{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_39309/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_39309","id":"gutenberg_39309","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39309","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Sermons, English"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n                            A DAY AT A TIME\n\n\n                            AND OTHER TALKS\n                          ON LIFE AND RELIGION\n\n\n                              BY THE REV.\n                      ARCH. ALEXANDER, M.A., B.D.\n\n                               Author of\n                        \"The Glory in the Grey\"\n\n\n\n\n                             SECOND EDITION\n\n\n\n\n                    LONDON: H. R. ALLENSON, LIMITED\n                   RACQUET COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.\n\n\n\n\n                       _Printed in Great Britain_\n                   _by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_\n\n\n\n\n                               THIS BOOK\n                          WRITTEN IN WAR-TIME\n                          TO MINISTER COMFORT\n                   AND IF IT MAY BE TO REINFORCE HOPE\n                               AND FAITH\n                              IS DEDICATED\n                             BY PERMISSION\n                                   TO\n                          SIR JOHN R. JELLICOE\n                            G.C.B., K.C.V.O.\n                       ADMIRAL OF THE GRAND FLEET\n\n\n\n\n\"There are nettles everywhere,\nBut smooth green grasses are more common still;\nThe blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.\"\n  E. B. BROWNING\n\n\n\n\n                                CONTENTS\n\n1. A DAY AT A TIME\n2. GOD IN THE WHEELS\n3. A TRIPLE BEST\n4. FINICAL FARMING\n5. THE DOCTOR\n6. WELL AND NOW\n7. THE \"WASHEN FACE\" IN WAR TIME\n8. THE REAL MARTHA\n9. OUR UNEARNED INCREMENT\n10. SMOKING WICKS\n11. CULPABLE GOODNESS\n12. A KHAKI VIRTUE\n13. THE OVERCOMING OF PANIC\n14. THE DAY'S DARG\n15. GASHMU THE GOSSIP\n16. GOD IN FRONT\n17. \"UNBELIEF KEPT QUIET\"\n18. THE EQUIPMENT OF JOY\n19. THE GOD OF THE UNLOVABLE MAN\n20. UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE\n21. INSTRUCTING THE CABIN BOY\n22. GOD'S DOOR OF HOPE\n23. NOWADAYS\n24. ROUNDABOUT ROADS\n25. THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF LOVE\n26. THE ART OF DOING WITHOUT\n27. WONDER\n28. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD\n29. THE UNRETURNING BRAVE\n30. THE SACRAMENT OF SUNSET\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"_As thy days, so shall thy strength be._\"\n  (DEUTERONOMY xxxiii.  25.)\n\n\n                                   I\n\n                            A DAY AT A TIME\n\nIf any one of us knows a word of hope or has picked up a message of\ncomfort anywhere, it is his plain duty to share it, these days.  We owe\nit to each other to cherish as exceeding precious, and to pass on to\nothers, every brave and helpful word or thought we come across.\n\nWell, here is a splendid one for us all, and especially for those who\nhave most at stake in this great conflict, and are looking anxiously\nahead and fearing what the weeks may have in store,--\"As thy days, so\nshall thy strength be.\"  It is a great and glorious promise.  And just a\ncouple of verses further on, it is caught up and included in one greater\nstill,--\"The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the\neverlasting arms.\"  Fathers and mothers, with a boy, or more than one,\nperhaps, away on active service for King and country, this promise is\nfor you, to take to your heart and hide there, like some precious secret\nbetween you and God,--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.\n\nNotice carefully, however, how the promise runs.  Not, mark you, as your\nlife is, not as your years are, not even as your weeks are, but as your\ndays, so shall your strength be.  For each day as it comes, God's\npromise is that strength will be given you, but just for a day at a\ntime.  The way to live under any circumstances, but especially in these\nhard weeks, is just a day at a time.  Leave to-morrow with God, my\nbrother, until it comes.  That is what the Word of God lays upon you as\na duty.  Live this day at your best and bravest, trusting that God's\nhelp will not fail you.  And for the duties and trials of to-morrow,\nhowever hard and heavy, believe that strength for that day also will be\ngiven you, when it comes.\n\nYou cannot have failed to observe what an important place this way of\nliving had in the teaching of Jesus Christ.  He was always trying to get\nmen to trust the coming days to God, and to live fully worthily and\nnobly to-day.  He was dead against the practice of adding to the burdens\nof to-day fears and forebodings for to-morrow.  It is in love to us, in\nHis desire to save us unnecessary pain, that He bids us remember that\n\"sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.\"\n\nIn one of R. D. Blackmore's fine open-air stories, there is a character\nwho talks at length about horses.  After comparing good ones and bad\nones in their behaviour the first time they breast a hill with a load\nbehind them, he sums the matter up thus: \"Howsoever good a horse be, he\nlongeth to see over the top of the hill before he be half-way up it.\"\nThe man who is listening to him confesses that he has often felt that\nway himself!  And I do not know that there are many of us who can claim\nto be guiltless in this respect.  Yet it is perfectly plain that the men\nand women who are living the bravest and most successful lives around\nus, and are proving towers of strength to others, are those who have\nlearned the art of living just a day at a time, and of depending upon\nGod for strength for that day in the simplest and most trustful fashion.\n\nWhy, my brothers, if God our Father had meant us to carry on our backs\nthe fears and anxieties of the coming days, He would surely have told us\nmore about them!  If we were meant to bear to-day what next week holds,\nsurely we should have been permitted to see into next week.  But we\ncannot.  We cannot see a single second ahead.  God gives us Now, and\nTo-Morrow He keeps to Himself.  Is there anything wiser or better we can\ndo with our to-morrows than just to leave them quietly and trustfully\nwith Him?\n\nThe habit of living ahead, as so many of us do, prevents us from getting\nthe full taste and flavour of the happiness and blessing that are ours\nto-day.  I defy any man to be adequately grateful for this day's\nsunshine if he is worrying all the time about the chance of a bad day\nto-morrow.  Mark Rutherford, merciless self-critic as he was, takes\nhimself severely to task for this habit in his \"Autobiography.\"  \"I\nlearned, alas! when it was almost too late,\" he says, \"to live in each\nmoment as it passed over my head, believing that the sun as it is now\nrising, is as good as it ever will be.\"  Yes, in great things as well as\nin little things, that is true.  If we are to live our lives at the\nfull, and anywhere on the Christian level, the only way is to live one\nday at a time.\n\nOur forefathers in the pulpit were fond of reminding their hearers to\nlive each day as if it were their last.  And in solemn truth, without\nbeing in the least morbid, that is the way to live.  If a man knew that\nafter to-day, he would not smell the sea again, how fully and gratefully\nwould he fill his lungs with its ozone to-day!  If he knew he were not\nto enter God's House again, how earnestly and sincerely and reverently\nhe would join in its worship to-day!  Yes, but the point is, why should\nhis hope, that he has other days to come, prevent him taking out of this\nday all that he possibly can?  Why should this day be any less prized,\nbecause others in all probability will follow it?\n\nBut the great value of this word is the comfort of it to those who are\nanxious and fear the coming days.  And which of us is not in that\ncategory?  I do not suppose there is one of my readers upon whom,\nsomehow or other, the war has not levied its tax.  Nearly every one has\nsomebody belonging to him or her who is in this gigantic struggle, and\nwhose welfare is a matter of real concern.  And, closer still, there are\nfathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, whose very dearest are \"in\nit\" or are getting ready to do their share.  They have joined, and we\nare proud that they have joined, for this is a cause that ennobles every\nmother's son who fights for it.  But who shall say what the mother's\nthoughts are, these days?  How proud, and justly proud, the father is\nthat his boy has played the man, and offered himself to his King and for\nhis country!  But only God, who made the father--and the mother--heart,\nknows what the surrender costs.  And only God knows how eagerly and\nanxiously they look ahead to try to see what the future may hold.\n\nAnd, knowing that, He sends His comfort to you, fathers and mothers. The\ncomfort of His promise,--As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Just a\nday at a time, my friend!  Do not take fears for next month on your\nshoulders now.  You will get strength given you for to-day, certain and\nsure, and when next month comes, the strength and comfort for that day\nwill come too, as certain and as sure.  Be not over-anxious about the\nmorrow.  Leave your to-morrow, and your soldier-son, in God's hands.\nYou can do nothing more at the best, and this is the best.  But it is\nsuch a mistake to do anything less.  Leave all your to-morrows with\nGod--it is what He wants you to do--and humbly and gratefully take from\nHis hands His gift of To-day, and the strength that comes with it.  If\nthat be not enough--and it is not enough for God has said more--when\nthat is not enough, still your heart a moment, and listen!  And you will\nhear, beneath that promise for to-day, like the grand deep tones of an\norgan, the magnificent diapason of the Father's constant love and\nmindfulness,--\"The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the\neverlasting arms.\"  And surely that is enough!\n\n    \"So for To-morrow and its needs\n      I do not pray,\n    But keep me, guide me, help me, Lord,\n      Just for To-Day.\"\n\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, who dost appoint the way for each of us, give us the\ngrace to trust that as Thou hast helped us hitherto, so, in Thy great\nmercy, Thou wilt bless us still.  We do not ask to see the distant\nscene.  Keep us, and our beloved, this day; and in quietness and\nconfidence teach us to leave to-morrow with Thee, our Father.  Through\nJesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_The Spirit of life was in the wheels._\"\n  (EZEKIEL i. 21.)\n\n\n                                   II\n\n                           GOD IN THE WHEELS\n\nThe prophet Ezekiel once had an extraordinary vision of God.  He tries\nto tell us about it, but his description seems to be a meaningless\njumble of cherubim, and wheels,--wheels within wheels, complex,\nwonderful, unresting.  Behind all, he saw the Glory of God.  And again\nand again he tells us that \"the Spirit of Life was in the wheels.\"\n\nNow that at least is intelligible, and it is a good thing for us to\nthink about.  The Spirit of God is in the wheels.\n\nI want to suggest to you that He is in the wheels of industry.  We have\nno hesitation in saying that God gives the farmer his harvest, and we\nactually thank Him for it in His temple.  A shepherd with a lamb in his\narms is for a pastoral people like the Jews the very image of the\nSaviour God.  But men who dwell in towns, and work in mills and\nfactories and yards and railways, or who control or manage such places,\nhave little to do with either corn or sheep.  Is it not worth while to\nremind them that God is also in the wheels?  Do you remember how\nKipling's old chief engineer Macandrew believed that his twin monsters,\ndriving the liner onward on her way, sang their hourly hymn of praise to\nGod?  And why not?  From all the wheels of industry and man's\ninventiveness, goes there not up to Him a praise as real as the song of\nHis little birds?\n\nWhere two or three gather together on Lord's days, God is truly and\ngraciously present.  But I want you to remember that out in the noisy\nmoving world of industry and business, God is present also, guiding,\ncontrolling and bringing His long, long plans to pass.  It is by His\ndecree that all the countless wheels of traffic and production turn and\nspin, for He needs them all, and has brought them into being by the\nhands of men, and they are His, as the Church is His.  I would not have\nyou, as Christian men, look upon your week-day world with its mechanism\nand its traffic, that world of yours that goes so literally upon wheels,\nas a province of life very far remote from the presence of God. I would\nremind you rather that God's spirit is in those wheels, that they move\nat His bidding, and that they are working out His purposes upon the\nearth.\n\nI would suggest, further, that God is in those wheels whose turning\nbrings us Change.  If you will allow the figure, I would say that God is\nin the wheels of Change and time.\n\nAs we grow older, we resent more and more the constant alteration of the\nsurroundings of life.  It saddens us that there should be such a\ncontinual moving on.  But perhaps it is in the realm of doctrine and\npractice that changes hurt and perplex us most.  Godly old customs die\nout.  The face of truth seems to alter.  Old notes in religion disappear\nand new ones take their place, and we are sorely tempted to ask if it be\npossible that the children can know God better or serve His Christ more\ntruly than their fathers.  Ah yes, from forty years and upwards, men are\nvery apt to have a quarrel with change.  They resent it, and would spike\nTime's wheels if they could.\n\nForgetting that the Spirit of God is in those very wheels.  Change is\nGod's method and His blessing.  The Bible does not envy the man who has\nno changes.  It is afraid for him, afraid that for want of them, he may\nsettle on his lees, and forget the fear of God.\n\nOf course, no one will defend every new fashion, or assert that\neverything recent is an improvement on what went before.  But I, for\none, do believe that generation after generation men are moving up,\nbeing shepherded up, the long slope of history nearer to God.  I believe\nthat God's promise is that He will do better for us than at the\nbeginnings, and I believe He is keeping His promise.  I must believe\nthat the history of this world which man rough hews, is--spite of all\nthe wars--being shaped by God Himself, or else there is no God at all.\nAnd so I would say to those who distrust the continual changes of life,\nand would fain stop the wheels that turn on and on and never halt, \"Fear\nnot!  Be of good courage!  For aback of all change is God our Father,\nand it is His Spirit that is working in the wheels.\"\n\nAgain, I would suggest to you that God is in the wheels that shape your\nown lot and mine.  The wheels of Chance, they are sometimes called, the\nmere whirligig of destiny, as if the world were some blind irresponsible\nmachine grinding on in the dark, and heeding not which or how many lives\nwere broken in its teeth.\n\nAnd I grant you that there be times when that idea seems feasible.  For\nlife is full of mysterious happenings, and chance sometimes seems the\nmost probable explanation.  The tragedy of Job is always being played\nsomewhere.  There are men who up to a certain point in life have known\nnothing but good fortune, and after that, nothing but disappointment and\ndisaster.  Out of a blue sky the bolt may fall on any one; while from\nclouds lowering and heavy, it is waited for, expected and dreaded--and\nnever comes!  The merest knife-edge of circumstance sometimes affects\nresults out of all proportion to its importance.  \"A grain of sand in a\nman's flesh\" as Pascal remarks, \"has changed the course of Empires.\"\nYes, I grant you, there be times when the blind chance theory does\nsuggest itself.\n\nBut by an overwhelming majority the instinct of man is against it.  And\nbest of all, Jesus Christ, our supreme authority, has pledged Himself in\nHis life and death, that the Ruler and Disposer of all events is Eternal\nLove.  We have learned from Jesus to say and to trust \"Our Father who\nart in Heaven.\"  We know and believe that whatever is to come falls not\nby chance, but is sent and permitted by the Love of God, who makes no\nmistakes.  Taught and inspired by Jesus, many thousands of men and women\nhave committed themselves and all their interests--home, health,\nhappiness, reputation, loved ones--to the keeping of God the Father, and\nknown by the peace that came to them, that it was a real transaction.\n\nSoulless wheels of destiny! say some.  The blind mechanism of law!  Ah,\nno, Jesus is the refutation of that.  Law there is, and mechanism there\nmust be.  But neither blind nor soulless.  For, above all, is the Father\nLove of God, and it is His spirit that is guiding and governing the\nwheels.\n\nWheels of Industry, Wheels of Change, Wheels of Destiny.  And God's\nSpirit in them all!\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, to whom not only the Church but our whole work-a-day\nworld belongs, give us the purged sight that can see Thy tokens there.\nDeliver us from all foolish fear of changes since the goad moving all\nthings onward is in our Father's hand.  And help us to be sure that\nwhatsoever befalleth us and ours has been permitted and appointed by a\nLove that passeth knowledge.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_The just shall live by faith._\"\n  (ROMANS i. 17.)\n\n\n                                  III\n\n                             A TRIPLE BEST\n\nSome time ago I came across the life-motto of George Stephenson, the\n\"father of the locomotive,\" as he has been called, the man whose brains\nand sagacity made possible the network of railways which spreads now\nover the earth.  The crystallised experience of such a life is worth\nstudying Here, then, was Stephenson's working formula:--\"Make the best\nof everything; think the best of everybody; hope the best for yourself.\"\n\nFirst, MAKE THE BEST OF EVERYTHING.  In every set of circumstances\npossible or conceivable, there are always, at any rate, two ways of\nacting.  You can look for the helpful, bright, and hopeful things, and\n\"freeze on\" to these meantime.  Or, you can select all the doleful,\nsombre aspects, and sit down in the dust with them.  Now, if it did not\nmatter which a man did, there would be no good saying any more.  But it\nhas long since become abundantly clear that the man who makes the best\nof his circumstances, however hard they be, comes most happily out of\nthem in the end.  In other words, it pays to make the best of things. It\nis the cheery people who recover quickest when they are sick.  There are\nmen who, if their house should fall in ruins about them, will contrive\nsome sort of shelter meantime with the broken beams!  That is the type\nthat wins out in the end somehow; these are the men to whom the miracles\nhappen--who never know when they are beaten, who will face the most\ntremendous odds with \"the half of a broken hope\" for a shield, who are\nnever done until they are dead.  What makes for success or failure in a\nman is nothing external to him at all.  It is something within him.  It\nis the temper of his spirit.  It is the way he captains his own soul.\n\nThe other day I saw a photograph of a backyard.  It was a little bit of\na place, of the most forlorn appearance, littered with tin cans,\novergrown with weeds, and hemmed round with blank walls of brick.  But\nit came into the hands of a man who believed in making the best of\nthings.  Another photograph showed that same backyard after a year had\npassed.  It was still as small as ever, still overlooked by high walls\nand surrounded by chimneys.  But it was now a perfect little oasis of\nbeauty amid a wilderness of bricks and slates.  Will anybody deny that\nthat spirit pays?\n\nRight up the scale, from little things to the highest things, the man\nwho looks for the shining possibilities and follows them, is the man on\nwhom, in our short-sighted way, we say that Fortune smiles.  Rather, he\nsmiles in such a determined way to Fortune, that she has at length to\nsmile back!\n\nNobody pretends that it is easy, when we have failed, to gather our\npowers together and try again.  But nearly all the big men have had to\ndo that very thing.  It certainly is not easy, when you have a heavy\nburden of your own, to spare a cheery word or a hand of sympathy for\nsomebody who is really much better off, but there are plenty of people\ndoing it at this moment.  Nero's palace is the last place in this world\nwhere you would expect to find a company of loyal Christian folk.  Yet\nthere were such people there, \"the saints of Caesar's household.\"  And\nthe grace of God that made that possible can achieve all these lesser\nwonders too.\n\nSecond, THINK THE BEST OF EVERYBODY.  There is a winsome legend that\nJesus once revealed Himself in this way:--A knot of idlers had gathered\nin the street round a dead dog.  One remarked how mangy and unkempt its\nhide was.  Another said, \"What ugly ears!\"  But a stranger, who had come\nforward, said, \"Pearls are not whiter than its teeth!\"  And men said to\none another, \"This must be Jesus of Nazareth, for nobody but He would\nfind something good even in a dead dog.\"  Certainly it is the mark of\nthe most Christlike men and women that they delight rather in\nemphasising the merest speck of goodness than in denouncing the too\nvisible evil.  We can, all too easily, see the fault in another.  What\nwe cannot see is the heart of the defaulter, the weight of temptation he\nstruggled under, and his bitter inner penitence.  \"Granted,\" as Carlyle\nsays, \"the ship comes into harbour with shrouds and tackle damaged; the\npilot is blameworthy.  He has not been all-wise and all-powerful.  But,\nto know how blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round\nthe globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs.\"\n\nThe way to get the best out of people is to think the best about them.\nLet a man see that you have good hopes of him, and recognise what is\nbest in him, and, in ways of which science can give no explanation, you\nadd to his chances of reaching better things.  In any case, who would\nnot wish to stand on Christ's side rather than on Judas's.  \"This\nointment might have been sold for three hundred pence and given to the\npoor.\" That is Judas.  \"Let her alone.  Why trouble ye her?  She hath\nwrought a good work in me.  She hath done what she could.\"  That is\nJesus Christ.\n\nThird,--Don't leave yourself out of the picture.  HOPE THE BEST FOR\nYOURSELF.  George Eliot, in her \"Scenes of Clerical Life,\" gives, in one\nchapter, an account of how the Rev. Amos Barton is criticised and\ndiscussed in his parish.  In the next chapter we see the Rev. Amos\nhimself going on his way blissfully unconscious of the poor opinion in\nwhich he is held, believing quite honestly in himself, and not a little\nproud of his abilities.  \"We are poor plants,\" says this keen student of\ncharacter, \"buoyed up by the air vessels of our own conceit.\"  And a\nblessed thing, too, when you think of it!  If we only knew all the\ndisparaging remarks people make about us, we should never face up to our\nduties at all.  What helps us along is our innocent belief in our\npowers, in the esteem in which we are held--our little conceits, if you\nlike.  Since they send us to our tasks with more spirit, and keep us at\nthem with more determination, aren't they good things in their way? They\nare indeed just a lower form of that hope that we are speaking\nof--Hope's poor relations.\n\nIf these are of such value, how much more pure quiet steady Hope itself,\npurged of all pride and undue self-esteem?  Hope the best for yourself,\nand you are already a good way on the road to it.  Suggestion is a\ntremendously powerful instrument, even when you make it yourself. By\nself suggestion, the psychologists tell us, you can influence your\nactions, your character, and your general outlook in a wonderful\nfashion, either to your advantage or your hurt.  Therefore, they say, be\ncareful never to suggest evil to yourself.  Never say to yourself, \"I'm\ngoing to make a mess of this,\" or \"I am not fit for that.\" Suggest\nsuccess, happiness, health, and you beckon them to you.  Hope the best\nfor yourself, and you pave the way for its coming.\n\nOn higher planes, the same holds true.  Hope on, and, though you fall\nyou will rise again.  Believe that you will be enabled to face your\ntrouble or temptation, and you will be brought through it somehow. Even\nwhen the end of life is near, hope still, for beyond this best there is\na better, and God's road winds uphill all the way.\n\nBut, you say, this is just faith.  I know it is.  Run your hopes for\nyourself up as high as you can reach, and they will touch God and become\nfaith.  That is why you are to hope the best for yourself. Because--God.\nBecause God the Father loves you, and desires the best for you too.  I\nbelieve in the optimism which Stephenson's motto embodies, because I\nbelieve in the Fatherhood of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  That is\nwhy I counsel you to go on hoping that the best is yet to be.  Not that\nwe can earn it at all, or that we deserve it at all.  But--because God,\nour Father.  And, for the daring and faith of that saying, this\nsufficient ground.--Because--Jesus Christ.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nHelp us all, Heavenly Father, to meet the discipline of life with\nstouter hearts.  May we all try harder to cultivate the Christ-like mark\nof charity.  And spite of our many sins and shortcomings, and our poor\nlove of Thee, grant us the courage to believe that all things, in Thy\ngreat Love for us, are working together for our good.  We ask it for\nJesus' sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_He that observeth the wind_\n_shall not sow, and he that_\n_regardeth the clouds shall not_\n_reap._\"\n  (ECCLESIASTES ii. 4.)\n\n\n                                   IV\n\n                            FINICAL FARMING\n\nWhen a man like the writer of Ecclesiastes gives his views on life, it\nis worth everybody's while to listen.  A tabloid of experience is worth\na ton of theory.  And it is from his own knowledge of men and experience\nof life that he has discovered that \"he that observeth the wind shall\nnot sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.\"\n\nWas ever a temper of mind, that we all know something about, more neatly\nhit off than that?  You can see the very picture which this wise\npreacher had before his eyes.  Agricola was a farmer in his parish who\nwould not sow his fields unless the wind was blowing soft and gentle\nfrom a certain direction, and the clouds were just as he wished to see\nthem.  He held there was no hope of a harvest unless wind and clouds\nwere right.  And I observed, says the wise man, that Agricola, my farmer\nfriend, waiting for the exactly suitable conditions, never got his seed\nin at all.\n\nHe was speaking chiefly about benevolence and charity when he used this\nfigure.  And that is one reason why we need to give heed to it.  For\nours is an age of charity.  We give more to the poor and needy to-day\nthan ever any nation gave before.  It is said, indeed, that a good deal\nof our giving is not very wise.  Our charities overlap.  The truly\nnecessitous are forgotten, and the improvident, the lazy, and the\nwasteful reap the largest share.  Certainly that is one of the perils of\ncharity-giving.  But I question very much if, in our efforts to avoid\nit, we are not running the risk of falling into a graver mistake still,\nnamely, of observing the wind overmuch before we sow.  If I refuse to\ngive my mite for Christ's sake till I have made perfectly certain that\nit will not be misused, if we withhold our subscription from a charity\ntill we are assured that it is managed in the very most economical\nfashion, it will end in us giving nothing at all.  There is, of course,\na reasonable amount of inquiry that is not only legitimate but\nnecessary.  Just as there is a regarding of the clouds before reaping\nwhich is simply wise.  But, to wait till every scruple is satisfied,\ntill every risk has been eliminated and there is not a cloud in the sky,\nis to wait for a state of matters that may be long enough in coming.\nMeantime the needy person may die; or the corn blacken in the fields.\n\nCharity, however, is but a small part of Christian benevolence.  The law\nof Christ says \"neighbour\" whether he be poor or not.  He is in trouble,\nand I feel inclined to visit him.  Must I wait till I am sure he will\nnot misunderstand my motive?  I have it in my heart to forgive him.\nShall I defer the reconciliation till I am convinced he will not offend\nagain?  Or I have hurt and offended him, and wish to apologise. Had I\nnot better wait till I know that he will not reject my advances? The\nwise man's answer to all these questions is an emphatic No.  If you wait\nfor all that, he says, you will wait too long, and the chance will go\npast.  Wait till the wind and the clouds are just as you would wish\nthem, and you will neither sow nor reap at all.\n\nWhat to do, then?  The wise man answers: \"In the morning sow thy seed,\nand in the evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not whether\nshall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike\ngood.\"  Just because you can never fully calculate what the result of\nyour labours may be, give up trying.  Don't trouble about it, but do\nwhat comes to your hand at the time.  If it is sowing time, don't wait\nfor the perfect day.  If the weather will do at all, sow thy seed in the\nmorning, and in the evening do not stop.  In other words, Take life more\nroyally.  Do not be deterred by its ordinary risks.  Seize your chance\nlike a brave man.  You do not know, of course, whether that seed you sow\nwill prosper or not.  But sow it, all the same.  Don't let the fact that\nyou don't know cause you to hold your hand.  It is just because you do\nnot know but that the kindness which you offer your neighbour may be\nill-requited, that there is a royal free-handed self-forgetfulness in\noffering it.  That a man should live his life and do his good deeds with\na certain dash and carelessness of consequence--that, the Preacher\nthought the ideal of noble living.  And when we measure it by the\nstandard of Him who said, Do good and lend, hoping for nothing again, it\ndoes not seem to come so very far short.\n\nFor, of course, there are the continual surprises that life holds for\nfaith.  If only the corn reaped when the clouds were just right was\nsafely gathered in, then indeed we might feel that we could not be too\ncareful.  But what do we find again and again?  Why, we find that men\nwho have had the faith to sow when the day was by no means perfect have\nbeen blessed beyond their expectations.  We find our barns full and\nrunning over, though we reaped on a cloudy day.  We have seen men cast\ntheir bread upon the waters, where you would say it was certain to be\nlost, and find it again, after many days.  It's perfectly true that you\ndon't know whether shall prosper this or that.  Yet how often have you\nbeen surprised to find that where you thought you knew, you were proved\nmistaken, and where you dealt in faith, it stood justified beyond your\ndreams.\n\nAnd so, the end of the matter for the Preacher is, once more, Live your\nlife royally, with a certain loving wastefulness, and an easy disregard\nof calculations.  Do all the good you can, and do it with a free hand,\nnot asking to see your harvest before you sow, but taking your risk of\nit, and leaving the outcome with God.  \"Cast your bread on the waters,\nand you will find it after many days.\"\n\nBut what of the bread one has cast on the waters, only to see it carried\naway, apparently of no use to anybody?  What of the faith that has not\nbeen justified?  What of the good done to the ill-deserving, of the\nkindly-meant act repaid with indignity and scorn?  It is a hard\nquestion, not easy to answer, not fully to be answered at all.  \"After\nmany days,\" said the Preacher.  And there is no sign yet, we say.\nPatience, brothers, patience!  God's day is not yet done.  When the days\nhave run out to the end, it will be time enough to say if we miss the\nbread returning.  We shall be better able to count the gains and the\nlosses, if there are any then,--when the \"days\" are done.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nTeach us, O Lord and Master, the high and difficult lesson that only\nthose who lose their lives shall truly find them.  Show us that the\nmanna hoarded in miserly fashion is always touched by Thy curse.  In\nsmall things as in great, may this be a token that we are Thy disciples,\nthat virtue also goeth out of us.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_But when Jesus heard_\n_that, he said unto them, they_\n_that be whole need not a physician,_\n_but they that are sick._\"\n  (MATTHEW ix. 12.)\n\n\n                                   V\n\n                               THE DOCTOR\n\nJesus is Himself the best witness as to what He was, and what He wished\nto do for men.  It is a fact, moreover, for which we cannot be too\nthankful that, in explaining Himself, Jesus used not the language of\ndoctrine, but living figures and symbols which the humblest and youngest\ncould not fail to understand.\n\nWhen, for example, He compared Himself to a shepherd leaving the ninety\nand nine in the fold and braving the darkness and the steep places that\nhe might bring back the one that had wandered, He opens a window into\nHis own love for men which is worth pages of description.  For those who\nare familiar with the daily life and work of a shepherd, it means a\ngreat deal that Jesus waits to be the Shepherd of men.\n\nBut, in these very different days of ours, there are multitudes in\nstreets and tenements who have never seen a shepherd, and know not what\nmanner of life is his.  So that one is glad that Jesus gave Himself\nother names as well.  When Matthew Arnold met the pale-faced preacher in\nthe slums of Bethnal Green, and asked him how he did--\n\n    \"Bravely,\" he said, \"for I of late have been\n    Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the Living Bread.\"\n\n\nIf that name for Christ brought him comfort, another preacher may be\nallowed to confess that he has often been cheered and helped by the\nthought of Jesus as the Good Physician.  I am glad that in effect, at\nleast, if not in actual words, He called Himself by that name.\n\nThis is His apology for consorting with publicans and sinners, for being\nso accessible to those who had lost caste and character.  He says it is\nthe sick who need a Physician, not those who are well.  And His defence\nimplies that Jesus regarded Himself as being in a true sense a\nPhysician, not for outward ills merely, but for the whole man, body,\nmind, and spirit.\n\nThe days were, as you know, when priest and physician were one calling;\nand it is doubtless to the advantage of both vocations that their\nspheres are now distinct.  But it may be, and I think it is, unfortunate\nthat Jesus should be regarded by many as so entirely identified with the\npriestly side of life and the priestly calling.  It is beyond question\nthat a faithful priest is, in his degree, a mirror of Christ, and helps\nmen to see Him more clearly.  But it is also true--and a truth worth\nunderlining in these days--that the Doctor, too, is a symbol of what\nChrist means to be to men--nay, more, that there are respects in which\nthe figure of a beloved physician of to-day comes nearer to the reality\nof the living human Christ than any other calling in the world.\n\nIt is a sure and unique place which the Doctor holds in the esteem and\nconfidence of the community.  He is the most accessible of all\nprofessional men, the most implicitly trusted, and, I think, the best\nbeloved.  At all hours of the day and night he is ready to give his\nservices to those who need him.  His mere presence in the sick room\ninspires confidence.  In the poor districts of town and city especially,\nhe is more really the friend and confidant and helper of everybody than\nany other person whatever.  As no other man does, the Doctor goes about\ncontinually doing good.  His life is a constant self-sacrifice for his\nfellow-men.  He wears himself out in the interests of the needy.  He\nruns risks daily from which other men flee. He asks not to be ministered\nunto, but to minister, and often and literally he gives his life a\nransom for many.\n\nAnd I do not know what we have been thinking of that we have not oftener\nmade use of this as Christ's claim for Himself, that we have not told\nthe ignorant and the very poor especially, who know far more about the\nDoctor than they do about the Church, who are, in fact, shy of all that\nis priestly, but who do understand and appreciate the Doctor, I say, I\ndo not know why we have not oftener told them to forget that Jesus is\nthe King and Head of the Church and remember only that He is the best of\nall Physicians.  That Christ is compassionate, sympathetic, and\napproachable, like the Doctor, would be veritable good news to many a\npoor ignorant soul who is mightily afraid of His priests.\n\nThe word which comes to our lips when we seek to characterise the life\nand work of the true Doctor is Christlike.  And big as the title is, it\nis deserved.  In sacrifice and self-forgetfulness, in his care most for\nthose who most need him, in the way he identifies himself with his\npatient, bearing with, because understanding, his weakness and petulance\nand fears, and seeking all the while only to heal and help and save him,\nthere is no more Christlike character or calling in the modern world\nthan the Doctor.\n\nI am the happy possessor of an engraving--a gift from one whose calling\nis to teach doctors--of Luke Fildes' famous picture.  Most of you\ndoubtless are familiar with it.  It represents the interior of a humble\nhome where a little child lies critically ill.  The father and mother,\ndistracted with grief, have yielded their place beside the couch to the\nDoctor, who sits watching and waiting, all-absorbed in the little one's\ntrouble.  It is a noble face, strong, compassionate, resourceful,\ngentle; and if the Eternal Christ of God is to be represented to us in\nHis strength and gentleness by any human analogy or likeness whatever,\nas He wished to be, and indeed must be, no finer figure could be found,\nI think, than that, none more certain to draw out the reverence and\ngratitude and trust of men.\n\nMen of all grades and classes appeal to and trust the Doctor.  But how\nmany of them realise that Jesus desires that men should come to Him and\ntrust His willingness to help and save them, just as they would do to\nsome good physician?  How many men who have found comfort by taking\ntheir fears and forebodings to the Doctor and hearing his authoritative\n\"Go in peace!\" know or realise that just so would Jesus have us bring\nHim our unworthiness and shame and sin?  Jesus never preached at those\nwhom His compassion drew to Him.  He never lectured them, He just helped\nthem, and that at once.  He lifted them to their feet and gave them a\nnew hope.  He, straightway, in God's name, assured them of forgiveness.\n\nAh, if men only understood that Jesus is to be found to-day down among\nthe world's burdened and weary souls, not as a Priest begirt with\nceremony and aloof from daily life, but as a Physician, approachable,\nhelpful, human, who sees and pities their weakness, and longs to save\nthem and help them to their best.  If men only understood that!\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nWe come to Thee, Thou Good Physician, with all our ills and fears.  We\nwould whisper in Thine ear the troubles that frighten and shame us.\nSurely Thou wilt hear.  Draw near us in Thy strength and Pity, and in\nThy Mercy heal us all.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Whatsoever thy hand findeth_\n_to do, do it with thy might,_\n_for there is no work nor device_\n_nor knowledge nor wisdom in_\n_the grave whither thou goest._\"\n  (ECCLESIASTES ix. 10.)\n\n\n                                   VI\n\n                              WELL AND NOW\n\nIn popular and condensed form, the golden rule according to Ecclesiastes\nis, \"Do it well and do it now.\"  His own words are, \"Whatsoever thy hand\nfindeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work nor device nor\nknowledge nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest.\"  We want to let\nthat precept soak into our minds for a little.\n\nDO IT WELL.  \"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.\"\nAmong the lesser joys of life there are few that thrill one with a more\npleasurable sense of satisfaction than that which goes with the bit of\nwork finished, rounded-off and done as well as one can do it.  No matter\nwhat the job may be, if it is worth doing at all, or if it is one's\nbusiness to do it, it is not difficult to recognise in the curious\ninward glow over its honourable completion, a token of God's good\npleasure, some far-off echo of His \"Well done!\"\n\nIt is a truism which never loses its point that it is enthusiasm that\ncommands success.  In her weird book called \"Dreams,\" Olive Schreiner\ntells the parable of an artist who painted a beautiful picture.  On it\nthere was a wonderful glow which drew the admiration of all his\ncompeers, but which none could imitate.  The other painters said, Where\ndid he get his colours?  But though they sought rich and rare pigments\nin far-off Eastern lands they could not catch the secret of it.  One day\nthe artist was found dead beside his picture, and when they stripped him\nfor his shroud they found a wound beneath his heart.  Then it dawned\nupon them where he had got his colour.  He had painted his picture with\nhis own heart's blood!  It is the only way to paint it, if the picture\nis to be worth while at all.  If we would have the work that we do live\nand count, our heart's blood must go into it. Whatsoever thy hand\nfindeth to do, do it with thy might.\n\nWhat magnificent heart-stirring examples are coming to us every day just\nnow, from sea and battle-field, of the good old British virtue of\nsticking in gamely to the end and \"seeing the thing through!\"  If the\nstories of the old English Admirals are calculated, as Stevenson says,\nto \"send bank clerks back with more heart and spirit to their\nbook-keeping by double entry,\" shall not the story that unfolds day by\nday of what our own kith and kin are doing, nerve and inspire us all to\n\"do OUR bit,\" to face up to OUR duty, humdrum and ordinary though it be,\nwith the same grit and energy, with the same determination to see it\nthrough, and make as good a job of it as we can?\n\nThe Preacher has his reason for this advice.  Because, he says, some day\nyou will have to stop and lay down your tools, and that will be the end.\nNo more touching botched work after that.  No going back to lift dropped\nstitches then.  Such as it is, your record will have to stand as you\nleave it, when Death raps at your door.  Even for us in this Christian\nage, this ancient Preacher's reason still stands valid and solemn.  Do\nwhat you are at now as well as ever you can, for you shall pass that way\nno more again for ever.\n\nThe Apostle Paul, who expresses practically the same sentiment, gives a\ndifferent reason.  \"Whatever ye do,\" he writes to the Colossians, \"do it\nheartily as to the Lord.\"  And that is the point for you and me. Not\nmerely because we have a limited time to work, but because our work is\nChrist's service, we must do it heartily, with all our might.  It is to\nthe Lord.  To us all in our different labours, in the things we work at\nday by day, and the worthy interests we endeavour to support, there\ncomes this call that transforms the very commonest duty into an\nhonourable obligation to a personal living Master--Whatever ye do, do it\nheartily as to the Lord.\n\nYes, and DO IT NOW.  For the amount of misery and suffering and remorse\nthat is directly due to putting off the God-given impulse or generous\npurpose to some other season, is simply incalculable.  If all the kind\nletters had been written when the thought of writing was fresh and\ninsistent--ah me, how many burdened souls would have been the braver and\nthe stronger.  If only the friendly visit had been paid when we thought\nabout it--and why wasn't it?  \"Never suppose,\" says Bagshot, \"that you\ncan make up to a neglected friend by going to visit him in a hospital.\nRepent on your own death-bed, if you like, but not on another's.\"\n\nAn old writer on agriculture says that there are seasons when if the\nhusbandman misses a day he falls a whole year behind.  But in life the\nresult is often more serious still.  When you miss the day, you miss it\nfor ever.  Wherefore, let us hear the words of the Preacher.  If we have\na kind purpose in our heart towards any living soul, let us do it now.\nIf we think of beginning a better way of living, let us begin now.  If\nwe propose to end our days sworn and surrendered servants and soldiers\nof the Lord Jesus Christ, let us volunteer now, for this is the day of\nsalvation.\n\nIt is said that a great English moralist had engraved on his watch the\nwords, \"The night cometh,\" so that whenever he looked at the time he\nmight be reminded of the preciousness of the passing moment.  The night\ncometh.  How far away it may be, or how near to any one of us, no one of\nus knows.  But near or far it cometh with unhalting step. Wherefore,\nwhatsoever the thing be that is in your heart to do, great or little,\nfor yourself or for others, for man or for God--DO IT NOW!\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, by whose command it is that man goeth forth to his work\nand his labour until the evening, grant us all a more earnest regard for\nthe sacredness of each passing moment, and help us to do with our whole\nheart whatsoever our hand findeth to do.  For Jesus' sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_And he washed his face,_\n_and went out, and refrained_\n_himself, and said, Set on bread._\"\n  (GENESIS xliii. 31.)\n\n\n                                  VII\n\n                     THE \"WASHEN FACE\" IN WAR TIME\n\nThat is what Joseph did when his feelings nearly overmastered him at the\nsight of his brother Benjamin standing before him, all unconscious of\nwho he was.  He \"sought where to weep,\" says the record with quaint\nmatter-of-factness, for of course he did not want his brothers to see\nhim weeping just yet.  So \"he entered into his chamber and wept there.\"\nBut Joseph's secret affections being thus recognised and allowed their\nexpression, he had a duty to perform.  He put a curb upon his feelings.\nHe took a firm grip of himself.  He \"washed his face and went out, and\nrefrained himself, and said, Set on bread.\"  One cannot help admiring\nthat.  It was a fine thing to do.\n\nAnd there are two classes of people in our own time in whom one sees\nthis same attitude, and never without a strange stirring of heart.\n\nThe first and most honourable are those who have already tasted of the\nsorrows of war and lost some dear one in the service of King and\ncountry.  We speak of the courage and sacrifice of our men, and we\ncannot speak too highly or too gratefully about that.  But there is\nsomething else that runs it very close, if it does not exceed it, and\nthat is the quiet heroism and endurance of many of those who have been\nbereaved.  Time and again one sees them facing up to all life's calls\nupon them with a marvellous spirit of self-restraint.  God only knows\nhow sad and sore their loss is.  And upon what takes place when they\nenter into their chamber and shut the door and face their sorrow alone\nwith God, it does not beseem us to intrude.  Such sorrow is a sacred\nthing, but at least we know, and are glad to know, that God Himself is\nthere as He is nowhere else.  It is never wrong and never weak to let\nthe tears come before Him.  As a father understands, so does He know all\nabout it.  As a mother comforteth, so does the touch of His Hand quieten\nand console.\n\nBut what fills one with reverent admiration is that so many of those\nwhose hearts we know have been so cruelly wounded have set up a new and\nnoble precedent in the matter of courage and self-control.  They are not\nshirking any of the duties of life.  They are claiming no exemptions on\nthe ground of their sorrow, and they excuse themselves from no duty\nmerely because it would hurt.  They wear their hurt gently like a flower\nin the breast.  They carry their sorrow like a coronet. Out from their\nsecret chambers they come, with washen face and brave lips to do their\nduty and refrain themselves.  How beautiful it is! What a fine thing to\nsee!  The sorrowing mother of a noble young fellow I am proud to have\nknown, said to a friend recently who was marvelling at her fortitude,\n\"My boy was very brave and I must try to be brave, too, for his sake.\"\nDear, gentle mother!  One cannot speak worthily about a spirit so sweet\nand gracious as that.  One can only bow the head and breathe the inward\nprayer, \"God send thee peace, brave heart!\" But, surely, to accept\nsorrow in that fashion is to entertain unawares an angel of God!  The\nfeeling which underlies this new etiquette of sorrow with the washen\nface is not very easily put into words.  But it rests, I think, upon the\ndim sense that the death which ends those young lives on this noble\nfield of battle is something different from the ordinary bleak fact of\nmortality.  If death is ever glorious, it is when it comes to the\nsoldier fighting for a pure and worthy cause. There is something more\nthan sorrow, there is even a quiet and reverent pride in the remembrance\nthat the beloved life was given as \"a ransom for many.\"  When one thinks\nwhat we are fighting for, one can hardly deny to the fallen the supreme\nhonour of the words \"for Christ's sake.\" And it is not death to fall so.\nRather is it the finding of life larger and more glorious still.  It is\nthat that marks the war-mourners of to-day as a caste royal and apart.\nIt is that that moves so many of them by an inward instinct to wear\ntheir sorrow royally.  Hidden in the heart of their grief is a tender\nand wistful pride.  Lowell has put this feeling into very fine words:\n\n    \"I, with uncovered head,\n    Salute the sacred dead,\n    Who went and who return not--\n    Say not so.\n    'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,\n    But the high faith that fails not by the way.\n    Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;\n    No bar of endless night exiles the brave,\n    And, to the saner mind,\n    We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.\"\n\nThe other class who are teaching us a new and better way to bear burdens\nare the friends at home of those who are on active service. Men, with\nsons in the trenches, are going about our streets these days almost as\nif nothing were happening, making it a point of honour not to let the\nlurking fear in their hearts have any outward expression. Wives and\nmothers and sisters are filling their hands and their hearts full of\nduties, and putting such a brave face on life that you would never\nsuspect they have a chamber that could tell a different tale.  It is\nabsolutely splendid.  There is no other word for it.  I walked a\nstreet-length with a young wife recently whose man has been ill and out\nof the fight for a while.  She hoped that he might have been sent home,\nand who can blame her? but he has gone back to the trenches instead. And\nhow bravely and quietly she spoke of it!  Pride, a true and noble pride\nin her beloved soldier, a resolute endeavour to do her difficult bit as\nuncomplainingly and willingly as he--it seemed to me that I saw all that\nin her brave smile.  And I said to myself, \"Here is the cult of the\nwashen face!  And a noble cult too!  Britain surely deserves to win when\nher women carry their crosses so!\"\n\nIt is easy, of course, to read the thought in their minds.  Our men,\nthey say, are splendid, why should we be doleful and despondent?  They\nhave made a new virtue of cheerfulness; let us try to learn it too. They\nhave offered everything in a cause which it is an honour to help in any\ndegree; let us lay beside theirs the worthy sacrifice of the washen face\nand a brave restraint.  Such, I imagine, is the unconscious kind of\nreasoning which results in the resolute and cheerful bearing you may see\non all sides of you every day.\n\nAnd wherever it is seen, it carries its blessing with it.  Others with\ntheir own private burdens and anxieties are encouraged to hold on to\nthat hope and cheerfulness which are just the homely side of our faith\nin God and in the righteousness of our cause.\n\nThe cult of the washen face is contagious.  It spreads like a beneficent\nstain.  And since it is entirely praiseworthy, we can but wish it to\nspread more and more.  Those who come out from the chambers where they\nhave kept company with sorrow or anxiety, to face life and duty with\nshining face and mastered feelings, are not only proving their faith in\nthe Divine Strength, they are making a precious contribution to the\nmoral stedfastness of the nation.\n\n\"And he washed his face and went out and refrained himself.\"  Good man!\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nWe bless Thee, O God, for the assurance that Thine ear is ever open to\nour cry, that it is never wrong to take our sorrows and our cares to\nThee.  But help us also, endowed with Thy strength in our secret\nchambers, to bear our burdens bravely in the sight of men.  For Thy\nName's sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_But few things are needful,_\n_or one._\"  R. V. (margin).\n  (LUKE X. 42.)\n\n\n                                  VIII\n\n                            THE REAL MARTHA\n\nWhen Jesus said, upon one occasion, that He had not where to lay His\nhead, He was speaking the bitter and literal truth.  He had really no\nhome of His own, but was everywhere a wanderer, dependent on others for\nshelter and food; and though the New Testament draws a veil over all the\nhardships which that entailed even in the hospitable East, imagination\ncan picture something at least of what the homelessness of Jesus must\nhave meant.\n\nBut He had close and warm friends who made it up to Him as far as\nfriends could, and of these were the two sisters, Martha and Mary, who\nwith their brother, Lazarus, had a house in Bethany.  This place was His\nhaven and shelter, for \"Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.\"\nThe sisters were unlike in disposition.  Mary, we can imagine, was\ndreamy, meditative, perhaps a little delicate and fragile, and gifted\nwith a quick and loving sympathy.  Martha was robust, practical,\nenergetic.  Her way of showing the Master that she considered it an\nhonour to have Him for a guest was to give Him the very best that her\nhousewifely skill could suggest.  No trouble was too much for her.  And\nit is very possible that one of the charms which this home had for\nJesus--one of the qualities which made it a real place of rest--was its\nwell-ordered arrangements, the quiet, efficient, capable way in which\nthings were done.  And whose was the credit for that?  Martha's.\n\nWhat would that household have been like without Martha?  And what would\nany home that is fortunate enough to have a Martha in it, be like\nwithout her?  The truth is our debt to the Marthas is one which we have\nnever fully acknowledged.  You would imagine, hearing the way in which\nher name is sometimes used, that it has an apologetic character, as if\nthe making of a home comfortable and homelike were a gift to be lightly\nesteemed in comparison, for example, with the ability to write verse! It\nis foolish to play Mary off against her sister in this way.  Martha did\nwhat she could do best, and showed her love for Christ in that fashion,\nand you may be quite sure that He understood.  Mary served Him in her\nway, by giving Him what He needed more at times than food--a heart to\nlisten to His message, and a sympathy which made the telling of it meat\nand drink to Him.  Each sister was the complement of the other.\n\nBut we wrong Martha, of course, in thinking of her as always in the\nkitchen.  Certainly when there waas a meal to be prepared you would find\nher there, and well that was for the household and the servants. But\nnobody is always eating or thinking about eating; and often of an\nevening, doubtless, when the labours of the day were over, Martha would\njoin her sister at the feet of the Master whom she loved as much as Mary\ndid.\n\nThe incident which has given rise to the popular misconception of\nMartha's character occurred during a visit which Jesus paid in the days\nbefore Lazarus fell sick.  Something went wrong in Martha's department\nthat day.  Perhaps it was a mistake of a servant that irritated the\nusually self-controlled Martha, or maybe some oversight of her own.  At\nanyrate, it set up a condition of worry which straightway began to add\nto itself, as its habit is, seven other devils.  And as Martha went out\nand in the dining chamber getting things ready, the sight of Mary\nsitting there at the Master's feet doing nothing, struck her, perhaps\nfor the first time, as rather out of place.  Things began to go further\nwrong.  Just when Martha wanted to do special honour to Jesus, the\nordinarily smooth-running wheels of that home began to creak and grind.\nEach time she entered the room where Christ and Mary were, Martha's\nsteps grew brisker and more emphatic; and then the last straw was laid\non, and the outburst came!  Martha asked Jesus if He really did not care\nthat Mary was leaving her to do everything.  Bid her come and help me,\nshe said.\n\nOf course, Jesus knew that it was for His sake that Martha was giving\nherself all this trouble.  He saw, as even we can see, that this\nkind-hearted, worried woman was speaking crossly, as the very best will\ndo at times, because she was tired and a bit overdriven.  And with a\nperfect and gentle chivalry and tact He made His reply.  As the\nAuthorised Version puts it, it jars on one, somehow.  But King James'\ntranslators have misread their text.  What Jesus said was: \"Martha,\nMartha, you are unduly anxious and troubled.  Only a few things are\nnecessary, or even one.  Mary has chosen a good part, and I cannot allow\nyou to take it from her.\"\n\nMartha, remember, was making a feast worthy of the Master, and Jesus,\nlooking upon the various dishes being got ready, said, in effect, I do\nnot really need so many as that.  One would do quite well.  And I must\nnot let you think that Mary is doing nothing.  She, too, is ministering\nto me by her sympathy and her willing ear, and you must not take away\nthe good part she has chosen.\n\nJesus was not speaking about the personal salvation of either Mary or\nher sister.  He was only dealing gently with a good and true friend of\nHis who had not served Him as she had wished to do.  When He spoke of\nwhat was needful, He meant needful for Himself, the Guest whom both the\nsisters were seeking to honour.\n\nHe made no comparison between Martha's service and Mary's.  He did not\nsay, as we have read it so often, that Mary had chosen the better part.\nHe said, in her defence, that Mary's was also a good part.  He is not\nblaming Martha, but only expostulating with her in the gentlest fashion,\nand defending Mary from the charge which Martha in her heat had made\nagainst her, the charge of being useless, and doing nothing to help to\nentertain the Master.  Jesus said, She is helping to entertain Me in her\nown way, and, He added, it is a good way.\n\nWhen Jesus having said that only a few things were necessary, dropped\nHis voice, as we may imagine, and added \"or indeed one,\" He may have\nmeant more than He seemed to say.  For there was one thing that was more\nthan meat to our Lord, and that was to find a soul with heart and\nsympathy open to His message.  And it may be that He felt, as He said\nthe words, that Mary's ministry met a need of His deeper than that for\nwhich Martha was catering.  At anyrate, the oldest and best versions of\nthis Gospel give Christ's words as we have rendered them, and they stand\nhere, not to be used as a peg on which to hang doctrines, but rather as\na proof of the gentle courtesy of our Lord, of His insight into\ncharacter and motive, and of His gracious recognition of the worth of\nany and every kind of service that has love at its heart.\n\nMartha went back to her kitchen, and Mary remained where she was.  Mary\nwas not asked to go and help.  Martha would have protested if she had\ncome.  Martha was not called upon to go and sit beside Mary.  Each\ncontinued the service for which she was best fitted.  But each, I think,\nhad learned something that day.  And you and I must not leave this page\nof our New Testament till we have learned it too--that we serve best\nwhen we do gladly that for which we are best qualified; that it belongs\nto our Christian service to recognise in all loyalty that, though others\nfind different ways of expressing it, theirs is a good part; and that we\nmust never either belittle it or seek to take it from them.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, Who by many diverse ways dost bring us near to Thee, and\nin differing modes and stations dost appoint our service, help us gladly\nand gratefully to do the things we can do, neither envying those whose\nopportunities are greater, nor forbidding those who follow not us.  For\nThy Name's sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_He giveth (to) His beloved_\n_(in their) sleep._\"\n  (PSALM cxxvii. 2.)\n\n\n                                   IX\n\n                         OUR UNEARNED INCREMENT\n\n\"It is vain for you,\" says the writer of the 127th Psalm, \"to rise early\nand sit up late and eat the bread of sorrow, for so He giveth to His\nbeloved (in their) sleep.\"  That is the true reading, and I want you to\nthink about it.  \"God giveth to His beloved while they sleep.\" Over and\nabove what you have yourself achieved, you GET something you have never\nworked for.  And you get that, as it were, in your sleep. This is a\nbeautiful thought, and there are three people to whom I want to offer it\nas God's comfort.\n\nThe first is the worried man.  It is indeed directly against worry that\nthis psalmist sets forth his reminder.  It is not that he minimises the\nneed for hard work and watchful care.  But he tells the man who is\nfeverishly burning his candle at both ends, and consuming himself in a\nfrenzy of tense anxiety, to leave something for God to do.  It is as if\nhe said, \"Why so hot, little man, why so fiercely clutching all the\nropes?  Remember that God is working too as well as you, working in your\ninterest and in love for you.  When you have done your best therefore,\ngo to your bed and sleep with a quiet mind, for God giveth to His\nbeloved even so.\"\n\nOne can imagine how a word like that would relax the tension and lead\nsome persuadable Hebrew who heard it to say, \"Ah, well, I worry far too\nmuch.  After all, I am not Providence.  I am always getting a great many\nthings I have not wrought for.  I shall worry less about securing the\ngood things I desire for me and mine, and trust more to God to give them\nas He sees fit.\"  If all of us who needed this reminder just had the\nsense to come to the same conclusion!\n\nI have seen a man compass his family with so many careful regulations\nand observances that the criticism of a candid friend seemed entirely\njust.  \"You would think,\" he said, \"to see so-and-so shepherding his\nfamily, that there was no other providence than his own.\"  You can't be\nwith your best beloved all the while.  And you ought to know that God\ntoo is watching even while you sleep.\n\nIf there be some plan on which you have set your heart, and you are\nover-anxious about it, quote this text to yourself.  Do your best, of\ncourse, but, having done so, leave the outcome with God.  About a great\nmany of the things over which we worry ourselves needlessly, I believe\nGod's word to us is:--Leave these things to Me.  You can't work for\nthem.  And anxiety won't bring them.  But you will get them, as you need\nthem, just as if they came to you in your sleep.\n\nSaid one hermit to another in the Egyptian desert, as he looked at a\nflourishing olive tree near his cave, \"How came that goodly tree there,\nbrother?  For I too planted an olive, and when I thought it wanted\nwater, I asked God to give it rain and the rain came, and when I thought\nit wanted sun I asked God and the sun shone, and when I deemed it needed\nstrengthening, I prayed and the frost came--God gave me all I demanded\nfor my tree, as I saw fit, and yet it died.\"  \"And I, brother,\" replied\nthe other hermit, \"I left my tree in God's hands, for He knew what it\nwanted better than I, and behold what a goodly tree it has become.\"\n\nThe second man to whom I would offer the comfort of this word of God is\nthe man who is disappointed.  Things have gone wrong with him.  The plan\non which he spent so much of his time and energy has miscarried, and a\nvery different result has emerged from what he counted on.  His way, as\nhe saw it, is blocked, and he has had to turn aside.\n\nNow, there are not many things one can say usefully to a disappointed\nman.  And it is cruel kindness to try to heal his hurt lightly.\nNevertheless, to him also the psalmist's message applies, and what he\nneeds to remember, that he may pick up heart and go on again, is that\nGod giveth to His beloved while they sleep.\n\nWe have all had disappointments, sore enough at the time, which\nafter-experience proved to have been blessings in disguise.  Many a man\ncan point to a signal failure as the beginning of a true success or\nusefulness or happiness.  We did not feel as if we were being enriched\nwhen our plan fell through, and we were bitter and rebellious enough at\nthe time, it may be, but it is quite clear to us now that God was at\nthat very time giving to us with both His hands.\n\nNo one, of course, can see that about any more than a few of his\ndisappointments.  It would be false to experience to speak as if we\ncould.  But what is manifestly true about one or two may conceivably\nhold with regard to them all, if we knew more, or could see better. And\nthe Christian Gospel calls us to believe and trust that that is so.\nThere is another Hand than ours shaping our life, a wiser Hand.  Better\nthings are being done for us than we can see in the meantime.  And the\nman whose hopes and plans have turned out amiss, but whose trust is\nstill in God, is invited by our psalmist to reason with himself\nthus:--\"I am like a man asleep, and I do not rightly understand at\npresent, but I will trust that it is not for nothing that misfortune has\ncome, and when I wake I shall hope to see that God has been giving to me\nin love and mercy when I was not aware of it at all.\"\n\nThe third man whom this text will help and comfort is the worker, the\nman or woman who is trying to do something for Christ's sake.  The\nChristian worker needs to be told that what he is trying to do is not\nnearly all that he is doing.  What he is, is speaking as loudly as what\nhe does or says.  There is an aroma and fragrance about the life of the\nconsecrated Christ-like man or woman which sweetens and sanctifies other\nlives beyond what he or she can ever know.  Some of the best sermons in\nthe world have been preached by people who least suspected what they\nwere doing.  The invalid in the home does not know how real religion\nbecomes to all who watch her patience and unselfishness.  And among the\nbusy and vigorous we often catch hints and reflections, that they never\nsuspect, of what Christ-likeness means.  The man who has surrendered his\nlife to God, indeed, is a channel of blessing to others beyond all he\never dreams of.  He must not be disheartened when he realises how little\nhe is doing, for the truth is he is doing far, far more than he knows.\nWherefore, my brother, be of good cheer, and render your service to\nChrist with a quiet heart.  Lay your course, and work your ship, and\nhoist your sail and trust.  And the gifts of God will enrich you, and\nthe winds of heaven will bring you on your way, even while you sleep.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nWe give Thee thanks, O God, for all Thy bounties, undeserved and\nunearned; for the increase Thou dost send us while the stars are\nshining; for Thy gracious thirty-fold and sixty-fold beyond what we have\nsown.  Every morning Thou leavest gifts upon our doorstep and dost\ndepart unthanked.  But this day we remember, and we bow our heads to\nrender unto Thee our humble and our hearty thanks for all that Thou hast\ngiven us while we slept.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_The smoking flax he shall not quench._\"\n  (ISAIAH xlii. 3.)\n\n\n                                   X\n\n                             SMOKING WICKS\n\nWe read the 42nd chapter of Isaiah now as if it were a part of the\nChristian Evangel.  And that is right.  For whoever the Servant may have\nbeen, of whom Isaiah was thinking, it is Christ and only Christ who\ncompletely fulfils this prophecy.  This is a true description of His\nspirit and His method.  \"The dimly-burning wick he shall not quench.\"\n\nThe figure is easily understood.  Here is a piece of flax floating in\noil, and burning so faintly that it seems a mere charred end from which\nthe smoke coils thinly upwards.  Some one comes and snuffs it out,\nbecause it smells.  That is the way of the world's reformers, as Isaiah\nsaw it, and we can see it still.  By and by they will trim the wick and\nlight it with fire of their own, but first they will quench the spark.\nBut there is One to come, said Isaiah, shooting his arrow of prophecy in\nthe air, who will go otherwise about it.  He will not despise the spark\nbecause it is so feeble.  He will tend it and foster it, and make the\nevil-smelling bundle of flax into a clear, shining light.  And the\nsaying has found its mark in Jesus Christ.\n\nWhen a woman that was a sinner made her way into the house where He sat\nat meat, and wept at His feet, He amazed all those present by the\nextraordinary gentleness of His dealing with her.  He did not refer to\nthe evil in her life.  He did not, as other good men would have done,\nfirst cast her down, that He might afterwards lift her up.  He simply\ntook the beautiful impulse after good which she brought Him out of a\nlife besmirched and tawdry, held it in His hands--a mere spark of\nvirtue--and breathing on it, blessed it, and behold it was a flame,\nburning up the evil in her life, a lamp lighting her path along a new\nand hopeful way.  That was Christ.  He does not, He will not quench the\ndimly-burning wick.\n\nNow--and this is our point--if those who profess and call themselves\nChristians are to have the spirit in them that was also in Christ Jesus,\nmust not this be their mark too?  Does not this prescribe their attitude\nto life, that many-coloured, strangely-mixed compound of good and evil?\nGood in any form, however feeble, however mixed, as in this world it\ninevitably is, with what is evil, should find in those who call\nthemselves by Christ's name, its truest supporters, sympathisers,\nfriends.\n\nTo the eye and heart in sympathy with it, beauty often peeps out in\nstrange places.\n\n    \"The poem hangs on the berry bush,\n    When comes the poet's eye,\n    And the whole street is a masquerade\n    When Shakespeare passes by.\"\n\nSo the mark of the Christ-like heart is just that it discerns, and,\ndiscerning, loves the feeblest tokens of some inward grace that redeems\na life from evil.  Do not be afraid that by welcoming the scant good,\nyou may be held to approve of the greater evil.  That is a risk that God\nHimself rejoices to take.  Did not Christ risk that, when He accepted\nthat poor woman's worship?  Did He not risk it when He held out His\nhands to a man like Zaccheus?  Does He not risk it always when He\ndeclares, \"Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out?\"  And\nshall we refuse because the risk is too great?\n\nLife presents us with many anomalies that refuse to square with our\ntheories.  You find men exhibiting qualities of character, which any\nChristian might be proud to emulate, outside of the Church altogether.\nAnd you cannot simply label these--\"glittering vices,\" and pass on. God\nis not two but One, and goodness is His token wherever it be found. \"The\nWorld,\" says John Owen, \"cannot yet afford to do without the good acts\neven of its bad men.\"  And the truth for us to learn is that the grace\nof God is not bound by our standards or limits.  Make the circle as wide\nas you like, you will still discover fruits of the Spirit outside, where\nby all our canons they were never to be expected.\n\n    \"And every virtue we possess,\n      And every victory won,\n    And every thought of holiness\n      Are His alone.\"\n\n\nIt is for something more than tolerance I am pleading.  For that may be\na weak and a wrong thing, if it spring not from belief in the good. What\nour calling demands is something more, the rejoicing, hopeful\nrecognition of the good deed or purpose anywhere, and the offer of a\nsympathy and a faith in which it can grow.  That gift of yours may\nactually be the decisive factor in a life balancing perilously betwixt\ngood and evil.  Three times, the other evening, I tried to light my\nstudy fire, and each time it went out.  The paper burned, but the sticks\napparently would not light.  At last in despair I flung in a burning\nmatch and went away--and when I returned I found a cheerful blaze: the\nbrief glimmer of that last match had been the determining factor.  You\nwill smile perhaps at the illustration, but you will remember, all the\nbetter, that where the flax is even smouldering, there the angels are\nstill fighting for a soul.  And you will, maybe, remember also that even\nyour warm sympathy may turn the scale, and fan the flicker to a flame.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that\nthe mind that was in Him may more and more be found in us.  Help us to\noffer to what is good anywhere a sympathy in which it may grow and\nincrease.  Grant us a helpful faith in the struggling good in every man,\neven as Thou, our Father, dost call us sons while as yet we are but\nprodigals, afar off.  For Jesus' sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Let not then your good be_\n_evil spoken of._\"\n  (ROMANS xiv. 16.)\n\n                                   XI\n\n                           CULPABLE GOODNESS\n\nIn his letter to the Christians at Rome, the Apostle Paul counsels them\nnot to let their \"good be evil spoken of.\"  And at first we ask\nourselves if this is a possible thing.  Can you have good that is evil\nspoken of?  Since this is a matter that ought to concern us all, I want\nto suggest one or two ways in which this very result may be brought\nabout, that those of us who are trying to follow an ideal of goodness\nmay be on our guard.\n\nFirst, we can very readily have what is good in us evil spoken of\nbecause of our CENSORIOUSNESS.  When men come upon some fruit that grows\nupon a goodly-looking tree, or one at least that has a trustworthy label\nattached to it, and find it sour or bitter to the taste, they are apt to\nbe particularly resentful.  And it is with precisely such indignation\nthat they observe men and women who profess themselves followers of\nChrist exhibiting a censorious and critical spirit.  Where ought you to\nfind the broadest charity, the kindliest judgment, the most Christ-like\nforbearance and restraint?  Among Christians, of course.  And yet--alas!\nalas!\n\nJust keep your ears open with this end in view for a week, and you will\nbe surprised at the appallingly hard judgments that come tripping\ndaintily from the lips of some of those you know best.  And if that line\nof investigation be not very handy, just watch yourself for the same\ntime, and you will learn what a rare thing Christian charity is.\n\nWe talk a lot about it, but in real life we \"forbid\" men very readily\n\"because they follow not us,\" we belittle things which we do not\nunderstand, we speak rashly about people whom we do not know, and we are\nready, without the least consideration, with our label for the movement\nor the man, who happens to be brought to our notice.\n\nAh, if we could only see how far astray we often are, what a libel our\nlabel is, and how unChrist-like many of our speeches appear!  We don't\nknow enough of the inner life of any man to entitle us to pass judgment\nupon him.  A critical spirit never commends its possessor to the\naffection or the good-will of men.  Besides, it blinds him to much that\nis really beautiful, and cuts him off from many sources of happiness.\nYou will see evil in almost anything if you look for it, but that is not\na gift that makes either for helpfulness or popular esteem.  \"I do not\ncall that by the name of religion,\" says Robert Louis Stevenson, \"which\nfills a man with bile,\" and, on the whole, the ordinary man is of the\nsame mind with him.\n\n    \"Judge not; the workings of his brain\n    And of his heart thou canst not see.\n    What looks, to thy dim eyes, a stain,\n    In God's pure light may only be\n    A scar brought from some well-won field,\n    Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.\"\n\n\nSometimes one must, in the interests of true religion, pass judgment,\nbut these times are not so frequent as we suppose.  And if there are\noccasions more than others when the disciple needs an overflowing\nmeasure of Christ's spirit, it is when it is his clear duty to diagnose,\ndisapprove, and condemn.\n\nSecondly, we may have our good evil spoken of by our EXTREMENESS.  I\nshould be very chary of saying that there is such a thing as being\nrighteous overmuch, but for two reasons.  The first is that there is an\ninjunction in Scripture against it.  And the second is that I have met\npeople, of whom, in all charity, it was true!  The modern name for being\nrighteous overmuch is being a \"crank.\"  Now, nobody loves a crank.  The\nextremist always does his own cause harm.  Carefulness about one's food\nis a good thing, but to take an analytical chemist's outfit to table\nwith us is simply to ask for the contempt of all sensible people.\n\nPaul's advice to the Philippians was, \"Let your moderation be known to\nall men.\"  And Paul was himself a splendid example of the true\nmoderation as distinguished from that which is merely indolent and\nuninterested.  Earnest, enthusiastic, loyal, there was yet about him a\nbig and healthy sanity, a sweet reasonableness, and--what the extremist\nalways lacks--an engaging tact.  In other words, Paul was a Christian\ngentleman, and if you want to know what that means, read his letter to\nPhilemon about Onesimus the runaway slave.  There are blunt words with\nwhich a man can be felled as effectually as with the \"grievous crab-tree\ncudgel\" of which Bunyan speaks.  Paul did not consider it any special\nvirtue to employ such words.  His Christian zeal did not lead him to\nmake a statement in a way that would irritate and rasp a man's soul.\nThere is a certain extreme candour affected by some Christian people,\nwho pride themselves on always calling a spade a spade.  But if it hurts\nmy friend to hear me say \"spade\" I know of no law of God that compels me\nto name the implement at all!\n\nAnd then, lastly, we can have our goodness \"evil spoken of\" because it\nis so COLD.  It sometimes seems as if, in our day, warmth of manner had\ngone out of fashion.  Ian Maclaren once said of our generation that it\nwill \"smile feebly when wished a happy New Year as if apologising for a\nlapse into barbarism.\"  But I don't think any sensible person, not\nblinded by an absurd convention, cares for that type of rarified\ndemeanour.  No one likes to get a hand to shake which feels like a dead\nfish!\n\nIn one of his books, Dr Dale of Birmingham criticised that line in\nKeble's hymn which speaks about the trivial round and the common task\ngiving us \"room to deny ourselves.\"  \"No doubt,\" he says, \"but I should\nbe very sorry for the people I live with to discharge their home duties\nin the spirit of martyrs.  God preserve us all from wives, husbands,\nchildren, brothers, and sisters who go about the house with an air of\ncelestial resignation.\"  Ah, no, that's not the goodness, either at home\nor on the street, which wins men.  It is not beautiful because it is too\ncold.  The religion of Jesus is something much more than duty-doing.\nThou shalt love the Lord thy GOD WITH ALL THY HEART. Whosoever compels\nthee to go a mile, GO WITH HIM TWAIN.  Whatsoever ye do, do it HEARTILY\nAS UNTO THE LORD.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nFrom all unkind thoughts and uncharitable judgments; from all\nintemperate speech and behaviour; from coldness of heart and a frigid\nservice, Good Lord, deliver us.  For Thy Name's sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_God loveth a cheerful giver._\"\n  (2 CORINTHIANS ix. 7.)\n\n\n                                  XII\n\n                             A KHAKI VIRTUE\n\nWe are proud to believe that, in the article of courage, our men are\nsecond to none in the world.  They have glorious traditions to live up\nto, and they are adding to these pages--nay, a whole volume, as splendid\nas any in our annals.  Yet it is not of our soldiers' courage I wish to\nspeak.\n\nFor we are told on all hands that there is another quality shining\nbrighter still these days in the trenches in France and Belgium, in\nambulance waggons and field hospitals, and in the camps at home, namely,\ncheerfulness.  Again and again the same tale is repeated from one\nquarter or another--\"our men are simply wonderful,\" \"they treat\ndiscomfort as a joke.\"  They label the very instruments that deal death\namong them with names that raise a smile.  Nurses, doctors, and\ncorrespondents tell us that the light-hearted way in which our soldiers\nface pain and suffering and force twisted lips to smile has created a\nnew record for the British Army.  When the story of this war is written,\nand the world gets a nearer glimpse into those awful trenches, I venture\nto prophesy that the quality in our countrymen which will most capture\nthe imagination and fill us with the greatest pride will be the gay,\nundaunted cheerfulness with which they faced it all.\n\nSurely we who stay at home may learn something of that virtue too.  For\nit is worth learning.  Ordinary people who only know what they like,\nwithout knowing why they like it, have a very warm side towards the\nperson who, when things are grey and gloomy, can keep cheerful.  They\nwould much rather see him come in on a dull day than a wiser man whose\nwisdom was a burden to him, or even than a pious person whose piety ran\nto solemnity and gloom.  It is high time, indeed, that the tradition was\nbroken for good and all which associates moral excellence with a\nfunereal heaviness of manner and denies the favour of the Lord to one\nwho, as Goldsmith has it, \"carols as he goes.\"\n\nFor the blessing of God is written visibly upon the results of\ncheerfulness wherever you find it.  God rewards the gallant souls who\nkeep their colours flying through every battle, even though they have to\nnail them up over a sorely damaged ship.  If you want a proof that the\nhopeful and cheery way of facing the rebuffs of life and tholing its\naches and disappointments is more in the line of what God expects from\nHis children than the doleful whining temper, you have it shown\nunmistakably in the fact that the gallant unconquerable soul solves\nproblems, overcomes difficulties, endures pains, and wins successes\nwhere the solemn and easily depressed would simply have given in and\nlain down.  You can safely prophesy that the man whom you hear singing\nas he goes through the valley, like the pilgrim that Bunyan's Christian\nheard, is going to get out of it safely and honourably in the end.  The\nLord Himself will deliver him, as He delights to deliver all those who\nface life smiling and unafraid, and meet His Fatherly discipline with a\nstout heart.\n\nCheerfulness, in other words, pays for oneself.  But it is also a great\nblessing to others.  One very safe and sure way to help our fellows up\ntheir hills is to breast our own as bravely and gaily as we can.  And\nthe cheerfulness which heals and blesses like the breath of morning is\nthat which shows up against a background of cloud and trouble.  Let us\nall in this year of war and clean courage, register a vow that we shall\ntake a leaf out of our soldiers' book, and think less about our own\ntroubles, teach our lips to smile when things are wrong, and keep our\neyes wider open for trouble's danger signals among our friends.  It's a\nsimple way of doing good, but a very effective one.  For cheerfulness,\nlike mercy, is twice blessed.  It blesseth him that has, and him that\nsees!\n\n    \"It was only a glad Good Morning\n      As she passed along the way,\n    But it spread the morning's glory\n      Over the livelong day.\"\n\n\nBut cheerfulness needs its explanation.  It implies something.  A man is\nnot cheerful without some underlying philosophy of life to sustain him,\nsome pillar of faith or hope at his back.  When a man faces life\ndauntless and smiling, he does so because some inward and, it may even\nbe, unconscious faith or hope thus finds its expression.  What that\nfaith is, different men will describe in different ways.\n\nBut however much the descriptions vary, it all comes back to this in the\nend, that the man who is living bravely and cheerfully is expressing by\nhis conduct at any rate his faith in the Fatherhood and good Providence\nof God.  He knows that \"God's in His Heaven\"; at any rate he believes\nso.  He believes that things do not just fall out by chance, but that a\nFather Hand controls all, and a Father Heart cares even for the\nsparrow's unheeded fall.  The God who rules all makes no mistakes.\n\nAnd is not that a cardinal part of the faith which Jesus brings near to\nall who are learning of Him?  There are various adjectives used to\nqualify the title Christian.  One hears, for example, of \"earnest\nChristians,\" and earnestness is a very necessary quality, even though\none does occasionally happen upon \"earnest Christians\" who are rather\nunlovable and irritating people.  But there's another adjective, not\nnearly so common--and yet it denotes a quality just as essential in\nthose who have taken Christ's gospel of God's Love and Fatherhood to\ntheir hearts--namely, cheerful.  A \"cheerful Christian.\"  Let us all try\nto be that kind of Christian at least.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\n\"The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns\nand duties.  Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with\nlaughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry.  Give us\nto go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our resting\nbeds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the\ngift of sleep.  Amen.\"\n\n  R. L. STEVENSON.\n\n\n\n\"(Jeremiah dwelt among the\npeople that were left in the\nland.(\"\n  (JEREMIAH xl. 6.)\n\n\n                                  XIII\n\n                        THE OVERCOMING OF PANIC\n\nOnce upon a time Jeremiah the prophet had asked for only one thing, that\nhe might get away from that strange cityful of perverse men to whom it\nwas his hard lot to be the mouthpiece of a God they were forgetting.  He\nwas tired of them.  \"O that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of\nwayfaring men that I might leave my people and go from them.\"\n\nWell, time passed on.  The people got no wiser, and Jeremiah's burden\ncertainly got no lighter.  But the very chance he prayed for came.  He\nhad a clear and honourable opportunity to go to the lodge in the\nwilderness, or anywhere else he liked, away from the men who had\ndisowned his teaching.  His work was done apparently, and he had failed.\nYet with the door standing invitingly open, see what Jeremiah did!  He\n\"went and dwelt among the people that were left in the land.\" He had his\nchance and he did not take it!\n\nWe all know something of this desire to get rid of a present hard duty,\nor a difficult environment, or a perplexing problem.  And yet I wonder,\nif the way were similarly opened up for us, how many would seize the\nopportunity?  I believe that the feature of such a situation would just\nbe the large number of us who, when it came to the pinch, would choose\nas Jeremiah did, to remain where we are!  Something would hold us back.\n\nYet the desire itself is natural enough, and a man need neither be a\ncoward nor a weakling who confesses to it.  The hours when the daily\nround seems altogether flat and unprofitable, and when one would gladly\nchange places with almost anybody, are real hours in life, and it is no\nshame to have known them.  But between that knowledge and the actual\nescape, the actual fleeing from one's post, there is a great gulf fixed\nthat, for very many with any high ideal of duty, is impassable.  For,\nthough a man has known the state of mind that looks for some back door\nout of a depressing situation, he has had the other experience also, the\njoy of self-mastery, the keen sense of pleasure that comes to him when\nhe discovers that his surroundings do not count for so much as he\nhimself does.  That experience, though it be only in memory, will stand\nbetween a man and retreat.  He has conquered before, and the thrill of\nvictory over material discouragements may be his again.  And so, though\nthe way of escape be open, he will choose to remain and fight it out.\n\nSometimes the mere weight of his responsibility may tempt a man to wish\nthat he might escape.  There is a fairly well-known symptom of nervous\ndisease whose name signifies the fear of being shut in, when the patient\ndreads the experience of being in any closed place.  Sometimes a moral\npanic of that kind comes to a man when he realises that he is shut in\nwith some duty which must be gone through with.  With something of the\ninstinct of the trapped animal he may look round for a way of escape.\n\nYet does that mean that he would take the chance deliberately, with eyes\nfull open to the consequences, if it were offered?  I think not.\n\nYou can apply the test to yourself.  Have you ever accepted some\nresponsibility, and then, when the occasion came nearer, backed out of\nit for no other reason than that you were afraid?  If you have, you will\nperhaps remember whether you felt proud of yourself, whether, beneath\nthe undoubted relief, there was not a good deal of quiet shame and\nself-scorn.  If the same thing were to happen again, you might feel the\nimpulse to desert, but if you remembered your former experience, you\nwould hardly yield to it, I imagine.\n\nThe plain truth is that no proper man really likes a soft job.  \"In the\nlong run,\" says J. A. Symonds, \"we really love the sternest things in\nlife best.\"  And he speaks truth.  There is a certain exhilaration in\nthe endurance of hardness.  Responsibility braces most men like a shock\nof cold water.  What is arduous calls them as with a trumpet.  And in\nthe general sense of quiet contempt for the person who in a panic flings\nup his responsibility, we may recognise one of God's elementary checks\nupon cowardice.\n\nThere are those who are reading these words who are enduring hardness\nand making sacrifices from which they might easily escape.  They do at\ntimes desire relief.  But the point is that they don't take it, when it\nis possible.  And I say there must be some reason for this.  What is it\nthat holds men back from the easy way when it stands open before them?\n\nFor one thing, I think, the sense of the place that hardness and effort\nand endurance play in every true life.  For centuries men have climbed\nup to strength of character, if at all, by ways uniformly arduous and\nsteep; and distrust of the primrose path, however alluring, has passed\nas an instinct into our blood.  In the small unheroic affairs of life we\nhave learned that a difficulty faced and overcome, or a duty doggedly\nfulfilled, add a precious something to experience that there is no other\nway of securing.  The schoolboy on a hot summer day may look up from his\ntask, away out wistfully to the cool shade of the trees across the\nplayground, and wish that he were there, rather than where he is.  Yet\neven he knows, what we all come to learn, that that is not the road to\nanything in life worth the gaining.\n\nAnother deterring impulse is the sense of a divine vocation.  Our\ncalling and circumstances are ordained for us by God, and we must not\nquit the field till the day is done.  It is He who has chosen our lot in\nlife and summoned us to the sphere we fill.\n\nWe may succeed or fail as seems to Him best.  Sometimes he places men,\nfor reasons of His own, in corners where success, as commonly measured,\nis not possible.  But one thing--success or failure--we must not do. We\nmust not shirk.  We must not run away.  God means us to stand fast and\ndo our best.  For failure even, if it be honourable, He may have His\ngood word at the last.  But to the man who has shirked life's hard\nduties, not even God can say, \"Well done!\"\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nLord of our life, and God of our salvation, make us strong to endure\nhardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.  Thou sendest no man a\nwarfare upon his own charges.  In dependence on Thy help, grant us grace\nto do each duty, as the hour and Thy will may bring it.  And, with Thy\nfear in our hearts, grant us deliverance from all other fears whatever.\nFor Thy Name's sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Whatsoever ye do, do all_\n_to the glory of God._\"\n  (1 CORINTHIANS x. 31.)\n\n\n                                  XIV\n\n                             THE DAY'S DARG\n\nIt is never hard to connect the presence of our Lord and Master Jesus\nChrist with our Sabbaths and our hours of worship.  If ever Christ comes\nnear us in spirit at all, we say, it is when in the quiet of the\nsanctuary we reach out hands of prayer and desire to Him.  The link\nbetween our worship and our Lord is strong and obvious.  But, when the\ndin of business shuts out all else, when the hard, toilsome duty of the\nordinary day is to be done, when we are at work amid surroundings that\nhave no suggestion of sacredness or of God about them--what of the link\nwith Christ then?  It is much harder then, is it not? to imagine any\nthinkable and workable connection that our Lord has with that sphere of\nlife, broad and extensive as it is.  There are many indeed who forget\nthat there is any, and live as if there were none.  And yet the solemn\ntruth is that if that link is not strong and real, we don't know what\nreligion means.  We have hardly the right to call ourselves Christian\nmen and women unless we can relate our week-day labours to the fact of\nChrist.\n\nSo let us try to strengthen that link.  Let us look at our daily work in\nthe light of religion.\n\nFirst, let me remind you that our work is by divine commandment.  It is\nnot something that God allows us to do when we are not worshipping.  It\nis His ordinance that we should all work at something.  The business of\nlife is labour of some sort.  I do not know if we all realise how the\nFourth Commandment begins--\"Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy\nwork.\"  And the man who is inexcusably idle, or who belittles his work,\neven in the interest, as he thinks, of religion, is breaking this\ncommandment as truly as he who neglects the other half of it and\ndishonours the Sabbath day.\n\nNo one will accuse the Apostle Paul of any indifference or lukewarmness\nwhere true religion was concerned.  Yet it was this Apostle who ordered\nthe Thessalonians to go on with their daily occupations even though they\nbelieved, as so many did at that time, that the Return of the Lord to\nearth was just at hand.  By our daily work we serve the Lord as truly as\nwhen we gather to His worship.  Let us get out of our heads, then, the\nfalse and foolish idea that all the working part of our week is the part\nat which God looks askance.  Man's chief end is to glorify God, and one\nof the ways of doing that is by being loyal to the duties of each hour\nwhatever they may be.\n\nSecondly, I would ask you to think of those quiet, unrecorded years of\nour Lord's life on earth before His public ministry.  The Gospels give\nno details, but the fact is perfectly certain that up till His thirtieth\nyear Jesus of Nazareth worked at His trade as a carpenter. If only we\nwould let that fact soak into us, it would alter our whole idea of the\nrelation of our daily work to religion.  Jesus worked Himself.\n\nAnd we have, as has been pointed out, interesting indirect proof as to\nwhat manner of life He lived on those workaday levels that we all know\nso much about.  For, to this Carpenter of Nazareth there came a day\nwhen, in Nazareth itself, He stood forth as representative of a morality\nand religion higher than ever was proclaimed before.  He spoke to men\nabout the true way to live like one having authority.  And there were\nmany who so resented what they deemed His presumption that anything that\nreflected on His claims or belittled His authority would gladly have\nbeen seized upon and made the most of.  Had there been in Nazareth a bit\nof botched work of His doing, \"a door of unseasoned wood or a badly made\nchest,\" don't you think it would have been produced to discredit His\nmission?  If any one could have been found with whom the Carpenter had\nnot dealt honourably and justly, if, as He walked the streets of His\nnative town and lived His humble daily life in the sight of all men,\nthere had been anything that weakened His claim to guide and teach His\nbrethren, don't you think they would have found it out and taxed Him\nwith it?\n\nThere was nothing of that.  Jesus faced His fellows with His daily duty\nbehind Him, and it reinforced every word He said.  His message to men\nwas backed up by His daily life.  He spoke of religion as no other son\nof man ever did, but He lived it long before He ever opened His mouth.\nHe brought religion down to the workshop and the street, and showed men\nwhat it meant there.  And unless He had done that, it is difficult to\nconceive that His public ministry of itself would have satisfied men\nthat He was indeed One sent from God.\n\nDo you see, then, from this point of view, what a great and vital part\nof religion our day's work is, and the way we do it, our life at home,\nour ordinary contact with our fellow-men?  It is that that gives weight\nto any profession we may make.  If in our daily life we are not\nexhibiting our religion, nothing that we can profess or say on Sunday\nwill make up for that defect.  It is what we are on Monday and Tuesday\nthat underlines and emphasises the claims we make at church on the\nSunday.  Behind all our prayer and profession lies the everyday life.\n\nThird, our daily work is sanctified by the fact that our Lord and Master\nis with us, to help and strengthen us there, as truly as when we pray.\nJesus Christ is not far away, as we so pitifully misconceive it, amid\nthe dust of business, when we must keep our temper and follow conscience\nalong the hard way and deal honourably with all men.  He is near us\nthere also, ready and willing to help us to be true to God and man on\nthat road which once He trod Himself.\n\nThere is a famous unwritten saying of Christ which puts memorably what\nthe Gospels likewise testify.  \"Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me.\nCleave the wood and there am I.\"  Christ is as near us in our daily work\nas that!  When Peter and his friends went a-fishing, you remember, with\nheavy hearts because the Master had gone away from them, He met them by\nthe lake as they plied their ordinary calling.  So does He wait, my\nbrother, to meet you and me wherever the duty of the hour may take us.\nFor our working life is not outside of His interest nor out with His\ncare and guidance.  With reverent imagination Van Dyke has seemed to\nhear the Christ speak thus--and the words may perhaps further weld the\nlink for some of us between our everyday duty and the Christ whom we\nworship and seek to serve:\n\n    \"They who tread the path of labour follow where My feet have\n    trod;\n    They who work without complaining do the holy will of God.\n    Where the many toil together, there am I among my own;\n    Where the tired workman sleepeth, there am I with Him alone.\n    I, the peace that passeth knowledge, dwell amid the daily\n    strife,\n    I, the bread of heaven, am broken in the sacrament of life.\n    Every task, however simple, sets the soul that does it free,\n    Every deed of love and mercy done to man is done to Me.\n    Nevermore thou needest seek Me; I am with thee everywhere--\n    Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me, cleave the wood and I am\n    there.\"\n\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nOur Lord and Master, whose command it is that we do with our whole heart\nwhatsoever our hand findeth to do, grant that we may so yield and\nsurrender ourselves, body, mind and spirit, unto Thee, that even in the\ncommon business of each ordinary day we may serve Thee and glorify Thy\ngreat Name.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Gashmu saith it._\"\n  (NEHEMIAH vi. 6.)\n\n\n                                   XV\n\n                           GASHMU THE GOSSIP\n\nGashmu is a mere name in Scripture.  He is mentioned only three\ntimes--twice as acting with Sanballat against Nehemiah, and once as the\nauthority for a false piece of news.  It is reported, wrote Sanballat in\na cruel letter to Nehemiah, that you are plotting against the king, and\n\"Gashmu saith it.\"  That is what Gashmu stands for in Scripture, a\ntale-bearer, a slanderer, a gossip.  What an unenviable immortality to\nbe remembered only as the pedlar of a tale he knew to be untrue!\n\nAs long as we live together in society, there will be a kind of gossip\nthat is inevitable, the kindly or merely casual relation of small and\ninsignificant matters of fact, as that the painters are in next door, or\nthat Mrs So-and-So has got a new bonnet.  It is not of that I want to\nspeak.\n\nFor there is another sort as deadly as the plague, and in civilised\ncountries the cruellest and most devilish instrument that one man or\nwoman can use against another.  And that is the inventing of an untrue\nreport about a man's doings or character, or the unthinking repetition\nof the same.  That is the pestilence that walketh in darkness; that is\nthe destruction that wasteth at noonday.  And I wish I had the pen to\nwrite of it as it deserves.\n\nIt is very, very common.  We are all too ready to repeat what we have\nheard, with a \"Gashmu saith it,\" as if that certified the tale correct.\nAnd the harm done is simply incalculable.  If my house is burned or I\nlose my money, I can still get along by the kindness of my friends for a\nlittle, till I find my feet again.  But whoever by some lying story\ntakes away my character, deals me a blow from which there is no\nrecovering, which my loyalest friends can do nothing to avert.  I have\nno redress, no compensation, and no help.  Any one may be a victim, and\nyou and I, by thoughtlessly passing on the deadly thing, may all\nunconsciously be driving another nail into a man's coffin.\n\nDid you ever lie awake at night and think that even now the cancer may\nhave begun on YOUR good name, that whispers may be going about among\nyour friends concerning you?  Those who know you will hear it, and will\nsay, It's a lie!  But that won't stop it.  And you will never know till\nsome day you waken up and find that your reputation is in danger.  And\nnot one word or vestige of truth may be in it.  It may be a lie pure and\nsimple, or a colourable counterfeit of some quite innocent truth. That\nwon't make any difference.  It is enough merely to start it, and, like a\nstone thrown down an Alpine slope, it gathers others in its train, till\nan avalanche swoops down on some unsuspecting head.\n\nWhen King Arthur enrolled his Knights of the Round Table, he made them\ntake the oath to \"speak no slander.\"  And there is a knightly chivalry\nof speech which ought to be the mark of all those who have promised\nfealty to Jesus Christ.  Our discipleship of Jesus demands of us the\nhigh endeavour to love our neighbour as ourselves, and that presupposes,\nas one of its consequences, that we guard his name against false witness\nas carefully as we protect our own.  If we hear a good story about some\none, a report that is to his credit and honour, let us blazon that\nabroad.  We are all far too slow at that, and somehow the tale that is a\nlittle damaging has a far easier and more rapid circulation.  Might we\nnot make more of our brother's successes?  Might we not oftener repeat\nabout him what he is too modest ever to say about himself?  It were a\ntrue and kindly Christian act.  But never, as we call ourselves servants\nof Christ, never do our brother such a grievous irreparable wrong as to\nstart about him a tale which may not be true. God can and will forgive\nyou your sins of speech.  But even He cannot make clean the character\nwhich a foolish word has sullied.\n\nKing Arthur went further, however, than demanding that his knights\nshould speak no slander.  Their vow included the words, \"no, nor listen\nto it.\"  And that is a high and difficult course to keep.  It is not\neasy, when you are being told of something that is striking or\nsensational of a merely gossipy character, to stop the conversation and\nlead it into other channels.  It requires great courage and as great\ntact.  But how many of us ever try it?\n\nIf, however, the refusal to listen be regarded as a counsel of\nperfection, there remains yet the further injunction--never REPEAT the\ngossip you have heard.  That at least is homely and possible.\n\nWe used to read in our book of Fables of the lamb that noticed this\nsignificant thing about the track that led to the lion's den--that all\nthe footprints pointed inwards, but there were none returning. \"Vestigia\nnulla retrorsum.\"  No footprints backwards.  It would be a good motto\nfor us all.  Let the stories, the ill-humoured, unkind, uncharitable\nsayings that float and wander about everywhere, let them come to us as\nthey will, but let the traces end there.  Be such a person that men may\ntrace a story from its source down the chain TO you, but never PAST you.\n\nWe can do that much at least for our friends.  All about us is the\nconstant, unquiet drift of gossip and distorted half-truth, as restless\nas the sand in the desert, dancing and whirling with every puff of wind.\nWe can do something to arrest that drift.  We can be for our friends in\nsome measure what Isaiah said that God's Servant, when He came, should\nbe, the shadow of a great Rock in a weary land, stopping the drift of\nthe sand, and sheltering our friends by our loyalty and our silence.\n\nDon't even repeat the gossip that comes to you, not only for the strong\nreason already given, but also for this little one, that you won't\nlikely repeat it correctly.  With all the will in the world, it is one\nof the hardest things to retail a story just exactly as you heard it.\nSir Walter Scott, speaking about anecdotes that he had heard, said he\nalways liked to cock up their bonnets a bit and put a staff in their\nhands that they might walk on a little brisker and sprightlier than when\nthey came to him!  But we all do that, without meaning to do it at all.\nWe add a little bit.  We exaggerate just the tiniest fraction, and our\nhearer when he repeats the story does the same, and so the matter grows\ntill it is big enough to do much mischief.\n\n    \"A Whisper broke the air,\n      A soft light tone and low,\n      Yet barbed with shame and woe.\n    Now, might it only perish there,\n        Nor further go!\n\n    Ah me!  A quick and eager ear\n      Caught up the little meaning sound;\n    Another voice has breathed it clear,\n      And so it wandered round,\n    From ear to lip, from lip to ear,\n      Until it reached a gentle heart,\n        And that--it broke.\"\n\n\nThere is a legend that once a king avoided death in a poisoned cup that\nhad been handed to him by making over it the sign of the Cross--when it\nbroke in pieces at his feet.  Let us, when we are tempted to retail the\nvivid, poisonous piece of scandal, stop and invoke the Spirit of Christ.\nIs this that I am going to say about my brother the kind of thing I\nshould say if Christ were standing by?  Am I justified in turning over\nthat bit of gossip which may be true, but which ought not to be true?\nOur duty, who profess and call ourselves Christians, is clear.  We are\nto speak no slander no, nor listen to it.  We are to retail evil about\nno man.  We are to love one another.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, whose command it is that we love our neighbour as\nourselves, help us to cherish and protect his good name as carefully as\nwe guard our own.  Make us more willing to repeat the good about him,\nbut slower to retail or exaggerate the evil.  Grant us all a deeper\nsense of the deadly wrong a foolish tongue can work, and keep Thou the\ndoor of our lips.  For Thy Name's sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Thou preventest him with_\n_the blessings of goodness._\"\n  (PSALM xxi. 3.)\n\n\n                                  XVI\n\n                              GOD IN FRONT\n\nYou know how, in a happy home, the near approach of a birthday is\nsignalised, how parcels are mysteriously smuggled in and hidden in\nsecret places, and, though everything seems to be going on as usual, yet\nthe plans are being laid in train that will surprise and delight the\nfortunate owner of the birthday when the festal day dawns.  That is our\nfeeble, human way of trying to surprise one another with the blessings\nof goodness.  That is how we \"prevent\" our beloved with tokens of our\nremembrance.  So, says the Psalmist, does God deal with us.  Not only\nhave we--what we so much need--His forgiveness of our past, and His help\nand presence for the day which now is; He is working for us in the\nfuture too, sowing the days to come with blessings for us to pick up\nwhen the passage of time brings us to the places where He has hidden\nthem.\n\nThe idea that God has been beforehand in our history, getting ready, as\nit were, for our coming, though not a very usual one, is very helpful,\nand it finds abundant illustration and proof in all directions.  When a\nchild arrives on this earth, he enters into the enjoyment of bounties\nand blessings prepared, not merely weeks, but literally ages before his\ncoming.  Warmth he needs, and aeons ago the coal beds were formed in the\nbowels of the earth.  Food he needs, and God \"laboured for ages,\" as Sir\nOliver Lodge puts it, to bring corn into existence.  For corn needs\nsoil, and, to make that, the Creator had to set the glaciers grinding\nover the granite, and to loosen the forces of rain and frost and running\nwater over great stretches of time.\n\nEvery child born into the world becomes the heir of all the ages past.\nWhat blessings have been prepared for most of us, in advance, in the\nhomes into which we were born, and the gracious influences under which\nwe have grown up!  \"I have to thank the gods,\" says Marcus Aurelius the\npagan Emperor, \"that my grandfathers, parents, sisters, preceptors,\nrelations, friends and domestics were almost all of them persons of\nprobity.\"  \"I have to thank the gods.\"  Who else is there to thank but\nGod who prevents us in this way with the blessings of goodness?  God is\nworking beforehand in our interest in all these things.  So, when we\nawaken to a sense of Him, there is His Church, established of old,\nawaiting to take us by the hand and help us on our way.  When we learn\nour need of a Saviour, behold Christ stands at the door and knocks.\nWhen, in penitence of heart, we ask God's mercy, we learn that, long\nsince, it was laid up in store for us.  Before we thought of loving God,\nHe first loved us, and gave Himself for us in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Is\nit not gloriously true all the way along that God has been beforehand\nwith His goodness?\n\nAnd that, of course, is the explanation of all the glad surprises of\nlife.  The Lord has prepared them for us beforehand.  He has sown the\nfuture with good things and watched our surprise as we picked them up.\nWhen Mary Mardon and her father, in Mark Rutherford's \"Autobiography,\"\nwent to the seaside to look for lodgings they saw a dismal row of very\nplain-looking houses.  Mary objected instinctively to the dull street,\nbut her father said he could not afford to pay for a sea view, so they\nwent in to inquire.  To their delight they found that what they thought\nwere the fronts of the houses were really the backs, for the real fronts\nfaced the bay, had pretty gardens before the doors, and a glorious sunny\nprospect over the ocean.  Isn't that what we often find to be the case?\nOur most treasured friends are not always those whom we fall in love\nwith at first sight.  The thing we greatly fear dissolves like mist.  An\nenvied, but despaired-of, blessing is flung into our lap.  A door of\nsplendid hope opens in a dead wall.  Life is full of the unexpected as\nif wonder were one of the things God wanted very much to keep alive in\nus.  When, as you think, everything has been exhausted, God surprises\nyou with a fresh gladness.  And, aback of all, there is the unending\nsurprise of God's patience with us, and of that daily mercy of His,\nwhich we so ill requite, and so often forget.\n\nOf course, no one dreams of suggesting that all our surprises are of a\nhappy sort.  It is not so.  But the point is that if it is God who has\nhidden the blessings for us to come upon, it is He also who has hidden\nthe other things.  God's hand does not slip so that we get the wrong\nparcel by accident.  He prevents us also with the blessings that we do\nnot call by that name at all.  In his Lay Sermons, Huxley, describing\nthe tadpole in its slimy cradle, says: \"After watching the process hour\nafter hour, one is almost possessed by the notion that some more subtle\naid to vision than an achromatic object-glass would show the hidden\nartist with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to\nperfect his work.\"  If, in that wonderful fashion, God is working\nbeforehand according to a plan of His own, in the life of a tadpole, is\nit not much more likely that He is so working in your life and mine, not\nin its joys only, but also in its dark hours and its sorrows? That,\nindeed, is the very message and comfort of the Lord Jesus Christ, that\nnot even a sparrow falleth to the ground--calamity indeed for the\nsparrow--without our Father.\n\nIf it be true that God our Father is working in advance of us all the\ntime, then surely it is wrong to speak of the monotony of life?  For we\nare on a road which God Himself has sown with surprises for us, and the\nhour of our deadliest weariness may be the immediate percursor of our\nrichest and most joyous find.  Who could have supposed, at the end of\nthe eighteenth century, when poetry in England seemed dead, that a great\ngalaxy of stars--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats--was on\nthe very eve of rising?  The unexpected can always happen.  You may come\nupon another of God's hidden blessings to-morrow. Let us not talk of\nmonotony, therefore, in an age which has seen so many wonderful things\nhappen.  Rather let us hold to the faith that all the while God is going\nbefore us with the blessings of goodness.\n\nThis faith puts another complexion on all our fears and forebodings.\nBefore we live it, the web of our life passes through God's hands.  And\nthe shaded parts, as well as the bright parts, are in His wise and\nloving design.  Nobody can promise us freedom from sorrow, but the Bible\npromises that God is beforehand to make the sorrow bearable.  He has\nadjusted our temptations to our strength, and never a one has He hidden,\nwhere we come upon it, that it is impossible for us by His help to\nwithstand.  Before the mother puts her little child into his hot bath at\nnight, she tests the water first with her fingers.  And the Psalmist\nmeans us to believe that life comes to us from God, who has measured and\nadapted it for us, beforehand, in a like fashion.\n\nViewed in the light of this faith, Death itself takes on a different\naspect.  Oliver Wendell Holmes has suggested that the story of this life\nand the next can be fully written in two strokes of the pen, an\ninterrogation-point, and, above it, a mark of exclamation--fear and\nquestion here below, and, above, adoration, wonder, surprise.  \"I go to\nprepare a place for you,\" said Christ to His disciples.  If the\npreparation for us here is so wonderful, is it likely to fail yonder? If\nLove made ready for us here, shall it not be beforehand there too? Yea,\nverily.  Our experience of how God prevents us here with His loving\nkindness ought to strengthen in us all the \"faith of our Lord Jesus\nChrist, and the saint's trust in every age, that when we pass hence it\nwill be to meet the grandest, the most blessed, and the most surprising\nprovision of all.\"\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nOur Father in Heaven, we shall not be afraid of what life may hold for\nus when we have learned that our little web has first passed through Thy\nmerciful and loving hands.  We have often prayed that Thou wouldest go\nwith us; but Thou hast answered us beyond our asking, for Thou goest\nbefore us all.  In the faith of that leading, make us to journey bravely\nand to sleep secure.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Fight the good fight of faith._\"\n  (1 TIMOTHY vi. 12.)\n\n\n                                  XVII\n\n                         \"UNBELIEF KEPT QUIET\"\n\nWe are often told that this is not an age of faith, that the day of the\nbeautiful, old, simple acquiescence is past, whether it ever comes again\nor not.  Some one has wittily suggested that the coat of arms of the\npresent age is \"an interrogation-point rampant, above three bishops\ndormant, and the motto 'Query.'\"  But, like a great many more witty\nthings, that saying leaves one questioning whether, after all, it be\nreally true.  I venture, for my part, to assert that a great many more\npeople are really interested in this matter of faith than most of us\nimagine.  There is something that haunts men as with a sense of hidden\ntreasure about this wonderful thing in life called Faith, that always\nseems to be going to disappear, and yet somehow does not.  With a\nstrange, wistful persistence men linger about this pool, though there\nare many to tell them that the \"desired angel bathes no more.\"\n\nI wish to speak a word of encouragement to-day to all who are finding\nfaith hard.  \"Fight the good fight of faith,\" says Paul to his young\nfriend, Timothy.  Fight.  I want to remind you that faith often implies\neffort, that there is nothing in the idea of faith which is incompatible\nwith struggle, that the very form of Paul's advice implies an\nantagonism.\n\nIt is true that many think of the \"faith of the saints\" as a quiet,\ncontented habit of gentle acquiescence, a sweet and beautiful state of\nmind very far removed from the restless, questioning, analytic temper of\nthe man of to-day.  Now, I do not say that faith is never seen now in\nthat placid form, but I do say that that was not the type Paul had in\nmind when he wrote Timothy, it is not the figure which best described\nhis own faith, and it is certainly not the aspect he would require to\ndeal with, were he writing to the men of to-day.\n\nFor they are only too conscious of much inward suspense of judgment and\nuncertainty concerning many things in Heaven and earth.  And that inward\nconflict seems to many of them a sign that faith is waning, if not dead.\nThey have forgotten that it is that very sense of inward conflict which\nproves that faith is not dead.  Dead things do not offer any resistance.\nWe ought by this time to have learned that a thing \"may be for us an\nintellectual puzzle, and yet a sheer spiritual necessity,\" and that the\nChristian faith is, for every soul who has once caught it.  There are a\ngreat many earnest and honest men to whom it is the best of news that\nChristian faith is not incompatible with very grave perplexities.  The\nreal opposite of faith is not doubt, as so many suppose, but deliberate\nand satisfied denial.  Faith can live in the same life along with very\nmany doubts--as a matter of fact, in the case of not a few of the most\nChrist-like men of our time, it is living beside them constantly.  Paul\nassures us that outside of him he found fightings and within him he\nfound fears.  Yet he kept the faith for all that.  They start up on all\nsides, these spectres of the mind and reason, and they ask questions\nwhich a man cannot answer.  Yet Faith may be dwelling in his life in\nvery deed and truth, because faith is something more than the sum of all\nhis beliefs.  It is the whole conscious and deliberate set and desire of\nhis being.\n\nIt is a well-known fact that a man may be truly courageous, acting,\nspeaking, thinking bravely at the very moment when panic fears are\ngripping his heart.  I like that fine old story of the soldier advancing\ninto the fire zone with steady step, and taunted by a comrade for his\npale face.  \"You're afraid,\" said the other.  \"I know I am afraid,\" said\nhe, \"and if you felt half as much afraid as I do, you would turn and\nflee.\"  It is the very finest courage that dominates and controls a\nsensitive organisation, and holds the shrinking other-half to its\npurpose with firm grip.  Just so is it with faith.  A man keeps his\ncourse, lifts up his eyes to the hills, lives for God and His Christ,\nprays on, struggles on, and hopes for the home beyond the edge of life,\nwhile often enough his mind is full of questioning and the puzzle of\nGod's deep mysteries.  For faith is not what the intellect says merely.\nIt is what the whole man is struggling and trying to say.\n\n    \"With me, faith means perpetual unbelief\n    Kept quiet, like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,\n    Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.\"\n\nDon't do yourself the wrong of thinking that faith has vanished because\nthe snake is felt to be writhing.  \"Perpetual unbelief kept quiet.\" Yes,\nbut what keeps the clamouring doubts and fears under foot?  Just\nyourself, just your highest self, the bit of you made for God, and\nunable to do without Him!  Faith is the vote of the whole man, of the\nbest of the man, in the face of a protesting minority.  In other words,\nfight is a splendid word to use in speaking about faith.\n\nLet a man ask himself--Does he really wish that the best he has dreamed\nor heard about God and His love for men, His passion to deliver them\nfrom evil, and His pity and nearness to us all in Jesus Christ His\nSon--does he wish all that to be true?  No man is without faith who does\nwish that, and is living in the direction of his desire.  In that man's\nlife who, despite all the clamour and philosophy of Babylon, is keeping\nhis window open towards where he believes Jerusalem to be, there is that\nvital element of faith that is linking his life to God even now, and\nwill bring him where he would be at last.\n\nI do not think that the prodigal was at all sure of the welcome that\nawaited him.  Probably his mind, as he limped along in his rags, was\nfull of misgivings and fears.  But the father hailed him as his son\nwhenever he saw afar off that the lad's face was set for home.  I do not\nimagine our Father will concern Himself very much about the gaps in our\ncreed if only our faces are turned homewards and towards Him.  Let the\nman I have tried to speak to be of good courage, and fight on with a\nstout heart.  Faith is not sight.  It may not even be assurance, may be\nonly hope and longing, and a reaching towards the Highest.  But I firmly\nbelieve that no man, even though he may fall on the way home, and before\nhe knows of his welcome, I believe that no man shall be cast out at the\nlast, whose arms, as he fell, were outstretched in desire to God.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, Author and Finisher of our faith, help us with all our\nstrength to fight the good fight.  When our defence is being broken, do\nThou garrison our souls, O God, that we may be able to stand in the evil\nday, and, having done all, to stand.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord.\nAmen.\n\n\n\n\"_The joy of the Lord is your strength._\"\n  (NEHEMIAH viii. 10.)\n\n\n                                 XVIII\n\n                          THE EQUIPMENT OF JOY\n\nLet us talk about joy, and especially that kind of it of which Nehemiah\nwas thinking when he said, \"The joy of the Lord is your strength.\"  It\nis strange that while practically everybody would agree as to the\nwholesomeness and the duty of joy in the ordinary sense of the term, to\nadd the words \"of the Lord\" to it, seems, to some, completely to alter\nits character and in fact to spoil it, to turn it into an unreal sort of\njoy which is not true joy at all.\n\nI wish emphatically to protest against such a conception of religious\njoy as an injustice to the Father Love of God.  The joy of the Lord, as\nI understand it, is not different in quality from wholesome human\ngladness, it is, in fact, just that gladness deepened and sanctified by\nthe sense of God, and the knowledge of Him brought to us by Jesus Christ\nour Lord.  There is not a single innocent and pure source of gladness\nopen to men and women on this earth but is made to taste sweeter when\nthey have opened their hearts to the love of God.  It is the very crown\nof happy living that is reached when a man can say, \"My Lord and my\nGod.\"  Once I have dared to accept the wonderful truth that even for me\nthe Eternal Father has His place and His plan and His care, every\nsimplest happiness, every common joy of living, every delight in the\nbeauty of the world and the pleasures of home and work and\nfriendship--every one of these takes on a keener edge.  It is a\npestilent heresy to declare that a Christian ought to walk through life\nlike a man with a hidden sickness.  On the contrary, there is no one who\nhas a better right to be joyous and happy-hearted.  Do you think it is\nfor nothing that the \"joy of our salvation\" is a Bible phrase?  And\nshall we believe that that salvation is ours and not be mighty glad\nabout it all the time?  What is the good of translating \"Gospel\" as\n\"good news\" and at the same time living as if religion were a bondage\nand a burden grievous to be borne?  Of all the strange twists of human\nconvention, it is surely the strangest to allow ordinary human joy to be\nhappy and cheerful, and to insist that those whose joy is in the Lord\nshould pull a long face, and forswear laughter, and crawl along\ndolefully as if to the sound of some dirge!  The \"morning face and the\nmorning heart\" belong of right to the truly religious, and no one ought\nto be gladder, come what may, than the man who has made the highest and\nbest disposal of his little life that any one can make, namely,\nsurrendered it in faith and obedience to his Lord.\n\nA gloomy, ponderous, stiff religion which looks askance at innocent\nmerriment and is afraid to pull a long breath of enjoyment has the mark\nof \"damaged goods\" on it somehow, and no one will take it off your\nhands.  It is not catching, and certainly your children will never catch\nit.  It is said to be a good test of a religion that it can be preached\nat a street corner.  But I know a better test than that. Preach it to a\nchild.  Set him in the midst of those who profess it. If their religion\nfrightens him, freezes the smiles on his lips, and destroys his\nhappiness, depend upon it, whatever sort of religion it be, it lacks the\nessential winsomeness of the religion of Jesus Christ.\n\nI need not say, of course, that I am not pleading for a more hilarious\nreligious life.  And, equally of course, empty frivolity, and the cult\nof the continual grin are insufferable things to endure either in the\nname of religion or anything else.  Not by a single word would I lessen\nthe condemnation which such aberrations deserve.  But I do say, and with\nall my heart I believe that a deep, abiding well-spring of\nhappiness--which our author calls the \"joy of the Lord\"--is of the very\nessence of true religion, and is indeed, what he asserts it, actually\nour strength.  Actually our strength.  Let us be quite clear about that.\n\nThe man in whose heart there dwells this best of all joys is a strength\nto other people.  We don't need any one to prove that to us, I imagine.\nWe have all been helped and revived many a time merely by contact with\nsome hearty cheerful soul.  Who, for example, that had his choice, would\nelect for his family physician a man with a doleful air?  Have we not\nall found that a doctor's cheery manner was as potent a medicine as any\ndrug that he called by a Latin name?  Ay, and even when we are in\ntrouble, and our hearts are sad and sore, I think we would all rather\nsee the friend whose faith in God showed in a brave and buoyant outlook\nthan one whose religion was of the dowie and despondent sort.\n\nI have heard it said of an employee who had the gift of the joyous heart\nthat the twinkle of his eyes was worth L100 a year to his firm. I could\neasily believe it, though the money value might well have been set at\nany figure, seeing that the thing itself is really priceless. Did not\nthe most famous modern apostle of the duty of happiness--himself a\nsignal proof that joy is something more than the mere easy overflow of\nhealth and animal spirits--did not Stevenson declare that \"by being\nhappy we sow anonymous benefits,\" and that \"the entrance of such a\nperson into a room is as if another candle had been lighted?\"  I take it\nthe proof is ample that a joyous heart is a strength to others.\n\nBut more, it is a strength to oneself.  That may not be so obvious, and\nyet the result here is even more certain.  Ordinary experience tells us\nthat joy is good for us, that depression and gloom work us bodily harm.\nBut from one province of scientific study especially there has come a\nwonderful array of evidence that makes it as certain as any fact can be\nthat the happy states of mind do literally add to our strength in quite\nmeasurable directions.  There is, in strict fact, no tonic in all the\nworld like gladness.\n\nThat being so, joy, and especially the best kind of it of which Nehemiah\nspeaks, is not a luxury, not a condition you may legitimately cherish if\nyou are fortunate enough to possess it.  It is a sheer necessity.  You\ncan't do without it.  Even to meet your sorrows, even to gird you for\nservice, even to run your race without fainting, you need the joy of the\nLord, which is strength.  And since the Father has stored up such an\nabundant supply of it in this world of His, since it is knocking at our\ndoors every day, and only our distrust and suspicion keep it outside, we\nknow what to do to secure this good gift of God. We have only to open\nour doors to let it in, and give it room.\n\n      \"So take Joy home\n    And make a place in thy great heart for her,\n    And give her time to grow, and cherish her,\n    Then will she come and oft will sing to thee\n    When thou art working in the furrows--ay,\n    Or weeding in the sacred hour of dawn.\n    It is a comely fashion to be glad--\n    Joy is the grace we say to God.\"\n\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nHelp us, O God, beyond our poor and forgetful thanksgiving, to show\nforth the praise of Thy loving kindness by our joy and gladness.  For\nThy great grace and mercy toward us, and for all the gifts of Thy\nsleepless Providence, we offer Thee the joy of our hearts.  Accept our\noffering, we beseech Thee; forgive its scant measure, and teach us to be\nglad in Thee.  For Thy Name's sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_The God of Jacob is our refuge._\"\n  (PSALM xlvi. 11.)\n\n\n                                  XIX\n\n                      THE GOD OF THE UNLOVABLE MAN\n\nThere is a phrase which echoes through the Old Testament like the\nrefrain of some solemn music--the \"God of Jacob.\"  \"The God of Jacob,\"\nsays the 46th Psalmist, \"is our refuge.\"  Yet when you think of it, it\nis a strange title.  The \"God of Abraham\" you can understand, for\nAbraham was a great and faithful soul.  And the \"God of Isaac,\" also,\nfor Isaac was a saint.  But the \"God of Jacob\" is a combination of ideas\nof a very different sort.  For though, by God's grace, Jacob became a\nsaint in the end, it took much discipline and trouble to mould him into\na true godliness.  And, for the greater part of his life, and many of\nhis appearances on the stage of Scripture, his actions and ideals are\nnot such as to make us admire him very passionately.  We like Esau for\nall his faults, but we do not like Jacob for all his virtues.  There is\nsomething cold and calculating about Jacob that repels affection.  For\nall his religion, the Jacob of the earlier chapters is a mean soul,\nsuccessful but unscrupulous, pious but not straight, spiritually-minded\nbut not lovable.  And yet the Almighty condescends to be known as the\nGod of Jacob, and the Bible loves that name for God!\n\nWhat does that say to you?  To me it says this--and I think we all need\nto learn it--that God is the God even of unlovable people!  That even\nunlovable people have a God!  That the Lord is very gracious to sinners,\nwe all rejoice to believe, for that is the Evangel of Jesus, and He\nHimself was found practising it even among the waifs and outcasts of\nsociety.  But that unlovable people have a God, too, is actually harder\nfor us to realise, for the plain fact is that unlovable, disagreeable\npeople irritate and annoy us more even than the sinners.  If you\nquestion that, just analyse your attitude to the Prodigal in our Lord's\nwonderful story, compared with that toward his respectable, cold-hearted\nand priggish elder brother.  The brother irritates us.  We call him,\nwith some heat, as Henry Drummond did, a baby, and we want to shake him.\nBut we never want to shake the prodigal.\n\nNow, we all have, on our list of acquaintances, people whom we have\nlabelled disagreeable, who continually rub us the wrong way, as we put\nit.  There is the man who is always talking about himself, and is filled\nwith conceit like a bladder with air.  \"There is the man,\" says Hazlitt\nin one of his Essays, \"who asks you fifty questions as to the commonest\nthings you advance, and, you would sooner pardon a fellow who held a\npistol at your breast and demanded your money.\"  There is the\nill-tempered, sulky person, and the grumbling, whining, dolorous soul\nnever without an ache or a grievance.  So we can all draw up our own\nprivate \"Index Expurgatorius\" of the people we bar or dislike.  We say\nthese people are unlovable.\n\nAnd, since the corruption of the best is the worst, we are agreed that\nthe most unlovable of all types is the religious undesirable, the smug,\nunctuous, oily person, for example, whose sincerity is continually in\nquestion, the narrow, intolerant, little soul who cannot see any sort of\ntruth or righteousness except his own, or the prim and pious man who is\ncocksure of his interest in the life to come, but is not straight in the\naffairs of the life which now is.  There are others, but enumeration is\nnot a very profitable or a pleasant task.  Take them all together,\ngather them in a crowd in your memory, and then set yourself this\nexercise for your sanctification and growth in grace.  Realise that the\nLord your God is the God also of these unlovable people.  Get that idea\nthoroughly into your heart, and say it to yourself, if need be, many\ntimes a day.  These people look up to Him in worship just as you do.\nThey have their sacred hours in His presence just as you have. There is\nnothing you look for to God, that they do not seek, too, from Him.  They\nare not of a different order from you, but the same order. And though\nyou do not love them, God does.  Though they are outside of your circle,\nthey are not outside of His.  The God of Jacob is their God.  And\ntherein lies for them, as it did for Jacob, the hope and promise of\nbetter things to come.\n\nIf we remembered that, should we not be more patient and forbearing with\nthem than we are, keener to look for the best in them, and to make the\nbest of them than we are?  Just to think of what is meant by the \"God of\nJacob\" is to set our sharp and bitter judgments of others over against\nthe infinitely tender compassion and patience and longsuffering of God.\nAll the wonder of the divine grace is hidden in the phrase. And this is\nthe wonder--that God never grows tired even of disagreeable people.  He\ndoes not give up caring even for the unlovable.  But oh! what poor sons\nand daughters of the Lord Almighty _we_ are, with our quick, rash final\njudgments and our hard, unbrotherly hearts!\n\nDid you ever ask yourself what some of these unlovable people are doing,\nthe while you and I are telling each other how impossible and unlovable\nthey are?  George Eliot suggests it somewhere thus:--\"While we are\ncoldly discussing a man's career, sneering at his mistakes, and\nlabelling his opinions 'Evangelical and narrow' or 'Latitudinarian and\npantheistic,' or 'Anglican and supercilious,' that man in his solitude\nis perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one,\nbecause strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult\nword and do the difficult deed.\"  Ah, yes, it's a mercy that there is a\nGod even for unlovable people!\n\nBut there is a question that has been waiting all this time, and we must\nask it before we close.  _What about ourselves, you and me_?  Are we\nsuch lovable people that we can afford to judge others?  Do we never rub\nour friends the wrong way, and, without meaning it, annoy and disappoint\nand repel them?  Are _our_ religious profession and our daily practice\nso very much in keeping that we may talk about prigs and self-righteous\npeople as if they belonged to an entirely different world?  May I speak\nfor you all and say humbly \"No\"?  No, God knows they are not!  The fact\nis that if we know ourselves at all well, we must be aware that we have\nit in us to be quite as disagreeable and selfish and self-righteous as\nanybody.  It is only our best beloved who do not get tired of us, and\nsometimes even they must be hard put to it.\n\nBut there is a blessed Gospel for those who have made that discovery\nabout themselves.  There is a God of Jacob.  Abraham is too high for us,\nand Isaac is too saintly, but Jacob, faulty, disappointing, unlovable,\nyet by God's grace redeemed and perfected at last, Jacob is the man for\nus!  The hope and comfort of all who have learned what they really are\nis that \"the God of Jacob is our refuge.\"\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nBring us, we pray Thee, O God, into a truer knowledge of ourselves. Make\nus to learn how frail we are, how poor and blind and naked; to the end\nwe may regard with due charity the shortcomings of others, and may\nworthily praise Thy great Mercy, who yet hast not turned away Thy face\nfrom us.  For Jesus' sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Elijah went a day's journey_\n_into the wilderness, and came_\n_and sat under a juniper tree, and_\n_requested for himself that he_\n_might die._\"\n  (1 KINGS xix. 4.)\n\n\n                                   XX\n\n                         UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE\n\nA well-known writer relates that, when passing through Edinburgh once,\nhe saw a procession of Friendly Societies, and observed on one of the\nbanners the name emblazoned, The Order of the Juniper Tree.  His comment\nis:--\"Many of us belong to that order.\"  So we do.  And, because of\nthat, we can diagnose Elijah's trouble quite accurately.  He is\nsuffering, as we have all suffered at some time or other, from the pains\nand penalties of reaction.  Just because he had climbed to a height\nalmost superhuman, the reaction when it came was very black and\nterrible.  The Bible is too wise and too true to human nature to conceal\nthe fact that for his hour of splendid daring, Elijah had his price to\npay.\n\nIt's a commonplace, of course, but just one of those commonplaces which\nin the bulk spell wisdom, that there was a physical reason for this\ncondition.  To put it plainly, Elijah was tired out.  He had been using\nup his physical and nervous energy at such a ruinous rate during the\npast few hours, that he had overdrawn his account.  It strikes one as a\nvery significant fact that when God's angel took the prophet in hand,\nthe first thing he did was to provide him with a meal.  Elijah was\nactually on his way back to his normal condition when he had had\nsomething to eat.\n\nThat is not a mere incident in the story.  It is exceedingly important,\nbecause, sometimes the religious depression with which we are acquainted\narises in a similar way.  It is a very useful fact to remember that a\nman's whole religious outlook is coloured by the condition of his\nhealth.  We may be slow to admit such a low and material cause for\neffects so apparently spiritual.  But it is a fact all the same.  And it\nis only wise to recognise it.\n\nBut Elijah's reaction was not entirely or even mainly physical in its\norigin.  He had been in a very exalted spiritual condition during the\ncontest on Carmel.  Think what the man had done!  He had stood alone in\nthe path of a whole nation rioting down to idolatry and shamelessness,\nand with voice and presence and fire from Heaven had stopped and turned\nthem, driven the huddled, frightened sheep back again to the ways and\nthe worship of God.  Was it to be wondered at that his very soul within\nhim was faint under the strain?\n\nThough the vision and the privileges of the hill-top are what the best\nmen covet most, it is but little of it at a time that any one can stand.\nDo you remember that Jesus would not let Peter and James and John remain\nlong on the Mount of the Transfiguration, even though they wanted to\nbuild tabernacles and dwell there?  There have been few greater\nspiritual experts than John Bunyan, and when he has described how his\npilgrim fared in the Palace Beautiful, how he slept in a chamber called\nPeace, how he saw afar off the Delectable Land, whither he was\njourneying, where does he take him next?  Straight down into the Valley\nof Humiliation, where he has to fight for his life against the darts of\nthe Evil One flying as thick as hail!\n\nThere is no cure for reaction, of course, but there are one or two rules\nwhich experience has proved to be helpful.\n\nFor example, it is never a wise thing, when you are depressed, to\nattempt to form any judgment about yourself, your service, or your\nstanding in the sight of God.  By some Satanic impulse, that is the very\ntime, of course, when you will be tempted to do it.  It may appear a\nvery wholesome spiritual exercise when you have gone a day's journey\ninto the wilderness and are faint, to reckon up what manner of man and\ndisciple of Christ you are.  But don't do it then.  Nobody sees truly\neither himself or God, under a juniper tree.\n\nAnd then, if possible, do not speak about your despondency.  Don't\nexpress your mood outwardly at all, if you can help it.  Bottle it up if\nyou can, and you will starve it all the sooner.  His biographer relates\nof the late Ian Maclaren that, like many people who have Celtic blood in\ntheir veins, he was subject to curious fits of depression and gloom\nwhich did not seem to be in any way connected with bodily health. \"But,\"\nhe goes on to say, \"he never inflicted his melancholy moods on his\nfamily, was only very quiet and absorbed, and kept more closely to his\nstudy.  In a day or two he would emerge again, like a man coming out\ninto the sunshine.\"\n\nAnd lastly.  Once a man has sworn himself a disciple and soldier of\nJesus Christ, neither doubt nor depression, neither darkness nor\nreaction absolves him from the obligation to follow and to serve when he\nis called.  It must be confessed that it is an undue sense of the\nimportance of our own feelings that makes the juniper-tree-mood the\nperil and hindrance that it is.  We need to remember that the call of\nChrist overrides personal feelings.  In His army too, there is\ndiscipline to be thought of, and \"it is not soldierly to skulk.\"  When\nthe bugle calls to action, nobody but a coward would make the fact that\nhe is not feeling quite up to the mark, an excuse for sitting still.\nReaction is a natural thing, but cowardice is always shameful.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, we bless Thee for the comfort of Thy perfect knowledge\nof us.  We are glad to think that Thou knowest our frame and rememberest\nthat we are dust.  Make us more wise to bring the burden of our moods of\ndarkness and reaction to the footstool of Thy perfect understanding; but\nsave us, we beseech Thee, from all yielding in the long fight against\nthem.  Seeing that Thy grace is sufficient for us and Thy strength made\nperfect in our weakness, grant us a godly fear of all unmanly surrender.\nFor Thy Name's sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_If any man will do his will_\n_he shall know of the doctrine._\"\n  (JOHN vii. 17.)\n\n\n                                  XXI\n\n                       INSTRUCTING THE CABIN BOY\n\nWhen John Wesley was on his way home from Georgia, he wrote this record\nof the voyage in his Journal:--\"Being sorrowful and very heavy (though I\ncould give no particular reason for it) and utterly unwilling to speak\nclose to any of my little flock (about twenty persons), I was in doubt\nwhether my own neglect of them was not one cause of my heaviness. In the\nevening, therefore, I began instructing the cabin boy, after which I was\nmuch easier.\"\n\nThis is a significant passage for various reasons.  For one thing, it\nlets us see that even a spiritual genius like Wesley sometimes fell into\nthe mood of doubt.  And, for another, it shows how, almost by accident,\nas it seems, he found a cure for his trouble.  It is plain that religion\njust then had lost its savour for the great evangelist. The joy had gone\nout of his service and the power from his prayers, and he was not sure\nof anything at all.  This is practical doubt, the only serious kind\nthere is.  \"Being sorrowful and very heavy and very unwilling.\"\n\nThere are not a few men and women whose trouble this is.  They are in\nstraits to know what is really God's truth.  They greatly desire to lay\nhold of it surely for themselves.  The tremendous earnestness of those\nwho have found the old dogmas unsatisfying, and are adrift again in a\ntwentieth century search for God, is one of the most significant\nfeatures of the situation.  Can a man really come in touch with God?\nthey ask.  Is there a living Christ whose presence redeems men from evil\nand can lift them up to what they long to be?  Is there a life with God\nwhich even Death cannot end?  And those who are in such deep earnest to\nknow God vitally for themselves, are sorrowful and heavy indeed to find\nthat all their thinking and reading and inquiry do so little for them.\nThey pray for light, and examine all the evidence with a wistful\neagerness, but the clouds still lie around them, and they are still\nwandering, now in this direction, now in that, like men lost in a mist.\n\nIs there no way out of this tangle?  Yes, there is.  To all who are\nsorrowful and heavy because they know so little they can call their own\nabout God and spiritual living, I want to say, There is a way forward, a\nsafe, sure way.  It is the way that Wesley stumbled upon.  \"I began\ninstructing the cabin boy.\"  That is the way for you and me to a fuller\nexperience of God.\n\nThat is the simple solution which so many thousands of us have\noverlooked, and it was the discovery of Jesus Christ.  When asked how He\nknew about God, He answered that it was because He was doing God's will,\nand He added, If any man, no matter who, no matter what his doubts be,\nif any man be willing to do God's will, where, and as, it is clear to\nhim, he too shall know.  God will not leave him in ignorance of what is\nreally essential.\n\nNowhere, except in the Bible, do you find such a method of learning\nrecommended.  From nobody but Christ could such a precept come, for it\nis clean contrary to all that we know about learning in other spheres.\nStudy and you will know, think, investigate, ask questions--that, we can\nunderstand.  That is how knowledge comes to us in the realms with which\nwe are acquainted.  But when men asked Christ how they could learn God's\ntruth for themselves, He said, First of all you must obey it.  Do, and\nyou will know.\n\nYou remember the lepers whom Christ touched, of whom it is written that\n\"as they went, they were healed?\"  That is how the only sort of doubt\nthat really matters is healed.  As you go, not as you sit still and\npuzzle, but as you shoulder the nearest duty and obey what light and\nknowledge you have.\n\n\"I don't know,\" Wesley would say to himself, \"whether I am in my right\nplace here or not, whether I am really Christ's servant or not.  I am in\nthe dark, and don't seem to be sure of anything.  But there is that\ncabin boy.  I can at least do him some good.  That is right anyhow,\nwhatever be uncertain.\"  \"After which,\" he says, \"I was much easier.\" It\nis marvellous to read, but it is a law as certain and safe as\ngravitation.  Do God's will as you know it, and you will get more light.\n\"Doubt of any sort,\" said Thomas Carlyle, \"cannot be removed except by\naction.\"\n\nIt is hardly necessary to say, of course, that the knowledge which\nChrist promises to those who will obey God's will is not of dogma in its\nrestricted theological sense.  It was life Christ talked about, it was\nlife He was concerned with, and, for Him, life meant not head-knowledge,\nbut heart-experience and heart-hold of God.  It is that He promises in\nHis great saying.  So do not make the mistake of thinking that when you\nseek to do the Will of God, all your mental difficulties, about miracles\nor inspiration or what not else, will come to an end.  These are\nproblems, not of life, but of mind, and you have them because God has\ngiven you a mind, and you will probably have them as long as your mind\nis growing.  What Christ does promise is of vastly more importance,\nnamely, the light of God's truth in your heart, the assurance of God in\nyour inmost soul, that you shall know for yourself that God is, and that\nHe is near to you, and that your true life is in Him; and when a man has\ngot that length, there are many doctrinal and other mental puzzles for\nthe solution of which he is content to wait with an easy trust and\npatience.\n\nI like that saying of Viscount Kenmure's, away back in the sixteenth\ncentury, \"I will lie at Christ's door like a beggar, and, if I may not\nknock, I will scrape.\"  I like it, for this reason, that I am quite sure\nthere is no essential door of God in earth or heaven which is shut\nagainst the man who casts himself so utterly on Him as that.  And I take\nKenmure's word to illustrate what Jesus meant by If any man will do\nGod's will.  It is when a man says, I cannot see, I do not know, my mind\nis filled with spectres and doubts and questions, but, so help me God, I\nwill do the thing that is right for me, I will walk by what little light\nI have--it is then, it is to that man that there come infallibly the\nknowledge which no criticism can shake, and the peace which the world\ncan neither give nor take away.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, we thank Thee for this one straight road out of our\ndoubts, and the difficulties we so often make for ourselves.  We bless\nThee for the stedfast certainty that no man, who will rise and follow\nwhat light he has, shall finally be left in darkness.  By doing shall we\ncome to know.  As we go upon our clear duty, other truths become more\nclear.  It is our Lord's own doctrine, and in His Name we pray that Thou\nwould'st help us to learn it.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_The valley of Achor for a_\n_door of hope._\"\n  (HOSEA xxv. 15.)\n\n\n                                  XXII\n\n                           GOD'S DOOR OF HOPE\n\nThe world has a scheme of redemption of its own, and men can themselves\ndo something for the brother who has fallen.  But the plan involves,\ninvariably, a change of surroundings.  Worldly wisdom says, of the youth\nwho is making a mess of his life, \"Ship him off to the colonies, try him\nwith a new start on another soil.\"  But the grace of God promises a far\nmore wonderful salvation.  It makes possible a new start on the very\nspot of the old failure.  It leads a man back to the scene of his old\ndisloyalty, and promises him a new memory that shall blot out and redeem\nthe old.  God does not take the depressed and discouraged out of their\nsurroundings.  He adds an inward something that enables them to conquer\nwhere they stand.  It is not some new untried sphere that God gilds with\npromise.  It is the old place where one has already failed and fallen.\nIt is the valley of Achor, the scene of Israel's defeat, and Achan's\nshame and sin, that God gives to His people as a door of hope.\n\nIn Italian history, during the Middle Ages, the republics of Pisa and\nGenoa were often at war, and at one time the Genoese were badly beaten\nin a sea-fight near the little island of Meloria.  Some years after, a\nGenoese admiral took his fleet to that same spot and said, \"Here is the\nrock which a Genoese defeat has made famous.  A victory would make it\nimmortal.\"  And sure enough, the fight that followed ended in a great\nvictory for Genoa.  It is that sort of hope that God holds out to all\ndefeated souls who put their trust in Him.  He points us back to our\nvalley of Achor, the place with a memory we do not like to think of, and\nHe says, There is your door of Hope, Go back and try again.  And those\nwho go back in His strength are enabled to write a new memory upon the\nold shame.\n\nOur Lord and Master is very gracious to forgive us when we come to Him\nin penitence to tell Him of the position we have lost by our\nfaithlessness or our cowardice, but He does not consent to the ultimate\ndefeat of the very feeblest of His soldiers.  \"Go back and try again,\"\nis His order.  There are many, as Dr Matheson says, who offer us a\ngolden to-morrow, but it is only Christ who enables us to retrieve our\nyesterday.  For His grace is more than forgiveness.  It is the promise\nto reverse the memory of Achor, to turn defeat into victory even yet.\n\nAchor, further, literally means Trouble, and it is a great thing for us\nwhen we have learned that even there God has for us a door of hope.\n\nThe valley of Trouble is perhaps the last place in the world where the\nuninstructed would look for any fruit of harvest, and yet again and\nagain men have brought the fairest flowers of character and holiness out\nof it.  How many a devout and useful servant of Christ owes the\nbeginning of his allegiance to a serious illness, to some crippling\ndisappointment, to an overwhelming sorrow?  In all humility there are\nmany who can say, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, and\nthere are many, many more about whom their friends often quote that\ntext.\n\n    \"I walked a mile with Pleasure;\n    She chattered all the way,\n    But left me none the wiser\n    For all she had to say.\n\n    \"I walked a mile with Sorrow,\n    And ne'er a word said she,\n    But oh, the things I learned from her,\n    When Sorrow walked with me!\"\n\nThere is a door of Hope even in the valley of Trouble, and those who\ntread it in God's company shall not fail to find it.\n\nThere is one other class who need to know that even in Achor there is a\ndoor of hope, the depressed and discouraged.  Phillips Brooks once\ndeclared, \"I came near doing a dreadful thing the other day.  I was in\nEast Boston and I suddenly felt as if I must get away from everything\nfor a while.  I went to the Cunard dock and asked if the steamer had\nsailed.  She had been gone about an hour.  I believe if she had still\nbeen there, I should have absconded.\"  I wonder if there is any one who\nhas not known that feeling?  When duty is dull, and circumstances\ndiscouraging, when we seem to be merely ploughing the sands, \"Oh,\" we\nsay, \"for the wings of a dove!\"  Comfort and happiness and salvation\nseem to lie solely in escape.  And it may be that they do.  But more\noften the trouble is in ourselves, and would travel with us to the new\npost.\n\nIf there be any depressed or discouraged reading these lines, I should\nlike to remind them of God's promise to give the valley of Achor--that\nis the depressing scene of your labours, my brother--for a door of hope.\nYou are looking for your hope somewhere else, anywhere else provided it\nbe out of your present rut and drudgery.  In reality your door of hope\nlies in the rut, in the valley itself.  It is not escape you need.  It\nis just a braver faith that God is in your valley with you, and that He\nneeds you there.\n\nTake a firmer grip of that, and go back to where you serve, and you will\nfind, please God, that even in your valley He has opened for you a door\nof Hope and Gladness.\n\nMay all those who are living and working these days in the valley of\nAchor find in it somewhere God's Door of Hope.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nGrant us, O God, the faith that in Thy strength we can yet succeed even\nin the place where we have failed.  Teach us that it is Thy whisper we\nhear, when we have fallen into Despond, bidding us rise and try again.\nAnd grant us the courage to be sure, since Thou hast a tryst to meet and\nhelp us there, that even our Achor shall open to us its door of hope.\nAmen.\n\n\n\n\"_There be many servants_\n_now-a-days that break away_\n_every man from his master._\"\n  (1 SAMUEL xxv. 10.)\n\n\n                                 XXIII\n\n                               NOW-A-DAYS\n\nNabal, says the Bible, was a churl.  When David sent his men to request\nsome provender, in return for services rendered, this ill-mannered\nsheep-farmer broke out, \"Who is David?  There be many servants\nnow-a-days that break away every man from his master.\"  It was a\nsingularly rude and ungracious reply, all things considered.  But it is\nnot about Nabal's truculence I wish to speak.  I want you to think about\nthat phrase he used, and the tone in which it was said. \"Now-a-days.\"\nThe implication, of course, is that servants did not break away from\ntheir masters in _his_ young days.  Things were different in the times\n_he_ could remember.\n\nYou will recognise this peculiar intonation of \"Now-a-days\" as something\nfairly familiar.  You hear it yet, quite often.  Now-a-days the Church\nhas lost caste.  Now-a-days the Bible is a neglected book. Now-a-days\nfaith is on the wane, and most people don't believe anything at all.\nThere are many such sentences, beginning with the word Now-a-days and\nsounding like a chant on a minor key.\n\nThis pessimistic philosophy is difficult to fight, for it is\nunsubstantial, and dissolves like mist whenever you come to close\nquarters.  But there are three queries I have noted in my Bible opposite\nthat \"Now-a-days\" of Nabal.\n\nAnd the first is--What about the man himself?  Judge his philosophy by\nhis actions.  Nabal apparently believed that servants were getting\nentirely out of hand, and he speaks as if he remembered something very\ndifferent in his own early days.  Very good.  What was he doing to\nmaintain the old standards?  Nothing, less than nothing.  His personal\nmanners and behaviour were such that servants would be very ready to\nbreak away on that farm, I should think.  Now, what business has Nabal\nto go whining, in general terms, mark you, about servants now-a-days,\nwhen he behaves like a boor to his own?  For any declension which he may\nsee about him, he is himself largely responsible.\n\nI think that it is a perfectly fair line of argument, and it disposes of\nquite a number of pious \"inexactitudes.\"  When I hear a man talking\nabout the lost influence of the Church now-a-days, I am always tempted\nto inquire what his own relation to it is, whether he is loyally\nsupporting it and working in its interests, for experience has taught me\nthat a very great deal of exaltation of the Church's past records, at\nthe expense of its position to-day, comes from men who are themselves\ndoing absolutely nothing to help it on its way.  There are exceptions,\nof course, but, as a rule, it is not the active workers in any worthy\ncause who are lamenting its failure.  The men who think the country is\ngoing to the dogs are themselves to be found, for the most part, lolling\nin the clubs.  It is not the pledged and active member of Christ's\nkingdom who thinks it is disappearing from the earth.  And to those who\nare fond of the Now-a-days type of complaint, I would suggest the\ninquiry--What about yourself?  Are you helping to keep up the old\nstandards as you say you remember them?  Or is your influence also\ntending to set this ball of the earth rolling in the very direction you\ndeplore, namely, down the hill?\n\nThe second query on Nabal's \"Now-a-days\" is--Can his memory be relied\nupon?  It is an instinct with us all to idealise the past, and gild it\nin memory with all sorts of romance.  We quietly drop all the shadows\nfrom the picture as time goes on.  Were ever summer days since so long\nand fine and sunny as they were when we were boys?  Never!  We are all\nagreed about that.  Yet when we were boys, men who were then grey were\nusing exactly the same words about summer days years before!  We are all\napt to praise the past just because it is the past, and because it has a\nway of turning rosy as it recedes.  The wise man recognises that, and\nallows for it.  The foolish man begins many sentences with \"Now-a-days,\"\nand ends with a shake of the head and a sigh.\n\nBut there is something that does not forget nor gild the past with false\nromance, and that is history.  Turn back its pages a hundred years or\nmore; read such a book as H. G. Graham's \"Social Life in Scotland in the\nEighteenth Century\"; and you will soon discover what a fine word\nNow-a-days really is.\n\nAs far as humanity and civilisation, brotherly charity, and true\nreligion are concerned, the man who in pessimistic mood contrasts\nnow-a-days with the good old times a hundred years ago, simply does not\nknow what he is talking about.  Changes there have been, many and\nradical, but change is not necessarily a sign either of declension or\ndecay.\n\nI can partly understand a man without faith in God giving his vote for a\ngeneral falling off in human progress, but I cannot understand a man who\nbelieves in God, and in the presence in the world of a living spirit of\nChrist, being a pessimist.  No one affirms, of course, that we are\nprogressing everywhere, and all the time.  Set-backs here and there,\nthere are in human history just as in a successful campaign. But that,\non the whole, the world grows better, the Kingdom comes, and earth draws\nnearer to Heaven, seems to me to be simply a corollary from the fact\nthat God reigns, and has blessed us with knowledge of Himself.\n\nI grant you that the war is a disappointing revelation of how far\nmankind still has to travel.  But, as far as we are concerned, I am not\ndisposed to counsel undue humiliation and self-condemnation on account\nof it.  A people that for the sake of unseen eternal realities like\nhonour and righteousness will make the sacrifices which we are making,\ncan hardly be said to be degenerating, especially when we remember some\nof the causes for which we have drawn the sword in years and generations\ngone by.  But even though the clock of progress be set back awhile--and\nthat does not seem so likely now as when the war began--it is simply not\npossible that, in this world of God's, evil should ultimately vanquish\ngood, that the Spirit of Christ should finally be crushed by the forces\nthat oppose it.  That can never be.  As soon might the germs of disease\nwhich the sun destroys turn round upon it and quench its blessed light.\n\nThe third query opposite Nabal's \"Now-a-days\" is--Does he truly discern\nthe present time?  Does he know \"now-a-days\" even as well as he knows\nthe past?  As a matter of fact, David was not just a servant who had\nbroken away from his master, and if Nabal had only lived a little longer\nhe would have seen how completely he had misread the signs of the times.\n\nThat is worth remembering when you are tempted to say, Now-a-days things\nare out of joint.  Maybe you don't clearly see these very days you are\ndisparaging.  When Jesus preached in Nazareth, the village where He had\nbeen brought up, the people said, Is not this the Carpenter? and in\ntheir anger at His presumption, as they thought it, they wanted to make\naway with Him.  If they had only known!\n\nIt is not enough to recognise that we cannot see the future.  We cannot\neven see the present.  Think what it would be like if we could see the\ngreat men, the prophets, poets, reformers, leaders, who are at this\npresent moment in our nurseries and schools, or if we were able to\nrecognise in the--at present--small shoot of a cause, the great tree\ninto which in God's providence it is destined to grow!\n\nNow-a-days; now-a-days!  What a delusion it is for anybody to think he\nknows \"now-a-days\" well enough to call it names!  It is not with\nobservation that the Kingdom comes.  God rings no bell when He has a new\nand gracious purpose afoot in the world.  And the thing for you and me\nto do is to rest confidently in the faith that, in His own good way and\ntime, God is redeeming the world to Himself, and to do all that we can\nto help Him, and to make our little corner of it a brighter and a better\nplace.  But do not let us imagine that we can see all that is going on\nabout us.  There is far, far more of God and of goodness in the world\nthan we suspect.  The woods and hedges look very bleak and bare\nto-day.[1]  It is a dead and barren aspect that Nature wears now-a-days.\nYet _even now_ the sap is mounting quickly in every living stem, and\nSpring is getting ready while we sleep.\n\n[1] Written in February.\n\nSo, let us have the courage to believe--so is it with every worthy cause\nof God and man.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nAlmighty God, Ruler and Disposer of all events, we would remember that\nthis world of ours is, first of all, Thine.  We believe that, though Thy\nKingdom comes not with observation yet it does come more and more. We\nbelieve that, with Thee, the best is yet to be.  And we pray that, with\nthat faith in our hearts, we may leave the large campaign with quietness\nand confidence to Thee, and seek rather to discharge the duties of that\npost Thou hast assigned to us, with loyalty and good hope.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_And a certain man drew a_\n_bow at a venture._\"\n  (2 CHRONICLES xviii. 33)\n\n\n                                  XXIV\n\n                            ROUNDABOUT ROADS\n\nIt sounds improbable that though a whole army was trying to kill Ahab,\nit should be an arrow which a man shot at a venture, or as the Hebrew\nhas it, quaintly, \"in his simplicity\"--when twanging his bow carelessly,\nor trying a new string perhaps--that should find the king's heart.\n\nAnd yet it is the thing that does happen occasionally in real life.  We\nsometimes do get the target when we are aiming for something else.  The\nname which we have been worrying to recall strolls casually into our\nmemory when we have given up trying and are not thinking of it at all.\nThere are certain stars, astronomers tell us, which they see best when\nthey look askance.  And I have come to think that there are certain\nprecious goods of His which God allows us to possess on the same\nconditions.  You see them by looking past them.  You get them by aiming\nat something else.  \"Look at your goal and go for it straight,\" says\nworldly wisdom, wisely and truly enough in many instances.  All the same\nthere are good things in life to which that is emphatically NOT the\nroad.  The real way to secure these is to aim for something else.\n\nThis is true, for example, of Happiness.  Everyone of us wants to be\nhappy.  And there is such a bountiful provision of the means of\nhappiness all about us that it is difficult to resist the conclusion\nthat God means us all to be happy.  Yet when those for whom happiness is\nmeant and prepared seek it directly and for itself, it is as certain as\nanything can be that they won't find it.  You ask, perhaps you pray for\nthis boon, and God shows you only some bare duty that is clearly yours.\nOut to it you go, like a brave man, not thinking there can be any\nblessings on that road, when, lo! as you journey, happiness comes to\nyou, quietly, filling your heart with peace.\n\nOne does not find that the New Testament, as a matter of fact, has much\nto say about being happy at all.  There is so little reference to it\nthat it looks as if God had forgotten our need.  I find that the Book\nwhich I had thought might tell me how to find happiness tells me instead\nof \"bearing one another's burdens,\" doing it \"unto one of the least of\nthese\"; tells me about my brother's need of me when he is sick or naked\nor hungry; tells me even about such a thing as a cup of cold water to a\nthirsty disciple.  Ah! but when, in however poor a fashion, I forget my\nown quest and gird myself in Christ's name and try to DO some of these\nthings, I find that God has not forgotten after all, that, all the time\nHe has been showing me THE way to happiness, and I did not recognise it\nbecause it is not a straight road.  It's not a question of seeking, but\nof forgetting to seek.  Happiness comes to you oftenest when you are\nintent on bringing it to your brother.\n\nThe same principle holds true also with regard to Influence.  It is\nnatural that a man should desire that his shadow when it falls on others\nshould heal and not hurt.  But the healing, helpful shadow is not got by\nwishing for it.  As soon as you begin to think about it and aim for it,\nyou will go astray.  Here is a little poem which tells how the strange\nmagnetic quality of influence for good comes to a man:--\n\n    \"He kept his lamp still lighted,\n      Though round about him came\n    Men who, by commerce blighted,\n      Laughed at his little flame.\n\n    He kept his sacred altar\n      Lit with the torch divine,\n    Nor let his purpose falter,\n      Like yours, O World, and mine.\n\n    And they whose cold derision\n      Had mocked him, came one day\n    To beg of him the vision\n      To help them on their way.\n\n    And, barefoot or in sandal,\n      When forth they fared to die,\n    They took from his poor candle\n      One spark to guide them by.\"\n\nThat is the secret--a roundabout way, as you see.  If Influence is to be\nours, that is how it will come, not by our trying to be influential, but\nby our striving to be upright, loyal, and true.\n\nIn the third place, this is true of Life in Christ's sense of the term.\nLife was one of His favourite words.  It was Life, in the highest sense,\nthat He claimed to bring to men.  And the greatest calamity in His eyes\nthat could fall on any man is that that inward soul-life should die.\n\nYet when those in whom He has awakened it, aim directly for its growth\nand culture, they make mistakes.  To the question--Shall I regard the\ndevelopment and deepening of that soul-life of mine as the one end and\nobject of my living? the answer of Jesus, as I understand it, is No.\nLife, said He, at its highest and fullest and most perfect, is reached\nby giving it away.  He that loseth his life shall save it.\n\nWhat a long way from this ideal are those good people who are for ever\nlaying their fingers on their spiritual pulse and plucking their\nsoul-life up by the roots to see how it is growing!  There is a nobler\nuse of life than to save it in that fearful fashion.  There is a truer\nway to grow in grace than by hoarding up virtue so, namely, by letting\nit go generously out from us.  When St Nicholas got to Heaven with his\nwhite robes of sainthood stained with mud through stopping on his way to\nhelp a carter pull his waggon out of a rut--a task which his fellow St\nCassianus, for the sake of his robes, avoided and declined--it was the\nmuddy saint whom the Master welcomed with the sweetest smile and the\nmost gracious words.  Whoso loseth his life, the same shall save it.\n\nHappiness, Influence, Life, these three, and the road to each of them is\nindirect.  May God bless it to us that we have stood for a little to\nmark the flight of an arrow shot \"in simplicity!\"\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, may we have grace to discover the blessings that lie on\nThy roundabout roads.  May we never make the mistake of thinking that\nthe path to true happiness is the one that runs straight towards it.\nKeep us true to Christ, and we shall not then be false to any man.  And\ngive us to know that we are likest Him, not when we hoard and cherish\nlife and virtue, but when we spend them without stint or measure in any\nworthy cause of God or man, for His sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Why was not this ointment_\n_sold for three hundred pence,_\n_and given to the poor?_\"\n  (JOHN xii. 5.)\n\n\n                                  XXV\n\n                        THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF LOVE\n\n\"Wherever this Gospel is preached, this that she had done shall be told\nas a memorial of her.\"  What a gracious memorial, and how worthy of it\nwas Mary's beautiful outburst of generosity!  But what a pity that the\nspeech of Judas should be recorded also, as a memorial of him!  And yet,\non mature consideration, we would not have the Judas criticism\nforgotten.  Because it called forth what we might not otherwise have\nhad, the vindication of Jesus Himself.  And because, as a matter of\nfact, we are constantly hearing the protest of Judas repeated in our own\nday, and are often ill-held to know how to meet it.\n\n\"This he said,\" records our evangelist bluntly, \"not because he loved\nthe poor, but because he was a thief and kept the bag.\"  Yet he might\nhave been an honest man and said the same thing.  For very many honest\nand earnest men and women are repeating this criticism still.  It is\nrepeated whenever it is taken for granted that practical utility is the\nonly standard by which to judge actions and offerings, that God and man\ncan be served in no other way than by \"iron bars and perspiration.\"\n\nHow often do we meet the type of mind that admits the service of a\nploughman and denies that of poet or artist, for whom a waterfall, as\nsomebody has said, exists merely as so much power for driving turbines,\nand whose sole test of usefulness is that of making two blades grow--and\ncorn blades at that!--where but one grew before.  We are commonly\nbrowbeaten by this type of person, and yet we feel that somehow, if we\ncould only say it, he is wrong--that the poet's is as divine a vocation\nas the farmer's, that God meant a silver band of falling water in a\ngreen glade to suggest other things besides dynamos, and that he who\neven paints some blades of grass, and paints them pleasingly, has his\nplace somewhere in the great guild of servants of God and man.\n\nOne has heard the same attitude taken up in other directions too.  Why\nspend so much money on a Church, you will be asked, when there are so\nmany poor people in the land?  What need for stone pillars and a fine\norgan, when a plain building and a harmonium would do as well?  Why try\nto secure what is called a beautiful Church service, dignified, stately,\nmusical, when the very baldest worship is acceptable in God's sight, if\nonly it be sincere?  We have heard all that, and other remarks like\nthat, often, and we have seldom been able to give reasons against them.\nA mere instinctive sentiment seems a feeble thing to oppose to such cold\nand hard facts.  Yet somehow we feel that it is all wrong if only we\nknew how to convict it.\n\nDid it ever occur to you that Jesus Himself has answered that objection\nand others like it when He vindicated Mary's action that night?  There\nis no doubt that her ointment cost a deal of money, money that could\nhave fed many hungry people.  It was an extravagant offering, without\nany practical outcome, save that Jesus was refreshed.  There is no doubt\nalso about our Lord's sympathy with the poor and needy.  And yet He\nupheld Mary's action, and would not have it called wasteful!  All that\ncould be said in its favour was that it was beautiful, that it touched\nJesus keenly, and influenced all who saw it done.  And that, as I read\nthe story, was one reason at least why Jesus defended it.  He allows the\nBeautiful.  He would have the Beautiful honoured for its own sake even\nin a world so full of sorrow and trouble as this.\n\nFor my part, I am very grateful that this word of Christ's has been\nrecorded.  For it affords sufficient warrant for declaring the poet, the\nartist, the architect, and all those who are trying to make the world\nmore beautiful, God's servants too, offering Him a gift He does not\ndisdain to recognise, as truly as the physician, the philanthropist, and\nthe preacher whose object is to make it better.\n\nBeauty of form and structure has been lavished profusely by the Creator\non creatures too small to be seen.  There are more things grow out of\nGod's earth than corn for food or timber for building houses.  There's\nthe heather and the wild flowers, the daisies and the violets.\nHard-headed common-sense asks--What's the use of them?  What good do\nthey do?  The answer is that they are beautiful, and that seems in God's\nsight to be justification enough for having made them.\n\nSo when we see Love breaking her alabaster box, and pouring forth her\noffering without stint, as she is doing every day--a mother lavishing\ncare upon an ungrateful son, a husband surrounding a peevish wife with a\ntireless devotion, or a sister keeping her own love-dream at arm's\nlength that she may guard and guide some graceless brother--let us lay\nour hands upon our lips when we are tempted to criticise.  These actions\nmay be foolish, extravagant, quixotic, and may outrage every canon of\ncommon-sense.  But there is a fragrance about them without which the\nworld would be much poorer.  They are morally beautiful, and for that\nreason, our Lord Himself would teach us, they are not to be rudely\nhandled nor judged by any hard standard.\n\nYes, but He said more than that.  He found a more complete extenuation\nof Mary's extravagance.  It was because she loved much.  Her gift was an\noffering of love to Himself.  \"She hath done it for my burial.\"  And\nthat is the end of the whole matter, my brothers.  Love is always\nextravagant when measured by the tape-line of bare duty.  It always\noverflows.  It breaks its box and gives everything it has.  Yet, like\nthe widow's cruse of old, its casket is never empty, for even when it\nhas given its all, the next needy case will find succour at that door.\nTake your charity subscription sheet to the man who loudly asserts that\ntoo much money is being given to the Kirk this dull season, and what\nwill you get?  Take it also to the man who has signed a bigger cheque\nthan he can well afford that the House of his God may be made beautiful,\nand it will be strange if you are sent empty away.  Ah no, it is not\nMary, whose devotion has found outlet in some sudden generosity, it is\nnot she who neglects the poor.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, whose we are and Whom we seek to serve, enlighten us, we\npray Thee, in the knowledge and practice of that supreme service which\nis love.  May we learn that the greatest thing in our little lives is\nthe love they hold for God and man.  Teach us to appraise love's extra\neverywhere as those who have also felt and understand. And when our own\ngift and offering must needs be poor and small, may we be encouraged by\nthe remembrance that even a widow's mite that love has offered is\nprecious in Thy sight.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_I know both how to be_\n_abased, and I know how to_\n_abound._\"\n  (PHILIPPIANS iv. 12.)\n\n\n                                  XXVI\n\n                       THE ART OF \"DOING WITHOUT\"\n\nIn one of his letters, Paul declares that he knows both how to be abased\nand how to abound.  Most people, who did not stop to think, would be\ninclined to assert that the second of these lessons did not require much\nlearning.  It's an easy enough thing to be content, they would say, when\nyou have plenty.  Far harder is it to learn how to do without.  I am not\nat all sure that that is right.  I rather think that, of the two,\nabundance is a more searching test of a man's true quality than scarcity\never is.  Carlyle has declared that for one man who will stand\nprosperity there are a hundred that will stand adversity.\n\nBut whether that be so or not, there is no question that it is a great\nthing to have the secret of doing without.  And the merest glance abroad\nconvinces us that it is of the utmost importance.  In literature, for\nexample, the quality which confers most distinction upon style is the\nart of omission.  Did not Stevenson, himself a master, say that one who\nknew what to omit could make an Iliad of the daily newspaper?  And the\ncommonest blunders in the great business of living spring from ignorance\nof this secret.  Why do some people make themselves disagreeable in a\ncommunity by their touchiness and sulkiness?  Simply because they have\nnot learned how to be abased, how to live without getting their own way\nalways, or without getting the praise or recognition to which they feel\nthemselves entitled.  It's an art, you see, which is well worth\nstudying.\n\nIt has to be added that opportunities for practising it are never long\nwanting from anybody.  We don't need to choose what things we shall do\nwithout, as a rule.  The things are simply taken from us, or we never\nget them.  It may be our own fault, or it may not.  The result is the\nsame.  We have to do without.  And we give away our inmost self by the\nfashion in which we do it.\n\nThere is, for example, the question of material goods.  It's easy to\ntalk unreal nonsense here, and we all must confess to wishing to have\nmore of this sort of property than we do possess.  But I honestly\nbelieve that the Apostle Paul did not greatly concern himself whether he\nwas, materially speaking, well-off or ill-off.  There are other men that\none knows who have attained to the same point of view.  There's no\nquestion either that for those whose religion is a vital thing it is the\nright point of view.  The real man is independent of either riches or\npoverty, because the real man is the man inside.  Riches is not you.\nPoverty is not you.  You are what you are in your inner spirit.  The\nriches there are invisible, but they are eternal--love, faith, hope,\npeace.  And the man who has these, as Paul had them, can honestly say\nthat it is of relatively small moment whether he is in a material sense,\nrich or poor.\n\nOr take the question of friendship.  Who can tell in adequate words what\nit means to have one true, loyal friend?  But it has happened sometimes\nthat the very closest friendships are broken and a man has to stand\nalone, not by his own choice, but in the grim ordering of things. There\nis a higher obligation than that you keep faith with your friends.\nFirst and foremost you must keep faith with yourself, with your own\nconscience, with the voice within.  And it may be that obedience to that\ninvolves seeming disloyalty to your friends, either for a while or\npermanently.\n\nSuch a time came to Paul.  He had for conscience' sake to stand alone;\nand he did it.  He was able to do it because his life did not rest for\nits ultimate pillar on his friendships any more than on his riches.\nPaul's real life was within.  That inner life of his was enriched and\nmade radiant and constant by one supreme fact--he believed that Jesus\nChrist his Lord deigned to share it with him in spirit.  It is not\nirreverent to say that in his inner soul Paul lived with Christ.\n\nMaybe his words are too big for us to use, but each of us who, at some\nhard bit of our journey, has appealed beyond friends to the Christ\nwithin, saying, \"I have done, O Lord, what seemed to me right.  And my\nfriends are hurt and angry.  But Thou knowest\"--that man has learned,\neven in a slight degree, that there is a nearer and truer blessing\npossible for sinful men than even human friendship.\n\nThen there is another thing that has sometimes to be done without. There\nare privileges that belong to every Christian man and woman, and are in\na sense their birthright--the sense of God, confidence, quietness of\nheart, hope.  There is no doubt that every real Christian should be\nwalking and working in the light and gladness of God's presence.\n\nBut it is just as clear that not all are so blessed.  It may be their\nown fault.  Doubtless in many cases it is.  Or it may be temperament or\noutward circumstances that determine it.  Anyhow, many have to walk, not\nin the light but in uncertainty, perplexity, and misgiving, and\nsometimes even in darkness.\n\nBut \"a bird is a bird even though it cannot sing.\"  And a Christian is a\nChristian still even though his soul is dark within him, and he goes on\nin fear, never daring to look up and hope at all.\n\nThat is spiritual abasement.  It ought not to be.  It is never to be\nlightly acquiesced in.  But it happens sometimes to earnest men and\nwomen, and it seems to be the settled condition of a few.  Is it\npossible to do without these things?  Can a man manage to exist and even\nmove forward who has for a while lost his hold on his faith and on God?\nThere are good and godly men who have done it.  Brother Lawrence did it.\nRobertson of Brighton did it.  Horace Bushnell did it.  And many, many\nmore.  When all that they held most precious in faith had been eclipsed\nfor the time, they steered still by the little light they knew.  Though\nthere should be no heaven, they resolved that they were called to be\npure, truthful, patient, kind, since these things could never be wrong.\nThough there were no Christ, they would still follow where He had once\nseemed to invite them.  And so doing and so following they came again to\nknow.  The darkness passed, and faith and gladness returned.  They had\nlost hold of God for a little, but He had never lost hold of them.  And,\nbrethren, whatever the doubt or darkness be, that's always true.  That\nis what makes it possible at all.  That is what may make it even\nblessed.  For\n\n    \"It's better to walk in the dark with God\n      Than to walk alone in the light;\n    Better to walk with God by faith\n      Than to walk alone by sight.\"\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nOur Gracious God and Father in Heaven, whether Thou dost appoint for us\npoverty or riches, save us from thinking that a man's life consisteth in\nthe abundance of the things which he possesseth.  Beyond all our\nfriendships, be Thou our Friend and Helper, and grant us to seek first\nthe blessing of our God.  Make us very sure, for their comforting and\nour own, that when men in their darkness sorely seek Thy face, the very\nache of their quest is token that Thou hast already found them.  For\nJesus' sake.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_And Moses said, I will now_\n_turn aside and see this great sight._\"\n  (EXODUS iii. 3.)\n\n\n                                 XXVII\n\n                                 WONDER\n\nMoses, adds one commentator significantly, was then eighty years of age.\nBy the ordinary standards, he was an old man, yet he had not lost his\nyouthful sense of wonder.  It is a good sign, the best of signs, when a\nman has lived so long and yet finds wonder in his heart.  It is a bad\nsign when a man at any age, or when a generation of men, find nothing in\nall God's world to wonder at.\n\nYet in many quarters it is regarded as the correct attitude to refrain\nfrom expressing surprise at anything, no matter how striking.  The\nutmost concession to be made to what is really wonderful is a languid\nand patronising \"Really?\"  That is always a pitiful thing.  For where\nthere is no wonder there can be no religion worthy of the name.\n\nThe instinct of worship and the instinct of wonder are very intimately\nrelated.  And where the one has died, the other cannot be in a very\nhealthy state.  \"I had rather,\" said Ruskin once, \"live in a cottage and\nwonder at everything, than live in Warwick Castle and wonder at\nnothing.\"  And his preference is to be commended.  For he who has never\nwondered has never thought about God in any way to be called thinking.\n\nIt was our Lord Himself who said that the ideal of religion was the\nchild-like heart.  Everyone knows that these little people are always\nbeing brought to a halt to wonder at something.  And Heaven is in very\ntruth nearer to them then, and they are more truly filled with its\nspirit, than either you or I are when the glory and bloom of this world\nunfold before our eyes, or the thought of the Infinite and Eternal God\ncomes to us and we have not felt impelled to bow our heads in silence\nand worship, spell-bound, and in a godly fear.\n\nIt is not hard to lay one's finger on some of the causes that have\nbrought about this state of things.  A silly fashion, for one cause, has\ndecreed that wonder is vulgar.  Why that should be so, no one can tell.\nBut if there be higher intelligences than ours in God's Universe, and\nthey see the sons of men, as they have plenty of chances to do, casting\nan indifferent glance at the full pomp and majesty of the setting sun,\nor reading such a Psalm as the 103rd with an untouched heart, how they\nmust marvel indeed!\n\nAnd then, of course, familiarity tends to blunt the sense of wonder in a\ncertain and common type of mind.  The best men have always resisted that\ntendency and recognised that it works harm to life and character. They\nhave remembered to look for God in the common and familiar, and that is\na search that goes far to make a man a saint, just because it is a\ncontinual prayer, a continual holding open of the heart to God. His\nanswer is to fill the wondering heart, bit by bit, with Himself.\n\nIgnorance, too, is often a cause, the kind of ignorance that calls\nitself knowledge.  It is an innocent delusion on the part of the\nyouthful tyro in Science that after he has made a little experiment with\na prism and a beam of sunlight, there is nothing wonderful in the\nrainbow.  Pure, profound Science on the other hand, speaks very\nhumbly--and wonders all the while.\n\nNature is dumb and silent concerning the Infinite behind it to him who\ngoes but to catalogue and dissect.  Take a heart that can wonder with\nyou on your country-walk, open your eyes and look, open your heart like\na child and listen, and you will find, as Moses found, that even in a\nbush there may be the Voice of God.  Hold the door of your heart ajar in\nsimple wonder, and some thing of God will enter to cleanse and freshen\nit, as the hot and dusty street is washed by the rain from Heaven.\n\nJust as he who goes to Nature with a heart that cannot wonder, will find\nno message there for him, so he who looks out upon the sanctities of\nhome, of human life and love, in that dull mood of mere acceptance, must\noften find himself hard pressed for material when he makes his\nthanksgiving to God.  George Eliot has spoken somewhere of the agony of\nthe thought that we can never atone to the dead for the stinted\naffection we gave them, for the \"little reverence we showed to that\nsacred human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing\nGod has given us to know.\"  The divinest thing God has given us to know!\n\nHave we realised that that gift of God to us lives now in the same home\nwith us?  Do you know what it is?  It is a wife's devotion, a mother's\ncare, a brother's comradeship, a sister's love.  It is the trust and\naffection of little children, and the patience of those who love us. And\nyet there have been men--judge ye if this be not true--who have lived\nclose to gifts of God like these, and taken them all unquestioned and\nnever wondered at the undeserved bounty of them or their continuance\nfrom day to day.\n\nHow easy it is to discover the gifts and charm of a stranger, how easy\nto wonder at that!  But to wonder at the sacrifice and the patience of\nthe love that dwells under the same roof with us, and stoops, in Mrs\nBrowning's happy phrase, \"to the level of each day's most quiet need,\"\nhow few of us do that!  And yet, without daily wonder, how can we be\nsure that we do not slight it, or requite it ill, how can we truly give\nour thanks to God whose gift it is?\n\nMost important of all, he who brings no wonder in his heart can never be\ntouched with the sense of God.  The lack of the great deep and awful\nwonder of our fathers in all their thought and speech about God, has\nbrought it about that our religious speech to-day is too often either\nsuperficial, flippant and easy, or syllogistic, mechanical, and hard. It\nis the absence of wonder that tempts men to imagine that God can be\nenclosed in any formula whatever, or brought to the hearts of men in so\nmany rigid propositions.  If men would but give their wonder expression\nwhen they frame their creeds, there would be less chafing where the\nedges are too sharp.\n\nI am bound to confess that my sympathies are altogether with a working\nman who once listened to a fervid evangelist at a street corner\nunfolding a scheme of salvation as clean-cut and mechanical as a problem\nof Euclid, and buttonholed him afterwards to inquire if he had ever read\nany astronomy.  No, he said, he had not.  \"That's a pity,\" said the\nartisan, \"for, eh, man, but ye have an awfu' wee God.\"  In all\nreverence, my brothers, that is what the absence of wonder brings us to,\na small God, a small salvation, and a merely mechanical Christ.\n\nMen have sometimes asked what that childhood of the Kingdom is on which\nJesus laid so much stress, and some have taken it to mean renunciation\nof intellect and reason in favour of a Church's dogma.  But it means,\nsays John Kelman, something far more human and more beautiful--\"it means\nwonder and humility and responsiveness, the straight gaze of childhood\npast conventionalities, the simplicity of a mind open to any truth, and\na heart with love alive in it.\"  That is surely right.  That is what\nbecoming a little child in Christ's sense does mean.  First of all,\nwonder.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nAlmighty and eternal God, Creator and Ruler of the Universe, dwelling in\nlight that is inaccessible and full of glory, whom no man hath seen or\ncan see, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man\nthat Thou visitest him?  Behold what manner of love the Father hath\nbestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God!  Such\nknowledge is too wonderful for us; it is high, we cannot attain unto it.\nO come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our\nMaker.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_If ye then, being evil, know_\n_... how much more ... your_\n_heavenly Father._\"\n  (LUKE xi. 13.)\n\n\n                                 XXVIII\n\n                         THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD\n\nIf it were a conceivable thing that we had to part with all the words of\nScripture save one, and if we were allowed to choose that one, there are\nsome of us who would elect to retain that great declaration of\nJesus--\"If ye being evil know ... how much more ... your heavenly\nFather.\"  For, having that, we should still be rich in knowledge of the\nLove and Fatherhood of God.  We should still know Christ's dominating\nconception of God, and have His last and highest word regarding Him. We\nshould still be able to rise, as Jesus not only warrants but invites us\nto do, from the little broken arc of true fatherhood on earth to the\nperfect round in Heaven.\n\nAt the warm reassuring touch of that \"How much more your heavenly\nFather\" whole systems of brainy divinity vanish away!  The truth of the\nFatherhood of God, vouched for and lived on by Jesus, kills men's hard\nand unworthy and hurtful thoughts about God as sunshine kills the\ncreatures that breed and prevail in darkness and ignorance.  They can no\nmore live alongside of a realisation that Christ's name for God is His\ntrue name, and really describes His attitude to all the sons of men,\nthan the dark, creepy things that live under the stone can remain there\nwhen you turn it over and let in the air and the light.\n\nBut, say some, you must not carry the truth of God's Fatherhood too far.\nWhat is too far? I ask.  I want to carry it, and I believe Christ means\nus to carry it, as far as ever it will stretch, and that is \"as far as\nthe East is from the West.\"  Think of a father's GOOD-WILL.  It is\nconceivable that other men may do you a deliberate wrong.  But you are\nentitled to believe that your father won't.  You may not understand what\nhe proposes, but you can be quite sure that he means only your good.\nHenry Drummond tells how his early days were made miserable by the\nconception he had of God as of some great staring Eye in the heavens\nwatching all he did.  But that is a policeman's eye, not a father's.\n\nThere are many tokens that, even yet, we have not realised what these\nblessed words of Jesus mean and imply.  A mother vainly trying to answer\nthe old, old question why her little one was taken from her, will say,\n\"Perhaps I was too fond of him.\"  Or, should sudden sorrow come, the\nexplanation suggested by the troubled one himself is, \"I was too happy.\"\nThere are plenty of people who are afraid to declare that they feel very\nwell or are very happy, in case the upper Powers should hear and send\ntrouble, apparently out of sheer malice!  \"Bethankit, what a bonny\ncreed!\"  Oh! what a dreadful caricature of God!  How it must pain the\nFather to hear His children talking so!\n\nThere is another mark of fatherhood, as we know it on earth--COMPASSION,\npity, the willingness to forgive.  There is no forgiveness on earth like\na father's or a mother's, none so willing, none that will wait so long\nand yet give itself without stint at last. Pity, as the world of\nbusiness and of ordinary relationship knows it, is at best a transient\nemotion.  It murmurs a few easy words and then forgets.  But parent love\nsuffereth long and is kind, hopes against hope, and waits and is still\nhopeful when every one else has written the offender down irreclaimable.\nIt is such compassion and pity for us sinners, how great soever our sins\nbe, that Jesus would have us come for to God in Heaven.\n\nBut will not men abuse such patience and long-suffering? it is asked. Is\nit not a risky thing to tell them that God is our Father?  It is. But it\nis the risk that Love takes cheerfully, and that only Love can take.\nAnd when men talk lightly and complacently about the great mercy of God,\nthere is something, I think, which they have forgotten, namely, that at\nthe heart of the divine Fatherly forgiveness there lies the shadow of\nthe Cross.  I do not say that in any conventional sense.  I say it\nbecause I have seen for myself that at the heart of all true earthly\nforgiveness of a fatherly sort there lies this same mysterious shadow.\nShall not the father forgive his returning prodigal?  Yea, verily, and\nwith all his heart.  But, ah, before that, think how the father has\nsuffered with his son, and for his son.  The prodigal's shame is the\nfather's shame too, and lies heavy on his heart.  And it is out of a\nchamber where he and that pain have long been companions that the\nearthly father issues to welcome and receive at last the lad who has\nsought his face penitent and in his right mind.  The welcome is real.\nThe forgiveness is full and free.  And yet behind it there is sacrifice.\nThe price of it is suffering.  Aback of it lies--the Cross! That is what\nsilences cheap thinking and glib speech about the forgiveness of God.\nIf God's long-suffering be like a father's here, it is, first, long\nsuffering.\n\nThe danger, however, is not that we abuse God's grace knowingly and in\ncallous complacency.  Far more is it, I think, that we never actually\naccept and realise and build our lives upon the gracious compassion of\nthe Heavenly Father and His willingness to forgive.\n\nEvery parent ought to know Coventry Patmore's beautiful lyric, \"The\nToys.\"  In it a father tells how, when his little son had been\ndisobedient again and again, he struck him, and sent him with hard words\nand unkissed to bed--\"his mother, who was patient, being dead.\" And\nwhen, later, he went upstairs to see him, he found him asleep, his\nlashes still wet with tears, and--what touched him most--on a table\nbeside his bed all his little treasures heaped together to comfort his\nsad heart--a box of counters, and a red-veined stone, a piece of glass\nabraded by the beach, and six or seven shells, a bottle with blue bells,\nand two French copper coins--all his little store of precious things.\n\n    So when that night I prayed\n    To God, I wept and said--\n    \"Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,\n    Not vexing Thee in death,\n    And Thou rememberest of what toys\n    We made our joys,\n    How weakly understood\n    Thy great commanded good,\n    Then, fatherly not less\n    Than I, whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,\n    Thou'lt leave Thy wrath and say:\n    'I will be sorry for their childishness.'\"\n\n\nOne word more about our Father's SILENCE.  Our fathers here on earth had\ntheir silences when we were children.  We asked him for something that\nwe wanted very much.  And he gave no reply.  We went on asking. We\nexpected to get what we had set our hearts on.  He heard us hoping and\nbelieving that this good thing would come to us, and he held his peace.\nBut we knew that silence, and we trusted it.  We were quite sure that he\nwould have told us if we were deceiving ourselves, that his gift, when\nit came, would, at least, not be a mere mockery of our hopes.\n\nAnd I often think of these words of Christ's, \"If a son shall ask bread\nof any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone?\" when I stand\nby a graveside, and speak the words of radiant hope with which we lay\nour beloved to rest.  Our Father hears us speak that hope.  He has heard\nhearts in an agony through all the generations wish that it might be\ntrue--that this bleak fact of Death is not the end, but only the\nbeginning of a better thing.  But He keeps silence.  We have no sure\nproof, only the blessed hope of the Christian evangel.\n\nHe keeps silence.  But, my brethren, can we not trust that silence since\nit is our Father's?  We have asked this bread in our pain and through\nour tears.  We have asked it because it seems to us we need it so.  And\nwhatever gift His silence hides, this at least is certain, it is not, it\ncannot be, only a stone.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nAlmighty God, who through Jesus Christ has taught us to call Thee our\nFather, we thank Thee that Thou hast chosen a name so dear to us to\nreveal Thy care and Love.  When our way is dark and our burden is heavy\nand our hearts are perplexed, grant us the grace to know that Thou who\nart directing every step of our journey art a God of Love, and Thy true\nand perfect Name is Our Father in Heaven.  Through Jesus Christ our\nLord.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_Whosoever will lose his_\n_life for my sake shall find it._\"\n  (MATTHEW xvi. 25.)\n\n\n                                  XXIX\n\n                         THE UNRETURNING BRAVE\n\n                           (EASTER DAY, 1915)\n\nNOTE.--I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Sir Wm. Robertson\nNicoll's \"When the Wounded Go Home,\" a tender and courageous message.\n\nChristmas in war time was like an evil dream.  Easter is like a breath\nfrom Heaven itself, a wind from the pure and blessed heights of God\nblowing the clouds of battle-smoke apart for a brief space so that we\nall may see again that beyond the smoke and beyond grim death itself\nthere is the Life Enduring, a Divine Love compared to which ours at the\nbest is untender and hard, a Fatherly welcome beside which welcomes here\nare faint and cold.  This is the strangest Easter Day the world has ever\nknown, yet never have the thousands and thousands of stricken homes and\nsore hearts needed more the living hope that is begotten anew in the\nChristian Church this day by our Lord's rising again from the dead.  It\nis assuredly of God's mercy that Easter should fall in these days, when\nso many fathers and mothers, wives and sisters and lovers need its hope\nand comfort so.\n\nWe cannot but think to-day of the many, many homes in our own and other\nlands from which strong and brave men marched away weeks or months ago,\nbecause they had heard the call, and were willing to make the supreme\nsacrifice for righteousness' sake, who will never come back again, who\nhave died a soldier's death and sleep in a soldier's grave--fathers,\nhusbands, sons, lovers, gallant men, dear lads, cheerful, willing,\ndauntless.  You find their names by the hundred and the thousand in the\ncasualty lists, but the loss you cannot measure unless you could see all\nthe shadowed homes.  How many such homes there are in our own land\nalone, How many such in our own little circle!\n\nTry to realise that, and then ask if a more gracious message could fall\nupon all these hearts to-day than the Easter message of the Christian\nChurch,--that there is no death and that its seeming victory is not a\nvictory.  The old, old question, If a man die shall he live again? is\nanswered to-day by the triumphant Yes! of Christendom.  Yes, he never\nceases to live.  From the inferno of the battlefield the mortally\nstricken do but pass across the bridge and stream of death to God's\nOther Side.  When they fall in battle, they fall into His everlasting\nArms.  They do not die.  They are not dead.  It is only their poor\nmortal bodies that the shrieking shells can maim or destroy.  They\nthemselves, the real self and spirit of them, no material force can\nhurt, for that belongs to a higher kingdom than the visible, and its\ntrue goal and home are not here at all.\n\nTo all who are sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death in these\ndays, to all who have watched their beloved go out where every true man\nwould wish to go, and know only too surely that they shall never\nreturn,--to these to-day Jesus Christ has His Word to speak,--and would\nthat all might hear it and give it room in their hearts to do its\nblessed work!  It is to Him we owe it, and He is our authority for\nbelieving that beyond the darkness and separation of death there is the\nmorning of a new and fairer day.  The valley of the Shadow, yea, the\nvalley of battle itself opens out again at its far end to the sun's\nrising and the untrammelled life in the light and liberty of God.  The\nhappy warrior is borne by gentle hands to God's own land of peace, where\nthe fret and fury of battle slip from him like a discarded garment, and\nbeside the still waters of that better country he finds healing for his\nhurt.  It is that quiet and blessed hope that is being reborn in our\nhearts this day as the Church keeps her festival of a Risen and a Living\nChrist.  It is that lively hope the Church offers for comfort to all\nstricken homes and to every sorrowing heart.\n\nThey offered themselves, these gallant lads, not for anything they hoped\nto gain, but for the sake of honour and liberty, of justice and\nrighteousness.  And when a man casts himself on God in that fashion,\noffering not the words of his lips, nor the homage of his worship, but\nhimself, all that he has, his life and all that life holds for him,\nthink you that upon that poor soul, with his priceless offering borne\nhumbly in his hands, the God and Father of us all is going to turn His\nback?  \"He that loseth his life,\" said Jesus, \"for my sake shall find\nit.\"\n\nThere are times when the most gracious doctrine is not gracious enough\nto represent and embody the Spirit of Christ to us.  We want something\nmore, and we often seek it and sometimes find it in poetry, in art, or,\nbest of all, in the silence of our own hearts when God-given instinct\nwhispers what no words or doctrine can ever express.  Such a time is\nnow.  Such a need is ours to-day.\n\nI make no defence of it theologically, and I ask no man to accept it who\ndoes not feel it clamouring at his heart for entrance, but I confess\nthat for me a couple of lines of John Hay's in his \"Pike County Ballads\"\nstrike a note which all that I know in my heart of the Spirit of Christ\nleaps up to welcome and approve.  It is when he has told the story of\nJim Bludso's sacrifice.  Jim was engineer on the \"Prairie Belle,\" a\nriver-steamboat, and he was rather a rough, careless man. But when the\nsteamer took fire, it was Jim who held her against the bank till\neverybody got safely off except himself.  With eyes wide open to what he\ndid, he sacrificed his life to save the other souls on board.  Hay sums\nup in these lines:--\n\n    \"And Christ ain't going to be too hard\n    On a man that died for men.\"\n\nI leave it there.  I trust I am a loyal son of the Church, but I must\nhave a place in my creed somewhere for the hope which these lines\nexpress that Christ ain't going to be too hard on a man that died for\nmen.\n\nBut there is something more to be said.  Every chaplain at the front\ntells us that the most careless and irreligious youths and men take up a\nwonderfully different attitude out there.  Men pray in the trenches who\nhave never prayed before.  I heard some stories recently that brought\ntears to my eyes, of brave and simple confessions made at little\ngatherings for prayer in strange places, by some of those very lads whom\nwe reckoned indifferent and heedless before they left home. And some of\nthen, turning their faces simply and earnestly, and by an old, old\ninstinct of the heart, towards God and His Christ before the battle\nbroke upon them, some of them have fallen on the field!\n\nMany, many more there must be who turned them Godwards even at the\neleventh hour in one brief upward glance to ask forgiveness and strength\nto play the man, about whom no chaplain can report, for no one knows or\nsaw or heard save Christ Himself.  But there's a glorious page in the\nGospel to assure us beyond all doubt or question that no one who makes\nthat appeal, though it be the dying thief himself, ever makes it in\nvain.\n\nAnd there we leave the issue--with God, who is kinder than our kindest,\nand whose mercy is from everlasting.  It is He who has brought us this\nblessed hope, through His Son, this Easter Day, and we honour His gift\nbest by taking it in all its breadth and comfort to our hearts.  To the\nbroken-hearted wife or mother, to whom the bald War Office report has\ncome, let us take this comfort,--\"Your beloved is not dead.  God has him\nin His gracious care and keeping till the day break and the shadows flee\naway.\"  For that is the Easter message, God be thanked.  And this is\nEaster Day.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nTo Thy merciful care and keeping we commend all the sons and daughters\nof affliction, and especially those who in this great contest have lost\nsome loved one.  Grant that even through their tears they may discern\nthe glory that belongs to those who have given their lives a ransom for\nmany.  Be Thou their help and their strength, and may the sympathy of\nall who know them be for them an earnest and token of Thy great Love and\nCompassion.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.\n\n\n\n\"_The heavens declare the_\n_glory of God._\"\n  (PSALM xix. 1.)\n\n\n                                  XXX\n\n                        THE SACRAMENT OF SUNSET\n\n\"The sky,\" says Ruskin, \"is the part of Nature in which God has done\nmore for the sake of pleasing man, more from the sole and evident\npurpose of touching him, than in any other of His works.\"  It looks like\nthe truth.  For there is no scene of earth so fair or majestic that man\ncannot spoil it.  Where the \"cataract exults among the hills, and wears\nits crown of rainbows all alone,\" he will build him a power-house to\nsupply current to some distant town.  But he cannot touch the heavens.\nIn the heart of some fairy glen he will placard the virtues of\nsomebody's pills, and plaster the gate-posts in a sweet country lane\nwith the specious claims of some quack doctor, but above it all, it is\nGod, and God alone, who spreadeth out the heavens like a curtain and in\nthem has set a tabernacle for the sun.  Even in places where the face of\nearth wears no suggestion of natural beauty the face of the sky redeems\nit from evil.  For, above the squalor of the city's meanest slum, burn\nthe great fires of the setting sun, and overhead the fleecy white clouds\nsail silently all night long.\n\nBut, of it all, the glory of the sunset is chief.  The dawn has its cold\nsplendours too, but not many of us are there to see it when it is at its\nbest.  It is at eventide, when the work of the day is done, and the\nspell of its restfulness lays the senses open, it is then chiefly that\nGod unfolds these splendid harmonies of colour in the western heavens.\nAnd, by consent, on this Ayrshire coast, on which I look out as I write,\nthese glories can be seen to great advantage.  It is into no flat\nexpanse of water that the dying sun sinks here.  The peaks and crags of\nArran invest its passage with an indescribable pomp and majesty,\nstanding out against it like the massive pillars of some giant gateway\nof the West.  It is never twice the same.  Sometimes lurid and blazing,\nwith masses of thunder-cloud piled high, all their outer edges rimmed\nwith fire; and, next night, peaceful and level, a study in straight\nlines, as if the great Artist, with even brush, had washed the sky with\nbands of grey and blue and gold.  Each evening God has His own picture\nfor us, His own handiwork, unspoiled by man.  How many of us ever pause\nto recognise its beauty?  What does it mean that such a prodigality of\nharmonious colours should be the most ordinary feature of our evening\nhour?  Is it that God Himself takes delight in the beauty of it all, for\nits own sake, rejoicing, like all good workmen, in the work of His\nhands?  Or has He some purpose with regard to His children of mankind?\nIs it, as Ruskin says, for the sake of pleasing man?  How unthankful and\nunmindful we are, if that be so!\n\nThe sunset teaches us to put together these two ideas--beauty, beyond\nthe wit of man to portray, and God.  There is plenty of ugliness and sin\nin the world, and the life of men.  Man himself recognises how much of\nthe beauty that might have been has been marred and disfigured by him.\nYet in his heart he worships it, and feels after it afar off. And in the\nevening sky it is written that Beauty belongeth supremely unto God.\n\nWhatever that far-off divine event be, to which the whole creation\nmoves, one of its features shall be, must be, a beauty which shall fully\nsatisfy.  For beauty and God cannot be divorced.  And when, of an\nevening, God for His own good pleasure, working with those material\nelements which have no power to disobey His behests, unfolds His will in\nsuch dazzling visions of splendour, is He not declaring that the end and\ngoal of life itself, when His purpose therewith is completed, and Man,\ntoo, has fallen into harmony with His will, shall be fair, and\nsatisfying, and beautiful?\n\nLet us not be afraid to say and believe that God speaks to us in the\nsunset.  If I pick up the receiver of a telephone and hear my friend\nannounce some good news that fills my heart with gladness, it does not\ndisturb me to remember that the wire itself has no power to speak.  For\nI feel that somewhere at the end of the wire is a mind and a heart like\nmy own who is using the dead, soulless wire as a medium of speech with\nme.  When the glories of the sun's setting fall upon your heart like a\nbenediction, stirring you to devout and grateful thought, breathing\npeace upon you, cleansing your desires of all that is mean and sordid,\ndo not be afraid to believe that, behind and beyond all that is material\nand visible, there is the Mind and Heart in whose image yours was made,\nwhose gift peace is, whose whisper, though it come along dead\nether-waves to reach you, is His whisper nevertheless.\n\nIt is perhaps natural that the prevailing quality of the thoughts that\narise within us when we watch the setting sun should be pensive, tender,\nand, not seldom, a little sad.  For it speaks of the end of the day and\nthe coming night.  Its charm and spell are like that of autumn, the\nremembrance of what has gone, the tender grace of a day that is dead.\nFor all the beauty and wonder of this world, there is a tear at the\nheart of things.  Beneath all our laughter and happiness there lies that\ndeeper note.  The night cometh.  There is an end to it all--friendship,\nlove, happiness, work, life itself.\n\n    \"For be the long day never so long,\n    At last it ringeth to evensong.\"\n\n\nAnd yet, and yet, my brothers, the end is beautiful, more beautiful even\nthan the beginning.  God has made the day's death to be exceeding fair.\nThe sun passes gloriously to its rest.  Hopefully too, for, passing\nthus, it promises a new and fairer morning.  So do God's children die.\n\n                                 PRAYER\n\nO Lord our God, who hast written Thy Word of hope and promise in the\nevening sky, be near us when our day is done, and the wind has fallen\nsilent, and the night is waiting.  Put us to sleep in a chamber of peace\nwhose windows open toward the sun rising, and, when we awake, may we be\nstill with Thee.  For Jesus' sake.  Amen.","title":"A Day at a Time, and Other Talks on Life and Religion","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":39223}