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           Title: The Silver Lining: Messages of Hope and Cheer
      Creator(s): Jowett, J. H. (1817-1893)
     Print Basis: New York: Grosset & Dunlap (1907)
   CCEL Subjects: All;
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THE SILVER LINING

                               The Silver Lining

Messages of

Hope and Cheer

    BY

J. H. JOWETT

   This book, while produced under wartime conditions, in full compliance
   with government regulations for the conservation of paper and other
   essential materials, is COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED

GROSSET & DUNLAP

  PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

    By arrangement with Fleming H. Revell Co.

Copyright, 1907, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
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CONTENTS

   PAGE
   UNDER THE FIG-TREE                   7
   IN TIME OF FLOOD                     15
   DIVINE AMELIORATIVES                 23
   THE CURE FOR CARE                    30
   PREPARING FOR EMERGENCIES            37
   "SILENT UNTO GOD"                    45
   MY STRENGTH AND MY SONG!             53
   THE ABIDING COMPANIONSHIP            60
   LIGHT ALL THE WAY                    69
   OUR BRILLIANT MOMENTS                76
   THE LORD'S GUESTS                    84
   HIDDEN MANNA                         95
   THE REJOICING DESERT                 102
   THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GRAVEYARD! 110
   COMFORTED IN ORDER TO COMFORT!       118
   THE MINISTRY OF HOPE                 126
   LIFE WITH WINGS                      136
   THE UNEXPECTED ANSWER                143
   THE CENSER AND THE SACRIFICE         152
   THE SCHOOL OF CHRIST                 161
   THE MINISTRY OF REST                 170
   WEALTH THAT NEVER FAILS              179
   THE DIVINE ABILITY                   189
   NEW STRENGTH FOR COMMON TASKS        197
   THE MINISTRY OF THE CLOUD            206
   THE REALMS OF THE BLEST              216
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                               THE SILVER LINING
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UNDER THE FIG-TREE

   "When thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee."--John i. 48.

   "WHEN thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee." But was there any
   special significance in this? There must have been something of very
   deep significance, for it inspired Nathaniel to an outburst of joyful
   faith: "Thou art the Son of God." Perhaps there was something in the
   tone in which the words were spoken; for revelations are not always
   contained in the literal words, they are often found in the way in
   which they are spoken. It is possible to say to a sorrowful and
   mourning widow, "I saw you," and the words will suggest nothing more
   than bare recognition; and one may use the same phrase and it would be
   weighted with warm and helpful sympathy. There was surely something in
   the tone of the Master which called forth the exuberant response of
   Nathaniel's heart. But there was more than this. "Under the fig-tree,"
   was a phrase which recalled a deep and personal experience. Nathaniel
   had been in the habit of retiring in the shade of the fig-tree, away
   from the crowd, and away from his labour, depressed by feelings of
   saddened loneliness and alienation. His was a chaste and sensitive
   soul, and there was much in his day to fill his delicate spirit with
   despondency and pain. So he was often found apart, under the fig-tree.
   The neighbours thought him moody; in reality he was thoughtful. He was
   described as dreamy; in reality he was prayerful. Sometimes he was
   esteemed a little proud; in reality he bore the burden of oppressive
   sadness. He used to retire into the quiet garden, lock the gate, and
   under the fig-tree, with no one near, he would pour out his soul before
   God.

   Can we exercise a prudent imagination, and attempt to realise
   Nathaniel's state? I think he was probably burdened in worship. He felt
   his spirit fettered by the multitudinous rules and regulations which
   had gathered round about the acts and offices of worship. He sought to
   be punctilious in their observation, but he laboured under the heavy
   load. A certain amount of harness is helpful to a beast; it directs and
   concentrates his strength at the needful points, and makes the yoke
   tolerable and easy. But it is possible so to multiply the harness that
   it adds to the burden, rather than reduces it. And rules and
   regulations can be helpful to the movements of the spirit, but if they
   are multiplied they increase its strain. In Nathaniel's day the rules
   and regulations had increased until every natural movement was harassed
   and irritated, and life became a galling bondage. Nathaniel hungered
   for free intimacy, for the emancipation of a friendly walk with God.
   And then I think he was weary in service. The attempts to do good
   seemed so fruitless in their issues. The streets of town and village
   rang with hypocrisy and vice, and his own little efforts appeared to
   have no more purifying influence than the dropping of white snowflakes
   into an open sewer.

   And then, too, I think he was faint in waiting. The promised deliverer
   was long in coming. He looked out with aching, weary eyes, but the
   emancipator did not appear. And his spirit grew faint and desponding.
   There is nothing so exhausting as mere waiting. Work does not tire a
   man so much as the looking for work. The hour of labour speeds like a
   weaver's shuttle; the hour of waiting drags like a cumbersome load, How
   long the minutes seem when we are waiting for the doctor! The loved one
   is passing into deeper need, and we listen for the hand upon the latch.
   Every moment seems an age. And there were many in the time of Nathaniel
   who were "waiting for the doctor"; the general life was sick and
   diseased, and the great Physician had not yet come! And these men
   waited, looking for "the consolation of Israel"! And Nathaniel was one
   of the waiters, and in the long waiting he had grown faint. Is it any
   wonder, then, that this man, burdened in worship, weary in service, and
   faint in waiting, should often be found apart in the retirement of some
   secluded garden, under a fig-tree, with downcast and despondent spirit,
   looking wistfully towards heaven and God? "When thou wast under the
   fig-tree I saw thee."

   "I saw thee." And how much the seeing means! The phrase has infinitely
   more significance than that of bare recognition. It is not only that
   Nathaniel was noticed; it means that he was understood. Our Lord's
   sight is insight. The majority of us see, but only a few perceive. "See
   ye, indeed, but perceive not." We see a sign, but we cannot give it an
   interpretation. We see a wrinkle, a grey hair, a tear, a smile, a look
   of care, a bent back, but we do not perceive their spiritual
   significance. Our Master not only sees; He "in-sees." When He looked at
   Nathaniel He understood him. He interpreted his thoughts and fears. He
   saw him through and through. "He knew what was in man." But the
   Master's seeing implies more than this. It is not only that sight was
   insight; His perceptions were compassions. He was "touched" with the
   feelings of men's infirmities. He did not bring to bear upon men the
   mere dry light of understanding; the light was warm and genial, and
   sunny with the grace of sympathy. The apostolic word is very beautiful,
   He was "touched." But the sight means even more than this. The
   understanding and the sympathy were joined to the ministry of
   co-operation. The Master not only feels, He works; He not only
   sympathises, He serves. When He saw Nathaniel under the fig-tree, His
   understanding, His sympathy, His power, all combined in a ministry of
   benevolent and beneficent love.

   Here, then, is the evangel. Our Lord sees us when we are under the
   gloom of the fig-tree, when in sadness and weariness we are turning
   tired eyes at the expectancy of help. "Before that Philip called thee,"
   before he came out into the open, when he was half hidden, when his
   soul-life was secret and unconfessed, when in grave despondency he was
   turning his weary eyes toward heaven--"I saw thee." He sees and knows
   us then. He sees us in the gropings in the gloom. That is the glory of
   our Redeemer. Anybody can see an electric light, but to feel the
   current, when there is not enough to make a light, requires a more
   refined discernment. We all become aware of the electrical power when
   there is enough to ring a bell; but when the power which is stored in
   the wires is feeble and faint, it requires something as sensitive as
   the palate to detect it. Our Master discerns the feeble stirrings of
   spiritual life. When there is not enough to illumine the soul, or to
   make its powers ring out the truth, He detects the faint beginnings
   which to other people are unknown. The woman of Samaria comes to Him.
   She was only a common woman of the city. Far from being a light, she
   was like a burnt-out fire. But I think that in her desolate soul there
   were often faint and uncertain movements. She had long seasons of
   despondency, with little flickerings of aspiration after a better life.
   I think she often went apart, and in deep dejection of spirit sighed
   out her woe. We are not told that our Master spake to her of these
   seasons, and yet I cannot but think He did. He would mention one place
   and another place, and one thing and another thing, which would recall
   to her the experiences of these darker seasons. "When thou wast under
   the fig-tree I saw thee!" One after another the deepest things in her
   life were recalled to her, until at length she turned away to her
   friends, saying, "Come, see a man who told me all the things that ever
   I did."

   And was it not so with Zacchæus? Can we think that when Jesus looked up
   at Zacchæus and bade him come and offer hospitality, it was the first
   time He had seen him? Nay, I think He had often passed him in the
   streets, He had seen the shadow over his face. There was unrest and
   trouble in his eye. He looked like a man who was often awake at nights.
   For Zacchæus often went home with a full purse and a very empty and
   improvished heart. He was often "under the fig-tree," in gloom and
   despondency, casting fitful glances at the better life. And so when the
   Master called to him, there was something in the very tone which
   revealed that he was understood. We are not told what they talked about
   on their way to the publican's house, but I think I can hear the Master
   saying to His newly-found disciple, "when thou wast under the fig-tree
   I saw thee." I say this is the way of the Master. He sees us in the
   faint beginning and gropings of the spiritual life. "When he was yet a
   long way off his father saw him!" That is characteristic of the Divine
   eyes. He sees us in the long distance! The first faint impulses are
   recognised; the first turning is known. When we are under the fig-tree
   He sees us!

   This, surely, is a word full of heartening and inspiration. We are
   never alone. Our Saviour understands us, sympathises with us,
   co-operates with us. He is with us under the fig-tree! And see how rich
   and wealthy is the promise. "Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened and
   the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man." How
   glorious and fitting is the issue! Nathaniel is to see heaven opened!
   The man who has been in the gloom of the fig-tree, with fitful and
   uncertain glimpses through the broken clouds, is to attain to firm,
   clear, and permanent vision. And the man who is so frequently timid,
   and wonders at the controlling power of life and the world, is to have
   his confidence steadied and stayed, and is to be made sure of the
   sovereignty of Christ.
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IN TIME OF FLOOD

   "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord
   shall lift up a standard against him."--Isaiah lix. 59.

   THESE heartening words were spoken to exiles who were preparing to
   return to the homeland. They had become so accustomed to their
   captivity that emancipation seemed a dream. Even when they lifted their
   eyes to the possibilities of return they seemed to gaze upon range
   after range of accumulating difficulties which would obstruct their
   journey home. As often as the prophet proclaimed their deliverance they
   proclaimed their fears. Their fears were laid one by one, but as soon
   as one was laid another arose!

   There was, for example, the wilderness to be crossed with all its
   fierce and sombre desolation! "The wilderness shall rejoice and blossom
   as the rose." And there was the weary, pathless desert, offering only
   the prospect of homelessness to the bewildered pilgrim! "And an highway
   shall be there, and a way," clean and clear across it. There are waters
   to be crossed and floods to be overcome! "When thou passest through the
   waters they shall not overflow thee." And other difficulties will
   arise, all the more burdensome because unforeseen! "Every valley shall
   be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low." And the
   enemies on the right hand and the left hand, what about them? The
   hostile peoples will accept their chance, and will come down upon the
   returning company in destructive array! "When the enemy shall come in
   like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against
   him." To every fear the prophet presents a promise; to every suspicion
   he offers an assurance. Now, we, too, are exiles returning to the
   homeland. We, too, have been in the dark realms of captivity, and by
   His redeeming grace our eyes have been lifted toward the better
   country. And we, too, are full of uncertainties and fears. There is a
   desert to traverse, a wilderness to cross, waters to pass through,
   mountains to climb, and we know not how we may safely reach our
   journey's end. And particularly are we beset by the enemy, who suddenly
   and unexpectedly sweeps down upon our path. But if we have the fears,
   ours, too, are the promises. Between the enemy and ourselves there
   shall be erected the standard of the Lord. "When the enemy shall come
   in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard
   against him."

   "When the enemy shall come in like a flood."! think that the figure is
   surely taken from the river-beds of their native land. They had looked
   upon the dry, bleached ravines in time of drought, when scarcely a
   rivulet lisped down its rocky course. And then the rain had fallen on
   the hills, or the snow had melted upon the distant mountains, and the
   waters had torn down like a flood. I have picnicked away up in the
   solitudes of the higher Tees, when there was only a handful of water
   passing along, a little stream which even a child could cross. And once
   I saw what the natives call the "roll" coming away in the distance.
   Great rains had fallen upon the heights, and this was their issue; in a
   moment the quiet stream became a roaring torrent, and shouted along in
   thunderous flood. That, I think, is the figure of my text. When the
   sudden "roll" shall come in the life, and the little rivulet is changed
   into tempestuous waters, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood,
   the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him."

   Now, what are some of these flood times in life when the enemy comes
   against us in overwhelming power? There is the flood of passion. There
   are many among my readers who do not know that flood. We are very
   differently constituted, and some there are in whom these particular
   waters bring no peril. There are some whose passion fills up slowly
   like a cistern; there are others who overflow in a moment. There are
   some who are constitutionally calm; there are others who "boil" at the
   slightest provocation. Well, now, floods always destroy something
   valuable and beautiful. I have watched a great river in flood, and I
   have seen how many precious things are carried down in the violent
   stream; a sheep that has been harmlessly playing by the bank, some
   tender sapling, some useful bridge. And so it is with the flood of
   passion that sweeps through the soul. It always damages the life
   through which it flows. Some seed of the kingdom, just beginning to
   germinate, is washed out of the ground. Some tender growth is impaired
   or destroyed, some little plant of meekness, or gentleness, or faith,
   or hope, or love. Even onlookers can frequently see the ruin; and to
   the Lord the fruitful place must become a desert. "The enemy has come
   in like a flood."

   And sometimes the flood is in the form of a great sorrow, and we are
   engulfed by it. Billow after billow goes over us, and does tremendous
   damage. I know that there is a sorrow appointed of the Almighty, but it
   is never ordained to hurt or destroy. And yet how often this particular
   flood, rushing into a life, works havoc with spiritual things. Have we
   not known many such in our own experience? "Was not So-and-so at one
   time a great worker in the Church?" And the answer was, "Yes, but he
   has never done anything since his child died!" The flood had done its
   evil work. And so it frequently is in lives that have been drowned in
   the enveloping waters. In one of our churches a little while ago a
   flood occurred, and the two things that were injured were the heating
   apparatus and the organ. I could not but think of the destructiveness
   wrought in the soul by the gathering waters of sorrow. Very frequently
   they put out the fires of geniality, and they silence the music and the
   song.

   And so it is, one may say, with all the perilous waters that arise in
   human life. Sometimes the flood gathers from a multitudinous
   contribution of petty cares. It is amazing how mighty a volume can be
   made with small contributions. We could deal with one; the multitude
   overwhelms us! We could deal with one worry, but multitudes of them
   create the flood we call anxiety, and we are overthrown. And again
   great damage is done, working havoc to our peace and self-control and
   magnanimity.

   Now, whenever a flood in the life damages a life the work is the work
   of the devil. When I am tempted into overflowing passion, or into
   excessive sorrow, or into overwhelming care, it is the work of the
   enemy. I think that if we could realise this we should be greatly
   helped in these perilous and frequently recurring seasons. If we could
   only practise our eyes so as to see in the tempting circumstance the
   face of the evil one we should be less inclined to the snare. If we
   could only get into our minds and hearts the settled conviction that
   behind all these threatening approaches there is the ugly enemy of our
   souls, we should more eagerly turn our eyes and feet toward the Lord of
   life and beauty. Now that Lord of life offers Himself as our defence in
   the time of the rising flood. He will "lift up a standard against him."
   I think that is very beautiful! King Canute had his regal chair carried
   down to the flowing tide, and he commanded the waters to retreat. The
   waters paid no heed, and the mighty flood advanced. But our King raises
   His standard against the threatening flood, and the retreat is
   absolutely ensured. In the moment when we are tempted to the
   overwhelming passion He will come between us and the flood. "The waters
   shall not overflow thee." Have you noticed that wonderfully suggestive
   passage in the Book of Revelation where a promise is made of help in
   the time of flood? "And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a
   flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away at
   the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her
   mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his
   mouth." I believe that that great promise has been abundantly confirmed
   in countless lives. Even the earth itself is our ally in contending
   with the foe. The beauties of nature will help us to contend with the
   forces of evil desire. I believe that if we more frequently communed
   with the flowers of the field we should find that the earth was a
   minister of the Holy Spirit. The earth would swallow up the flood. But
   we have more than Nature as our defence; we have the Lord of nature,
   the Lord in nature, not so much the supernatural as the Spirit who
   pervades nature and all things. That gracious Spirit will subtly steal
   into the threatened parts of our life, and will contend with our foe.

   And so, too, it is in the flood times of sorrow. The Spirit of the Lord
   will engage for us, "lest we be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow."
   Have I not seen it done a hundred times? Have I not seen sorrow come
   into a life, and it has been entirely a minister of good and never of
   ill? The devil has not got hold of it, and used it as a destructive
   flood. Not one thing has been damaged or destroyed. It has been a
   minister of irrigation rather than destruction, and in the moist place
   of tears beautiful ferns have grown, the exquisite graces of compassion
   and long-suffering and peace.

   "The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard!" Well, then, let Him
   do it. Do not let us attempt to do it for ourselves. Let us hand it
   over to Him. "Undertake Thou for me, O Lord." The life of faith just
   consists in a quiet, conscious, realising trust in the all-willing and
   all-powerful Spirit of God.
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DIVINE AMELIORATIVES

   "Sleeping for sorrow."--Luke xxii. 45.

   I AM not concerned with the element of human weakness suggested by my
   text; I want to dwell entirely upon the Divine graciousness which I
   think is enshrined in it.

   "Sleeping for sorrow." Is it not a very strange conjunction of words?
   One would have thought that wakefulness and sorrow would have been
   associated, and that sleep and sorrow would never have found communion.
   But here is sorrow passing into sleep! As though sorrow itself contains
   a gracious opiate which lulls and subdues into slumber. As though God
   had determined that every distress should carry a certain palliative in
   order that we might not be burdened beyond measure. When sorrow becomes
   very intense it induces sleep. A Divine ameliorative is at hand, and
   the strain of the galling burden is lightened. They say in the North
   that there is never a nettle that has not its companion dock. The dock
   supplies the opiate for relieving and destroying the sting of the
   nettle. And so I wish to consider some of these Divine amelioratives
   which the good Lord has appointed for reducing the burdensomeness of
   grief, and for making the daily sorrow tolerable.

   The ameliorative of sleep. What a wonderful minister is the genius of
   sleep When our bodies are tired out, and the nervous force is almost
   spent, and we feel ourselves wearied and "down," what a hotbed is
   provided for irritableness, and doubt, and despondency and despair! A
   tired-out body offers a fertile rootage to all manner of mental
   ailments. Many a man in the evening time feels that life is very
   colourless and juiceless, and this 'sense of the sombreness and
   dullness arises from a body which has temporarily lost its spring. And
   then comes sleep! During the hours of sleep our gracious God comes and
   refills the exhausted lamp, and in the morning the touchiness and
   irritableness and tastelessness have all gone, and we face the new day
   as men renewed. The Lord has been near with His gracious palliative of
   sleep, and the oppressiveness of the passing day has been removed.

   Then how frequently sleep acts as a gracious opiate when we are
   inclined to make precipitate vows! Something has happened and we
   hastily resolve upon hasty action. But some discreet friend says to us,
   "Sleep on it." And the influence of the one night's sleep scatters our
   rash resolve like morning mist. Have we not recently been told of a
   great minister who, in some moment of impatience, resolved upon sending
   his resignation to his deacons, but he took the counsel of his wife to
   "sleep on it," and the resignation was never sent. God's gracious gift
   came in the meantime, and the storm-tossed mind and heart were laid to
   rest.

   And what a wonderful servant is this same sleep in the time of
   bereavement! I have frequently known a widow in the very first day of
   her widowhood, when the body of her husband was scarcely cold, pass
   into a deep and most refreshing sleep. "I have had the best night's
   sleep I have had for many a month," she has said; and this was the
   first night of bereavement! "Sleeping for sorrow." It is a wonderfully
   gracious providence of our God to mingle this Divine opiate with our
   sorrows, and to put us into a quiet and restoring sleep. "He giveth His
   beloved sleep."

   The ameliorative of Time. What a healing minister we have in Time
   itself. The old proverb tells us that Time brings roses. And a still
   older proverb, coming down from the days of the Romans, tells us that
   Time is generally the best doctor. The new railway cutting is a great
   red gash in the green countryside, but Time is a great healer and
   restorer, and day after day the bald, bare place is being re-covered
   with fern and grass and wild flower, until at length the ugly cutting
   harmonises with the colours of the surrounding landscape, and the gash
   is healed. And Time works a similar history with human life. A cutting
   injury is done to me. I think I can never forget it. The wound is deep,
   rankling is sore. But Time takes the thing in hand, and little by
   little, and day by day, the healing process is continued, until at
   length the open wound is closed, and I wonder how I could have been so
   silly as to make so much stir about it. And we all know what Time can
   do even for the sharp pangs of a great bereavement. In the first dark
   and cloudy day it seems as though no light will ever fall upon our path
   again. "I shall never laugh any more." Oh, yes, you will! Time, the
   Lord's ameliorative, will begin to minister to the broken spirit, and
   however incredible it may now appear, some day the smiles will come
   back in the blanched cheek, and the mouth will be filled with laughter.
   And this because, as the days go by, Time turns a beautiful memory into
   an alluring hope. We not only feel the season behind us, but the
   pulling power of the age that lies before. Let us never forget, when we
   are counting our blessings, to thank God for the glorious ministry of
   gracious Time.

   The Divine ameliorative of work. May we not speak of work as one of the
   Lord's servants appointed by Him to subdue the distresses of life, and
   to mitigate its pangs? How frequently it happens that the needful work
   that is required to be done immediately after a death is a gracious
   helpmeet to the spirit. We have to be busy about the funeral, and even
   that bit of business is a minister of rest. We say one of another,
   "It's well she had so much to do." Goethe's mother said of her son, "My
   son, when he has a grief, puts it in a poem and so gets rid of it." We
   cannot all put our griefs into poems, but it is amazing how much of
   them we can put into work. And so it is well for us to look upon work
   as a signal token of Divine Providence and Fatherly love and grace. He
   has appointed us to work, and the work has been ordained for our
   eternal good. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake"; yes, but the cursing
   of the ground was for the blessedness of man. In cursing the ground God
   blessed the race. When God cursed the ground He made it essential that
   man should work. The curse was only a restraining of the natural
   energies of the earth, in order that man should co-operate and bring
   the hidden things to fruition. God made work compulsory in order that
   man might regain his lost Eden. To lose his Eden, and then to have no
   work, would have made the alienation too grievous to be borne. The
   compulsory work was the decree of Eternal love.

   I am not surprised, therefore, when I turn to the New Testament to find
   how great was Paul's fear of indolent Christians. The early believers
   gave up their ordinary work and passively waited the coming of their
   Lord. Now Paul knew that, in the time of stress, and persecution, and
   tribulation, to have no work would be to take sides with the enemy.
   Therefore "let every man abide in the calling wherein he was called."
   Let every man go on working, for he will find in his work an
   ameliorative for his sorrows. To cast aside work is to deprive oneself
   of the means of grace. A doctor, quite recently in my hearing, said to
   a man who was inclined to become a little morbid and depressed, "Go out
   and weed your garden." The weeding of the garden was the smallest part
   of the hour's work; while the man was weeding the garden he was also
   extracting weeds from his own heart and life. Let us thank God for
   work.

   The Divine ameliorative of service. I distinguish between work and
   service. Work is primarily for our own profit; service is primarily
   profit for others. And therefore I speak now of labour expended in
   another's good, and in this kind of service I say there is a grand
   ameliorative for the griefs and distresses of life. It is an amazing
   thing to watch the new colour which our sorrow assumes when we go out
   to minister to others. The rawness goes out of our own wound while we
   are dressing the wounds of our neighbour. Our own pang is lessened when
   we seek to take the pang out of another's soul. "I felt as though my
   heart would break, so I just got up and went out to help a poor body
   who I knew was in need." Yes, and while she went to bring comfort to
   her needy sister the heart's-ease came into her own soul. This is the
   beautiful, gracious way of God. We can go out with a broken heart to
   minister to other broken hearts, and a cooling balm is applied to our
   own feverish pain and fears. Along these lines we can all make bold and
   immediate experiment, and you may depend upon it you will find that in
   this kind of service there is hidden a gracious opiate which deadens
   the sense of our own sorrows and makes it possible for us to endure
   them.

   All these are Divine amelioratives, the gracious ministers of God, and
   I would that we might more frequently remember them when we seek to
   tell the story of His mercy and grace. Let us think of them as the
   angels of the Lord, appointed by Him to do us service in the dark and
   cloudy day. "He shall give His angels charge concerning thee, to keep
   thee in all thy ways."
     __________________________________________________________________

THE CURE FOR CARE

   "Fret not thyself."--Psalm xxxvii. 1.

   "Fret not thyself." Do not get into a perilous heat about things. And
   yet, if ever heat were justified, it was surely justified in the
   circumstances outlined in the psalm. Evildoers were moving about
   clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day.
   "Workers of iniquity" were climbing into the supreme places of power,
   and were tyrannising over their less fortunate brethren. Sinful men and
   women were stalking through the land in the pride of life, and basking
   in the light and comfort of great prosperity. And good men were
   becoming heated and fretful. "Fret not thyself." Do not get unduly
   heated! Keep cool! Even in a good cause fretfulness is not a wise
   helpmeet. Fretting only heats the bearings, it does not generate the
   steam. It is no help to a train for the axles to get hot; their heat is
   only a hindrance; the best contribution which the axles can make to the
   progress of the train is to keep cool. Fretfulness is just the heating
   of the axles; it is heat in the wrong place; it is heat become a source
   of weakness rather than strength. We sometimes say of a man, concerning
   his relationship to some particular topic, "He got quite hot over it!"
   That kind of heat does not increase a man's driving power, nor does it
   contribute to his vindication. It is only the perilous heat of the
   axles.

   Now, when the axles get heated it is because of unnecessary friction;
   dry surfaces are grinding together which ought to be kept in smooth
   cooperation by a delicate cushion of oil. And is it not a suggestive
   fact that this word "fret" is closely akin to the word "friction," and
   is indicative of the absence of the anointing oil of the grace of God?
   In fretfulness, thought is grinding against thought, desire against
   desire, will against will; a little bit of grit gets into the
   bearings--some slight disappointment, some ingratitude, some
   discourtesy, and the smooth working of the life is checked. Friction
   begets heat, and with the heat most dangerous conditions are created.

   We can never really foresee to what kind of disaster this perilous heat
   may lead. The psalmist, in the early verses of this psalm, points out
   some of the stages of increasing destructiveness to which this unclean
   fire assuredly leads. It is somewhat strange, and yet not strange, that
   the second piece of counsel in this psalm is concerned with the
   disposition of envy. It is not put there as an irrelevance. It
   indicates a possible succession. Fretfulness frequently leads to
   jealousy. For what is jealousy? Again, let it be said that jealousy is
   heat out of place. The "jealous" man and the "zealous" man are somewhat
   akin, but in one case the fire is clean and in the other it is unclean.
   It is the difference between fervour and fever. Fretfulness creates the
   unclean fire of envy. Now see the further stage proclaimed by the
   Psalmist. "Cease from anger." The fire is now burning furiously, noisy
   in the fierceness of its wrath. What shall we expect as the climax of
   all this? "Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil." That is what I
   should expect. Men who have worked themselves into envy and anger will
   be led into the very evil they originally resented. Men begin by
   fretting "because of evildoers," and they end by "doing the evil"
   themselves. "Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth!" "Fret
   not thyself!" Do not let thy bearings get hot. Let the oil of the Lord
   keep thee cool, lest by reason of an unclean heat thou be reckoned
   among the evildoers.

   How, then, is fretfulness to be cured?--The Psalmist brings in the
   heavenly to correct the earthly. This psalm is full of "the Lord"! "The
   Lord" is the refrain of almost every verse, as though it were only in
   the power of the heavenly that this dangerous fire could be subdued.
   Let us look at the counsel in detail.

   "Trust in the Lord." "Trust." It is, perhaps, helpful to remember that
   the word which is here translated "trust" is elsewhere in the Old
   Testament translated "careless." "Be careless in the Lord!" Instead of
   carrying a load of care let care be absent! It is the carelessness of
   little children running about the house in the assurance of their
   father's providence and love. It is the singing disposition that leaves
   something for the parent to do. Assume that He is working as well as
   thyself, and working even when things appear to be adverse.

   I remember meeting a man in Birmingham, not so very long ago, a man who
   is honestly and earnestly seeking to live a Christian life, but he
   mourned to me the depression under which he was suffering on that
   particular day. "I feel very depressed; my feelings are gloomy; I feel
   as though my Lord were far away!" It was a very miserable morning; the
   unclean snow was melting in the streets, and a November fog possessed
   the town. I said to him, "Do you think the Welsh water is running into
   our town today? Has the supply from the Welsh hills been stopped? The
   day is gloomy enough, the fog is about, and the atmosphere is certainly
   chilly, but the water from the Welsh hills is flowing into the city
   quite as abundantly as it will do on the sunniest day in June! The fog
   in Birmingham will not check the gracious supply from the hills!" And
   so it is with our feelings. The supply of grace is not determined by
   the changes in our moods; it is independent of our feelings. 'There is
   a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God!" That
   river is flowing even when we are temporarily depressed, and we are no
   longer enjoying the ecstasy of the heights. "Trust in the Lord!"
   Believe in His fidelity! Assume that the river is flowing even on the
   darkest day. This would be an amazing cure for fretfulness and
   excessive care.

   "Delight thyself also in the Lord." How beautiful the phrase! The
   literal significance is this, "Seek for delicacies in the Lord." Yes,
   and if we only set about with ardent purpose to discover the delicacies
   of the Lord's table, we should have no time and no inclination to fret.
   But this is just what the majority of us do not do. We take the crumbs
   from the Master's table, and we have no taste of the excellent
   delicacies. Now the delicacies of anything are not found in the
   elementary stages; we have to move forward to the advanced. The
   delicacies of music are not found in the first half-dozen lessons; it
   is only in the later stages that we come to the exquisite. And so it is
   in art, and so it is in literature, and so it is with the "things of
   the Lord." "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into
   the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love
   Him." Let us be ambitious for the excellent! God has not yet given to
   us of His best. He always keeps the best wine until the last. We shall
   never reach God's superlative! The "unsearchable riches of Christ" will
   reveal themselves more and more to us throughout the glorious seasons
   of the eternal day. When we sit at the table of the Lord, tasting of
   His delicacies, fretfulness will be unable to breathe.

   "Commit thy way unto the Lord." "Thy way!" What is that? Any pure
   purpose, any worthy ambition, any duty, anything we have got to do, any
   road we have got to tread, all our outgoings. "Commit thy way unto the
   Lord." Commit it to Him, not merely when we are in the middle of the
   way and are stuck and lost in the mire. Let us commit our beginnings
   unto Him, before we have gone wrong; let us have His companionship from
   the very outset of the journey. "I am Alpha." He likes to be in at our
   beginnings. What am I purposing for tomorrow? What am I setting out to
   do? Have I committed it to the Lord, or am I setting out upon a
   solitary journey? If I am going out alone, fretfulness will encounter
   me before I have gone many steps in the way; if I go out in the company
   of Jesus I shall have the peace that passeth understanding, and the
   heat of my life will be the ardour of an intense devotion.

   "Rest is the Lord." Having done all this, and doing it all, trusting in
   the Lord, delighting in the Lord, committing my way unto the Lord, let
   me now just "rest." Don't worry. Whatever happens, just refer it to the
   Lord! If it be anything injurious He will suppress it. If it be
   anything containing helpful ministry He will adapt it to our need. This
   is the cure for care.
     __________________________________________________________________

PREPARING FOR EMERGENCIES

   "Before governors and kings shall ye be brought for My sake, for a
   testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, be
   not anxious how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in
   that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the
   Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you."--Matthew x. 18-20 (R. V.).

   "Ye shall be brought before governors and kings." This was said to
   fishermen who had lived a quiet, unobtrusive life on and by the
   Galilean lake. It does not require much imagination to enter into the
   panic occasioned by the Master's words. In our day, to appear before a
   Court even as a plaintiff makes one limp and weak and useless; to
   appear as defendant is to suffer collapse. And these humble, toiling
   men, with their horny hands, with their homely dialect, are told that
   they must appear before kings and governors to answer for their lives!
   It is no easy experience for obscure people to appear in the presence
   of the great and mighty. They are often either the victims of
   awkwardness or the prey of paralysing fear. They do the wrong thing;
   they say the wrong thing; things they purposed saying and doing are
   forgotten; both in the presence of the august and when they leave it
   they feel abashed and ashamed. If not the prey of awkwardness they are
   in the bondage of fear; the pith goes out of their powers, and they
   feel as though their wills are melting away. It was by no means an easy
   prospect which the Master held out before them. "Ye shall be brought
   before governors and kings." When they heard the words their secret
   hearts began to busy themselves with this unspoken question: "What
   shall we do?" Immediately they became anxious, possessed by worry,
   thrown into mental and spiritual disorder.

   Here, then, are the disciples contemplating a remote emergency. The
   emergency will come. It is inevitable. The line of their life, at
   present commonplace and even, will rise into a great crisis. As sure as
   the morrow comes the emergency will come with it! What shall they do?
   That was the pregnant question, and the question suggests our present
   meditation. How shall we prepare for emergencies?

   Our life now may be a level, regular road; but to-morrow the character
   of the road will be changed, and we shall be confronted by some great
   and unusual task. What shall we do? It may not be ours to stand as
   culprits before powers of an imperial or ecclesiastical kind. But it is
   not only kings and governors who make life's crises. There are
   presences and powers of another kind, great, strong, and inevitable.
   Other things may stop us, arrest us, imprison us in close bondage.
   There are other kings beside those who sit on thrones. To-morrow I may
   not stand before a king who wears the purple, but I may come into the
   presence of sickness. I may approach the sudden shadow of calamity. I
   may come within the chill and loneliness of bereavement. I may meet
   King Death himself, the king of kings, the king of terror, the shadow
   feared of man. "Ye shall be brought before" sickness, calamity,
   bereavement, death! These presences are inevitable. What shall we do?
   How shall we prepare for them?

   "Ye shall be brought before kings." When the disciples heard the words
   many of them began already to prepare the words which they would
   address to the king. "No," said the Master, "do not prepare a speech,
   be not anxious what ye shall speak. Don't prepare a speech, prepare
   yourselves!" That is the way to meet all emergencies. Not to make
   little detailed arrangements and little specified plans and finished
   speeches, but to have our souls in health and to meet all emergencies
   with the invincibility of a prepared life.

   "Be not anxious." The first step in all wise preparation for
   emergencies is to cultivate the strength of stillness. Anxiety is
   mental and spiritual unrest. It always signifies the absence of
   stillness, the calmness which is the very secret of strength.

   Most of us are familiar with the calm people to whom we instinctively
   turn in times of stress and danger. Among the poor and the working
   classes, where neighbourliness is more alive than among the well-to-do,
   it is beautiful how some one neighbour is renowned for this quality of
   calmness. There is nearly always some woman in the locality to whom
   poor people turn when life passes into the strain of some great
   emergency. She is sent for in cases of accident, or when bad news is
   received, or when Death is at the door. The neighbours say one to
   another, as their first and readiest counsel, "Send for Mrs.
   So-and-So," and the calm woman comes on the scene of general panic and
   disorder, and her presence at once begins to restore confidence. She
   has the strength of stillness. What do we mean by this calmness? We
   mean that she is self-possessed, that she has everything in hand, that
   all her powers are at her disposal like the well-arranged tools in the
   carpenter's shop. We have a very expressive word by which we describe
   this quality of mind. We call it "collectedness." The opposite of
   collectedness is distraction, when a man's powers do not work together,
   but one is passive and another is active, one pulling this way and
   another that, and there is no general aim and direction. The collected
   man has his faculties about him Me well-ordered troops, and he says to
   one "Go," and he goeth, and to another "Come," and he cometh, and to
   all his servants "Do this," and they do it. These are the people who
   save us from the perils of panic, and turn our crises into advantage.
   Lord Kitchener is known in the Army as the strong, silent man. There is
   no flurry or hurry about him. He moves toward seeming disaster as
   though he were going to a feast. None of his powers are paralysed by
   disorder, none are impoverished by anxiety, no strength is wasted,
   everything is intent upon a quietly seen and deliberate end. Now, if we
   are to meet the crises of life, this calmness of spirit must be
   cultivated. It is infinitely better than a prepared speech or a
   ready-made plan; these may fail us when the crisis arrives; the
   stillness is our friend in the dark and stormy day.

   But if we are to obtain the strength of stillness we must practise the
   art of living in the present. "Be not anxious for to-morrow."
   "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." We must not needlessly go
   out to anticipate the crisis. We must not meet our trouble half-way.
   Half-met troubles always appear monstrous. Anticipation makes trifles
   loom gigantic. The thing that frowns, in threatening and terrific
   guise, often ceases to terrify when we draw closer to it. I saw a
   picture some time ago which represented a rising storm. Seen at some
   little distance it appeared as though dark, black, threatening
   cloud-battalions were speedily covering the entire sky and blotting out
   all the patches of light and hope. But when I went a little nearer to
   the picture I found that the artist had subtly fashioned his clouds out
   of angel faces, and all these black battalions wore the winsome aspect
   of genial friends. I have had that experience more than once away from
   the realm of picture and fiction, in the hard ways of practical life.
   The clouds I feared and worried about, and concerning which I wasted so
   much precious strength, lost their frown and revealed themselves as my
   friends. Other clouds never arrived; they were purely imaginary, or
   they melted away before they reached my threshold. "Be not anxious for
   to-morrow." Live in the immediate moment. Practise the art of omission.
   Leave out some things and concentrate upon the rest. The best
   preparation for the morrow is quiet attention to-day.


   "I ask Thee for a present mind.

   Intent on pleasing Thee."

   If I am to be a capable expert, living in the present, I must engage in
   the practice of trusting God in every passing moment of my life. What
   is this that is nearest to me? What is this duty? What is this task?
   What is this immediate trouble? Just here and just now let me trust in
   God. Let me turn this present moment into happy confidence, and in this
   very season let me hold communion with my God. Let my trust be
   deliberate, repeatedly deliberate, until by conscious, volitional trust
   I come to have instinctive confidence in my God. Let me fill the
   present with holy faith, and "the changes that will surely come I shall
   not fear to see."

   And why shall I not fear them? "Be not anxious how or what ye shall
   speak: for it is not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father that
   speaketh in you." Lay hold of the last two words of this great promise,
   "in you." That is the secret of everything. Every act of trust
   increases your capacity for God. Every time I trust Him I have more
   room for Him. He dwells within me in ever-richer fullness, occupying
   room after room in my life. That is a glorious assurance, and one that
   is filled with infinite comfort. Let me repeat it again, for it is the
   very music of the soul; little acts of trust make larger room for God.
   In my trifles I can prepare for emergencies. Along a commonplace road I
   can get ready for the hill. In the green pastures and by the still
   waters I can prepare myself for the valley of the shadow. For when I
   reach the hill, the shadow, the emergency, I shall be God-possessed: He
   will dwell in me. And where He dwells He controls. If He lives in my
   life He will direct my powers. It will not be I that speak, but my
   Father that speaketh in me. He will govern my speech. He will empower
   my will. He will enlighten my mind. He will energise and vitalise my
   entire life.

   Here, then, is the little sequence I have been endeavouring to unfold.
   Put your trust in the Lord and you will live well in the immediate
   present; live well in the immediate present and you will have the
   spirit of calmness which is the secret of strength. The emergency will
   not affright you. You will approach it with that quietness which is the
   essential factor in triumph.
     __________________________________________________________________

"SILENT UNTO GOD"

   "My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him. He
   only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defence; I shall not be
   moved."--Psalm lxii. 5, 6.

   "My soul!" Here is a man communing with his own soul! He is
   deliberately addressing himself, and calling himself to attention. He
   is of set purpose breaking up his own drowsiness and indifference, and
   calling himself to a fruitful vigilance. There is nothing like the
   deliberate exercise of a power for making it spontaneously active. Men
   who come to have keen and discerning vision begin by deliberate
   exercise of the eyes. It is a good and a healthy thing to stand before
   a flower and to clearly and strongly challenge the eyes to attention.
   It is a profitable thing to stand before some natural panorama and wake
   the eyes to diligent quest. Eyes that are trained in deliberateness
   come at last to watch instinctively. We may apply the same reasoning to
   the realm of the spirit. We must challenge our own souls, and rouse
   them to the contemplation of the things of God. "My soul! look upon
   this, and look long!" But let us see to it that when we do incite the
   attention of our spirits we give them something worthy to contemplate.
   "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease!"
   That was a most unworthy spectacle to present to the wondering spirit,
   and it would be no surprise if, after a single glance, the soul fell
   back again into deeper and more perilous slumber.

   Here in my text the Psalmist calls upon his soul to contemplate the
   manifold glory of God. Let us gaze at one or two aspects of the
   inspiring vision.

   "He only is my rock." Here is one of the figures in which the Psalmist
   expresses his conception of the ministry of his God. "My rock!" The
   figure is literally suggestive of an enclosure of rock, a cave, a
   hiding-place. There are two or three kindred words used in the Old
   Testament Scriptures which will, perhaps, unfold to us something of the
   wealthy content of the speech which the Psalmist employs. All the words
   are suggestive of encirclement; they describe the state of being
   surrounded, protected, and secured. Here is one of the kindred words,
   "Thou hast beset me behind and before." How perfectly complete is the
   suggestion of an all-encircling presence, round about me on every side.
   The ramparts are built up all about me, and the ring of defence is
   complete. Perhaps there is no experience in human life which more
   perfectly develops the thought of the Psalmist than the guardianship
   offered by a mother to her baby-child when the little one is just
   learning to walk. The mother literally encircles the child with
   protection, spreading out her arms into almost a complete ring, so that
   in whatever way the child may happen to stumble she falls into the
   waiting ministry of love. Such is the idea of "besetment" which lies in
   this familiar word "rock."

   But let me remind you of another kindred word, "Bind up the money in
   thy hand." You place a coin in the palm of your hand, and your fingers
   close over it, and the precious metal is strongly secured. It is
   encircled by a muscular grasp. Let us carry the suggestion into the
   relationships between ourselves and God. Our Father will secure us as a
   precious jewel in His own clenched hand. His fingers will wrap round
   about us, and there shall be no crevice through which the sheltered
   piece may slip. "None shall pluck you out of My hand!" This, then, is
   the significance of the word "rock." It is a strong enclosure, an
   invincible ring, a grand besetment within which we move in restful
   security.

   "He is my salvation." Then He not only shields me, but strengthens me!
   We are not left by protection in the state of weaklings. We are
   nourished and developed into healthy children. Salvation is a wealthy
   and comprehensive word. It denotes not merely "first aid," the primary
   treatment given to those who are bruised and wounded by the wayside; it
   means, also, "last aid," the bringing of the wounded into strength
   again. Salvation implies more than convalescence, it denotes health. It
   is vastly more than redemption from sin; it is redemption from
   infirmity. It offers no mediocrity; its goal is spiritual prosperity
   and abundance. This promise of health we have in God. He accepts us in
   our disease; He pledges His name to confer absolute health. "Having
   loved His own, He loved them unto the end."

   "He is my defence." The Psalmist is multiplying his figures that he may
   the better bring out the richness of his conception. Defence is
   suggestive of loftiness, of inaccessibility. It denotes the summit of
   some stupendous, out-jutting, precipitous crag! It signifies such a
   place as where the eagle makes its nest, far beyond the prowlings of
   the marauders, away on the dizzy heights which mischief cannot scale.
   God is my defence! He lifts me away into the security of inaccessible
   heights. My safety is in my salvation. Purity is found in the
   altitudes. I have lately been reading the analysis of the air as it is
   found by the aëronaut at different levels above our metropolis. The
   heightening grades revealed heightening degrees of purity, until the
   last microbe appeared to have been left behind. God lifts us to
   spiritual heights where our very loftiness of thought and feeling is
   our best defence. "He hath made us to sit with Him in the Heavenly
   places." In those lofty spheres the pestilential microbe is harmless.
   "Neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling."

   In these three words the Psalmist expresses something of his thought of
   the all-enveloping and protecting presence of God. He is "my rock," "my
   salvation," "my defence." What, then, shall be the attitude of the soul
   towards this God? "My soul, wait thou only upon God." "Wait!" Or as the
   marginal rendering so beautifully gives it, "be thou silent unto God."
   We are to be in the presence of God with thoughts and feelings which
   are the opposite to those of false haste. The spirit of impatience is
   to be hushed and subdued. There is to be nothing of passion or of
   heated distemper. Loud murmurings are to be silenced. Our own clamorous
   wills are to be checked. The perilous heat is to be cooled. We are to
   linger before God in composure, in tranquillity. We are to be
   unruffled. It is the unruffled surface of the pool that receives the
   reflected beauty of the skies. The reflection is clearest where the
   life is most calm. How much evidence we have of this in the temper and
   disposition of the Quakers! They are so frequently, and so long, silent
   unto God that the very peace of God steeps their spirits, and chastens
   and refines their manners, gives softness to their speech, and appears
   to impart leisureliness even to the very activities of their bodies.
   Would it not be wise for us to copy something of their method, and to
   linger silently and quietly in the presence of our God? Perhaps we are
   inclined to talk too much in communion with our God. If silent our
   spirits might be the more receptive. "One evening," says Frances Ridley
   Havergal, "after a relapse, I longed so much to be able to pray, but
   found I was too weak for the least effort of thought, and I only looked
   up and said, `Lord Jesus, I am so tired,' and then He brought to my
   mind Rest in the Lord,' and its lovely marginal rendering, Be silent to
   the Lord,' and so I was just silent to Him, and He seemed to overflow
   me with perfect peace in the sense of His own perfect love."

   "My expectation is from Him." It is to my mind a very fruitful
   significance that the word translated "expectation" might also be
   translated "line" or "cord." "The line of scarlet thread." The line of
   all my hope stretches away to Him, and from Him back to me! The
   Psalmist declares that however circumstances may vary, the cord of his
   hope binds him to the Lord. Ever and everywhere there is the
   outstretched line! I stood a little while ago by the sea. Away over the
   waters above the horizon, there was the moon shining at the full.
   Between me and the moon there was a golden line of light stretching
   across the waters. I walked away down the shore and the line moved with
   me. Wherever I stood there was the golden cord between me and the lamp
   of the night. The experience came back to me when I was considering the
   meaning of the Psalmist's words, "My line is from Him." Whether he was
   in trouble or in joy, in prosperity or adversity, on whatever part of
   the varying shoreline he stood, there was the golden track between him
   and his God. "Thine expectation shall not be cut off"; the line shall
   never be broken.

   "I shall not be moved." Of course not! man whose conception of God is
   that of "Rock," "Salvation," and "Defence," and who is "silent unto
   Him," and is bound to Him by the golden "cord" of hope, cannot be
   moved. But mark how the Psalmist's confidence has grown by the exercise
   of contemplation. In the outset of the Psalm his spirit was a little
   tremulous and uncertain. "I shall not be greatly moved." But now the
   qualifying adverb is gone, the tremulousness has vanished, and he says
   in unshaken confidence and trust, "I shall not be moved."
     __________________________________________________________________

MY STRENGTH AND MY SONG!

   "The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is become my
   salvation."--Isaiah xii. 2.

   THE storm is over. Even the distant rumblings have ceased. The
   righteous, and yet very tender and pitiful, severity of the Lord has
   perfected its ministry and has passed away. The alienated heart has
   been constrained by the sharp instrument of suffering to turn its weary
   self unto God. And now the sun is shining again, the birds are singing,
   the desert is blossoming like the rose! There is a new heaven and a new
   earth! "The Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song: He also is become
   my salvation."

   What does this sweet and joyful singer find in God? "My strength"! "My
   song"! "My salvation"! How extraordinarily rich and comprehensive!
   Everything is there! All that a man needs in the battle of life is
   enshrined in this most wealthy and ancient word. "My strength"; the
   very power to fight! "My song"; with my God I can fight to music; I can
   march to the war to the accompaniment of the band; I can be a singing
   warrior, stepping out to the harmonies of heaven! "My salvation"; with
   my God I fight to victory, to larger liberty, to ever more glorious
   possessions. I say everything is here, the strength that makes me a
   warrior, the song that makes me a happy warrior, the salvation which
   makes me a happy warrior fighting unto richer freedom. Here truly is a
   perfect equipment for life's battle, and this equipment is absolutely
   and entirely found in God.

   "The Lord Jehovah is my strength." That is primary and fundamental. The
   first thing we need is that our weakness be transformed, and that we
   become possessed of resource. All other gifts are useless if this
   initial gift be denied. A box of tools would be impotent without the
   strong hand to use them. There are many gifted lives that are held in
   languor and are altogether inefficient because the gifts ire not backed
   by this elementary strength. Phrenology is far from being a science,
   and much of its teachings savour of quackery, but, amid all its
   vagaries, one lesson has been emphasised, and I think to great
   advantage, that, however finely built a man's mind may be, it is like a
   magnificent engine, idle and productless, unless beneath and behind it
   there is a fine force of executive strength. Our mental powers are
   built up, layer upon layer, from the domestic sentiments, through the
   intellectual senses, to the social and moral and spiritual perceptions,
   but they are all dependent for their vigour and persistence on a
   primary strength, without which they are altogether impotent. Here is
   the organ, which leads the musical services of the church. It is a
   combination of faculties and functions; let the engine power go wrong,
   and all the constituents will become idle! The engine provides the
   power in which all the pipes find their requisite strength. "The Lord
   is my strength." The Lord imparts unto us that primary strength of
   character which makes everything in the life work with intensity and
   decision. We are "strengthened with all might by His Spirit in the
   inner man."

   And the strength is continuous; reserves of power come to us which we
   cannot exhaust. "As thy day so shall thy strength be," strength of
   will, strength of affection, strength of judgment, strength of ideals
   and of achievement. "The Lord is my strength," strength to go on. He
   gives us the power to tread the dead level, to walk the long lane that
   seems never to have a turning, to go through those long reaches of life
   which affords no pleasant surprise, and which depress the spirits in
   the sameness of a terrible drudgery. "The Lord is my strength,"
   strength to go up. He is to me the power by which I can ascend the Hill
   Difficulty, and not be afraid. "They shall walk and not faint." "The
   Lord is my strength," strength to go down. I heard a man say the other
   day concerning his growing physical frailty, "It is coming down that
   tires me!" And in other senses it is coming down that tires a great
   many of us. It is when we leave the bracing heights, where the wind and
   the sun have been about us, and when we begin to come down the hill
   into closer and more sultry spheres, that the heart is apt to grow
   faint. When a man has reached his height, the height of his fame and
   popularity, and he begins to go down the hill, it is then he requires
   exceptional resource. "Though I walk through the valley . . . I will
   fear no ill, for Thou art with me." "The Lord is my strength," strength
   to sit still! And how difficult is the attainment. Do we not often say
   to one another in seasons when we are compelled to be quiet, "if only I
   could do something!" When the child is ill, and the mother has to stand
   by in comparative impotence, how severe is the test! If she could only
   do something, if she could only exhaust herself in some effective
   ministry, if she could only open her own veins and give away her blood!
   But to do nothing, just to sit still and wait, requires tremendous
   strength. "The Lord is my strength!" "Our sufficiency is of God."

   Let us bring out the music of the pronoun which also brings out the
   wonder of the promise. "The Lord is my strength." Is the conjunction
   presumptuous, to bring the Almighty in communion with me? I made a
   little toy water-mill the other day for my little girl, and I used the
   water from the Welsh hills to work it. And we can let in the river of
   Water of Life to work the little mill of our life, to make all its
   powers fruitful and effective. Our God is

   "A gracious, willing Guest,
   Where He can find one humble heart
   Wherein to rest."

   "The Lord is my song." The religious life must not only be
   characterised by strength but by music. If the life of the Christian is
   not musical it is because there is not strength enough. Have you ever
   heard an organ when the wind-power was insufficient? Have you ever
   listened to a man with defective lung-power trying to blow a bugle? The
   wind with inadequate strength results in imperfect harmonies. It is
   when the strength is abounding that we have full song. Go to the Book
   of the Acts, the pentecostal book, where the Holy Spirit is sweeping
   men's lives like a mighty wind. Is there any book more full of music
   and song, with the strain of a triumphant march? Even in the midnight
   "Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God." It is not otherwise
   with the Epistles. The power-Epistles are the singing Epistles. In the
   greatest of the Epistles, when Paul's Spirit-swept soul surveys the
   wonders of grace, the doxologies are abounding. We can be perfectly
   sure that if we are melancholic and gloomy we are wrong at the base, we
   are lacking in resource. Let me return to the illustration I have just
   used. When I had made the little water-mill, and I turned the tap and
   let in a little water from the Welsh hill, it ran reluctantly and
   sluggishly, and without any song. When I still further turned the tap,
   and let in a stronger supply, the wheel spun round with great speed and
   hummed in the spinning! That is what we want. More power would make
   things hum, would make our spirits sing in the riches of grace. How the
   psalmists sang in the day of their power! How frequently comes the
   phrase, "I will sing!" And we can depend upon it, it is a singing
   religion, a religion that sings while it serves, a cheering, musical
   religion that is going to save the world! Again let us say, "Our
   sufficiency is of God." "The Lord is my song." All my music is from
   Him. If the Lord fill my soul with power, there shall rise a unique
   song, a perfectly original strain. Every life will be a new song. Get
   the elementary strength and "the time of the singing of birds is come."

   "The Lord has become my salvation." That is a fine, full-blooded word,
   literally signifying "wealth of space." It is as though a man had been
   fighting in a tight corner, and by the aid of immeasurable "strength,"
   used to the accompaniment of a "song," he had fought his way through
   into a wide space, into larger liberties, into more glorious
   possessions. Salvation includes deliverance, inheritance, and freedom.
   This man has fought and sung his way into ever richer inheritances of
   spiritual liberty. And that may happen to all of us after every one of
   our battles. The Lord will always become our salvation. And then,
   surely, after every fresh deliverance the soul will have more strength
   for its next victory, and in its victory it will sing a larger song,
   and in its song it will be ready for the next fray! "And they sang a
   new song." I do not wonder at it, and they changed it every day!


   "From victory unto victory

   His army shall He lead,

   Till every foe is vanquished

   And Christ is Lord indeed."
     __________________________________________________________________

THE ABIDING COMPANIONSHIP

   "My Presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest."--Exodus
   xxxiii. 14.

   THE other morning I went for a walk up the valley of the Tees. My path
   left the home, passed under the shadow of the County School, crossed
   the Recreation grounds, wound in and out among the wide-spreading
   meadows, now and again coming within sight and sound of the swift,
   eager river, and now veering round and threading the crowded street of
   the busy market-town, and now narrowing to the little track that led to
   a new-made grave. And through all the varying way this evangel
   possessed my mind, "My Presence shall go with thee, and I will give
   thee rest."

   And then suddenly I realised that my walk had been parabolic, and that
   in all its shifting changes life itself had been pourtrayed. My walk
   had been a Pilgrim's Progress, every turning laden with spiritual
   significance. I had touched life at all its emphases, and the gracious
   evangel was fitted to all. "My Presence shall go with thee," in the
   serious affairs of the home, in the serious place of education, in the
   relaxations of amusement and sport, in the broad, quiet spaces of
   Nature's strength and beauty, in the stress and speed of business, and
   along the narrow road that leads to the open grave. The changing road:
   the unchanging Presence! The shifting environment: "the Friend that
   sticketh closer than a brother!" "My Presence shall go with thee, and I
   will give thee rest."

   Whither is our road going to lead? What sudden and unexpected turnings
   shall we experience? Shall we find the road firm and smooth and easy,
   or shall we find it rough and "rutty," straining and tiring to the
   limbs? Will it provide a pleasant saunter, or will it involve bleeding
   feet? Will it be a green lane, or a stony steep? Will the way be clear
   and legible as a turnpike, or will it sometimes be faint and doubtful,
   like an uncertain track across the moor? We do not know: we are alike
   in a common ignorance: culture and wealth ensure no favour: all
   distinctions are here wiped out: we are all upon an unknown road, and
   for everybody the next step is in the mist! "Thou knowest not what a
   day may bring forth." If it were good for us to know it, we should be
   taken into the counsels of the Almighty. The knowledge of the future
   path really matters nothing: the perception of the present
   companionship matters everything! What of the road? "Thou knowest not
   now." What then? "My Presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee
   rest." And so our text entwines the gracious offer of a Companion for
   the unknown and changing road. It promises the destruction of
   loneliness, but not the dispersal of the mist. Let me remind you of
   some of life's lonelinesses which this wonderful Companionship will
   destroy.

   There is the loneliness of unshared sorrow. Is there anything more
   solitary than sorrow that can find no friendly ear? Sorrow which has an
   audience can frequently find relief in telling and retelling its own
   story. How often the bereaved one can find a cordial for the pain in
   recalling the doings and prowess of the departed! It is a wise ministry
   in visiting the bereaved to give them abundant opportunity of speaking
   about the lost. The heart eases itself in such shared remembrance.
   Grief is saved from freezing, and the genial currents of the soul are
   kept in motion. But when sorrow has no companionable presence with
   which to commune, the grief becomes a withering and desolating
   ministry.

   "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old." Aye, there is nothing ages
   people like the loneliness of unshared grief. And there are multitudes
   of people who know no friendly human ear into which they can pour the
   story of their woes. The outlet manward is denied them. What then? Is
   the desolation hopeless? "My Presence shall go with thee." The story
   can be whispered into the ear of the Highest. The Companionship is from
   above. Said one lonely soul, who had been nursing his grief in secrecy,
   as the stricken dove seeks to hide the arrow that rankles in its
   breast, "I will pour out my soul unto the LORD," and in the sympathy of
   that great Companionship his sorrow was lightened, and transfigured,
   like rain clouds in the sun.


   "In the dark and cloudy day,

   When earth's riches flee away,

   And the last hope will not stay,

   My Saviour, comfort me.


   "When the secret idol's gone,

   That my poor heart yearned upon,

   Desolate, bereft, alone,

   My Saviour, comfort me."

   There is the loneliness of unshared triumph. I asked a little while ago
   if there is anything more lonely than sorrow that can find no friendly
   ear? I am bound to say that I sometimes think that lonely triumph is as
   desolate as unshared grief. My memory recalls with vivid clearness one
   of the boys in the school where I received my earliest training. He was
   an orphan-boy, but more than that, he was perfectly friendless. Those
   who were nearest to him were all dead, and the entire interest of his
   guardian exhausted itself in paying the school-fees as they became due.
   When the holidays came, and we all bounded home, he remained at the
   school, for he had nowhere else to go. I thought little or nothing
   about it. Certainly his position did not move me to pain, until one day
   his loneliness broke upon me with appalling reality, when in the
   class-lists he appeared as the premier boy in the school. His triumph
   was most distinguished and brilliant, but he had no one to share it! No
   father, no mother, no kinsman, no friend! I felt that in his success he
   was more desolate than in his defeats! His bereavement seemed to
   culminate in his triumphs!

   Let me illustrate further. I had a friend who in mature life published
   a book on which he had bestowed the hard labours of many years. Some
   time before its publication his wife died, and he was left alone. The
   book received an enthusiastic welcome, and now enjoys high eminence in
   its own department of learning. I spoke to my friend of his
   well-deserved reward, and of the triumph of his labours. His face
   immediately clouded, and he quietly said, "Ah, if only she were here to
   share it!" I say, his loneliness culminated there, and his sharpest
   pang was experienced in his sunniest hour.

   It is not otherwise with the moral triumphs of the soul. When I sin and
   falter, I feel I need a companion to whom I can tell the story of my
   defeat: but when I have some secret triumph I want a companion to share
   the glow and glory of the conquest, or the glow and glory will fade.
   Even when we conquer secret sin the heart calls for a Companion in the
   joy! And here He is! "My Presence shall go with thee!" If you will turn
   to the book of the Psalms you will find how continually the ringing
   paeans sound from hearts that are just bursting with the desire to
   share their joy and triumph with the LORD. They are the communings of
   victory, the gladsome fellowship of radiant souls and their GOD. His
   Presence shall go with us, and He will destroy the loneliness of
   unshared joy.

   And there is the loneliness of temptation. Our friends can accompany us
   so far along the troubled way, and by GOD'S good grace they can
   partially minister to our progress by re-arranging our environment, and
   removing many of the snares and pitfalls from our path. But in this
   serious business of temptation it is little that friend can do for
   friend. The great battle is waged behind a door they cannot enter. The
   real fight, the death-grip, is not in some public arena, with friends
   and spectators gathered around: it takes place in awful and desolate
   loneliness! In the secret place of every temptation no earthly friend
   can be near. A man might possibly fight with wild beasts, if the
   theatre were a public one, and amid the plaudits of assembled crowds:
   but to contend with beasts in secret, to slay them behind the closed
   and muffled door, is desperate and lonely work. But we need not be
   alone! One Presence can pass the door that leads to the secret place.
   "My Presence shall go with thee," not as an interested or applauding
   spectator, but as Fellow-worker, Fellow-fighter, Redeemer, and Friend.
   The loneliness of the wilderness is peopled by the ubiquitous presence
   of the LORD.

   And there is the loneliness of death. It is pathetic, deeply pathetic,
   how we have to stand idly by at the last moment--doctor, nurse,
   husband, wife, child--all to stand idly by, when the lonely voyager
   launches forth into the unknown sea! "It is the loneliness of death
   that is so terrible. If we and those whom we love passed over
   simultaneously, we should think no more of it than changing our houses"
   from one place into another. But every voyager goes alone! Alone? Nay,
   there is a Fellow-voyager! "My Presence shall go with thee." The last,
   chill loneliness is warmed by the Resurrection Life. There is a winsome
   light in the valleys, as of the dawning of grander days. "Though I walk
   through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou
   art with me." "My Presence shall go with thee!" "When thou passest
   through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they
   shall not overflow thee."

   Now, if we only firmly believed this, and clearly realised this
   gracious Presence, what would be the ministry? Well, we should work
   without worry. We should step out without dread. We should waste no
   energy in fruitless fear and sapping care. We should face the unknown
   not daunted by our ignorance. The great Companion may still think it
   good to deny us the light of comprehension: but then, though we may not
   comprehend the nature of the entire way, He will see to it that we have
   light at the next turning of the road. Don't let us be afraid of our
   ignorance. Our Companion is a great husbander of light, and at the
   appointed moment, when "His hour is come," He shall "bring forth thy
   righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday."

   And do not let us be afraid of our weakness. You feel about as little
   like carrying the possible load of the new day as a grasshopper! Never
   mind! Perhaps that is how we ought to feel. We must leave something for
   the great Companion to do! Do not let us try to carry our GOD and our
   burden too! You remember that passage in Isaiah where, with pathetic
   irony, the prophet declares that the people are busy carrying their
   gods, when all the time the great Jehovah is waiting to carry the
   people! No, our little strength will soon leak out. The real combatants
   are not our weakness versus the burdens and difficulties of the day,
   but all these things versus our Almighty Friend! "My Presence shall go
   with thee," and thou shalt lack neither light nor might; "as thy day so
   shall thy strength be," and "at eventide it shall be light."

   But we must lean upon Him and allow Him to carry our load. An aged,
   weary woman, carrying a heavy basket, got into the train with me the
   other day, and when she was seated she still kept the heavy burden upon
   her arm! "Lay your burden down, mum," said the kindly voice of a
   working man. "Lay your burden down, mum; the train will carry both it
   and you." Aye, that's it! "Lay your burden down!" The LORD will carry
   both it and you! "I will give thee rest": not by the absence of
   warfare, but by the happy assurance of victory: not by the absence of
   the hill, but by the absence of the spirit of fainting. "I will give
   thee rest."
     __________________________________________________________________

LIGHT ALL THE WAY

   "I am the light of the world."--John viii. 12.

   "I AM the light!" breaking up the empire of darkness, making things
   luminous by the gracious rays of His own presence. "I am the light of
   the world," breaking upon the tired eyes of men with the soft, quiet
   glory of the dawn. Twice recently has it been my privilege to watch the
   sun rise in circumstances of unusual beauty. Long before his appearing
   we had tokens of his coming. The horizon, and the clouds that gathered
   in little flocks about the horizon, and banks of clouds further remote
   abiding motionless in the highest places, beg-an to clothe themselves
   in appropriate raiment to welcome the sovereign of the morning. Dull
   greys, gleaming silver, deep reds, dark purple--all available hues were
   to be seen in that array. Then in the fullness of time the great flame
   rode out among the encircling glories, making them all appear dim and
   faint in the presence of his own effulgence.

   "I am the light of the world"; and before His coming, His appearance
   was foretold in tokens of purple and gold. Here and there, in Isaiah
   and Jeremiah, we have great peaks tipped with the light of the coming
   day, suggesting the glory in which the whole world would be bathed in
   after time. "He shall feed His flock like a shepherd"; is not that a
   fore-token of the tenth chapter of John? "Liberty to the captive, and
   the opening of the prison to them that are bound"; is not this the
   herald of the wonderful happenings which thrill the gospel story
   through and through? And then, after all these golden hints of promise,
   there came the Sun, the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings,
   and the whole world passed into a new day.

   "I am the light"; and what multitudes of things He illumined I He threw
   light upon the character of God, upon the nature of man, upon the
   beauty of holiness, upon the abominableness of sin. He revealed the
   poverty of the far country, and with a clear, winning light he showed
   the way back home. The illumination touches everything, enlightening
   and quickening everywhere. Let me narrow our subject, and bring our
   consideration into certain immediate aspects and needs of the personal
   life. Christ is the light and I need Him. When? Where? I need a light
   in the unknown day of life. I need a light in the unknown night of
   death. I need a light in the unknown morrow beyond. I want my Lord
   to-day, to-night, to-morrow.

   I need the light in the unknown day of life. If I interpret myself
   aright I am in need of three great primary things: I want to see the
   right way, I want to love it, and I want power to walk in it. The Light
   of Life will satisfy all these needs and equip me throughout my
   pilgrimage. How shall we interpret light? Let us begin here. Science
   tells us of the conversion of forces, how one force can be translated
   into another, how motion can become heat and heat become light; and
   this process of translation can be reversed. Our scientific papers have
   been recently telling us of a great experiment which has been tried in
   America. A vast machine was invented in the shape of a gigantic
   windmill, the arms being composed of reflectors catching the light of
   the sun. The concentrated light, in the form of heat, was then made to
   generate steam, and the steam was used to drive complicated machinery.

   Now in this wonderful invention we have illustrated the process of
   transformation by which light is converted into heat and heat into
   motion. In light we have the secret of fire, and in fire we have the
   secret of movement. So that when my Lord uses the figure of light I may
   find in its spiritual suggestion satisfaction for all other needs of my
   life. "I am the light," not only to make lucid but to make fervid, not
   only to make fervid but to make operative. The light illumines; the
   light kindles; the light empowers. The Lord brings to me light that I
   may know, warmth that I may feel, and power that I may do. He satisfies
   the mind, He inflames the desire, He communicates energy to the will.
   In my mind I need the light! "Lord, give me light to do Thy work." When
   the Saviour of the world takes up His abode in me, illumination is
   conveyed to two of my powers; the conscience is made to shine with the
   distinctiveness of a lighthouse, and the judgment glistens with the
   brightness of a sharp sword. The "eyes of my understanding" are
   enlightened, and the lamp of the conscience is never suffered to grow
   dim.

   In my desires I need warmth! Bright ideas would not adequately serve my
   need. If I am cold in desire the lucid ideal will have no allurement.
   "Lack of desire is the ill of all ills." And when the revelation has
   been given, aspiration is needed. How often this healthy desire is
   mentioned in the Word of God! "They desire a better country." "Desire
   the sincere milk of the Word." "Desire spiritual gifts." Now it is this
   desire which the Light of the World enkindles. He makes me not only to
   see the ideal, but to become fervid in spirit. He makes His disciples
   "burning and shining" lights.

   And I need strength in my will! The power to see and the power to feel
   would not give me perfect equipment. I need the strength to move. In
   the illustration I employed it was seen how light could be translated
   into the power of motion; and the Light of Life conveys energy to the
   spirit which enables it to follow the gleam. In Him we live and move.
   "It is God that worketh in you to will." And so in light and warmth and
   power the Lord will be to me all that I need in the day of life. I
   shall know His mind, I shall love His appearing, I shall be
   strengthened to move at His command.

   But the night cometh! I shall need Him to-night. To-night I shall have
   to lie down and die. Is there any light? "I am the light." He claims
   that to those who are in Him the night shineth even as the day. What
   does my Lord do in the hour of death to break up the reign of darkness?
   He gives us the cheer of sovereignty. "All things are yours . . . .
   death!" Then I do not belong to death? No, death belongs to me. Death
   is not my master, he is my servant. He is made to minister to me in the
   hour of translation, and I shall not be enslaved by his approach. That
   was a true and beautiful word uttered by Mrs. Booth when she was
   passing home: "The waters are rising, but I am not sinking!" Death was
   her minister, floating her forward to glory. "All things are yours . .
   . . death." And my Lord further softens the night by the gracious light
   of fellowship. "I will be with thee." When we are in fine and congenial
   company how the time passes! The hours slip away and we marvel when the
   moment for separation comes. And so it will be in death! Our company
   will be so rich and welcome that the season will pass before we know
   it. I think the Christian's first wondering question on the other side
   will be: "Am I really through? Really?" "Even the night shall be light
   about thee." It matters not how stormy the night may be, the Light of
   Life shall never be blown out. "At even-tide it shall be light."

   And what about the morrow? When the river is crossed, is there any
   light upon the regions beyond? Am I to gaze into blackness,
   impenetrable, inscrutable? "I am the light." What kind of light does He
   give me here? "In my Father's house!" Is there not a softening gleam in
   the very phrase? Look here for a sheaf of rays of welcome light. "In my
   Father's house," there is our habitation! "I go to prepare a place for
   you," there is the preparation for us! "I will receive you unto
   myself," there is a welcome for us! Does not this throw the soft light
   of the morning on the Beyond? The same light which has been given to me
   along the way of time will shine upon me in the realms of the new day.
   "The Lord God is the light thereof." So, you see, it is Jesus all the
   way; my light to-day, tonight, to-morrow!


   "I heard the voice of Jesus say:--

   I am this dark world's light.

   Look unto Me, thy morn shall rise,

   And all thy days be bright.'

   I looked to Jesus and I found

   In Him my star, my sun:

   And in that Light of Life I'll walk

   Till travelling days are done."
     __________________________________________________________________

OUR BRILLIANT MOMENTS

   "While ye have light believe in the light, that ye may be the children
   of light."--John xii. 36.

   "WHILE ye have light." Take advantage of the sun while it shines. The
   vivid illumination is not constant. Life's visions do not shine and
   glow like brilliant and continuous noons. The lucid seasons are rare
   and infrequent. They come and they go, bright intervals in the wastes
   of grey twilight and darker night. There is an illumination for a
   moment; in that moment we have a glimpse of reality, and the colours
   and outlines of things are clearly revealed. "While ye have light
   believe in the light."

   A little while ago, on a dark and stormy night, I wandered along a
   winding road on a bleak hillside. Things in the distance were hidden
   from my view, and the things which were near were revealed in weird and
   portentous guise. Then the clouds divided, and the full moon swept into
   the rift, and in the blaze of light the road stood out like a white
   ribbon across the hill, and the whole countryside emerged into view,
   river and hedgerow and tree. And the rift closed again, the door was
   shut and again the darkness reigned. But I had taken my bearings, and I
   could proceed with assured tread. If the enveloping clouds or the mists
   of the night roll themselves back for a moment, and disclose the stars,
   by that twinkle of a moment man can adjust and correct his course.
   Sometimes the illuminant in nature is not the soft light of moon or
   star. Sometimes the ministry of vision is severe and terrific
   lightning, bringing hidden things to view with fearful and startling
   intensity. The flash of a moment can unveil a secret and buried world.
   "While ye have light believe in the light."

   As it is in the realm of nature so it is in the finer region of the
   soul. We have our brilliant moments. In those moments the near view
   opens out into the distant prospect and we see things clearly. We are
   privileged to have "heavenly visions." We have the light! In these
   bright, lucid seasons we gain some clearer apprehension of God, we look
   more deeply into the mystery of life, we can behold our ideal
   possibilities and gaze upon our purified and exalted selves. We see in
   the winsomeness of duty the repulsiveness of sin, and the charm and
   fascination of unselfish service. These are the brilliant moments in
   life, when the clear light is shining upon our changing way. We can
   never be sure when the revelation may come. We never know when the
   concealing cloud will divide, and the radiant light will throw her
   kindly ministry upon our dusky way. We never know just when the veil of
   the temple will be rent in twain, and our wondering eyes will gaze into
   the secrets of the holy place.

   Sometimes the brilliant moment comes to us when we are contemplating a
   scene of superlative beauty. Who has not read that wonderful passage in
   one of Kingsley's letters wherein he describes how the trout stream on
   Dartmoor, and all its immediate surroundings, opened out into an
   apocalypse of the unseen? The temporal divided, and he saw God! I heard
   a man a little while ago describing his experiences amid the
   unspeakable wonders of the Alps, and his story culminated in a
   never-to-be-forgotten morning when, away up on the solitary heights, he
   declared there was "only a film between him and the Lord." I heard
   another man tell a little company that there had been five or six
   distinct moments in his life, and perhaps the most commanding of them
   was a season of sunset in the Austrian Tyrol, when his soul literally
   trembled in the unfolding glory. Yes, these are brilliant moments, when
   the heavenly light breaks upon our wondering eyes.

   Sometimes the brilliant moment comes in a season of calm and lonely
   meditation. Everybody else is at rest. The house is quiet. The last
   book has been put away. And suddenly our surroundings fade away, or are
   eclipsed, and life's possibilities shine before us in dazzling summits
   of ambition, pure as Alpine heights. Range upon range of surpassing
   loveliness breaks upon our spiritual vision, and we behold what we
   might be in the Lord. It is one of the moments of the Son of Man, a
   brilliant moment, and we have the light.

   Or perhaps the brilliant moment comes to us in the rending ministry of
   sorrow. It is amazing how far we can see through the tiniest niche and
   crevice. And when our imprisoning and commonplace environment has been
   shaken and convulsed in some season of upheaval and trouble, through
   the very rifts of the disaster we often obtain a clear glimpse of a
   forgotten or neglected world. "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw
   the Lord." The vision came in a bewildering season of night. Our tears
   frequently give lucidity and range to our views. "Before I was
   afflicted I went astray, but now . . . !" The light had come in the
   midnight. The brilliant moment had come in the time of the shadow.

   Or perhaps, again, the brilliant moment is experienced in the sanctuary
   and the ministries of public worship. In some part of the service we
   gain a wonderful detachment; the ordinary interests that imprison us
   lose their tyranny; we acquire a spiritual freedom; we soar and see! We
   gaze upon the Father, we behold our relationship to Him, we feel the
   greatness of our possible inheritance, and we thrill to the high
   calling of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It may be that the detachment
   and the exaltation spring from a hymn, or from some word from Holy
   Scripture, or from the leadings of another man's petitions, or from a
   strain of music. Perhaps it is some face in the congregation that
   reminds us of another face, and the reminiscence opens the heavens to
   us. But whatever may be the agent of the illumination, in that
   momentary vision, however created, we have a lucid revelation of the
   reality of things. We see! We have the light!


   "Sometimes a light surprises

   The Christian while he sings.

   It is the Lord, who rises

   With healing in His wings."

   "While ye have light believe in the light." The brilliant moment
   passes. The ecstatic revelation comes to an end. The clouds close
   again. The grey and commonplace twilight returns. How, then, shall we
   regard and interpret ourselves? Which shall we trust--the revelation of
   the brilliant moment or the revelation of the familiar twilight? Shall
   we direct our way according to what we saw at our best, or what we saw
   in the mediocre season of our life? Here is the answer of our Lord:
   "Believe in the light" Believe what thou didst behold in thy brilliant
   moment. Just then, when thy highest powers were at their best, and the
   season was gracious and genial, take thy bearings. Do not mistrust thy
   highest, and give thine homage to thy lowest. What didst thou see of
   thy Lord in thy brilliant moment? What vision didst thou have of His
   power and His grace and His love? Take that for thy guide: "Believe in
   the light." What didst thou see of thyself in thy brilliant moment?
   What of thy present sin, thy possible holiness, thy capabilities of
   fellowship as a friend and companion of the Lord? "Believe in the
   light." What didst thou see of duty in thy brilliant moment? Which way
   did the road take? Over the steep hill or down the seductive vale? Did
   it reverse thy present purpose and reveal to thee another way? "Believe
   in the light." What didst thou see of brotherhood in thy brilliant
   moment? What of pale, beseeching need? What of the helpless and the
   careworn and the dying? Didst thou see thyself taking a towel and
   girding thyself? Such, then, is thy possibility, and such is the vision
   of thy best. "Believe in the light." Do not doubt thy brilliant moments
   doubt thy glooms, doubt the revelations of depression, the perverse and
   crooked creations of despair. The best is always the true. Nothing is
   too good to be true. It is rather true because it is the good, true
   because it is the best. "Believe in the light." Let the brilliant
   vision determine our goings when the ecstatic season is over. Let us
   act upon what we see at our best. Why? Because the only way to remember
   a vision is to act it. "Walk in the light lest darkness come upon
   thee." Aye, that is a terrible truth, and we all know it. How many of
   our brilliant moments are now things of the night! If we want to keep a
   brilliant vision we must enact it. Walk in the light of the lucid
   vision and the vision will endure. "I was not disobedient unto the
   heavenly vision." Let us believe in our best moments, and life as a
   whole will rise to the plane of best.

   And the principle is as applicable to people as to individuals. Let us
   believe in the revelation of our brilliant moments, in our national
   possibilities as seen by our nation at its best. Sometimes a man
   appears upon the grey and commonplace road of low policy and mean
   expedient and cowardly compromise, and he unfolds a vision of national
   ideals, and the common life is exalted and glorified. He calls to us,
   "My fellow men, look upon this," and we turn a reluctant eye, half in
   derision and half in unbelief. We answer him that his dreamy vision is
   impracticable. And so we leave the prophet, and we swear by the
   politician! Oh, the pity of it! "O Jerusalem, thou that stonest the
   prophets," the men with the seeing eyes, the men who bring the
   brilliant moments into the commonplace history of the people! We turn
   from the prophet because his vision is brilliant. Let us rather
   "believe in the light." If we will not believe, the prophet passes, the
   vision fades, and we wander in the confusion of bewildering guesswork
   instead of looking to the decisive leadership of the light Divine. How
   often would those leadings have been revealed unto us, "but now they
   are hidden from our eyes." For individuals and for peoples the
   brilliant moments are provided in order that we may take our bearings,
   and by their interpretation adjust the affairs of our ever-changing
   days.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE LORD'S GUESTS

   "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine
   enemies."--Psalm xxiii. 5.

   THIS is a desert scene. A hot, panting fugitive is fleeing for his
   life, pursued and hunted by the forces of a fierce revenge. His crime
   is placarded on his garments. The marks of blood are upon him. In a
   moment of passion, or in cool deliberateness, he has maimed and
   outraged his brother. And now fear has spurred him to flight. Nemesis
   is upon his track. He takes to the desert! The wild, inhospitable waste
   stretches before him in shadowless immensity. No bush offers him a
   secret shelter. No rock offers him a safe defence. He can almost feel
   the hot breath of his pursuers in the rear. Whither shall he turn? His
   terrified eyes search the horizon, and in the cloudy distance he
   discerns the dim outlines of a desert-tent. His excited nerves play
   like whips about his muscles, and with terrific strain he makes for the
   promised rest. The way is long! The enemy is near! The air is feverish!
   The night is falling! The runner is faint! Spurring himself anew, and
   flinging all his wasting resources into the flight, with the pursuers
   even at his heels, he stretches out toward the mark, and with one last
   tremendous exertion he touches the tent-rope and is safe! He is now a
   guest of the desert-man, and the guest is inviolable. All the hallowed
   sanctions of hospitality gather about him for his defence. He is taken
   into the tent, food is placed before him, while his evaded pursuers
   stand frowningly at the door. The fugitive is at rest. If he can speak
   at all I think his words will be these, "Thou preparest a table before
   me in the presence of mine enemies." Such is the undimmed glory of Arab
   hospitality. To injure a guest is the mark of the deepest depravity.
   Many of the Bedouins light fires in their encampments to guide the
   travellers or fugitives to their tents. Many of them keep dogs, not
   only for the purpose of watching against perils, but in order that, by
   their bark, they may guide the tired and benighted wayfarer to their
   place of rest. And so the fugitive finds food and shelter. To touch the
   tent-rope is to enter the circle of inviolable hospitality. The host is
   the slave of the guest as long as the guest remains. All the resources
   of the tent are placed as his disposal. He can lie down in peace, and
   take his rest in safety. The pursuer is stayed beyond the tent. He can
   only "look" the revenge he dare not inflict. "Thou preparest a table
   before me in the presence of mine enemies."

   Such is the desert symbol. What is its spiritual significance? The soul
   is a fugitive, in flight across the plains of time. The soul is pursued
   by enemies, which disturb its peace, and threaten its destruction. The
   soul is often terror-stricken. The soul is often a "haunt of fears."
   There are things it cannot escape, presences it cannot avoid, enemies
   that dog its track through the long, long day, from morning until
   night. What are these enemies that chase the soul across the ways of
   time? Can we name them?

   Here is an enemy, the sin of yesterday. I cannot get away from it. When
   I have half-forgotten it, and leave it slumbering in the rear, it is
   suddenly awake again, and, like a hound, it is baying at my heels. Some
   days are days of peculiar intensity, and the far-off experience draws
   near and assumes the vividness of an immediate act. Yesterday pursues
   to-day, and threatens it!


   "O! I have passed a miserable night,

   So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,

   That, as I am a Christian faithful man,

   I would not spend another such a night,

   Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days,

   So full of dismal terror was the time."

   And what were the "ugly sights" which filled the time with "dismal
   terror"? They were the threatening presences of old sins, pursuing in
   full cry across the years! The affrighted experience is all
   foreshadowed by the Word of God. Whether I turn to the Old Testament or
   to the New Testament the awful succession is proclaimed as a primary
   law of the spiritual life. "Evil pursueth sinners." That sounds
   significant of desert-flight and hot pursuit! "Be sure your sin will
   find you out!" as though our sin were an objective reality. The hounds
   of Nemesis have found the scent, and they are following on in fierce
   pursuit! "Be sure your sin will find you out." If I turn to the New
   Testament the dark succession is made equally sure. "Their works do
   follow them." I know these words are spoken of the good, the
   spiritually-minded, the men and the women who have spent themselves in
   beneficent sacrifice. "Their works do follow them!" They are attended
   by the radiant procession of their services, a shining, singing throng,
   conducting them in jubilation along the ways of time into the temple of
   the blest! But the converse is equally true. The spiritually-rebellious
   and unclean are followed by the dark and ugly procession of their own
   deeds, every deed a menacing foe, reaching out a condemnatory finger,
   and pursuing them through the portals of death into the very precincts
   of the judgment-throne. "Their works do follow them." The sin of
   yesterday is chasing the soul across the plains of to-day! "Since thou
   hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee."

   Here is another enemy, the temptation of today. Yesterday is not the
   only menacing presence; there is the insidious seducer who stands by
   the wayside to-day. Sometimes he approaches me in deceptive
   deliberateness; sometimes his advance is so stealthy that in a moment I
   am caught in his snare! At one time he comes near me like a fox; at
   other times he leaps upon me like a lion out of the thicket. At one
   time the menace is in my passions, and again it crouches very near my
   prayers! Now the enemy draws near in the heavy guise of carnality, "the
   lust of the flesh"; and now in the lighter robe of covetousness, "the
   lust of the eyes"; and now in the delicate garb of vanity, "the pride
   of life"! But in all the many guises it is the one foe. In the manifold
   suggestions there is one threat "The enemy that sowed them is the
   devil." If I am awake I fear! If I move he follows! "When I would do
   good evil is present with me." "O wretched man that I am, who shall
   deliver me from the body of this death?" The soul is in the desert,
   chased by the enemy of ever-present temptation.

   Here is a third enemy, the death that awaits me to-morrow. "And I
   looked and beheld a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death,
   and Hell followed with him!" Man seeks to banish that presence from his
   conscience, but he pathetically fails. The pale horse with his rider
   walks into our feasts! He forces himself into the wedding-day! "To love
   and to cherish until death us do part!" We have almost agreed to exile
   his name from our vocabulary. If we are obliged to refer to him we hide
   the slaughterhouse under rose-trees, we conceal the reality under more
   pleasing euphemisms. I have become insured. What for? Because to-morrow
   I may---- No, I do not speak in that wise. I banish the word at the
   threshold. I do not mention death or dying. How then? I have become
   insured, because "if anything should happen to me----?" In such
   circumlocution do I seek to evade the rider upon the pale horse. Yet
   the rider is getting nearer! To-morrow he will dismount at the door,
   and his hand will be upon the latch! Shall we fear his pursuit? "The
   terrors of death compassed me," cries the Psalmist. "Through fear of
   death they were all their lifetime subject to bondage," cries the
   Apostle of the New Covenant. It is an enemy we have got to meet. "The
   last enemy . . . is death." Here, then, we are, lone fugitives crossing
   the desert of time, chased by the sin of yesterday, menaced by the
   temptation of to-day, threatened by death to-morrow! The enemies are
   about us on every side. "My heart is sore pained within me, and the
   terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come
   upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me." "Oh that I had wings like a
   dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest." Whither can we turn?
   On the whole vast plain, is there one tabernacle whose tent-ropes we
   may touch, and in whose circle of hospitality we may find food and
   refuge and rest?

   "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of
   trouble." In the Lord our God is the fugitive's refuge. "In the secret
   of His tabernacle shall He hide me." In the Lord our God we are secured
   against the destructiveness of our yesterdays, the menaces of to-day,
   and the darkening fears of the morrow. Our enemies are stayed at the
   door! We are the Lord's guests, and our sanctuary is inviolable! But
   what assurance have we that the Lord will take us in? I will give you
   the assurance. "Hath He not said, and shall He not do it?" I will give
   you the assurance. The most inspiring way to read the commandments of
   God is to interpret them also as evangels. Commandments are not only
   expressive of duties, they are revelations of God. Look into a
   commandment and you can see what you might be; look into a commandment
   and you will see what God is. Therefore commandments are not only human
   ideals, they are expressive of Divine glory. I would know, therefore,
   what the Lord has commanded, in order that I may look into it for a
   vision of His face. He has commanded us to be "given to hospitality,"
   to have the camp-fires lit that lost and fear-stricken pilgrims may be
   guided to shelter and rest! Then, are His camp-fires burning, and is He
   standing at the tent-door to give the fugitives welcome? I have heard
   Him apportion the rewards of His kingdom, and these were the terms of
   the benediction, "I was a stranger, and ye took Me in." Then will the
   Lord Himself throw back the tent-curtain, and take me out of the fright
   and darkness into the light and warmth and rest of His own abode!


   "If I ask Him to receive me,

   Will He say me nay?

   Not till earth, and not tin heaven

   Pass away!"

   This, then, is my assurance. What He wants me to do, He does. What He
   empowers me to be, He is!

   "Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt
   His own love can compete with it? . . . Would I fain in my impotent
   yearning do all for this man,

   And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?

   . . . . .

   Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,

   To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would . . .

   Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou--so wilt Thou!"

   "I will flee unto Him to hide me."

   And what shall I find in the tent? "Thou preparest a table before me in
   the presence of mine enemies." There is something so exuberantly
   triumphant in the Psalmist's boast! It is laughingly defiant in its
   security. The enemies frown at the open door, while he calmly sits down
   to a feast with his Lord. "Yesterday" glowers, but cannot hurt.
   "To-day" tempts, but cannot entice. "To-morrow" threatens, but can. not
   destroy. "O death! where is thy sting?" They are like the enemies which
   John Bunyan saw just outside the Valley of the Shadow, two giants by
   whose power and tyranny many had been cruelly put to death, but who can
   now "do little more than sit in the cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims
   as they go by, and biting their nails because they cannot come at
   them." We taste our joys in the presence of our discomfited foe.

   In "the secret of His tabernacle" we shall find a sure defence. "Who
   can separate us from the love of Christ?" We shall find a refreshing
   repose. The shock of panic will be over. The waste of fear will be
   stayed. We shall "rest in the Lord," and "hide under the shadow of His
   wing." We shall find an abundant provision. Our Host is grandly "given
   to hospitality." As quaint John Trapp says, "There is not only
   fullness, but redundance." He giveth "good measure, pressed down,
   shaken together, running over!" On the Lord's table there is provision
   for everybody, and the nutriment is suited to each one's peculiar need.

   The only time I have ever heard a sermon on this text was twenty years
   ago, when I heard Horatius Bonar proclaim its good news to a great
   company of blind people gathered from the many institutions and homes
   of the city of Edinburgh. "Thou preparest a table before me," a poor,
   burdened pilgrim, groping sightless through the ways of time! Aye,
   there was provision on the table for the blind! And for all of us there
   is a table prepared and arranged for our need. "In my Father's house
   there is bread enough and to spare." The desert is cold and weird; in
   the tent there is warmth and cheer The desert is the lurking-place of
   the enemy; in the tent is the glorious fellowship of God! "In the time
   of trouble He shall hide thee in His pavilion." "Knock, and it shall be
   opened unto you."


   "Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

   Let me hide myself in Thee."
     __________________________________________________________________

HIDDEN MANNA

   "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and
   will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which
   no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."--Revelation ii. 17.

   I THINK we ought not to refer the fulfilment of this great prophecy to
   some remote futurity when we have passed through the veil and are in
   the kingdom of eternal day. If this promise is to be of much worth to
   me, it must be worth something now. I don't suppose there will ever be
   a time when I shall need the hidden manna more than I need it now.
   Certainly there will never come a day when I shall be in greater need
   of the white stone than I am to-day. Therefore I want at once to draw
   this word quite back from that remote day, and regard it as a promise
   for current need, as a blessing offered to men and women to-day.

   Hidden manna! What is it? Hidden resources; strengthening and
   sustaining food given to the man who is in the fighting line--a feast
   upon the battlefield. "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence
   of mine enemies."

   There is nothing that distinguishes one man from another more than
   staying power. What resources has a man upon which he can draw? What
   hidden bread can he call out in the dark and impoverished day? You know
   how that contrast prevails even in the realm of the body; how we
   contrast and distinguish one from another by the amount he can visibly
   endure. Why, even of the men who try to achieve the feat of swimming
   across the Channel the great outstanding contrast is the amount of
   hidden manna they possess, the amount of secret resources, their
   capacity to hold out.

   Then the contrast prevails in the realm of dispositions. Take the first
   half-dozen of your friends, and try to measure the length of their
   tempers; try to put your finger just at the point where irritability
   begins. You will be amazed how different are the lengths you will have
   to measure out. One man swiftly exhausts his little store, and has no
   hidden manna upon which to draw. We say, "his patience was soon spent."
   Others have hidden manna, and are marvellous in their powers of
   toleration. How long can you go on, how far can you go in an atmosphere
   of discouragement, ingratitude, apparent ineffectiveness, and open
   contempt? How long can you go on teaching a Sunday-school class, and
   never making a convert? How much hidden manna have you?

   The contrast prevails in wider fields still. We hear people saying of a
   man, "How does he do it?" He is not over strong, sickness is never out
   of his house, the funeral hearse has often stopped at his door, money
   does not appear to be plentiful, business is not brisk; his sky is
   continually overcast. How does he do it? His disposition remains
   cheery, his hope remains bright, his endeavour abides persistent! What
   is his staying power? "Hidden manna."

   Now, observe, there are two primary emphases of the Christian evangel.
   The first primary note is that our Lord is acquainted with the secret
   need of the individual life. "I know My sheep." "Thy Father"--is not
   this beautiful?--who seeth beneath the skin, who seeth in secret where
   the kindliest eye of thy dearest friend cannot pierce--"thy Father
   seeth thy secret need."

   The second primary note is this: our God will bring the secret bread to
   the secret need. Our secret life shall be preserved from starvation,
   or, to use the words of Paul, our inner life is renewed--fed up,
   sustained, nourished. That is what constitutes the outstanding contrast
   between men. Some men are in covenant with the One who has the secret
   knowledge, and He brings down the hidden manna by which they gain their
   sustenance and give you and me such keen and frequent surprises.
   General Booth has not always been the idol of the country. He has
   rather been the victim of insult, brutality, and open contempt. Where
   now throughout the length and breadth of the land civic dignitaries
   hasten to pay him honour, in those very towns and cities in past days
   he was pelted with the mire of the streets and treated as the very scum
   of the earth. For thirty or forty years he endured, and no civic or
   national dignity was conferred upon him, no patronage of the great! Yet
   he endured--on, on, on! right on to white hairs! What was the secret?
   "Hidden manna." "I have meat to eat that ye know not of."

   What is the second promise of the evangel? "I will give him a white
   stone." This phrase was running through my brain when I was away for my
   holiday recently, and in passing along a pebble-strewn beach I picked
   up a white pebble. I looked at it very intently and inquisitively--and
   spiritually, in the hope that it would communicate something to me of
   the significance of the Apostle's figure. It was wonderfully pure; it
   was intensely hard; it was exceedingly smooth. My Lord will give to me
   a "white stone." What is the significance of it? My interpretation was
   this: "I will endow thee with a character pure as a white stone that
   lies upon the beach, hard and tenacious as that stone, beautifully
   refined, with all obstrusive and painful angularities smoothed away."
   Is there anything more exquisitely clean than a white pebble? I don't
   know how many times the wavelets have washed over the stone until it is
   cleansed from all defilement. "I will give to thee a life so washed
   every day by the waters of grace that every part of thy being shall be
   as clean as a white stone." Perfectly clean is what God purposes us to
   be. Moral dirt is unnatural. When we are perfectly clean all our powers
   will work with simplicity and naturalness, as in the very sight of God.

   "Perfectly pure I will make thee--and hard!" Oh, not the hardness of
   insensitiveness, but the hardness of strength. Said one of my young
   fellows, speaking of another man, "His muscles are as hard as nails."
   That is the hardness we want in the spirit. Muscular hardness that will
   not yield to an easy threat or even to a formidable threat, the
   hardness which is the opposite to flabbiness, softness of limb. The man
   whose moral muscles are as hard as pebbles, as hard as nails, cannot be
   broken by any temptations which assail him. That is the character we
   want--rock-character!

   Then there is this beautiful addition: "In the stone a new name
   written." The name I bore in the old life before I turned to the Lord
   is to be forgotten. A man came to me in my vestry and said, "Do you
   think God ever forgets and forgives a man's past?" I replied, "God so
   forgets a man's past that He forgets the man's name! He blots it out,
   and gives him a new one." We have not to wait for the white stone, but
   I think we shall have to wait for the unveiling of the new name. No one
   will enter into the meaning of it except the one to whom it is given.
   How can any man know my triumphs who has not known my shame? I don't
   think that Lydia, who lived in Philippi, will ever be able to
   comprehend the new name of the jailer who lived in the same town. If
   there had been a kind of Wesleyan fellowship meeting in Philippi, I
   think their experiences would have been a perfect enigma to each other.
   I wonder if Billy Bray can ever appreciate the new name given to Henry
   Drummond, or if Henry Drummond will quite appreciate that of Billy
   Bray. I wonder if Catherine Booth will understand the new name of Mary
   Magdalene. I wonder if Mary Magdalene will ever be able to get beneath
   the surface of the new name of Catherine Booth. We all have our little
   secrets with our Lord. When He calls you by your name, no one else will
   respond to it but you.

   God will feed us with strength, and endow us with a character like a
   white stone, and will give to us a unique and individual name. Will you
   have it? I remember hearing Henry Drummond, addressing a great meeting
   of graduates and undergraduates, say (and it was about the most
   sensational thing he ever did say): "Gentlemen, do you mean business?
   Here is my Lord. If you mean business, give Him your hand--and stick!"
     __________________________________________________________________

THE REJOICING DESERT

   "The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose."--Isaiah xxxv. 1.

   THERE is nothing more interesting and fascinating than to watch the
   transformation of the barren into the beautiful. Conversion is often
   more wonderful than creation. We gaze with extraordinary attention as
   some half-repellent thing passes through some mysterious process, and
   in the process becomes lovely. There is always something alluring about
   the transformation of the desert. In my schooldays I had a
   drawing-master who was a very pronounced expert in his profession, and
   he adorned the walls of the schoolroom with many of his own creations.
   I have almost completely forgotten those masterpieces, but I perfectly
   well remember the transformation of one of my own drawings into a thing
   of comparative beauty. The drawing itself, as I had left it, was
   fearfully imperfect, and I looked upon it almost with feelings of
   loathing; but the master touched it and retouched it, and the half-ugly
   thing became a passable representation of an ancient arch. "The desert
   was made to rejoice and blossom as the rose." I know two places in
   Newcastle-on-Tyne, Jesmond Dene and Brandling Park. Jesmond Dene was
   always beautiful, even before it became a public resort. A few pathways
   were cut through it, and it was made a little more hospitable to the
   crowd. But Brandling Park was once an eyesore to the city. It was the
   place of a common tip, where loads of rubbish were heaped together. And
   then the municipality determined to change this eyesore into a winsome
   thing, and they converted it into a beautiful park. Often, on my way to
   my church, have I rested amid its beautiful green and flowers, and I
   have rejoiced in the transformation of the repellent into the lovely.
   "The desert rejoiced and blossomed like the rose." The conversion of
   Brandling Park was even more wonderful than the original creation of
   Jesmond Dene.

   It is not long since the first trees were planted in the great work of
   re-afforesting the Black Country. In all broad England there is no
   stretch of country more depressing than that which lies in dismal waste
   between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. And now the attempt is being made
   to transform it, and to redeem the Black Country from its well-deserved
   notoriety. Yes, it is transformation that arrests our attention. And
   here is a gracious promise from our God, offering a very miracle of
   transformation in human life. Just as the eyesore was turned into a
   park, just as the Black Country is being re-beautified, so the Lord
   will lay hold of the Black Country of the soul and convert it into His
   own garden. Let us take the great, mighty promise round about the
   circuit of our life, let us plant it like an inspiring banner over our
   deserts, that waving there it may proclaim our wonderful possibilities
   in the redeeming grace of Christ.

   Our Lord will transform the desert of the soul and make it blossom as
   the rose. Who has not known the desert-soul? There is nothing gracious
   about it, nothing winsome and welcome. When people draw near they can
   find nothing satisfying in its presence. There is no fruit they can
   pluck, no water of inspiration they can drink, no grateful shade in
   which they may find refreshing rest. The whole being is hot and dry and
   feverish and fruitless. Men speak to one another of such a life and
   say, "You will get nothing out of him," which means they will not only
   be denied money, but denied things even more valuable than money they
   will be denied time and strength and service. Was not Scrooge in
   Dickens's "Christmas Carol" a desert-soul? No one drew near to him to
   pluck a flower or to taste a delicacy or to gather a single green
   blade. What can be done with a soul like this? Here comes in the
   uniqueness of the evangel of grace. "The desert shall rejoice and
   blossom as the rose." Now let us see what can be done.

   "I will make the dry land springs of water." First of all, wells shall
   break out in the desert-soul. Kindly impulses shall be born. Generous
   emotions shall flow in plenteous abundance. Gracious feelings shall
   pervade the once dry and feverish soil. I do not quite know how the
   Lord will start these springs. He has many ministries, and they are all
   of them ministers of re-creation. I heard a farmer say a little while
   ago, "There is nothing like snow for feeding the springs!" And I have
   known men whose souls have been desert-like, who have been graciously
   blessed by the Lord under the snows of some chilling sorrow or
   disappointment. And most assuredly the genial springs have been born
   again. It is very frequently a seasonable moment, when you want help
   from anybody, to go after they have passed through some grave and
   serious affliction. The wells of sympathy are flowing, the first step
   has been taken in the transformation of the desert.

   "In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert."
   The kindly impulse shall become a steady inclination. A spring shall
   become a river. The emotion shall become a disposition. The soul shall
   be possessed by genial currents. It may be that the first sign of the
   gracious conversion will be the flow of tears. Who is there who has not
   been grateful when some heart, that has been dry and harsh as desert
   sand, has one day begun to weep? The penitence is the evidence of the
   wonder-working ministry of the great Restorer, and the life is becoming
   soft and gracious again.

   "I will plant in the desert the cedar." He will not only make the
   springs to leap and the rivers to flow, He will continue the
   transformation by the culture of spiritual vegetation. He will plant
   the cedar, the symbol of strength. The effeminate shall become the
   masculine, and the soft and yielding shall become the durable and the
   persistent. There shall be nothing capricious about the life, nothing
   weak and rootless, but in the transformed desert there shall be
   virtuous habits with the strength of cedars. "I will set in the desert
   the fir-tree," the symbol to the Oriental of things sweet and musical.
   It provided the material out of which they made their harps, and it
   would suggest to them the end of the desert silence, and the outbreak
   of praise and song. Well, is not all this a wonderful transformation of
   the soul? In the desert of the life there are to come springs and
   rivers and strong and beautiful trees. And the promise is made to
   everybody, however dark and terrible may be their need, and however
   harsh and repellent may be their life. "The desert shall rejoice and
   blossom as the rose."

   Sometimes our work appears to us like a desert. One of the great
   characteristics of the desert is its monotony, and we frequently go to
   its unchanging wastes for a figure to describe our monotonous toil. In
   the desert the progress is merely on and on! There is no turn of the
   road! There is no surprise! And so it is with much of our daily life
   and calling. There is a great deal of sameness in the work of every
   man. It is a little round, the well-known track. We trudge it daily, we
   know every stone in the pavement; and we have become so subdued by the
   monotony that we have begun to regard ourselves as the victims of
   drudgery. I think that is how a great many people regard their work. It
   is a desert and not a garden. I have sometimes spoken to men when they
   have finished their holiday and returned to their labour, and I have
   asked them how they have enjoyed it, and they very frequently reply
   that after such experiences it is very tame returning to the common
   work.

   I stood a little while ago on the Great Orme's Head, on a wonderfully
   beautiful day, gazing upon the colours of that exquisite coast. There
   was a fine air blowing over the headland, and everything was fresh and
   sweet. One who was standing near me suddenly made this remark, "Fancy
   auctioneering after this!" He had thought of his work, and with the
   work immediately appeared the desert! His holiday provided the garden,
   and he was returning to the waste. Now, can the desert of our work be
   made to blossom like the rose? Most assuredly it can. I wonder how it
   was with Paul when he was making tents? I feel perfectly sure there was
   no suggestion of "desert" in the labour. And why did he not regard his
   work as a desert? Just because there was no desert in his soul. His own
   soul was a bit of Emmanuel's land, and therefore his work formed a part
   of the same inheritance. What we are in soul will determine what we see
   in our work. If our soul is "flat" then everything will drag. The light
   upon our work comes from our own eyes. If the sunshine is on our souls
   it will most assuredly beam out of our eyes and rest on our labour.

   I knew a cobbler who used to sit at his work just where he could catch
   a glimpse of the green fields! I think that is suggestive of how we
   ought to sit at our work. So sit as to catch the glory-light Let the
   soul be posed toward the Lord, and the light of His countenance will
   shine upon it; and the light will beam out of the eyes and our work
   will appear transfigured. "The desert will rejoice and blossom as the
   rose."

   And surely sometimes our sorrows appear as the desert. We pass into
   experiences that are dark and cold and lonely, and over which there
   blows a bitter wind. Surely sorrow is a Black Country to untold
   multitudes of souls! "Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?" Can
   He feed us in the season of a sorrow? Let us remember it was in the
   desert that the miracle of the loaves was wrought, and in the desert of
   our sorrow a harvest miracle may be wrought to-day. At His word our
   desert can abound with lilies and violets and heart's-ease and
   forget-me-nots. "He will also feed thee with the finest of the wheat."
   Your sorrow shall be turned into joy. Oh, thou troubled soul, turn to
   the great Wonder Worker, and thy desert shall blossom as the rose!
     __________________________________________________________________

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GRAVEYARD

   "You did He quicken, when ye were dead through your trespasses and
   sins."--Ephesians ii. 1.

   "Dead through your trespasses and sins," . . . "you did He quicken."
   The transition is like passing from a graveyard into a sweet meadow in
   which the children are playing! But this illustration is very
   imperfect, and in order to make it in any way an adequate analogy of
   the apostle's thought we must conceive the transformation of the
   graveyard itself. The graveyard must be converted into a sweet and
   winsome meadow, and its dead must emerge from their grave clothes in
   the brightness and buoyancy of little children. It is not a transition
   from the cemetery to the sweet pastures; it is the transformation of
   the graveyard itself. "Dead through your trespasses and sins," . . .
   "you did He quicken"! Or we may change the figure and regard it as the
   passing of winter into spring. There is winter; cold, bare, flowerless
   and fruitless. Then there is a feeling of spring in the air. Everything
   is vitalised and begins to manifest the signs of growth and increase,
   and we behold the welcome beauties of the genial season. And here is
   another winter; "dead through your trespasses and sins." Everything is
   cold, insensitive, barren. And then comes the vital breath, the
   vitalising wind of the Spirit,--"you did He quicken." The once dead
   life begins to manifest evidences of the quickening, and clothes itself
   with the beauty and glory of the Lord. And "lo, the winter is past, the
   rain is over and gone, flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the
   singing of birds is come."

   Winter! "Dead through your trespasses and sins." And what are the
   deadening ministries which create this appalling condition? The apostle
   mentions two, "the course of this world," and "the prince of the power
   of the air." These are the two mighty forces ever at work upon the
   lives of men, producing paralysis of the higher powers, benumbing and
   impairing the finer sensitiveness, and sinking all the worthy things in
   the life to degradation and death.

   Here is the first of the deadening ministries, "the course of this
   world." And is there anything more deadening than the ordinary course
   and custom of the present world? Look at the world's way of thinking.
   How deadening is its influence upon the perceptions of the spirit! The
   thinking of the world always runs on low planes. It is ever in search
   of compromise. There is nothing lofty and ideal in its aim and purpose.
   It seeks purely temporal and transient ends. No man can come under the
   influence of the world's manner of thought without losing the fine edge
   of his spiritual powers, and rendering himself insensible to the
   glorious things of the Spirit. And look at the world's way of speaking.
   It substitutes gossip for gospel. Its conversation is not seasoned with
   salt. There is nothing in it to preserve it from corruption. No man can
   put himself under the influence of the course of the world's speech
   without reducing his powers of spiritual apprehension. Let a man spend
   the entire day under the corrupting ministry of worldly speech, and in
   the evening time he will find that the difficulty of communing with God
   is incredibly increased. And look at the world's way of doing. The
   course of this world is always egotistic, emphasising the interests of
   self; it is therefore always combative, assuming an attitude of
   antagonism to one's brother. Now, all these are deadening influences.
   They work upon the loftier powers of man in sheer destructiveness, and
   bring his better self to ruin. Men are degraded and sunk into spiritual
   death by "the course of this world."

   And the second of the deadening ministries is "the prince of the power
   of the air." We are confronted with a personal power, who is ever at
   work in the realm of evil suggestion and desire. There is a great
   leader in the hierarchy of evil spirits. He is the antagonist of men's
   welfare, and seeks to destroy the finer faculties by which they hold
   communion with God. He is "the spirit that now worketh in the sons of
   disobedience." When some little flame of carnal desire is kindled in
   the life, "the prince of the power of the air" blows upon it, and seeks
   to fan it into fierce and destructive fire. Who has not experienced his
   influence? It is painfully marvellous how the spark of evil-thinking so
   speedily becomes a devouring heat! The prince of the power of the air
   is ever at work blowing upon these incipient fires, in order that in
   the intense heat of a greater conflagration he may scorch and burn up
   the furniture of the soul.

   Now see how these two deadening ministries work. The apostle declares
   that they seek to determine our manner of "walk," and also our manner
   of "life." They seek to subject us to a bondage in which we shall "walk
   according to the course of this world," and in which we shall "live in
   the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the
   mind." Now, to influence one's walk is to determine one's conduct; to
   influence one's life is to determine one's character. By our walk I
   think the apostle means all the outer movements and activities of the
   life--what we call our conduct; and by life I think the apostle
   describes the abiding inclinations and resting-places of the soul--what
   we call our character. These deadening ministries seek to establish us
   in the ways of the flesh, to make us choose our dwelling-place in the
   outer halls and passages of the life, and to neglect the secret and
   inner rooms where we could hold spiritual communion with God. They lure
   us into the snare of the bodily senses, and hold us captive there, and
   so deprive us of that larger life of the spirit which is found in the
   secret place.

   Now, when men's conduct is determined by "the course of this world,"
   and their life is limited by the will of "the prince of the air," all
   the higher powers in the life languish and droop, and at length pine
   away in paralysis and death. The deadening ministries complete their
   work, and man is "dead in trespasses and sins."

   Spring! "You did he quicken." It is well to read the earlier verses of
   this great chapter, and to go slowly through its description of the
   winter time, until we are pulled up by this great and hopeful word:
   "But God"! The antagonistic word introduces the Lord of the
   spring-time, who is about to break up the bonds and chains of the
   winter season. And see how graciously the spring is introduced. "God,
   who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even
   when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (for
   by grace are ye saved!)" Could anything be more gloriously rich in
   genial and gracious evangel? All the biggest words in the New Testament
   are introduced in this one verse of Holy Writ. Here we have "grace,"
   and here we have "love," and here we have "mercy," all co-operative in
   the ministry of breaking up the winter. Grace is the grand, glorious
   goodwill of God. Love is grace on the march toward us, speeding on a
   crusade of chivalrous beneficence. Mercy is love arrived, distributing
   its gifts to those who are enslaved and winter-bound. Surely, here is a
   rich and all-efficient atmosphere, in which even the firmest tyranny
   can be melted away! Now watch the ministry of the spring. "Hath
   quickened us together with Christ." He hath made us alive again. He
   hath released the appalling grip of the despotic master, and the
   deadened faculties are alive again.

   The quickening is sometimes a painful experience to the one who is
   being revived. I am told that when a drowning man is brought to shore,
   and is resuscitated, the renewed flow of life, as the blood-current
   rushes again through the half-dead and contracted channels, is attended
   by spasms of agony. And in the life of the spirit I have known the
   awakening to be a time of keen unrest and pain. But, shall I say, it is
   only a "growing pain," and is significant of spiritual recreation and
   expansion? We are acquiring a new sensitiveness toward God and man, and
   a new capacity, both for joy and pain. "And hath raised us up together
   with Him." We are not only quickened, we are lifted out of our graves.
   We are taken away from the place where we have been lying, the realm of
   tyranny where we have been enslaved.

   What shall we say then, one to another, when God has lifted us out of
   the graves? Let us urge one another not to go back to the cemetery, not
   even to look upon it, lest we stumble into the grave again. It is a
   strange and harrowing thing how frequently even saved men will go
   perilously near to the grave out of which they were redeemed! It is
   altogether a wise and healthy and secure thing to keep a great space
   between us and the place of our old enslavement.

   "And hath made us sit together with Him in the heavenly places." Said
   an old Puritan, "A man is where his head is." Of course he is! And as
   the Christian's head is in heaven, so he is with the Lord in the
   heavenly places. Here, then, in the coming of the Lord we find our
   resurrection, "You hath He quickened"; our ascension, "and hath raised
   us up together"; our enthronement, "and hath made us sit together in
   the heavenly places with Christ." But in every case our redemption is
   accomplished "with Him." It is all done "together"! There is no man so
   dead that he cannot choose this deliverance by the Lord of life. To
   choose Him is to have Him; to be willing to have Him is to receive Him.
   And to receive the Lord is to admit into our life the great
   Emancipator, who will convert our winter into spring, and turn the life
   of barrenness into a garden of spiritual fertility and glory.
     __________________________________________________________________

COMFORTED IN ORDER TO COMFORT

   "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
   mercies and God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our
   affliction, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any
   affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of
   God."--2 Corinthians i. 3, 4.

   "Blessed be God!" The apostle begins with his usual doxology. He will
   have a great deal to say in this epistle about affliction, but he
   begins upon another note. He begins with the contemplation of the
   mercies of God, and from that standpoint he surveys the field of his
   own trouble.

   Everything depends upon our point of view. I stood a short time ago in
   a room which was furnished with wealthy pictures, and I fixed my gaze
   upon a Highland scene of great strength and glory. The owner of the
   picture found me gazing at this particular work, and he immediately
   said, "I am afraid you won't get the light on the hill." And, sure
   enough, he was right. From my point of view I was contemplating a dark
   and storm-swept landscape, and I did not get the light on the hill. He
   moved me to another part of the room, and, standing there, I found that
   the scene was lit up with wonderful light from above. Yes, everything
   depends upon our point of view. If you are going to look upon your
   trouble, the primary question will be, "Where do you stand?" See where
   the Apostle Paul plants his feet. "Blessed be God!" That is the
   view-point in the life of faith! Standing there, we shall get the light
   on the hill. Paul takes his stand on the grace of God, and he gazes
   upon the ministry of mercies and comfort in the otherwise midnight
   wastes of affliction and pain. He begins, I say, in doxology. He sings
   a paean over his mercies and comfort, and lifts his soul in adoration
   to God.

   Now where does the apostle find his comfort? This verse always rears
   itself before me like a mountain range, in which there is a valley
   through which there flows a gladdening, refreshing river of mercy and
   comfort. "Blessed be God!" That is the supreme height. The other end of
   the text describes the gladdening river of comfort and grace. You see
   to what elevation he traces his comfort; away up to God! And so his
   resource is no mere trickle, to be dried up in the day of drought, or
   swiftly congealed in the nip of the first wintry day. The apostle loved
   to proclaim the infinitude of his supply, and no wonder, when he found
   it upon the everlasting hills. It is a very pertinent question which
   any man can put to himself:--"Will my present comfort last?" It all
   depends upon where he gets it from. Does he get it from friendships?
   How grateful is the ministry, and yet is it a dependable supply? Even
   if our friends are not taken from us by death, can we absolutely depend
   on the supply of comfort flowing from them to us? Here is a man who had
   come to the days of drought, and he looked about among his friends, if
   perchance he might find the waters of sympathy. "I looked on my right
   hand, and on my left; no man knew me, no one cared for my soul." The
   river was dry.

   Yes, it all depends where we look for our comfort. Do we seek it from
   books? Again how welcome the service; but it is amazing how the
   ministry varies. You go to a book one day and the river is full; you
   return on the morrow ands the bed is bleached and dry. We cannot depend
   on the gracious ministry of our books. Do we seek our comfort in
   Nature? Again how healing the ministry, and yet how uncertain! have
   known a June day deepen a sorrow! I have known a moonlight night throw
   a heavy soul into a denser gloom! I have known a little flower open out
   an old wound! We cannot depend upon the comforting ministry of Nature.
   These are all welcome ministries, gracious ministries, but they are
   minor ministries, and if we seek our comfort in these, then in the dark
   and cloudy day we shall be left disconsolate. And so the apostle turns
   away from the secondary supplies and seeks his resources in the
   eternal. He hies him away to the infinite and inexhaustible, and his
   river never fails in the dryest and most exacting season. "I will not
   leave you comfortless." Paul goes away to the heights, and sings his
   doxology there. "Blessed be God!"

   "Blessed be God, the Father of mercies." The Father of pity, of
   compassion, the Father of that gracious spirit to which we have given
   the name "Samaritanism." That is the kind of mercy that streams from
   the hills. Mercy is the very spirit of Samaritanism. It stops by the
   wounded wayfarer, it dismounts without condescension, it is not moved
   by the imperative of duty, but constrained by the tender yearnings of
   humanity and love. It is not the mercy of a stern and awful judge,* but
   the compassion of a tenderly-disposed and wistful friend. Our God is
   the Father of such mercies. Wherever the spirit of a true Samaritanism
   is to be found, our God is the Father of it. It was born of Him. It was
   born on the hills.


   "It streams from the hills,

   It descends to the plain."

   Wherever we discover a bit of real Samaritanism we may claim it as one
   of the tender offsprings of the Spirit of God. With what boldness the
   apostle plants his Lord's flag on territory that has been unjustly
   alienated from its owner, and he claims it for its rightful King! "The
   Father of mercies."

   "The God of all comfort." What music there is about the word! It means
   more than tenderness: it is strength in tenderness, and it is
   tenderness in strength. It is not a mere palliative, but a curative. It
   does not merely soothe, it heals. Its ministry is not only consolation
   but restoration. "Comfort" is "mercy" at work, it is Samaritanism busy
   with its oil and wine. And again let us mark that whenever we find this
   busy goodness among the children of men, exercising itself among the
   broken limbs and broken hearts of the race, the Lord is the fountain of
   it. He is "the God of all comfort," of every form and kind and aspect.
   Again I say, how boldly the apostle plants the Lord's flag, and claims
   the gracious kingdom of kindly ministries for our God I

   "Who comforteth us in all our affliction." Let us note the word in
   which the apostle describes the condition of the wayfaring pilgrims.
   They are passing through "affliction"; that is to say, they are in
   straits, in tight corners. Their way has become narrowed; they are
   hemmed in by cares or sorrows or temptations, and they are in a tight
   place. "He comforteth us" in such conditions. The river of mercy and
   comfort flows our way. Sometimes the comfort comes to us in some
   secret, mystic ministry which we can never describe. We are feeling
   very "down," and life has become very tasteless and dreary. We fling
   ourselves upon our knees, and we expose the dreary waste to the pitying
   eyes of our God. And suddenly "the desert rejoices and blossoms like
   the rose!" We cannot give any explanation, but we can exult in the
   experience.


   "It is the Lord who rises

   With healing in His wings."

   Sometimes a comfort is mediated to us through the ministry of one of
   our fellow-men. The apostle never allowed the human messenger to
   eclipse the Lord who sent him. He had a keen eye for his Lord's
   comings, even when He wore some lowly human guise. "God comforted me by
   the coming of Titus!" Happy Paul! to be able to tell by the fragrance
   of the message that the messenger had come from the King's garden. I
   would that we might cultivate this fine discernment in order that we
   might see through the agent to the real doer, and through the
   ambassador to the King. How often might we be able to say, "God
   comforted me by the coming of a letter!" "God comforted me by the
   coming of a kindly service!" "God comforted me by the coming of a
   friend!" "God comforted me by the coming of . . .?" Fill up the blank
   for yourself, and recognise the goodness and mercy of God. "He
   comforteth us in all our affliction."

   "He comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort
   them which are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we
   ourselves are comforted of God." Then the Lord comforts us, not to make
   us comfortable, but to make us comforters. Thou hast received the gift
   of comfort; now go out and comfort others! "We take God's gifts most
   completely for ourselves when we realise that He sends them to us for
   the benefit of other men."

   It is not enough for us to have sympathy. Sympathy can be exceedingly
   fruitless, or it may be exceedingly clumsy, irritating the wound It
   purposes to heal. There are many men who are exceedingly sympathetic,
   but they have not the secret ministry of those who have been closeted
   with the Lord. No, if we would be able to comfort we must ourselves be
   comforted. They are the expert comforters who have sought and found
   their comfort in the Lord. They are able to "speak a word in season to
   him that is weary." They who have been comforted in doubt are the
   finest ministers to those who are still treading the valley of gloom.
   They who have been comforted in sickness know just the word which opens
   the pearly gates and brings to the desolate soul the hosts of the Lord.
   They who have been comforted in turning from sin and wickedness, and
   becoming penitent unto God, know just the word to speak to the
   shrinking Prodigal when he is timidly approaching his father's door.

   Let us get away to our God, let us bare our souls to Him, and let us
   receive His marvellous gifts of comfort and mercy. And then let us use
   our glorious wealth in enriching other people and by our ministry bring
   them to the heights.


   "O give Thine own sweet rest to me,

   That I may speak with soothing power

   A word in season as from Thee

   To weary ones in needful hour."
     __________________________________________________________________

THE MINISTRY OF HOPE

   "Having no hope. . . . But now in Christ."--Ephesians ii. 12, 13.

   "HAVING no hope." We are familiar with hopelessness in common life. We
   know the rout that begins in the sick chamber when hope goes out of the
   room. So long as the patient remains hopeful the doctor has a mighty
   helpmeet in his ministry, but when the patient loses heart and hope the
   doctor strives in the face of almost assured defeat.

   The influence is similar in the ministry of the nurse. I was impressed
   by a phrase uttered in my hearing by a nurse in a conversation which I
   had with her concerning the nature of her work. "I like a
   life-and-death case," she said, "with just a chance for life!" She
   rejoiced in the struggle if the bias was on the side of victory. But
   when the last chance is gone, and there is no possibility of recovery,
   and the nurse has to labour confronted by sheer defeat, the service
   becomes a burdensome task.

   It is not otherwise on the battlefield. Armies that go out without the
   inspiring presence of hope prepare themselves for defeat. I know there
   is what we call a "courage of despair," but it lacks the very elements
   of radiant victory. It has dash but no sight: it has force but no song;
   it is a wild leap and not the jubilant march of strength.

   Now, what prevails when hopelessness invades the sick room and the
   battlefield is also experienced in the more secret life of the spirit,
   in the realm of religion. When a man becomes hopeless in religious life
   he loses the very springs of activity, and he sinks in ever-deepening
   degradation. The Scriptures employ a very powerful figure to express
   the state of those in whose life there is no hope. "They that sit in
   darkness." It is a very graphic picture. Try to realise it. You sit by
   the fireside on a winter's night, with a bright fire making the room
   genial and cheery. You sit on until the fire burns low and eventually
   dies out, and the warmth gives place to a searching chill. Then the
   light goes out and darkness is added to the coldness. You sit on. "They
   that sit in darkness." And there are people whose soul-life is just
   like that. There is no fire in the grate and their light is gone out,
   and they abide in cold and dreary desolation, "Having no hope."

   Now, what are some of the causes of this dingy and paralysing
   hopelessness? Surely I must in the first place mention the tyranny of
   sin. When sin enters into a life and is welcomed there and entertained
   in daily hospitality, certain consequences assuredly happen. One of the
   first things to happen is this: sin puts out the light of joy. I am
   persuaded that there is not a man or woman in God's wide world, who
   persists in deliberate sin, in whose life we could find the light of
   joy. There is disquiet and unrest, and a sense of a great and hungry
   uncertainty, and these are incompatible with the abiding presence of
   joy. No, that light is turned out. But sin goes farther, and proceeds
   to quench the heat of endeavour. When sin ceases to be a visitor and
   becomes a tenant in the home of my soul, it assumes the position of
   master of the house, and I become its servile attendant Repeated
   experiences of the power of sin create within me a sense of impotence,
   and I feel how impossible it is to regain my lost sovereignty. My
   endeavours become more and more lukewarm, my spiritual strivings more
   and more spasmodic and cold. But sin goes still farther, and eventually
   scatters and tramples out the very fire of desire. In the earlier
   stages a man may feel the uselessness of endeavour while still he may
   eagerly wish to regain his lost estate, but in the latter stages his
   very wishes are destroyed and he sinks into the "ill of all ills, the
   lack of desire." The light of joy has been turned out The heat of
   endeavour has been quenched! The fire of desire has died away! And the
   man is reduced to a state of cheerless and wintry desolation, "Having
   no hope."

   The second cause of hopelessness which I will name, is the tempest of
   sorrow. I saw an account, a little while ago, of one of our steamships
   which had passed through tremendous seas, and the waters had got down
   into her engine-room and put out the fires. When I read the record I
   immediately thought of a kindred experience in the spirit, which I find
   expressed in the ancient words of the Psalmist: "All thy waves and thy
   billows have gone over me." The passage through heavy seas of sorrow
   may be attended with complete security, or it may be accompanied by
   unspeakable loss. It is when the waters of sorrow get down among the
   fires of the life, the driving passions, the loves and the joys and the
   hopes, that dire ruin is wrought. It is unfortunately not an infrequent
   occurrence that the sorrow of a life is permitted to approach the
   central fires, and the light and warmth and cheer of the life are put
   out. I have many times heard sorrowing people say, "I feel as cold as
   stone." May we not say that the engine fire is temporarily out, and
   that they are drifting in hopeless bewilderment?

   And the third of the causes which I will name is the monotony of
   labour. All monotony is tedious and depressing. To be compelled to
   listen to one persistent note of the organ would be an intolerable
   affliction, and would weigh the life down in heavy depression. To be
   obliged to listen even to a monotonous speaker tends to drain away the
   springs of inspiration. It is the unchanging note that makes the life
   sink in weariness. And this perhaps is pre-eminently so when one's
   daily toil is one of unrelieved monotony. There are people whose work
   calls for no intelligence, no ingenuity, no skill. It makes not the
   slightest demand upon their thought. It is a purely mechanical service,
   and works as unsentimentally and as rigidly as a machine. The life
   looks out every day and sees nothing new. The morning finds it at the
   old routine. There is no expectancy in the day, no surprise by the
   road. The hammer of the daily experience hits the same place at every
   moment, until life settles down into a benumbment which has no vision
   and no hope. The spring goes out of the spirit, and frequently it
   happens, as it did in other days, that "Because they have no changes
   they fear not God."

   Now, so far we have not brought in the Lord Christ, and just because He
   has been so deliberately left out, the hopelessness of men has been
   unrelieved. Let us now bring Him into the dark cold life, and see what
   happens. "But now in Christ Jesus"--what? What kind of hope does the
   Master kindle when He enters into communion with a human life? Well, I
   think He kindles and keeps aflame a threefold hope; hope in the
   perfectibility of self, hope in the instrumentality of all things, and
   hope in personal immortality.

   Christ kindles hope in the perfectibility of self. He comes to me, a
   poor sensitive, devil-governed man, and whispers to me that I too can
   attain to freedom and put on the strength of the ideal man. I stand
   amazed before the suggestion. Quietly He reassures me and tells me that
   I too can be perfected. What, I; with the fires out, a poor bit of
   driftage upon life's sea, that I can be renewed and filled with power
   and made master of circumstances, and voyage happily and safely to the
   desired haven? Can I be perfected? I have seen what men can do. I have
   seen my fellows take a mere refuse place in the city, one of its
   eyesores, and turn it into a place of beauty. Yes, I have seen the
   place of refuse transformed into a garden. And even now I hear my
   fellows speaking confidently of the re-afforesting of the Black
   Country, and turning the place of slag and cinder heaps, of blackness
   and death, into a place of sweet growth and pleasantness and beauty.
   But my Master tells me that the same miracle can be wrought in the
   realm of the spirit, that the black country in the soul can be
   re-afforested, that that place of indiscriminate refuse can be turned
   into the place where the Lord would delight to dwell. "The wilderness
   shall become a garden, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the
   rose." I, too, can be perfected! This is the hope he kindles, "the hope
   of glory," "the hope of salvation." The Master begins by breaking the
   tyranny that holds me captive.


   "He breaks the power of cancelled sin,

   He sets the captive free."

   And when I have experienced even a little of His emancipating ministry
   my soul walks in a wonderful hope. That is the reason why I am always
   so anxious that men should have one experience of the power of the
   Master's grace. One experience will make them the children of a
   confident hope. Once they have tasted they will want to remain at the
   feast. "Oh, taste and see how gracious the Lord is." "He will perfect
   that which concerneth me."

   The Master kindles hope in the instrumentality of all things. If He
   purposes my perfection, then all my circumstances will be made to
   conspire to the accomplishment of His will. Nothing that comes to me
   will make me despair. I am hopeful that He will convert everything into
   a helpmeet and friend. "All things work together for good to them that
   love God." Even sorrow? Yes, sorrow. Sorrow is one of the "all things,"
   and is subjected to the Master's will, and is one of His instruments
   for the attainment of His ends. Sorrow can accomplish what comfort
   would always fail to do. There is a legend that tells of a German baron
   who, at his castle on the Rhine, stretched wires from tower to tower,
   that the winds might convert it into an Æolian harp. And the soft
   breezes played about the castle, but no music was born. But one night
   there arose a great tempest, and hill and castle were smitten by the
   fury of mighty winds. The baron went to the threshold to look out upon
   the terror of the storm, and the Æolian harp was filling the air with
   strains that rang out even above the clamour of the tempest. It needed
   the tempest to bring out the music! And have we not known men whose
   lives have not given out any entrancing music in the day of a calm
   prosperity, but who, when the tempest drove against them, have
   astonished their fellows by the power and strength of their music?
   "Stormy wind fulfilling His word." In Christ I have a hope that
   everything is made to work for my good. The rough experience is an
   agent of refinement to polish and take away the rust.

   And surely this applies to my work, however monotonous it may be. With
   the assurance that my Lord will use it for my spiritual profit, into my
   labour I shall put a song, and the way of drudgery will become the very
   highway of my Lord. Everything will give me a lift if I am in close
   communion with my Lord.


   "Nearer, my God, to Thee,

   Nearer to Thee;

   E'en though it be a cross

   That raiseth me;

   Still all my song shall be,

   Nearer, my God, to Thee,

   Nearer to Thee."

   The Master kindles hope in my personal immortality. "Because I live, ye
   shall live also." "He hath begotten us again unto a living hope." "He
   that believeth on Me shall never die." What a hope He kindles! Such a
   hope gives to life an amazing expectancy. When Samuel Rutherford was
   near his end, he was so gloriously excited at the prospect that those
   about him had to counsel him to moderate his ecstasy! The fine flavour
   of that glorious expectancy should pervade all our days. That we are to
   live for ever with the Lord is a prospect that should fill our life
   with quiet and fruitful amazement. To have that life in front of us
   will enable us to set all things in true perspective, and to observe
   their true proportions. Set "money" in the line and light of
   immortality, and we at once observe the limits of its ministry and
   range. Set "rectitude" in the same radiant line, and we see how it
   clothes itself with abounding glory. Everything must be placed in that
   long and glorious line or nothing will be truly seen.

   These, then, are some of the hopes kindled and inspired by Jesus Christ
   our Lord. What He kindles He will keep burning. "Having loved His own,
   He will love them unto the end."
     __________________________________________________________________

LIFE WITH WINGS

   "They shall mount up with wings as eagles."--Isaiah xl. 31.

   "They shall mount up with wings as eagles." Who shall? "They that wait
   upon the Lord." And waiting upon the Lord is not merely a passing call,
   but an abiding in Him. Waiting is not so much a transient action as a
   permanent attitude. It is not the restless vagrant calling at the door
   for relief, it is rather the intimacy of the babe at the breast.

   They who thus wait upon the Lord shall obtain a marvellous addition to
   their resources. Their life shall be endowed with mysterious but most
   real equipment. They shall obtain wings. We do well when picturing the
   angel presences to endow them with wings. At the best it is a clumsy
   symbolism, but all symbolisms of eternal things are clumsy and
   ineffective. And what do we mean by wings? We mean that life has gained
   new powers, extraordinary capacity; the old self has received heavenly
   addition, endowing it with nimbleness, buoyancy, strength. We used to
   sing in our childhood, "I want to be an angel." I am afraid the
   sentiment was often poor and unworthy, and removed our thoughts rather
   to a world that is to be than to the reality by which we are surrounded
   to-day. But it is right to wish to be an angel if by that wish we
   aspire after angelic powers and seek for angels' wings. It is right to
   long for their powers of flight, their capacity to soar unto the
   heights. We may have the angels' wings. Wing-power is not only the
   reward of those who are redeemed out of time and emancipated from
   death, and who have entered into the larger life of the unseen glory,
   but it is the prerogative of you and me. "They that wait upon the Lord
   . . . shall mount up with wings." Waiting upon the Lord will enable us
   to share the angels' fellowship, to feed on angels' food, and to
   acquire the angels' power of wing. "They shall mount up with wings as
   eagles." Now let us see what are some of the characteristics of life
   with wings.

   It is life characterised by buoyancy. We become endowed with power to
   rise above things! How often we give the counsel one to another, "You
   should rise above it!" But too often it is idle counsel, because it
   implies that the friend to whom we give it has the gift of wings too
   frequently he is only endowed with feet. If, when we give the counsel,
   we could give the wings, the things that bind him to the low plains of
   life might be left behind.

   How frequently we are held in bondage by grovelling to the mean and
   trifling! Some small grievance enters into our life and keeps us from
   the heights. Some disappointment holds us in depressing servitude. Some
   ingratitude paralyses our service and chills our delight in unselfish
   toil. Or some discourtesy is done to us, we cannot get away from it.
   Or, perhaps, it is "the murmur of self-will," or "the storm of passion"
   which prevents our emancipation. Whatever it may be, and there are a
   thousand such tyrannies, life is separated from the heavenlies, and
   becomes utterly mundane, of the earth earthy. Well, now, when we get
   the wings we have the power to rise above these trifles, and even above
   the things that may be larger than trifles and may appear like gigantic
   hills. Wing-power gives buoyancy, and we are enabled to look down even
   upon the hills and see them beneath our feet. The life with wing-power
   is not the victim of "the spirit of heaviness." It does not creep along
   in deep, heavy melancholy. In the day of difficulty and disappointment
   it can soar and sing at heaven's gate.

   Life with wing-power is characterised by loftiness. "They shall mount
   up!" You know how we speak of the men and women endowed with wings. We
   speak of a "lofty character," as opposed to one who is low or mean.
   There are men with low motives, and they move along the low way. There
   are men with mean affections which do not comprehend a brother. Now, it
   is the glorious characteristic of the Christian religion that it claims
   to give loftiness to the life. There is no feature that the Bible loves
   more to proclaim than just this feature of "aboveness." It
   distinguishes the disciples of Christ. See how the ambitions of the
   book run:--"Seek the things that are above"; "Set your mind on things
   above." It speaks also of dwelling "with Christ in the heavenly
   places." All this describes the life that looks at everything from
   lofty standpoints and approaches everything with high ambition. We know
   these men when they appear. How often one has observed the power of
   their presence in public meetings! Other speakers have addressed the
   assembly, and the thought and life of the meeting have grovelled along
   a mean and questionable way. And then the wing-man comes! He lays hold
   of the subject, and what happens? Everybody says, "How he lifted it
   up!" A pure atmosphere cam round about the assembly; everybody felt the
   inrush of a purer air and a finer light. We had mounted up with wings
   as eagles.

   The wing-life is characterised by comprehensiveness. High soaring gives
   wide seeing. Loftiness gives comprehension. When we live on the low
   grounds we only possess a narrow outlook. One man offers his opinion on
   some weighty matter and he is answered by the charge, "That is a very
   low ground to take." The low ground always means petty vision. Men who
   do not soar always have small views of things. We require wings for
   breadth of view. Now see! The higher you get the greater will be the
   area that comes within your view. We may judge our height by the
   measure of our outlook. How much do we see? We have not got very high
   if we only see ourselves; nay, we are in the mire! "Look not every man
   on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." It is
   well when we get so high that our vision comprehends our town, better
   still when it includes the country, better still when it encircles
   other countries, best of all when it engirdles the world. It is well
   when we are interested in home missions; better still when home and
   foreign work are comprehended in our view. We cannot do this without
   wings, for without the wings we cannot get into the heights. The higher
   we get the more we shall see of other parties beside our own. "Lord, we
   saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and we forbade him, because he
   followeth not with us." How narrow the outlook! One day the vision of
   the disciples will be immeasurably enlarged, and that will be when they
   are dwelling in the heavenly places with Christ. If we remain locked up
   in an --ism we shall never see our brethren in the other --isms. If we
   rise up into Christ we shall meet our brethren there. Unity is coming
   by the use of wings! "They shall mount up with wings as eagles."

   The wing-life is characterised by proportion. To see things aright we
   must get away from them. We never see a thing truly until we see it in
   its relationships. We must see a moment in relation to a week, a week
   in relation to a year, a year in relation to eternity. Wing-power gives
   us the gift of soaring, and we see how things are related one to
   another. An affliction looked at from the lowlands may be stupendous;
   looked at from the heights it may appear little or nothing. "This light
   affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more
   exceeding and eternal weight of glory." What a breadth of view! And
   here is another. "The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to
   be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to usward." This is
   a bird's-eye view. It sees life "whole."

   All these are characteristics of the life with wings. And does it not
   sound a strong and joyful life? "As eagles!" How mighty the bird from
   which the picture is taken! What strength of wing!And such is to be
   ours if we wait upon the Lord. We shall be able to soar above the
   biggest disappointment and to wing our way into the very presence of
   the sun. "They that wait upon the Lord" shall have all this. Let us
   abide in waiting and find our joy and our power in the heights.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE UNEXPECTED ANSWER

   "Many were gathered together praying."--Acts xii. 12.

   "Many were gathered together praying." What had prompted the
   prayer-meeting? "James the brother of John" had been killed "with the
   sword." "And because Herod saw it pleased the Jews" . . ! Ah, that is
   one of the dangerous crises in a man's life! When a man finds that a
   certain course of conduct is receiving popular applause he is led on to
   further excesses. He is often doubly betrayed by the seductions of the
   shouting crowd. A public speaker descends to a coarse and vulgar jest,
   and because it pleases the baser sort in the audience, and the speaker
   is awarded a round of applause, he is prone to descend to still further
   depths of degradation. "He proceeded further to take Peter also"! The
   apostle was arrested, shut up in prison, and guarded by four
   quaternions of soldiers. And now what can the little company do with
   whom he has been wont to associate in the evangelical ministry? They
   have no influence with the king. Not one of the little band has any
   connections with the imperial house. "Not many noble are called." No
   material force belongs to them. What, then, is their resource? They can
   pray. "Prayer was made without ceasing unto God for him."

   But in such an emergency as this does not a prayer-meeting appear
   absurd? Here is a man in prison, surrounded by a tenfold defence. The
   material obstacles are overwhelming. What is the use of a
   prayer-meeting? Can we pray a man out of his chains, and through the
   prison gate, and through the assembled soldiery? The world regards it
   as a grotesque expedient. And perhaps there are many Christians who
   would regard it as legitimate and reasonable to pray for the quietness
   of Peter's spirit, that he might be kept in boldness of faith and in
   open communication with his Lord, but who would regard a prayer for his
   release as trespassing upon forbidden ground. Does not this timidity
   very frequently spoil the range of our petitions, and rob us of the
   promised inheritance? If the dominion of prayer is to be limited by the
   prison gates, we are reduced to a pitiful impoverishment. If the
   ministry of prayer is absolutely ineffective in the material world,
   then I, for one, am stupefied. I am told I may pray for mental
   enlightenment, or for moral strength, or for spiritual perception and
   gift, but I am warned off the material ground as a domain in which
   prayer exercises no influence. But I have an initial difficulty. I do
   not know where the boundary line between the body and the mind is
   found. In many instances the mental seems to pervade the material, and
   to control and determine its conditions. If I pray for a brighter mind
   and obtain it, I gain in addition a healthier body. If I grow in hope I
   also increase my material resources. If my love is inflamed I am
   established in the power of endurance. My morals and my digestion are
   very intimate! And if in this little world, which I call my body, mind
   and flesh are so intimate, is it not possible that a larger Mind may be
   intimate with the larger body we call the universe? If my mind can in
   any way influence and change the ministries of my body, why should not
   God's mind pervade and control and change the larger ministries of the
   universe?

   And if prayer is the communion of the human mind with the Divine mind,
   is it altogether incredible that by my fellowship with the Lord I can
   indirectly exercise the mighty prerogative of influencing the movements
   even of the material world? And, therefore, I see nothing incredible
   and illegitimate in praying for favourable weather. It may be that the
   prayer is sometimes unwise, but the unwisdom of a prayer does not imply
   the impossibility of the intercourse. I see no need to give our
   supplications the severe restrictions which many Christians impose. I
   would rather exercise a glorious liberty, and if Peter is in prison I
   would pray for the opening of the prison doors, and for the apostle's
   bodily release.

   "And behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him." That was a great
   moving mission begotten by the ministry of prayer. I will not at the
   bidding of unbelief reduce the narrative to mere poetry and regard the
   incident as a commonplace event, for which, if we knew everything, we
   could find a commonplace explanation. It is one of the profoundest
   beliefs in my own life that there was a vital connection between the
   prayer-meeting and the prison. Do not let us throw away our dignities
   and prerogatives at the cry of the timid, or at the sneer of a flippant
   unbelief. Do not let us limit our communion. Let us believe that the
   little prayer-meeting can set in motion ministries which will take the
   chains from a man's limbs, and lead him out of the iron gates and bring
   him into healthy freedom.

   A little while ago Sir Oliver Lodge met a company of evangelical
   ministers, and I felt greatly humiliated that we had to receive the
   warning from his lips not to relinquish the boldness of our rights in
   the ministry of prayer! This little apostolic prayer-meeting moved
   about in splendid freedom in their supplication to the Almighty. They
   prayed for their companion's release, and release was given. "And
   behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the
   prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying,
   Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands. And the angel
   said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And so he did.
   And he saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me. And
   he went out, and followed him: and wist not that it was true which was
   done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision. When they were past the
   first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth
   unto the city; which opened to them of its own accord; and they went
   out, and passed on through one street; and forthwith the angel departed
   from him."

   Now let us look at these praying people. It is the dead of night. The
   doors are locked. It is something after the fashion of those
   prayer-meetings which used to be held in the cellar at Scrooby by the
   men who founded the commonwealth across the seas. And while one of the
   little company is praying, a knocking is heard at the door. A damsel
   named Rhoda goes to the door, and listens to the voice; she had often
   heard it, and knew it to be the voice of Peter. Just before she had
   left the little company, one of the brethren was praying ardently for
   the apostle's release. Now here he is at the door! "She opened not the
   door for gladness." How strange that is! She was so glad that she
   became thoughtless! But can gladness confuse the judgment? I know that
   fear can; fear can throw the powers into panic, and take away the
   faculty of a calm discretion. And I know that sorrow can lead to mental
   confusion, and we know not what we do. But here the ministry of
   bewilderment is joy itself! The incident is simple, and I think most
   illuminative. Shall we not say that it suggests that we must watch our
   moments of exultation, our delights, our season of ecstasy? In our joy
   we may forget many needful things. Is not this true of the joy of a
   revival? Is it not true that very frequently we open not the gate for
   gladness? I have known converts who, in the delight of revival
   meetings, have forgotten common courtesies. They have rapturous
   eagerness to get away to the foreign field, and they forget to send a
   letter to their aged mother at home. They ignore the humdrum ministry,
   in the glad contemplation of the field afar off. There are some people
   who are so glad in the Lord that they go about writing Scripture-texts
   on other people's property! Surely that is a forgetfulness which a
   little vigilance would avoid. I think this is not impertinent teaching.
   Our joy becomes perilous when it makes us forget the immediate duty.
   That door! Open it! That little duty! Discharge it! "She opened not the
   door for gladness."

   Now let us go into the meeting itself. Rhoda, I said, had just heard
   one of the brethren praying, "Lord, restore him unto us!" The damsel
   eagerly returns with the announcement that Peter is at the gate. Now
   what? The petition had scarcely fallen from the brother's lips; she had
   interrupted him in the middle of his petition; and it was probably the
   suppliant himself who replied to Rhoda, "Thou art mad!" How can Rhoda's
   announcement be true? Think of the prison, the chains, the soldiers,
   gate after gate, and especially that notorious iron gate at the last!
   "Thou art mad!" Again I say, how suggestive the incident! They were
   praying for an answer; the answer comes to the door; and it strikes
   them as incredible. I know the condition of the little troubled
   company. There were two empty places in their ranks, and they knew not
   how soon the vacancies might be multiplied. James was dead and Peter
   was in prison, and they were bewildered in their distresses. Then they
   would pray! They prayed for his release, and when his release was
   given, they received the intimation as the speech of the mad. "She
   constantly affirmed that it was so." And so they went on debating the
   matter, while all the time the answer was waiting at the door! If it
   were not too sorrowful the situation would be half-humorous. Surely the
   best thing would be to open the door at once, which after a while they
   did. "When they had opened the door they saw him and were astonished."

   Now, God's answers to our prayers ought not to surprise us into
   incredulity. These momentous occurrences ought to be daily commonplaces
   in our lives. The responses of the Almighty should be grand
   familiarities. Why should we suppose the herald of the answer to be
   mad? God is good! God is faithful! It is the most natural of all things
   that the prison gates should open and the apostle be free. The answer
   often comes knocking at the door but we don't let it in, and we never
   know that the answer has been given. We are in an unexpectant mood, and
   we have never suspected the wealth which the Lord would have left at
   our gate.

   Now let us listen to the word of the apostle. "Go show these things to
   the brethren." He urges them to be evangelists of the story. Tell these
   dealings to other people! Go about among the absentees, telling them
   the wonderful dealings of the Lord. How grand would be the ministry if
   this were our usual track! Did some gracious answer knock at your door
   yesterday? Tell it to others. Had you some heartening visitor of grace
   before the day began? Share it with others. "Come unto me, all ye that
   fear the Lord, and I will tell you what things He hath done for my
   soul."
     __________________________________________________________________

THE CENSER AND THE SACRIFICE

   "Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense; and the lifting up
   of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord, before my
   mouth; keep the door of my lips. Incline not my heart to any evil
   thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity; and let me
   not eat of their dainties."--Psalm cxli. 2-4.

   "LET my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense; and the lifting up
   of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord." How
   priestly is the entire exercise! Incense! Sacrifice! Supplication! When
   I had read the verse I rejoiced that I, too, was a priest unto God, and
   that in Christ Jesus we all have access to the same incomparable
   privilege and glory. "He hath made us kings and priests unto God." We
   can all swing the censer; we can all lay the sacrifice upon the altar;
   we can all engage in the marvellous ministry of intercession.

   And then I read the words over again, and I observed the process and
   order of their thoughts, and I think I can discern in them the primary
   and all-essential elements in all personal communion with God. These
   are three in number, and their healthy order is prescribed for us, and
   it is because we forget or ignore one or two of the three that the
   fruitfulness of our communion is impoverished. When we draw near to our
   Lord, all three elements are required of us if our fellowship is to be
   fruitful, and if we are to return laden with the gifts and glories of
   the kingdom of grace; first, the incense, then the sacrifice, and then
   the intercession.

   "Let my prayer be set before Thee as incense." The first thing we have
   to do when we come into the holy Presence is to swing our censer, and
   send the odour of our praise upwards to our Lord. The figure is taken
   from a very popular Eastern custom. Every Oriental is exceedingly
   partial to sweet odours. He always offers sweet perfume to those whom
   he delights to honour. In the olden times it was customary in India to
   scent the roads when the king went out. And what is the significance of
   the act? It is an acknowledgment of sovereignty, and a tribute of
   honour and praise. "Let my prayer be set forth as incense"! Let it be
   "set forth": that is to say, let it begin in adoration and
   thanksgiving! I think it would be well if sometimes we were to go into
   the presence of our King just to swing the censer and nothing more. A
   private praise-service would be an exceedingly efficient and memorable
   ministry. I remember that Thomas Carlyle, in a letter he wrote to a
   young friend, offered him this counsel: "Loyal subjects can approach
   the King's throne who have no requests to make there except that they
   may continue loyal." I think we may approach the King with just this
   act of glad obeisance and the pouring forth of the tribute of a
   grateful heart. We can begin with the incense. It is probable that the
   worshippers of our day are more inclined to neglect this than our
   fathers. With what magnificent thanksgivings they preluded their
   intercessions! Look at the vestibule of this grand hymnbook which
   ministers to our worship here. Mark the opening section of praise, and
   see how large is the portion which Dr. Dale has given to the subject of
   praise. And I think that the proportions of our hymnbook ought to
   pretty well represent the proportions of our devotion. What sort of
   vestibule has our private communion? What time do we give to the censer
   before the suppliant begins? William Law has this very pertinent word
   in his Devout Life: "When you begin your petitions use such various
   expressions of the attributes of God as may make you most sensible of
   the greatness and power of the Divine nature." And then William Law
   gives various examples, which, I am bound to say, would not be helpful
   to me, as they would imprison my spirit in a coat of mail. But I want
   to emphasise and commend the principle of it, which is, that our
   fellowship should begin with the primary elements of adoration and
   praise. "Let us come before His Presence with thanksgiving."

   I do not think we sufficiently appreciate the effect of praise in the
   enrichment of our fellowship. The old monasteries used to arrange for
   relays of monks to be engaged in chanting ceaseless praise, and thereby
   keeping the entire community susceptible and sweet. The heart is always
   at its best when it is in the genial influence of praise. There is
   first of all the preliminary exercise of observing the amazing
   providences which crowd our ways; for the man who is to praise must
   become an expert at discernment. It is the man who sees the love-tokens
   of his Lord crowding about him who comes into His house "in the
   multitude of His mercies." If we have little or nothing for which to
   offer praise it is a clear proof that we have been making a most;
   infrequent use of the censer. Let us go into our life, let us ransack
   its provinces, let us look for the marks of the King's coming and
   goings, and we shall soon take up the censer. And then when we are in
   the atmosphere of praise we are one with the spirits of just men made
   perfect, for it is the atmosphere they breathe in the land of glory. So
   let us swing the censer:


   "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven,

   To His feet thy tribute bring,

   Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,

   Who, like thee, His praise shall sing?

   Praise Him, praise Him,

   Praise the everlasting King."

   And let "the lifting up of my hands be as the evening sacrifice." What
   is the lifting up of the hands to be like? As a sacrifice. That itself
   is almost startling. The lifting up of the hands has come to mean an
   act of supplication, a petition, but here the primary significance is
   the offering of something to God. It does not betoken a pleading, but a
   giving, not a request, but a sacrifice. It is like unto the lifting up
   of the hands of the Roman soldiers when they swore fealty to their
   emperor and lord. It is our sacramentum. It is our pledge. It is the
   yielding of ourselves to the Lord, for whose goodness we have just
   swung the censer.

   Now our sacrifice must never be vague, and therefore meaningless. It is
   quite easy to sing, "Were the whole realm of nature mine," and to
   jubilantly proclaim what then would be our sacrifice. The whole realm
   of nature is not ours, and our responsibility begins and ends with what
   we have. And therefore we must not lose ourselves in vast professions
   which have no heart. We must bring the spirit of sacrifice into our
   present possessions, we must take these things into our hands and lift
   them up in willing surrender to the Lord. We must hold up our apparent
   trifles, and let them receive the King's seal. A halfpenny can bear the
   face and superscription of the king as well as a sovereign. "Let the
   lifting up of my hands be the sacrifice" of my soul! But even here we
   must not lose ourselves in a generality. Let us take our powers one by
   one; our reason, our conscience, our will, and all the manifold
   spiritual gifts of our God, and let us lay them all upon the altar of
   sacrifice. "Let the lifting up of my hands be the sacrifice" of my
   body. And here again, let the surrender be detailed and particular. Let
   us take our several limbs and members, and brand each one of them with
   the marks of the Lord Jesus. "Present your body a living sacrifice."
   And "let the lifting up of my hands be the sacrifice" of my
   possessions. Let us take the things that bring us comfort and delight
   and hold them up for the service of the King. There is a tribe in
   Central Africa which periodically brings its spears and clubs and bows
   and arrows, and puts them down at the feet of its chief. Then the whole
   tribe takes again those warlike implements and goes away to fight the
   battles of their lord. Such must be our way with all our gifts and all
   our powers. Let us, first of all, swing the incense of our praise, and
   then take all we are and all we have and lift up our hands in holy
   sacrifice.

   And now, having swung the censer, and sent to heaven the odour of
   acceptable praise, and having erected the altar and offered to Heaven
   the sacrifice of our gifts, what remains for us to do? After these
   primary exercises the Psalmist feels himself justified in proceeding to
   the gracious ministry of supplication. And see where his petitions
   begin: "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my
   lips." I do not wonder he begins there. He asks for the strength of
   silence. I say, I do not wonder, for he is a persecuted man, and the
   hardest of all things to a persecuted man is self-restraint. Indeed, it
   is the severest test of everybody, this controlling of the speech. The
   Psalmist begins with his cardinal weakness, he goes to the place where
   he most easily breaks down, he invokes the Divine help at the door of
   his lips. "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou
   shalt be condemned." And then he moves from speech to inclination.
   "Incline not my heart to any evil thing." He goes down among his
   biases, his leanings, his prejudices, and he prays that he may have an
   initial bearing toward goodness and virtue and truth. He prays that the
   elementary bias of his life may be on the side of God. He asks that
   when many courses are presented to him, he may instinctively lean to
   the worthiest and the excellent. He beseeches the Lord that he may have
   the right angle of vision, and that he may survey everything
   appreciatingly from the standpoint of the Almighty. He prays that his
   dispositions may be pure and true. And lastly his petition moves among
   his personal pleasures, and he prays for their purification and
   enrichment. Let me not "practise wicked works with men that work
   iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties." Aye, that is our
   peril. When men threaten us we instinctively resist them, but when they
   offer us dainties we are more easily overcome. If they come to us with
   a sword we draw our sword in response. But when they come to tickle our
   palates we easily take the bait. And so the Psalmist prays that these
   things may never taste dainties at all. If our mouths are perfectly
   pure, then bitter things will never taste sweet. Our discrimination
   will be all right if our moral sense is in no wise impaired. And surely
   our prayer ought to be, "Lord, give me a clean mouth, that the bitter
   may taste bitter, and the sweet may taste sweet!" We require that re--
   palate that we may enjoy "the river of ---- pleasures." We have got a
   long way in---- Divine life when we appreciate the delicacies ---- the
   Lord's table, and find our sweetest things ---- the King's feast. We
   are well on the road ---- holiness when our mouth "is satisfied with
   ---- things."

   Here, then, is the trend of the Psalmist's ----tions, beginning with
   speech, and passing thr---- inclinations to his daily delights. And he
   ---- the larger trend of the Psalmist's comm---- with his Lord,
   beginning with the glad---- swinging of the censer of praise, and
   mo---- through the priestly act of sacrifice to the ----cious ministry
   of supplication.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE SCHOOL OF CHRIST

   "Learn of Me."--Matthew xi. 29.

   THIS is a word of the Master, to which the heart of man turns with most
   ready inclination. It is a little favourite rendezvous of pilgrims to
   Zion. In other parts of the Scriptures we may find only a few
   footprints or a faintly-outlined road. For instance, there are some
   parts of Ezekiel, and some parts of what we have foolishly called the
   Minor Prophets, and large areas of the Book of Revelation, where it is
   like untrodden moor. But in other places we find a well-made road,
   suggestive of the passage of multitudinous feet. Such a road we find at
   the twenty-third Psalm, and at the fourteenth of John; and there are
   many well-trodden parts which are like the immediate circumference of a
   pool in the meadows where the kine have gathered to drink. And this
   word of my text marks one of the well-trodden places where thousands of
   pilgrims are gathered every day.

   But just now, amid the abundant wealth of the evangel, I want to
   concentrate upon one particular part of the counsel, "Learn of Me." How
   great are the differences which divide us in the mere capacity of
   learning! Some can suck in knowledge as a sponge takes in water; others
   throw it aside like the imperviousness of igneous rock. What amazing
   differences there are in our children in just this quality of
   receptivity, the power to appropriate knowledge! You give one child a
   hint and he has got the entire lesson! to other children you have to
   spell it out slowly, a syllable at a time. And so it is in the realm of
   religion. There are magnificent scholars in the school of Christ,
   scholars who can follow hard at the Master's heels, and who can
   appreciate His lightest word. But there are poorer scholars, like Mr.
   Ready-to-Halt, who limp on painfully and slowly, and often slip and
   fall and slide on the upward track. Some of the scholars do not apply
   themselves, and through sheer indolence they make no progress. Others
   have no method, and because their study is disorderly they are attended
   by constant failure. They never seem to rise above the first standard,
   and they abide in the rudiments of the religious life.

   It is to this latter class that I want to try to speak a word of
   heartening and cheer. A great student and scholar, speaking about quite
   other roads and realms of knowledge than the purely religious, recently
   gave some helpful counsel, and I want to lift it from the restricted
   sphere in which it was employed and apply it to the greater realm of
   the religious life. "The secret of learning," he said, "is to ask much,
   to remember much, and to teach much." In what we imperfectly call the
   secular fields of knowledge these have been found to be fruitful
   suggestions; I think they will be equally fruitful when applied to our
   discipleship to Christ. They enfold some of the secrets of successful
   learning in the school of Christ.

   If, then, we would learn of Christ we must "ask much." Now "asking" is
   a great sign of a fine learner. We cannot come into contact with a man
   who is finely receptive in any department of knowledge without
   discovering his fierce inquisitiveness in his own particular realm. I
   walked out some little time ago with a most learned geologist, and in
   the course of our journey we passed a common gravel-pit, and at once my
   friend was all alert and full of inquiry, and immediately began to
   question the little heap of pebbles which he took in his hand. His
   "asking" led him to the secrets of a new neighbourhood. Within the last
   few months I walked also in the company of a renowned botanist, and I
   was amazed at the eager spirit of inquiry which possessed him in every
   dale and country lane. He was for ever "asking," "seeking," "knocking,"
   and everywhere he found the appointed reward. I am perfectly sure we
   have got to cultivate this spirit of inquisitiveness in our relation to
   Christ. We are not great askers in the school. Let us ask for
   illumination as to character. Let us be full of questioning concerning
   what the Master calls "heavenly things," the spiritual mysteries, the
   heavenly glories, the far-off destinies and goals. You will find
   immense help in such life-quest from the example and experience of the
   Apostle Paul. A keen asker is a splendid companion to have on a tour.
   He will put questions which you would never dream of asking; he will
   talk with the road-mender by the way, and with the old peasant at his
   cottage door, and with little children on the village green, and the
   country begins to tell its secrets in answer to the search. Paul, I
   say, was a splendid asker, and we can train ourselves by the example
   which is revealed to us in his own great letters. Turn to Colossians,
   or Ephesians, or Philippians, and mark the things he asks about, and
   pursue your search along the same lines, and you will most assuredly
   pass from stage to stage in the Master's school, and have
   ever-expanding visions of the glory of the Lord.

   And let us ask for illumination as to conduct. We not only want
   knowledge of ideals, but how to apply the ideals to our immediate life.
   We want principles and we want rules. We want "a light to our path and
   a lamp unto our feet." We don't ask nearly enough concerning the next
   step, and the next step, in our forward march. Turn to the Acts of the
   Apostles and mark the spirit of questioning which always possessed the
   Apostle Paul in relation to the practice and immediate goings of his
   life. Or take the simple experiences of Brother Lawrence, and mark how
   every emergency presents an occasion for making inquiry into God. In
   this realm we are to be "as little children," voraciously inquisitive,
   yearning for knowledge of the Divine will, so that we may know the mind
   of Christ. "Ask much!" We must not be timid in our approach. "He is
   able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." This
   is one of the great secrets of progressive learning.

   "Remember much!" Ah, there is the difficulty for many of us! We can
   take, but we cannot keep. We can receive an impression, but we cannot
   retain it. We can do the exposure, but we are not expert in the fixing.
   We have a vision in the night, but it fades in the glare of the next
   day. We have a glimpse of glory or of duty, but common affairs
   obliterate it again, and the experience seems to be wasted. This leaky
   memory is very obtrusive in realms other than religious. How we have to
   jog our remembrance in the little things of daily life! We knot our
   handkerchiefs, or we put a ring on another finger, or we call to our
   aid some system of mnemonics, and all this that we might be able to
   retain something we have got. Can we call any sanctified expedients to
   the help of our spirits that we may remember what we have learnt in the
   school of the Lord? I think we can. We can have, in the first place,
   some specially appointed time for the ministry of recollection, for
   reviewing ourselves and our possessions in the presence of the Lord. I
   place great emphasis upon this expedient. I mean, not so much a time
   for reading the Scriptures or even for actual supplication, but a
   season for recalling what we have learned about the Lord, and what we
   have discovered in the ways of our experience. It is everything to fix
   definite times for these periods of holy contemplation. Fixity is a
   great virtue in the discipline of the soul. Fixity helps to engender
   firm habit, mental bias, and moral inclination. At appointed times the
   mind is ready for the work, and will more and more answer our bidding
   to produce its garnered stores. And further, if it be possible, let us
   have some special place for the ministry, some corner of a room, or
   some particular street on our way to work, and we shall find that the
   very place becomes a co-operative friend helping us to revive the
   partially-effaced impressions. I heard one of the most beautiful
   spirits in our ministry, one who is now at home in glory, declare some
   years ago that a particular part of the shoreline of England, where he
   walked every day in the contemplation of his knowledge of God, had
   become almost a system of mnemonics. Every headland, and every rock,
   and every cove silently helped and suggested the findings of past days.
   You will be amazed at the ministry of places in awaking and confirming
   the impressions of the soul.

   But it will perhaps be best for you to devise your own helpmeets for
   the ministry. You want to recollect God, and the things of God, and the
   things He has made known to you. Well, sit down and devise some means
   of "stirring up your remembrance" in this holy exercise. But do not let
   any one assume that he is alone in the labour of remembrance. We have a
   great Helper in the sacred work. "He shall bring to your remembrance
   whatsoever things I have said unto you." Only let us be honest and
   eager, sincere and ingenuous, and He will work to the establishment of
   our souls in the knowledge of God.

   "Teach much!" We shall never really know Christ as He is to be known
   until we begin to tell what we already know. In the realm of religion
   we never really know until we testify. Until the disciple becomes an
   apostle he is never an advanced disciple. Every teacher knows this; his
   knowledge grows while he imparts it. I heard a friend of Watts say in
   the Tate Gallery some time ago, when he was taking a little party
   through the famous chamber: "Every time I try to explain these pictures
   I see more to explain!" In the act of stating a principle the light
   brightens for ourselves. That, perhaps, is one of the glories of the
   ministry of Jesus Christ. While we ministers seek to tell about the
   beauty of the Lord the beauty grows upon our vision. While we declare
   the grace of redemption, grace more abounds toward us. While we testify
   as to the way of peace we are led into the more secret place. If we
   would be fine learners we must be ready teachers. Are you saying you
   cannot be? Is there anything you know about the Lord? Tell the little
   you know, and the little will grow. Have you no sick neighbour, no
   care-worn friend, no depressed fellow-pilgrim who is fainting on life's
   way? Teach him the little you know. You will be perfectly amazed at the
   effect upon your friend, but still more wonderful will be the effect
   upon yourself. As you go home from that house, the truth which hitherto
   shone like a candle, will burn like a star. "He that doeth the least of
   these commandments, and shall teach men so, the same shall be called
   great." These are some of the secrets of successful discipleship in the
   school of Christ.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE MINISTRY OF REST

   "And He said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place,
   and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no
   leisure so much as to eat."--Mark vi. 31.

   THIS is not the speech of an old man, but of quite a young man, barely
   thirty-three years of age, and who is burdened with the superlative
   ministry of the redemption of the race. All the arrangements of His
   public life are made on the assumption of its brevity. And yet He made
   time for rest! Sometimes we allow the sacredness of our labour to tempt
   us to regard rest as indolence and relaxation as waste. True rest is
   the minister of progress. The hour of seclusion enriches the public
   service.

   What were the special circumstances which impelled our Lord to call His
   disciples apart? They were twofold. They had just experienced the shock
   of a great sorrow. John the Baptist had been done to death. The deed
   had come upon them as an awful collision with their rosiest
   expectancies. The great Deliverer was near; the Kingdom was at hand;
   the Divine sovereignty was about to be established; on the morrow He
   would be on the throne! And yet, here was the pioneer of the kingdom,
   in the very dawning of the victory, destroyed by the powers of the
   world. The disciples were stunned and bewildered. The world of their
   visions and imaginations tottered like a house of dreams. And it was in
   this season of mental confusion .that our Lord called them apart to
   rest.

   But, in the second place, there was the constant distraction of the
   ubiquitous crowd. "There were many coming and going." There is a
   strangely exciting interest about a multitude. It whips up the life to
   a most unhealthy speed and tension. And the peril is that we do not
   realise the intensity when we are in it. When we are on board ship we
   do not realise how noisy the engines have been until for a moment they
   cease. We are not conscious of the roar and haste of the traffic of
   Ludgate Hill until we turn aside into St. Paul's. And it is even so
   with the influence of a crowd. It acts upon us like an opiate; it
   externalises our life, it draws all our interests to the outsides of
   things, and we are almost unconscious of the distraction. And this was
   the mesmeric influence in which the disciples were constantly moving.
   The outsides of things were becoming too obstrusive, and the insides of
   things were becoming dim. And these same two presences are with us
   to-day, the calamity and the crowd, the ministers of bewilderment and
   distraction. And to us, as to the disciples, the call comes from the
   Redeemer Himself: "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and
   rest a while."

   Now what will these deliberately contrived seasons of spiritual rest do
   for the stunned and distracted soul? In the first place, they will help
   us to realise the reality of the invisible, the immediacy of "things
   not seen." I know that if we were spiritual experts this fine
   perception would be experienced everywhere. But the possibility in
   publicity is conditioned by experiences in private. If we are to have a
   real sense of God in the crowd it must be by discipline in secret. We
   require special centres if we would spread the healthy influence over
   the life. One special day of rest is demanded if the entire week is to
   become a Sabbath. One special place is to be sanctified if the Lord is
   to be apprehended everywhere. In my own experience I know that the
   shocks of the day and the distractions of the crowd tend to remove the
   Invisible into the dim background, until the Invisible plays no mighty
   and awe-inspiring part in our lives. It is apart, in the awed quietness
   and individual loneliness, that the Invisible rears itself like a great
   mountain. When the pressure of external circumstances is relaxed, and
   we are alone, the veil of the temple parts asunder, and we are in the
   holy of holies, and we know ourselves to be in the presence of God. If
   we practise that Presence in the special moment it will abide with us
   through the hour.

   In the second place, by going apart for rest we shall gain a bird's-eye
   view of the field of life and duty. In the midst of life's moving
   affairs we see life fragmentarily and not entire. We note a text, but
   not a context. We see items, but we are blind to their relationships.
   We see facts, but we do not mark their far-reaching issue and destiny.
   We are often ill-informed as to the true size of a thing which looms
   large in the immediate moment. Things seen within narrow walls assume
   an appalling bulk. A lion in your back yard is one thing; with a
   continent to move in it is quite another. There are many feverish and
   threatening crises which would dwindle into harmless proportions if
   only we saw them in calm detachment. There are some things which we can
   never see with true interpretation until we get away from them. There
   is nothing more hideous and confusing than an oil painting when viewed
   at the distance of an inch. To see it we must get away from it.
   Detachment is essential to the comprehension of the whole, and
   therefore to the discernment of a part. It is not otherwise with life.
   We are often too much in the thick of things to see them. We cannot see
   the wood for the trees, the whole for the part, the life for the
   living. "Come ye apart!" Leave this and that and the other, and from
   the place of sacred and restful detachment look over the entire field
   of life and duty, of purpose and destiny, and the fragment shall take
   its appointed place in the vast design, and shall no longer masquerade
   as an appalling and overwhelming totality.

   Sometimes this season of discerning detachment is forced upon us by the
   ministry of sickness. The Lord says to a long-time healthy man, "Come
   apart, I have something to say to thee. I have things to show thee
   which thou hast forgotten, or Which thou hast never seen." And then the
   man is detached by sickness from the immediate labours to which he has
   been applying himself with fierce and blinding quest. And what
   frequently happens, as the outcome of his seclusion, is a transformed
   conception of life and destiny; "I see things quite differently now!"
   He had been engrossed in fireworks, and had forgotten the stars. He had
   been busy building and enlarging his barns and had overlooked his
   mighty soul. He had been feverish about the transient and negligent of
   the eternal. "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now--!" In the
   season of seclusion he obtained a corrected vision.

   And sometimes a holiday provides the requisite apartness, when life
   passes in review, and we apprehend its true significance and
   proportion. I think this is peculiarly true of a minister and his
   ministry. We are so apt to become riveted to the mere organisation, and
   overlook the very products for which it was devised. We become
   engrossed with agricultural implements, and we forget the harvest. Now
   a holiday takes us. apart and gives us a more comprehensive view of our
   work. In some of Dr. Dale's letters, as published in his biography, it
   is very evident how he utilised his holidays for this most fruitful
   purpose. He brought all his life under review--his work, the emphasis
   of his teaching, and the general proportions of his ministry. And what
   is pertinent for the ministry would be surely fruitful to all men. We
   may use our holiday times as seasons for looking at things from the
   standpoint of healthy detachment, and noting the real quality and
   bearings of our work, its drift and ultimate destiny.

   But what holidays and sicknesses sometimes accomplish we can achieve by
   more immediate devices of our own choosing. By deliberately retiring
   from the pressure of our besieging work we can ordain a
   seclusion-chamber, where we can look at things in the calming, cooling,
   sanctifying presence of the Lord. In that sacred detachment many
   obscure things will become clear, "When I thought to know this it was
   too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary; then understood I.
   . . ." And in this sacred detachment many previous emphases will be
   changed. Many a valley shall be exalted, and many a mountain and hill
   shall be made low. The thing that seemed tremendous shall sink into a
   plain, and some things, which we had almost ignored, shall rear
   themselves as the very hills of God.

   And there is something further. It is only by this seclusion with the
   Lord that we can obtain the restoration of our squandered and exhausted
   strength. Look at this handful of fishermen who were attending our
   Lord, and mark the life they were leading in these exacting days. They
   were subjected to the exhausting ministry of constant surprise. We all
   know how a day of wonders drains our strength, until even wonder itself
   is spent and weary. These men lived in the thick of the miraculous, and
   the presentation of every new infirmity was the occasion of a new
   surprise. I think, I say, wonder itself was dulled, and they became
   worn and weary. And then, on the top of it all, there was the constant
   drain of the crowd. The crowd sucks the very energy out of our limbs,
   and leaves us soft and good-for-nothing. At the time we are in the
   crowd the drain may be unconscious, but it is none the less real. I
   know that a multitude provides a stimulus, but the very stimulus
   consists in opening a sluice-gate of our own precious and secret
   resource. What a multitude seems to give, it first of all extorts.
   Here, then, were these men in the midst of all these draining
   seductions, and they were becoming tired out in body, mind, and soul.
   "And He said unto them, Come ye apart into a desert place, and rest a
   while," that in the ministry of seclusion ye may find the means of
   restoration.

   Now this need is as pressing and serious today, perhaps even more so,
   than in the days of the disciples. Think of the constant drain in
   modern life. Think of the multiplicity of our correspondence, and every
   series of letters making its own exaction. Calculate the mere drain
   upon nerve force, the ceaseless suck upon our most vital resources, and
   then think of the influence of this constant efflux upon the mind, the
   organ of discernment, upon the emotions, the ministers of fellowship,
   and upon the soul, the medium of worship. Our vital strength is oozing
   out at every pore, and we need means of recuperation.

   Now there is nothing that so refreshes the entire man as deep, quiet
   waiting upon God. Every other refreshment may be welcome, but it is
   only partial, and will leave some weary power still impaired. Get the
   soul restored, and every part of the being will feel the mighty
   influence of its rejuvenation. There are multitudes of men and women
   who take a week-end at the seaside who would be incomparably more
   benefited, even in body, if they spent the week-end in quiet, restful
   communion with their God. There is more real recreation in one hour of
   communion with Christ than in a whole week of social revelries, however
   gracious and worthy they may be. "They that wait upon the Lord shall
   renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they
   shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."
     __________________________________________________________________

WEALTH THAT NEVER FAILS

   "The unsearchable riches of Christ."--Ephesians iii. 8.

   "THE unsearchable riches!" The inexplorable wealth, ranging vein beyond
   vein, mine beyond mine, in land beyond land, in continent beyond
   continent! "The unsearchable riches of Christ!" And then, side by side
   with this immeasurable glory, the apostle puts himself. "Unto me, who
   am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given!"

   What an arresting and daring conjunction! "The unsearchable riches" . .
   . "me, the least of all saints!" It is like some solitary mountaineer
   contemplating the uplifted splendours of Mont Blanc. "The unsearchable
   riches" . . . "unto me . . . given!" I turned my eyes away from the
   printed page, and I saw a bee exploring the wealth of a nasturtium
   flower. Then I thought of all the flowers in the garden, and of all the
   flowers in my neighbourhood, and of all the flowers in my country,
   growing in quiet meadows, on heathery moor, and in twilight glen and
   then my imagination roamed away to the floral splendours of other
   lands, bending on the blowing plain or nestling in the hollows of the
   towering heights, and still further ran my thought to the inconceivable
   luxuriance of the tropics. And then I came back to my bee, as it
   visited the hearts of the single flowers in my garden; I thought of
   that bee setting out to explore the floral wonders of the universe; and
   then I came back to the apostle, equally busy, extracting juices
   "sweeter than honey and the honeycomb," and almost bewildered by the
   vast and overwhelming glories of his inheritance. "The unsearchable
   riches of Christ" . . . "unto me" given, "who am less than the least of
   all saints!" The wealth is inexplorable. It cannot be pegged out. It
   cannot be finally traced. No inventory can be given. There is always a
   beyond! His riches are inexhaustible.


   "The first-born sons of light

   Desire in vain its depths to see,

   They cannot tell the mystery,

   The length and breadth and height."

   Let us turn our contemplation to one or two aspects of this
   "unsearchable" wealth. The Lord Jesus Christ has created so exacting a
   conception of Himself in the minds of men that no ministry of man can
   satisfy it. No human ministry can express it. In all our best
   representations of the Lord there is always a missing something, an
   "unsearchable" something, which the most masterly fingers cannot span.
   Art cannot express Him. I gazed, the other day, upon a powerful picture
   of our Saviour in conversation with Simon Peter. They were sitting
   together in Peter's fishing-boat, drawn up upon the beach, and the
   disciple was busy mending his nets. And as I looked upon the
   fisherman--strong, muscular, brawny, and watched him as he strayed his
   fingers, and lifted his keen, restless, impulsive, friendly eyes upon
   his Master--I said to myself, "That's my Peter! Whenever in coming days
   I seek communion with him, this is the likeness that will occupy my
   vision! I want no other! The inspired artist has given me Simon Peter,
   and I am satisfied!" But when I turned from the fisherman to his Lord
   my heart gave no leap of contented recognition. No, it was not my
   Saviour! There were lines of suggestive strength and beauty, but my
   heart withheld its homage. There was amazing wealth in the
   representation, but who can express "the unsearchable riches of
   Christ"? "No, that is not my Saviour," I said, and I turned away
   unsatisfied.

   Nor can literature express Him. The finest lineaments leave the half
   untold. I suppose that Tennyson has given us his conception of the
   Christ-man in King Arthur, as Thackeray has given us his in the
   delicate and lovely likeness of Colonel Newcome, but when our hearts
   have kindled and glowed in their masculine refinements, when we have
   stood wondering at the mingled strength and transparency of their life
   as it moves and shines like a glassy sea, our very wonder is chilled if
   we are told that the likeness must be interpreted as the representation
   of our Lord. No, a fine man, but not my Saviour! The heart is
   unsatisfied. And so it is with all human ministries, with music and
   literature and art--they can give us a little of the glory, they can
   give us diamond wealth as we see it in the jeweller's window, but the
   diamond mines are unexplored. So exacting is the conception which the
   Lord Himself has given us, that no human representation is possible,
   and all our expectations fall dispirited before every attempt to
   portray "the unsearchable riches of Christ."

   But it is not only that our Saviour has created an exacting conception
   of Himself, He has also, by His "unsearchable riches," created an
   exacting ideal of human possibility. When His disciples have been
   emancipated from the bondage of sin, and have been led to occupy some
   radiant summit in the realm of piety and virtue, even in the midst of
   their highest attainment they have an overwhelming sense of
   inexhaustible glories beyond. That was not characteristic of Stoicism.
   The Stoic got his feet planted upon a lower height, and abode there in
   undisturbed satisfaction. Most certainly it was not characteristic of
   the Pharisee. The tragedy of the Pharisee was this--he had finally
   attained, all his riches were in possession, he had arrived. Pharisaism
   had a jeweller's window, it had no mines. It spent its time in
   window-dressing, it never set out on wondering explorations. But the
   Lord Jesus has created an ideal of character, and has opened out dim
   and enticing vistas of possibility which leave us, after every
   conquest, with new dominions yet to be won. Every summit brings a new
   revelation, the reward of every attainment is a vision of further
   glory. And so it happens that, altogether unlike Pharisaism, in the
   ranks of the Lord's disciples the best are the lowliest, those who are
   furthest up the slopes are the least conscious of their attainments,
   for they contemplate, with breathless reverence, the far-spreading
   glories of their "unsearchable riches" in Christ. "Not as though I had
   already attained, or were already perfect, but I press on . . .!"

   "Unsearchable riches!" We cannot compute their glory in Christ our
   Lord, we cannot put our finger upon their limits in human possibility,
   and, thirdly, we cannot exhaust their Dowers of application to the
   ever-changing conditions in human life and destiny. In the Christian
   life new conditions never find us resourceless. Our wealth is
   inexhaustible, and always manifests itself as current coin. An old well
   was pointed out to me the other day, of which there are records
   stretching back through many centuries. I thought of the strangely
   varied and changing life, which had gathered about its birth, and how
   it had abundantly satisfied the needs of different environments that
   had passed away like dissolving views. Here had come the wandering
   minstrel, and the devout monk, and the tired soldier, and the itinerant
   evangelist, and the farmer and the labourer, and the woman and the
   child, and the spring had never failed! Through mediaeval days, and in
   the wonderful light of the Renaissance, and in the fierce, stern days
   of martial enterprise, and amid the ferment of the Reformation, and the
   later kindlings of the evangelical revival, down to our own day, when
   nothing harsh or hard seems to disturb the pastoral peace and
   simplicity, the well has been flowing, a minister of unceasing
   refreshment.

   It is so with the inexhaustible "riches of Christ," their glory is
   found in their immediate applicability to all the changes of our
   changing years. They never leave us, we never have to discard them,
   they are always up-to-date and pertinent. We can begin to use them when
   we are young. It is beautiful, and to me always very wonderful, that
   our little ones can begin to handle the unsearchable wealth of Christ.
   Our "weeniest bairns" paddle in the unsearchable sea, and if you lift
   your eyes you may see that same ocean carrying the great liner upon its
   broad bosom, and all its unknown freight of sorrow and joy. And our
   little ones can put their little feet into the vast sea of infinite
   love and grace, and the experience enhances their joy and liberty.
   "Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of
   such is the kingdom of heaven." Aye, believe me, our very youngest have
   the power to enjoy God. They have a delicate apprehension, like slender
   tendrils of climbing plants, by which they can lay hold of the Eternal,
   and live the aspiring life of communion with God. And when we grow
   older, and the apprehension has become a little more matured, larger
   resources are disclosed to our larger capacity, and the riches are
   plentiful to the vaster needs. Our Lord never wears out. He is always
   equal to the problem. He always brims to the new occasion, and in Him
   we are always full.


   "To Thee shall age with snowy hair,

   And strength and beauty bend the knee:

   And childhood lisp, with reverent air,

   Its praises and its prayers to Thee."

   But it is not only that "the unsearchable riches of Christ" adapt
   themselves, and reveal their wealth, to the changing condition of our
   years, it is that in our personal crises, when life suddenly leaps into
   fierce emergency, their resources are all available, and never leave us
   in the lurch. There are three great crises in human life--the crisis of
   sin, the crisis of sorrow, and the crisis of death--and by its ability
   to cope with these crises every philosophy and every ministry must be
   finally determined and tried.

   How fares it with the riches of Christ in these emergencies? Is the
   ocean of grace only for childlike paddling, or can it carry a liner?
   When we come to crises like these, is the Christian's exchequer empty,
   or is there an abundance of money, and is it current coin? How is it
   with sin? Are "the unsearchable riches" available? Is there any
   ministry in broad England dealing with the real virus of sin, and the
   haunting, paralysing Nemesis of guilt, except the redeeming grace of
   Christ? Do you know of any other ministry that is seeking to


   "Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff

   Which weighs upon the heart"?

   Is it not the bare truth to say that every other exchequer is empty?
   And is it not the bare truth of common experience to say that into the
   wretchedness of our moral impoverishment, and into the sunless places
   of our spiritual depravity, redeeming grace enters, and begins its
   mighty work of restoration and enrichment? This was the glory of
   Christianity to the Apostle Paul, and this it was which inspired his
   loudest and most triumphant song. "He breaks the power of cancelled
   sin, He sets the prisoner free!" And Paul found those liberating
   energies in strange places; they were to him "the treasures of
   darkness," for they sprang out of the awful poverty and desolations of
   Calvary. To the Apostle Paul Calvary just meant "the unsearchable
   riches" of love and grace in conflict with unspeakable powers of guilt
   and sin, accomplishing their triumphant overthrow, and establishing an
   open way to the heavenly land of light and peace. "The unsearchable
   riches" do not "give out" in the high crises of our awful sin and
   guilt. "What is that you once said?" asked a distressed woman of me the
   other day in a remote corner of this country, "what is that you once
   said of the love of Christ to sinners? Tell it me once again!" And she
   helped my memory until I had recovered the word she wanted, and it was
   this: "He hath loved thee more than thou hast loved thy sin!" And again
   I repeat it, that everybody may know, that "where sin abounds, grace
   doth much more abound," and that in this deep and dark necessity, where
   every other form of wealth fails, the "unsearchable riches of Christ"
   are all-sufficient, for He has "purchased our redemption with His
   blood."

   It is even so with the other crises I have named, the emergency of
   sorrow and the solemn and austere occasion of death. What wealth of
   grace He piles up about the sorrow of them that love Him, throwing upon
   it riches of soft and softening light; until, like the bare screes at
   gloomy Wastwater when the sunshine falls upon them, colours emerge
   which make the grief tolerable, as it lies transfigured before the
   countenance of God. "The people that sat in darkness have seen a great
   light." "In Thy light shall we see light." "Now are ye light in the
   Lord."

   And at the end of the journey, when we arrive at the toll-gate through
   which we all must pass, we need fear no ill. The "unsearchable riches"
   will be still available, and we shall pass quietly and serenely into
   the realm of clearer air and of larger service. We can never get to the
   end of "the unsearchable riches of Christ." They are our glory in time:
   they will be our endless surprise in eternity.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE DIVINE ABILITY

   "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding alma* dandy above all that
   we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be
   glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without
   end. Amen."--Ephesians iii. 20, 21.

   How is this doxology born? What are the circumstances which make it
   spring forth from the apostle's mind and heart? It is preceded by a
   glorious panorama of spiritual prospect. He has been feasting his eyes
   upon a vista of bewitching spiritual promise. Let us rehearse the
   glowing speech in which the vision is described: "That He would grant
   you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with
   might by His Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may dwell in your
   hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be
   able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and
   depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth
   knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God." How
   rich and radiant is the passage! How overwhelming in its visions of
   glory! But is it all an idle dream? After basking in its splendour for
   a moment, do we inevitably return to the squalor and meagreness of the
   commonplace? Is it all a mirage, beautiful but not substantial? Is it a
   dream, lovely but unreal? Is it too good to be true? Can we enter the
   promised land? Can we be endowed with regal robes, and walk as kings
   and queens in the glorious country? Is there any power by which we can
   grasp the shining dignities? It is in answer to doubting questions of
   this kind that the apostle sings his doxology: "Now unto Him that is
   able to do." The doxology is occasioned by the thought of the dynamic
   which is ours in God. It is an ideal that may be realised. It is a
   vision that may be actualised. The promised land is a substantial
   country, and by the marvellous power of the Almighty the poorest child
   of time may enter into its possession. Now let us look at the details
   of the apostle's triumphant song.

   "Now unto Him that is able to do." There is something so quiet, so
   easy, so tremendous in the contents of this word "do." It is not the
   noisy, obtrusive doings of a manufacturer; it is suggestive of an easy
   creation. Behind this word "do" there hides that other word "poem," and
   it is to the naturalness and ease which mark the creation of poetry
   that the term refers. There is nothing of noise and exertion in the
   making of a poem; it is a quiet birth; it is the emergence of
   mysterious power. The majority of us can make something that we call
   poetry, but the vital element is absent. We use the appropriate term in
   the word "make"; it is something manufactured; it is not suggestive of
   the coming of a flower or the appearance of a sunrise. The making of
   poetry results in artifice. It is like the making of artificial
   flowers, and we can see the supporting wire! I am trying to emphasise
   that behind this word "do" there is a stupendous and tremendous power,
   as quiet and as mighty as the power which hides in the birth of the
   morning. "He is able to do."

   "Exceeding abundantly." Here Paul coins a word for his own peculiar
   use. It seems as though at times the Holy Spirit crowded such great and
   radiant revelations into the apostle's mind and heart that even the
   rich vocabulary at his disposal was not sufficient to express them. But
   when ordinary language fails Paul employs his own. There was no
   superlative at hand which could describe his sense of the overwhelming
   ability of God, and so he just constructed a word of his own, the
   intensity of which can only be suggested in our English phrase
   "exceeding abundantly." The power flows up, and out, and over! It is a
   spring, and therefore incalculable. We can measure the resources of a
   cistern; we can tell its capacity to a trifle. We can register the
   contents of a reservoir; at any moment we can tell how many gallons it
   contains. But who can measure the resources of a spring? It is to this
   spring-like quality in the Divine power, the exceeding abundance, the
   immeasurable quantity, that the apostle refers. We can bring our little
   vessels to the spring and take them away filled to overflowing, and the
   exceeding abundance remains. The "doing" of our God is an inexhaustible
   well.

   "Above all we ask." The ability of God is beyond our prayers, beyond
   our largest prayers! I have been thinking of some of the petitions that
   have entered into my supplications innumerable times. What have I asked
   for? I have asked my God for forgiveness. I have asked my God for
   deliverance. I have asked Him for seasons of renewal. Sometimes I have
   thought that my asking was too presumptuous, it was even beyond the
   power of God to give. And yet here comes in the apostolic doxology.
   What I have asked for is as nothing compared to the ability of my God
   to give. I have asked for a cupful, and the ocean remains! I have asked
   for a sunbeam, and the sun abides! My best asking falls immeasurably
   short of my Father's giving. It is beyond all that we can ask.

   "Or think." Then His ability is beyond even our imagination! Let us
   stretch our imaginations to the utmost! Let us seek to realise some of
   the promised splendours that are ours in Christ. Let our imagination
   soar amid the offered sublimities of the Word of God. What is it
   possible for us to become? Think of the splendours of holiness that may
   be ours! Think of the range of affection that may be ours! Think of the
   amplitude of service that may be ours! And when our imagination has
   almost wearied itself in the effort to conceive our possible dignities,
   let us hear the apostolic song,--"Above all that we can think!" I call
   to mind the men who have been supreme in holy imagination. I think of
   the marvellous imaginative power of John Bunyan, and his unique
   capacity for realising the splendours of the Unseen. But even when I
   have accompanied John Bunyan, and have been amazed at his power, beyond
   all his dreams and visions I hear the apostolic word:--"Above all that
   we can think." I remember Richard Baxter's "Saints' Everlasting Rest."
   I remember how he deals with the glories of our prospective home, how
   he seems to have been endowed with special vision for unveiling the
   raptures of the blessed. But when I have closed Richard Baxter's book
   in amazed inspiration, I hear the apostolic superlative--"Above all
   that we can think." When all our workings and all our thinkings are put
   together, and piled one upon another, like some stupendous Alpine
   height, the ability of our God towers above all, reaching away into the
   mists of the immeasurable.

   How does this ability manifest itself toward us? What are the human
   conditions? "According to the power that worketh in us." A certain
   power on our side creates the possibility in which our God can clothe
   us with grace and spiritual strength. If our God is to do "exceeding
   abundantly above all that we can ask or think," there must be a certain
   power working on our side. There must be a certain energy on the human
   side, co-operating with the inconceivable strength of the Divine. What
   is the human power? The power of faith. And what is faith? Faith is a
   twofold constitution, the elements of which are in vital relation. It
   is an attitude and a venture. To sever the two is to destroy the life
   of both. We can no more divide the attitude and the venture and
   preserve their vitality than we can sustain life by the separation of
   flesh and blood.

   And what is the attitude in faith? It is the upward looking of the soul
   to God. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills." "Mine eyes are
   toward the Lord." The soul looks upward into the face of God that it
   may discern His mind and hear His voice. And the second element in
   faith is the element of venture and risk. "I will walk in the paths of
   Thy commandments." Having heard the Lord's will, risk it! "Thy words
   were found and I did eat them." When I have discovered the mind of the
   Lord I must turn His counsel into life. I must incarnate it in conduct.
   I must take any risk and every risk, and boldly walk in the appointed
   way. The unity of these two elements constitutes the act of faith. When
   these are present in the soul, the soul opens out to the wondrous
   incoming of the Almighty God. When I am willing to risk, God is "able
   to do." When I surrender, He can impart. The greater my willingness,
   the richer the river of His grace. If I lose my life I shall find it.
   "According to your faith be it unto you." "He is able to do . . .
   according to the power that worketh in us."

   It is therefore evident that the act of faith implies the exercise of
   will. It is more than an emotion; it is an exercise. Before God can
   "do," my will must be operative. Our wills, however weak, must be on
   the side of God. "But I have got no will left!" Oh yes, you have! You
   can will yourself on to your knees. You can will yourself to pray. You
   can do more than that, you can take the initial steps in obedience.
   "Rise and walk!" And that was said to. an impotent man! But he made the
   effort to rise,- and in making the effort he enabled God "to do"! Use
   the will you have got. Our God will not carry us as logs. He will
   co-operate with sincere and endeavouring children. By these conditions
   we shall become heirs to the wonderful powers that are ours in Christ.
   There will be no stint in our resources; we shall feel everywhere and
   feel always that we are more than conquerors through Him that loves us.
     __________________________________________________________________

NEW STRENGTH FOR COMMON TASKS

   "And immediately she arose and ministered unto them."--Luke iv. 39.

   THIS woman used her new strength to return to her old duties. She
   employed her divinely restored health in homely ministries about the
   house. The first evidence of her restoration was found in her own home.
   "Immediately she arose and ministered unto them." She did not even make
   her way to the synagogue to offer public praise to the Lord. Nor did
   she retire to her chamber, that she might place upon the altar some
   secret thanksgiving to the King. She just took up her duties with a new
   strength, and found her joy in immediate ministration to those who were
   round about her.

   It is beautiful to think that one of those to whom she ministered was
   the Lord Himself. The Lord of all glory sat down to her table, and the
   once helpless and fever-stricken woman used her new-found strength in
   ministering to His needs. The mother went on with her motherly work.

   Now this is one of the Lord's miracles, but, like all the Lord's
   miracles, it is full of parabolic suggestion. We read His miracles
   amiss unless we regard them as vestures of deeper wonders and
   profounder truths. And I want now to regard this particular act of
   healing, and the beautiful ministry that followed, as portraying larger
   workings in which we may all find a share. Here, then, are some of the
   teachings which I think may be justly inferred from this beautiful
   story:--

   Health is imparted at the touch of the Lord. Our Lord is the
   health-centre for the race. "In Him was life." It is not that some
   life, in certain degree and quality, was found in Him, but that life of
   every kind finds in Him its source. "With Thee is the fountain of
   life." We cannot find that anywhere else. We can no more find healthy
   life apart from the King than we can find heat independent of the sun.
   "It pleased God that in Him should all fullness dwell." Now this
   Life-source can communicate its treasures to others, and they are
   communicated through the ministry of contagion. We come into touch with
   our Lord, and by the touch the health-force is conveyed. Let us mark
   the analogies in the material sphere. Here is the leper, bearing his
   loathsome disease, and banned from the society of his fellows. He draws
   near to the health-centre. "And Jesus touched him," and by that touch
   the forces of health routed the regiments of disease, and the leper
   became clean as a little child.

   It was even so with the blind man. "And Jesus anointed his eyes." By
   that wonderful communion the ministry of the Godhead drove away the
   impeding scales from the eyes and the man received his sight. It is the
   same in the incident before us. Here is the woman fever-stricken and
   helpless. "And Jesus touched her," and before the power of that
   fellowship the fever left her. Sometimes the initiative appears to be
   taken by the children of need. Here is a woman bent and broken,
   threading her way through the dense and indifferent crowd. Now she is
   borne nearer to the Master, and now carried further away. But at one
   favourable drift of the crowd she comes near enough to the Lord to
   stretch out her hand and touch Him. "Who touched Me?" The disciples
   were amazed at the simplicity of the question, knowing that the
   multitude was pressing about Him on every side. But Jesus knew that a
   touch had been given which had tapped the fountain! "Virtue hath gone
   out of Me!" Through the channels of that communion the woman had
   received invigoration which enabled her to stand erect and to walk with
   ease.

   Now this contact comprises a twofold approach, the human and the
   Divine. It implies the grasp of two hands, the Healer and the healed.
   It necessitates the union of two wills, the man's and his Lord's. Here,
   again, the material analogies will help our thought. "Lord, if Thou
   wilt!" There is the projection of the human will, the approach from the
   side of man. "I will!" And here is the Divine approach, the marvellous
   condescension of our God. "What wilt thou have Me to do unto thee?"
   That is the approach of the Lord. "Lord, that I might receive my
   sight"; that is the approach of the man that is blind. And so, I say,
   the contact is composed of the unifying of two wills, the will of faith
   and the will of the redeeming Lord. Our spiritual health begins with
   the same contact.


   "We touch Him in life's throng and press,

   And we are whole again."

   No matter what our disease may be, and how deep and established it be,
   through the power of this union it is driven away. "I will restore
   health unto thee." When we move our will toward the Lord we may have
   perfect confidence that. He is inclined toward us, and through the
   mysterious union we become "partakers of the Divine nature."

   Health is sustained in the channels of service. When our health has
   been restored how shall we maintain it? No life can preserve its
   spiritual health which in any way seeks to be independent of the Lord.
   Those to whom the Lord imparts, health are still dependent upon the
   Lord. But the health forces will flow to us from our Lord through the
   channels of service. That is so, I think, in the glory-land, among
   those who live in the immediate presence of God. Their holiness is
   maintained in service. "They serve Him, day and night." It is not all
   singing and harping in heaven! And I think that even the harping and
   the singing will be so arranged as to be ministers to communion. You
   can depend upon it, we shall need one another there, only it will not
   be a painful need, and everybody will find their delight and health in
   serving one another. The "spirits of just men made perfect" are kept in
   their perfection through mutual ministry.

   Whether or not this be the principle prevalent in heaven, it is
   certainly the principle by which health is preserved on earth. "He that
   would be great among you let him be your minister." And what did Jesus
   mean by "great"? Certainly He did not suggest the exalted and highly
   placed. Contacts like these never entered the Master's interpretation
   of greatness. To be "great" in Jesus' usage of the word is to be
   morally and spiritually whole. I think, therefore, we may justly
   transpose His words, and read them in this wise--"He that would be
   healthy and robust among you let him be your minister." That is how we
   are to sustain our health; we are to find our strength in service. I
   think that here we come upon the most conspicuous blot in the character
   of Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress. Everybody is serving him; he is
   rarely serving anybody. He is not the happiest man, nor does he walk
   with perfect assurance and triumph. Melancholy often sits upon his
   shoulders, and he does not walk like a man in exuberant health. I think
   it is because he is not commonly found in the paths of service. Now
   Faithful is a healthier man because a more helpful man. He did not see
   the hobgoblins, nor hear the shrieking spirits that menaced and shouted
   in the ears of Christian. He was a healthier man, and these things did
   not come his way. The healthy life is a life of ministration, and the
   sooner we take to it the better.

   "Immediately she arose and ministered unto them." A man once came into
   my vestry who had just been won from the world, and regenerated by the
   grace of Christ. I pointed out to him that he must engage in a little
   service for the King. "Yes," he said, "but I must just feed for a
   time!" That is a very commonly accepted way, but it is not the
   appointed way. We get by giving, we feed by feeding. "I have meat to
   eat that ye know not of." Where had the Master found that food? He had
   been feeding the poor, fallen woman at the well, and while He fed her
   soul His own was restored. "When thou art converted, strengthen thy
   brethren," and while thou art strengthening thy brother thine own
   strength shall be preserved. "She arose and ministered unto them."

   Our field of service must first be sought in the need that is most
   immediate. Peter's wife's mother began with the humdrum work of the
   home. Now the first temptation in the converted life is to despise the
   commonplace. The devil may say to you, now that you are re-born, "You
   must be a missionary," while all the time the Lord is pointing to a bit
   of needy work at your own feet. The devil gets your mind set upon
   Africa, and you ignore your own town you look for a big sphere, and you
   ignore your own house. There is nothing more insidious than the
   temptation to take our eyes away from the immediate need and to wait
   for an imaginary one. The woman of my text began her ministry in her
   own house, and that is where we must begin. Is there nothing to sweeten
   there, to illumine there, to beautify there? We are for ever "seeking
   for some great thing to do," and there is a bit of duty lying at our
   feet which needs to be burnished into acceptable brightness.

   How is it in your workshop? Is there a Jesus-finish about your work? Is
   there a Jesus-fragrance about your relationships with your fellow
   workers? You say you wish to go to the foreign field suppose your
   workshop were a bit of India, how are you getting ready for the work?
   Have you the love-girdle on? Or is the devil saying to you, "You will
   not want the love-girdle until you are in India"? "Arise and minister."
   I know a woman who was brought out of darkness into light, and out of
   bondage into the liberty of the Lord. She lived in one of the poorest
   courts of our city. And when she was converted she said to herself,
   "Now I must tidy things up a bit. I must have a Jesus-house, a
   Martha-and-Mary kind of home. My house must be the tidiest, cleanest,
   and sweetest house in the court." And such it became. Was not this a
   bit of real ministry for the King?

   We are all so ambitious to be stars. while our Saviour wants us to be
   street-lamps. And after all, on the muddy, heavy roads at night, and to
   the trudging, tired wayfarer, the lamp is more useful than the star.
   "Let your light so shine." We would all like to stand in royal palaces
   and be cup-bearers to the King, but all the time the King is saying,
   "Give a cup of cold water in My name!" I am waiting for a great sermon
   to come my way, and I have waited for years. I want some golden goblet,
   that I can offer to the critical crowd; and the Lord is quietly saying
   to me, "Take a plain cup and give My people to drink!" Some of you
   young men may be trying to write an eloquent sermon, or some convincing
   essay on Christian evidences; perhaps, after all, you will serve your
   Lord better if you will just write home to your mother a little more
   frequently! Oh, if we would only begin with the intermediate task, and
   beautify the commonplace road, we should preserve our own spiritual
   health, and we should bring vigour and grace to others.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE MINISTRY OF THE CLOUD

   "His pavilions round about Him were . . . thick clouds of the
   skies."--Psalm xviii. 11.

   "The clouds drop down the dew."--Proverbs iii. 20.

   His pavilions are thick clouds! Then the cloud is not a destructive
   libertine, some stray, haphazard, lawless force, the grim parent of
   shadow and chill and tempest! "His pavilions are thick clouds." The
   clouds are the dwelling-places of God. He lives in them; He moves
   through them. He pervades them with the gentle ministries of grace and
   love. "The clouds drop down their dew." Then the clouds are more than
   shutters; they are springs. They do more than exclude the sunlight;
   they are the parents of the fertilising rains and the drenching mists
   and dews. It is something of a triumph when we have got thus far in our
   religious faith. In the early days it was believed that only the
   sunlight was the token and vehicle of our Lord's appearing. But here is
   a man with a larger and more comprehensive faith. Not only the
   sunlight, but the cloud also Is the minister of His purpose and will.
   It is lot only prosperity which glows with the seal of His favour;
   adversity also may be a proof of His grace. The cloud may hide the
   light; it does not destroy it. The cloud does not disprove the light;
   it is really the proof of the light. Without the warm and genial light
   there could be no cloud; the cloud is the creation of light. When,
   therefore, the cloud is forming, it means the sun is working. Raindrops
   can be traced to sunbeams. Love yearns to send a gentle rain, and so
   love prepares a cloud. So, the cloud is part of the answer to our
   prayer for dew. The sable vehicle carries a brilliant jewel. If,
   therefore, I have been asking my God for a softening, fertilising rain,
   I must not be discomfited by the appearance of a chilling and darkening
   cloud. If I have been asking for a drenching baptism of dew I must not
   lose my heart when there comes a confusing mist. I asked for rain;
   there came a cloud! I asked for dew; there came a mist!

   A few years ago, we were asking the Lord to bless our nation; there
   came a chilling disappointment; the answer was in the cloud! We asked
   the Lord to save and bless our King; to enrich him with the continual
   dews of His Holy Spirit; and deep shadows came upon the palace; the
   answer was in the cloud. We asked the Lord to weld our people together
   in purer and more fruitful sympathy; and over the people there
   descended a common sorrow; the answer was in the cloud! We asked the
   Lord for Coronation blessings! And when all was ready, all was stayed!
   The pageant halted! Gun and bell and trumpet were silenced! The
   Coronation ceremonial was checked! a deep gloom ran over the glory. But
   our answer was in the cloud; the Coronation blessing was more richly
   given in awakened thought, in more elevated vision, in deepened
   intercession, in moral increment, and in the spiritual enrichment both
   of the Sovereign and the people. "The clouds drop the dew."


   "Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

   The clouds ye so much dread

   Are big with mercy, and shall break

   With blessings on your head."

   And so I have thought it might be calming and cheering if I thus direct
   your meditations to the ministry of the cloud. Have you ever noticed
   how many of the dispositions of the perfected life can only be richly
   gained in the baptism of shadow and tears? We are accustomed to speak
   of them as the fruits and flowers of the Spirit. I sometimes think we
   might be nearer the truth if we spoke of them as the ferns. Flowers are
   suggestive of the sunny glare; ferns are more significant of the
   moistened shade. And when I contemplate the dispositions which are the
   creations of the Spirit, I feel that for their perfect nourishing
   something is needed of moistness and of shade. Here is a short list of
   the beautiful things: "Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
   goodness, meekness, temperance, faith." I say, I am more inclined to
   call them ferns than flowers! I don't think they would come to any
   luxuriant profusion and beauty if they were grown in the prolonged and
   cloudless glare! They need not only the upward calling of the light,
   but the feeding baptism of waters and the restfulness of the shade.

   Here is an exquisite fern--"gentleness." Where will you find it growing
   in richest profusion? You will find it growing in the life that has
   known the shadow and the tear. There is no touch so tenderly gentle as
   the touch of the wounded hand. There is no speech so insinuatingly
   sympathetic as the speech of those who have been folded about by the
   garment of night. Gentleness is a fern, and it requires the ministry of
   the cloud. Here is another rare and beautiful fern--"long-suffering."
   How can you grow that in the "garish day"! You may as well plant out
   your ferns in the middle of the unprotected lawn, and let the fierce
   darts of light strike upon them through the long day, and expect to
   have a mass of broad, healthy, graceful fronds, as expect to find
   "long-suffering" flourishing where there is no shadow of trial, no
   chill of darkness and tears. "Long-suffering" is a fern, and it needs
   the ministry of the cloud. And is it otherwise with the ferns of
   "goodness" and "love"? How this love-fern expands when life passes into
   the shadow; when husband or child is laid low, how love puts on
   strength and beauty, whether the lover be peasant-wife or queen! When I
   remember these things, when I recall the purpose of all living, to make
   perfectly holy our dispositions, I do not wonder that, for the sake of
   the fern-like qualities of the spirit, we are sometimes taken out of
   the brightness of "the green pastures" into "the valley of the shadow,"
   and are put under the gracious influence of the ministry of the cloud.

   Now, I do not think we have any difficulty in perceiving the influence
   of the cloud in the individual life. Perhaps we may find its best
   expression in the familiar words of the Psalmist, "In my distress Thou
   hast enlarged me." Enlarged! It is a very spacious word, and includes
   the complementary meanings of broadening and enrichment. "In my
   cloud-experience Thou hast enriched me!" Some little languishing fern
   of tenderness or thoughtfulness has been revived by the ministry of the
   moistened shade. Is that an altogether unfamiliar experience? A man
   goes into the cloud rough and boorish, and full of domineering
   aggression, and he emerges from its ministry strangely softened and
   refined! He entered the cloud hard and dry as a pavement; he emerges
   with disposition suggestive of the fernery. "In my distress Thou hast
   enriched me!"

   The cloud experience is the minister not only of enrichment, but of
   enlargement. It is in the cloud that men grow the fern of a spacious
   tolerance. Narrowness is transformed to breadth. I have known a man of
   very stern, severe, and rigid creed, who definitely relegated to
   damnation all who lived beyond its sharp and imprisoning fence; and I
   have met him again in after years, and I found that the barbed wire was
   down, and the field of his sympathy was immeasurably enlarged. "But
   that is not what you used to believe ten years ago?" "No, but many
   things have happened since then." Then I learned that he had been in
   the valley of the shadow! Adversity had wrapped him in its clammy
   embrace! He had become very familiar with the grave; the way to the
   cemetery was well worn by his accustomed feet; he had been under the
   tuition and ministry of the cloud, and in his distress he had been
   enlarged The clouds had dropped their dew! In the personal life, if it
   were not for the cloud we should become and remain dry and infertile as
   the Sahara; it is the providential cloud that calls forth the hidden
   growth, the sleeping ferns, and transforms the dust-heap into a thing
   of grace and beauty.

   It is not otherwise with the ministry of the cloud in the sphere of the
   home. There is many a family which never realises its unity until it is
   enveloped in the folds of a chilling cloud. Health and luxury are too
   often divisive; sickness and sorrow are wondrous cements. Luxury
   nourishes a thoughtless individualism; adversity discovers hidden and
   profounder kinships. There is many a home, whose light has been as the
   glitter and the dazzle of a garish day; and the daughters of the house
   have been the creatures of levity and flippancy and of an endless
   trifling. And the cloud has come, and gloom has filled the house; the
   father is stricken, and adversity shows its famine-teeth at the door;
   and these flippant daughters awake from their luxurious sleep, and they
   put on moral strength and beauty like a robe. The family has found its
   unity in its distress. "We shall know each other better when the mists
   have rolled away!" Ah! but we sometimes never know each other until we
   meet together in the mist! It is in the common cloud that the family
   finds its kinship. It is in our sorrow that deep calleth unto deep, and
   our communion is revealed.

   Is it otherwise in the larger life and family of the nations? Does the
   cloud-ministry exercise its influence in the State? Surely we may say
   that the common life of a people is deepened and enriched by the
   ministry of the shade. A people is not consolidated by common material
   interests and aims. It is not by free trade or by reciprocity that we
   shall forge the links of enduring fellowships. These ties are only
   skin-ties, and they are the subjects of skin disease. Juxtaposition is
   not fellowship. You may place men in a common schedule and yet not make
   them more akin. Men may march together without being agreed. We may
   revise our commercial relationships, and yet the springs of unity may
   not be touched. We shall never owe our deepened fellowship to the
   dazzle; we shall owe it to the shade. It is not the prosperous glare
   that makes us one. We fall apart in the noontide; we draw closer to
   each other in the night. It is in the national clouds and shadows, and
   in the nation's tears that you will find the forces of a true
   consolidation. It is not in the nation's shout, but in the nation's
   hush that the unifying forces are at work. There has been a marvellous
   growth in the mutual attachment of sovereign and people during the last
   twenty-five or thirty years. Has the cloud had any share in the
   enrichment? Even twenty-five years ago there was a broad republican
   sentiment prevalent in the nation. It was shared by some who now occupy
   exalted positions of state. In our own day it has weakened almost to
   the point of extinction. It is rarely, if ever, whispered in the broad
   plains of public life. How is the change to be explained? Instinctively
   we think of the late Queen's goodness, of her sane and healthy
   judgment, of her unfailing tact and discretion, of her single-minded
   devotion to her subjects' weal. And certainly all these were forces of
   integration, but having named them is the situation now explained? I
   confess to you that much as I esteemed Queen Victoria's mental and
   spiritual resources, it is not to her endowments but to her sorrows
   that I would point if I wished to find the primary causes of this
   deepened attachment and regard. I think her clouded experiences
   accomplished as much as her sovereign gifts, and that in the sharing of
   common sorrow monarch and people approached in ever deeper and richer
   communion. It was not by the passing of imperial pageants that the
   welding was effected, but by the so-often repeated passing of the
   funeral train as it made its sombre journey from the palace to the
   grave! No, not by the dazzling splendour of her sovereignty, but by the
   grey and sober ministry of the cloud, revealing the kindred humanness
   of monarch and people, and in its vital depths creating the mutual
   bonds of loving and reverent attachment.

   The clouds, in their courses, have been the friends of the national
   life.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE REALMS OF THE BLEST

   "And so shall we ever be with the Lord."--1 Thessalonians iv. 17.

   I WANT to turn your attention to that blessed land in which our Saviour
   rules as King, and where our departed have ceaseless communion, with
   Him. I know it is out of fashion to meditate about heaven. It is
   regarded as somewhat effeminate even to speak of the abodes of the
   blessed. I suppose it partly arises from what is regarded as a very
   healthy disparagement of mere emotion and sentiment. It seems to be
   commonly thought that people who ponder much upon heaven have their
   fibre softened and their faculties generally debilitated and impaired.

   I remember that when I first came out of college, and took up the work
   of the Christian ministry, I fervently shared this common belief, and I
   felt with a good many other young reformers that instead of singing
   about the things of the blessed and the doings of the eternal life, I
   would engage the interest of my congregation in the condition of the
   slums, and the uncleanness of the common streets of our own city.
   Rather than waste sentiment and thought upon the life that is to be, I
   would seek to concentrate all our energy in bettering the life that is.

   I think I have learned a larger lesson. I have discovered that no man
   works less eagerly in the slums, because now and again he has a view of
   the City of God, and no man has a softened fibre because he stimulates
   his imagination in trying to realise the life that is to be. What kind
   of power does it impair? What kind of faculty does it soften, to think
   occasionally about the land to which we are all hastening? Does it
   soften the will? Does it in any way bedim the conscience? Does it
   narrow or strain the affections? Let us be definite in our charge, let
   us seek to put our finger upon that particular part of our mental or
   spiritual constitution which is in any way injured by the steady,
   frequent, regular contemplation of the Eternal Rest. In what way does
   it unfit men for practical life? In what way does it create dreamers?
   "I should like to meet with a few of these dreamy people," says Faber,
   "first to be sure of the fact, which I venture to doubt, and secondly
   to be sure I should condemn their dreaminess, which I doubt also."

   Well, now, suppose we do give a little of our time to thought about the
   better land, and the Lord of the better land, what may we hope to
   accomplish by it? I have been lately spending a very busy week among
   the saints, that I might discover from their experience what they have
   found from such contemplation. What do they find? Here is a quaint
   phrase in which one of the saints expresses his sense of the value of
   heavenly meditation. "It will prevent a shyness between thy soul and
   God." Love is exquisitely shy, and our love for our Saviour has, I
   think, in its beginning, just this little touch of shyness which wears
   away as we engage in frequent talk and communion with Him.

   What else have the saints found in heavenly contemplation? Here is
   Richard Baxter's answer: "It will open the door between thy head and
   thy heart," and then he goes on to say, in what I consider a very
   suggestive phrase: "He is usually the best Christian who has the
   readiest passage from his brain to his heart." Do you see the
   significance of that? We take into our minds a certain truth, a certain
   mental conception; if we meditate upon the truth received, the ministry
   of meditation transfers the truth from the mind to the affections. It
   becomes mare than a mental apprehension; it becomes a part of our love.
   It turns a thing of the brain into a power of the life. It begins to
   energise the passions, waking them, feeding them, nourishing those
   parts of our life which are the most potent in determining our
   activity.

   What else will it accomplish? It will bring the needed inspiration in
   times of temptation and distress. "When should we take our cordial,"
   says our friend the Puritan, "but in times of fainting?" When the
   tempter is very near you, or when distress seems to overwhelm you like
   a flood--then is one of the seasons when you ought to turn your mind to
   the land of the blessed, because from that contemplation there will
   come nutriment and inspiration by which you shall be sustained in your
   darkest hour and carried through in safety. Now that is most
   characteristic of Samuel Rutherford. I confess that when I am reading
   one of his letters, and I find that he is dealing with some season of
   distress, some season of overwhelming tribulation, I almost welcome it
   because I know he will bring out some of the heavenly counsel and
   experience which he has acquired in season of communion with God. "I
   had rather," he says, "I had rather have Christ's buffet and Christ's
   love stroke than any king's kiss." He weighs his pain over against the
   coming glory. In the hour of his sorrow he meditates upon the coming
   bliss, and the contemplation of the bliss transfigures the present
   sorrow.

   Find out the best place whence you can send your thoughts heavenward.
   Richard Baxter said that he always found that his "fattest time" was in
   the evening, from the sunset to the twilight. It may not be your best
   time, it may not be your convenient time; but find a place and find an
   hour when you can send your imagination among the realms of the
   blessed, to remind yourselves of the country towards which you are
   going, of the inheritance to whose possession you are succeeding, and
   give yourself the sense of the dignity of one who has part and lot in
   the matter, who is a partaker of the Divine nature, and will share with
   the Eternal the blessedness of eternity.

   What are some of the characteristic glories of the life which is to be
   spent for ever with the Lord? I can tell you nothing you do not know;
   but perhaps just by repeating a commonplace in a fresh way I may give
   it a certain newness.

   It is a life of rest. I do not wonder that Faber, in one of his books,
   when he had mentioned this word "rest," added the sentence: "Let us
   stay and suck that word as if it were a honeycomb." Now people who are
   never tired cannot know the significance of rest. But people who have
   to labour very hard, and amid very straitened circumstances, find in
   the word a delicious consolation. I remember once talking with a
   fisher-woman who had lost her husband and two sons at sea, away down in
   Cullercoats Bay on the Northumberland coast. I asked her what she liked
   most to think about when she thought about the land beyond, and I was
   not surprised to hear her say, "And there shall be no more sea." And
   when you go to very tired people, people who are not only physically
   tired but mentally worn, there is no word which appeals to them with
   such sweet significance as just this common word "rest." I said to one
   of my people the other day, as I stood by his dying bed: "Rest comes at
   length!" And the tired eyes lit up, and I knew the meaning of the
   expectancy that leaped into his hungry eyes. "They shall hunger no
   more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light upon them
   nor any heat"; "there shall be no more pain."

   It is a life of quest. It is not a life of mere passivity, but a life
   of glorious activity. First of all our quest is to be under the
   immediate leadership of our Lord: "He shall lead them to living
   fountains of water." The unveiling of new things, the unsealing of new
   springs! When we have dropped the clay and the veil of the flesh, we
   shall stand out with immeasurably increased powers of perception, and
   going with our Lord as our personal conductor among the wonders of
   unveiled truth and all the splendours of glory, with our immeasurably
   intensified powers, we shall find countless kinds of new and
   unimaginable delights break out before us on every side.

   It is a life of service. I like that little phrase that Swedenborg
   uses--and among all the apparent fictions and fancies and flimsy
   conceits of Swedenborgianism you sometimes come across what you feel at
   once to be rare gems of superlative truth--Swedenborg says concerning
   the employments of heaven: "There will be occupation but no labour."
   The worker is never tired His activity is never toil! It is a life of
   uses, and every soul will have its individual enterprise.

   And it is a life of wondrous communion. First of all, it is communion
   with one another. I sometimes say to my people when they are telling me
   their sorrows and their troubles, and when neither the teller nor the
   hearer can find even the faintest clue, "You will explain it to me some
   day!" I say it as a glorious conviction that one of the joys and
   delights of the heavenly country will be the perfect understanding of
   the things that have bewildered us here. We shall get the clue, and we
   shall tell one another the story which down here we found a burden and
   a destroyer of our peace.

   But the joy of fellowship will be not only fellowship one with another,
   but fellowship with those spirits who "have never, never known a fallen
   world like this." If you were to ask me to put my finger upon one page
   in all the published writings of Dr. Dale which is written most deeply
   on my mind and heart, it would be that glorious passage in which he is
   expounding this great word to the Ephesians: "to the principalities and
   powers in the heavenly place there shall be made known the manifold
   wisdom of God." Dr. Dale speaks about the redeemed pilgrims of time
   telling the inhabitants of the heavenly city who have never known our
   estate, who have never known our sin, the story of redemption, and of
   how our hunger was met and how our peace was renewed; and they will
   tell the pilgrims about the unclouded day, about the far-away time when
   sin had not fallen upon the world, and all about the wonderful
   developments and experiences of the unsullied life.

   But pre-eminently, and above all other things, it is to be a life of
   fellowship with the Lord. "For ever with the Lord! Amen, so let it be!"
   "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall tabernacle among
   them." It is a homely figure; it is the figure of a meeting-place of
   many tents, and our God comes and adds His tent to the number. He is
   one with us, one among us; allowing us to go into His tent, and coming
   into our tent, a life of shared fellowship, a life of close intimacy in
   the things of the blessed.

   Well, now, let us give a little time to thinking about these things. In
   twelve months' time some of us will probably be in the heavenly
   country. Surely it is well just to think a little about the glories and
   beauties of the land. "Half-an-hour in heaven," said a working man to
   me one day, "half-an-hour in heaven and I am ready for anything!" Spend
   a little time with the Lord now, and you will be prepared to spend the
   "for ever with the Lord." Amen.

  THE END

    Printed in the United States of America.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Exodus

   [1]33:14

   Psalms

   [2]18:11   [3]23:5   [4]37:1   [5]62:5-6   [6]141:2-4

   Proverbs

   [7]3:20

   Isaiah

   [8]12:2   [9]35:1   [10]40:31   [11]59:59

   Matthew

   [12]6:31   [13]10:18-20   [14]11:29

   Luke

   [15]4:39   [16]22:45

   John

   [17]1:48   [18]8:12   [19]12:36

   Acts

   [20]12:12

   2 Corinthians

   [21]1:3-4

   Ephesians

   [22]2:1   [23]2:12-13   [24]3:8   [25]3:20-21

   1 Thessalonians

   [26]4:17

   Revelation

   [27]2:17
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Index of Pages of the Print Edition

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     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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