascend and descend continually. The peace that the Lord gives enables the soul to say with glad humility, "I and my Father are one." And secondly, if peace is fundamental rightness with God, it is also fundamental union with God's universe. Natural forces become the friendly allies of men who are right with God. "The whole creation groaneth and waiteth for the manifestation of the children of God." When a man is one with the Maker he has the co-operation of all the Maker has made. The winds and currents are his friends. "The stars in their courses" fight on his side. There is established "a covenant between him and the stones of the field." And so peace is the condition of the soul in its God-purposed relationship of being right with Him and one with the movements of the Divine order in the world. Now, our Lord had this peace. It was His through all His changing days. It was independent of seasons, and He had it "in the dark and cloudy day." And, therefore, there are certain things we can say about it. This peace can exist in the midst of apparent defeat. It does not require success to assure one of its presence. We can have God's peace and yet be apparent failures in the world. For look at our Saviour Himself. Look at His position when the words were uttered. The antagonism of the multitude was approaching culmination. Despite His wealth of gracious deeds He was everywhere met with deep and fierce resentment. Even His own disciples pathetically misunderstood His mission. After a training of three years, when He had daily led them into the realm of the Spirit and into communion with the Highest, they had just been quarrelling one with another, "Who should be greatest." One of the disciples was the victim of greed, and he deliberately sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver. The rest of the disciples were becoming fearful, and the mood of desertion was upon them. Crucifixion was at hand. What an apparent failure! From the worldly point of view everything had gone wrong. And yet, in spite of everything, the Lord retained His condition of peace. And so it may be with the Lord's disciples. The applause of men may not gratify our ears. No worldly garland may be put upon our brow. We may climb unto no high place in the world's esteem. We may stumble along a painful way, we may be continually jostled and elbowed into the rear of the competing crowd, and yet we may have fundamental "rightness" with God and share with Jesus the condition of heavenly peace. If Jesus Christ had this peace, then its possession does not make us incapable of sorrow. No; it would be more true to say that this peace makes us more capable of sorrow, for to be right with God is to be sensitive to His joys and sorrows, and to share them. The Master who spake about "My peace" wept over Jerusalem, and His heart was torn by the contemplation of the sins of the city. He wept by the grave of Lazarus as He called to mind the accumulated common sorrows of the world. He wept over the vagrant, aimless multitude, for what is "compassion" but a most refined and delicate form of grief? He saw that the crowd was wayward and vagrant, purposeless, moving here and there in constant danger, and He pitied the crowd with a pity that redeemed it. Thus the Lord had an infinite capacity for sorrow, and yet He was in possession of peace. It is even so with His disciples. The Apostle Paul used words which are seemingly inconsistent with one another, "What sorrow I have!" "What travail!" "How I agonize!" And yet he could also speak of "The peace of God which passeth understanding." He was fundamentally right with God, but the fountain of tears was not dried up. Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round? On Jesus' bosom naught but peace is found. And then, in the third place, it is evident that the possession of peace does not banish the possibility of temptation. Our Master, who claimed the possession of peace, was tempted on every side. He had the temptations that besiege the flesh and seek the unlawful gratification of appetite. He had the temptations which assail the mind and seek to entice it to mental presumption. He had the temptations which waylay the soul and seek to seduce it into illicit homage. And these temptations were repeated throughout His life. He was essentially at one with the Father, and yet temptations were never away from His door. It is well for us to remember this. We are sometimes inclined to suspect the reality of our union with God by the number and prevalence of our snares. We are apt to regard our temptations as signs of our detachment from the Master. We may be at peace when temptations crowd the field. "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." God's saints have in all generations sat at that table, and their souls have been filled with holy laughter in the confidence of their God. Now this wonderful peace is the gift of the Lord Jesus. "I give unto you." All that is requisite for us to possess the gift is in the power of the Lord Jesus. In Him we have the forgiveness of sin. In Him we obtain the mystic union with our God. In Him we find the secret strength of holy continuance. All are "His and His alone." This peace is not the perquisite of some particular temperament. It is not the attainment of painful effort and service. It is not the refined fruit of prolonged culture. It is a legacy. "Peace I leave with you." It is a gift; "My peace I give unto you." "He is our peace." And there are two ways in which this gift of peace differs from the gifts of the world. In the first place, it differs in the matter of the gift. When the world seeks to give peace it addresses itself to conditions; the Lord addresses Himself to character. The world deals with things; the Lord deals with kinships. The world keeps in the material realm; Jesus Christ moves in the spiritual realm. The world offers to put us into a fine house; the Lord offers to make a fine tenant. The world will introduce us into "fine society"; Jesus will make us at home with God. In the second place, our Lord differs from the world in the manner of His giving. The world always gives its best at the beginning. It offers gaudy garlands, brimming cups, and glittering crowns. "But knowest thou not it shall be bitterness in the latter end?" It makes an imposing fire, but we are speedily left with the ashes. It leads us to a showy feast, but we soon encounter aches and pains. It blinds us with the "garish day"; then come chill twilight and uncompanionable night. "Not as the world giveth give I." He keeps His good wine until last. He leads us from grace to grace, from faith to faith, from glory to glory. "Greater things than these shall we see." His gifts grow deeper, richer, fuller, right through the eternal years. IX SEEKING THE BEST "THE Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls." This sentence gives us one great characteristic of the kingly life, for the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Heaven are the kingly men and women. They move in great stateliness through the Word of God. They are distinguished by humility and dignity, by a certain retirement which is allied with the most mysterious glory. Great images are used to suggest the greatness of their character. They move in impressive lordship and liberty. They are kings and priests unto God. And here I say is one of their distinctions; they are seeking goodly pearls. And so the kingly life is a life in quest of big things. Everyone is painfully familiar with the temptation to fritter away life in interests that are small and mean. There are many Scriptural types of the wasteful and belittled life. There are those who spend their strength in seeking money. The concentrated purpose of their days is a quest for gold. They are zealous for artificial gems and they miss the goodly pearls. Judas Iscariot had the priceless privilege of communion with his Lord. He had the incomparable glory of living with the Master day by day--the opportunity of entering into the "inheritance of the saints in light," and he used his privilege in the quest for money, and all that he got out of his supreme advantage was thirty pieces of silver. He missed the pearls. And here is another Scriptural type described as "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God." They sought the transitory rather than the eternal. They were more intent upon the carnal than the Divine. They were out seeking rockets and ignoring dawns. All that they got from life was a transient flash. They missed the goodly pearl. Here is another from the Scriptural gallery of disastrous failures. "Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present evil world." Think of that man's opportunity! He had the privilege of the fellowship of the Apostle Paul, but he "loved the garish day," and he preferred glamour to serenity and a loud sensation to an ideal friendship. The world offered a Bohemian hour, and he took it, and the end thereof was found in. the white, cold ashes of moral defeat. Thus life is frittered away on a thousand trifles, and at the end of the restless quest we have no pearls. Now the big things of life belong to the realm of spirit and character. It is in the region of the soul that we find the pearls. The really goodly things, the big things, are inside and not outside the man. The big thing is not luxury, but contentment; not a big house, but a big satisfaction; not accumulated art treasures, but a fine, artistic appreciation; not a big library, but a serene studiousness; not a big estate, but a large vision. The big things are not "the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen." "Seek peace and ensue it." "Seek the things that are above." "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness." Such are the goodly pearls. But the quest of the kingly man is not only for the big things--it is for the bigger things among the big, and for the biggest among them all. The merchantman was not only in search of goodly pearls; he discriminated among the values of pearls, and he knew when he had found "one pearl of great price." There are gradations of value even among good things. There are pearls and better pearls, and the true king in life is known by his pursuit of the best. Knowledge is a good thing, the mastery of the secrets of the visible world; wisdom is a better thing, the possession of fine judgment and delicate intuition, of moral and spiritual discernment. Acquaintance is a good thing; friendship is a better thing; love is the best thing. The respect of others is a good thing; self-respect is a better thing; a fine, untroubled conscience is the best thing. Love for our lovers is a good thing; love for our neighbours is a better thing; love for our enemies is the best thing. There are pearls and there are pearls of great price. And so this, I say, is a mark of the children of the kingdom. They are always in quest of something beyond. "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I press on." There is ever a height beyond, a better pearl still to win. "Glories upon glories hath our God prepared, by the souls that love Him one day to be shared." Such is the aim of the kingly quest. It is in search of the goodliest among the goodly pearls. Now let us look at the quality of the quest. A kingly man is "like unto a merchantman." So the pearls are not found by the loafer, by the mere strolling fiddler along life's way. We are to have the characteristics of business men, even when we are engaged in the affairs of the Highest. If only we assume that requirement as an essential condition of the Kingdom of Heaven, a thousand religious failures will be at once explained. The majority of us are about as little like merchantmen in our religious life as could be very well conceived. And yet this is the Master's demand. We are to be business-like in our search for pearls. And if we are to be business-like what will be some of our characteristics? First of all, we shall have breadth of outlook. A good merchant has an eye for new markets, for fresh opportunities in new fields. He watches drifts and tendencies, movements of population, and he is the alert friend of every new discovery. His eyes roam over wide areas in quest of new openings to push his trade. And so it is in the Kingdom of Heaven. The man of the kingly life must seek his pearls in many markets and over wide fields. He must seek them in worship and in prayer and in praise. He must look for them in the crowded places of human fellowship. He must search the wide expanse of literature. He must busy himself with the treasures of history. He must be curious in the bright domain of wit and humour. He must be wakeful even on the battlefield, when he is in combat with hostile forces, as well as in the quieter places of human service and communion. He must assume that anywhere and everywhere he may find a goodly pearl. So he must have an eye for markets at every hour of the day and amid all the change and varieties of human experience. This he must do if he would be a "merchantman seeking goodly pearls." And, secondly, he must have the ability to fix attention on details. The vision of a merchantman is not only telescopic, it is microscopic. "He lets nothing escape him." He knows the weight and force of apparent nothings; he knows the value of seeming trifles. He often finds his treasure in things that other men despise or throw away. He is very inquisitive when he finds apparent waste, if by chance he may turn it into gold. So must it be in the quest for the goodly pearls of the Kingdom. We must give keen attention to the neglected trifles of life. Lowly duties must be carefully scanned. Small disappointments must be examined as though they were dark caskets containing possible treasure. Even commonplace courtesies must not be scouted, but must be regarded as a possible hiding place of priceless gems. The Master Himself described the man of fine quest as being "faithful in that which is least." He does little things in a great way, and he makes great discoveries in doing them. Thirdly, the kingly life must be distinguished by method and order. A fine business man must have method in his work. He has not only principles, he has rules; he has not only a general system, he has a detailed order. Men who have no method are soon compelled to close their doors. And so it is in the life of the Kingdom of Heaven. We do not stroll carelessly up to the pearls and find them in some haphazard and vagrant loitering. No man lounges into any treasure that is worth having. And that is why so many of us are very poor in the things of the Kingdom. We have no order and method, and the work of one hour is undone by the hour that succeeds it. Look at our prayers. How unmethodical and disorderly? Are they likely to find any pearls? Look at our worship. How little intelligent quest is in it! Is it likely to discover any pearls? Look at our service. How careless it often is and how pointless and unprepared! There are abundant signs that even our Lord Himself regulated His life and refused to allow it to frivol away in indefinite purpose and desire. Lastly, the man in search of goodly pearls must be distinguished by decision. A competent merchantman knows when to act, and at the decisive moment he acts with commanding promptness. He watches circumstances when they are ripening, and at the proper moment he plucks the fruit. There are times in a business man's life when promptness requires great courage. There is a demand for risk and speculation and untried enterprise, and timidity would let the promising circumstance go by and lose its bounty. So is it in the Kingdom of Heaven. Here, too, there are "tides in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, lead on to fortune." It is a great thing to know when the hour is ripe for decision. It is one of the fine arts of living to know when to act upon an impulse, and when to accept the hints of emotion as the signs of a favouring gale. Here again our Lord is our example. He was very patient, but He was always very decisive. No one could move Him before the appointed time. No one could stop Him when He said, "The hour has come." Such is to be the quality of our quest. We are to be like merchantmen, broad in outlook, vigilant for detail, intelligent in method, and decisive in action. With such a spirit we shall undoubtedly discover the goodly pearls, and we shall discover the best of all, "the pearl of great price." But for that pearl we may have to sell many others. What are we prepared to give for it? What are we ready to surrender? According to our consecrated enterprise will be our holy gains. If we refuse to part with Mammon we can never possess the Lord. If we contentedly hug the good we can never gain the better. If we take our ease in the realm of the better we can never enter the best. What are we ready to lose for Christ? Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my life, my soul, my all. __________________________________________________________________ X WITHERED HANDS ALL the miracles of our Lord are purposed to be symbols of analogous works which can be wrought in the soul. "But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power" to heal and emancipate the spirit He restored a paralyzed body to freedom. He drove the palsy out of the body as a token that He could drive the palsy out of the soul. He could impart the same strength and buoyancy and agility to the one as He had given to the other. And so it is with all the miracles of our Lord; they are types of the "greater things than these" which He can work among the secret needs of the spirit. Here was a man with a withered hand. A legend comes along the centuries that he was a bricklayer, an ordinary working man, who had been reduced to impotence by the loss of the member he needed most. But his calamity had not embittered him or made him spiritually insensitive. He was found in the synagogue seeking communion with God. And there the Master met him and restored life to his withered limb, and he was whole again. Now there are withered faculties of the soul. There are spiritual members that can become dry and impotent. There are mysterious hands which can lose their grip and even their power to apprehend the heights. And a diseased faculty can impair the strength of the entire life. It can check our spiritual progress, and impair the vigour of moral aspiration and service. And these withered limbs can be found in the Church. They are brought into the place of worship, and they are often taken out again withered and dead. We do not establish the communion with the Healer which insures the ministry of the irresistible forces of grace. The faculty of love can be a withered hand. It can shrivel away until it has no strength, no reach, no hold. I suppose we may test the quality of love by the length and strength of its apprehension. How far can it stretch? What is the intensity of its grip? How long can it hold out? The people who have the strongest love have the fullest assurance of moral triumph.. It is sometimes said that money can unlock any door. The statement is the merest nonsense. There are treasure-houses, the most real and the best, that money can never touch. Love is the great "open sesame." A man with a fine love burns his way like fervent iron through ice. He pierces through every difficulty, and nothing is allowed to obstruct his way. "Love never faileth." But when the love itself begins to wither, like a limb that shrivels through lack of vitality, life is comparatively impotent. And how frequently we see this spiritual tragedy! "I have something against thee, thou hast lost thy first love." It is the disease of the withered hand. Something has happened at the very fountains of vitality, and love sickens and dies. The faculty of hope can be like a withered hand. Think for a moment of a man endowed with brilliant hope, pursuing some personal quest or engaged in some social crusade. What power there is in his goings! What spring there is in the feet of a man who "feels the days before him"! The man who lays hold of the triumph of to-morrow has a mighty inspiration in the battle of to-day. The man who sees "the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God" is a glorious labourer in the Jerusalem that is, seeking to transform and transfigure it into the light and beauty of his vision. The man endowed with hope is a magnificent worker. He sees the diamond in the carbon; he sees the finished garden in the desert waste. But if hope shrivels into despondency, or dies away in despair, how helpless is the man who touches the task! It is hope that fetches the bread that feeds endeavour; it is hope that sustains the life. We are "saved by hope." But let hope shrivel, and a dulness steals over the spirit; laxity and limpness take possession of the soul. When a man can say, "I have lost my hope," he is a man with a withered hand. The conscience can be a withered hand. A live conscience gives a man a fine, nervous, sensitive, "feeling" touch of the mind of God. It gives a man a discerning apprehension of right and wrong. When the feeling is really sensitive, what confidence it imparts to life's movements, what firmness, what motion, what decision! But the conscience can be benumbed. It can become as unresponsive as a paralyzed hand. Common experience affords abundant illustration. There are many people who were once endowed with a scrupulous moral sense, and in some way or other it has lost its exquisiteness, and they no longer finely realize the will of God. The withering is made manifest in apparently small disloyalties. We do not sustain the sense of honour in the full round of common life. There are ministers who are intensely scrupulous about orthodoxy who are not equally scrupulous in more practical obligations. They shrink from heresy; they do not shrink from debt. I have known people deface other people's property by writing Scriptural texts upon it! They have a sensitive desire to serve the Lord, but their honour is not keen enough to make them respect the common rights of their fellows. And often the unscrupulous may degenerate into the vicious. Moral unsoundness is like every other disease, it can proceed from the apparent trifle until it corrupts the pillars of the life. Poison can begin with a pin-prick and may at length reach the heart. A withering conscience is an unspeakable peril. A withering conscience indicates that a man is dead. The will may be like a withered hand. What a strong, pushful, resourceful hand it is when it is endowed with healthy vitality! But when it withers, everything is touched with irresolution and hesitancy. Nothing is initiated with power. Nothing is addressed with persistence. Nothing is accomplished with decision. A feeble will makes all life's doings anaemic. Everything is languid, from the sickly promise to the imperfect achievement. What can we do with all or any of these faculties of the soul? We have only one resource. We can bring them to Him who made them, and who can remake them by the power of His grace. But we must bring them deliberately, naming the withered member in the presence of our Lord. We must bring them submissively, laying aside all presumption and pride. We must bring them obediently, ready and willing to carry out the King's decrees. If He orders us to attempt the impossible, we must attempt it. "Stretch forth thy hand!" The man might have replied, "Master, that is just what I cannot do!" "Stretch forth thy hand," and the attempt being made, the needful power was found, and the man was made whole. So must I bring my withered love to Him, and if need be I must "stretch it forth" in effort and service. If He bid me I must act as though I have a healthy love, and in the very effort I shall find I have received it. I must bring my withered hope to Him. At His command I must stretch it forth. I must act as a hopeful man, and I shall find that the gracious light is restored. The Saviour's power goes with the Saviour's demand. The Saviour's power is received in human obedience. __________________________________________________________________ XI THE THORN REMAINS THE Apostle Paul was afflicted with some bodily infirmity, some extremely painful disease whose symptoms were marked by frequent recurrence. Many suggestions have been made as to the nature of the disease. Bishop Lightfoot inclines to the opinion that it was epilepsy. Others have fixed upon ophthalmia; Ramsay has recently advanced the theory of malarial fever. It does not very much matter for our immediate purpose what was the particular form of the infirmity. Whatever it was, it appeared to cripple the Apostle; his sacred purpose seemed to be hampered and partially defeated. Even the healthiest of bodies would have been all too slow and sluggish for his burningly passionate soul; but a damaged body was an obtrusive impediment to his great crusade. He prayed about it as only Paul could pray; he prayed that it might depart from him. He offered the prayer twice, thrice, and repeatedly. And then there was given to him that mystic revelation, that enlightenment of conscience, that dawning of interpretation, so often given to the soul that waits on God; he was given the wider vision, the larger understanding, in which similar problems find their solution. "My grace is sufficient for thee, for My power is made perfect in weakness." And this being interpreted seems to say, "Thy apparent weakness may be a channel of strength. The seemingly ungracious thing may be a means of grace. The very infirmity of the organ may confirm the authority of the message. God may become more visible through thy frailty. God may dawn upon the world through thy gloom. My grace is sufficient for thee; through thy seeming weakness My power shall be perfected." And so these were the results of the Apostle's prayers; first, the thorn remained, the bodily pain continued as his guest; second, the prayer was answered in an accession of grace which converted a crown of thorns into a crown of glory. So this seems to be the principle of the interpretation given to the Apostle Paul. The apparent weakness may become the very occasion of power. The seeming handicap may redound to the glory of the Lord. The combatants seem to be one man with a thorn versus the tremendous resistance of Asia, and the supercilious cynicism and indifference of Athens, Corinth, and Rome. But the realities are these: one man with a thorn plus the grace of God, and the very thorn becomes a medium of power, and through the obtrusive weakness God's strength is more perfectly revealed. When Paul had fully grasped the significance of this enlightenment his impatience was changed into quietness, his irritableness into confidence, and his complaint into sacred jubilation. "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the strength of Christ may spread a tabernacle over me." "I take pleasure in weaknesses . . . for when I am weak then am I strong." So here is the vivid lesson shining across the Apostle's consecrated life; he prayed, and yet the thorn remained, but grace was given whereby the very infirmity became the servant of his strength and a minister to the glory of God. Now let us bring that principle into our own life, and let us see its applications to our own conditions and needs. We too have our thorns in the flesh, things that seem to hinder our work, apparent obstructions to the progress of the Kingdom of God. If these could be taken away, with what blessed freedom we could run in the way of God's commandments! We pray that the hindrance might be taken away from us. And yet it remains, and the meaning of the apparently unanswered prayer is this, that God wishes to give grace in order that these seemingly adverse circumstances may be converted into our slaves, and made to minister to our own highest interests, to the welfare of others, and to the glory of God. Take the matter of physical frailty. Perhaps that is our trouble. Just the lack of lusty robustness. Our reserves of strength are very scanty. We are hampered by the bodily clog, and the interests of the Kingdom suffer. We pray for the restoration of health, but the thorn remains. But the prayer is not unanswered. God comes to us in an accession of grace which converts the very sword into a ploughshare, into an implement of moral and spiritual culture. Frances Ridley Havergal was very frail, frail as the most delicate porcelain. She prayed for greater strength, but the thorn remained. But who will say that her prayer was unanswered? Think of the tender songs that were sung from her frail tent! Her very weaknesses endowed her with delicacies of intuition, discernments in sacred explorations, sympathies with the travail of her Lord, which have made her the precious guide and teacher of tens of thousands of the children of God. Her power was made perfect in weakness. Or take Mrs. Browning. Physically she was frail as an autumn leaf. "Once I wished not to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up in me again from under the crushing feet of heavy grief." She prayed once, twice, thrice, and the thorn remained. But grace was given, and she gave us "Aurora Leigh" and "The Cry of the Children." "I cannot lament having learned in suffering what I taught in song." Her husband declared that she was "always smilingly happy with a face like a girl's." And when I take down Mrs. Browning's poems I think of her frail and wan face, and those large, serene eyes, and the calm and lofty brow, and I say "His power was made perfect in her weakness." Or take another apparent infirmity, the affliction we call nervousness. Some people are like a bundle of exposed nerves. They are endowed with exquisiteness of feeling which makes every jar a discord, a catastrophe. They experience vividness and intensity of emotion. They are slim and sprightly, and the crack of the whip almost excites a mental and moral convulsion. They pray for its removal. They ask for a temperament a little more numb to all the pangs of outrageous fortune. But the thorn remains. The prayer is answered in a better way. By the grace of Christ their very sensitiveness is made the minister of strength and fruitful service. God's power is made perfect in weakness. Robertson of Brighton was extremely sensitive. He was easily jarred. His whole being was as full of feeling as the eye. An ugly colour "brought on nervous irritations." "A gloomy day afflicted him like a misfortune." He prayed for the removal of the infirmity, and the thorn remained. But his prayer was answered. His very weakness was made the vehicle of strength. His sensitiveness gave him his sense of awe and triumph in the presence of nature. It gave him his almost instinctive sense of the characters of men. It gave him his superlatively fine apprehension of the secrets of the Most High. His nervous temperament remained, but God gave him a sufficiency of grace, and through his apparent infirmity God's power was made perfect. And so it is with many other infirmities that one might name. It is true of temptation. It is true of the disposition that is haunted by painful questionings. They may become to us the ministers of God's holy grace. If the thorn were removed one of the helpers of our health and progress would be gone. The thorn on the rose-bush is the purposed friend and not the enemy of the rose. The flower is all the more surely perfected because the thorn remains. And so it is with the thorns of the soul. By the very retention of the thorn faith is nourished, and ordered power, and the faculty to apprehend the glory of God when He is pleased to reveal it. And thus are we led to the all-sufficiency of the grace of the Father in the Heaven. __________________________________________________________________ XII THE SONG OF MOSES AND THE LAMB IN the mystical and mysterious book of Revelation there is a strange and jubilant song sung by "them that have gotten the victory over the beast." I am not concerned to identify any particular beast over whom these singers had proved victorious. The beast may very well and justly stand as typical of all that is unspiritual, the general beastliness which man has to encounter as he struggles towards his crown. Tennyson gives me the suggestion I seek in his description of the four tiers of symbolic sculpture which adorned the walls of Merlin's Hall: On the lowest beasts were slaying men; On the second men were slaying beasts; On the third were warriors, perfect men, And on the fourth were men with growing wings. The singers in the Seer's vision had attained to this glorious power of wing; they had gotten the victory over the beast. And what was the burden of their song? First of all they sang the eternal righteousness of God. "Righteous and true are Thy ways." That is ever the main theme of psalmist, prophet, apostle, martyr, and saint; that is the ground-work of the heavenly music, the very stuff and substance of the song. The praise of the blest is not primarily concerned with the tender love of God or His infinite compassion; not first with the flowers of the earth, but with earth's enduring frame; not first with God's graces, but with His grace, His incorruptible holiness. For what love can there be without a basis of truth? And what is the worth of mercy without the solidity of rectitude? And so it is that when these singers break into song this is the theme of their music: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord!" And, secondly, their music wanders among the wonders of God's progressive providence. "Great and marvellous are Thy works! "These works are not primarily the works of nature, but the works of grace. The singers are contemplating the truth in its conflict with falsehood. They are watching the wonders of holiness in its hallowing ministries among the children of men. They are recalling the romance of God's providence as they see it unrolled through the generations of their own troubled national history. And their doxology of providence and grace gathers about two names, the names of Moses and the Lamb. In their songful recital of providential deliverances these two names seem to crystallize and tell the story. And what is the significance of the names? Surely it is this: Moses signifies emancipation from social bondage; the Lamb signifies emancipation from spiritual bondage. Moses stands for deliverance from wrong. The Lamb stands for deliverance from sin. Moses delivers from the wrong which man may suffer from his brother. The Lamb delivers from the wrong which man may suffer from himself. Moses delivers from the Pharaoh outside man. The Lamb delivers from the devil within man. Moses delivers from the gall of oppression and pain. The Lamb delivers from the gall of guilt and sin. This is the song the singers sing, the "Song of Moses and the Lamb"--Thy marvellous works in Moses against all wrong; Thy marvellous works in the Lamb against all sin! Let me still further emphasize the distinction here made. The song of Moses described a deliverance from the Egyptian house of bondage. It narrated an Exodus from oppression and servitude. The deliverance was the destruction of a galling yoke imposed by man on man. It was the overthrow of tyranny. And that deliverance is sung as a great and marvellous work of God; God is working through a human leader to human emancipation. And this deliverance by Moses is being continued to our own day. In every generation there is some new Exodus from servitude, led by men inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. The leader himself may not be conscious of his divine inspiration, but he is nevertheless the instrument of God's right hand. Wherever men have been fettered in physical servitude, wherever minds have been imprisoned in the darkness of ignorance, wherever hearts have been bruised and broken and a leader has appeared to set the captive free, that leader was a Moses, the champion of a new Exodus, and his crusade of freedom was inspired of the Lord. Our own time has been singularly distinguished by such emancipations. I know not how many big and petty tyrannies have been fought within the compass even of one generation. In mine and factory, among women and children, on land and sea, among the labourers in the field, and among the sailors on the deep, yokes have been broken, prison doors have been opened, oppression has been righted, and captives have been led into the fair domain of freedom. To tell the story of freedom during the last fifty years would be to sing "a Song of Moses" worthy to be chanted with the song of Revelation sung by the victors at the crystal sea. There are many more bondages yet to be broken; many more tyrants yet to be dethroned. Wrongs still stalk abroad unabashed and unashamed. There is many a chivalrous exodus yet to be won. And the heavenly allies are on the side of those who seek to do the work. The mystic horses and chariots are on the hill. The mystic ministers, with their golden censers and their golden vials, are still in active service. We are fellow-workers with the spirits of good men made perfect, and all heaven is enlisted on the side of those who seek "to set at liberty them that are oppressed." But when the "Song of Moses" has been sung, what then? Lead your bondslaves out of Egypt. When you have lifted the tyranny, what about those who have been set free? When you have given the seaman the protection of the load-line he may still reel about the port. When you have lifted the tyranny from the factory operative he may delight to be a beast. When you have given the labourer a vote you have not given him either a conscience or a will. The fact of the matter is, when we have lifted a man out of Egypt we may yet leave him in hell. And let it be remembered that a man may remain in the bondage of Egypt, and yet be in heaven. There is many a servant living to-day in severe and unattractive social servitude who is yet in fellowship with a heaven their master or mistress has never known. Slaves sang their songs in the early Christian Church while they were still in their servitude, and we catch snatches of the music to-day. Yes, all that is true; the prison-house has been bright with the splendours of heaven. And this, too, I say, is true; that a man may gain a certain liberty and yet may enter into a deeper servitude. A man may be redeemed from Egypt and may become a more ignoble slave. The shackles may have been struck from his limbs but they are still on his soul. One tyrant is gone, but the greater tyrant remains. What, then, do we need? Moses can destroy the lesser tyranny, but he cannot touch the greater. We need another and a mightier exodus; we need another and a mightier Moses. The one can work the wonders of the Red Sea and smite and cleave the intercepting flood; we need one who can command and subdue the waters of passion and make its turbid waters clear and clean as the crystal sea. And so to the "Song of Moses" it is imperative that we add the "Song of the Lamb." We shall find at Calvary what can never be found at the Red Sea. "Babylon is fallen." So do I hear again and again resounding in the Book of Revelation. It is the emancipating word of Moses, and we needs must sing and shout when the tyrant is vanquished, "The slave trade is fallen!" It is the emancipating word of Moses, and we needs must sing when the slave is free. But what has happened when we sing the "Song of the Lamb"? Another exodus has happened with deeper experiences, leading into a far more glorious freedom. "If the Son, therefore, shall make you free ye shall be free indeed." And how are His freed ones described? They are "clothed in white robes"; they have attained to purified habits and dispositions. They have "palms in their hands," the symbol of sovereignty, the emblem of a strong and graceful self-conquest and self-control. And they are singing; the discords of life have been subdued to sweetest harmony. Such is the free one in the Lord. Moses can never make him; he is the creation of the Lamb. There is a very modern significance in all this. It is imperative that we remember that Moses can never do the work of the Lamb. We are living in a day when we are very much tempted to believe he can. The "Song of Moses" is prone to make us forget the "Song of the Lamb." We are busy, and wisely busy, legislating, emancipating, educating, co-operating. It is all good, and I will sing the song of thanksgiving, but it will never do. The Moses-ministry is pathetically insufficient. It may give us a little more ease, it will never give us a wealthy peace. It may make us more comfortable; it will never make us inherently good. "We are complete in Him," in Him alone, and in Him only, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." XIII WAVE AND RIVER I AM writing these words in sight of a fine, fresh sea. A strong south-westerly breeze is blowing, and huge waves are moving swiftly to their culmination, and breaking majestically on the shore. A little way up the coast a broad river, full and brimming, fed by a hundred tributaries from the rain-drenched hills, is leisurely emptying its voluminous flood into the advancing sea. And as my eyes pass from the sea to the river, and again from the river to the sea, I am reminded of two very powerful figures, used by the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and which may have had their birth in conditions similar to those which I am gazing upon to-day. "O, that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments; then had thy peace been like a river, and thy righteousness like the waves of the sea." The figures are strikingly original and suggestive, and I think that they enshrine conceptions of truth which afford healthy correctives to some soft and effeminate thinking of our own time. "Then had thy peace been like a river!" That itself is a most unusual sphere in which to find a symbol of peace. Most people, when they want a symbol of peace, would seek it in some secluded mountain-tarn, nestling quiet and unrippled far away from beaten roads, and where even the cry of a vagrant bird is only rarely heard. It is by these "still waters," and in these deep silences, that we should call to mind the gift of peace. Other people are impressed with the "peacefulness" of the chamber of death. When they see the body lying perfectly still, and when every sound is muffled, everybody speaking in whispers, and going about on tiptoe, they feel constrained to say, "How peaceful!" How different is the prophet's choice of figure! Not a stagnant tarn, not a lifeless body, but a river! The erroneous conception gathers about a particular sort of stillness; the true conception gathers about a particular quality of movement. Peace is not motionless quietness, but quiet motion. Peace has its appropriate figure in the brimming river, deeply quiet because of its depth. Peace is liquid motion, frictionless movement! That is the phrase which expresses my present thought. Perfect peace is found in human life when that life moves in God's life without babble, or fret, or friction. It is not so much found in the absence of sound as in the absence of discord. It is musical movement, it is harmony. Our Master's conception of peace is given in His oft-repeated words, "I and My Father are one." When one life flows into another life with perfect commingling--will with will, thought with thought, desire with desire, then we have the basal secret of peace. And when that perfect commingling is between the human heart and God, we have learned the secret of perfect peace. That was Jesus's peace, and this is Jesus's promise, "My peace I give unto you." "And thy righteousness like the waves of the sea." Well, let me go nearer the sea. I leave the dry upper beach, and go down to the water's edge. There in the distance a fine wave is forming, gathering volume and impetus as it rolls. Let me step forward, confront it, and check its advance! The wave laughs at the antagonism, and races shoreward with powerful and jubilant flood. And my righteousness is purposed to be like that! "Thy righteousness like the waves of the sea." But in the lives of the majority of us, even of those who profess to know the Lord, there is nothing characteristic of a glorious wave. Our righteousness is more like some trembling rivulet, uncertainly threading its way in time of drought. Any small antagonism can check it, and delay it, and divert it. We timidly shrink behind the impediment; we do not clear it at a leap! The truth is, the wave-force is pathetically lacking in many Christian lives. There is nothing strong and positive; there is no vigorous trend because there is no definite end. Their purposes meander along, and any obstacle can hinder them, and any hostile foot can turn them aside. If our life is to find a fitting symbol in the waves of the sea, then it is to be distinguished by a commanding force of character. It will be grandly impressive, and will be known by its "go." Surely, this must be something of the meaning of Paul's inspiring words, "we have not received again the spirit of fear . . . but of power." Ours is not to be a spirit of fear, of trembling, like the uncertain surf, "carried with the wind and tossed" about the shore. Ours is to be a spirit of power, moving in noble impressiveness, and with the invincible majesty of a magnificent wave. Again and again our Lord sets before His disciples the strong ideal of a character which "tells," which is positive and bracing. He seemed to be afraid of their discipleship weakening down into an anaemic sentimentality, a forceless effeminacy which would never arrest the world, or take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm. He did not wish His disciples to be only as a pleasant perfume; He wished them to be more like that strong breeze which is even now blowing upon me from the southwest, pervaded with the pungent smack of the salt sea! "Ye are the salt of the earth." I think it is the same element of impressiveness which is suggested in the figure of the advancing wave. And when this forceful, impressive element is wanting, when this energetic spirit is absent, then the individual Christian, or that fellowship of Christians which we call the Church, becomes as "salt that has lost its savour," a poor, savourless presence, and the world will pay no heed, or treat it as something to be despised and "trodden under foot of men." There were some in the Corinthian Church who had become thus enervated and forceless, and the Apostle seeks to stir them up into a more vigorous life. "Some are sickly, and not a few sleep!" How far was this from the forcefulness of the triumphant wave! It was more significant of the stagnant pool, with a noisome corruption mantling its idle face. There are many men who, on the business side of their life, have all the strong impetuosity of a wave but on the distinctively moral and religious side their will beats as feebly as a forceless pulse. They flaunt a religious profession, but they have no religious "life." These constitute the very bane of the Kingdom, for they are the unimpressive professionals who make the Christian religion unattractive and repellent. But when our righteousness becomes like a wave, its very power will hold the world in rich and fertile wonder. __________________________________________________________________ XIV THE GUIDING HAND THERE is a familiar phrase which is twice repeated in the twenty-third Psalm: "He leadeth me," but the two usages have very different surroundings. In the first the surroundings are pastoral, a deep restfulness is in the air, and all things are significant of relaxation and repose. "He leadeth me beside waters of rest." It is like walking on the banks of a river on some serene Saturday night, when the work of the week is over, and the very beasts of the field seem to have begun their Sabbath rest. In the second usage the surroundings are altogether changed. Rest becomes action; relaxation becomes strenuousness. We leave the "waters of rest" for the exposed and storm-swept uplands. We turn to the frowning slopes, with their terrors of wild beasts and tempests. Life becomes militant. "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness." It is like leaving the sweet and fragrant vineyards of the lower Alpine slopes for the bare and craggy heights, and the dubious and treacherous ways of the snow. But the guide who leads through the vineyard leads also through the snows; and it is the same God who leads by the "waters of rest," who also leads into exacting and exhausting "ways of righteousness." The Lord of the restful valley is also King of the flood and Sovereign of the terrible heights. And this brings me to the theme of the present meditation; the Divine leadership, the grace of the guiding hand. There is surely nothing remote or obscure in the theme. It is relevant and immediate to everybody. We differ in many things and in many ways; we differ in age and in calling, in physical fitness and in mental equipment; we differ in knowledge and accomplishments; we are greatly different in temperament, and therefore in the character of our daily strife. But in one thing we are all alike--we are pilgrims travelling between life and death, on an unknown road, not knowing how or when the road may turn; not knowing how or when it may end; and we are in urgent need of a Greatheart who is acquainted with every step of the way. We are all in need of a leader who will be our guide by the "waters of rest," and also in the perilous ways of the heights. Now how does the Lord lead us? I want to find the answer in the word and life of the Scriptures. And when I turn to the Scriptures I find that the means and methods of Divine leadership are many, that the Great Leader is like a wise human leader, and He adapts His ministries to the nature of the child and the character of the immediate need. I can only mention two or three of these varied methods of leadership as I find them in the Word of God. And here is the first: "