The addresses in this volume were all originally published in the Examiner newspaper, and it was not intended by Mr. Jowett, that they should ever take more permanent form. They were found, however, to be so helpful and stimulating by a wide circle of readers, and so many requests for their republication were received, that it has been resolved to issue them in the present volume, with the hope that they may appeal for good to a still larger public. As they retain the form of spoken rather than written addresses, it is only due to the author that this much should be stated.
W. B. SELBIE,
(Editor of “The Examiner.” )
“I have set.”—
“He set.”—
The Bible abounds in figures representing spiritual attitudes
and the Father’s gracious response. Man assumes a certain posture of soul, and
the grace of the Lord falls upon him like a soft and inspiring light. How shall
I dispose my life? At what angle shall I incline it that I may receive this
glorious baptism? I find the requisite suggestion in a verse of the
Psalmist,—“I have set the Lord always before me.” That is a “setting” on my
part, which will issue in a responsive “setting” on the part of God. I
determine the direction of gaze; He will determine the character of my life. I
“set the Lord always before me”; He will
“I have set the Lord always before me” (
You are away from home, and in the far-away city; before you retire to rest you take out of your pocket a photograph, and gaze upon the likeness of your wife or child. How calming and steadying is the influence of the picture as you set it before you! One of Robertson’s congregation at Brighton used to keep a portrait of the great preacher in the room behind his shop, and when he was tempted to any mean device, he would set the likeness before him, and its influence determined his inclination in the way of truth. But it is not the figure of any earthly personality, however noble and ennobling, which is the object of the Psalmist’s contemplation. He “sets” before him the august and holy presence of God, and in the glory of His most searching light all the Psalmist’s affairs are determined.
“I have set the Lord always before me.” It is
The man who steadily contemplates God as the abiding background of all his affection will find a spiritual ministry operating in his life with most gracious response. Let us gather up two or three of the “settings” which are the happy experiences of those who set their mind upon God.
(1) “He set my feet upon a rock.”
The shake and tremble shall go out of life. Timidity shall be
changed into a sense of firmness and security. The loose, uncertain sand and
gravel shall be consolidated into rock. Loose ideas about the right shall be
changed into strong perceptions. Loose principles shall be converted into
immovable convictions. Vagrant affection shall be transfigured into steady and
unwavering love. Weak will shall be energised into mighty powers of
righteousness. There shall be about the entire life a firmness, a decisiveness,
a sense of strength and “go” and security, analagous to the feelings of a
(2) “Thou hast set my feet in a large place.”
The life of the man whose gaze is fixed upon God shall not
only be firm but roomy. Everything about his spirit shall receive enrichment.
The consecrated life is not lived in the dark, dank surroundings of a narrow
cell. Our feet are set in a “large place.” Our affections, which were dwarfed
and petty, become spacious and inclusive. Our pleasures have larger skies
and more remote horizons. The enjoyments of the unconsecrated life were only as
the uncertain pools and puddles of the common way. “Thou shalt make us to drink
of the river of Thy pleasures.” The only pleasures that are denied us are the
bewitching and destructive delights of the flesh. But why should we mourn that
they are gone? It would be like mourning for the return of the beclouding steam
that dimmed the window-pane. The steam has gone, the blinding carnality is
removed. We have now an outlook over the large and beautiful realm of the
spirit. Our feet are “set in a large place.” Our possibilities are
enlarged. There are no limits to the power of our becoming, no confines to the
bounds of our optimism. Peak upon peak
(3) “I have set before thee an open door.”
The life that is lived in steady contemplation of God is not
only firm and roomy, but is characterised by daily enlargement. Every day the
Lord opens doors to the consecrated life. Words that hitherto had no meaning
throw open their doors and unveil their wealth. Promises that have hitherto been
under lock and key fling their doors ajar, and invite us to partake of their
treasure. We don’t know just where we shall find the open door. Sometimes a
lowly service confronts us. We discharge the humble task, and in the act of
obedience we find we have passed through an open door into an enlarged
conception of “the inheritance of the saints in light.” In the old castle at
Edinburgh, the way to the Crown Jewels leads through a very humble doorway and
through a very dingy and circuitous passage. The humble doorways of common
duties are frequently the way to the room where God keeps His jewels. The Lord
is ever giving us new opportunities, fresh chances, that day by day we may grow
in grace and in the knowledge
Let us “set the Lord” always before us, and life in its inmost depths shall be wondrously transfigured. We shall step upon rock, we shall live in a large place, and life will be abundant in opportunities for moral and spiritual growth.
“It is the glory of God to conceal a thing”—
The Lord conceals that He may the more abundantly reveal. He hides a thing in order that we
may have the refining discipline of seeking for it,
and enjoy the keen delights of discovery. Things
which are come at easily are esteemed lightly.
The pebble that lies upon the common way is
beneath regard. The pearl that lies buried in
ocean depths is a treasure of rare price. The pain
of getting intensifies the joy of possessing. If
everything could be picked up from the surface,
life would become exceedingly superficial. But
the best things are concealed. “The kingdom of
heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field.”
We have to dig for our wealth. We are called
to a life of toil and discipline and research.
Things are concealed in order that life may be
But where shall I make my search? I never know where the wealth may be concealed. The patch of ground which appears to be the most unpromising may be the hiding place of the finest gold. Therefore I will interrogate the commonplace, I will search into the humdrum ways of life; I will pierce into the heart of tame and sober duties; I will look for treasure even in the dark cloud. I will assume that there is a dowry of grace even in the ministry of pain. I will search for the wealth of poverty, the advantage of apparent disadvantage, the jewels that may be in the heaviest grief. I will look for the hidden treasure, for “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing.”
1. It is the glory of God to conceal His teaching in the hard and toilsome ways of experience.
I come to know when I have begun to do. The doctrine is
hidden in the obedience. “If any man will to do, he shall know.” Illumination
breaks out in the ways of consecration. The Bible expresses this teaching in a
great variety of forms. Here is a beautiful image from the lips of the Psalmist.
“Light is sown for the righteous.” I can so arrange the sowing of seed
that my
Here is another word from the old book suggestive of the same
teaching. “To him that overcometh
2. It is the glory of God to conceal His fortune in apparent misfortune.
We often find that the “valley of the shadow” gives rest to eyes which had become wearied with the “green pastures,” and tired with the gleaming of the “still waters.” It is sometimes the shadow that “restoreth our soul.” The darkness often brings the healing medicament. In the apparent misfortune the Lord has hidden a fortune. God has concealed His riches in the night. The overcast sky is frequently our best friend.
What a calamity it appeared when the Apostle Paul was checked in his missionary career, and imprisoned in custody at Rome. It appeared as though an irrigating river had been dammed up, and had become a localised lake. His evangel appeared to be confined, and his activities paralysed. But it was “the glory of God to conceal a thing.” The misfortune was only the shrine of a larger fortune. The Apostle cries with great jubilation—“The things that happened unto me have turned out rather for the furtherance of the Gospel.” Out of his activity there came glorious letters which have guided and cheered the pilgrimage of a countless host.
Pain comes to be my guest. My powers are wasted, and I am burdened with the dark companionship. I call it a calamity, or I regard it as a sore misfortune; but how often it has turned out that the calamity was only the dark vesture of benediction. In my suffering I gained a wider sympathy. My responsiveness was enriched. “Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.”
Disappointment flings a barrier across my path. My purposes
are thwarted. My ambitions are checked. There comes an imperative “halt” in
3. It is the glory of the Lord to conceal His power in apparently contemptible agents.
We never know where the Lord is preparing His instruments. Their emergence is usually creative of surprise. God hides His preparations in such strange places. He wants a missionary for the New Hebrides, and He fashions him in a peasant’s cottage at Dumfries. Three of the most stalwart and fruitful labourers in modern Methodism were reared in a labourer’s hut. God so frequently deserts conspicuous spheres, and nourishes His great ones in the obscure corners of the world. Perhaps the mightiest spiritual ministry, now being exerted in our country, is proceeding from the life of some unknown and unrecognised woman, living a strong and beautiful life in cramped and abject material conditions. “Things that are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things that are not.” He makes the nobodies and the nothings into kings and queens.
“Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon
me.”—
“Thou hast beset me behind!” He deals with the enemy in the rear, the foe that lurks in my yesterdays. He does not ignore the dark heritage that bears down upon me from the past. “And before!” He deals with the enemy in the front, the foe that seems to hide in my to-morrows. “And laid Thine hand upon me!” He deals with the immediate contingency, and gives me a present consciousness of ample defence and security.
But does He perfectly understand me? Does He know my
idiosyncrasies? Is He intimate with my peculiar weaknesses? Does He know where
the hedge is thin and vulnerable, and where my life is most easily invaded and
defiled? Does He know where defences are more specially required?
“O Lord, Thou hast searched me.” The examination has been most thorough and penetrating. Every nook and corner has been explored. Nothing has been overlooked, unrecognised, unnamed. “I, the Lord, search the heart.”
“And known me.” It is the knowledge of an intimate friend. I require knowing. I am often misunderstood. The unexplored is so frequently the misjudged. The Lord knows me. “I know my sheep.”
“Thou knowest my downsitting.” He is present in my seasons of meditation, in the hours when I sit down to think and plan and devise, and when the formative purposes of life are chosen and shaped.
“And mine uprising.” He is an intimate presence when meditation is ended, and the moment of execution has arrived. He knows when my purpose becomes an action, when “I will arise” has passed into “he arose,” and resolution is being fulfilled.
“Thou understandest my thought afar off.” He discerns the faintest beginnings of purpose. He detects the mental germs. He sees my thought long before it is incarnated in an act. He sees it “afar off,” when it is only a trembling suggestion, and when it passes almost imperceptibly across the threshold of the mind.
“Thou searchest out my path.” He knows the way I take to achieve my purposes. He knows all the windings of the road. He knows when it is “straight” and when it is “crooked.” He knows all the means I employ. “He is acquainted with all my ways.”
“There is not a word in my tongue, but lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.” He watches life as it blossoms at the lips. He marks the kindly vehicle of grace. He notes the ungainly vehicle of malice and ill-will. He knows the contents of all my intercourse, and how it is determined and coloured by the threats and flatteries of men.
Surely this God knows me! He is intimate with my personal “make-up,” with my own peculiar weaknesses, and knows just what is needed to render me strong and invulnerable.
1. “Thou hast beset me behind.” He
stands
between me and my enemies in the rear. He
2. “And before.” He comes between me and the enemy
that troubles me from to-morrow, the foe that lies ambushed in futurity and
disturbs the peace of to-day. And so He deals with my fears and anxieties, and
repeats the miracle of transformation, and changes them from swords into
ploughshares. He changes destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness.
He converts a lacerating fretfulness into an energetic contentment. He
transforms an abject fear into a holy reverence. He takes the terror out of
to-morrow,
3. “And laid Thine hand upon me.” And the hand suggests the sweet sense of companionship. The little child awakes in the night, and is affrighted by the darkness and the stillness, but the mother puts out her hand and just rests it upon her troubled babe, and the little one sinks to rest again. “O, let me feel Thee near me!” “Only in the darkness just to feel Thy hand.”
And the hand suggests the ministry of soothing. The nurse lays her cool hand upon the burning brow of her patient, and he exclaims, “How lovely that is!” And when I come into a sudden crisis in life, and am tempted to become feverish, and “heated hot with burning fears,” the Lord lays His cooling hand upon me, and I grow calm again. “And Jesus touched her, and the fever left her.”
And the hand suggests the ministry of guidance. That is a
most suggestive word, constantly in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “And the
Lord said unto me with a strong hand.” Speech by strange graspings! Suggestion
by grips! Guidance by the creation of a mighty impulse! The Lord declared His
will unto the prophet Isaiah by implanting in his life the sense of a tremendous
imperative, a terrific “must,” a consciousness which the prophet expressed
under the symbol of
With these defences we are safe. In these hands our security is complete. “None shall pluck them out of My hand.” “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit.”
“Teach me Thy way.”—
“Teach me to do Thy will.”—
“I delight to do Thy will.”—
“Teach me Thy way.” Refine my conscience. Make my sense of right and wrong clear and definite. Suffer me not to grope in moral confusion. Train me in a fine discernment of moral values. Let me grow ever more and more exquisite in the perception of the spiritually lovely.
“Teach me to do Thy will.” I want more than a fine sense
of moral distinctions. I need more than a rare perception of right. I need to
know the best way to accomplish it. There are wise and unwise ways of seeking
the sovereignty of the right. I may fail of the end by using indiscreet means. I
require not only a trained conscience,
“I delight to do Thy will.” That marks a still more matured stage in discipleship. When the soul instinctively and joyfully inclines to the way of obedience, the life has reached a stage of rare fruition.
And so the scattered verses of my text arrange themselves in a heightening gradation, and together express the spacious compass of a consecrated life. “Teach me Thy way”—the training of the conscience. “Teach me to do Thy will”—the illumination of the judgment. “I delight to do Thy will”—the rectification of the will.
“Teach me Thy way.” The conscience is the organ through which the Lord makes known to me His way, and unveils the primary distinctions between right and wrong. The more refined and highly trained is the organ, the more exquisite will be its perceptions. The greater sensitiveness of the telephonic receiver has vivified the clearness and the detail of the message. But the organ of conscience can be impaired and its receptivity largely destroyed.
(1) It can be injured by sin.
John Ruskin’s father would never allow him to gaze upon any inferior picture lest his artistic sense should be impaired. A similar reasoning might be followed in relation to the moral sense. To contemplate the morally inferior, to gaze upon the ugly, to have intercourse with sin, damages the fine delicacy of this sensitive organ.
(2) It can be perverted by prejudice.
If conscience be regarded as a light “which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” then it is within our power to put up a stained window and pervert the light. We can erect the coloured medium of a prejudice or a spirit of envy, or a jealousy, and the light we then receive is in reality “darkness.” We walk in the darkness, and our errors re-act upon the conscience, and injure its exquisite perceptions.
(3) It can be muffled by compromise.
All attempts to find a go-between in matters of right and
wrong inevitably issue in the muffling of the conscience. There are
tradesmen who, on the Sabbath, compromise with their sense of right by putting
up two shutters to their shop window, and then behind the shutters they continue
their business as on any other day of the week. Those two shutters play a large
part in the destruction of the finer parts of the moral life. If the Lord is
Now all training of the conscience proceeds in the direction of the scruple. In moral and spiritual culture the line of progress is not from the less to the greater, but from the greater to the less. A man can measure the increasing refinement of his conscience by its more pervasive activity in the trifle. The path of perfection leads towards a “faithfulness in that which is least.” It is “he that doeth the least,” whom the Lord accounts as great. “Teach me Thy way.” Train my conscience. Educate it. Breathe upon it Thy refining breath, that in the smallest affairs I may discern the secret of the Lord.
“Teach me to do.” A man may know the right to aim at, and
may take an unwise way to reach it. He may have a good conscience and be
possessed of little tact. He may be conscientious but not resourceful. He may
have fine moral discernment, but poor practical judgment. We often dim
Now what is the secret of wise judgment? Does it not consist
very largely in the active exercise of the imagination? A man of sound judgment
is a man who looks all round a thing, and to do this requires the use of a
disciplined imagination. Wellington used to say that one of the great secrets of
successful generalship was the power to imagine what was going on behind a stone
wall. That is the faculty we require in common life, the power to imagine what
is going on in our brother’s life, the power to “put ourselves in his place.”
Imagination is the twin sister to sympathy. They move together. If we had a
broader and more responsive sympathy, we should have a quicker and more alert
imagination. A more spacious sympathy and a more active imagination would give
us two of the main essentials of
“I delight to do Thy will.” “I delight,” which, literally interpreted, means, “I am bent,” to do Thy will. The inclinations of life are instinctively set in the way of obedience. The sense of constraint and reluctance is absent. The bent of the life is God-ward, and the bent abides. This represents a fine and mature attainment. What at first was constrained has come at length to be natural. He who says “I will incline my heart unto Thy testimonies,” and will resolutely incline it every moment, day by day, will at length be able to sing, “O God! my heart is fixed.” When the spiritual becomes natural, we have entered into the joy of the Lord. When our obedience has become instinctive, “His statutes have become our song.” “We delight to do His will.”
“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in
believing, that ye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Ghost.”—
What a radiant assembly of jewels! It would scarcely be
possible to bring together into two short sentences a larger company of
resplendent words,—“God,” “hope,” “joy,” “peace,” “believing,”
“power,” “Holy Ghost”! A prayer which in almost one sentence encompasses these spacious
benedictions must have issued from a very exultant spirit, and one deeply
acquainted with “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” If we re-arrange the
members of the text in vital and logical order, the two extreme limbs would
appear to be these: “The God of Hope,” and “That ye may abound in hope.” The
one expresses the creative ministry, the other expresses the created result. The
text describes the making of optimists,—the “God of
There are some matches which can only be kindled on one kind
of surface. We may rub them on an unsuitable surface through a very long day,
and no spark will be evoked. The fine effective flame of hope can only be
kindled upon one surface. The human must come into contact with the divine.
Where else can the holy fire be kindled? A mother is in despair about her son.
His face is set in the ways of vice, and his imagination is being led captive by
the devil. How shall I quicken the mother’s hope, the hope which is so fruitful
in loving devices? I will tell her that it is a long lane that has never
a turning. I will tell her that the fiercest fire burns itself out at last. But
these worldly proverbs awaken no fervent response. The depression remains heavy
and cold. The match does not strike. I must lead her to “the God of Hope.” A
brother is discouraged because of his moral and spiritual bondage. How shall I
kindle his hope? I will
The “God of Hope,” in the pursuit of his purpose to create children of hope, plants in their life the inspiring presence of the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures compare the ministry of this presence to the influence of a wind, an atmosphere, a breathing.
1. It is quickening. Like the air of the spring time. Buried
or sleeping powers awake and bud, and clothe themselves in grace and beauty. I
become conscious of new and increased capacities, new powers of love, and faith,
and spiritual discernment. “In Christ shall all be made alive.”
2. It is bracing. How easy it is to make long journeys in fine, bracing air! Five miles in the city wearies one more than twenty miles in the Lake District. The Holy Spirit breathes through the life a bracing, invigorating influence. My powers are at their best. I am able to persist, able to endure. “They shall walk and not faint.”
3. It is revealing. It is the clean, clear air which unveils the panoramas. When the Holy Spirit possesses me I “see visions.” I “grow in knowledge.” “He shall lead you into all truth.”
These are some of the ministries which are implied in the gift of the Holy Ghost. They are the primary requisites in the production of an optimist.
The life that is possessed by the pervasive “power of the Holy Spirit” will acquire the fruitful, equable temperament of “joy and peace.”
1. Joy. Not a scintillating, transient happiness, but a
permanent cheeriness. Life shall be lived in the light. “Lift upon us the light
of Thy countenance.” It is that light, the light of the
2. Peace. A deep, quiet sense of rightness in the background. It does not imply the absence of tribulation, but it suggests an abiding consciousness that fundamentally we are right with God. A man can go happily through a hard day’s work if everything is right at home. If things are wrong there, all the work of the day is haunted and impaired, and every moment is weighted with the burden of years. A man can encounter much tribulation, and encounter it calmly if everything is right at home, if all is well between him and his God. “Peace” is just that sense of rightness with God. “It is well, it is well with my soul!” The presence and power of the Holy Spirit are creative of a temperament of mingled joy and peace.
Surely this appears as quite an inevitable issue. If life is inspired by the presence of the Holy Ghost, quickened, braced, and taught by His power, and possessed of a temperament of joy and peace, it will “abound” in large and fructifying hope. I shall “abound in hope” concerning myself, that at length I shall stand before my God clothed in the white robes of a perfected life. I shall “abound in hope” concerning my brother. I shall never regard him as “past praying for.” I shall hope “all things,” even when confronted with the stupendous power of majestic vice. “The day will dawn and darksome night be past.” The “God of Hope,” through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the creation of a cheery and equable disposition, will make me to “abound in hope.”
There are two words in the great text which have not yet been
quoted—“In believing.” They describe the link which binds the despondent and
the pessimistic soul to the “God of Hope.” Shall we rather say, they describe
the channel by which the quickening and cheering influence of “the God of Hope” is conveyed to the depressed and disquieted life? Belief is an attitude of
soul which implies both alliance and reliance—a surrender
“I am the vine; ye are the branches.”—
The Bible appears to exhaust all available figures in describing the intimate relationship which exists between the Lord and His own. All the most subtle and vital associations are laid hold of to shadow forth the wonderful fellowship which unites God and the children of God. The exquisite fitness of the one to the other is suggested by such relationships as hunger and bread, thirst and water, and the intimacy of their united lives is unveiled in the figures of the vine and its branches, the head and its members, the bridegroom and the bride. It is around the first of these symbols that we will concentrate the thought of this meditation.
Then man can only realise himself in union with the Christ.
The branch cannot realise itself apart from the Vine. Its powers remain latent and unexpressed. Its capabilities remain undeveloped and unconceived. If the branch is to burst into bud and leaf and flower and fruit, its resources must be drawn from the Vine. It has no sap of its own creation. Its quickening and sustaining power can be obtained only by association. Its ideal is realised by an alliance which engages the tissues of its most inward parts.
Man can only come to himself by an intimate alliance with Christ. Apart from Christ man is never consummated. The force is wanting which would bring his powers to fruition. If his capabilities are to become abilities, if his possibilities are to ripen into actualities, if the human branch is to break into bud, and flower, and fruit, and life is to receive its appropriate crown, man must enter into profound and hearty fellowship with Christ. Every part of man’s varied and composite personality will receive enrichment when the energising sap of the Lord flows in the deep and hidden parts of his life.
(1) May we assume a physical quickening? Why should we shrink from the assertion that if the branch comes into union with the Vine, even the physical powers will be purified and strengthened? Surely it is not illegitimate reasoning to assume that virtue is a finer health-minister than vice. We do not make nearly sufficient allowance for the influence of the spirit upon the body. The hopeful temperament is very frequently a more potent element than the doctor’s medicine in ridding the body of sickness and disease. Get a clean, sanctified spirit into the body, and the influences, even upon the flesh, must be very different from the influences which proceed from an unclean spirit of rebellion and night. “He shall quicken your mortal bodies by His spirit that dwelleth in you.” I am not prepared to relegate the fulfilment of this promise to an altogether remote futurity. It may be consummated only upon the day of the great unveiling, but I cannot think that its operations are still and inoperative even to-day. “Everything shall live whither the river cometh”; and in that “everything” I am inclined to include the quickening even of the physical capacities of the life.
(2) May we assume a mental quickening? If the energy of the
Vine flows into the branch, will man realise himself more perfectly in the realm
of
(3) May we assume a moral quickening? If the sap of the Vine
flows into the branch, man will realise himself in a rarer moral fruitage.
Conscience will flower in more exquisite discernments. Will will sweeten into a
rarer willingness. Obedience will become more and more choice. Affection will
grow richer in benevolence and discernment. “The fruit of the Spirit is in
all goodness.” When the divine sap flows into human
(4) May we assume a spiritual quickening? When the branch becomes allied with the Vine man realises himself in undreamed-of powers for the apprehension and appreciation of the things of God. He is enabled to enter with awed and reverent discernment into the mysteries of grace. He finds himself capable of appropriating the riches of redemption. He experiences the peace of forgiveness. He knows “the power of the resurrection.” He “grows in grace and in knowledge,” and feels the glory of the immortal hope. When life is energised by the divine sap, life acquires rare appreciations, and holds intimate fellowship with God. In all these ways man must realise himself in union with the Christ. We come to ourselves in Him. In Him our best is hidden; He has our crown. “Our sufficiency is in Him.” “We are complete in Him.”
Then Christ can only express Himself through union with man.
We have been considering the impotence of the branch apart from
the Vine; but what can the
He declares His Gospel through witnesses; therefore He has need of the branches. He proclaims His power through the healed man; He has therefore a need of the branches. He warns and counsels the people through prophets; He has therefore need of the branches. In an equally intimate figure, He declares that we are His “body.” The unseen life of the Spirit embodies itself through us; we are its eyes, ears, hands, and feet. If we refuse the service, we silence the King.
He is yearning to express Himself in your own home, but He
has no branch! He wants to reveal to your family what gracious fruit is matured
in the life that abides in Him. He wants to show how barrenness changes to
beauty under the influence of His sap, and how unfulfilled promise grows into
ripe and beautiful attainment. But He has no branch! He longs to express
Himself
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall
any man pluck them out of My hand.”—
In these words there are disclosed to us some of the gracious attributes of the Heavenly Shepherd, and some of the prominent characteristics of His sheep. Let our meditation seek to gather fruit from the contemplation of both.
“My sheep hear My voice.” They have the gift of spiritual discernment. All voices do not sound alike to
them. They can distinguish the still small voice, even amid the Babel and
clamour of the world. They can catch the tones of their own Shepherd amid the
loud shoutings of many aliens. They have the gracious faculty of being able to
sort the messages which assail their ears. In whatever
(1) The voice of yesterday. “My sheep hear My voice.” The disciples of the Master can interpret the voice that calls to them from the days of the past. “I heard behind me a great voice.” They gather instruction from the voice that speaks in this commanding tone. History is full of expression; it abounds in teaching. In song and wail, in psalm and warning, the disciples can hear the voice of the Lord.
The “days that have been” yield their instruction to the days that are, and the instinct of to-day is refined and chastened by the fight and failures and victories of yesterday. The present gains in riches by the witness of the past.
(2) The voice of to-day. “To-day if ye will hear His voice.” The Lord’s own people catch the sound of their Master’s voice in the seemingly silent circumstances of to-day. They discern His voice in what other men regard only as a dumb drift. They hear the new message in the new conditions. “New occasions teach new duties.” The disciple discerns the duty, and in it he hears the still small voice of his God.
(3) The voice of to-morrow. “My sheep hear My voice.” “I heard a
voice from heaven say, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.”
“And they follow Me.” The sheep not only
discern the voice of the Shepherd, they respond to
His call, and follow in glad obedience. What
at first may be. a choice, becomes at last an instinct.
The sound of the voice prompts the heart to
obedience. The soul leaps to the call. There is
a beautiful passage in the Book of Revelation
which may be appropriately quoted here. “I
heard a voice from heaven, as a voice of many
waters, and as the voice of a great thunder, and I
heard the voice of harpers harping with their
harps.” Who are these triumphant ones in the
heavenly place? “These are they which follow
the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.” Then they
are “following” still! They began their companionship where we have still ours. They accompanied Him “through the green pastures,” and “by
the still waters,” and through the perilous ways
“I know them.” Here is the reciprocal discernment. The Master recognises His own. He never mistakes one for another. He knows our idiosyncrasies. He knows my “make-up,” my peculiar individuality, my special conditions. He does not deal with us as though we were all alike. “He calleth His own sheep by name.” He watches each life as though it presented a unique and separate problem. His recognition means more than perception. It implies sympathy. He not only knows; He feels. He responds to the need which He discerns. He can be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities.”
“I give unto them eternal life.” How this Gospel abounds
in messages concerning life, and in declarations which proclaim the Master as
the Fountain of Life! “In Him was life.” “The Son hath life in Himself.” “I
am the Bread of Life.” “I am the Life.” And what His lips proclaimed, His life
confirmed. Everything He
“They shall never perish.” They shall be made indestructible. The far country shall never get hold of them again to waste their treasure. Their power shall never be impaired. They shall be kept in health. They shall never be “lost.” They shall become ever more and more alive. Everything that is worthy shall be increasingly quickened and enriched.
“No one shall pluck them out of My hand.” They shall not be snatched into destruction. They
shall not be victims of any sudden emergency. They shall never be taken “off
their guard.” What a wonderful promise, and yet a promise of which
And what is the foundation of all these gracious experiences? The answer is to be found in the very first word of our text. “My sheep.” Can that word be used of me? Am I willing to be His? Have I yielded myself to be His property? Can I say, “I am not my own?” Do I admit the Master’s claim? If the claim be admitted, then all the gracious issues, which we have been contemplating, will become assuredly ours.
“Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.
He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”—
To whom is this gracious promise of sustenance made? Some
people’s burdens are intended to be burdensome; the very heaviness of their
load is purposed to discharge a gracious ministry. The yoke of the unrighteous
is purposed to be galling. It would be calamitous to ease their pain even by
shifting the position of the burden. The load that presses upon their souls may
bring them to their knees, and the endurance of pain may issue in the fellowship
of prayer. The gracious promise of our text is spoken to the surrendered life.
Immovableness shall be the characteristic of the righteous. It is the righteous
who remains uncrushed beneath the heaviest load, and who,
But who is the righteous? We can infer the nature of sources by the character of issues. We can discern the nature of the will from the tendency of the life. If we know the effects of living, we can infer its secret springs. Now the Word of God records many significant symptoms and effects and tendencies of the righteous life, and from the observation of these we may possibly interpret its primary character and source. Let us glance at two or three of these descriptive words.
(1) “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.”
Here is a symptom of the righteous life. Its conversation is
vitalising; the purport of its speech is constructive. The Scriptures dwell on
this characteristic with very varied emphasis. “Let nothing proceed out of your
mouth but what is edifying.” Our speech is to aid in the rearing of a stately
and exquisitely finished life. “The lips of the righteous feed many.” Their
speech is food. Their conversation nourishes the minds of those with whom they
hold intercourse. Their words revive the better selves of their companions.
(2) “The labour of the righteous tendeth to life.”
Then not only their speech but their labour is a minister to more abundant life. The manner of the man’s labour, the way in which he earns his bread, quickens the common life. There is nothing poisonous about his business ways; nothing perverting or destructive. They are not murderous but vitalising, and tend to quicken and enrich the corporate life.
(3) “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.”
All the varied issues of his life, all his accomplishments, the plentiful products of character and conduct, everything that emerges from his personality, minister to a more abundant life. All the fruit on his branches tend to sweeten and purify the common life.
Such are a few of the effects and symptoms of the righteous
life. From such streams we can infer the spring. “With Thee is the fountain of
life.” The righteous is in profound fellowship
What is the burden which is weighing with painful intensity upon the heart of this troubled Psalmist? Let us look abroad over the disturbed surface of the psalm. What does he bemoan as the burden of his soul?
(1) He bemoans the loud unblushing aggressiveness of evil. He goes about the city, and the ostentation of evil fills his eyes and ears—“The voice of the enemy”; “The oppression of the wicked”; “They cast iniquity upon me”; “Violence and strife in the city”; “Iniquity and mischief also”; “Oppression and guile depart not from her streets.” It is the burden of social evils which weighs upon the man’s soul, as an intolerable and suffocating load. It weighs him down. “My heart is sore pained within me.” “Horror hath overwhelmed me.”
(2) He bemoans the unfaithfulness of the professor. The leaven of professed goodness is revealing itself to be bad. The salt is going wrong. “It was thou . . . my companion, my familiar friend . . . we walked in the House of the God with the throng.” He is burdened by the presence of the unfaithful professor, who hath profaned his covenant. Such is the two-fold perversity which is crushing the Psalmist’s soul; the burden of proud evil and the burden of false virtue. In the face of these he is almost seduced into flight. “Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest.”
The remedy for thy depression is not to be found in flight,
but in continued fight. Rest will not be discovered in the solitude of the
wilderness, but in an alliance with thy God. Thou art assuming to carry the
burden in thine own weakness, and the load is too much for thee. Thou hast a
Partner. This kind of burden-bearing is the labour of a “company.” The yoke is
proposed to be borne by thee and thy God. Bring together all the words of the
Scriptures which suggest the gracious truth. The Bible is great in that class
That is the common way by which the Lord lightens the burden
of life. It is not lifted away from us; our strength is increased, and the
burden becomes light. He gives us sustenance, and, being stronger men, we are
able to carry the old load with a lighter and more confident heart. Is not this
what happened under the appalling sufferings of Gethsemane? The burden was
“How much more.” These words express a mode of reasoning
enjoined and commended in the Christian Scriptures. We are permitted to begin on
the plane of the human, and reason upward to the Divine; on the plane of the
material, and reason to the spiritual; on the plane of the temporary, and
reason to the Eternal. We are to exercise the powers of observation in the
common ways of life. We are to interrogate the common heart, and find there the
elements of our thinking, and with these elements we may then begin to shape our
conception of the Divine. “If ye then . . . how much more your Father.” We are
to search among ourselves for alphabetic hints and suggestions, and with these
we may partially determine the ways and the thoughts of the Eternal mind. We are
permitted to move about
I. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more shall your Father!”
I am counselled to go into the family circle with the purpose
of discovering some hints about God. I am told that in the arrangements and
government of a typical home, I shall obtain glimpses of the divine fatherhood.
Let me exercise this privilege. I will go into a home and exercise my powers of
observation. What do I observe? I notice the presence of a pervading affection,
but I am impressed by the mysteriousness of its working. I notice that affection
has an extensive wardrobe. It does not always appear in the same dress. It
enshrines itself in very varied guises, sometimes attractive, sometimes
apparently forbidding, but through all the different vestures the one affection
persists. There is one breath in the organ, but there are many notes. One breath
can express
I notice, further, in the home life that the wishes of the
children do not always determine the gifts of the parents. I observe that
affection frequently expresses itself in apparent antagonism to the one
Now take the step in reasoning commended by the Scriptures. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more shall
your Father, which is in heaven.” If these things pervade the common home life,
if affection sometimes denies, and sometimes restrains, and sometimes expresses
itself in severity, “how much more” will the all-wise affection be constrained
to act in apparent antagonism to our own blind and petty desires. Our Father
will give “good things.” I may ask for freedom; He may increase the
restraints. I may ask for the sweet, and the response may be found in
intensified bitterness. I may ask for fish, and there may come an apparent
scorpion. But the antagonism is apparent. The thing that comes is “good.” “Thou art good, and
doeth good.”
“It is good for me that I have
been
2. “If God so clothed the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, how much more shall He clothe you, O ye of little faith.”
I am to take a blade of grass, and contemplate it, and
from the suggestions it conveys to me reason upward to a larger and truer
conception of God. Have you ever gazed at a blade of grass? I don’t mean have
you merely glanced at it; but have you taken it up and feasted your eyes upon
it until its exquisite beauty is for ever imprinted upon your soul? “Think of
it well,” says John Ruskin, “and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that
beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes, or
good for food—stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron,
burdened vine,—there be any by man so deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as
that narrow point of feeble green.” Contemplate, therefore, a blade of grass.
Examine the exquisite robes of a lily. Take one of the commonplaces of the
ordinary field. Look long at the daisy, or the buttercup, or a sprig of moorland
heather. And when your vision is possessed by the ineffable loveliness, call to
mind the Scriptural reasoning, “If God so clothe the grass of the field, how
much
3. “If the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of the heifer, sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ.”
The argument is just this. If certain things happened in the
Old Testament, how much more will they happen in the New. If certain things
happened in the uncertain twilight, how much more will they occur in the
splendour of the noontide?
“For He Himself hath said He will in no wise fail thee, nor
will I in any wise forsake thee, so that with good courage we say the Lord is my
Helper, I will not fear; what shall man do unto me?”—
“He hath said I will in no wise fail thee,” “so that
with good courage we say, I will not fear.” What a beautiful antiphony! The
evangel of the Father awakens the song of the children. Life moves to gladsome
music when we appreciate the content of the eternal promise. We walk like kings
and queens when we recognise the dignity of our companionship. When the terror
goes out of the heart, the uncertainty goes out of the steps, and life marches
to the stately measures of bright and triumphant strains. “He hath said” . . .
“So that we say.” Our speech takes its measures from His
speech. Our house is built upon the foundation of the divine word. It ought to
be
“I will in no wise fail thee.” “I will not wax feeble
towards thee when thy difficulties grow mighty. Thy resources shall not run out
in the day of stress and strain. I will not fail thee when life approaches some
supreme and severe demand.” Such appears to be a little of the wealth of the
gracious word. The promise proclaims that the crisis shall not find us
impoverished. I was recently travelling in an electric car up one of the steep
streets of a town in the West Riding, and when we had reached the middle of the
ascent the power suddenly failed, and we stuck fast with half the height still
to be climbed. This may provide us with a figure by which we may enter into the
heart of the promise of God. Power is never to fail us on “the Hill
Difficulty.” The moment of supreme test is to be the moment of supreme
revelation. The most trying conditions of life are to be the seasons when the
Father will most be glorified. And so the promise appears to me to have
reference to two different classes of conditions through which every soul has to
pass.
He will not fail us in the sudden emergency. The rope will not snap at the unexpected tension. The great disappointment shall not destroy our steadfastness. The receipt of bad news shall not extinguish our valour. A sudden bereavement shall not break our hearts. Our resources will be sufficient. The staying power will remain. We shall “stand it well,” for “the Lord will in no wise fail us.”
He will not fail in the prolonged monotony.
Perhaps the test of monotony is more severe than
the test of an emergency. Perhaps the long pull
tends more to exhaustion than some tremendous
but momentary strain. In a cycle journey which
I took recently from Oxford to London, I found
the latter half of the journey far more trying than
the earlier part. The earlier part of the road was
full of changes, now climbing, now descending;
the latter part was one long, dead, monotonous
level. Along the monotonous level I missed the
freshening breeze, the expansive outlook, the rest
which is born of change. The limbs were apt to
tire, the same muscles being unceasingly exercised.
The uneven road brought more muscles into play,
or changed the posture of the limbs, and out of
the variety there came strength. Life which has
“Neither will I in any way forsake thee.” This adds an emphasis to the preceding word. The Lord will not desert us; He will not leave us behind. He will not drop us when we grow old and are worn out. Our war correspondents tell us very frequently of worn-out horses, which are left upon the line of march to die. Our God will not so forsake His children. The worn-out life He rather “carries in His bosom.” “In Thy manifold mercies Thou forsakedst me not.” “When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.” The frail, the easily-spent are the peculiar care of the Almighty God.
How easily we forsake one another! The lure of gain will make us forsake our friend. The garland of the world draws us into alienation. “Demas hath forsaken Me, having loved this present evil world.” The vision of peril will drive a man to forsake his brother. He fears the persecutor, so he takes the way of ease. He turns with alarm from the valley of shadows, and abides in the green pastures. “At my first defence no one took my part; they all forsook me.” How beautiful it is when a man stands close by his exhausted brother, and permits no offer of gain or threat of pain to take him away. There is no more beautiful characteristic of a noble man than that which is attributed to Onesiphorus by the Apostle Paul:—“He was not ashamed of my chain.” The Apostle’s captivity only drew his comrade into closer and more affectionate bonds. His chains were the ministers of a deeper spiritual wedlock. This is the abiding attachment referred to in the text, only in an infinitely exalted degree. The Lord is never repelled by our need; rather is it our need by which He is enticed. “I will in no wise forsake thee.”
Now let us look at the children. If they have apprehended the
Father’s evangel, if the music of His word is in their hearts, if they
appreciate the
“With good courage we may say, the Lord is my Helper.” Mark their fine, inspiring, confident conception of God. “My Helper.” The word is suggestive of one who runs with succour at the hearing of a cry. It is the act of a mother, who, perhaps amid much clamour, hears the faint cry of her child in the chamber above, and who runs to bestow expressions of love and of comfort. “His ears are open unto their cry.”
What wonderful examples we have of “The Helper” in the New
Testament Scriptures! The cry of an aching heart always brought succour from
the Helper. The Syro-Phœnician woman came with a breaking heart, and falling at
His feet, she cried, “Lord, help me!” and the Helper gave of His resources,
and gave abundantly. “Oh, woman, be it unto Thee even as Thou wilt.” But
perhaps a still more suggestive instance is to be found in the story of the
father who brought to the Lord his son, who was afflicted with a dumb spirit.
Twice does the father ask for help, and twice the help was given. He prayed that
they might be helped in their tragic trouble, and he prayed that he might be
helped in his wavering unbelief. The Lord heard both the heart-cries, and the
needed succour was given. The Lord
“I will not fear.” If the Lord is listening, and heeding, and even anticipating my cry, “I will not fear.” I will not be a child of alarms. I will not be a victim of superstition. Rather will I be a child of faith. I will not fear the visible hosts of armed foes, the unseen heights are full of horses and chariots of fire. I will not fear the cloud, for “He cometh in thick clouds,” and these seeming portents will be only the vehicles of heavenly benediction. I will not fear my yesterdays, for the “Helper” is my rearguard. “Goodness and mercy shall follow me,” and by the ministry of grace shall wipe out my transgressions. I will not fear the lurking snares of to-day, for “He will keep my feet.” I will not fear the unknown experiences of to-morrow, for “my times are in His hands.” The apprehension of the truth that the Lord is “My Helper” issues in a consequent fearlessness which makes my life the progress of a conqueror.
Now let us finally bring the two extreme clauses of the text
together, and we shall obtain the point of view from which all life can be seen
in true
“I think it meet to stir you up by putting you in
remembrance.”—
“I stir up your minds by way of remembrance.”—
The peril suggested by the Apostle is that of an
insidious sleep. His readers were not inclined to
any deliberate revolt from the truth. They were
not meditating any act of open and avowed
treachery. They were in no immediate danger of
consciously allying themselves with the evil one.
They were not mustering their forces in hostility
to the Son of God. The peril was of another
kind. They were in danger of almost unconsciously dropping their enthusiasm, of losing the
keenness of their discipleship, and of subsiding into
a fatal sleep. The Apostle therefore seeks to “stir
them up,” to keep them awake, to preserve their
That which once startled us may ultimately
minister to a deeper slumber. The Christmas bells
awoke me in the hours of night, but I lay awake
until they lulled me into sleep again. The alarm
bell which originally stirred us into the brightest
vigilance may act at last as a lullaby to lead us
into deeper sleep. The green of the spring time
arrests us by its novelty, but by summer time the
observation of most people is satiated, and the
attention has gone to sleep. The permanent
grandeur of the night sky has long since induced
the majority of people into a profound sleep,
while a display of fireworks will stir them into most deliberate
attention. What is the principle underlying all this? Unwilled observation is soon
satiated and goes to sleep. Willed observation,
vision with executive force behind it, is full of
discernment, and is continually making discoveries
Is not all this equally true as to our familiarity with
Christian truth? Here in the Word of God we have pictures of the life of
Christ, revelations of His mind and disclosures of His heart. We may become so
familiar with them that our attention goes to sleep. There are no further
unveilings, no novelties, nothing unexpected, and the familiar vision ceases to
arrest our attention. What do we need? We need to “stir up the mind,” to put
some force behind it, to direct it in a strong, fresh, eager inquisitiveness. We
need to put it into the attitude of “asking,” “seeking,” “knocking,” and the
familiar presence will reveal itself in unaccustomed guise. The familiar puts on
wonderful robes when approached by a fervent inquisitor. Truth makes winsome
revelations to her devoted wooers. Every day the ardent lover makes a new
discovery. If men would come to
There is a very suggestive sentence in one of John Stuart
Mill’s essays, which will enable me to make my meaning perfectly clear: “The
fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no
longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors.” That is to say, a decided
opinion may make a man thoughtless about his opinion and may induce a mental
sleep. It so frequently happens, that when a man has attained a decided opinion,
he ties a bit of tape about it, puts it away in a pigeon hole, and lapses into
unconscious slumber. He leaves off thinking about it. When the matter was still
doubtful,
Success can make a man sleep by making him cocksure. Triumph
can make men careless and thoughtless. The glare of prosperity can close men’s
eyes in slumber. There is a “destruction that wasteth at noon-tide.” A perilous
sleep can also be begotten of failure. When repeated disappointment visits the
life, when the “wet blanket” is frequently applied to our fervent ambitions,
when the fire in the soul is damped, and enthusiasm dies out, the life is
inclined to a most dangerous sleep. How many there are who were once awake and
enthusiastic in civic service, or in seeking social ameliorations, or in the
ministry of Christian instruction, who are now sunk in the indifference of a
profound sleep. They were disappointed with the results. The grey conditions at
which they worked never gained any colour. The unattractive lives to which they
ministered were never transfigured. The desert never revealed even a tiny patch
blossoming like the rose. And so their enthusiasm smouldered. They became
lukewarm. Their reforming energy abated. They
When difficulties appear to have vanished from our life, when
Apollyon no longer encounters us with dreadful front, when there is no lion in
the way, when the giants are miles in the rear, and the precipitous hills, that
took so long to climb, are away back on the far horizon, then we are in imminent
peril of a most dangerous sleep. “I saw then in my dream that they went on till
they
“Watch therefore . . . lest, coming suddenly, He find you sleeping.”
“He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.”—
“He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.” Unless we
read the words in the right tone, we can never apprehend the trend of their
suggestion. The words are uttered in a tone of great surprise. They are much
more than a descriptive record of a certain feature in a vast assemblage of
natural things. They express the unexpected, the unique. The Psalmist is
profoundly surprised to find grass growing upon the mountains. It would have
been ordinary and commonplace, arousing no wonder, to have found it in the vale,
but to find it away up in the heights where barrenness usually reigns, affected
him as the suggestion of exceptional power, and stirred him into profound
amazement. He discovered what he
1. “He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.” I am
not surprised to find piety at the Carpenter’s bench, but I wonder to find it in
the midst of the Throne. I am grateful that Christ has in these recent days had
the opportunity to reveal to the world what He can do in the neighbourhood of a
Throne. He frequently reveals to the world the spiritual beauty with which He
can grace the Poet. It is almost a commonplace for us to behold His workmanship
in the production of some pure and noble merchant. But only rarely is He
permitted to display His sanctified power upon the occupant of a throne. Now the
claim of the religion of Jesus is this, that faith is effectual everywhere. The
Lord can grow His flowers in every place. His converts are not taken from any
particular place or vocation. He can make them anywhere. He can grow His flowers
in palaces or in garrets, but I am not quite sure that they are grown with equal
ease. The Master has told us that there are conditions in which it is very
difficult to rear a saintly life. “How hard is it for them that have riches to
enter into the Kingdom.” It
It is a wonderful conjunction to find piety upon the throne.
Study the conditions in which the choice temperament has to be begotten and
reared. The occupant of a throne is the centre of a most lonely Majesty. All who
are round about her pay her obeisance. All who draw near unto her bow the knee.
The altar of homage burns without ceasing. Is it any wonder that in conditions
so intoxicating the monarch should be “lifted up” in perilous self-dependence,
and God should be exiled from the thought? But in our own day the Lord has made
it plain to us that even on these far and lonely heights He can rear a saint.
Piety is blooming about the seat of majesty. The Queen, to whom everybody bowed
the knee, herself bowed the knee to a greater. She reverently recognised God.
She has, by the intimacy of her fellowship, and by the fervour of her devotion,
made the hallowed words upon our coins infinitely more than members of a legal
and official phraseology. She has transfigured them, and made them shine as
radiant truth. Of her it may be said that she was “Fidei Defensor,” as Paul
himself was able to say “I have kept faith.” Of her, too,
2. I am not surprised to find lowliness adorning a subject,
but I wonder to find it dwelling in the very heart of sovereignty. It is a rare
thing to find lowliness in the heights. What do we mean by lowliness? It is a
word which is grievously impoverished, and much misunderstood. It is sometimes
associated with the shrinking spirit; a little less frequently it is regarded
as synonymous with the cringing. Its meaning is far otherwise. A man may shrink
from a high calling, and may not be lowly. His shrinking may be the child of his
pride. The New Testament uses the word with quite other significance. Perhaps if
we call to our mind the figure of a carpet or of a rug, we may be helped near to
the New Testament conception of the word. When the carpets are up in the house
there is a sense of general forlornness and discomfort. The hollow sounds in the
house make the home sepulchral. When things are put straight again how
comforting it is to have the carpets down. Or recall the comfort which the use
of a rug gives to one in journeying. Or call to mind how
Now this kind of lowliness is a commonplace among the poor. I
am not surprised when I find a member in one of the poor courts of a crowded
city, spreading out her affections and her sympathies for another to rest upon.
But I am amazed when I find this disposition allied with sovereignty. Power
usually makes for pride. It creates a spirit of exclusiveness. It often issues
in cruelty. One can frequently trace the evil influence of power in
3. I am not surprised to find the virtue of temperance in
conditions of scanty or moderate affluence, but I am surprised to find it in
conditions of sumptuousness and wealth. “How oft the sight of means to do ill
deeds makes ill deeds done.” To behold the means to gratify the appetite often
leads to the gratification. Appetite often sleeps where the means to please it
are not abounding. It is so easy for those who are sumptuously placed to spend
their lives in eating, drinking and merry making. It is so easy for the wealthy
to become morally vulgar, and to lose their virtuous self-control. I therefore
wonder when one meets the grace of a rigid self-control in circumstances of
overflowing affluence. But the Grace of God can accomplish it. He can grow this
flower in the heights. He can cultivate souls of puritan temperament in
conditions which appear to be intensely hostile to its creation. In the midst of
all manner
“He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.” If the Lord can do this on the mountains, what may He do in the vales? If He can grow choice temperaments in the heights of majesty and power, what may He grow in the quieter places of obscurity and seclusion? The majority of us are children of the valley. We are not called upon to occupy any conspicuous place. The blasts that shake the heights do not disturb us. God has not called us to the supreme difficulty of an exalted station. Let us ask ourselves the searching question—have we permitted the Lord to beautify the vale? The plain may be a desert, or it may blossom like a rose. Let us ask the great Renewer to take us in hand, and clothe us in His own unspeakable beauty.
“Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.”
“Except a grain of wheat”—a germ of life, a promise, a potency, a possibility—“fall into the ground,”—enter into fellowship with other forces, merge itself in the dissolving, evolving powers of the broad earth—“it abideth by itself alone”—it never gets any further, it never enters into a richer realisation; it remains a promise, a mere potentiality, a bare possibility, and does not discover the wealth that lies enshrined in its own heart.
Except a human soul—the germinal promise of unutterable
wealth—enters into fellowship with other souls, loses itself in the larger
interests of a broad humanity, buries itself in the common
“Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die it
abideth by itself alone.” Then the cure of loneliness is death. “It abideth
by itself alone.” That is a most chilling and impoverishing loneliness. It is
the loneliness of incessant self-remembrance. It is the loneliness of a life
that is always with itself, that never loses itself, that never forgets itself,
a life that never bleeds for others, that never expends beneficent energy for
others, that never satisfies itself in thoughtful sympathy for others. It is the
loneliness of a life that never occupies the common stand-point, and never loses
itself in the crowd. “It abideth by itself alone.” It is the loneliness of the
egotist, of the man whose world is himself, who never gets away from himself,
who never dies to his little
There is a nervous disease know to physicians as chorea, and in this distemper “the patient sometimes turns round and continues to spin slowly on one spot.” Egotism is just an incessant spinning on one spot. Sometimes we spin slowly round about our own particular talent. Or perhaps the centre of our egotism is our suffering. How prone we are just to spin round about our own pains and complaints! An ailment is apt to make us think ourselves interesting to other people, and we move as the craving absorbents of the world’s sympathy. We all know the sufferer who ever pilots the conversation round about his own pains, and if it appears to stray for a moment from the line of the recital of his sombre symptoms, he sharply turns it back again to his all-engrossing centre! We are apt to find a melancholy pleasure in “tearing the lint from our bruises and the bandages from our limbs,” and moving in fascinated contemplation of our own complaints.
Now, the egotist is exceedingly lonely, and becomes
increasingly so, and that by the eternal law of God. It is a dry, parched, arid
loneliness, for the genial springs and currents of the soul have never been
unsealed. Incessant self-regard
“But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” Then death
to self is not only the cure of loneliness, it is the secret of fruitfulness. “It bringeth forth much fruit.”
“To die”—to bury yourself in others—is the
secret of personal fruitfulness. Impartation is the clue of multiplication. We
It is not otherwise with the Church. If the Church shrink
into a club, self-contained, self-sufficient, it “shall abide by itself alone,”
unconscious of its own heritage, imprisoned in
“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
use you and persecute you: that ye may be the children of your Father which is
in heaven.”—
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven.” “The children.” There is a wide difference between a mere connection
and a kinsman. One is in the sphere of the legal and artificial; the other is
in the vital and natural. One is determined by a certificate; the other resides
in the blood. There is an equally wide and more profound distinction between
offspring and children. One is suggestive of common blood; the other of common
spirit. One indicates relationship; the other implies fellowship. Joel and
Abiah, who “turned aside after lucre, and
Now, let me turn the light of this principle upon two or three exceeding broad and uncompromising commandments which confront us in the Word of God.
1. “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to
them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute
you.” The brilliance of the ideal almost consumes me. The vastness of the height
tends to make me faint and despondent even before I leave the base. Let us hold
the commandment squarely before us. “Love your enemies.” The man who makes your
misery his policy, who dogs your steps, who sets snares for your feet, who
twists your
The demands of the command are appalling. The command is so exceeding broad as to stretch across the entire path of my life, and there is no possible margin for compromise or evasion. If I confine my attention to the commandment and its relationship to me, I am oppressed and discouraged by the firm breadth of its demands. Why should I bow to the commandment? That I may be a child of the Father. This is what a child is like; so through this I see my Father. The commandment becomes a revelation, and I am filled with an inspiring and aspiring sense of rejoicing. What God wants me to be, He is.
“Love your enemies.” Look through that window at God. God
loves His enemies. Don’t let the energy of that great truth be wasted in a vague
and diffused generality. God loves His enemies. He is vigilantly alert to redeem
us from ourselves. From Him there proceeds a river of mighty beneficent energy
working round about us to accomplish our redemption. Love in God is no idle or
passive sentiment. A mother’s love is just a bequest from the heart of God. All
her finest, most exquisite, and tenderest instincts
2. Now, turn the light of the principle upon another
commandment, calculated, I think, to fill us with fear. “Lord, how oft shall my
brother sin against me and I forgive him? Till seven times?” “I say not unto
thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.” That is a suggestion
that these things are not to be governed by mere processes of counting; that
they belong to a province where arithmetic has no sovereignty, and where quite
other measures and standards hold the throne. Let us deepen the clear
significance of the teaching. “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him; and if he trespass against thee seven times in
a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, ‘I repent,’ thou
shalt forgive him.” That seems an overwhelming ideal! I do not wonder
Where shall we get the inspiration? Apply our principle;
the commandment laid upon men is a revelation of God. What makes a child
“Lord, I will follow Thee—but—”—
“Lord, I will follow Thee—but—.” Then
he perceived the beauty of the Christ. He
acknowledged His authority. He recognised His
duty. An impulse had been created within,
which, being interpreted, said unto him, “Follow,”
and he now replied, “I will follow—but—.” Let
us apprehend very clearly the stage at which he
had arrived. It had come to this. There was
the Lord, Son of Man, King of the race, beckoning
into discipleship. Conscience had said, “Follow
Him, for He is thy supreme Lord.” The heart
had said, “Follow Him, for He is the ideal
loveliness.” Conscience and heart had combined
to the creation of an impulse which urged the life
to immediate decision. The impulse was aroused
and active. The imperative sounded in the very
Let us look at it. What is the essence of the narrative? The
essence is this—that nothing must be allowed to take precedence over a divine
impulse, that a divine impulse is of royal and imperial descent, and must ever
be given the first rank. Man’s relationship to Christ is the primary
relationship, and to that relationship all other associations must bow. That is
the pith and marrow of the story. My first and immediate attention must be given
to any impulse which concerns my relationship to Christ. Nothing on earth must
be permitted to thrust it into a second place. “Let me first bury my father.” “First, the impulse,” replied the Lord.
“Let me first bid
Now why this pre-eminence to a divine impulse? Christ had
looked at the two men, and had gazed into their souls. Perhaps they had been men
of the world, living on the mere superficies of things, absorbed in affairs that
are belittling and transient, and having no large bracing intercourse with the
things of the Eternal. And now the Master saw that the divine spark was
kindling. He saw that a faint, fitful and trembling inclination was aspiring
after a higher life. He saw that the men felt the impulse, and were half
inclined to heed, and half inclined to seek postponement. He saw the
precariousness of the heavenly babe-life that in the heart was newly born. He
knew just how long it would live if it were treated with neglect. He knew that
if attention were denied until after the father was buried, the impulse also
would be dead and buried. He knew that postponement meant destruction, that if
obedience to a good impulse be deferred until the third day, on the third day
there might be no impulse to obey. And so underneath the Master’s reply there
runs this current of awful warning: “With thee, the postponement of a day may
mean eternal death; the spark of divinity may be extinguished; the spirit may
be quenched; and if
This is Christ’s way of emphasising for all time the infinite and transcendent preciousness of a divine impulse. No life is utterly without good impulse. No life is consistently and increasingly bad. There are softer seasons among the years, times when the springs in the life are unsealed, and lovely purposes come to birth. We have a beautiful phrase by which we describe the gracious season. We speak of being in a “softer mood,” as though the rain had fallen, as indeed it has, and turned the hard unfertile ground into forcing-beds of beauteous growth. “I will come down like rain,” says the gracious God, and like rain He comes, creating these “softer moods” in the life, and causing it to be fragrant with budding things of the kingdom. This rainy season is known to all.
Now we cannot tell in what circumstances the rainy seasons
will come, and the consequent softer mood. No one can foretell the coming of the
Lord, or anticipate His ways. Sometimes the vision of infirmity will cause the
rain to fall, and
But there are softening seasons other than those caused by
the visions of infirmity. I have known God’s rain fall in copious showers the
morning after a great sin. The night before the shower I was hard, rebellious,
obstinate! I shut the gates of my calmer reason, and opened the gates of fiery
Who does not know that the hour of bereavement is sometimes
the season of the falling rain? Many a divine impulse has had its birth by an
open grave. Here and now I could not pray that God would do away with infirmity
and death. If it were in my power now, by the lifting up of my hand, to rid this
land of infirmity and death, I think I should hardly dare to lift it. I know not
what would become of us if in our present condition there were no more pain and
no more death. Life would become a mass of selfish isolations. We should become
hard as the nether millstone, and the softer mood and the heavenly impulses
would be unknown. So God keeps it possible for us to grow into His image by
keeping two dark angels in our midst, the angel of pain and the angel of death,
whose visits to our homes keep us from becoming callous, and call us from the
thraldom of the senses by the creation of
Well, then, God creates these softer moods. He begets this impulse within us, this spiritual emotion. Now proceed a step further. What is the purpose of impulse? Let this in the first place be said, impulse is not to be a resting place. Emotion is not the goal. Is that altogether a needless warning? It is possible to cultivate a spurious emotionalism, a luxury of emotions, which may come to be regarded as the marrow and essence of true religion. True religion is not merely the enjoyment of certain feelings; it is the translation of them. There is a wide difference between good impulse and good life, and the work of true religion is to translate the one into the other. Yes, let me repeat that the work of the truly religious is the work of translation. I have to take the impulse, given me by God, and translate it first into resolution and then into action. That is religion, to take divine impulse, and, by the process of living, translate it into finished and eternal achievement. “Follow Me,” must not only be translated into “I will follow Thee,” but “I do follow Thee.” The impulse must be converted into a perfected act.
But now, suppose I don’t translate this impulse.
Suppose I just rest and luxuriate in the divine
Let me assume, then, that you have a divine impulse. You have
been brought into a softer mood. You feel the stirrings of the heavenly
citizenship. You feel the hand of the Lord. You are inclined to obey the
impulse. I pray you, let your first inclinations have the leadership. In all
matters affecting your relationship to Christ, your first thoughts are ever the
best. Second thoughts are usually suggestions of compromise, postponement and
doubt. The first thought is this—“I will follow Thee.” The second thought is
this—“I will follow Thee, but—” and thus there creeps in perilous postponement
and destructive doubt. The intrusion of a traitorous compromise can spoil the
music of a life. You know the story of the great bell of Moscow, the largest
bell in the world. It was cast more than two hundred years ago, and has never
been raised, not because it is
It is this intrusion of the compromise that works such destruction in our spiritual life. Life would abound in heavenly bell-music if we took every divine impulse and offered it the mould of a ready and willing decision. “Teach me to do Thy will.”
“Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts
thereof.”—
“Make not provision for the flesh.” Let the evil thing
die of famine. Let the ungodly suggestion perish for sheer lack of
food. Let the presumptuous thought be destroyed by the withholding of
appropriate support. Kill your spiritual enemies by starvation. Make no
provision for them. This appears to be the principle advocated by the great
Apostle for the culture of the spiritual life. Our enemies are to be conquered
by neglect. It is a principle which prevails along purely material planes. Some
two or three years ago, the Liverpool School of Tropical Science sent out a body
of qualified experts to investigate the causes of the malarial fever which works
immeasurable havoc in the lives of multitudes of our fellow citizens
It is even so in the realm of the spirit. When the microbes of evil appear in the life, little baby germs, infantile suggestions of revolt, weaklings of unclean desire, the effective method of destroying them is by deliberate and studious neglect. We are to annihilate them by refusing proper maintenance. We are to see to it, that there is no food about the life on which they can thrive. We are to make no provision for them.
Now there is no method more absolutely efficient and assured
in its working than the method of destruction by neglect. “Where no wood is,
there the fire goeth out.” Deny the fuel, you exhaust the flame. If the enemy in
the spirit hunger, starve him. If we surround him with
I want to give this apostolic word “flesh” the apostolic content. We perilously impoverish its significance if we limit its comprehensions to the rise and sovereignty of carnal desire. It embraces dispositions and tendencies which appear to have no immediate relationship with carnality. The Apostle has broken up the surface of the word, and enabled us to see its varied and manifold significance. He has proclaimed that, in his conception of the term, there are involved such presences as “wrath,” “strife,” “sedition,” “drunkenness,” “uncleanness.” But whichever of these manifold guises the flesh may assume, the Apostolic method works a sure destruction. We are to slay them by withholding congenial food. Let us apply the principle to two or three of the enemies which besiege the souls of men.
How shall I deal with unholy anger, with anger whose only
influence is self-destruction? How shall I contend with passion that boils
over and scalds and destroys the sensitiveness
This is another of the carnal enemies described by the Apostle
Paul. “Whereas there is strife among you, are ye not carnal?”
(1) We may make provision for strife by indiscreet conversation. To gossip about a misunderstanding will almost surely aggravate it. Misunderstandings grow by being talked about to others. To make them the topic of idle speech is to inflame and exaggerate them. It is a very device of the evil one that when we talk about a supposed injury, it assumes colossal proportions. The way to deal with a misunderstanding is to make no provision for it. Don’t let us provide the food by which it nourishes itself into appalling bulk. If we talk about it at all, let it be in frank and sanctified speech with the one in whom the misunderstanding has occurred. Such conversation provides no food for evil germs. It rather checks their growth and causes them to perish.
(2) We may make provision for strife by indiscreet hearing.
It is not only the speaker but the listener who may be making provision for the
flesh. We may nurse the spirit of strife by being unwise and receptive hearers. There would be
This is another of the off-springs of the flesh
characterised by the Apostle Paul. It suggests an ill relationship to another
which, if nourished, will grow into ill-will, and manifest itself in positive
attempts at injury. Let me give two or three familiar examples of its work. A
young girl in a business house is very popular in her circle. She has many
attractions, many gifts, and much personal charm. She is admired and sought
after, and lives in the light of ceaseless favour. Another girl in the same
house enjoys no such popularity, and is little sought and not conspicuously
admired. What space there may be here for the growth of envy, and if suitable
provision is made, how speedily envy will mature into ill-will and grievous
So one might travel the entire round of the fleshly symptoms described by the Apostle, and to every species we might have applied the apostolic counsel. Let us learn this method of spiritual culture, the method of killing our enemies by neglect. The counsel emerges conspicuously in almost every book of the Bible. “Avoid it; pass not by it; turn from it and pass away.” That is only the Old Testament setting of our New Testament injunction. Treat a thing with neglect and it will pine away and die. “Set your mind on things above,” and the things below, the enemy that comes from beneath, will find no provision in our lives. He will find his cupboard empty, and he will sink away to faint and die.
“One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek
after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to
behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple. For in the time of
trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion; in the secret of His tabernacle shall
He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock. And now shall mine head be lifted
up above mine enemies round about me.”—
It is always a great privilege to be permitted to overhear
the prayers of a saint. It is greatly helpful to be allowed to know the kind of vision which
occupies the mind of a saint when he is upon his
knees. What is the burden of his supplications?
What is the character of his largest hopes? What
is the hope of his aspirations? Perhaps it is by no
means the smallest of our obligations to the
Apostle Paul that we are so frequently permitted
to hear him at prayer. Again and again in his
“That I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of
my life.” He prays that his life may be spent in a sanctuary. The ideal life is
to him the life of ceaseless worship. In the perfected life the soul is always
upon its knees. The saint “dwells in the House of the Lord all
the days of his life.” There are no interregnums. Life is not broken up into
hours spent in the House of the Lord, and days spent away from it. The whole
life is pervaded by the atmosphere of worship. Now when we usually speak of the
devotional life, we describe a mere patch of our days, a little fringe, or a
thin thread in a wide, barren waste. We think of the early moments of the day,
or of its later
We commonly speak of the religious and the secular, as
though they were two quantities that might run along in parallel lines without
flowing into intimate combination. The distinction is perilous and illegitimate.
We can no more separate the religious and the secular, and preserve their life,
than we can preserve the life of flesh which is divorced from blood. We cannot
isolate flesh and blood and sustain vitality. The condition of the life of each
is the union of both. Religion without the secular is a wasted and ineffectual
breath; the secular without religion is a dead and inert form. And so the
distinction between secular music and sacred music, between secular books and
religious books, between secular callings and sacred callings, is fraught with
tremendous peril, and is usually the prelude to spiritual death. The psalmist
wanted
“To behold the beauty of the Lord.” That is the second of
the great emphases of the psalmist’s prayer. He yearned for a life that is
inspired by contemplation of the divine beauty. Is it altogether irrelevant to
say that nowadays we give ourselves very little time to “behold” anything? Is
not seeing becoming a lost art? We go too much at the gallop, and quiet,
fruitful seeing is not consistent with the racing and hurrying life. We have
almost coined a word which has
“And to enquire in His Temple.” He wants to seek his
knowledge in the spirit of devotion. Where will he make his enquiries? “In His
Temple.” That is the place in which all enquiries should be made. All
investigations should commence and be continued on one’s knees. The solution of
pressing problems must be sought in the mood of prayer. We are just here at the
root of many of our errors. We do not ask our questions in His Temple. We ask
them elsewhere, and in an alien spirit. We ask our questions defiantly. Grief
overshadows us, and we raise our questions in stiff rebellion. Adversity comes,
and we project our enquiries in bitterness. The healing answer is frequently
withheld because we have asked amiss. We must ask our questions in reverence. We
must kneel if we want to enquire. We must not give up worship when we are face
to face with a hard difficulty. Let us seek the clue in the Temple. “Take it to
the Lord in prayer.” There are many things which feel overwhelming when we ask
them in a spirit of revolt; they become tolerable when we ask them in the mood
of prayer. “When I sought to know this, it was
What would be the issues of such a life? The psalmist yearns for a life in which the spirit of worship is unceasing, and in which the divine beauty is intimately contemplated, and in which all investigation shall be made in the spirit of reverent supplication. What will be the fruits of such a quest?
1. Restfulness. “In the time of trouble He shall hide
me in His pavilion; in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me.” There
shall be quietness at the heart of things. There shall be a centre of rest, even
though there be a circumference of trouble. The life shall be kept calm, and
free from panic, as in a secret place. When the foes are many and threatening,
there shall be a place of rest, even in their midst. When the enemy shows his
teeth, and I can almost feel his hot breath, there shall still be a hiding-place
of rest. “Thou preparest a table
2. Security. “He shall set me up upon a rock.” He will give me the sense of the firm-rootedness of the good. He will inspire my consciousness with the faith that everything is not loose, and slippery, and uncertain. There is something firm and dependable. There is a rock. “The Lord is my rock.” The man becomes sure of God, and in that assurance his security is complete.
3. Elevation. “Now shall mine head be lifted up above mine
enemies round about me.” The foes that conquer shall themselves be
conquered. The enemy that ruled shall become a subject. The things that
troubled him shall now be beneath his feet. It is salvation by elevation. “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon
shalt thou trample under feet.” I shall be above my old worries, my old
irritations, my old temptations. The Lord lifts
There are just two other words in the passage which I desire to emphasise. This kind of life was not only “desired” by the psalmist; it was “sought after.” “That will I seek after.” His prayer determined his pursuit. That is the order in all fruitful religion. A man’s practical search must follow the vision of his supplications. It is not a mere coincidence that our Master has linked together the two words “ask” and “seek.” We must find our purpose in our prayers. We must shape our ambitions out of our aspirations. We must turn our supplications into duties, and let our prayers determine the trend and intensity of our search.
“Except a man be born again he cannot see the
Kingdom of God.”—
“We know that Thou art a teacher come from
God.” How did he know? There is a dogmatism
and a finality about the assertion which arouses
our inquisitiveness. The statement is made in
the tone of one who is familiar with heavenly
things. “We know that Thou art come from
God.” About Thee there are all the signs of the
heavenly-born. What were the signs he marked?
How did this ruler of the Jews know that Jesus
came from God? “No man can do these miracles
that Thou doest, except God be with him.” “These miracles that Thou doest.” These were
the signs that determined the ruler’s judgment;
these were the hall-marks which testified that Jesus
belonged to the prophetic order, and had intimate
Now look at that position. By this one individual we may be able to interpret his race. Here is a light which illumines for us the thought and expectation of a people. The Hebrew people were looking for a kingdom, the kingdom of God. Their eyes were gazing wistfully for signs of its advent. They said that when it came they would see it, and know it by its extraordinary display of miraculous power. That was to be the sign of its presence. There would be a manifestation which would fascinate all eyes and determine all judgments, and all men should see it together.
Here, then, was the attitude of the Hebrew race. “Let us
wait for the kingdom. Let us watch for the miraculous, that we may know the
advent of the Kingdom. Let us keep our eyes alert that
Now, if that be so, what is the work of the unregenerate judgment when it expresses itself concerning the Kingdom of God? What is the value of the “we know” of the unborn? The Master declares that the unregenerate are stamped by inability to apprehend and appreciate the forces of the Kingdom. What authority, then, I ask, shall we place upon their judgment? The man born blind is no authority in the discernment of exquisite colours. The man born deaf is no authority in the discrimination of melodious sounds. The man born without a palate is no authority in matters which demand the exercised powers of an epicure. To receive sensations you require a sense. The forces that create light demand an eye. The forces that create sound demand an ear. The forces that operate in the Kingdom of God demand a regenerated soul. Except a man have eyes he cannot see the kingdom of colour. Except a man have ears he cannot apprehend the kingdom of sound. Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.
Now, can that declaration be submitted to the test of
practical experience? What is the declaration? The declaration is this, that
in the regenerate life forces operate and conditions prevail which are
absolutely beyond the apprehension of the unregenerate, and that when the
Let me give one or two examples of forces at work in the
regenerate life of which the unregenerate cannot conceive. Let me give one or
two suggestions of a kingdom which they cannot see. In the Kingdom of God there
are what I will call liberating forces at work, of which it is quite
impossible for the unredeemed to conceive. You cannot be in the Kingdom and not
experience their power. You cannot be outside the Kingdom and understand their
power. They may be at work, operating upon the life of the one who is sitting
near to you in the House of God, and if you be outside the Kingdom the life
What are these liberating forces of the Kingdom, circulating
like healthful winds among all its members? Here is a member of the Kingdom.
Listen to a snatch from his daily song, “He brought me up out of a horrible
pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock.” Do we all know the
meaning of that song? How much of it do we understand? We all know the
horrible pit; we all know the miry clay. Thus far our experience has been
common, and we speak in familiar terms. But do we all know the meaning of the rock? Do we all realise what the force has been that laid hold of the man,
like a strong hand, and lifted him out of pit and clay into the welcome light
and set his feet upon a rock? Can we form any conception of that? He was in
the pit, and he walked in darkness, and the darkness was blinding his eyes, and
he saw and heard nothing ahead but the threats and portents of judgment. And
then God’s Kingdom came, and the sweet, strong angel-forces of the Kingdom
befriended him, and threw their influences round about him in glorious and
redeeming might. And now, when I call to Him and say, “Dweller in the horrible
pit, how fares it with thee now?” there comes back the glad response, “No more
night;
Let me give another example of the forces at work in the
regenerate, and of which the unregenerate are quite unable to conceive. I named
my first example the liberating forces of the Kingdom; let me name the second
example,
The Kingdom can only be known by its natives. How can we become naturalised? How can we cross the borders and come within the range of the gracious forces of the Kingdom? “Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” We must lay aside all pride, and kneel at the King’s feet. We must resign our wills. We must be docile and obedient. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
“God so loved the world.”—
“I pray not for the
world.”—
“God so loved the world.” “I pray not for the world.” We are confronted by an apparent antagonism. The two dispositions appear to be contradictory. “God so loved the world.” The evangel suggests an all-affectionate inclusiveness. “I pray not for the world.” The supplication suggests a partial and severe exclusion. The one describes a circle which embraces a race; “God so loved the world.” The other defines a sphere of benediction which comprehends an elected few; “I pray not for the world.” It is well to feel the strain of the apparent antagonism in order that we may enter into the peace of the fundamental consistency.
Now, let us begin here. The Christianised instinct revolts against a spiritual exclusiveness. The culture of the Christian religion is in the direction of an ever-expanding comprehension. Growth in grace is growth in sympathetic inclusiveness. We may measure our growth by the size and quality of our fellowships. Measure the circumference of your love and you have got the amplitude of your Christian life. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour.” That is the circle which defines the size of life lived in the days of the early covenant. “Thou shalt love thine enemy.” Such is the incomparably larger circle defined for the privileged possessor of the new covenant in Christ our Lord. “Thou shalt love thine enemy.” That is the stretched-out circle of affectionate fellowship enjoined by the Christian religion. It stretches out to include the outermost. There is no one beyond its pale. Within the scope of its far-reaching lines the whole family of man can find a home.
“Thou shalt love thine enemy.” “I pray not for the world.”
Now the Master is never behind the disciple. In this warfare the great
Commandant never lags in the rear of the common soldier. In Christ the ideal is
realised, and all the law is fulfilled. “I pray not for the world.” And yet I
know the world is loved, and cared for,
1. Now, this is the vital doctrine of election, the election
of some for the benediction of the whole. “I pray for these that the world may
believe.” The elect are not called to a sphere of exclusion, but to a function
of transmission. They are not elected to privilege, but to service, not to the
secret hoarding of blessing, but to its widespread distribution. The elect are
not circles, but centres, heat centres for radiating gracious influence to
remote circumferences, that under its warming and softening ministry “the world
may believe” in the Son of God. That is the way of the Master. He will work
upon the frozen streams and rivers of the world by raising the general
temperature. He seeks to increase the fervour of those who are His own, and,
through the pure and intense flame of their zeal, to create an atmosphere in
which the hard frozen indifference of the world shall be melted into wonder,
into tender inquisition, that on the cold altar of the heart may be kindled the
fire of spiritual devotion. “I pray not for the
2. Now in this great prayer there are one or two clear glimpses of certain convictions which will have to be created before the world can be constrained to turn to Christ. “That the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” We have to get that conviction deeply and ineradicably embedded into the mind and heart of the world. And here is another collateral conviction, “That the world may know that Thou hast loved them.” The believers are to make that fact shine like the noontide, that the world can no more evade it than it can evade the obtrusive glory of the meridian sun. Somehow or other the disciples of Christ are to drive this twofold persuasion into the heart of the world:—
(1) That Christ was really sent, that what He said was true, that He is grandly dependable; and
(2) That we are loved by Him, and that the Christ life is the
life of blessedness. “That the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me”; the
dependableness of Christ. “That the world may know that Thou hast loved them”; the blessedness
How are we to do it? I gather the answer from the prayer of
our Lord. These convictions are to be driven home to the world by the force and
impetus of redeemed character. See the march and ascension of the wonderful
prayer. “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that
Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” And a little later the light breaks upon
the primary purpose—“that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” “Kept
from the evil . . . that the world may believe.” The unworldliness of the
believer is to make the world believe in the dependableness of the Lord. Our
moral elevation is to be the initial ministry in the world’s salvation. By our
elevation we are to create a profound conviction that it is possible to resist
the gravitation of the world. The strength of our resistance is to placard
before the world the might and dependableness of our God. We are to manifest
pure aspiration amid defiling
Listen again to the Master in prayer—“that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and Thou in Me . . . that the world may know that Thou hast loved them.” Do you see the creative force of the second of these convictions? We are to make the world believe that the Lord loves us by the loveliness of our fellowships. “That they may be one . . . that the world may know.” Our oneness, the absence of division and strife, the beauty of our communion, the lovely vision of exquisite family kinship, is to convince the world that the love of God has been engaged in so fair a creation. The winsome bloom that rests upon our relationships is to persuade the world that the life is heaven-born. We are to placard the love of God through the loveliness of our communion. “That they may be one . . . that the world may believe.”
Here, then, my brethren, is the setting of the divine
purpose. Our Lord will work upon the world through us. Through our moral
elevation
Are we ready for the Master’s use? Do we really believe in
the possibility of the world’s redemption? How spacious is our belief; how
large is the possibility which we entertain? When we survey the clamant needs
of the race, do we discover any “hopeless cases”? Where have we obtained the
right to use the word “hopeless”? What evidence or experience will justify us
in saying of any man, “He is too far gone”? In what atmosphere of thought and
expectancy are we living? Are we dwelling in the Book of Ecclesiastes, or
making our home in the Gospel by John? Let us ransack the city. Let us rake
out, if we can find him, the worst of our race. Let us produce the sin-steeped
and the lust-soddened soul, and then let us hear the word of the Master.
“Believest thou that I am able to do this”? The first condition of being
capable ministers of Christ, is to believe in the possibility
“Love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own.”—
“Love envieth not.” And what is envy? To envy any
one is to repine at their superior excellence. But the repining leads to something worse.
Envious repining is the parent of malice and ill-will.
Nay, envy drags after it a whole brood of evil spirits.
I think the great tempter must be exaltingly satisfied when he has inserted into the life of anyone
this germ of envy. There are some insects which
insert their eggs into the bodies of others, and at first the insertion seems to
be comparatively harmless. But the inserted life begins to develop, and
to feed upon the body in which it dwells, and
matures and strengthens itself by the entire destruction of the other. And so envy is somehow or other
introduced into our spirits, and may at first appear
Here are these Corinthians, endowed with various gifts. One
had eloquence, another had wealth, another had a wonder-working faith. And they
became envious one of another. The one who had eloquence envied the one who had
faith, and from envy he passed to ill-will and disparagement and slander. And the
disposition became so prevalent that this Corinthian Church became the
dwelling-place rather of Satan than of Christ. Well, you know how prone we are to
this disposition to-day. Everywhere we are exposed to its insidious allurements.
Here are two ministers. One has an influence assuredly broadening, and a
congregation steadily increasing. The other has a congregation slowly
diminishing, and an influence apparently shrinking. Oh, how terribly strong is
the temptation to envy and ill-will! Is it otherwise in social functions? When
one who has moved in your circle becomes a general favourite and is greatly
courted and admired, while you are partially overlooked or altogether ignored,
how fierce is the temptation to envy, and slander, and ill-will! And so it is
everywhere and in every life. When we turn with this thought in our minds to
gaze upon the personality of John the Baptist, I think it shines with most
“Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.” No,
where there is no envy there will be no vaunting of oneself, no self-glorifying.
It is the envious folk who are the swaggerers. Envy always forces a man into
self assertion. Envy leads a man to disparage another, and the disparagement is
always directed to the commendation of himself. If you listen to an envious
person, who is engaged in disparaging
“Love doth not behave itself unseemly.” Envy does. Envy leads to self-vaunting, to swagger, to
self-conceit, and self-conceit leads to unseemly behaviour. The envious,
conceited man is for ever pushing himself to the front. He is always putting
himself in evidence, thrusting himself before the public gaze. In this
Corinthian Church every envious man was wanting to exhibit his own gift. They
all wanted to be at the front, and their behaviour became unseemly.
“Unseemly,” or, as the word literally means, mis-shapen; their behaviour
became shapeless, ugly; it had no form, no comeliness. It ignored all the
claims of civility and grace. Well, I think we shall all feel that this
unseemliness
“Love seeketh not her own.” So far from rushing into
any unseemliness in seeking to display itself, so far from trampling upon the
rights of others, love does not even claim her own. “Love seeketh not her own.”
She claims no rights except where moral principle is involved, and on this she
takes a stand, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. There is a
quaint, grey monument in the sweet old town of Appleby, which was built in the
days of the Puritans, and on which these words are inscribed: “Maintain your
loyalty; preserve your rights.” Maintain your rights! Aye, but they were the
crown rights of manhood, freedom to oppose iniquity, freedom to worship God, and
the very love in the hearts of those strong old Puritans made them claim the
rights, and support their claim by death. There are rights which true love will
never relinquish. She will always seek her own. On the other hand, there are
rights which love is ever prepared to yield to others. If love had a right to
the uppermost seat at a feast, and somebody else has got it, love would seek not
her own, but would gracefully insist on the rights of the other. If love had a
sitting in the Church of Christ,
“Sick of a fever. And He touched her hand, and the fever left
her.”—
I have no hesitation in interpreting this miracle
as symbolic of a greater miracle which the Master
works upon the soul. He has made it perfectly
clear that such interpretation is not an illegitimate
use of His healing ministry. “That ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on
earth to forgive sins (then saith He to the sick of the palsy),
Arise, take up thy bed.” He performed a miracle upon the body that we might know
He can perform an analogous miracle upon the soul. He
released a paralysed body that we might know He
is able to release a paralysed spirit. And so with
the incident before us. By a touch He drove the
fever from the body, that we may know He can
drive the feverishness out of the soul. I want,
There is the fever of anxiety. We become “heated hot
with burning fears.” We are fearful about yesterday, fearful about the things we
are doing to-day, fearful about the things which confront us on the morrow. We
become feverish over “evils that never arrive.” Now anxiety is a wasting power.
Even from the point of view of economy it is a foolish expenditure. We could
obtain better results with a smaller outlay. Temperate carefulness accomplishes
more than a burning anxiety. I have noticed that with the incandescent lights,
firm control of the gas results in more brilliant illumination. Turn the gas on
to the full, and whilst you obtain a wasteful roar you get a poorer light. It is
even so with anxiety. Its issues are more impoverished than those attained by
calm and temperate thought. But the fever of anxiety is more than bad economy.
It impairs and enervates the moral powers. Anxiety easily passes into
fretfulness, and fretfulness is frequently creative of peevishness, and
peevishness is easily conducive to a chronic evil temper. It is not without
There is the fever of zealotry. I am conscious that the word I have chosen as descriptive of this fever is not altogether adequate. I use it in the sense of unillumined zeal. We require ardour in the religious life, and the demand for “fire” in our devotion and fellowship has become a commonplace. But ardour is not sufficient. We may have heat accompanied by a great deal of smoke. We need not only heat, but light. John the Baptist was a “burning and a shining light.”
And so the New Testament has much to say about the necessity
of “knowledge,” “understanding,” “discernment,” and we are strongly warned
against a religious life from which these elements are absent. “They have a
zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” They had abundance of passion,
but little discretion. Now, zeal allied with knowledge creates a fruitful
fervour. Zeal bereft of knowledge is a perilous fever. And here again there is a
pregnant suggestion in the etymology of the words. Fervour is akin to fever, and
it frequently
There is the fever of superstition. Charles Kingsley
has defined superstition as “an unreasoning fear of the unknown.” I think we
may perhaps express the same thought by saying that superstition arises from an
unworthy conception of God. There are many of the superstitions which distress
men, that would pass away like mist if only we lived in the light of God’s
countenance. Where superstition dwells, fever abides. The life is never calm and
restful that is haunted by superstitions. I don’t think this is altogether an
irrelevant warning even for our own enlightened day. There are many apparently
trifling superstitions which tend to disturb the sanity and quietude of the
life. Take the superstition which gathers round about Friday as the unlucky day
of the week. What an abhorrence there is of the suggestion that anyone should be
married on a Friday! How few of the maids who go out to service will take a
situation on a Friday! Such superstitions may appear to be harmless, but in
reality they tend to consume the vitals of religion. There are other
superstitions which gather round about charms, and ritual, and sacraments, all
There is the fever begotten of success. We might have thought that success would lead to a cool contentment. We should have assumed that when men had prospered their feverish craving would cease, and they would rest in calm satisfaction. But quite the opposite appears to be the prevalent issue. Success fosters feverishness and begets a clamant thirst. The more one succeeds the more he wants to succeed. The more he obtains the more he craves. The more you drink when you are heated, the more you want to drink. This seems to be the peril of the prosperous life. There is a quaint remark in Bacon’s “Natural History,” which I think has wide suggestion—“It hath been noted by the ancients that southern winds, blowing much, do cause a feverous disposition.” I think this is a frequent result of the ministry of the south wind. When the soft, genial airs of prosperity breathe over a man, and he never feels the rawness of the east wind, or the biting nip of the north wind, he is apt to acquire a “feverous disposition” which consumes the wealthier elements of his soul.
“He touched her hand, and the fever left her.”
“He touched her hand.” The fever-stricken
By my union with Him, the ill-working heat of my life is reduced. I am delivered from panic, I am brought into a normal and healthy moral temperature. “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.”
But the cure effected by the great Healer is more than an expulsion of the fever. It is a defence against it when contagion is prowling about. It is the man with pronounced weaknesses who becomes the victim.
It is the spiritually weak who are liable to perilous spiritual fevers. Now union with the Christ turns our weakness into strength. Fellowship ripens into blessed intimacy. We delight in our companionship, and “the joy of the Lord is our strength.” In that companionship we shall find that the word of the Psalmist is confirmed, only with an unspeakably richer meaning: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the pestilence that walketh in darkness”; “neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” Perhaps we may sum up the cooling ministry in a word, which we may borrow from the Prophet Isaiah: “He that believeth shall not make haste.” He shall not become feverish, or get into a panic. He shall remain calm and cool amid all the dangers of the common day.
“She arose and ministered unto Him.”
May we not with advantage accept the suggestion which is
contained in these words? The fever-stricken woman was healed by the Saviour;
and then, when she was delivered from her fever, “She arose and ministered unto
Him.” She had been
“What man is he that feareth the Lord?” “The
fear of God” is a familiar expression in the Scriptures. Perhaps our very intimacy with the phrase
has somewhat impoverished our sense of its content. Let us seek to lay hold of
one element in the spacious word. When we profoundly fear a thing we
are haunted by it. It affects everything. It throws
a shadow into the sunniest hour, and brings a chill
into the gayest feast. May we transfer any of this
meaning into our interpretation of the fear of God?
To fear God is to be God-haunted, God-possessed.
But immediately we see the defectiveness of the
figure. In all fruitful fear of God there is no cringing, no slavishness, no paralysing terror. Perfect
love “casteth out” this type of fear. Let us, then,
change our figure. We speak of being haunted by
What would be the fruits of such a fear? If God haunts the
life, and His presence is welcomed,
“Him shall He teach in the way that he shall choose.” He shall be guided in his choices. He shall have
the gift of enlightenment. His discernment shall be refined so as to perceive
the right way when the ways are many. His judgment shall be illumined. I use the
word judgment with a full and comprehensive meaning. The moral judgment shall be
instructed. Its perceptions shall be rendered more microscopic. It shall be able
to discern among scruples; it shall become more and more scrupulous. It shall
truthfully detect that which is least. The moral choice shall be firm and sure.
But it is not only the moral judgment which shall be put to school. The
practical judgment shall also be nurtured and refined in the Lord’s school. Such
qualities as these are among the fruits of the education—tact, discretion,
insight, foresight, shrewdness. I do not yield the distribution of these gifts to the sovereignty of the devil. They are among the gifts
of the Spirit. Practical sagacity is one of the bequests of the Lord. “If any
man lack wisdom let him ask of God.” The enlightenment covers the entire field
of human life. “He shall teach.” The word is full of comforting
suggestion. He will come down to my level. He will search out the needs of the
individual scholar. He will begin
“His soul shall dwell at ease.” Restlessness and worry shall be abolished. “He shall lodge in the chamber of
content.” The sense of the companionship of God will make every place the realm
of promise, and in every place he will find the riches of grace. Every variety
of condition into which his life may pass shall provide its own feast. He will
not fret or be worried even though he be led into a place that abounds with
antagonisms. He will still be “at ease.” “Thou preparest a table before me in
the presence of mine enemies.” That is a wonderfully heartening testimony! When
the foes are all about him, and his besetment appears to be perilous, in the
very midst of it all he sits down to feast with God. And so he “dwells at
ease,” wherever his lot is cast. Is not this only a paraphrase of the apostolic
word, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.” If the
dwelling-place be one of tribulation, even in this dark spot the Lord’s treasure
may be found. “Tribulation worketh patience, and patience hope.” Such are the
jewels to be found in this black mine. The God-haunted man is restful in every
place because the all-sufficient resource accompanies him
“His seed shall inherit the earth.” Children become heirs when parents become pious. The God-possessed
transmits a legacy of blessing. Our children fare the better when we fear the
Lord. It would be a fruitful subject of meditation for us to sit down and
quietly think about the bequests of piety. It would be a profitable exercise to
calculate what one may inherit because another man was good. The men and women
who are haunted by God and live in His fear bequeath pure vital force, rare
moral energy, and a spiritual atmosphere in which sin becomes more difficult.
But among the legacies of the pious there are ministries other than these. “Nevertheless I will not do it for David thy father’s sake.” Is that suggestive
of a common ministry in human life? Is judgment withheld from the son because
of the sanctity of the parent? Is the son blessed because the father prayed?
What vistas are opened out by the application of the principle! All that I have
that is worth anything may be a deposit from the prayerfulness of a consecrated
parent. I may have an inheritance because he walked with God. “The mercy of the
Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His
righteousness unto children’s children to such as keep His covenant.” When I
fear the
“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He
will show them His covenant.” They are taken into intimate fellowship. They become the familiar
friends of God. It is always a sign of deepening friendship when people begin to
open their inner rooms to us. To be made the depository of a rare secret is to
be sealed as a friend. When anyone tells us a secret joy, it is a mark of
intimacy; when they unveil to us a secret grief, it is a proof of the closest
fellowship. When we are taken from the suburbs of a man’s being to the centre,
it is a proof of an enriching communion. “No longer do I call you servants, but
friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father, I have made known unto
you.” Is there not something tenderly suggestive in the word which tells us that
“when they were alone, He expounded unto them”? When He had got His familiar
friends to Himself, He told them His secrets and showed them His covenant. And
so it is the saint who is the spiritual expert. The merely intellectual athlete
may be in the remote suburb of truth, while the illiterate saint may dwell in
its very heart. There are many illiterate saints who are grand expositors. The
Lord “shows them” His covenant. He unveils to them rare glimpses of redemptive
glory,
Here, then, are some of the fruits of the God-possessed life. How can we become God-haunted? Let us begin by deliberately consulting God in the individual movements of our busy life. Let us refer everything to His decision. Let us make Him a partner in all our affairs. Let us begin by distinct acts of volition, and what began at first with strained deliberateness may become at length an easy-fitting habit, and may even ripen still further into the spontaneity of an instinct. The Lord will be “continually before us.”
“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I
will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and
lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”—
This exquisite passage is like a flower which one is almost afraid to touch, lest he should spoil the delicate bloom. Yet to disturb the flower may awake a fragrance and distribute it to others. My treatment shall be a gentle shaking of the flower, if perchance its inherent fragrance may captivate our spiritual senses and allure us to the heart of its gracious truth.
“Ye that labour and are heavy-laden.” And who are the “labouring”? There is an intense force and
significance in the word. We may discover one aspect of its wealthy content in
the familiar verse, “Jesus being wearied with His journey, sat
Are there such souls? Are there any sinking, sunken,
despairing hearts? Are there over-cargoed men and women, beset by hungry waves
ever seeking to engulf them? Is life a merry maytime, a sunny round of
lightsome games in a flower-decked meadow? Or is life full of steep and
difficult highways, hard, dry, and dust-covered? And is it that
I think if we could gather together all the scattered army of the sinking and the heavy-laden, and marshal them in ranks, they would form a procession which would surely melt the hardest heart. Who would be found in that vast procession?
One big regiment would be formed of those who are sinking
under the burdening sense of guilt. Does that sound like fiction? Have we never
heard of men and women who have spent the forces of mind and soul, and who are
sinking in sheer exhaustion because of the load of guilt which they drag after
them to-day? If, when we have lived to-day, to-day were done, men might walk
with airy step, but the guilt of to-day is added to the heavy baggage-waggon
which constitutes our load, and at length men sink in sheer collapse. “Oh,
The outlook on the morrows is just a monotony of laden and hopeless gloom.
Now what can we do for such? Men attempt to alleviate the
burdens of the guilt-bound by little fictions. “This is the very painting of
your fears.” Painting! “My worm dieth not, my fire is not quenched.” Another
little fiction is tried. “Maybe there is no God.” No God! “I feel His terrible
Another regiment in the procession of the “labouring” soul
would be composed of those who are heavy laden with the burdensome mystery of
things, who are dragging along in the mire of fears and uncertainties, and who
are looking about for some firm way of assurance and rest. A regiment of
heavy-laden gropers! Is there anything so exhausting as long and fruitless
search? Men who are looking for work become more exhausted than if they were
engaged in work. Work itself provides an element of rest, but looking for work
is productive of nothing but exhaustion. The man who goes about all day, seeking
for work, turns home
But the trouble is that men do not search for Him in the right place. “Ye search the Scriptures . . . and ye will not come unto Me.” I have seen a tourist travelling through one of the loveliest parts of Scotland, who was so absorbed in his guidebook that he scarcely lifted his eyes to look at the scenery. “Ye search the Scriptures, and ye will not come unto Me.” Men will search anywhere and do anything except turn in simple surrender to the Christ Himself. They weary themselves in intellectual exploration, and they will not lay their wills in childlike simplicity, in lowly obeisance to the Master’s call. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him.” The secrets are discovered in the way of devotion and reverent fear. “Come unto Me,” ye sinking, exhausted seekers, “and I will give you rest.”
Let me name one other regiment in this great army of the
heavy-laden. How shall we describe
And so rest is to be gained by finding Christ. How is it to
be retained? How are we to keep our “rest” fresh and healthful? God does not
want His bread to become stale; He wants it to be ever palatable and good to
our taste. He does not want His “rest” to become stale, He wants it to remain
fresh and sweet that I may experience it every day like a newly-discovered
thing. He wants His “gift” to be a daily “find.” “Take My yoke upon you and
learn of Me . . . and ye shall find rest.” He wants His rest to be so fresh in
experience that it may surprise me every day as though it were a thing I had
newly found. He wants it to remain a novelty, and never become a commonplace. He
wants his rest to be “new every morning.” And this is how it is to be
accomplished:—“Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me.” Find out the Master’s
way of doing things. Dwell with Him and appropriate His Spirit. Approach
everything from His stand-point. Do not confront anything in vanity and pride.
Take up all your tasks and encounter all your sorrows in “meekness” and
“lowliness”; and the rest He gave us when first we turned to Him we shall find
“A certain centurion.”—
What are my anticipations respecting the character of this Centurion? He is an educated Roman,
and therefore I anticipate that he will be unsentimental, severely secular, crushing out all inclinations
to the mystical. He is a Roman soldier, and therefore I anticipate that he may be proud, domineering,
hard, and unsympathetic. He is a Roman slave-owner, and therefore I anticipate that he may be
self-centred, supercilious, inconsiderate, and brutal.
My anticipations do not shape for me a rich and
enticing personality. He is a man living in the
steely glare of imperial power, and I expect to find him power-benumbed, and
absorbed in the hardening materialism of the fleeting day. He will be as
a land of drought and barrenness, sandy, gritty, rasping, and unkindly. Instead of all which, he stands
Here are rivers of rich and generous sympathy. I know their depth and fulness by the barriers they overleap.
Sympathy is commonly confined within severer conventional limits. It is often
like a lake in a private park, and not like the stream which weds together the
private park and the village green. It is often the dialect of the hamlet rather
than the speech of a people. It is parochial rather than national, sectarian
instead of universal. There are stern, hoary walls within which its movements
are enclosed, and beyond the enclosures the music of its influence is never
heard. But sometimes the waters rise in a gracious flood; the imprisoning walls
are submerged; the boundary marks of the little hamlet are washed out, and
class and caste and sect are forgotten in a broad and fruitful union. Here is a
man whose sympathies are at the flood,
Mark the further advance of the gracious flood. “He loveth
our nation!” What! the Roman loving the Jew? Here is another hoary rampart
overthrown. “He loveth our nation.” Racial limits
Can we trace the sympathy into yet finer issues? “Himself
built us our synagogue.” A Roman discerning the beauty in the worship of the
Jew. “Himself built us our synagogue.” Ecclesiastical boundaries overflowed.
It is a welcome sign of broadening and enriching vision when we begin to
take sympathetic interest in the religious aspirations and worships of others.
It is a sure sign of dwarfed and crippled life when religious interests are
self-contained and exclusive, when we cannot see the beauties in another mode of
worship, nor find a single foothold for kinship and communion. But our sectarian
fences are so emphatic and pronounced that it is difficult for our sympathies to
get beyond them. Our boundaries are so apt to be made of spiked railings and
barbed wire, instead of green and perfumed hedge-rows. When sympathy is refined,
kinships are discerned, and even where there is much that is alien, we shall
discover much that is common. Here, then, is the breadth and depth of the
Centurion’s sympathy. In its gracious comprehensiveness social barriers are
submerged,
Now I am not surprised to find that a man of such spacious
sympathy is also a man of profound humility. That is not a mere
coincidence, it is an inevitable moral consequence. Sympathy is creative of
humility. Large sympathy; deep humility! No sympathy; colossal self-conceit!
Sympathy means association, vision, comprehension, outlook. Large sympathy
implies large spaciousness and far-reaching outlook. Absence of sympathy means
absence of vision, lack of space, life confined to one’s own court-yard. Now a
little thing looks big when it is set in a small room. The piece of furniture
which looked dwarfed in the warehouse assumes quite respectable proportions when
set in the narrower surroundings of your own home. If you want a little thing to
look big, put it into a small room. A fly is conspicuous on a saucer, it is lost
on a lawn. A man of no sympathy, of no spacious vision, is set in a small place,
and self bulks big, and becomes possessed by a swelling conceit. But
Sympathy is here; humility is here; then you have got a
fine discernment. When you have in a life a broad surface of sympathy,
allied with a deep and fruitful humility, you have obtained a sensitive plane of
spirit, which, like the photographer’s most exquisite plate, will register the
finest impressions of light. Sympathy and humility are the conditions of moral
and spiritual discernment. Let these be absent, and discernment and apprehension
are blunted and impaired. Without sympathy and humility life is hardened, and a
thousand mystic visitors may knock at our doors unheeded and
ignored. But with their presence there is a fine
“Let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory; but in
lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.”—
“Let nothing be done through strife or vain-glory.” Whom is the Apostle addressing? His
words seem applicable to some violent political
party, or to some ambitious and selfish state. They
appear to be descriptive of the ways of the world,
and yet they are pointed at a Christian Church. “Let nothing be done through strife and vain-glory.” Is the counsel irrelevant? Is the danger
imaginary? Do not “Church” and “Strife” appear quite incongruous? I should have thought that
when the fire-brand of strife sought introduction
into the temple of the Lord, it would have been
extinguished at the very threshold. And yet the
Apostle suggests that even in the Church it may
What we have before us is a warning against the obtrusion of
self in Christian service. Now the Apostle says that this obtrusion may reveal
itself in one of two shapes, in strife or vain-glory. I think it will be well,
in the place of both these words to substitute more modern equivalents, which
will enable us to catch the Apostle’s thought. What did the Apostle mean by
strife? Party-spirit. What did he mean by vain-glory? Personal vanity. “Let
nothing be done through party-spirit or personal vanity.” Party-spirit!
Personal vanity! Those
“Or vain-glory,” personal vanity! A man can be a sect to
himself; he can be a party of one. He can seek his own triumphs, his own
majorities. Such
The warning against self-obtrusion is followed by a
declaration as to how the obtrusive self may be suppressed. Here is transition
from egotism to altruism. “But in lowliness of mind let each esteem other
better than themselves.” It is the lowly spirit which discerns things in their
true proportion and order. The lowly spirit sets me in the right attitude, and
makes it possible for me to obtain accuracy of vision. People who are
high-minded, in the sense of being supercilious, “look down” upon others.
People who are lowly-minded “look up” to others, and discover their wealth and
grace. It is the lowly place that gives us the point of vision for the spacious
out-look. That may appear to be a contradiction, but it is one of the common
experiences of the spiritual life. There is much food for meditation in the
familiar phrase “The Valley of Vision.” I could have readily understood it had
it been “The Mount of Vision,” but to have visions in valleys, to have
panoramas breaking upon one’s gaze in the place of humility, excites doubt and
surprise. But the Scriptures abound in the suggestion. “Blessed are the poor in
spirit,” those who are
There is no way by which we can obtain this gracious disposition except by holding intimate companionship with Christ. In His presence “the mountains and hills are made low.” In the light and warmth of His presence the ice of false pride melts away.
“He calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out.”—
“He calleth His own sheep by name.” The unit
is not lost in the indiscriminate mass. The colour
of a personality is not merged in the monotonous
grey of the multitude. The personalities are distinguished. “He calleth His own sheep by name.”
He never mistakes one for another. We are not so
much alike that we are treated as crowds. We are
not repetitions of a type, uniform articles cast in a
common and unvarying mould. We are individualities, every one original and
unique, and bearing individual characteristics and name. “He calleth His
own sheep by name.” He never confounds Thomas
and John, or Peter and Nathaniel, or Mary and
Martha. Each name suggests its special problem,
and requires peculiar ministry. The ministries are
“He calleth his own sheep by name.” But this was said of Him
in the day of His gracious travail, when He walked the heavy road of pilgrimage
and pain. This was spoken in the day of His humiliation, when He companied with
men, when He visited their lowly dwellings, and moved amid their common haunts,
and sympathetically knew the needs of the individual heart. “He calleth His own
sheep by name.” Will it be true of Him when He rises again on the third day,
clothed in resurrection glory? In His humiliation He knew the individual
I turn to the wonderful record, with the music of my text
ringing in my heart, “He calleth His own sheep by name,” and half-tremblingly I
listen to His speech on the resurrection morn. “Mary stood without at the
sepulchre weeping . . . Jesus saith unto her, Mary!” “He calleth His
sheep by name.” It is the same Master. And here is Thomas, trembling with
misgiving, half stunned by the grim and unforgettable realities which he had
seen on Calvary, with his hope buried in a sealed tomb, and despairing of any
sweet and winsome
(1) “Mary stood without at the sepulchre, weeping, and as
she wept, . . . Mary!” She knew the tone! She had heard it too often to
mistake it for another. How had she learnt the tone? “Mary Magdalene, out of
whom the Lord had cast seven devils.” She had heard the voice then, a commanding
voice, speaking in the midnight of her bondage. When her freedom was gained,
when the devils had been expelled, she heard the voice then, a soothing,
heartening voice, speaking in the soft, quiet dawn of her emancipation. And ever
since the great enfranchisement, she had lived in the light and music of His
gracious speech. And now at the grave she could not mistake the familiar tone. “She turned and said, Rabboni; which is to say, Master!” All this is not
without its suggestion. If I want to be calmed by my Lord’s voice in the black
crisis, I must familiarise myself with its tones in the common day. The mother
hushes her little one in the dark midnight, with tones which have become
familiar in the light. It is possible for one to be in the chilling midnight,
and not to hear the tones of the speaking Lord! “Ye therefore hear them not,
because ye are not of God.” “My sheep
“Jesus saith unto her, Mary!” What did the name mean
when spoken by the Lord on that first day of the week? She was searching for
death; she had met life! Perhaps the last time He had called her Mary was when
He was toiling up Calvary’s slope to the cross. And between then and now there
had been the crucifixion, the death, the burial. And now again, “Mary.” Then
death was no blind alley, no impassable terminus, but a highway and a
thoroughfare! She had seen Him enter, had seen Him emerge, and now the tones of
His voice confirmed it. “Mary!” I think her conception of death was
transfigured. Death is so imperious, its sovereignty appears to be so absolutely
unconditioned. When we watch the dying, the transient is so obtrusive. We are
held by the spectacle of the failing strength, the graspless memory, the dim
discernment, the scanty breath; the brief flickering of the fading light; the
expiration;
Is it not a gracious thing that the witness of the risen Lord
is first of all given to the weeping woman, bending near a grave? How much we
need it! It is a dark lane, and the cold wind that sweeps across it blows out
every earthly light! I am grateful for the gift of memory, and the gracious
ministry of retrospect. To be able to sit in the twilight, before the lamps are
lit, and just think about him, and about her, is to exercise a kindly gift of
God. To live it all over again in memory, from the wooing days to the ministry
of the last sickness, and the sacred fellowship of the declining day! It is very
good of God to permit us to recall it all, to canonise our loved ones in the
soft, transfiguring light of retrospect. But retrospect may be
(2) “After eight days again His disciples were within, and Thomas with them.”
“And Thomas with them.” I am glad that Thomas was with them.
I am glad he was permitted to retain his companionship. I am glad they had not
cast him from their fellowship because he was a sceptic. He must have greatly
wounded his fellow-disciples when he so stoutly disbelieved what their
experience had witnessed and confirmed. But they retained him in their
fellowship. It is a beautiful glimpse of their broadening tolerance and their
comprehensive sympathy. I think it was one of the first fruits of the
resurrection light. Perhaps
And I am glad that Thomas himself had not turned his back upon those whom he regarded as his credulous fellow-disciples. It so frequently happens that, when a man cannot fully accept the faith of his fellows, he severs himself entirely from their companionship and communion. This doubter might have said, “For me the matter is settled. The evidence is overwhelming. My judgment is final. I saw the ghastly scenes on Calvary. I heard His groans, and that one great cry that filled us all with fear. I saw the spear-thrust, and the expiration of the last breath. For me the promising crusade is sunk in the abyss of an endless night.” “Except I shall see in His hand the print of the nails . . . I will not believe.” And yet “the disciples were within, and Thomas with them.” “Then came Jesus.”
“I know My sheep.” “He calleth His sheep by name.” And he
knew and called Thomas. The risen Lord came to him with infinite tenderness. “Peace be unto you,” and I think perhaps He directed His look more particularly
upon the doubter. Do you think the Master needed to have gone further? He had
not yet shown His hands
(3) “So when they had dined Jesus saith to Simon Peter,
Simon!” “He calleth His sheep by name.” I wonder what the risen Lord will say
to him? The denial was only a few steps back in the dark way. “Art
thou also one of His disciples?” “I am not.” That denial was never out of
Peter’s mind. He felt he could never make another vow. He was the first to
spring out of the boat when the Lord called, but he knew not what to say. He
longed that the dark yesterday might be all undone, blotted out, and that he
might have another chance. What will the Lord say to him? “Simon, . . . lovest thou Me?” Was it half-critical, half-ironical, a
little condemnatory? Was it a sentence with an index pointing back to his
denial? It may have been. To Peter it was; but whatever the Lord had said
would have brought the dark hour back to
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