The Christian Revelation Of Providence
"LIBERTY OF THE TREE OF LIFE"
ever I recognise Christ to be a reality.
The moment I say to myself, "There is a beauty which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor natural mind conceived,"
I have set up a claim to the Christian reading of that which men call fiction.
I have claimed it on the ground, not of the weakness of the flesh, but of the strength of the spirit.
I have asserted my right to this branch of the tree.
I have done so on the principle that the gospel of Christ has revealed to me the absolute reality of all heroism that transcends the earth.
In reading of a high heroism which I have not seen in actual life, I do not feel that I am wasting my time in unreality.
On the contrary, I am turning from the unreal to the real, from the imperfect to the perfect, from the prophecy to the fulfilment, from the temporal shadow to the eternal substance.
The Christian is by nature a worshipper of things not seen as yet.
He is a believer in the existence of a star which lies beyond the range of the telescope.
Is it surprising that he should be prepared to welcome the record
"LIBERTY OF THE TREE OF LIFE"
of that which is above experience, and accept by the eye of faith an order of human things which the eye of sense as yet cannot discern?
The only remaining instance I shall notice of the relation between Christian life and Christian liberty is the set of actions comprehended under the general word " pleasure."
The common view is that when a man becomes a Christian the thing called worldly pleasure is there and then lessened to him in value.
The Christian position is exactly the reverse.
It is that the possession of Christ for the first time makes pleasure possible.
The doctrine of Christianity is that the root of all earthly happiness is self-forgetfulness.
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you" are the words in which the law of pleasure is declared.
The petition, "Thy will be done" precedes the prayer "Give us this day our daily bread."
Nor is it without reason that it does so.
It is a matter of the most everyday experience that "he who loveth his life shall lose it."
"LIBERTY OF THE TREE OF LIFE"
Fix your mind upon the personal joy which any pleasure shall bring you, dwell on it night and day, cherish it hour by hour, and the result will inevitably be disappointment
Pleasure will not stand to be scrutinised ; it must come in at the side door.
Its most successful moments are its most forgetful moments.
It is not the fact of anticipation which disqualifies; it is the anticipation for one's self.
Figure in advance the pleasure, not which will come to you, but which will come to another, and the result will be quite different; 1t will come into your own bosom "pressed down, and shaken, and _ running over."
The Christian has for the first time received the organ of joy, the sense by which pleasure can be known.
He has the right to pleasure which comes from the possession of the faculty—the right which the eye has to see, which the ear has to hear, which the heart has to feel.
He has got back the liberty of nature because he has himself for the first time become natural—acquired all the organs for physical enjoyment.
He has
"LIBERTY OF THE TREE OF LIFE"
entered into the pleasure of natural things because he has entered into their spontaneity.
He has overcome the tendency to self-consciousness which is the death of happiness.
He has ceased to say we shall be "as gods, knowing good and evil."
It is the thought of being like gods that expels Paradise from the eyes, that stops the flow of the rivers, that withers the foliage of the trees.
The overcoming of my own shadow restores the banished light, and the spontaneity of a sacrificial soul unbars my way to that play of energy which belongs by nature to created things.
THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION
OF PROVIDENCE
REVELATION
III.
"J HAVE set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it" are the words in which St.
John describes the providential government which man is to look for in the new order.
It is not a promise; it is the revelation of a fact already accomplished.
Let me remark at the outset how singularly appropriate is the symbol in which the message comes.
The words are addressed to Christianity's youth.
What youth wants before all other things is an opening.
The expression has become almost proverbial.
Every young man wants an entrance into life.
You will observe, it is an entrance that he desires.
It is not a door of escape which is sought; it is a door of usefulness.
The idea is not that of a
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captive, desirous to get out; it is that of a free man, eager to get in—to get utilised for some service.
That was the position of Christianity's youth, as of all youth.
Its first days were not days of bondage, but of irksome liberty—days when it was simply ignored as a cipher, as a nobody.
The original cross which Christianity had to bear was _ not persecution, but neglect.
Its primitive penalty was to be left alone, to be left outside.
It saw others enter into the kingdom—the Roman kingdom; it envied them in ceasing to be free.
Its pain was its long holiday— the fact that no man had hired it.
It longed to have a work to do for the kingdom, to be sharer in the common chain.
St.
John's misery in Patmos was not the fact that the sea shut him in, but that the sea shut him out.
He could have borne the mill bravely if it had not been a tread-mill—a mill that ground nothing for anybody.
His hardships were not greater than those of any Roman soldier ; but they were less productive.
That was their sting, that was their victory.
The
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sea of Patmos was the symbol of that difficulty which besets all youth—the barrier to an entrance into the real world.
Now, under these apparently gloomy circumstances, observe the extremely scientific character of St John's theory of Divine Providence.
He never for a moment evokes the aid of supernatural interference.
It is not even to a second advent that he looks for the putting of things right.
This would have been after the manner of his countrymen; the Jew hoped all things from the direct interference of God.
But St. John's view is that, so far as Christianity is qoncerned, there 'is no need of such interference.
To his eye, the seeming dead lock is a delusion.
To all appearance there is a solid wall blocking the way; but in reality there is a breach in it.
If you could only get near enough, St. John says you would find that instead of being continuous it has a break in the middle.
The idea suggests the feeling one experiences in sailing up some of our Scottish lochs.
We often see before us what seems to be the end
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of the journey—the necessary end.
In front of us stretches an apparently unbroken line of hills, right in the face of future progress.
"The vessel will have to turn," we say.
But as we approach the barrier there breaks upon us a wondrous revelation.
The solid mass seems to part asunder.
In reality it was never united.
That which in the distance appeared continuous, reveals a pass between ; and, in the very spot which once seemed to present an interposed barrier, there is stretched a channel of communication with regions far away.
The vessel is not arrested, is not diverted from its goal.
It finds an exit at the very point where it expected to meet a terminus, and the scene of its threatened extremity becomes the place of its emergence.
One could almost imagine that a simile analogous to this was floating before the eyes of the seer of Patmos when he proclaimed to the old world his doctrine of Divine superintendence.
Proclaimed as it was to the old world, perhaps the first thing which impresses us about it is its intense modernness.
There
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is not a trace of anything ancient in the utterance.
Brief as the words are, they arc wonderfully comprehensive.
They are full of demarcation lines.
They mark off St. John's theory from all other theories on the subject.
It seems to me that they specially distinguish it from three other views which are apt to enter into our computation of the universe— the fatalistic, the unnatural, and the accidental.
Let us glance at each of these.
And first, I would observe that St. John's view of Providence is distinct from fatalism.
This is brought out, I think, by the designed indefiniteness of the revelation.
The door which is opened is not revealed.
What is really said is: "There is an opening for you somewhere—a door."
It is not intended that the Christian should fold his hands in the hope of a coming destiny.
The motive of the statement is precisely the reverse.
What St.
John says is: "You do not know at what particular point or angle your opportunity is coming.
You see in advance of you no aperture by which you can make your
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entrance into the world.
None the less, the aperture is there.
It is your distance that prevents you from seeing it.
You will never see it till you go near.
It is situated somewhere in the very middle of the seemingly continuous wall.
Do not be arrested in your march by the sight of that wall.
Do not ask a revelation of the aperture in advance.
You are not promised to-day your bread for to-morrow.
The question for the hour is, not whether you have sight enough to see the aperture in the wall, but whether you have strength enough to approach the aperture without seeing it.
You are distressed about your capabilities for to-morrow: have you the capability to veach to-morrow?
Have you strength to take the intervening steps between you and your barrier?
Have you strength for the one day that divides you from it, for the one hour that divides you from it, for the last five minutes that divide you from it?
Have you strength to take the one remaining step that intervenes between you and your seeming interruption?
Then, in
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God's name, let that step be taken.
Go up to the obstacle ; put out your hand and touch it.
And lo! it will recede before your touch.
It will reveal in the middle an ivory gate and golden.
And the gate will prove to be unlocked, unshut; it will swing back upon its hinges, and you will enter in—will find pasture in the very spot where you thought to be confronted with barren ground."
All this is the extreme opposite of fatalism.
Fatalism is the passiveness of the mind in the presence of destiny; ¢zs is the passiveness of destiny in the presence of the mind.
Fatalism says, "There is a door open for me; I need not work;"
¢hzs says, "There is a door open for me; I must work to find what it is."
Fatalism is the reverence for an unknown event which is to happen somewhere, somehow;
"¢zs is the reverence for every event of the world.
You will see how it must be so.
I am to find my door by seeking ; for all I know, any spot may be the spot.
I am bound to walk with uncovered head through the universe.
It is to
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me as to Abraham in the days of his first journeying.
He sought a land of promise, but he had no idea where it was.
What did he do under these circumstances?
He put up an altar wherever he went.
He did not know where the consecrated spot might be ; accordingly he consecrated every spot, on the chance of its being the favoured one.
In point of fact he proved right; he was in the promised land all the time.
But had it been otherwise, it would still have been his only course, as it is yours and mine.
We must build our altars, not to an unknown God, but to an unknown place.
We must impute to every scene our possible destiny.
We must feel the solemnity of a street-crossing, of a chance visit, of an evening party.
We must accept our call to commonplace, yea, to zvksome duty, as a possible call to the ivory gate.
We must bow to the unseen issues of the exchange, the counting-house, the workshop.
We must remember that every stroke of life's oar is carrying us farther than we dream of, and therefore we must allow
OF PROVIDENCE
each stroke to alternate with a prayer.
All this is the reverse of fatalism.
The second view of the universe to which St. John's message forms a sharp antithesis is what I have called the unnatural, by which I mean the theory which favours an_ interruption in the ordinary course of nature.
The point in which St. John's message diverges from this view lies in the words, "I have set before thee a door which is opened."
This is the most direct translation, and it is suggestive.
It implies that there is no need of interposition in the working of the machine The course of nature, which here means the course of human history, already holds upon its line of rail the very opening Christianity requires.
It is not even implied that originally this door was opened for a Christian purpose.
Rather the contrary.
The strong point in the passage is not the opening, but the setting—the placing on the line where the opening happened to be.
In point of fact, Christianity has been helped by what Mr.
Gibbon calls secondary causes, what St. John
44.
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calls previously open doors.
The one means exactly the same as the other.
Both signify that when Christianity came into the world it found already laid a certain line of transport
—laid by human hands for secular ends, the product of selfish ambition, and the result of worldly conquest—but none the less the help of a life of whose coming it did not know, and the accelerator of a progress whose nature it did not contemplate.
Let me try to make my meaning clear.
I have often been struck with the fact that every period of Christian development has been preceded by a period of gravitation towards a common centre.
In other words, the most prosaic study of history will, I think, lead one to the conclusion that each special age of Christian outpouring has had for its forerunner a time of political unity—a time in which the earth has been drawn together as by a belt of contact.
Of course no one will dispute that, when the Christian outpouring occurs at such a time, it receives from it a great advantage—an open door.
But the
OF PROVIDENCE
remarkable thing is that it sou/d occur at such a time—that / should throw the ball just when a common road is made.
The striking feature about it, I should say the beautiful feature about it, is that it has all happened quite naturally
—in fact, rather carnally.
The common road has been made without any reference to Christianity.
It has been made for human motives, in obedience to mechanical requirements, with a view often to sordid interests.
It has no more connection with its goal, so far as man is concerned, than the selling of Joseph by his brethren had with his future good fortune; yet in the sequel it proves to be an open door.
One or two illustrations will make _ this plain.
The empire of Alexander the Great conquered Judea, and united for a time the two most opposite nations in the world—the Greeks and the Jews.
Then came the Romans, and conquered the empire of Alexander—Greeks and Jews alike.
And now, the three great nations of the world were one nation—the Roman, the Jew, and the Greek.
At that hour
THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION
Christ came.
It was the fulness of the time for Him.
Had He come a hundred years earlier, there would have been no common road.
Had He come five centuries later, there would have been no common road.
He stood before the tree just when the tree was ripe.
Yet it was ripened by earthly suns, tended by human hands, cultivated by worldly motives.
If to be natural is to be unprovidential, then a man might look at the spectacle and deny
Providence, for it all happened quite naturally.
Again.
At the beginning of the fourth century the world was very divided.
Six emperors ruled the Roman State —rivals, mutual enemies.
One of them conquered all the others.
He conquered by purely physical weapons and for purely material gain.
He was the only one of the six who had a leaning towards Christianity; but he kept the secret in his heart.
There was no reason on the ground of Christianity why he-of all the six should have united the world once more.
But he did.
The handle of the door was turned by earthly fingers.
It opened in the ordinary
OF PROVIDENCE
course of history.
None the less, it opened into Christ.
The physical conqueror of to-day was to be the avowed Christian of to-morrow He did not know it; humanly speaking, he did not win by it.
But when he did win, he became the example, not to a section of the community, but to a united empire.
The man was Constantine.
Once more.
In the first quarter of the sixteenth century Europe was almost dominated by the life of a single man—Charles the Fifth of Germany.
His empire was vast in extent, greater still in influence.
It comprehended, fully in theory and almost in fact, the greater part of the Continent.
It reigned over Austria, the German principalities, the kingdom of Spain, the Italian States, the Netherlands ; it had prostrated the power of France; it was in alliance with the policy of England.
Never since the days of Constantine had the common road extended so far.
Like Constantine's road, it had all been constructed quite naturally.
It had been cut by human subtlety, cleared by human ambition, smoothed by
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human craft.
Yet it was to prove a medium of transmission for a very different force— a power whose motives and workings were intensely spiritual and supremely unworldly.
It was on this road that Luther rose.
The man came just at the hour.
An hour earlier would have been too soon; an hour after would have been too late; the one would have found the road unmade, the other would have found it destroyed.
As it was, that ball called The Reformation was thrown just at the right time.
It struck the road when it was level, when it was continuous; and when it began to roll it rolled on.
There had been set before it an open door.
The door had been opened for another purpose.
When Abraham looked round he saw a ram behind him.
It had not been created for the purpose of sacrifice.
It had come into the thicket for its own sake, not for Abraham's sake.
It had been in search of its own bread for the day, not of Abraham's nourishment for to-morrow.
Yet it became Abraham's door.
Even thus naturally did the united German
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Empire of the year 1525 become the door of the Lutheran Reformation.
The third view of the universe which the message of St. John controverts is what I have named the accidental—the belief that things happen fortuitously.
The antithesis to this opinion appears in the words "no man can shut it."
"Man" is here used in contrast to God—the opener of the door; he stands as the symbol for all external opposition.
The idea is that no adverse movement from without can shut a door which God has opened.
I say "from without."
All the writers of the Bible would have held very firmly that a man's adverse will can shut his own door—the door
God meant for him.
"JZ would, but ye would not" is the requiem on Jerusalem.
The same thought appears again, I think, in that strange epitaph of the third evangelist: "Judas went to his own place."
He means that he chose his own door—not God's door for him.
God had opened a door for Judas—the entrance into an apostolic mission; he was elect according to the desire of heaven.
But his own will was
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towards another aperture.
Our authorised version says he "fell by ¢ransgression"; and the English word singularly suits the fact.
He stepped over the path; he crossed the street to avoid his opening ; he went to his own place.
But, while a man's own will may shut his door, St. John says that another man's will cannot.
This is a/so a favourite doctrine of the third evangelist.
Nay, he puts it even stronger.
With him, every outside attempt to shut God's door helps to open it wider.
The finest illustration I know of his bent of mind is the remarkable passage Acts iv. 27:
"Of a truth against Thy holy servant Jesus, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, ... were gathered together, to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done."
Herod and Pilate, he says, came to shut the door, to close it effectually and for ever.
What could close it so effectually as death?
They said "Let Him die—this proposer of a new civilisation."
At that moment, St. Luke says, they opened the door to its widest.
They sent Him the one gift which was to make Him, crown
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Him.
They did the only thing which has made Him the Messiah.
If they had proposed to enrol Him among the gods of Palatine they would, without meaning it, have struck an adverse blow; when they sent Him to the cross, they prepared for Him His chariot.
"From this time forth shall ye see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."
" From this time forth"—from the hour of His humiliation, from the day of His death, from the night of His silence in the tomb.
It is a mere matter of history, and would not be denied, even by an atheist, that the glory of Jesus has dated from His sufferings—from the attempt to shut
His door.
"He emptied Himself," cries St.
Paul, "therefore God has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above every name."
Pilate and Herod meant to bury a body ; unconsciously to themselves, they were planting a flower.
I have emphasised this point, not because it is illustrative, but because it is typical.
Alike in the Old Testament and in the New
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the goal of Divine Providence is the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.
If that goal has been achieved, not only in spite of, but by reason of, the things which were meant to interrupt it, it becomes more than an_ illustration, it is a vindication, of St. John's message.
Perhaps, too, from another quarter the verdict of modern life will be with St. John.
It is the doctrine of scientific evolution that the world has reached its present attitude by reason of all the steps of the past—the waste as well as the fulness, the losses alike with the gains.
Whatever height we have attained is the result of all the forces that have gone before.
If I stand on a hill higher than the animal, it is because every circumstance of the past has made for that goal—the advances, the retardings, the going back, the standing still ; the evening and the morning have alike contributed to make the one day.
Such is the doctrine of modern science, even of the most negative science.
And what does it amount to?
To nothing less than the old aphorism of St. John, that no circumstance
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can shut a man's door.
There has been a struggle for survival, and thousands have fallen in the fight; but dy the struggle, not in spite of it, I am what I am.
There have been moments of regress; many have turned back, and the ranks have been greatly thinned ; but by the thinning of the ranks I am what
Iam.
Through devious roads, through contrary roads, through ways I never should have chosen, through paths I should have rejected beforehand, I have reached my open door.
The key which has opened it is not all of gold.
Like the image of Nebuchadnezzar's vision, part of it was of gold, part of silver, part of brass, and part of clay.
The clay might be called the adversary of the gold; yet the open door on whose threshold I stand to-day has been unlocked equally by every side of the key.
I have come into my kingdom as much by the way of the thorns as by the way of the roses; the desert has contributed to make my promised iand.
That is the doctrine of modern science ; that is the message of the seer of Patmos.
THE CHRISTIAN PROMISE OF
IMMUNITY
REVELATION
III. 10
THE Christian promise of immunity is contained in these words: " Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world."
The phrase which startles us at the outset is the expression, " My fatzence."
What a strange attribute to be claimed for the Divine!
We could have understood "My greatness,' "My power," "My justice," "My majesty."
But patience—that is surely a singular prerogative for a Divine ideal.
It was directly in the face of all existing conceptions— Roman, Greek, Jewish.
It was the lifting into the heavens of a virtue which had been always deemed too prosaic for the best of earth—a virtue which was regarded as the property of
THE CHRISTIAN
PROMISE
poor creatures, of the down-trodden, of the slave.
In a book which is saturated with a sense of the majesty of God, in a book which lavishes on the Christ every epithet of glory, it seems an anti-climax to claim as the chief jewel of His crown the homely grace of patience.
But is there anything which shows more strongly that St. John had in his view the Christ of history?
Is not the distinctive attribute of the Christ of history His patience ?
The peculiar trial of the Son of Man was waiting ; He was straitened until His baptism was accomplished.
The world was not ready for Him, though He was ready for the world.
The sorest cross He had to bear was the unpreparedness of men.
His deepest struggle was the struggle to restrain Himself, to keep Himself from anticipating the slow course of events.
It is this consciousness, I think, that breaks forth in the words "I am meek and lowly in heart."
He felt that He was capable of quicker things.
He perceived within Himself the working of forces which, if He gave them
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PROMISE vent, would lift the world in a moment miles along the way.
"Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels?"
It is the expression of the belief that He was submitting to a reserve of power, that He was constraining Himself within the limits prescribed by natural law.
The special gift of the earthly life of Jesus was the power of patience.
In one sense the force of all temptation springs from a want of patience.
It is a familiar experience that if hunger is long protracted, the appetite goes.
I believe, if we could suspend the obedience to any temptation for an adequate period, it would follow the law of hunger—would subside.
What the drunkard wants is a power of resistance— an ability to hold out; if he could hold out long enough, the appetite for drink would fade and ultimately vanish.
What the illtempered man wants is time to carry his anger without expressing it.
I do not believe in the adage that nursing wrath keeps it warm, if it means that suspending its action
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keeps it warm.
We all utter genuine threats on Monday which we could not possibly carry out on Saturday.
We explain it by saying that we have cooled down; and it is true.
But the cooling down is not the result of any change of circumstances; it comes simply from the attitude of waiting.
The most potent of all powers against the influence of temptation is the power to wait.
But the stress of this passage is after all laid, not on the patience, but on the "word" of the patience.
The "word," as I take it, means the cause, the motive of the patience; the "word" is the prompting word.
The expression "the word of my patience" is antithetical.
It implies that patience may have many watchwords, many rallying-cries.
The rallying-cry of a movement is its motive, its ground of stimulus.
Now, there have been three rallying-cries or watchwords of patience in this world.
There are three words which have been made the cause of patience, and not one of them is that of Christ.
We shall look at each in turn.
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The first of these watchwords is the sense of life's nothingness.
Its motto for patience would be, " Not worth while to get hot."
No man can deny that such a rallying-cry, if it comes from the heart, and goes to the heart, has a certain amount of power.
I believe that if a man could reach an attitude of absolute pessimism, if he could really come to feel that everything in this world was as bad as it could be, he would be free from all temptation.
Everything would then be on a level; and temptation requires a mountain.
But you will observe, what St. John speaks of is not freedom from temptation; it is keeping from the our of temptation—resisting the hour for the sake of the eternity.
So far from advocating the freedom from temptation, he says that temptation "shall come to all the world" —therefore to the Christian also.
The difference, in his view, between the man of the world and the Christian, is not that the former shall be tempted and the latter not.
On the contrary, temptation is often more blunted to the worldling than to the Christian.
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I would say that it is more difficult for a follower of Christ to get free from temptation than it is for a man of the world, for the simple reason that to the follower of Christ life is a more rose-coloured thing.
The worldling has great advantages for getting soured with life—in other words, for seeing the colours taken out of it; and that is itself the death of temptation.
When a man's tree of life is withered, it is withered all round— for active evil as well as active good.
His fate, from an opposite point of view, is something like the fate of the three' men 'in Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace—he passes through and receives no hurt.
Now, whatever be the word of Christ's patience, it is not this word.
His attitude towards life is not that of pessimism—even less so than that of His apostle, St. Paul.
Indeed, looking at the matter from the purely human side, I know of no teacher so optimistic as that Son of Man who had the deepest sense of human sin.
He regarded the world as beautiful to look upon.
He had a sense
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of that impartial mercy which blesses the creature because he zs a creature—makes its sun to rise on the evil and the good.
He was impressed with the infinite influence of the most finite things, of the most seemingly insignificant things.
He emphasised the ineradicable effect of giving a cup of cold water to a thirsty man.
He perilled the fortunes of His kingdom in a moment of danger on the influence of a look cast upon a deserting disciple, whom He had placed at the head of His band.
The word of Christ's patience was certainly not a sense of life's nothingness.
The second word which may describe a source of patience is "exhaustion "—the decline of the vital functions.
The rallying-cry for the abandonment of life and its temptations may be the patience which says, "I am_ tired."
The exhaustion of vital energy may come from many things.
It may be the fruit of old age; it may spring from what is called fastness—the over-yielding to temptation itself.
A dissipated man literally means a man who has ceased to be tempted—ceased to
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taste the joy of sins which once allured him.
He is one who has been made old before his time, in whom the process of vital exhaustion has been accelerated.
A_ state like this involves the death of temptation.
It does so even though the old habits may remain.
A man frequents his former haunts from custom long after he has become blind to their beauty.
So is it with false beauty as well as true.
The dissipated man is the man who has lost the charm of things that once were joys.
The objects remain uninjured; the habit remains unbroken; but the energy is exhausted, the temptation is away.
Is this the word of Christ's patience?
No.
Whatever His prompting word may be, it is not "exhaustion."
There is a remarkable passage in St. John's own Gospel which strongly bears upon this point.
Christ says to the Samaritan, " The water which I will give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."
"Springing up to everlasting life" means, springing up for ever.
The idea is that of a perpetual flow, of a power
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PROMISE ever recuperative, ever renewing itself.
And the charm of the saying is that it is a delightful little bit of autobiography.
It is a record of Christ's own experience about Himself.
How did He know that His followers were to have a sense of perpetual youth?
Because He felt it in Himself.
No man could have pictured life as the springing water who had not essentially a young soul.
It is the cry of youth, of youth irrepressible and full of glory.
It is the voice of a heart that, amid all its sorrows, has never been wasted, worn, wearied—of a spirit which has been conscious of fresh strength at every moment of exhaustion.
We must seek elsewhere than in fading vigour for the word of Christ's patience.
There is a third word which may be the source of patience.
It may come from bloodlessness, or anemia; its rallying-cry may be, "TI cannot be troubled with the heat of passion."
For it must be confessed that there are minds in this world which are too shallow to be violently stirred, either by good or ill.
They dwell in a recess of the bay.
The
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storms of life sweep overhead and leave them quite untouched.
I do not say, unharmed.
Their incapacity to be moved springs from their want of depth, and it prevents them as much from becoming very good as_ from becoming very bad.
None the less, the position of these men in the world is what the world calls blameless.
They are blameless because they are bloodless.
They are sheltered by their own inlandness.
They are protected by the passiveness of their nature.
They fail to take fire because they have not the combustible element.
They are incapable of great desire, of strong emotion, of ardent longing, of much laughter or of many tears.
They cannot be said to possess their souls in patience.
Their patience is, strictly speaking, not a possession ; they do not hold z¢; it holds them.
It imprisons them.
It encloses them from the breath of every current.
It girds them round and round with an atmosphere of deadly calm which excludes all contact with the forces and forms of passion Is this the word of Christ's patience?
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Assuredly not.
This is the cleansing through bloodlessness; but it is the dlod of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all sin.
Christ's conquest of temptation is not the conquest by impassiveness; it is the conquest by passion— the Lord's passion.
Not by bloodlessness, but by the transfusion of new blood, is the victory of the Christian won.
If temptation is subdued, it is not by a calming down of the life-forces.
It is by the impartation of a fresh force.
The old temptation is conquered by getting a new one, a higher one.
The things which once were gain are counted loss, not because a part of our nature is dormant, but because there has appeared a more excellent glory, beneath whose sunlight the candle ceases to shine.
For let us now ask, What is that word of Christ's patience which has enabled man _ to wait?
It is a shorter word than any of the three foregoing—nothingness, exhaustion, anemia ; it is love.
Love is distinctively the one power in all the universe that makes for patience.
It is a remarkable fact that when St. Paul is counting the different jewels of its
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crown he lingers longest over its waiting power.
One would have thought that in that magnificent hymn which he dedicates to its glory he would have dwelt upon its flights and raptures.
Not so.
His eye rests upon its patience.
He is so attracted by that gem that he can hardly let it go.
Nearly every note of this hymn is a note in praise of love's waiting.
To him its paramount beauty is that it "never faileth."
It "suffereth long"; it "is not easily provoked " ; it is greater in its abidingness than even faith or hope; it "beareth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things"; these are the chords that dominate the triumphant anthem, and constitute the charm of its music.
It is the same note which appears again in the twelfth chapter of Romans, where he is speaking of the gifts of love.
To him. there is ever one cry: " Wait, wait, wait!"
All love's more brilliant manifestations are passed by on the other side.
He calls on the ministering to wait on their ministry, the teachers on their teaching, the exhorters on their exhortation.
He bids the prophets "prophesy according to
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PROMISE the proportion of faith "»—their waiting-power for the coming good of humanity.
He tells the rulers to rule "with diligence "—with that prosaic painstaking whose name is patience.
From first to last he has no other song but the patience of love.
And is it not true that love is the most staying power in the universe?
Is there anything which so helps a man to endure the hour?
We see a youth of burning passions and of loose morals; a pure love comes, and thenceforth he walks above the mire.
We feel within our breast the glow of a just anger.
A man is seen living in defiance of all goodness.
Every voice of the hour cries for vengeance, and every instinct of daily justice exclaims, "Cut him down; why cumbereth he the ground?"
Yet, even in our hearts, we do not cut him down.
Why?
Because there is a voice beyond the hour, an instinct beyond the day; it is love.
The hour cries, "Cut him down," because it sees the man of the present ; love says, "Spare him," because it sees the man of the future.
There is a temptation
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which once at least in a lifetime comes to all the world; it is uncharity—the cry of the hour for the sword of retribution.
From that temptation which comes to all the world there is provided for all the world a refuge.
There is a power which is quite universal, and its name is love.
It has the attribute of waiting, because it has the gift of foresight.
It sees in advance, and therefore it evades the moment.
It does not conquer the sense of wrong, does not wish to conquer it; but it suspends the act, it postpones the stroke, it arrests the descending blow.
It craves time for the barren fig-tree, it makes time.
It puts into the heart a word of patience; it keeps us from the temptation of the hour.
And now, running through all these details, there is one vast principle which comprehends and yet transcends them.
For what does this utterance of St. John amount to?
Is it not simply this: that in the life of the new régzme morality shall have its motive in immortality?
The waiting on the future is to conquer the temptation of the hour.
Many would call this
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PROMISE a decline in religion—a regress to the Egyptian and the Parsee.
Robertson of Brighton, in a famous passage, quoted with enthusiasm by many professed agnostics, tells us that, even if there be no future, it is better to be good than to be evil.
No ethical creed would ever deny it.
But it is not a question of betterness; it is a question of helpfulness.
What St. John maintains, what Christianity maintains, is that the sense of an object's value helps us to be good to it.
Analyse your moments of benevolence ; I think you will find that they are strongest in proportion to the possibilities of to-morrow.
Pity is independent of the sense of futurity ; it gives because it sees pain.
But when it gives it runs away; it is itself a pain.
But benevolence is a hope, and it demands hope.
If it is not to run away, it must get a glimpse of to-morrow.
It must see through the rags the possibility of the seamless robe, through the marred visage the lineaments of a face divine.
We do not crown the creature for death, but for life here or elsewhere.
If we knew that a child would not pass its
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seventh year, we should not begin its education.
It is vain to say that humanitarianism is a substitute for immortality.
It is immortality that makes humanitarianism.
Consciously or unconsciously, with or against the will, it is the far look-out towards the Father's house that prompts us to lift the prodigal from the swine.
It is the sounding of the bells across the snow that impels the arms to clear the snow away.
The word of Christ's patience is the word of immortality, and the word of immortality helps us to resist the hour.