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           Title: The Passion for Souls
      Creator(s): Jowett, J. H. (1817-1893)
     Print Basis: New York: Fleming H. Revell Company (1905)
   CCEL Subjects: All;
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THE PASSION FOR SOULS

   WORKS OF
   REV. J. H. JOWETT

   YET ANOTHER DAY

   32mo, Cloth, net, 25C. Leather, net, 35c.

   A brief prayer for every day of the year. They drive straight to the
   heart as nothing that ever came from Mr. Jowett's pen. It is an
   extraordinary, little book, the flower of the sweetest, open eyed love
   of Christ.
   THE PASSION FOR SOULS

   16mo, Cloth, net, Soc.

   Seven sermons on the themes tenderness, watchfulness, companionship,
   rest and vision of the Apostle Paul's passion for human souls. This
   little volume shows Mr. Jowett's keen, reverent insight at its best.
   MEDITATIONS FOR QUIET MOMENTS

   16mo, Cloth, 50c.

   "Twenty-seven brief homilies on subjects of practical and immediate
   interest to Christians. One's note-book, after reading it, has many
   suggestions."--Record of Christian Work.
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   Fleming H. Revell Company

   PUBLISHERS
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                             The Passion for Souls

By

J. H. JOWETT, M. A.

Author of "Brooks by the Traveller's Way," etc.

    NEW YORK    CHICAGO    TORONTO

Fleming H. Revell Company

    LONDON   AND    EDINBURGH

    Copyright, 1905, by

  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

   New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
   Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
   Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W.
   London: 21 Paternoster Square
   Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
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To
My Father and Mother
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The Passion for Souls
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I

THE DISCIPLE'S THEME

   "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace
   given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of
   Christ."--EPH. 3: 8.

   Mark how the apostle describes the evangel--"the unsearchable riches of
   Christ!" It suggests the figure of a man standing, with uplifted hands,
   in a posture of great amazement, before continuous revelations of
   immeasurable and unspeakable glory. In whatever way he turns, the
   splendour confronts him! It is not a single highway of enrichment.
   There are side-ways, byways, turnings here and there, labyrinthine
   paths and recesses, and all of them abounding in unsuspected jewels of
   grace. It is as if a miner, working away at the primary vein of ore,
   should continually discover equally precious veins stretching out on
   every side, and overwhelming him in rich embarrassment. It is as if a
   little child, gathering the wild sweet heather at the fringe of the
   road, should lift his eyes and catch sight of the purple glory of a
   boundless moor. "The unsearchable riches of Christ!" It is as if a man
   were tracking out the confines of a lake, walking its boundaries, and
   when the circuit were almost complete should discover that it was no
   lake at all, but an arm of the ocean, and that he was confronted by the
   immeasurable sea! "The unsearchable riches of Christ!" This sense of
   amazement is never absent from the apostle's life and writings. His
   wonder grows by what it feeds on. Today's surprise almost makes
   yesterday's wonder a commonplace. Again and again he checks himself,
   and stops the march of his argument, as the glory breathes upon him the
   new freshness of the morning. You know how the familiar paean runs.
   "According to the riches of His grace." "That He would grant you,
   according to the riches of His glory." "God shall supply all your need
   according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." "The riches of the
   glory of this mystery among the Gentiles." "The same Lord over all is
   rich unto all that call upon Him." "In everything ye are enriched in
   Him." "The exceeding riches of His grace." His thought is overwhelmed.
   He is dazzled by the splendour. Speech is useless. Description is
   impossible. He just breaks out in awed and exultant exclamation. "O,
   the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" The
   riches are "unsearchable," untrackable, "beyond all knowledge and all
   thought."

   But now, to the Apostle Paul, these "unsearchable riches" are not
   merely the subjects of contemplation, they are objects of
   appropriation. This ideal wealth is usable glory, usable for the
   enrichment of the race. The "unsearchable riches" fit themselves into
   every possible condition of human poverty and need. The ocean of grace
   flows about the shore of common life, into all its distresses and
   gaping wants, and it fills every crack and crevice to the full. That is
   the sublime confidence of the Apostle Paul. He stands before all the
   desert places in human life, the mere cinder-heaps, the men and the
   women with burnt-out enthusiasms and affections, and he boldly
   proclaims their possible enrichment. He stands before sin, and
   proclaims that sin can be destroyed. He stands before sorrow, and
   proclaims that sorrow can be transfigured. He stands before the broken
   and perverted relationships of men, and proclaims that they can all be
   rectified. And all this in the strength of "the unsearchable riches of
   Christ!" To this man the wealth is realizable, and can be applied to
   the removal of all the deepest needs of men. Let us fasten our
   attention here for a little while, in the contemplation of this man's
   amazing confidence in the triumphant powers of grace.

   He stands before sin and proclaims its possible destruction. It is not
   only that he proclaims the general ministry of pardon and the general
   removal of sin. He finds his special delight in specializing the
   ministry, and in proclaiming the all-sufficiency of redeeming grace in
   its relationship to the worst. There is about him the fearlessness of a
   man who knows that his evangel is that of a redemption which cannot
   possibly fail. Turn to those gloomy catalogues which are found here and
   there in his epistles, long appalling lists of human depravity and
   human need, and from these estimate his glowing confidence in the
   powers of redeeming grace. Here is such a list:--"Fornicators,
   idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with men,
   thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners." Such were some
   of the foul issues upon which the saving energies of grace were to be
   brought. And then he adds--"And such were some of you. But ye were
   washed!" And when the Apostle uses the word "washed" he suggests more
   than the washing out of an old sin, he means the removal of an old
   affection; more than the removal of a pimple, he means the purifying of
   the blood; more than the cancelling of guilt, he means the
   transformation of desire. Such was this man's belief in the saving
   ministry of divine grace. Do we share his confidence? Do we speak with
   the same unshaken assurance, or do we stagger through unbelief? Does
   our speech tremble with hesitancy and indecision? If we had here a
   company of men and women whose condition might well place them in one
   of the catalogues of the Apostle Paul, could we address to them an
   evangel of untroubled assurance, and would our tones have that savour
   of persuasion which would make our message believed? What could we tell
   them with firm and illumined convictions? Could we tell them that the
   cinder-heaps can be made into gardens, and that the desert can be made
   to rejoice and blossom as the rose? I say, should we stagger in the
   presence of the worst, or should we triumphantly exult in the power of
   Christ's salvation?

   It has always been characteristic of great soul-winners that, in the
   strength of the unsearchable riches of Christ, they have proclaimed the
   possible enrichment and ennoblement of the most debased. John Wesley
   appeared to take almost a pride in recounting and describing the
   appalling ruin and defilement of mankind, that he might then glory in
   all-sufficient power of redeeming grace. "I preached at Bath. Some of
   the rich and great were present, to whom, as to the rest, I declared
   with all plainness of speech, (1) That by nature they were all children
   of wrath. (2) That all their natural tempers were corrupted and
   abominable. . . . One of my hearers, my Lord ----, stayed very
   impatiently until I came to the middle of my fourth head. Then,
   starting up, he said, 'Tis hot! 'tis very hot,' and got downstairs as
   fast as he could." My Lord ---- should have stayed a little longer, for
   John Wesley's analysis of depravity and of human need was only and
   always the preface to the introduction of the glories of the
   unsearchable riches of Christ. My Lord ---- should have waited until
   Wesley got to the marrow of his text, "The Son of Man is come to seek
   and to save that which was lost."

   There was a similar sublime confidence in the preaching of Spurgeon.
   What a magnificent assurance breathes through these words, "The blood
   of Christ can wash out blasphemy, adultery, fornication, lying,
   slander, perjury, theft, murder. Though thou hast raked in the very
   kennels of hell, yet if thou wilt come to Christ and ask mercy He will
   absolve thee from all sin." That too, I think, is quite Pauline. Henry
   Drummond has told us that he has sometimes listened to confessions of
   sin and to stories of ill-living so filthy and so loathsome that he
   felt when he returned home that he must change his very clothes. And
   yet to these plague-smitten children Drummond offered with joyful
   confidence the robe of righteousness and the garment of salvation. We
   need this confident hope to-day. Men and women are round about us,
   will-less, heartless, hopeless, and there is something stimulating and
   magnetic about a strong man's confident speech. If we proclaim the
   unsearchable riches of Christ, let us proclaim them with a confidence
   born of experimental fellowship with the Lord, and with the untrembling
   assurance that the crown of life can be brought to the most besotted,
   and the pure white robe to the most defiled.

   What else does Paul find in the unsearchable riches of Christ? He finds
   a gracious ministry for the transfiguration of sorrow. The unsearchable
   riches of Christ bring most winsome light and heat into the midst of
   human sorrow and grief. "Our consolations also abound through Christ."
   Turn where you will, in the life of Paul, into his darker seasons and
   experiences, and you will find that the sublime and spiritual
   consolation is shedding its comforting rays. "We rejoice in
   tribulations also." Who would have expected to find the light burning
   there? "We sorrow, yet not as others who have no hope." "Not as
   others!" It is sorrow with the light streaming through it! It is an
   April shower, mingled sunshine and rain; the hope gleams through tears.
   The light transfigures what it touches! Even the yew tree in my garden,
   so sombre and so sullen, shows another face when the sunlight falls
   upon it. I think I have seen the yew tree smile!

   Even pain shows a new face when the glory-light beams upon it. Said
   Frances Ridley Havergal, that exultant singing spirit, with the frail,
   shaking, pain-ridden body, "Everybody is so sorry for me except
   myself." And then she uses the phrase, "I see my pain in the light of
   Calvary." It is the yew tree with the light upon it! Such is the
   ministry of the unsearchable riches in the night-time of pain.
   Professor Elmslie said to one of his dearest friends towards the end of
   his days, "What people need most is comfort." If that be true, then the
   sad, tear-stricken, heavy-laden children of men will find their
   satisfaction only in the unsearchable riches of Christ.

   What further discoveries does the Apostle make in the unsearchable
   riches of Christ? He not only confronts sin and claims that it can be
   destroyed, and stands before sorrow and claims that it can be
   transfigured, he stands amid the misunderstandings of men, amid the
   perversions in the purposed order of life, the ugly twists that have
   been given to fellowships which were ordained to be beautiful and true,
   and he proclaims their possible rectification in Christ. When Paul
   wants to bring correcting and enriching forces into human affairs, he
   seeks the wealthy energy in "the unsearchable riches of Christ" He
   finds the ore for all ethical and social enrichments in this vast
   spiritual deposit. He goes into the home, and seeks the adjustment of
   the home relationships, and the heightening and enrichment of the
   marriage vow. And by what means does he seek it? By bringing Calvary's
   tree to the very hearthstone, the merits of the bleeding sacrifice to
   the enrichment of the wedded life. "Husbands, love your wives, as
   Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it" He goes into the
   domain of labour, and seeks the resetting of the relationships of
   master and servant. And by what means does he seek it? By seeking the
   spiritual enrichment of both master and servant in a common communion
   with the wealth of the blessed Lord. He takes our common intimacies,
   our familiar contracts, the points where we meet in daily fellowship,
   and he seeks to transform the touch which carries an ill contagion into
   a touch which shall be the vehicle of contagious health. And by what
   means does he seek it? By bringing the Cross to the common life and
   letting the wealth of that transcendent sacrifice reveal the work of
   the individual soul. Everywhere the Apostle finds in the "unsearchable
   riches of Christ" life's glorious ideal, and the all-sufficient dynamic
   by which it is to be attained. Here, then, my brethren, are the
   "unsearchable riches" of Christ--riches of love, riches of pardon,
   riches of comfort, riches of health, riches for restoring the
   sin-scorched wastes of the soul, riches for transfiguring the
   sullenness of sorrow and pain, and riches for healthily adjusting the
   perverted relationships of the home, the state and the race. These
   riches are ours. Every soul is heir to the vast inheritance! The riches
   are waiting for the claimants! And some, yea, multitudes of our fellows
   have claimed them, and they are moving about in the humdrum ways of
   common life with the joyful consciousness of spiritual millionaires.
   One such man is described by James Smetham. He was a humble member of
   Smetham's Methodist class-meeting. "He sold a bit of tea . . . and
   staggered along in June days with a tendency to hernia, and prayed as
   if he had a fortune of ten thousand a year, and were the best-off man
   in the world!" His "bit of tea" and his rupture! But with the
   consciousness of a spiritual millionaire! "All this," said the old
   woman to Bishop Burnett, as she held up a crust, "all this and Christ!"
   These are the folk who have inherited the promises, who have even now
   inherited the treasures in heaven: and "unto me, who am less than the
   least of all saints, is this grace given, to preach these unsearchable
   riches of Christ."

   Let me turn, in conclusion, from the disciple's theme to the preacher
   himself. "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints." Then the
   disciple is possessed by a sense of profound humility. "Unto me"--the
   standing amazement of it, that he should have been chosen, first, to
   share the wealth, to claim the inheritance, and then to make known his
   discovery to others. "Unto me, who am less than the least"--he violates
   grammar, he coins a word which I suppose is used nowhere else. It is
   not enough for Paul to obtain a word which signifies the least, he
   wants a place beneath the least--"unto me, who am less than the
   least"--such a word does he require in order to express his sense of
   his own unworthiness. "Less than the least." He gazes back; surely I
   don't misinterpret the Apostle when I say it--he gazes back upon the
   days of his alienation, upon the days when he was deriding and scorning
   the supposed riches of his Master's kingdom. Again and again, in places
   where I least expect it, I find the Apostle turning a powerful and, I
   think, pain-ridden gaze into those early days when he lived in revolt.
   If you turn to Romans 16, that collection of miscellanies, a chapter
   which I suppose we don't often read, which is concerned largely with
   salutations and the courtesies of common life, you get here and there
   most vivid glimpses into the consciousness of the Apostle. Here is one:
   "Salute Andronicus, and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners who
   were in Christ before me." Do you feel the sob of it--"who were in
   Christ before me"? They were serving Him, following Him, proclaiming
   Him, while I was still a declared and implacable foe; they were in
   Christ before me. But unto me, less than Andronicus, less than Junia,
   and less than the least of all, unto me was the grace given. I think we
   shall have to share it with him--this sense of unworthiness at being
   called and elected by grace to preach the Gospel. We shall have to
   enter into controversy even with the old Puritan who said, "I do not
   quarrel with Paul's language, but I do dispute his right to push me out
   of my place." "Less than the least," said the Puritan, "is my place."
   Surely the preacher must sometimes lay down his pen, and pause in the
   very middle of his preparation, in a sense of extreme wonderment that
   the condescending Lord should have chosen him to be the vehicle and
   messenger of eternal grace. The man who feels unworthy will be kept
   open and receptive towards the fountain. "Why did Jesus choose Judas?
   "said an inquirer once to Dr. Parker. "I don't know," replied the
   Doctor, "but I have a bigger mystery still. I cannot make out why He
   chose me." "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints was this
   grace given." I wish I could just read that in the very tone and accent
   in which I think the Apostle himself would have proclaimed it. I think
   the early part of it would have to be read almost tremblingly. Mark the
   mingling of profound humility with the tone of absolute confidence.
   When the Apostle looked at himself he was filled with shrinkings and
   timidities, but when he thought about his acceptance and his endowment
   he was possessed by confident triumph. Whatever shrinking he had about
   himself, he had no shrinking that he was the elect of God, endowed with
   the grace of God, in order to proclaim the evangel of God. It was just
   because he was so perfectly assured of his acceptance and of his
   vocation that he felt so perfectly unworthy. Did not Cromwell say of
   George Fox that an enormous sacred self-confidence was not the least of
   his attainments? I am not quite sure that Oliver Cromwell correctly
   interpreted George Fox. I would be inclined to withdraw the word "self"
   and insert the word "God," and then we have got, not only what George
   Fox ought to be, but what the Apostle Paul was, and what every minister
   of the Gospel is expected to be in Christ; we are expected to be the
   children of an enormous God-confidence, we are to be children
   absolutely assured that we are in communion with Christ, and are even
   now receptive of His grace.

   "Unto me was the grace given." Without that grace there can be no
   herald, and without that grace there can, therefore, be no evangel. You
   have heard the old legend of the noble hall, and the horn that hung by
   the gate waiting for the heir's return; none could blow the horn except
   the heir to the noble pile. One stranger after another would come and
   put the horn to his lips, but fail to sound the blast. Then the heir
   appeared, took the horn down from the gate, blew it, and there came the
   blast that rang down the valley and wound round the hills. "Unto me was
   the grace given" to blow the horn; "unto me was the grace given" to
   preach; and none but the one who has the grace of the heir can blow the
   horn of the Gospel. Our main work, our supreme work, our work, before
   which all other pales and becomes dim, is to tell the good news, to go
   everywhere, letting everybody know about the unsearchable riches of
   Christ. When Professor Elmslie was dying, he said to his wife, "No man
   can deny that I have always preached the love of God"; and just before
   he died he said again, "Kate, God is love, all love. Kate, we will tell
   everybody that, but especially our own boy--at least, you will--we will
   tell everybody that; that's my vocation." That is the vocation of the
   disciple, to tell everybody of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
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II

THE DISCIPLE'S SACRIFICE

   "I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of
   Christ."--COLOSSIANS 1: 24.

   "I FILL up that which is behind!" Not that the ministry of
   reconciliation is incomplete. Not that Gethsemane and Calvary have
   failed. Not that the debt of guilt is only partially paid, and there is
   now a threatening remnant which demands the sacrifice of human blood.
   The ministry of atonement is perfected. There is no outstanding debt.
   "Jesus paid it all." In the one commanding sacrifice for human sin
   Calvary leaves nothing for you and me to do. In the bundle of the
   Saviour's sufferings every needful pang was borne.


   Bearing shame and scoffing rude,

   In my place condemned He stood,

   Sealed my pardon with His blood.

   I can add nothing to that. There is nothing lacking. The sacrifice is
   all sufficient.

   And yet "I fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ."
   The sufferings need a herald. A story needs a teller. A gospel requires
   an evangelist. A finished case demands efficient presentation. The
   monarch must repeat himself through his ambassadors. The atoning
   Saviour must express Himself through the ministering Paul. The work of
   Calvary must proclaim itself in the sacrificial saints. In his own
   sphere, and in his own degree, Paul must be Christ repeated. As a
   minister in Greece and Asia Minor Paul must reincarnate the sacrificial
   spirit of Jerusalem and Galilee. He must "fill up that which is behind
   in the sufferings of Christ." The suggestion is this--all ministry for
   the Master must be possessed by the sacrificial spirit of the Master.
   If Paul is to help in the redemption of Rome he must himself incarnate
   the death of Calvary. If he is to be a minister of life he must "die
   daily." "The blood is the life." Without the shedding of blood there is
   no regenerative toil. Every real lift implies a corresponding strain,
   and wherever the crooked is made straight "virtue" must go out of the
   erect. The spirit of Calvary is to be reincarnated in Ephesus and
   Athens and Rome and London and Birmingham; the sacrificial succession
   is to be maintained through the ages, and we are to "fill up that which
   is behind in the sufferings of Christ."

   "I fill up that which is behind"! That is not the presumptuous boast of
   perilous pride; it is the quiet, awed aspiration of privileged
   fellowship with the Lord. Here is an Apostle, a man who thinks meanly
   enough of himself, counting himself an abortion, regarding himself as
   "the least of the apostles, not worthy to be called an apostle," and
   yet he dares to whisper his own name alongside his Master's, and humbly
   to associate his own pangs with the sufferings of redemptive love. "I
   fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ." Is the
   association permissible? Are the sufferings of Christ and His Apostles
   complementary, and are they profoundly cooperative in the ministry of
   salvation? Dare we proclaim them together?

   Here is an association. "In all their afflictions He was afflicted."
   "Who is weak and I am not weak; who is offended and I burn not?" Is the
   association alien and uncongenial, or is it altogether legitimate and
   fitting? "In all their afflictions He was afflicted"--the deep,
   poignant, passionate sympathy of the Saviour; "Who is weak and I am not
   weak"--the deep, poignant, passionate sympathy of the ambassador. The
   kinship in the succession is vital. The daily dying of the Apostle
   corroborates and drives home the one death of his Lord. The suffering
   sympathies in Rome perfected the exquisite sensitiveness in Galilee and
   Jerusalem. The bleeding heart in Rome perfected the ministry of the
   broken heart upon the Cross. Paul "filled up that which was behind of
   the sufferings of Christ."

   Here, then, is a principle. The gospel of a broken heart demands the
   ministry of bleeding hearts. If that succession be broken we lose our
   fellowship with the King. As soon as we cease to bleed we cease to
   bless. When our sympathy loses its pang we can no longer be the
   servants of the passion. We no longer "fill up the sufferings of
   Christ," and not to "fill up" is to paralyze, and to "make the cross of
   Christ of none effect." Now the apostle was a man of the most vivid and
   realistic sympathy. "Who is weak and I am not weak?" His sympathy was a
   perpetuation of the Passion. I am amazed at its intensity and scope.
   What a broad, exquisite surface of perceptiveness he exposed to the
   needs and sorrows of the race! Wherever there was a pang it tore the
   strings of his sensitive heart. Now it is the painful fears and alarms
   of a runaway slave, and now the dumb, dark agonies of people far away.
   The Apostle felt as vividly as he thought, and he lived through all he
   saw. He was being continually aroused by the sighs and cries of his
   fellow men. He heard a cry from Macedonia, and the pain on the distant
   shore was reflected in his own life. That is the only recorded voice,
   but he was hearing them every day, wandering, pain-filled, fear-filled
   voices, calling out of the night, voices from Corinth, from Athens,
   from Rome also, and from distant Spain!" Who is weak and I am not
   weak?" He was exhausted with other folk's exhaustion, and in the heavy
   burdensomeness he touched the mystery of Gethsemane, and had fellowship
   with the sufferings of his Lord.

   My brethren, are we in this succession? Does the cry of the world's
   need pierce the heart, and ring even through the fabric of our dreams?
   Do we "fill up" our Lord's sufferings with our own sufferings, or are
   we the unsympathetic ministers of a mighty Passion? I am amazed how
   easily I become callous. I am ashamed how small and insensitive is the
   surface which I present to the needs and sorrows of the world. I so
   easily become enwrapped in the soft wool of self-indulgency, and the
   cries from far and near cannot reach my easeful soul. "Why do you wish
   to return?" I asked a noble young missionary who had been invalided
   home: "Why do you wish to return?" "Because I can't sleep for thinking
   of them!" But, my brethren, except when I spend a day with my Lord, the
   trend of my life is quite another way. I cannot think about them
   because I am so inclined to sleep! A benumbment settles down upon my
   spirit, and the pangs of the world awake no corresponding sympathy. I
   can take my newspaper, which is ofttimes a veritable cup-full of
   horrors, and I can peruse it at the breakfast table, and it does not
   add a single tang to my feast. I wonder if one who is so unmoved can
   ever be a servant of the suffering Lord!

   Here in my newspaper is the long, small-typed casualty list from the
   seat of war; or here is half a column of the crimes and misdemeanours
   of my city; or here is a couple of columns descriptive of the hot and
   frantic doings of the race-course; or here is a small corner paragraph
   telling me about some massacres in China; or here are two little hidden
   lines saying that a man named James Chalmers has been murdered in New
   Guinea! And I can read it all while I take my break fast, and the dark
   record does not haunt the day with the mingled wails of the orphaned
   and the damned. My brethren, I do not know how any Christian service is
   to be fruitful if the servant is not primarily baptized in the spirit
   of a suffering compassion. We can never heal the needs we do not feel.
   Tearless hearts can never be the heralds of the Passion. We must pity
   if we would redeem. We must bleed if we would be the ministers of the
   saving blood. We must perfect by our passion the Passion of the Lord,
   and by our own suffering sympathies we must "fill up that which is
   behind in the sufferings of Christ." "Put on, therefore, as God's
   elect, a heart of compassion."

   Here is another association. Can we find a vital kinship? "He offered
   up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears." So far the
   Master. "I would have you know how greatly I agonize for you." So far
   the Apostle. The Saviour prayed "with strong crying and tears"; His
   Apostle "agonized" in intercession! Is the association legitimate? Did
   not the agony at Rome "fill up" the "strong cryings" at Jerusalem? Does
   not the interceding Apostle enter into the fellowship of his Master's
   sufferings, and perfect that "which is behind"? The intercession in
   Rome is akin to the intercession in Jerusalem, and both are affairs of
   blood. If the prayer of the disciple is to "fill up" the intercession
   of the Master, the disciple's prayer must be stricken with much crying
   and many tears. The ministers of Calvary must supplicate in bloody
   sweat, and their intercession must often touch the point of agony. If
   we pray in cold blood we are no longer the ministers of the Cross. True
   intercession is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice, a perpetuation of
   Calvary, a "filling up" of the sufferings of Christ. St. Catherine told
   a friend that the anguish which she experienced, in the realization of
   the sufferings of Christ, was greatest at the moment when she was
   pleading for the salvation of others. "Promise me that Thou wilt save
   them!" she cried, and stretching forth her right hand to Jesus, she
   again implored in agony, "Promise me, dear Lord, that Thou wilt save
   them. O give me a token that Thou wilt." Then her Lord seemed to clasp
   her outstretched hand in His, and to give her the promise, and she felt
   a piercing pain as though a nail had been driven through the palm. I
   think I know the meaning of the mystic experience. She had become so
   absolutely one with the interceding Saviour that she entered into the
   fellowship of His crucifixion. Her prayers were red with sacrifice, and
   she felt the grasp of the pierced hand.

   My brethren, this is the ministry which the Master owns, the agonized
   yearnings which perfect the sufferings of His own intercession. And we
   in the succession? Do our prayers bleed? Have we felt the painful
   fellowship of the pierced hand? I am so often ashamed of my prayers.
   They so frequently cost me nothing; they shed no blood. I am amazed at
   the grace and condescension of my Lord that He confers any fruitfulness
   upon my superficial pains. I think of David Brainerd--I think of his
   magnificent ministry among the Indians, whole tribes being swayed by
   the evangel of the Saviour's love. I wonder at the secret, and the
   secret stands revealed. Gethsemane had its pale reflection in
   Susquahannah, and the "strong-crying" Saviour had a fellow labourer in
   His agonizing saint. Let me give you a few words from his journal,
   after one hundred and fifty years still wet with the hot tears of his
   supplications and prayers: "I think my soul was never so drawn out in
   intercession for others as it has been this night; I hardly ever so
   longed to live to God, and to be altogether devoted to Him; I wanted to
   wear out my life for Him." "I wrestled for the ingathering of souls,
   for multitudes of poor souls, personally, in many distant places. I was
   in such an agony, from sun half-an-hour high till near dark, that I was
   wet all over with sweat; but O, my dear Lord did sweat blood for such
   poor souls: I longed for more compassion." Mark the words, "I was in
   such an agony from sun half-an-hour high till near dark!" May we do
   what David Brainerd would not do, may we reverently whisper the word
   side by side with another and a greater word, "And being in an agony He
   prayed more earnestly." I say, was not Susquahannah a faint echo of
   Gethsemane, and was not David Brainerd filling up "that which was
   behind in the sufferings of Christ"? Brethren, all vital intercession
   makes a draught upon a man's vitality. Real supplication leaves us
   tired and spent. Why the Apostle Paul, when he wishes to express the
   poignancy of his yearning intercession for the souls of men, does not
   hesitate to lay hold of the pangs of labour to give it adequate
   interpretation. "Ye remember, brethren, our travail." "My little
   children, of whom I travail in birth again till Christ be formed in
   you." Again I say, it was only the echo of a stronger word, "He shall
   see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied." Are we in the
   succession? Is intercession with us a travail, or is it a playtime, a
   recreation, the least exacting of all things, an exercise in which
   there is neither labour nor blood? "The blood is the life." Bloodless
   intercession is dead. It is only the man whose prayer .is a vital
   expenditure, a sacrifice, who holds fellowship with Calvary, and "fills
   up that which is behind in the sufferings of Christ."

   Here is another association. Is it legitimate? "Master, the Jews of
   late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither again?" "Having
   stoned Paul" (at Lystra) "they drew him out of the city supposing he
   had been dead." And Paul "returned again to Lystra!" Back to the
   stones! Is that in the succession? Is not the Apostle the complement of
   his Master? Is he not doing in Lystra what his Master did in Judaea? Is
   he not filling up "that which was behind of the sufferings of Christ"?
   Back to the stones! "Master, the Jews of late sought to stone Thee, and
   goest Thou thither again?" The Boxers of late sought to decimate thee,
   poor little flock, and goest thou thither again? The New Guineans have
   butchered thy Chalmers and thy Tompkins, and goest thou thither again?
   Mongolia has swallowed thy men and thy treasure, and its prejudice and
   its suspicions appear unmoved, and goest thou thither again? Thou halt
   been tiring thyself for years, seeking to redeem this man and that man,
   and he treats thee with indifference and contempt, and goest thou
   thither again? My brethren, are we familiar with the road that leads
   back to the stones? It was familiar to the Apostle Paul, and when he
   trod the heavy way he entered the fellowship of his Master's pains, and
   knew that he "filled out that which was behind of the sufferings" of
   his Lord. To go again and face the stones is to perpetuate the spirit
   of the Man who "set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem," even
   though it meant derision, desertion, and the Cross. We never really
   know our Master until we kneel and toil among the driving stones. Only
   as we experience the "fellowship of His sufferings can we know the
   power of His resurrection." There is a sentence in David Hill's
   biography--that rare, gentle, refined spirit, who moved like a
   fragrance in his little part of China--a sentence which has burned
   itself into the very marrow of my mind. Disorder had broken out, and
   one of the rioters seized a huge splinter of a smashed door and gave
   him a terrific blow on the wrist, almost breaking his arm. And how is
   it all referred to? "There is a deep joy in actually suffering physical
   violence for Christ's sake." That is all! It is a strange combination
   of words--suffering, violence, joy! And yet I remember the evangel of
   the Apostle, "If we suffer with Him we shall also reign with Him," and
   I cannot forget that the epistle which has much to say about
   tribulation and loss, has most to say about rejoicing! "As the
   sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth
   through Christ." "Out of the eater comes forth meat." These men did not
   shrink from the labour when the stones began to fly. Rebuff was an
   invitation to return! The strength of opposition acted upon them like
   an inspiration. Have you ever noticed that magnificent turn which the
   Apostle gives to a certain passage in his second letter to the
   Corinthians? "I will tarry at Ephesus . . . for a great door and
   effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries"! "There
   are many adversaries . . . I will tarry"! The majestic opposition
   constitutes a reason to remain!" There are many adversaries"; I will
   hold on! My brethren, that is the martyr's road, and he who treads that
   way lives the martyr's life, and even though he do not die the martyr's
   death he shall have the martyr's crown. Back to the stones! "It is the
   way the Master went," and to be found in that way is to perpetuate the
   sacrificial spirit, and to "fill up that which is behind of the
   sufferings of Christ."

   To be, therefore, in the sacrifical succession, our sympathy must be a
   passion, our intercession must be a groaning, our beneficence must be a
   sacrifice, and our service must be a martyrdom. In everything there
   must be the shedding of blood. How can we attain unto it? What is the
   secret of the sacrificial life? It is here. The men and the women who
   willingly and joyfully share the fellowship of Christ's sufferings are
   vividly conscious of the unspeakable reality of their own personal
   redemption. They never forget the pit out of which they have been
   digged, and they never lose the remembrance of the grace that saved
   them. "He loved me, and gave Himself for me"; therefore, "I glory in
   tribulation!" "by the grace of God I am what I am"; therefore "I will
   very gladly spend and be spent!" The insertion of the "therefore" is
   not illegitimate: it is the implied conjunction which reveals the
   secret of the sacrificial life. When Henry Martin reached the shores of
   India he made this entry in his journal, "I desire to burn out for my
   God," and at the end of the far-off years the secret of his grand
   enthusiasm stood openly revealed. "Look at me," he said to those about
   him as he was dying--"Look at me, the vilest of sinners, but saved by
   grace! Amazing that I can be saved!" It was that amazement, wondering
   all through his years, that made him such a fountain of sacrificial
   energy in the service of his Lord.

   My brethren, are we in the succession? Are we shedding our blood? Are
   we filling up "that which is behind in the sufferings of Christ"? They
   are doing it among the heathen. It was done in Uganda, when that
   handful of lads, having been tortured, and their arms cut off, and
   while they were being slowly burned to death, raised a song of triumph,
   and praised their Saviour in the fire, "singing till their shrivelled
   tongues refused to form the sound." They are doing it in China, the
   little remnant of the decimated Churches gathering here and there upon
   the very spots of butchery and martyrdom, and renewing their covenant
   with the Lord. They are "filling up that which is behind of the
   sufferings of Christ." They are doing it among the missionaries. James
   Hannington was doing it when he wrote this splendidly heroic word, when
   he was encountered by tremendous opposition: "I refuse to be
   disappointed; I will only praise!" James Chalmers was doing it when,
   after long years of hardship and difficulty, he proclaimed his
   unalterable choice: "Recall the twenty-one years, give me back all its
   experience, give me its shipwrecks, give me its standings in the face
   of death, give it me surrounded with savages with spears and clubs,
   give it me back again with spears flying about me, with the club
   knocking me to the ground--give it me back, and I will still be your
   missionary!" Are we in the succession?


   A noble army, men and boys,

   The matron and the maid,

   Around the Saviour's throne rejoice,

   In robes of light arrayed;

   They climbed the steep ascent of Heaven

   Through peril, toil and pain!

   O God, to us may grace be given

   To follow in their train.
     __________________________________________________________________

III

THE DISCIPLE'S TENDERNESS

   "And I will betroth thee unto Me forever."--Hosea 2: 19.

   THAT is a tenderly beautiful figure; surely one of the sweetest and
   most exquisite in God's Word! "I will betroth thee unto Me forever!"
   The communion of ideal wedlock is used to express the ideal
   relationship between the soul and its Lord. We are to be married unto
   the Lord! Look into the heart of it, and see how much the gracious
   figure reveals.

   "I will betroth thee unto Me forever." There is to be a wedding of the
   soul and its Saviour, of the nation and its King. To bring that wedding
   about is the aim and purpose of every kind and type of Christian
   ministry. We are to labour to bring souls into marriage-covenant with
   their Lord. I wish for the present to limit my outlook entirely to the
   winning of the children, and shall engage your thought to the pertinent
   problem as to how they can be wooed into a marriage-contract with the
   Lord of glory. What is the kind of wooing that will lead to a wedding?

   Let me begin here. I do not think we greatly help the cause of the
   Lover by proclaiming the remoteness of the Lover's home. I have never
   been able to find out what we gain by teaching children the
   "far-offness" of the Saviour's dwelling.


   There is a happy land

   Far, far away!

   How does that help the wooer?


   For beyond the clouds and beyond the tomb

   It is there, it is there, my child.

   I say, how does that help the wooing? I am afraid that the remoteness
   of the home tends to create a conception of the remoteness of the
   Lover; and, if the Lover is away, the wooing will be very mechanical
   and cold.

   There's a Friend for little children
   Above the bright blue sky.

   That is the only line I don't like in that greatly beloved and very
   beautiful hymn. In my childhood it helped to make my Saviour an
   absentee, and He was "above the bright blue sky," when I wanted Him on
   the near and common earth. I think that we shall perhaps best help the
   cause of the Wooer if we teach that His home is very near, and that no
   clouds interpose between us and the place of His abiding.

   There is a happy land,
   Not far away.

   Destroying all sense of remoteness, we must labour to bring the
   children into the immediate presence of the Lover Himself. How shall we
   do it? What is there in the child of which we must lay hold? To what
   shall we make our appeal? Ruskin was never weary of telling us that the
   two fundamental virtues in childhood are reverence and compassion, the
   sympathetic perception of another's weakness, and the venerating regard
   for another's crown. To perceive the sorrows of life, and to maintain a
   sense of the dignities of life, are two rare and choice endowments;
   and, when these are exercised upon "the Man of Sorrows," and "the King
   with many crowns," the issue will be a life of commanding spiritual
   devotion. But Ruskin's analysis does not altogether, and quite
   fittingly, serve my purpose here. It is more to my purpose to borrow
   the familiar line of Wordsworth, for his teaching includes the teaching
   of Ruskin, and also adds to it--"We live by admiration, hope, and
   love." In those three attributes a man's personality abides. Gain them,
   and you win the man! All the three attributes must be regarded in
   indissoluble union. The quality of each depends upon the presence of
   all. Strike out one, and you maim and impoverish the rest. There is an
   imperfect love in which there is no admiration. There is an imperfect
   admiration in which there is no love. Perfect love admires: perfect
   admiration loves; and love and admiration are ever associated with the
   gracious spirit of hopeful aspiration. These three, I say, constitute
   the very marrow of life--the deep, secret springs of character and
   conduct. "We live by admiration, hope, and love." To win a child's
   love, and admiration, and hope, is to grip his entire being, and make
   conquest of all the powers of his soul. If the great Lover can win
   these, the wooing will be followed by the wedding. How can we so
   represent Him, that this triumph shall be won?

   We have so to reveal Jesus to the children, that He captivates their
   love. What shall we reveal to them? Instinctively, I think, we feel
   that we must let them gaze long at His beauteous simplicity. We must
   reveal Him handling the lilies; we must strive to make it so real, that
   the children, with their magnificently realistic imagination, shall
   feel that they are with Him among the flowers of the field. We must
   reveal Him watching the graceful flight of the birds of the air, and
   His peculiarly tender regard for the common sparrow. We must reveal Him
   pausing to give thought to the hen and her chickens, and His wistful
   interest in the sheep and the sheepfold. We must reveal Him as the
   approachable Jesus, with groups of little children clustering about His
   knees; not bored by them, not too great for their companionship, but
   lovingly taking them into His arms to bless them; and, if there is some
   puny weakling among them, giving to that one some special caress and
   regard. Will these fascinating simplicities, if vividly revealed, be
   ineffective in awaking the impressionable responsiveness of a little
   child? Depend upon it, the heart will begin to thrill! But not only His
   simplicity must we reveal, but His sympathy too! We must whip up our
   own powers, and seek to clearly depict for the child the great Lover's
   love for the weak, the defenseless, the unloved, and the abandoned.

   But cannot we go further? Must we confine the visions of the children
   to the simplicities and sympathies of the Lover? Must we just keep to
   the fireside Jesus, the Jesus of the lilies, the farmyard, and the
   sheepfold, the good-Samaritan Jesus, binding up the wounds of the
   bruised and broken? Shall we keep the children in the "green pastures,"
   and by "the still waters," or shall we take them into "the valley of
   the shadow"? Shall they abide upon the sunny slopes of Galilee, and
   watch the Lover there, or shall we guide their feet into Gethsemane,
   and let them gaze on Calvary? Brethren, I will give my own experience;
   at any rate, it is one man's witness, and represents, I avow, the
   findings of one who seeks to woo young life into covenant-communion
   with the Lord. I sometimes take my young people into the garden of
   Gethsemane and up the hill of Calvary; I do not do it frequently, lest
   the via dolorosa should become a common way, and should be trod with
   flippant step; but now and again, when I think I dare, I lead them into
   the shadow of the Passion, and whisper to them hints of the awful
   mystery! And what do I find? My brethren, I find there is no wooing
   like that! It is not only for the reprobate, but also for the little
   child, that in the passion of the Lord there is unbared the infinite
   love of the Lover. There is no need to be sensational. The sensational
   is never the parent of fruitful love. Gethsemane was very quiet, and
   all we need to do is to walk very softly, taking the children with us,
   and let them gaze upon the Sufferer as He bows amid the olive-groves on
   that most eventful night. The spiritual appreciativeness of the child
   will supply the rest. "I thank Thee, O Father . . . that Thou hast hid
   these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto
   babes." "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained
   praise." I say there is no wooing like this! The spiritual marriage
   contract is most frequently made in Gethsemane and at the Cross. "The
   love of Christ constraineth me."

   "We live by love." By "admiration" too! Our children must not only find
   in the Lover their Saviour; they must find in Him their Hero too. Say
   to yourself, "I will so present my Master as a Hero as to woo the
   adoring homage of my boys." Would you suffer from any lack of matter?
   Your eyes are closed and sealed if you do not see the. heroic glowing
   upon every page of the sacred story! His splendid chivalry; His
   tremendous hatred of all meanness and sin; His magnificent "aloneness"
   in the night; His strenuous refusal of a popular crown, when the
   sovereignty would mean compromise with the powers of darkness! Let
   these be unfolded with the same tremendous effort at vivid realization
   which we make when we seek to unveil the heroisms of a Cromwell, a
   Howard, or a Gordon, and our boys and girls will go on their knees
   before the unveiling with reverent admiration and homage. "Thou art
   worthy, O Christ, to receive all honour and glory."

   Loving! Admiring! These fair dispositions will be assuredly associated
   with the beautiful genius of hope. The glorious Lord will become the
   children's bread. Their worship will become their hunger. Their loving
   will become their longing. Their admiration will become their
   aspiration. Their faith will become their hope. They will be laid hold
   of in all the fetters and feelings of personality, and the great Wooer
   will have won.

   What more shall we say about ourselves? Let this be said: while we are
   employed in wooing do not let us be heedless as to the manner of our
   living. I know that is a great commonplace, but I know also that it is
   by the preservation of the commonplace that we maintain the wholeness
   and sanity of our lives. Those who woo for the Master must be careful
   how they live. The detection of inconsistency is fatal to the reception
   of our message. "A child is the most rigid exacter of consistency." "I
   say" may count for little or nothing. "I know" may count for very
   little more. "I am" is the incarnation which gives defense and
   confirmation to the Gospel, and reveals the deputy-wooer in something
   of the reflected beauty of the glorious Lover Himself. The wooers must
   themselves be won; and our own conquest must be proved by the
   brightness and purity of our wedding apparel and the radiant buoyancy
   of our dispositions. I say the wooers must be in wedding attire, and
   must be "children of light," children of the morning. "I wonder if
   there is so much laughter in any other home in England as in ours." So
   wrote Charles Kingsley in one of his incomparable letters to his wife!
   That sounds fascinating, captivating, there is the ring of the
   wedding-bells in the quaint and only partially hidden boast. I do not
   wonder that this child of the morning was such a mighty wooer for his
   Lord! Let us beware of a forced seriousness. Let us discriminate
   between sobriety and melancholy. It was a saying of David Brainerd's
   that "there is nothing that the devil seems to make so great a handle
   of as a melancholy humour." Let us distinguish between a wedding and a
   funeral, and in our wooing let it be the wedding-bells which lend their
   music to our speech. I confess that in the school-teaching of my early
   days I think the wooers gave too much prominence to the minor key, and
   the dirge of melancholy resignation too often displaced the
   wedding-march of a triumphant walk with God.

   When shall we begin the wooing? When I had written that sentence I
   chanced to lift my eyes from the paper, and I saw a tender
   fruit-sapling just laden with blossom. At what age may a sapling
   blossom? At what age may a young life begin to blossom for the King? To
   revert to my figure--when shall we begin the wooing? Plato said, "The
   most important part of education is right training in the nursery." And
   Ruskin said; "When do you suppose the education of a child begins? At
   six months old it can answer smile with smile, and impatience with
   impatience." Perhaps we have to begin the wooing even in the speechless
   years. In the life of the Spirit I believe in early wooings because I
   believe in early weddings! The wooing and the wedding become
   increasingly difficult when we pass the age of twelve. As for the
   wedding itself, the betrothal to the lord, I would have it a very
   decisive act. It must be a conscious, intelligent consecration. The vow
   must not be made in thoughtlessness; not in any bewildering and
   sensational transports. In the rapture there must be the moderating
   presence of serious and illumined thought. But mind you, the act of
   decision must be a wedding and not a funeral. It must be serious and
   yet glad.


   I give my heart to Thee,

   Saviour Divine.

   For Thou art all to me

   And I am Thine.

   Is there on earth a closer bond than this

   That my Beloved's mine and I am His?
     __________________________________________________________________

IV

THE DISCIPLE WATCHING FOR SOULS

   "I will make you fishers of men."--Matt. 4: 19.

   I WISH to devote this chapter to the consideration of the serious work
   of watching for souls. I do not presume to be a teacher who has secrets
   to unfold; still less can I claim to be an expert in the great
   vocation. I suppose it is true of all preachers that as we grow older
   our sense of the inefficiency of our work becomes intensified. The
   wonder grows that God can accomplish so much with such inadequate
   implements. One's satisfaction with the evangel deepens with the years;
   but one is increasingly discontented with the imperfect way in which we
   present it. No, I do not write as one who is proficient; I am only a
   blunderer at the best; but I write as one who is honestly desirous of
   better and more useful equipment. I have often been amused by the
   headline to the preface in Isaac Walton's "Compleat Angler." Here is
   the quaint sentence: "To the reader of this discourse, but especially
   to the Honest Angler." And in this chapter I conceive myself as
   writing, not to expert anglers, or even to successful anglers, but to
   those who are "honest," and who are sincerely desirous to become
   proficient in their ministry. More than two hundred years ago there was
   a young probationer in the Church of Scotland named Thomas Boston. He
   was about to preach before the parish of Simprin. In contemplation of
   the eventful visit he sat down to meditate and pray. "Reading in
   secret, my heart was touched with Matt. 4: 19: Follow Me, and I will
   make you fishers of men.' My soul cried out for the accomplishing of
   that to me, and I was very desirous to know how I might follow Christ
   so as to be a fisher of men, and for my own instruction in that point I
   addressed myself to the consideration of it in that manner." Out of
   that honest and serious consideration there came that quaint and
   spiritually profound and suggestive book: "A Soliloquy on the Art of
   Man-Fishing." All through Thomas Boston's book one feels the fervent
   intensity of a spirit eager to know the mind of God in the great matter
   of fishing for souls. Without that passion our enquiry is worthless.
   "The all-important matter in fishing is to have the desire to learn."

   "Now for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a
   man--that was not--to be an angler by a book; he that undertakes it
   shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales, a most valiant and
   excellent fencer, who in the printed book called A Private School of
   Defence,' undertook to teach that art or science, and was laughed at
   for his labour--not that but many useful things might be learned by
   that book, but he was laughed at because that art was not to be taught
   by words." So says Isaac Walton in his famous book on Angling. It is
   painfully true. If books would make an angler, I should be the most
   expert fisher in this neighbourhood. On one of my shelves there is
   quite a little collection of fishing books, out of which I have been
   able to borrow many hints and suggestions for my own particular labour.
   I think I know them fairly well, and in many of their chapters could
   pass an examination with honours. But in the practical handling of the
   rod I should come in the rear of the most incompetent. In angling I am
   a splendid theorist, but useless in practice. Is it not here that we
   must begin our consideration of the matter of the ministry of Christ?
   Books cannot make a preacher; he may find them full of helps, but they
   are not creators of gifts. They may teach how to make sermons, but they
   have nothing to do with the creation of prophets. We are made by
   Christ. "I will make you." We are fashioned in His presence. Every
   wealthy and fruitful gift for our work is born directly of His own
   grace and love. Ring out the music of the changing emphasis in this
   phrase! The promise reveals its treasure as each word is taken in turn
   and given distinct prominence. "I will make you"; no one else and
   nothing else can do it. Neither books, nor colleges, nor friends! "I
   will make you"; He will make us just in that secret and mysterious way
   in which true poetry comes into being. The gift will come as a breath,
   as an inspiration, as a new creation. "When He ascended on high . . .
   He gave gifts unto men." He dropped one gift here, and a commonplace
   man became a pastor. He dropped another gift there, and the
   undistinguished became a prophet. He dropped a third gift yonder, and
   an impotent man became a powerful evangelist. "I will make you fishers
   of men." But even though the germinal gifts of the preacher are
   Christ-born and Christ-given, our Lord expects us to reverently and
   diligently use our minds. He will further fashion and. enrich His gifts
   through our own alertness. The incipient capacity will be developed by
   our own intelligent observation and experience. What can we learn which
   will foster our heaven-born gift? Let us turn to the fisher in natural
   waters, and see what hints he may give us for the labours in our own
   sphere. What, then, does the angler say to fishers of men?

   Keep out of sight! Mark Guy Pearse is an expert fisher, and rarely does
   a year pass without his paying a visit to the rivers of Northumberland.
   And he has more than once laid down what he considers to be the three
   essential rules for all successful fishing, and concerning which he
   says, "It is no good trying if you don't mind them. The first rule is
   this: Keep yourself out of sight. And secondly, keep yourself further
   out of sight. And thirdly, keep yourself further out of sight!" Mr.
   Pearse's counsel is confirmed by every fisher. A notable angler,
   writing recently in one of our daily papers, summed up all his advice
   in what he proclaims a golden maxim: "Let the trout see the angler and
   the angler will catch no trout." Now this is a first essential in the
   art of man-fishing: the suppression and eclipse of the preacher. How
   easily we become obtrusive! How easily we are tempted into
   self-aggressive prominence! How prone we are to push ourselves to the
   front of our work in quest of fame and praise and glory! The temptation
   comes in a hundred different ways. It steals upon us in the study and
   spoils our secret labour. It destroys the efficacy even of the bait
   that we prepare. It comes upon us in the pulpit and perverts our
   workmanship even when we are in the very midst of our work. The devil
   secretly whispers to us in most unctuous flattery: "That was a fine
   point you made." And we readily respond to the suggestion. And so the
   insidious destruction is wrought. We don't stand aside. If I may vary
   my figure, let me say that our function is to draw aside the curtain
   and hide ourselves somewhere in its robes. Let us remember that so soon
   as our people see the preacher they will not take his bait. As soon as
   we become prominent our Lord is never seen. Keep out of sight!

   Cultivate a mood of cheeriness and praise. Here is a bit of counsel
   from an old book whose phraseology and spelling have quite an old-world
   flavour about them. It is a book on fishing. The writer is recording
   the requisite virtues of the angler: "He should not be unskillful in
   musick, that whensoever either melancholy, heaviness of his thoughts,
   or the perturbations of his own fancies, stirreth up sadness in him, he
   may remove the same with some godly hymn or anthem, of which David
   gives him ample examples." Is that not rather a far-fetched notion of
   an angler's equipment? Why should he require the gift of music?
   Because, says my author, when the angler is depressed he cannot throw a
   light line. When a man is melancholy his throw will be heavy. When his
   spirits are light and exuberant, he will be able to touch the surface
   of the water with the exquisite delicacy of a passing feather. Can we
   not apply the counsel to the ministry of preaching? If we come into our
   pulpits in a depressed and complaining frame of mind, we shall lack the
   requisite throw. If we are possessed by melancholy we shall catch no
   fish. And therefore it is well that we, too, should resort to the
   service of song. We must sing away our depressions and melancholies
   before we preach the evangel of grace. We must put on "the garment of
   praise." I frequently consult a book given to me many years ago, and
   now out of print: "Earnest Christianity," an account of the life and
   journal of the Rev. James Caughey. There is much in that journal that
   reminds me of David Brainerd and John Wesley. One day James Caughey was
   depressed and melancholy, full of lamentation and complaint. There was
   no music in his spirit and there was no power upon his tongue. He
   preached, but ineffectively, because his words were not pervaded by the
   spirit of praise. And then he took to the corrective of prayer and
   singing. He adopted William Law's counsel, and chanted himself into
   lightness and buoyancy of heart. He exchanged the "spirit of heaviness
   for the garment of praise." And now mark the change in the diary: "Easy
   preaching now. The sword has a new edge, more apt to penetrate; more
   strength in my soul's arm to lay it round me fearlessly." That is the
   spirit. We must address ourselves to the great act of preaching in the
   exuberance which belongs to a thankful and praiseful heart.

   Study the fish! George Eliot was once listening to the complaints of
   some angling friends as they were describing their fruitless day's
   work. Looking into their empty creels she said: "You should make a
   deeper study of the subjectivity of the trout." That is a very
   suggestive word, and pregnant with significance for the fishers in the
   world of men. We must study the fish that we may find out what will win
   them for the Lord. All fish cannot be caught by the same bait. We must
   study the individual prejudices, and habits and tastes. We must
   discover what will catch this man and that man, and address ourselves
   accordingly. I was once passing through a little village in the Lake
   district, and there was a card in the shop window which gave me more
   than a passing thought. On the card were a number of artificial flies
   with this engaging headline: "Flies with which to catch fish in this
   locality." The shopkeeper had nothing to say about the requirements of
   the Midlands. He had studied the characteristics of the fish in his own
   neighbourhood, and he had discovered what bait provided the best
   allurement. We preachers must do it in our own localities. It was the
   practice of the Apostle Paul: "To the Jews I became as a Jew that I
   might gain the Jews." He became "all things to all men that he might
   gain some." He baited his hook according to the fish he wanted to
   catch. I don't think we should fish with the same hook for Lydia and
   the Philippian jailer. It may be that we shall discover that a sermon
   will never effect the purpose. We may find out that a letter will do
   infinitely better work. Or it may be that a direct talk may be the
   requisite constraint. Or, again, it may be that a long conversation,
   apparently indirect and aimless, but quietly dropping one delicate
   hint, may win a soul for Christ. Study the fish!

   Learn from other fishermen! Other men will never make us fishers, but
   they may make us better fishers. If we have the rudimentary gift their
   experience may help to enrich it. Let us turn to the expert fishermen
   and see if their ways and methods can give us helpful counsel. John
   Wesley was a great fisher, can we learn anything from him? Dr.
   Alexander Whyte has told us how he has made a patient and laborious
   study of John Wesley's journals for the purpose of classifying all the
   texts upon which the great preacher built his evangel. Is not that a
   splendid discipline for any one who wishes to become skillful in the
   great ministry? What did Wesley preach about? And how did he fit his
   message to the changing circumstances of his varying spheres? The
   Salvation Army has a great body of expert fishers. They lack many
   things, but they catch fish. .How do they do it? We may dislike many of
   their ways, but what is it in their ministry which enables them to win
   multitudes for the Lord? What was the secret of Finney and Moody? And
   what is it about Torrey which constrains the people to become disciples
   of the Christ? Let us set about this investigation like men who wish to
   do great business for the Lord. Let us eagerly pick up any hints which
   these highly endowed and experienced men may be able to give us.

   "It is a great matter to take a trout early in your trial. It gives one
   more heart. It seems to keep one about his business. Otherwise you are
   apt to fall into unproductive reverie." I know no word more closely
   applicable to the work of the ministry. If we do not catch men we are
   in great danger of losing even the desire to catch them. Our purposed
   activity is in peril of becoming a dream. Let me counsel my fellow
   preachers in the lay ministry to make up their minds to catch one soul,
   to go about it day and night until the soul is won. And when they have
   gained one man for the Master I have then no fear as to what will be
   their resultant mood. The joy of catching a soul is unspeakable! When
   we have got one soul we become possessed by the passion for souls. Get
   one and you will want a crowd I And let me say this further word. Keep
   a list of the names of the souls you win for the King, and if on any
   day you are apt to be cast down, and the lightness and buoyancy go out
   of your spirit, bring out that list and read it over, and let the
   contemplation of those saved lives set your heart a-singing and inspire
   you to fresh and more strenuous work. It is a good thing to have lists
   of the Lord's mercies by which to drive away the clouds in a day of
   adversity. Let your labour be directed to the immediate catching of men
   for the Lord. "It is a great matter to take a trout early in your
   trial."

   And now I will close this meditation by offering a suggestion which I
   obtained from an advertisement in an anglers' paper some time ago. "Now
   is the time for your old favourite rods to be overhauled and treated
   with a steel tonic that will not fail to work wonders in the way of
   renewing their strength." And following this advertisement came this
   confirmatory testimonial: "I am glad to acknowledge that a very whippy
   gig-whip of a rod has been converted into a powerful weapon." My
   hearers will immediately perceive the spiritual significance of the
   words. There are times when we need the "steel tonic" in order that our
   poor ministries may be converted into powerful weapons. And, blessed be
   God, we have the promise of this redemptive work in the very names in
   which the Holy Spirit is revealed to us. He is called the Renewer, the
   Reviver, the Restorer of souls, and by His baptism the poorest, weakest
   agent can be turned into a powerful weapon. "They that wait upon the
   Lord shall renew their strength." Let us turn to our Lord this very
   night, and seek for that renewal in the strength of which we shall turn
   to our work with multiplied possibility, and with perfect assurance of
   success.
     __________________________________________________________________

V

THE DISCIPLE'S COMPANION

   "Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed? And they said unto
   him, Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Ghost was
   given."--Acts 19: 1-3.

   "DID ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed?" Why did he put the
   anxious question? Were there some ominous signs of impoverishment which
   aroused this painful wonder? Did he miss something? He certainly did
   not suspect the reality and sincerity of their faith. The separation of
   this little body of twelve men from the mighty drift and popular
   fashion of Ephesian life was itself an all-sufficient proof that they
   were moving in the fear of the Lord. And yet to the Apostle's trained
   and discerning eye there was something lacking! I know not what were
   the signs which stirred his solicitude. Perhaps it was the large
   care-lines ploughed so deeply upon their faces. Perhaps it was a
   certain slow heaviness in their walk, or a certain stale flatness in
   their intercourse. Perhaps it was a look of defeat in their tired
   eyes--the expression of exhausted reserves, the lack of exuberance, the
   want of a swinging and jubilant optimism. Perhaps it was the absence of
   the bird-note from their religious life. I know not what the signs may
   have been, but some conspicuous gap yawned before the Apostle's
   penetrating vision, which prompted him to ask this trembling, searching
   question, "Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed?" And the
   half-spent and wearied souls replied, "Nay, we did not so much as hear
   whether the Holy Ghost was given!" How imperfect their equipment! How
   inadequate their resources! They were resisting the day's drift with a
   quite insufficient endowment. They were endeavouring to counteract and
   transform the fashion of the world with quite inferior dynamics. I know
   that mighty dynamics can work along the flimsiest threads, and I know
   that the heavenly powers can operate through the slenderest faith; but
   there is an unenlightened, a non-vigilant, a non-expectant attitude of
   mind which negatives the divine ministry, which impedes the inflow of
   the divine power, and which reduces the soul to comparative weakness
   and impoverishment. The day of Pentecost had come; the marvellous
   promises had been fulfilled; the wonder-ministry had begun; but these
   disciples were still in the pre-Pentecostal days: they were behind the
   spiritual times!" We did not so much as hear whether the Holy Ghost was
   given." And if you would. discover what it means for men to step from
   pre-Pentecostal dearth to Pentecostal fullness, you must compare the
   earlier atmosphere of this incident with the atmosphere of its close,
   and you will find how these weary, labouring men, heavy-footed,
   heavy-minded, with slow and stammering lips, are transformed into
   nimble, buoyant, and resourceful servants of the Lord. "The Holy Ghost
   came upon them, and they spake with the tongues and prophesied."

   But what is the relevancy of all this to our own time? The precise
   lineaments of this incident are not repeated to-day. No such
   impoverishing ignorance prevails among the modern disciples. We know
   that the Holy Ghost has been given. We know! Ah, I am using a New
   Testament word, and I must attach to it the wealth of New Testament
   significance. We may "know," in the way of cognition: a bare act of the
   intelligence; a merely mental acquisition. And we may "know," in the
   way of a living fellowship, by the intimate discernments of communion,
   by the delights and satisfactions of the soul, by real and practical
   experience. As a matter of cognition, of merely mental enlightenment,
   we may live in the spacious days of Pentecost; but in daily usage and
   common experience we may be living in the leaner and straitened days
   which preceded it. I am deeply persuaded that, judged experimentally by
   our daily life and practice, much of the mental attitude and spiritual
   pose of the modern Church is pre-Pentecostal, and that in this thin and
   immature relationship is to be found the secret of our common weariness
   and impotence. This is the relevancy of the ancient incident: Do we
   share their mental temper, their spiritual standpoint, their angle of
   vision? Are we a little band of pilgrims, laboriously toiling over
   desert sands, with now and again the privilege of standing upon some
   Pisgah height and wistfully gazing upon the promised land afar, or are
   we in the possession and enjoyment of the goodly land, "a land that
   flows with milk and honey"? Are we still on the road, or have we
   arrived? Are our religious thinking and experience up-to-date, or are
   we behind the spiritual times?

   If I go into one of our assemblies of praise I find that we are still
   "tarrying at Jerusalem," waiting for "the Promise of the Father." We
   are busy invoking instead of receiving, busy asking rather than using.
   If I listen to the phraseology of the hymns I discover that the outlook
   of the soul is frequently pre-Pentecostal:--


   Father, glorify Thy Son:

   Answering His all-powerful prayer,

   Send that Intercessor down,

   Send that other Comforter!

   Descend with all Thy gracious powers;

   O come, great Spirit, come!

   I think that if the Apostle Paul were to visibly enter our assembly
   when we are singing these strained and fervid supplications he would
   wonderingly and anxiously ask: "Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye
   believed?" He would wonder that men should plead for a Presence when
   the Presence Himself is pleading to be received! He would wonder that
   men should continue the strains of the exile when the native air is
   about their souls! When I listen to some of our prayers, and mark the
   pose and inclination of the soul, and note its uncertain longings, its
   timid askings, its trembling waiting for an event which has happened,
   its sighing for a gift that is already given, I can scarcely realize
   that the One with whom we are dealing is "a gracious willing Guest,
   where He can find one humble heart wherein to rest." The attitude is
   pre-Pentecostal; it is the language of the wilderness; it is not "one
   of the songs of Zion!"

   But when I look a little more deeply at this mental temper, and
   investigate more closely the nature of its conception, I find that we
   are still more profoundly allied with the imperfect mood and
   inclination of the pre-Pentecostal day. Is it native to the Christian
   inheritance that we should so commonly conceive of the Spirit as an
   influence, a force, an energy, an atmosphere, an impersonal breath? I
   know the limitations of the human mind, and I know the fertile and
   helpful ministry of simile and symbol. I know how inclined we are to
   dwell in the realm of effects, and to express those very effects in the
   shrines of figurative speech. It is beautiful and true to speak of some
   gracious influence upon the soul by the imagery of a wind, or a fire,
   or of light, or of dew, or of rain. I say it is a beautiful and a
   helpful ministry; but if this be the predominant characteristic of our
   thinking we are pre-Pentecostal men and women, and we are self-deprived
   of the strength and glory of our larger and richer day. The
   all-encompassing glory of the Christian day is this--that we are
   dealing, not with an energy, but with a Person--not with "it," but with
   "Him"! Now, see our danger. We are living in a time when men are busy
   reducing all phenomena beneath the categories of definite law and
   order. No phenomenon is now regarded as a lawless vagrant, the sport of
   a sad or happy chance, wandering as chartered libertine through the
   mighty wastes of space. Everything pays obeisance to law. And so, too,
   in the realm of the spirit, we are busy eliminating chance and caprice;
   we are taking the tides of ambition, the gusts of passion, the
   movements of desire, and the kindlings of love, and we are reducing
   them to the dominion of sovereign law. We are seeing more and more
   clearly that things are not erratic and lawless just because they are
   spiritual and ethereal, and that "the law of the Spirit of life in
   Christ Jesus" is as constant as the laws that breathe in the material
   world. Well, all this is wise and good and inevitable. Only let us see
   to it that we do not so far bow to a tendency as to enthrone a law in
   place of a Companion, and exalt a force in place of a Counsellor and
   Friend. We shall lose unspeakably, and miss the fine fervour and
   flavour of Apostolic life, if our larger knowledge of law attenuates
   our fellowship with a Person, and our greater familiarity with forces
   impair our intimacy with the immediate heart of God. "A something not
   ourselves that makes for righteousness" may be a notable expression of
   scientific thought, but it is not the language of religion. "A
   something not ourselves that makes for righteousness," when translated
   into religious speech, becomes "a Friend that sticketh closer than a
   brother," and when translated into the New Testament evangel it becomes
   "the communion of the Holy Ghost." Our fellowship is not with a
   "something" but with a "Somebody," not with a force but with a Spirit,
   not with "it" but with "Him"!

   It is just here, I think, that Keswick is contributing a vital emphasis
   to the thought of the modern Church. I do not identify myself with all
   the mental methods and instruments of Keswick. I think its Old
   Testament exegesis is often fanciful. I think its symbolisms are often
   forced and artificial. I think it has often laboured to erect doctrinal
   structures upon a tabernacle-pin when it could have found a much more
   satisfactory base. I think it has shown a little timidity in the
   application of its dynamic in the wider fields of social and national
   life. But even these are criticisms which are directed more at
   yesterday than at the life and teaching of to-day. The all-predominant
   teaching of Keswick is the personality of the Holy Ghost, and the
   wonderful and glorious privilege of the Christian believer to have holy
   and intimate companionship with Him. They do not deal with an
   influence, they walk with a Friend! There is nothing new in the
   teaching it is only the recovery of an emphasis, with this further
   uniqueness, that while so many of us are contented with the
   proclamation of the fellowship they are busy in the enjoyment of it,
   and about their lives there is a strength, and a serenity, and a
   flavour, and a fragrance, which mark them off from the harassed,
   restless, feverish world they are seeking to redeem. I miss this
   glaring contrast between the Church and the world! The saved are too
   much like the unsaved; the physician is labouring under the disease of
   his patient; there is no outstanding and commanding difference; we do
   not, with sufficient legibleness, bear God's name "in our foreheads."
   What is the reason? Is it that we are not long enough in His company to
   receive the imprint of the fair and gracious seal? Is it that we are
   having mental commerce with an "it" instead of ceaseless communion with
   "Him"? I declare my own conviction that here is the secret of much of
   our impoverishment. We are living too much as men lived before the Holy
   Ghost was given. We have not occupied the new and far-stretching land
   of Christian privilege. We have not seized upon our inheritance of
   august and holy companionship, and, therefore, many of the gifts and
   graces and perfumes of the Apostolic age are absent from our modern
   religious life.

   You cannot, by fellowship with an energy, produce that exquisite little
   flower called "heart's-ease," which was so prolific and abounding in
   the life of the Apostle Paul. The prophet of the Old Testament hints at
   the coming of the flower in his illumined phrase, "He that believeth
   shall not make haste"! What a word for our own day! He shall not get
   excited, become fussy, or be thrown into panic! "He shall not make
   haste"! There shall be progress without much perspiration! There shall
   be strenuousness without strain! There shall be running without
   panting!" They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not
   faint." They shall be fed with "hidden manna." In the very midst of
   turbulence shall heart's-ease grow. "He that believeth shall not make
   haste."


   O blessed life! the heart at rest

   When all without tumultuous seems!

   I say you cannot grow that flower in cooperation with an influence or a
   force, but only in the strength and grace of a glorious companionship.
   It is not the product of an energy: it is born of a communion. It is
   "peace in the Holy Ghost." Do you see much of this flower called
   "heart's-ease" about to-day? When the world gazes upon us, the
   professed disciples of the Master, does it see just a reflection of
   itself, its own wear and tear, its own strain and worry, or does it
   stoop to gaze upon a rare flower, and to wonder and to inquire about
   the soil in which it was grown? Is there anything about our speech and
   behaviour to suggest that "wear and tear" are counteracted by a secret
   renewal, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, "the inward man being renewed
   day by day"? Speaking for myself, I have to say that even when for a
   day I enter upon my inheritance, and realize the ineffable nearness of
   the great Companion-Spirit, the strain not only goes out of my mind and
   heart, but I feel the very wrinkles and care-lines being smoothed out
   of my face. If we were children of Pentecost, living up to our
   spiritual times, heart's-ease would bloom just within our gate, and the
   weary wayfarer would be stopped by its perfume, and would question us
   as to the secret and manner of its growth.

   You cannot, by fellowship with a force, produce the exquisite grace of
   Apostolic tenderness. Have you ever studied the strength and softness
   of Apostolic tenderness? Why, their very rebukes and severities emerge
   from their tendernesses! Mark the tenor and order of this Apostolic
   counsel: "Full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to
   admonish"! Do you see where admonition has to be born? Who is to be the
   monitor? One "filled with all knowledge"! Back still further! "Full of
   goodness!" Who would not be helped by admonition which came clothed in
   this tender bloom? But see again: "Admonishing one another in psalms
   and hymns and spiritual songs"; and even this singing monitor has first
   of all to "put on a heart of compassion"! All this tenderness is not
   the softness of weakness; it is the bloom of strength, and is born of
   the refining and chastening ministry of a great Companionship. We
   cannot live in the communion of the Holy Ghost without our unnecessary
   asperities being smoothed, away; the very power of the fellowship
   subdues them into tenderness. And, my brethren, there must never have
   been a time when it was more needful to ensure this tenderness than
   to-day. In these days of hard controversy we must beware of becoming
   hard. Men who become hard lose the power to inflict hard blows. The
   most tremendous antagonist is the man who is inherently tender. The
   only overwhelming anger is "the wrath of the Lamb." No, my brethren; we
   cannot fight without it! We cannot preach without it! You may perhaps
   remember how Andrew Bonar and Robert M'Cheyne were having one of their
   frequent walks together, talking over the ways of their ministry, when
   "M'Cheyne asked me," says Bonar, "what my last Sabbath's subject had
   been. It had been: The wicked shall be turned into hell.' On hearing
   this awful text, he asked: Were you able to preach it with
   tenderness?'" Shall we repeat Robert M'Cheyne's question to one
   another? When we speak on the destiny of the sinful, or on any one of
   the awful severities of the Word, are we "able to preach it with
   tenderness," with a melting heart, with secret tears? They say that
   M'Cheyne's severities were terrific, they were so tender! And I do not
   wonder at his tenderness, for he lived enfolded in the companionship of
   the Holy Ghost. He was ever holding converse with Him, and how could he
   become hard? "Oh," said his domestic servant; "oh! to hear Mr. M'Cheyne
   at prayers in the mornin'! It was as if he would never gi'e ower; he
   had sae muckle to ask." How could he become hard, abiding in a
   Companionship which was forever communicating to him the very
   gentleness of God? You will not get that exquisite sensitiveness from a
   force; you will get it only from an intimate Friend. "Thy gentleness
   hath made me great":--


   Tender Spirit, dwell with me,

   I myself would tender be:

   And with words that help and heal,

   Would Thy life in mine reveal;

   And with actions brotherly,

   Speak my Lord's sincerity.

   And let me add this further word. There is a certain compulsory
   impressiveness of character which attaches to profound spirituality,
   and which is commandingly present in those who walk in the fellowship
   of the Holy Ghost. I know not how to define it. It is a certain
   convincing aroma, self-witnessing, like the perfume of a flower. It is
   independent of mental equipment, and it makes no preference between a
   plenteous and a penurious estate. It works without the aid of speech
   because it is the effluence of a silent and secret communion. It begins
   to minister before you preach; it continues its ministry when the
   sermon is ended. It is endowed with marvellous powers of compulsion,
   and it sways the lives of others when mere words would miserably fail.
   The pitman away yonder in the county of Durham felt the strength of
   this mystic constraint when he said of his old vicar, "You have only to
   shake that man's hand to feel that he is full of the Holy Ghost"! And
   his fellow in toil, an agricultural labourer in a not distant village,
   was bowing beneath the same persuasion when, speaking of another, he
   said, "I never saw that man cross the common, sir, without being the
   better for it"! What is it, this mysterious influence? It is this: "He
   that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly
   shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the Spirit,
   which they that believed in Him were to receive, for the Spirit was not
   yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." Then it was not the
   vicar whom the pitman felt, but the vicar's great Companion; it was not
   the man who crossed the common, but the man's inseparable Guest and
   Friend. My brethren, Jesus is now glorified! The Holy Ghost has been
   given! We, too, may cross our common, and by the very crossing make men
   better: for in the prayerful fostering of a conscious friendship with
   Him the "rivers of living water" will flow from you and me.

   I have been leading you among the rudiments of our religious faith and
   life. I make no apology. "We must need to learn the things we have
   known the longest." Why should a man apologize for leading his fellows
   to the running waters and the bracing air of the open moor? We are
   infinitely richer than we dream. Ours is the Pentecostal inheritance.
   Let us assume the Pentecostal attitude of zealous and hungry reception.
   Above all, let us cultivate a sensitive intimacy with the Holy Spirit
   Let us listen to Him, let us talk to Him, let us consult Him in all the
   changing seasons of the changing days, and let us greedily receive His
   proffered gifts of enlightenment and grace. He will be our
   all-sufficiency, and we shall move about in the enduement of
   Pentecostal power.

   A little while ago I had a day-dream, one of those subjective visions
   which sometimes visit the mind in seasons of wakeful meditation and
   serious thought I was in my study in the early morning, before the
   day's work was begun, and I was somewhat sadly contemplating the
   comparative weakness of my ministry and the many shortcomings in my
   personal life. And while I pondered, with closed eyes, I became aware
   of a Presence before whom my spirit bowed in trembling awe. He lifted
   my garments, and I saw that they were badly stained. He went away, and
   came again, and again He lifted my robes, and began to remove the
   stains, and I saw that He was using the ministry of blood. And then He
   touched my lips, and they became pure as the lips of a little child.
   And then He anointed mine eyes with eye-salve, and I knew He was giving
   sight to the blind. Then He breathed upon my brow, and my depression
   passed away like a morning cloud. And I wondered what next my august
   Companion would do, and with the eyes and ears of my spirit I watched
   and listened. Then He took a pen, and putting it into my hand He said,
   "Write, for I will take of the things of Christ and show them unto
   thee." And I turned to my desk and I wrote in the communion of the Holy
   Ghost.
     __________________________________________________________________

VI

THE DISCIPLE'S REST

   "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."--Matt. 11: 28,
   29.

   "I WILL give you rest." Give! This kind of rest is always a gift; it is
   never earned. It is not the emolument of toil; it is the dowry of
   grace. It is not the prize of endeavour, its birth precedes endeavour,
   and is indeed the spring and secret of it. It is not the perquisite of
   culture, for between it and culture there is no necessary and
   inevitable communion. It broods in strange and illiterate places,
   untouched by scholastic and academic refinement, but it abides also in
   cultured souls which have been chastened by the manifold ministry of
   the schools. It is not a work, but a fruit; not the product of
   organization, but the sure and silent issue of a relationship. "Come
   unto Me, . . . and I will give you rest."

   But even the gift of rest does not disclose its unutterable contents in
   a day. It is an immediate gift, but it is also a continuous discovery.
   "Learn of Me, . . . and ye shall find rest." Part of "the things which
   God hath prepared for them that love Him" lie in this wealthy gift of
   rest, and it is one of the frequent and delightful surprises of grace
   that we should repeatedly come upon new and unexpected veins of ore in
   this deep mine of "the peace of God which passeth all understanding." I
   say that the rest of the Lord is an immediate gift and a perpetual
   discovery. "Come unto Me, . . . and I will give you rest." "Learn of Me
   . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls."

   And so I am to speak to you of the riches of the Christian rest. Do you
   feel it to be an irrelevant note, an inappropriate theme, in the march
   and warfare of our times? Surely, we need to speak of battle-fields
   rather than of green pastures, and to hear the nerving call to struggle
   and duty rather than the soft and gentle wooings that call to rest! Our
   times demand the warrior's bugle-peal, and not the shepherd's pipe of
   peace! Ah, but, brethren, in this warfare the trumpeter himself is
   shorn of inspiration unless he have the gift of rest, and the warrior
   himself is rendered impotent unless he be possessed by the secret of
   the heavenly peace. The restless trumpeter ministers no thrill, and the
   perturbed warrior lacks the very genius of conquest. I know the
   feverish motions of our time, the restlessness of fruitless desire, the
   disturbing forebodings of anxiety, the busy-ness of the devil, the
   sleepless and perspiring activity of Mammon, the rush to be rich, the
   race to be happy, the craving for sensation, the immense impetus and
   speed characterizing every interest in our varied life, and added to
   all, the precipitate shedding of hoary forms and vestures, and the
   re-clothing of the thoughts of men in modern and more congenial attire.
   I know the general restlessness, the heated and consuming haste, and
   knowing them I proclaim that the secret of a successful antagonism must
   be sought in the profound restfulness of the Church. I do not wonder at
   the restlessness of the world, but I stand amazed at the restlessness
   of the Saviour's Church! We are encountering restlessness by
   restlessness, and on many sides we are suffering defeat. The antagonist
   ought to be of quite another order. The contendents must be restfulness
   versus rest, and the odds will be overwhelmingly on our side. Let me
   pause to make a few distinctions in order that my argument may not be
   misunderstood. We must distinguish between indolent passivity and
   active restfulness. I am not pleading for enervating ease, but for
   enabling and inspiring rest. Ease is an opiate; rest is a stimulant,
   say, rather a nutriment. Ease is the enemy of strength; rest is its
   hidden resource. I do not stand here, therefore, as the advocate of the
   couch, but as the advocate of restful and therefore invincible
   movement. Our scientists distinguish between motion and energy, and I
   could wish that some similar distinction might be transferred to the
   sphere of the Church. All activity is not influential. All speech is
   not persuasive. All supplication is not effective. The secret of
   effective supplication is a quiet faith. The secret of effective speech
   is a hidden assurance. The secret of triumphant warfare is a permanent
   peace. The essential and operative element in all fruitful activity is
   a deep and abiding rest. We must fight the prevalent restlessness by a
   sovereign peace. "Come unto Me, . . . and I will give you rest."

   Now, my brethren, I confess I miss this essential in the modern Church.
   How think you? Is the Church of our day characterized by that wealthy
   peace and rest which ought to be the portion of all saved, forgiven and
   sanctified men and women? I confess that peace and rest are about the
   last grace I think about when I gaze upon the modern Church! The
   care-lines, and the wrinkles of worry and anxiety and uncertainty, and
   a general air of restlessness, seem to me almost as prevalent upon the
   countenance of the Church as upon the face of the world. The Church is
   not conspicuous by the smoothness of its brow! Everywhere I detect a
   certain strain, a certain fussy precipitancy, a certain trembling
   activity, a certain emasculating care. We look like men and women who
   are carrying more than we can bear, and, who are attempting tasks that
   are quite beyond our strength. If I listen to our prevailing
   vocabulary, and note the words that are most in evidence, my impression
   of the general restlessness is only confirmed. The vocabulary is
   scriptural enough so far as it goes, but the real fertilizing terms are
   too much obscured or ignored. The great, hot, dry words in the
   terminology are manifest enough: strive, fight, wrestle, oppose, work,
   war, do, endeavour; but those gracious, energizing words, lying there
   with the soft dews upon them: grace, rest, joy, quietness, assurance,
   these deep, generic words are not sufficiently honoured in our modern
   speech. I am calling for the resurrection of these domestic terms in
   order that the military terms may be revived. I am calling to peace for
   the sake of warfare. I am calling to rest for the sake of labour. I
   plead for a little more mysticism for the sake of our enthusiasms. I
   proclaim the sacredness and necessity of the cloister in the soul, the
   necessity of a chamber of peace, a centre of calmness, a "heart at
   rest, when all without tumultuous seems." Rest is the secret of
   conquest, and it is to the Church therefore, and not to the world, that
   I primarily offer this evangel today: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour
   and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

   Now, when I look around upon the strained and wrinkled Church, moving
   often in the pallor of fear and uncertainty when she ought to exult in
   the pink of strength and assurance, I am impressed with certain primary
   lacks in her equipment. The strain frequently comes at the hill; not
   always so, perhaps not even commonly so, for perhaps it is true both of
   men and of Churches that the strain is not so much felt in the sharp
   and passing crisis as in the dull and jogging commonplace. Perhaps
   there is more strain in the prolonged drudgery than in the sudden
   calamity. The dead level may try us more than the hill! "Because they
   have no changes they fear not God." But come the strain how it may, all
   strain is suggestive of inadequate resources; and the wrinkled,
   restless, careworn face of the Church makes it abundantly evident that
   the Church is not entering into the fullness of "the inheritance of the
   saints in light." What does the Church require if her strain and her
   paralyzing restlessness are to be removed? She needs a more restful
   realization of her Lord's Presence. My brethren, we fight too much as
   soldiers whose leader is out of the field. We work too much as though
   our Exemplar were a dead Nazarene, instead of a living and immediate
   friend. We tear about with the aimless, pathetic wanderings of little
   chicks when the mother-bird is away. And so our life is strained and
   restless and uninspired, when it might be filled with a big and bracing
   contentment. We need the stimulating consciousness of a great and
   ever-present Companionship. We know the stimulus of lofty companionship
   in other spheres and in smaller communions. We know the influence of
   Stevenson's companionship upon Mr. Barrie and Mr. Crockett. That
   companionship acted like a second literary conscience, restraining all
   careless and hasty work, but it also acted as an unfailing inspiration,
   quickening the very tissues of their minds and souls. It was a
   companionship that was not only like a great white throne of literary
   judgment, but a throne out of which there flowed, as there does out of
   every engaging personality, a river of water of life, vitalizing all
   who hold communion with it. But when we lift up the relationship, and
   contemplate the great communion which we are all privileged to share in
   the companionship of the Lord, all similes tire and fall limp and
   ineffective, and leave the glory unexpressed! A restful realization of
   the Lord's companionship! That has been the characteristic of all men
   whose religious activity has been forceful, influential and fertile in
   the purposes of the kingdom. At the very heart of all their labours, in
   the very centre of their stormiest days, there is a sphere of sure and
   restful intimacy with the Lord. You know how close and intimate and
   calm such intimacy can be. I think of Samuel Rutherford. I think of the
   love-language which he uses in his communion with the Lord. Only the
   Song of Solomon can supply him with suitable expressions of holy
   passion wherewith to tell the story of his soul's devotion. When I read
   some of his words I almost feel as though I were eavesdropping, and had
   overheard two lovers in their gentle and wooing speech. It is a fashion
   of language not congenial to our time, but that is only because in our
   day we have almost ceased to cultivate the affections, and confine our
   education to the culture of the intellect and the conscience. "We now
   make critics, not lovers," and the love-impassioned speech of Samuel
   Rutherford sounds to us like an alien tongue. Samuel Rutherford had a
   sweet and restful intimacy with his Lord, and therefore he was never
   idle, and never feared the coming day. I think of Jonathan Edwards, a
   man of greatly differing type from Samuel Rutherford, but also a man of
   multitudinous labours and of fearless persistence, and whose activities
   rested upon a sublime repose in the abiding sense of the reality and
   presence of his Lord. His latest biographer declares that he had "an
   immediate vision of the spiritual universe as the reality of
   realities," that "in exploring its recesses and in pondering its
   relations he did so as native and to the manner born," and that perhaps
   next to the Apostle John he exercised the surest and most intimate
   familiarity with things unseen. I think of David Hill, and I am
   conscious of the sweet and gracious perfume which was ever rising from
   his full and ever-moving life. At the heart of this busy worker was the
   restful lover; he moved about in assured and certain warfare because
   his soul was ever feasting in love-companionship with his Lord. I like
   this sentence of his: "What a thrill it gives me to meet with one who
   has fallen in love with Jesus!" Ah, but that is the speech of a lover,
   who is himself in love with the Lord. It is the thrill of sympathetic
   vibrations; it is the thrill of one who is already in love with the
   lover, and who delights to see the Lover come to His own. David Hill's
   sort of warfare finds its explanation in the lover's thrill, and in the
   lover's thrill has its secret in the lover's rest. But why should I
   keep upon these high planes of renowned and prominent personalities?
   Get a man who is restfully intimate with his Lord, and you have a man
   whose force is tremendous! Such men move in apparent ease, but it is
   the ease that is linked with the infinite, it is the very rest of God.
   They may be engaged in apparent trifles, but even in the doing of the
   trifles there emerges the health-giving currents of the Kingdom of God.
   Listen to James Smetham: "I was at the leaders' meeting last night.
   There was the superintendent. There were a gardener, a baker, a
   cheese-monger, a postman and myself. We sat till near to P. M. Now what
   were the topics? When is the juvenile missionary meeting to be? When
   the society tea-meeting? How best to distribute the poor money, etc.?"
   Here were these unknown and unlettered men, engaged in apparently
   trivial business, but resting in the Lord, and pouring forth from their
   rest-possessed souls spiritual energy which to James Smetham is like
   "healthy air," and "send me home," he says, "as last night, cured to
   the core, so fresh, so calm, so delivered from all my fears and
   troubles." The man who is sure and restful in the conscious
   companionship of his Lord has about him the strainlessness and
   inevitableness of the ocean tide, and gives off bracing influence like
   God's fresh and wondrous sea. "Then had Thy peace been like a river,
   and Thy righteousness like the waves of the sea." Let us become
   restfully sure of God, and we shall meet the battalions of the evil one
   unstrained and undismayed. "Hold the fort, for I am coming!" The
   doctrine is pernicious, and fills the life with strain, and fear, and
   uncertainty! "For I am coming!" "The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God
   of Jacob is our refuge." Let the Church rest in her Lord, and she will
   become terrible as an army with banners. "Come unto Me, . . . and I
   will give you rest."

   What does the Church need if her strain and her wrinkles are to be
   removed? She needs a more restful realization of the wealth and power
   of her allies. We too often face our foes with the shiver of fear, and
   with the pallor of expected defeat We too often manifest the symptoms
   of panic, instead of marching out in orderly array with the restful
   assurance of conquest. The hosts of evil are even now organizing their
   forces in threatening and terrific mass. Are our wrinkles increasing?
   Is our fear intensifying our strain, and are we possessed by a great
   uncertainty? Why, brethren, if we were conscious of our resources, and
   recognized our cooperative allies, we should more frequently put the
   Doxology at the beginning of our programmes, and our hearts would sing
   of victory even before the conflict began! It is all a matter of being
   more restfully conscious of the allies that fight on our side. Paul was
   a great hand at numbering up his friends, and so great was the company
   that he always felt his side was overwhelming! He periodically reviews
   the cooperative forces, and invariably marches on with a more
   impassioned Doxology. Think of our resources in grace. You cannot turn
   to any of the epistles of the great Apostle without feeling how immense
   and immediate is his conception of his helpmeets in grace. Grace runs
   through all his arguments. It is allied with all his counsel. It bathes
   all his ethical ideals. It flows like a river close by the highway of
   his life, winding with all his windings, and remaining in inseparable
   companionship. But my figure is altogether ineffective. Paul's
   conception of life was not that of road and river--the common highway
   of duty with its associated refreshment of grace. Grace was to Paul an
   all-enveloping atmosphere, a defensive and oxygenating air, which
   braced and nourished his own spirit, and wasted and consumed his foes.
   "The abundant grace"! "The riches of the grace"! "The exceeding riches
   of His grace"! can never recall Paul's conception of grace without
   thinking of broad, full rivers when the snows have melted on the
   heights, of brimming springtides, and of overwhelming and submerging
   floods. "Where sin abounded grace did much more abound"! And, brethren,
   these glorious resources of grace are ours, our allies in the work, and
   march, and conflict of our times. Don't you think that if she realized
   them, the Church would lose her wrinkles and her strain, and would move
   in the strength and the assurance of a glorious rest? I like that dream
   of Josephine Butler's, when her life passed into deep shadow, amid many
   frowning and threatening besetments: "I thought I was lying flat, with
   a restful feeling, on a smooth, still sea, a boundless ocean, with no
   limit or shore on any side. It was strong and held me up, and there was
   light and sunshine all around me. And I heard a voice say, Such is the
   grace of God!'" Let the Church even dimly realize the force of this
   tremendous ally, and she will move with a strength and quietness which
   will give her the secret of perpetual conquest.

   And think of our allies in circumstances! Devilry has not the unimpeded
   run of the field. Somewhere in the field, let me rather say everywhere
   in the field, there is hidden the Divine Antagonist. The apparent is
   not the fundamental. The immediate trend does not represent the final
   issue. The roystering adversary runs up against Almighty God, and all
   his feverish schemes are turned agley. It is marvellous to watch the
   terrific twist given to circumstances by the compulsion of an unseen
   and mysterious hand. "The things that happened unto me have turned out
   rather unto the progress of the Gospel." So sings the Apostle Paul, and
   the experience has become so familiar to him that now, in the days of
   his great besetments, he always quietly and confidently awaits the
   action of the mighty, secret pressure which changes the temporary
   misfortune into permanent advantage. "I know that even this shall turn
   to my salvation through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of
   Christ Jesus." How can a man with that persuasion be shaken with panic?
   How can he fight and labour in any spirit but the restful optimism of a
   triumphant hope? Do not let us quake before circumstances, or lapse
   into unbelieving restlessness and strain. The secret of circumstance
   belongeth unto God. The unseen drift is with us. The nature of things
   is on our side. "Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field."
   The universal yearning of the material world corroborates the purpose
   of our advance. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth" in
   profoundest sympathy with the evolution and "manifestation of the
   children of God." The planet itself is pledged against the devil. "The
   stars in their courses fought against Sisera." "They that be with us
   are more than they that be against us." "And Elijah prayed, and said,
   Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened
   the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was
   full of horses and chariots of fire." Our allies are everywhere and
   anywhere! Why should our faces be strained? Why should we toil in
   restless fear? Why should the Church be wrinkled like the world?
   "Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, . . . that He might
   present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle,
   or any such thing."

   And let me add one closing word. I think the Church needs a more
   restful disposition in the ministry of prayer. I am amazed at the want
   of restfulness in our communion with the Lord! I do not speak of our
   unnecessary loudness, but of the feverish uncertainty, the strained and
   painful clutch and cleaving, the perspiring pleading which is
   half-suggestive of unbelief. Let me say it in great reverence, and not
   in a spirit of idle and careless criticism, when I listen to some
   prayers I find it difficult to realize that we are speaking to the One
   who said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My
   voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and
   he with Me." Our strained and restless prayers do not suggest the quiet
   opening of a door, they rather suggest a frenzied and fearful prisoner,
   hallooing to a God who has turned His back upon our door, and the sound
   of whose retreating footsteps is lessening in the far-away. We need a
   firmer and quieter assurance while we pray. Yes, even in our
   supplications it is needful to "rest in the Lord." Perhaps it would be
   a good thing for many of us in our praying seasons if we were to say
   less and to listen more. "I will hear what God the Lord will speak."
   Listening might bring restfulness where speech would only inflame us.
   It is not an insignificant thing that the marginal rendering of that
   lovely phrase, "Rest in the Lord," is just this, "Be silent unto the
   Lord"! Perhaps we need a little more of the Quaker silence and
   receptiveness, and a little less of heated speech and aggression. At
   any rate, we must get the doubt-wrinkles out of our prayers, and in our
   speech with God we must manifest the assurance of a calm and fruitful
   faith.

   I call you then to rest! Nay, the Master Himself is the caller: "Come
   unto Me," thou strained and care-worn Church, "Come unto Me," and I
   will distinguish thee from the world, for "I will give thee rest."


   Drop Thy still dews of quietness,

   Till all our strivings cease;

   Take from our souls the strain and stress,

   And let our ordered lives confess

   The beauty of Thy peace.
     __________________________________________________________________

VII

THE DISCIPLE'S VISION

   "But in the latter days it shall come to pass."--Micah 4: 1.

   "BUT in the latter days it shall come to pass. . . ." The prophet lifts
   his eyes away to the latter days to gain refreshment in his present
   toil. He feasts his soul upon the golden age which is to be, in order
   that he may nerve himself in his immediate service. Without the
   anticipation of a golden age he would lose his buoyantly, and the
   spirit of endeavour would go out of his work. Our visions always
   determine the quality of our tasks. Our dominant thought regulates our
   activities. What pattern any I working by? What golden age have I in my
   mind? What do I see as the possible consummation of my labours? I may
   be keenly conscious of what I am working at, but what am I working for?
   What do I see in the latter days? There is your child at home. You are
   ministering to him in your daily attention and service. What is your
   pattern in the mind? How do you see him in the long run? How looks he
   in your mind's eye? What sort of a man do you see in your boy? How
   would you fill up this imperfect phrase concerning him "In the latter
   days it shall come to pass . . .?" Have you ever painted his
   possibilities? If you have no clear golden age for the boy your
   training will be uncertain, your discipline will be a guesswork and a
   chance. You must come to your child with a vision of the man you would
   like him to be, and the vision will shape and control all your
   ministries. Our visions are our dies, quietly, ceaselessly pressing
   against the plastic material of the lives for which we labour. Our
   vision of possibilities helps to shape the actuality.

   There is the scholar in the school. When a teacher goes to his class,
   be it a class of boys or girls, what kind of men and women has he in
   his eye? Surely we do not go to work among our children in blind and
   good-humoured chance? We are the architects and builders of their
   characters, and we must have some completed conception even before we
   begin our work. I suppose the architect sees the finished building in
   his eye even before he takes a pencil in his hand, and certainly long
   before the pick and the spade touch the virgin soil. It is built up in
   imagination before he cuts the first sod. It must not be otherwise with
   our children in the schools. Again I say, we must be able to complete
   the unfinished phrase: "In the latter days it shall come to pass. . .
   ." We must deliberately fill in the blank, and see clearly the
   consummation at which we aim. That boy who gives the teacher so much
   trouble; restless, indifferent, bursting with animal vitality, how is
   he depicted as man in your chamber of imagery? Do you only see him as
   he is? Little, then, will be your influence to make him what he might
   be. You must see a golden age for the boy, a splendid prime, and so
   every moment your ardent vision will be operating to realize itself in
   the unpromising material of the present.

   Let me assume that your work is among the outcasts. When you go to
   court and alley, or to the elegant house in the favoured suburb, and
   find men and women sunk in animalism, trailing the robes of human
   dignity in unnameable mire, how do you see them with the eyes of the
   soul? "In the latter days it shall come to pass. . . ." What? To the
   eye of sense they are filthy, offensive, repellent. What like are their
   faces, and what sort of robes do they wear in the vision of the soul?
   Do we address the beast as the gentleman-to-be? Are we dealing with the
   "might-be" or only with the thing that is? Sir Titus Salt was pacing
   the docks at Liverpool and saw great quantities of dirty, waste
   material lying in unregarded heaps. He looked at the unpromising
   substance, and in his mind's eye saw finished fabrics and warm and
   welcome garments; and ere long the power of the imagination devised
   ministries for converting the outcast stuff into refined and finished
   robes. We must look at all our waste material in human life and see the
   vision of the "might-be." I took out a little sentence the other day
   from a book I was reading, a sentence which fell from the lips of one
   of the unfortunate women who so greatly add to the sins of our great
   cities. Some man had done her a courtesy, spoken to her in kindly tone
   and manner, and surprised and thrilled her cold and careless heart. "He
   raised his hat to me as if I were a lady!" The man had addressed her as
   she might be, and the buried dignity within her rose to the call. He
   spoke to her in the language of the golden age, and she lifted her eyes
   to the vision revealed.

   Surely this was the Master's way! He is always calling the thing that
   is by the name of its "might-be." "Thou art Simon," a mere hearer;
   "Thou shalt be called Peter," a rock. To the woman of sin, the outcast
   child of the city, He addressed the gracious word "daughter," and spoke
   to her as if she were already a child of the golden age; her weary
   heart leaped to the welcome speech. And so we have got to come to our
   work with visions of the latter days, glimpses of the "might-be,"
   pictures of the golden age, or the cheap and tinselled present will
   never be enriched. Take your child, your scholar, or the outcast man in
   the court, or the degraded man in the villa, and get well into your
   mind and heart a vision of all they might be. Spend time over it. Work
   it out line upon line. Make it superlatively beautiful and noble. Then,
   with that vision of the later day, address yourself to the present day;
   and your vision will dominate your very muscles, and every movement of
   service will be a minister of elevation and refinement.

   I am not surprised, therefore, that all great reformers and all men and
   women who have profoundly influenced the life and thought of their day
   have been visionaries, having a clear sight of things as they might be,
   feeling the cheery glow of the light and heat of the golden age.
   Abraham, amid the idolatrous cities of his own day, had a vision of the
   latter days, and, while labouring in the present, "looked for the city
   which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God." The Apostle
   John, in the Island of Patmos, while impressed with the iniquity of
   Rome seated on her seven hills, and drunk with the blood of saints, saw
   through the Rome that was to the Rome that might be, "The Holy City,
   the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, made ready as a
   bride adorned for husband." And so has it been through all the changing
   centuries right down to our own time. In my own city of Birmingham
   forty years ago, when North and South America were locked in bloody
   strife, and it seemed as though the future were pregnant with nothing
   but quarrel and discord, John Bright lifted the eyes of his countrymen
   to the glory of the latter days, and unfolded to them the radiant
   colours of the golden age: "It may be but a vision, but I will cherish
   it; I see one vast federation stretch from the frozen north in unbroken
   line to the glowing south, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic
   westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main. And I see one people
   and one language, and one law and one faith, and over all that white
   continent the home of freedom and a refuge for the oppressed of every
   race and every clime."

   And so the prophet Amos, in a book that is crowded with severity and
   denunciation and indictment, and noisy with thunder and frightful in
   its lightning, still lets us hear the music of the latter days, and
   permits us to contemplate the vision of the golden age in which he
   travailed and toiled: "In the latter days it shall come to pass. . . ."
   What are the characteristics of the golden age to which the prophet was
   looking with hungry and aspiring spirit? "The mountain of the Lord's
   house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be
   exalted above the hills." Then in the golden age emphasis is to be
   given to the spiritual. The mountain of the Lord's house is to be
   established at the top of the mountain. I think of Durham city as an
   emblem of the prophet's thought. Away in the lower reaches of the city
   there is the river, on which boats are plying for pleasure and
   recreation. A little higher up on the slopes are the places of
   business, the ways and byways of trade. A little higher there is the
   castle hill, on which the turretted tower presents its imposing front;
   but on a higher summit, commanding all and overlooking all, there rises
   and towers aloft the majesty of the glorious old cathedral. Let me
   interpret the emblem. The river is typical of pleasure, the ways of
   business are representatives of money, the castle is the symbol of
   armaments, the cathedral is significant of God. In the latter days the
   spiritual is to have emphasis above pleasure, money, armaments. In
   whatever prominence these may be seen, they are all to be subordinate
   to the reverence and worship of God. Military prowess and money-making
   and pleasure-seeking are to be put in their own place, and not to be
   permitted to leave it. First things first I "In the beginning God."
   This is the first characteristic of the golden age.

   "And many nations shall come and say: Come and let us go up to the
   mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will
   teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths." Then the second
   characteristic of the golden age is that people are to find their
   confluence and unity in common worship. The brotherhood is to be
   discovered in spiritual communion. We are not to find profound
   community upon the river of pleasure or in the ways of business or in
   the armaments of the castle. These are never permanently cohesive.
   Pleasure is more frequently divisive than cohesive. At the present time
   we have abundant evidence that commerce may be a severing ministry
   among the peoples of the earth. And certainly we do not find union in
   common armaments. Two nations may fight side by side to-day, and may
   confront each other tomorrow. No, it is in the mountain of the Lord's
   house the peoples will discover their unity and kinship. It is in the
   common worship of the one Lord, in united adoration of the God revealed
   in Christ, that our brotherhood will be unburied, and we shall realize
   how rich is our oneness in Him.

   "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears
   into pruning hooks." Then the third characteristic of the golden age is
   to be the conversion of merely destructive force into positive and
   constructive ministries. No energy is to be destroyed: it is all to be
   transfigured. The sword is to become a ploughshare; the weapon of
   destruction an implement of culture. I saw a picture the other day
   which was intended to represent the re-enshrinement of peace. A cannon
   had dropped from its battered carriage and was lying in the meadow,
   rusting away to ruin. A lamb was feeding at its very mouth, and round
   it on every side the flowers were growing. But really that is not a
   picture of the golden age. The cannon is not to rust, it is to be
   converted, its strength is to be transfigured. After the Franco-German
   war many of the cannon balls were re-made into church bells. One of our
   manufacturers in Birmingham told me only a week ago that he was busy
   turning the empty cases of the shells used in the recent war into
   dinner gongs! That is the suggestion we seek in the golden age: all
   destructive forces are to be changed into helpful ministries. Tongues
   that speak nothing but malice are to be turned into instructors of
   wisdom. Passions that are working havoc and ruin are to be made the
   nourishers of fine endeavour and holy work. All men's gifts and powers,
   and all material forces, are to be used in the employment of the
   kingdom of God.

   "They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree." That
   savours of Bournville! Yes, and Bournville is in the prophetic line,
   and has got something of the light and colour of the golden age. There
   is to be a distribution of comforts. Life's monotony is to be broken
   up. Sweet and winsome things are to be brought into the common life.
   Dinginess and want are both to be banished. There is to be a little
   beauty for everybody, something of the vine and the fig-tree. There is
   to be a little ease for everybody, time to sit down and rest. To every
   mortal man there is to be given a little treasure, a little leisure and
   a little pleasure. "And none shall make them afraid." And they are not
   only to have comfort but the added glory of peace. The gift of the vine
   and fig-tree would be nothing if peace remained an exile. There are
   many people who have both the vine and the fig-tree, but their life is
   haunted and disturbed by fears. In the golden age peace is to be the
   attendant of comfort, and both are to be guests in every man's
   dwelling.

   And now mark the beautiful final touches in this prophet's dream: "I
   will assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven
   out, and her that is afflicted." They are all to be found in God's
   family. "Her that halteth," the child of "ifs" and "buts" and fears and
   indecision, she shall lose her halting and obtain a firm and confident
   step. "And her that is driven out," the child of exile, the
   self-banished son or daughter, the outcast by reason of sin; they shall
   all be home again! "He gathereth together the outcasts." And along with
   these there is to come "her that is afflicted," the child of sorrows.
   The day of grief is to be ended, morning shall be the thing of the
   preparatory day which is over; "He shall wipe away all tears from their
   eyes, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Hosea

   [1]2:19

   Micah

   [2]4:1

   Matthew

   [3]4:19   [4]4:19   [5]11:28-29

   Acts

   [6]19:1-3

   Romans

   [7]16

   Ephesians

   [8]3:8

   Colossians

   [9]1:24
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [10]1  [11]2  [12]3  [13]4  [14]5  [15]6  [16]7  [17]8  [18]9  [19]9
   [20]11  [21]12  [22]13  [23]14  [24]15  [25]16  [26]17  [27]18  [28]19
   [29]20  [30]21  [31]22  [32]23  [33]24  [34]25  [35]26  [36]27  [37]28
   [38]29  [39]30  [40]31  [41]32  [42]33  [43]34  [44]35  [45]36  [46]37
   [47]38  [48]39  [49]40  [50]41  [51]42  [52]43  [53]44  [54]45  [55]46
   [56]47  [57]48  [58]49  [59]50  [60]51  [61]52  [62]53  [63]54  [64]55
   [65]56  [66]57  [67]58  [68]59  [69]60  [70]61  [71]62  [72]63  [73]64
   [74]65  [75]66  [76]67  [77]68  [78]69  [79]70  [80]71  [81]72  [82]73
   [83]74  [84]75  [85]76  [86]77  [87]78  [88]79  [89]80  [90]81  [91]82
   [92]83  [93]84  [94]85  [95]86  [96]87  [97]88  [98]89  [99]90
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   [122]113  [123]114  [124]115  [125]116  [126]117  [127]118  [128]119
   [129]120  [130]121  [131]122  [132]123  [133]124  [134]125  [135]126
   [136]127  [137]128
     __________________________________________________________________

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

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