Front matter (continued 2)

Yet does that mean that he would take the chance deliberately, with eyes full open to the consequences, if it were offered? I think not.

You can apply the test to yourself. Have you ever accepted some responsibility, and then, when the occasion came nearer, backed out of it for no other reason than that you were afraid? If you have, you will perhaps remember whether you felt proud of yourself, whether, beneath the undoubted relief, there was not a good deal of quiet shame and self-scorn. If the same thing were to happen again, you might feel the impulse to desert, but if you remembered your former experience, you would hardly yield to it, I imagine.

The plain truth is that no proper man really likes a soft job. "In the long run," says J. A. Symonds, "we really love the sternest things in life best." And he speaks truth. There is a certain exhilaration in the endurance of hardness. Responsibility braces most men like a shock of cold water. What is arduous calls them as with a trumpet. And in the general sense of quiet contempt for the person who in a panic flings up his responsibility, we may recognise one of God's elementary checks upon cowardice.

There are those who are reading these words who are enduring hardness and making sacrifices from which they might easily escape. They do at times desire relief. But the point is that they don't take it, when it is possible. And I say there must be some reason for this. What is it that holds men back from the easy way when it stands open before them?

For one thing, I think, the sense of the place that hardness and effort and endurance play in every true life. For centuries men have climbed up to strength of character, if at all, by ways uniformly arduous and steep; and distrust of the primrose path, however alluring, has passed as an instinct into our blood. In the small unheroic affairs of life we have learned that a difficulty faced and overcome, or a duty doggedly fulfilled, add a precious something to experience that there is no other way of securing. The schoolboy on a hot summer day may look up from his task, away out wistfully to the cool shade of the trees across the playground, and wish that he were there, rather than where he is. Yet even he knows, what we all come to learn, that that is not the road to anything in life worth the gaining.

Another deterring impulse is the sense of a divine vocation. Our calling and circumstances are ordained for us by God, and we must not quit the field till the day is done. It is He who has chosen our lot in life and summoned us to the sphere we fill.

We may succeed or fail as seems to Him best. Sometimes he places men, for reasons of His own, in corners where success, as commonly measured, is not possible. But one thing--success or failure--we must not do. We must not shirk. We must not run away. God means us to stand fast and do our best. For failure even, if it be honourable, He may have His good word at the last. But to the man who has shirked life's hard duties, not even God can say, "Well done!"

PRAYER

Lord of our life, and God of our salvation, make us strong to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Thou sendest no man a warfare upon his own charges. In dependence on Thy help, grant us grace to do each duty, as the hour and Thy will may bring it. And, with Thy fear in our hearts, grant us deliverance from all other fears whatever. For Thy Name's sake. Amen.

"Whatsoever ye do, do all

to the glory of God."

(1 CORINTHIANS x. 31.)

XIV

THE DAY'S DARG

It is never hard to connect the presence of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ with our Sabbaths and our hours of worship. If ever Christ comes near us in spirit at all, we say, it is when in the quiet of the sanctuary we reach out hands of prayer and desire to Him. The link between our worship and our Lord is strong and obvious. But, when the din of business shuts out all else, when the hard, toilsome duty of the ordinary day is to be done, when we are at work amid surroundings that have no suggestion of sacredness or of God about them--what of the link with Christ then? It is much harder then, is it not? to imagine any thinkable and workable connection that our Lord has with that sphere of life, broad and extensive as it is. There are many indeed who forget that there is any, and live as if there were none. And yet the solemn truth is that if that link is not strong and real, we don't know what religion means. We have hardly the right to call ourselves Christian men and women unless we can relate our week-day labours to the fact of Christ.

So let us try to strengthen that link. Let us look at our daily work in the light of religion.

First, let me remind you that our work is by divine commandment. It is not something that God allows us to do when we are not worshipping. It is His ordinance that we should all work at something. The business of life is labour of some sort. I do not know if we all realise how the Fourth Commandment begins--"Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work." And the man who is inexcusably idle, or who belittles his work, even in the interest, as he thinks, of religion, is breaking this commandment as truly as he who neglects the other half of it and dishonours the Sabbath day.

No one will accuse the Apostle Paul of any indifference or lukewarmness where true religion was concerned. Yet it was this Apostle who ordered the Thessalonians to go on with their daily occupations even though they believed, as so many did at that time, that the Return of the Lord to earth was just at hand. By our daily work we serve the Lord as truly as when we gather to His worship. Let us get out of our heads, then, the false and foolish idea that all the working part of our week is the part at which God looks askance. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and one of the ways of doing that is by being loyal to the duties of each hour whatever they may be.

Secondly, I would ask you to think of those quiet, unrecorded years of our Lord's life on earth before His public ministry. The Gospels give no details, but the fact is perfectly certain that up till His thirtieth year Jesus of Nazareth worked at His trade as a carpenter. If only we would let that fact soak into us, it would alter our whole idea of the relation of our daily work to religion. Jesus worked Himself.

And we have, as has been pointed out, interesting indirect proof as to what manner of life He lived on those workaday levels that we all know so much about. For, to this Carpenter of Nazareth there came a day when, in Nazareth itself, He stood forth as representative of a morality and religion higher than ever was proclaimed before. He spoke to men about the true way to live like one having authority. And there were many who so resented what they deemed His presumption that anything that reflected on His claims or belittled His authority would gladly have been seized upon and made the most of. Had there been in Nazareth a bit of botched work of His doing, "a door of unseasoned wood or a badly made chest," don't you think it would have been produced to discredit His mission? If any one could have been found with whom the Carpenter had not dealt honourably and justly, if, as He walked the streets of His native town and lived His humble daily life in the sight of all men, there had been anything that weakened His claim to guide and teach His brethren, don't you think they would have found it out and taxed Him with it?

There was nothing of that. Jesus faced His fellows with His daily duty behind Him, and it reinforced every word He said. His message to men was backed up by His daily life. He spoke of religion as no other son of man ever did, but He lived it long before He ever opened His mouth. He brought religion down to the workshop and the street, and showed men what it meant there. And unless He had done that, it is difficult to conceive that His public ministry of itself would have satisfied men that He was indeed One sent from God.

Do you see, then, from this point of view, what a great and vital part of religion our day's work is, and the way we do it, our life at home, our ordinary contact with our fellow-men? It is that that gives weight to any profession we may make. If in our daily life we are not exhibiting our religion, nothing that we can profess or say on Sunday will make up for that defect. It is what we are on Monday and Tuesday that underlines and emphasises the claims we make at church on the Sunday. Behind all our prayer and profession lies the everyday life.

Third, our daily work is sanctified by the fact that our Lord and Master is with us, to help and strengthen us there, as truly as when we pray. Jesus Christ is not far away, as we so pitifully misconceive it, amid the dust of business, when we must keep our temper and follow conscience along the hard way and deal honourably with all men. He is near us there also, ready and willing to help us to be true to God and man on that road which once He trod Himself.

There is a famous unwritten saying of Christ which puts memorably what the Gospels likewise testify. "Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me. Cleave the wood and there am I." Christ is as near us in our daily work as that! When Peter and his friends went a-fishing, you remember, with heavy hearts because the Master had gone away from them, He met them by the lake as they plied their ordinary calling. So does He wait, my brother, to meet you and me wherever the duty of the hour may take us. For our working life is not outside of His interest nor out with His care and guidance. With reverent imagination Van Dyke has seemed to hear the Christ speak thus--and the words may perhaps further weld the link for some of us between our everyday duty and the Christ whom we worship and seek to serve:

"They who tread the path of labour follow where My feet have trod;

They who work without complaining do the holy will of God.

Where the many toil together, there am I among my own;

Where the tired workman sleepeth, there am I with Him alone.

I, the peace that passeth knowledge, dwell amid the daily strife,

I, the bread of heaven, am broken in the sacrament of life.

Every task, however simple, sets the soul that does it free,

Every deed of love and mercy done to man is done to Me.

Nevermore thou needest seek Me; I am with thee everywhere--

Raise the stone and thou shalt find Me, cleave the wood and I am there."

PRAYER

Our Lord and Master, whose command it is that we do with our whole heart whatsoever our hand findeth to do, grant that we may so yield and surrender ourselves, body, mind and spirit, unto Thee, that even in the common business of each ordinary day we may serve Thee and glorify Thy great Name. Amen.

"Gashmu saith it."

(NEHEMIAH vi. 6.)

XV

GASHMU THE GOSSIP

Gashmu is a mere name in Scripture. He is mentioned only three times--twice as acting with Sanballat against Nehemiah, and once as the authority for a false piece of news. It is reported, wrote Sanballat in a cruel letter to Nehemiah, that you are plotting against the king, and "Gashmu saith it." That is what Gashmu stands for in Scripture, a tale-bearer, a slanderer, a gossip. What an unenviable immortality to be remembered only as the pedlar of a tale he knew to be untrue!

As long as we live together in society, there will be a kind of gossip that is inevitable, the kindly or merely casual relation of small and insignificant matters of fact, as that the painters are in next door, or that Mrs So-and-So has got a new bonnet. It is not of that I want to speak.

For there is another sort as deadly as the plague, and in civilised countries the cruellest and most devilish instrument that one man or woman can use against another. And that is the inventing of an untrue report about a man's doings or character, or the unthinking repetition of the same. That is the pestilence that walketh in darkness; that is the destruction that wasteth at noonday. And I wish I had the pen to write of it as it deserves.

It is very, very common. We are all too ready to repeat what we have heard, with a "Gashmu saith it," as if that certified the tale correct. And the harm done is simply incalculable. If my house is burned or I lose my money, I can still get along by the kindness of my friends for a little, till I find my feet again. But whoever by some lying story takes away my character, deals me a blow from which there is no recovering, which my loyalest friends can do nothing to avert. I have no redress, no compensation, and no help. Any one may be a victim, and you and I, by thoughtlessly passing on the deadly thing, may all unconsciously be driving another nail into a man's coffin.

Did you ever lie awake at night and think that even now the cancer may have begun on YOUR good name, that whispers may be going about among your friends concerning you? Those who know you will hear it, and will say, It's a lie! But that won't stop it. And you will never know till some day you waken up and find that your reputation is in danger. And not one word or vestige of truth may be in it. It may be a lie pure and simple, or a colourable counterfeit of some quite innocent truth. That won't make any difference. It is enough merely to start it, and, like a stone thrown down an Alpine slope, it gathers others in its train, till an avalanche swoops down on some unsuspecting head.

When King Arthur enrolled his Knights of the Round Table, he made them take the oath to "speak no slander." And there is a knightly chivalry of speech which ought to be the mark of all those who have promised fealty to Jesus Christ. Our discipleship of Jesus demands of us the high endeavour to love our neighbour as ourselves, and that presupposes, as one of its consequences, that we guard his name against false witness as carefully as we protect our own. If we hear a good story about some one, a report that is to his credit and honour, let us blazon that abroad. We are all far too slow at that, and somehow the tale that is a little damaging has a far easier and more rapid circulation. Might we not make more of our brother's successes? Might we not oftener repeat about him what he is too modest ever to say about himself? It were a true and kindly Christian act. But never, as we call ourselves servants of Christ, never do our brother such a grievous irreparable wrong as to start about him a tale which may not be true. God can and will forgive you your sins of speech. But even He cannot make clean the character which a foolish word has sullied.

King Arthur went further, however, than demanding that his knights should speak no slander. Their vow included the words, "no, nor listen to it." And that is a high and difficult course to keep. It is not easy, when you are being told of something that is striking or sensational of a merely gossipy character, to stop the conversation and lead it into other channels. It requires great courage and as great tact. But how many of us ever try it?

If, however, the refusal to listen be regarded as a counsel of perfection, there remains yet the further injunction--never REPEAT the gossip you have heard. That at least is homely and possible.

We used to read in our book of Fables of the lamb that noticed this significant thing about the track that led to the lion's den--that all the footprints pointed inwards, but there were none returning. "Vestigia nulla retrorsum." No footprints backwards. It would be a good motto for us all. Let the stories, the ill-humoured, unkind, uncharitable sayings that float and wander about everywhere, let them come to us as they will, but let the traces end there. Be such a person that men may trace a story from its source down the chain TO you, but never PAST you.

We can do that much at least for our friends. All about us is the constant, unquiet drift of gossip and distorted half-truth, as restless as the sand in the desert, dancing and whirling with every puff of wind. We can do something to arrest that drift. We can be for our friends in some measure what Isaiah said that God's Servant, when He came, should be, the shadow of a great Rock in a weary land, stopping the drift of the sand, and sheltering our friends by our loyalty and our silence.

Don't even repeat the gossip that comes to you, not only for the strong reason already given, but also for this little one, that you won't likely repeat it correctly. With all the will in the world, it is one of the hardest things to retail a story just exactly as you heard it. Sir Walter Scott, speaking about anecdotes that he had heard, said he always liked to cock up their bonnets a bit and put a staff in their hands that they might walk on a little brisker and sprightlier than when they came to him! But we all do that, without meaning to do it at all. We add a little bit. We exaggerate just the tiniest fraction, and our hearer when he repeats the story does the same, and so the matter grows till it is big enough to do much mischief.

"A Whisper broke the air,

A soft light tone and low,

Yet barbed with shame and woe.

Now, might it only perish there,

Nor further go!

Ah me! A quick and eager ear

Caught up the little meaning sound;

Another voice has breathed it clear,

And so it wandered round,

From ear to lip, from lip to ear,

Until it reached a gentle heart,

And that--it broke."

There is a legend that once a king avoided death in a poisoned cup that had been handed to him by making over it the sign of the Cross--when it broke in pieces at his feet. Let us, when we are tempted to retail the vivid, poisonous piece of scandal, stop and invoke the Spirit of Christ. Is this that I am going to say about my brother the kind of thing I should say if Christ were standing by? Am I justified in turning over that bit of gossip which may be true, but which ought not to be true? Our duty, who profess and call ourselves Christians, is clear. We are to speak no slander no, nor listen to it. We are to retail evil about no man. We are to love one another.

PRAYER

O Lord our God, whose command it is that we love our neighbour as ourselves, help us to cherish and protect his good name as carefully as we guard our own. Make us more willing to repeat the good about him, but slower to retail or exaggerate the evil. Grant us all a deeper sense of the deadly wrong a foolish tongue can work, and keep Thou the door of our lips. For Thy Name's sake. Amen.

"Thou preventest him with

the blessings of goodness."

(PSALM xxi. 3.)

XVI

GOD IN FRONT

You know how, in a happy home, the near approach of a birthday is signalised, how parcels are mysteriously smuggled in and hidden in secret places, and, though everything seems to be going on as usual, yet the plans are being laid in train that will surprise and delight the fortunate owner of the birthday when the festal day dawns. That is our feeble, human way of trying to surprise one another with the blessings of goodness. That is how we "prevent" our beloved with tokens of our remembrance. So, says the Psalmist, does God deal with us. Not only have we--what we so much need--His forgiveness of our past, and His help and presence for the day which now is; He is working for us in the future too, sowing the days to come with blessings for us to pick up when the passage of time brings us to the places where He has hidden them.

The idea that God has been beforehand in our history, getting ready, as it were, for our coming, though not a very usual one, is very helpful, and it finds abundant illustration and proof in all directions. When a child arrives on this earth, he enters into the enjoyment of bounties and blessings prepared, not merely weeks, but literally ages before his coming. Warmth he needs, and aeons ago the coal beds were formed in the bowels of the earth. Food he needs, and God "laboured for ages," as Sir Oliver Lodge puts it, to bring corn into existence. For corn needs soil, and, to make that, the Creator had to set the glaciers grinding over the granite, and to loosen the forces of rain and frost and running water over great stretches of time.

Every child born into the world becomes the heir of all the ages past. What blessings have been prepared for most of us, in advance, in the homes into which we were born, and the gracious influences under which we have grown up! "I have to thank the gods," says Marcus Aurelius the pagan Emperor, "that my grandfathers, parents, sisters, preceptors, relations, friends and domestics were almost all of them persons of probity." "I have to thank the gods." Who else is there to thank but God who prevents us in this way with the blessings of goodness? God is working beforehand in our interest in all these things. So, when we awaken to a sense of Him, there is His Church, established of old, awaiting to take us by the hand and help us on our way. When we learn our need of a Saviour, behold Christ stands at the door and knocks. When, in penitence of heart, we ask God's mercy, we learn that, long since, it was laid up in store for us. Before we thought of loving God, He first loved us, and gave Himself for us in Jesus Christ our Lord. Is it not gloriously true all the way along that God has been beforehand with His goodness?

And that, of course, is the explanation of all the glad surprises of life. The Lord has prepared them for us beforehand. He has sown the future with good things and watched our surprise as we picked them up. When Mary Mardon and her father, in Mark Rutherford's "Autobiography," went to the seaside to look for lodgings they saw a dismal row of very plain-looking houses. Mary objected instinctively to the dull street, but her father said he could not afford to pay for a sea view, so they went in to inquire. To their delight they found that what they thought were the fronts of the houses were really the backs, for the real fronts faced the bay, had pretty gardens before the doors, and a glorious sunny prospect over the ocean. Isn't that what we often find to be the case? Our most treasured friends are not always those whom we fall in love with at first sight. The thing we greatly fear dissolves like mist. An envied, but despaired-of, blessing is flung into our lap. A door of splendid hope opens in a dead wall. Life is full of the unexpected as if wonder were one of the things God wanted very much to keep alive in us. When, as you think, everything has been exhausted, God surprises you with a fresh gladness. And, aback of all, there is the unending surprise of God's patience with us, and of that daily mercy of His, which we so ill requite, and so often forget.

Of course, no one dreams of suggesting that all our surprises are of a happy sort. It is not so. But the point is that if it is God who has hidden the blessings for us to come upon, it is He also who has hidden the other things. God's hand does not slip so that we get the wrong parcel by accident. He prevents us also with the blessings that we do not call by that name at all. In his Lay Sermons, Huxley, describing the tadpole in its slimy cradle, says: "After watching the process hour after hour, one is almost possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic object-glass would show the hidden artist with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work." If, in that wonderful fashion, God is working beforehand according to a plan of His own, in the life of a tadpole, is it not much more likely that He is so working in your life and mine, not in its joys only, but also in its dark hours and its sorrows? That, indeed, is the very message and comfort of the Lord Jesus Christ, that not even a sparrow falleth to the ground--calamity indeed for the sparrow--without our Father.

If it be true that God our Father is working in advance of us all the time, then surely it is wrong to speak of the monotony of life? For we are on a road which God Himself has sown with surprises for us, and the hour of our deadliest weariness may be the immediate percursor of our richest and most joyous find. Who could have supposed, at the end of the eighteenth century, when poetry in England seemed dead, that a great galaxy of stars--Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats--was on the very eve of rising? The unexpected can always happen. You may come upon another of God's hidden blessings to-morrow. Let us not talk of monotony, therefore, in an age which has seen so many wonderful things happen. Rather let us hold to the faith that all the while God is going before us with the blessings of goodness.

This faith puts another complexion on all our fears and forebodings. Before we live it, the web of our life passes through God's hands. And the shaded parts, as well as the bright parts, are in His wise and loving design. Nobody can promise us freedom from sorrow, but the Bible promises that God is beforehand to make the sorrow bearable. He has adjusted our temptations to our strength, and never a one has He hidden, where we come upon it, that it is impossible for us by His help to withstand. Before the mother puts her little child into his hot bath at night, she tests the water first with her fingers. And the Psalmist means us to believe that life comes to us from God, who has measured and adapted it for us, beforehand, in a like fashion.

Viewed in the light of this faith, Death itself takes on a different aspect. Oliver Wendell Holmes has suggested that the story of this life and the next can be fully written in two strokes of the pen, an interrogation-point, and, above it, a mark of exclamation--fear and question here below, and, above, adoration, wonder, surprise. "I go to prepare a place for you," said Christ to His disciples. If the preparation for us here is so wonderful, is it likely to fail yonder? If Love made ready for us here, shall it not be beforehand there too? Yea, verily. Our experience of how God prevents us here with His loving kindness ought to strengthen in us all the "faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the saint's trust in every age, that when we pass hence it will be to meet the grandest, the most blessed, and the most surprising provision of all."

PRAYER

Our Father in Heaven, we shall not be afraid of what life may hold for us when we have learned that our little web has first passed through Thy merciful and loving hands. We have often prayed that Thou wouldest go with us; but Thou hast answered us beyond our asking, for Thou goest before us all. In the faith of that leading, make us to journey bravely and to sleep secure. Amen.

"Fight the good fight of faith."

(1 TIMOTHY vi. 12.)

XVII

"UNBELIEF KEPT QUIET"

We are often told that this is not an age of faith, that the day of the beautiful, old, simple acquiescence is past, whether it ever comes again or not. Some one has wittily suggested that the coat of arms of the present age is "an interrogation-point rampant, above three bishops dormant, and the motto 'Query.'" But, like a great many more witty things, that saying leaves one questioning whether, after all, it be really true. I venture, for my part, to assert that a great many more people are really interested in this matter of faith than most of us imagine. There is something that haunts men as with a sense of hidden treasure about this wonderful thing in life called Faith, that always seems to be going to disappear, and yet somehow does not. With a strange, wistful persistence men linger about this pool, though there are many to tell them that the "desired angel bathes no more."

I wish to speak a word of encouragement to-day to all who are finding faith hard. "Fight the good fight of faith," says Paul to his young friend, Timothy. Fight. I want to remind you that faith often implies effort, that there is nothing in the idea of faith which is incompatible with struggle, that the very form of Paul's advice implies an antagonism.

It is true that many think of the "faith of the saints" as a quiet, contented habit of gentle acquiescence, a sweet and beautiful state of mind very far removed from the restless, questioning, analytic temper of the man of to-day. Now, I do not say that faith is never seen now in that placid form, but I do say that that was not the type Paul had in mind when he wrote Timothy, it is not the figure which best described his own faith, and it is certainly not the aspect he would require to deal with, were he writing to the men of to-day.

For they are only too conscious of much inward suspense of judgment and uncertainty concerning many things in Heaven and earth. And that inward conflict seems to many of them a sign that faith is waning, if not dead. They have forgotten that it is that very sense of inward conflict which proves that faith is not dead. Dead things do not offer any resistance. We ought by this time to have learned that a thing "may be for us an intellectual puzzle, and yet a sheer spiritual necessity," and that the Christian faith is, for every soul who has once caught it. There are a great many earnest and honest men to whom it is the best of news that Christian faith is not incompatible with very grave perplexities. The real opposite of faith is not doubt, as so many suppose, but deliberate and satisfied denial. Faith can live in the same life along with very many doubts--as a matter of fact, in the case of not a few of the most Christ-like men of our time, it is living beside them constantly. Paul assures us that outside of him he found fightings and within him he found fears. Yet he kept the faith for all that. They start up on all sides, these spectres of the mind and reason, and they ask questions which a man cannot answer. Yet Faith may be dwelling in his life in very deed and truth, because faith is something more than the sum of all his beliefs. It is the whole conscious and deliberate set and desire of his being.

It is a well-known fact that a man may be truly courageous, acting, speaking, thinking bravely at the very moment when panic fears are gripping his heart. I like that fine old story of the soldier advancing into the fire zone with steady step, and taunted by a comrade for his pale face. "You're afraid," said the other. "I know I am afraid," said he, "and if you felt half as much afraid as I do, you would turn and flee." It is the very finest courage that dominates and controls a sensitive organisation, and holds the shrinking other-half to its purpose with firm grip. Just so is it with faith. A man keeps his course, lifts up his eyes to the hills, lives for God and His Christ, prays on, struggles on, and hopes for the home beyond the edge of life, while often enough his mind is full of questioning and the puzzle of God's deep mysteries. For faith is not what the intellect says merely. It is what the whole man is struggling and trying to say.

"With me, faith means perpetual unbelief

Kept quiet, like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,

Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe."

Don't do yourself the wrong of thinking that faith has vanished because the snake is felt to be writhing. "Perpetual unbelief kept quiet." Yes, but what keeps the clamouring doubts and fears under foot? Just yourself, just your highest self, the bit of you made for God, and unable to do without Him! Faith is the vote of the whole man, of the best of the man, in the face of a protesting minority. In other words, fight is a splendid word to use in speaking about faith.

Let a man ask himself--Does he really wish that the best he has dreamed or heard about God and His love for men, His passion to deliver them from evil, and His pity and nearness to us all in Jesus Christ His Son--does he wish all that to be true? No man is without faith who does wish that, and is living in the direction of his desire. In that man's life who, despite all the clamour and philosophy of Babylon, is keeping his window open towards where he believes Jerusalem to be, there is that vital element of faith that is linking his life to God even now, and will bring him where he would be at last.

I do not think that the prodigal was at all sure of the welcome that awaited him. Probably his mind, as he limped along in his rags, was full of misgivings and fears. But the father hailed him as his son whenever he saw afar off that the lad's face was set for home. I do not imagine our Father will concern Himself very much about the gaps in our creed if only our faces are turned homewards and towards Him. Let the man I have tried to speak to be of good courage, and fight on with a stout heart. Faith is not sight. It may not even be assurance, may be only hope and longing, and a reaching towards the Highest. But I firmly believe that no man, even though he may fall on the way home, and before he knows of his welcome, I believe that no man shall be cast out at the last, whose arms, as he fell, were outstretched in desire to God.

PRAYER

O Lord our God, Author and Finisher of our faith, help us with all our strength to fight the good fight. When our defence is being broken, do Thou garrison our souls, O God, that we may be able to stand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"The joy of the Lord is your strength."

(NEHEMIAH viii. 10.)

XVIII

THE EQUIPMENT OF JOY

Let us talk about joy, and especially that kind of it of which Nehemiah was thinking when he said, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." It is strange that while practically everybody would agree as to the wholesomeness and the duty of joy in the ordinary sense of the term, to add the words "of the Lord" to it, seems, to some, completely to alter its character and in fact to spoil it, to turn it into an unreal sort of joy which is not true joy at all.

I wish emphatically to protest against such a conception of religious joy as an injustice to the Father Love of God. The joy of the Lord, as I understand it, is not different in quality from wholesome human gladness, it is, in fact, just that gladness deepened and sanctified by the sense of God, and the knowledge of Him brought to us by Jesus Christ our Lord. There is not a single innocent and pure source of gladness open to men and women on this earth but is made to taste sweeter when they have opened their hearts to the love of God. It is the very crown of happy living that is reached when a man can say, "My Lord and my God." Once I have dared to accept the wonderful truth that even for me the Eternal Father has His place and His plan and His care, every simplest happiness, every common joy of living, every delight in the beauty of the world and the pleasures of home and work and friendship--every one of these takes on a keener edge. It is a pestilent heresy to declare that a Christian ought to walk through life like a man with a hidden sickness. On the contrary, there is no one who has a better right to be joyous and happy-hearted. Do you think it is for nothing that the "joy of our salvation" is a Bible phrase? And shall we believe that that salvation is ours and not be mighty glad about it all the time? What is the good of translating "Gospel" as "good news" and at the same time living as if religion were a bondage and a burden grievous to be borne? Of all the strange twists of human convention, it is surely the strangest to allow ordinary human joy to be happy and cheerful, and to insist that those whose joy is in the Lord should pull a long face, and forswear laughter, and crawl along dolefully as if to the sound of some dirge! The "morning face and the morning heart" belong of right to the truly religious, and no one ought to be gladder, come what may, than the man who has made the highest and best disposal of his little life that any one can make, namely, surrendered it in faith and obedience to his Lord.

A gloomy, ponderous, stiff religion which looks askance at innocent merriment and is afraid to pull a long breath of enjoyment has the mark of "damaged goods" on it somehow, and no one will take it off your hands. It is not catching, and certainly your children will never catch it. It is said to be a good test of a religion that it can be preached at a street corner. But I know a better test than that. Preach it to a child. Set him in the midst of those who profess it. If their religion frightens him, freezes the smiles on his lips, and destroys his happiness, depend upon it, whatever sort of religion it be, it lacks the essential winsomeness of the religion of Jesus Christ.

I need not say, of course, that I am not pleading for a more hilarious religious life. And, equally of course, empty frivolity, and the cult of the continual grin are insufferable things to endure either in the name of religion or anything else. Not by a single word would I lessen the condemnation which such aberrations deserve. But I do say, and with all my heart I believe that a deep, abiding well-spring of happiness--which our author calls the "joy of the Lord"--is of the very essence of true religion, and is indeed, what he asserts it, actually our strength. Actually our strength. Let us be quite clear about that.

The man in whose heart there dwells this best of all joys is a strength to other people. We don't need any one to prove that to us, I imagine. We have all been helped and revived many a time merely by contact with some hearty cheerful soul. Who, for example, that had his choice, would elect for his family physician a man with a doleful air? Have we not all found that a doctor's cheery manner was as potent a medicine as any drug that he called by a Latin name? Ay, and even when we are in trouble, and our hearts are sad and sore, I think we would all rather see the friend whose faith in God showed in a brave and buoyant outlook than one whose religion was of the dowie and despondent sort.

I have heard it said of an employee who had the gift of the joyous heart that the twinkle of his eyes was worth £100 a year to his firm. I could easily believe it, though the money value might well have been set at any figure, seeing that the thing itself is really priceless. Did not the most famous modern apostle of the duty of happiness--himself a signal proof that joy is something more than the mere easy overflow of health and animal spirits--did not Stevenson declare that "by being happy we sow anonymous benefits," and that "the entrance of such a person into a room is as if another candle had been lighted?" I take it the proof is ample that a joyous heart is a strength to others.

But more, it is a strength to oneself. That may not be so obvious, and yet the result here is even more certain. Ordinary experience tells us that joy is good for us, that depression and gloom work us bodily harm. But from one province of scientific study especially there has come a wonderful array of evidence that makes it as certain as any fact can be that the happy states of mind do literally add to our strength in quite measurable directions. There is, in strict fact, no tonic in all the world like gladness.

That being so, joy, and especially the best kind of it of which Nehemiah speaks, is not a luxury, not a condition you may legitimately cherish if you are fortunate enough to possess it. It is a sheer necessity. You can't do without it. Even to meet your sorrows, even to gird you for service, even to run your race without fainting, you need the joy of the Lord, which is strength. And since the Father has stored up such an abundant supply of it in this world of His, since it is knocking at our doors every day, and only our distrust and suspicion keep it outside, we know what to do to secure this good gift of God. We have only to open our doors to let it in, and give it room.

"So take Joy home

And make a place in thy great heart for her,

And give her time to grow, and cherish her,

Then will she come and oft will sing to thee

When thou art working in the furrows--ay,

Or weeding in the sacred hour of dawn.

It is a comely fashion to be glad--

Joy is the grace we say to God."

PRAYER

Help us, O God, beyond our poor and forgetful thanksgiving, to show forth the praise of Thy loving kindness by our joy and gladness. For Thy great grace and mercy toward us, and for all the gifts of Thy sleepless Providence, we offer Thee the joy of our hearts. Accept our offering, we beseech Thee; forgive its scant measure, and teach us to be glad in Thee. For Thy Name's sake. Amen.

"The God of Jacob is our refuge."

(PSALM xlvi. 11.)

XIX

THE GOD OF THE UNLOVABLE MAN

There is a phrase which echoes through the Old Testament like the refrain of some solemn music--the "God of Jacob." "The God of Jacob," says the 46th Psalmist, "is our refuge." Yet when you think of it, it is a strange title. The "God of Abraham" you can understand, for Abraham was a great and faithful soul. And the "God of Isaac," also, for Isaac was a saint. But the "God of Jacob" is a combination of ideas of a very different sort. For though, by God's grace, Jacob became a saint in the end, it took much discipline and trouble to mould him into a true godliness. And, for the greater part of his life, and many of his appearances on the stage of Scripture, his actions and ideals are not such as to make us admire him very passionately. We like Esau for all his faults, but we do not like Jacob for all his virtues. There is something cold and calculating about Jacob that repels affection. For all his religion, the Jacob of the earlier chapters is a mean soul, successful but unscrupulous, pious but not straight, spiritually-minded but not lovable. And yet the Almighty condescends to be known as the God of Jacob, and the Bible loves that name for God!

What does that say to you? To me it says this--and I think we all need to learn it--that God is the God even of unlovable people! That even unlovable people have a God! That the Lord is very gracious to sinners, we all rejoice to believe, for that is the Evangel of Jesus, and He Himself was found practising it even among the waifs and outcasts of society. But that unlovable people have a God, too, is actually harder for us to realise, for the plain fact is that unlovable, disagreeable people irritate and annoy us more even than the sinners. If you question that, just analyse your attitude to the Prodigal in our Lord's wonderful story, compared with that toward his respectable, cold-hearted and priggish elder brother. The brother irritates us. We call him, with some heat, as Henry Drummond did, a baby, and we want to shake him. But we never want to shake the prodigal.

Now, we all have, on our list of acquaintances, people whom we have labelled disagreeable, who continually rub us the wrong way, as we put it. There is the man who is always talking about himself, and is filled with conceit like a bladder with air. "There is the man," says Hazlitt in one of his Essays, "who asks you fifty questions as to the commonest things you advance, and, you would sooner pardon a fellow who held a pistol at your breast and demanded your money." There is the ill-tempered, sulky person, and the grumbling, whining, dolorous soul never without an ache or a grievance. So we can all draw up our own private "Index Expurgatorius" of the people we bar or dislike. We say these people are unlovable.

And, since the corruption of the best is the worst, we are agreed that the most unlovable of all types is the religious undesirable, the smug, unctuous, oily person, for example, whose sincerity is continually in question, the narrow, intolerant, little soul who cannot see any sort of truth or righteousness except his own, or the prim and pious man who is cocksure of his interest in the life to come, but is not straight in the affairs of the life which now is. There are others, but enumeration is not a very profitable or a pleasant task. Take them all together, gather them in a crowd in your memory, and then set yourself this exercise for your sanctification and growth in grace. Realise that the Lord your God is the God also of these unlovable people. Get that idea thoroughly into your heart, and say it to yourself, if need be, many times a day. These people look up to Him in worship just as you do. They have their sacred hours in His presence just as you have. There is nothing you look for to God, that they do not seek, too, from Him. They are not of a different order from you, but the same order. And though you do not love them, God does. Though they are outside of your circle, they are not outside of His. The God of Jacob is their God. And therein lies for them, as it did for Jacob, the hope and promise of better things to come.

If we remembered that, should we not be more patient and forbearing with them than we are, keener to look for the best in them, and to make the best of them than we are? Just to think of what is meant by the "God of Jacob" is to set our sharp and bitter judgments of others over against the infinitely tender compassion and patience and longsuffering of God. All the wonder of the divine grace is hidden in the phrase. And this is the wonder--that God never grows tired even of disagreeable people. He does not give up caring even for the unlovable. But oh! what poor sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty we are, with our quick, rash final judgments and our hard, unbrotherly hearts!

Did you ever ask yourself what some of these unlovable people are doing, the while you and I are telling each other how impossible and unlovable they are? George Eliot suggests it somewhere thus:--"While we are coldly discussing a man's career, sneering at his mistakes, and labelling his opinions 'Evangelical and narrow' or 'Latitudinarian and pantheistic,' or 'Anglican and supercilious,' that man in his solitude is perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word and do the difficult deed." Ah, yes, it's a mercy that there is a God even for unlovable people!

But there is a question that has been waiting all this time, and we must ask it before we close. What about ourselves, you and me? Are we such lovable people that we can afford to judge others? Do we never rub our friends the wrong way, and, without meaning it, annoy and disappoint and repel them? Are our religious profession and our daily practice so very much in keeping that we may talk about prigs and self-righteous people as if they belonged to an entirely different world? May I speak for you all and say humbly "No"? No, God knows they are not! The fact is that if we know ourselves at all well, we must be aware that we have it in us to be quite as disagreeable and selfish and self-righteous as anybody. It is only our best beloved who do not get tired of us, and sometimes even they must be hard put to it.

But there is a blessed Gospel for those who have made that discovery about themselves. There is a God of Jacob. Abraham is too high for us, and Isaac is too saintly, but Jacob, faulty, disappointing, unlovable, yet by God's grace redeemed and perfected at last, Jacob is the man for us! The hope and comfort of all who have learned what they really are is that "the God of Jacob is our refuge."

PRAYER

Bring us, we pray Thee, O God, into a truer knowledge of ourselves. Make us to learn how frail we are, how poor and blind and naked; to the end we may regard with due charity the shortcomings of others, and may worthily praise Thy great Mercy, who yet hast not turned away Thy face from us. For Jesus' sake. Amen.

"Elijah went a day's journey

into the wilderness, and came

and sat under a juniper tree, and

requested for himself that he

might die."

(1 KINGS xix. 4.)

XX

UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE

A well-known writer relates that, when passing through Edinburgh once, he saw a procession of Friendly Societies, and observed on one of the banners the name emblazoned, The Order of the Juniper Tree. His comment is:--"Many of us belong to that order." So we do. And, because of that, we can diagnose Elijah's trouble quite accurately. He is suffering, as we have all suffered at some time or other, from the pains and penalties of reaction. Just because he had climbed to a height almost superhuman, the reaction when it came was very black and terrible. The Bible is too wise and too true to human nature to conceal the fact that for his hour of splendid daring, Elijah had his price to pay.

It's a commonplace, of course, but just one of those commonplaces which in the bulk spell wisdom, that there was a physical reason for this condition. To put it plainly, Elijah was tired out. He had been using up his physical and nervous energy at such a ruinous rate during the past few hours, that he had overdrawn his account. It strikes one as a very significant fact that when God's angel took the prophet in hand, the first thing he did was to provide him with a meal. Elijah was actually on his way back to his normal condition when he had had something to eat.

That is not a mere incident in the story. It is exceedingly important, because, sometimes the religious depression with which we are acquainted arises in a similar way. It is a very useful fact to remember that a man's whole religious outlook is coloured by the condition of his health. We may be slow to admit such a low and material cause for effects so apparently spiritual. But it is a fact all the same. And it is only wise to recognise it.

But Elijah's reaction was not entirely or even mainly physical in its origin. He had been in a very exalted spiritual condition during the contest on Carmel. Think what the man had done! He had stood alone in the path of a whole nation rioting down to idolatry and shamelessness, and with voice and presence and fire from Heaven had stopped and turned them, driven the huddled, frightened sheep back again to the ways and the worship of God. Was it to be wondered at that his very soul within him was faint under the strain?

Though the vision and the privileges of the hill-top are what the best men covet most, it is but little of it at a time that any one can stand. Do you remember that Jesus would not let Peter and James and John remain long on the Mount of the Transfiguration, even though they wanted to build tabernacles and dwell there? There have been few greater spiritual experts than John Bunyan, and when he has described how his pilgrim fared in the Palace Beautiful, how he slept in a chamber called Peace, how he saw afar off the Delectable Land, whither he was journeying, where does he take him next? Straight down into the Valley of Humiliation, where he has to fight for his life against the darts of the Evil One flying as thick as hail!

There is no cure for reaction, of course, but there are one or two rules which experience has proved to be helpful.

For example, it is never a wise thing, when you are depressed, to attempt to form any judgment about yourself, your service, or your standing in the sight of God. By some Satanic impulse, that is the very time, of course, when you will be tempted to do it. It may appear a very wholesome spiritual exercise when you have gone a day's journey into the wilderness and are faint, to reckon up what manner of man and disciple of Christ you are. But don't do it then. Nobody sees truly either himself or God, under a juniper tree.

And then, if possible, do not speak about your despondency. Don't express your mood outwardly at all, if you can help it. Bottle it up if you can, and you will starve it all the sooner. His biographer relates of the late Ian Maclaren that, like many people who have Celtic blood in their veins, he was subject to curious fits of depression and gloom which did not seem to be in any way connected with bodily health. "But," he goes on to say, "he never inflicted his melancholy moods on his family, was only very quiet and absorbed, and kept more closely to his study. In a day or two he would emerge again, like a man coming out into the sunshine."

And lastly. Once a man has sworn himself a disciple and soldier of Jesus Christ, neither doubt nor depression, neither darkness nor reaction absolves him from the obligation to follow and to serve when he is called. It must be confessed that it is an undue sense of the importance of our own feelings that makes the juniper-tree-mood the peril and hindrance that it is. We need to remember that the call of Christ overrides personal feelings. In His army too, there is discipline to be thought of, and "it is not soldierly to skulk." When the bugle calls to action, nobody but a coward would make the fact that he is not feeling quite up to the mark, an excuse for sitting still. Reaction is a natural thing, but cowardice is always shameful.

PRAYER

O Lord our God, we bless Thee for the comfort of Thy perfect knowledge of us. We are glad to think that Thou knowest our frame and rememberest that we are dust. Make us more wise to bring the burden of our moods of darkness and reaction to the footstool of Thy perfect understanding; but save us, we beseech Thee, from all yielding in the long fight against them. Seeing that Thy grace is sufficient for us and Thy strength made perfect in our weakness, grant us a godly fear of all unmanly surrender. For Thy Name's sake. Amen.

"If any man will do his will

he shall know of the doctrine."

(JOHN vii. 17.)

XXI

INSTRUCTING THE CABIN BOY

When John Wesley was on his way home from Georgia, he wrote this record of the voyage in his Journal:--"Being sorrowful and very heavy (though I could give no particular reason for it) and utterly unwilling to speak close to any of my little flock (about twenty persons), I was in doubt whether my own neglect of them was not one cause of my heaviness. In the evening, therefore, I began instructing the cabin boy, after which I was much easier."

This is a significant passage for various reasons. For one thing, it lets us see that even a spiritual genius like Wesley sometimes fell into the mood of doubt. And, for another, it shows how, almost by accident, as it seems, he found a cure for his trouble. It is plain that religion just then had lost its savour for the great evangelist. The joy had gone out of his service and the power from his prayers, and he was not sure of anything at all. This is practical doubt, the only serious kind there is. "Being sorrowful and very heavy and very unwilling."

There are not a few men and women whose trouble this is. They are in straits to know what is really God's truth. They greatly desire to lay hold of it surely for themselves. The tremendous earnestness of those who have found the old dogmas unsatisfying, and are adrift again in a twentieth century search for God, is one of the most significant features of the situation. Can a man really come in touch with God? they ask. Is there a living Christ whose presence redeems men from evil and can lift them up to what they long to be? Is there a life with God which even Death cannot end? And those who are in such deep earnest to know God vitally for themselves, are sorrowful and heavy indeed to find that all their thinking and reading and inquiry do so little for them. They pray for light, and examine all the evidence with a wistful eagerness, but the clouds still lie around them, and they are still wandering, now in this direction, now in that, like men lost in a mist.

Is there no way out of this tangle? Yes, there is. To all who are sorrowful and heavy because they know so little they can call their own about God and spiritual living, I want to say, There is a way forward, a safe, sure way. It is the way that Wesley stumbled upon. "I began instructing the cabin boy." That is the way for you and me to a fuller experience of God.

That is the simple solution which so many thousands of us have overlooked, and it was the discovery of Jesus Christ. When asked how He knew about God, He answered that it was because He was doing God's will, and He added, If any man, no matter who, no matter what his doubts be, if any man be willing to do God's will, where, and as, it is clear to him, he too shall know. God will not leave him in ignorance of what is really essential.

Nowhere, except in the Bible, do you find such a method of learning recommended. From nobody but Christ could such a precept come, for it is clean contrary to all that we know about learning in other spheres. Study and you will know, think, investigate, ask questions--that, we can understand. That is how knowledge comes to us in the realms with which we are acquainted. But when men asked Christ how they could learn God's truth for themselves, He said, First of all you must obey it. Do, and you will know.

You remember the lepers whom Christ touched, of whom it is written that "as they went, they were healed?" That is how the only sort of doubt that really matters is healed. As you go, not as you sit still and puzzle, but as you shoulder the nearest duty and obey what light and knowledge you have.

"I don't know," Wesley would say to himself, "whether I am in my right place here or not, whether I am really Christ's servant or not. I am in the dark, and don't seem to be sure of anything. But there is that cabin boy. I can at least do him some good. That is right anyhow, whatever be uncertain." "After which," he says, "I was much easier." It is marvellous to read, but it is a law as certain and safe as gravitation. Do God's will as you know it, and you will get more light. "Doubt of any sort," said Thomas Carlyle, "cannot be removed except by action."

It is hardly necessary to say, of course, that the knowledge which Christ promises to those who will obey God's will is not of dogma in its restricted theological sense. It was life Christ talked about, it was life He was concerned with, and, for Him, life meant not head-knowledge, but heart-experience and heart-hold of God. It is that He promises in His great saying. So do not make the mistake of thinking that when you seek to do the Will of God, all your mental difficulties, about miracles or inspiration or what not else, will come to an end. These are problems, not of life, but of mind, and you have them because God has given you a mind, and you will probably have them as long as your mind is growing. What Christ does promise is of vastly more importance, namely, the light of God's truth in your heart, the assurance of God in your inmost soul, that you shall know for yourself that God is, and that He is near to you, and that your true life is in Him; and when a man has got that length, there are many doctrinal and other mental puzzles for the solution of which he is content to wait with an easy trust and patience.

I like that saying of Viscount Kenmure's, away back in the sixteenth century, "I will lie at Christ's door like a beggar, and, if I may not knock, I will scrape." I like it, for this reason, that I am quite sure there is no essential door of God in earth or heaven which is shut against the man who casts himself so utterly on Him as that. And I take Kenmure's word to illustrate what Jesus meant by If any man will do God's will. It is when a man says, I cannot see, I do not know, my mind is filled with spectres and doubts and questions, but, so help me God, I will do the thing that is right for me, I will walk by what little light I have--it is then, it is to that man that there come infallibly the knowledge which no criticism can shake, and the peace which the world can neither give nor take away.

PRAYER

O Lord our God, we thank Thee for this one straight road out of our doubts, and the difficulties we so often make for ourselves. We bless Thee for the stedfast certainty that no man, who will rise and follow what light he has, shall finally be left in darkness. By doing shall we come to know. As we go upon our clear duty, other truths become more clear. It is our Lord's own doctrine, and in His Name we pray that Thou would'st help us to learn it. Amen.

"The valley of Achor for a

door of hope."

(HOSEA xxv. 15.)

XXII

GOD'S DOOR OF HOPE

The world has a scheme of redemption of its own, and men can themselves do something for the brother who has fallen. But the plan involves, invariably, a change of surroundings. Worldly wisdom says, of the youth who is making a mess of his life, "Ship him off to the colonies, try him with a new start on another soil." But the grace of God promises a far more wonderful salvation. It makes possible a new start on the very spot of the old failure. It leads a man back to the scene of his old disloyalty, and promises him a new memory that shall blot out and redeem the old. God does not take the depressed and discouraged out of their surroundings. He adds an inward something that enables them to conquer where they stand. It is not some new untried sphere that God gilds with promise. It is the old place where one has already failed and fallen. It is the valley of Achor, the scene of Israel's defeat, and Achan's shame and sin, that God gives to His people as a door of hope.

In Italian history, during the Middle Ages, the republics of Pisa and Genoa were often at war, and at one time the Genoese were badly beaten in a sea-fight near the little island of Meloria. Some years after, a Genoese admiral took his fleet to that same spot and said, "Here is the rock which a Genoese defeat has made famous. A victory would make it immortal." And sure enough, the fight that followed ended in a great victory for Genoa. It is that sort of hope that God holds out to all defeated souls who put their trust in Him. He points us back to our valley of Achor, the place with a memory we do not like to think of, and He says, There is your door of Hope, Go back and try again. And those who go back in His strength are enabled to write a new memory upon the old shame.

Our Lord and Master is very gracious to forgive us when we come to Him in penitence to tell Him of the position we have lost by our faithlessness or our cowardice, but He does not consent to the ultimate defeat of the very feeblest of His soldiers. "Go back and try again," is His order. There are many, as Dr Matheson says, who offer us a golden to-morrow, but it is only Christ who enables us to retrieve our yesterday. For His grace is more than forgiveness. It is the promise to reverse the memory of Achor, to turn defeat into victory even yet.

Achor, further, literally means Trouble, and it is a great thing for us when we have learned that even there God has for us a door of hope.

The valley of Trouble is perhaps the last place in the world where the uninstructed would look for any fruit of harvest, and yet again and again men have brought the fairest flowers of character and holiness out of it. How many a devout and useful servant of Christ owes the beginning of his allegiance to a serious illness, to some crippling disappointment, to an overwhelming sorrow? In all humility there are many who can say, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, and there are many, many more about whom their friends often quote that text.

"I walked a mile with Pleasure;

She chattered all the way,

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

"I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne'er a word said she,

But oh, the things I learned from her,

When Sorrow walked with me!"

There is a door of Hope even in the valley of Trouble, and those who tread it in God's company shall not fail to find it.

There is one other class who need to know that even in Achor there is a door of hope, the depressed and discouraged. Phillips Brooks once declared, "I came near doing a dreadful thing the other day. I was in East Boston and I suddenly felt as if I must get away from everything for a while. I went to the Cunard dock and asked if the steamer had sailed. She had been gone about an hour. I believe if she had still been there, I should have absconded." I wonder if there is any one who has not known that feeling? When duty is dull, and circumstances discouraging, when we seem to be merely ploughing the sands, "Oh," we say, "for the wings of a dove!" Comfort and happiness and salvation seem to lie solely in escape. And it may be that they do. But more often the trouble is in ourselves, and would travel with us to the new post.

If there be any depressed or discouraged reading these lines, I should like to remind them of God's promise to give the valley of Achor--that is the depressing scene of your labours, my brother--for a door of hope. You are looking for your hope somewhere else, anywhere else provided it be out of your present rut and drudgery. In reality your door of hope lies in the rut, in the valley itself. It is not escape you need. It is just a braver faith that God is in your valley with you, and that He needs you there.

Take a firmer grip of that, and go back to where you serve, and you will find, please God, that even in your valley He has opened for you a door of Hope and Gladness.

May all those who are living and working these days in the valley of Achor find in it somewhere God's Door of Hope.

PRAYER

Grant us, O God, the faith that in Thy strength we can yet succeed even in the place where we have failed. Teach us that it is Thy whisper we hear, when we have fallen into Despond, bidding us rise and try again. And grant us the courage to be sure, since Thou hast a tryst to meet and help us there, that even our Achor shall open to us its door of hope. Amen.

"There be many servants

now-a-days that break away

every man from his master."

(1 SAMUEL xxv. 10.)

XXIII

NOW-A-DAYS

Nabal, says the Bible, was a churl. When David sent his men to request some provender, in return for services rendered, this ill-mannered sheep-farmer broke out, "Who is David? There be many servants now-a-days that break away every man from his master." It was a singularly rude and ungracious reply, all things considered. But it is not about Nabal's truculence I wish to speak. I want you to think about that phrase he used, and the tone in which it was said. "Now-a-days." The implication, of course, is that servants did not break away from their masters in his young days. Things were different in the times he could remember.

You will recognise this peculiar intonation of "Now-a-days" as something fairly familiar. You hear it yet, quite often. Now-a-days the Church has lost caste. Now-a-days the Bible is a neglected book. Now-a-days faith is on the wane, and most people don't believe anything at all. There are many such sentences, beginning with the word Now-a-days and sounding like a chant on a minor key.

This pessimistic philosophy is difficult to fight, for it is unsubstantial, and dissolves like mist whenever you come to close quarters. But there are three queries I have noted in my Bible opposite that "Now-a-days" of Nabal.

And the first is--What about the man himself? Judge his philosophy by his actions. Nabal apparently believed that servants were getting entirely out of hand, and he speaks as if he remembered something very different in his own early days. Very good. What was he doing to maintain the old standards? Nothing, less than nothing. His personal manners and behaviour were such that servants would be very ready to break away on that farm, I should think. Now, what business has Nabal to go whining, in general terms, mark you, about servants now-a-days, when he behaves like a boor to his own? For any declension which he may see about him, he is himself largely responsible.

I think that it is a perfectly fair line of argument, and it disposes of quite a number of pious "inexactitudes." When I hear a man talking about the lost influence of the Church now-a-days, I am always tempted to inquire what his own relation to it is, whether he is loyally supporting it and working in its interests, for experience has taught me that a very great deal of exaltation of the Church's past records, at the expense of its position to-day, comes from men who are themselves doing absolutely nothing to help it on its way. There are exceptions, of course, but, as a rule, it is not the active workers in any worthy cause who are lamenting its failure. The men who think the country is going to the dogs are themselves to be found, for the most part, lolling in the clubs. It is not the pledged and active member of Christ's kingdom who thinks it is disappearing from the earth. And to those who are fond of the Now-a-days type of complaint, I would suggest the inquiry--What about yourself? Are you helping to keep up the old standards as you say you remember them? Or is your influence also tending to set this ball of the earth rolling in the very direction you deplore, namely, down the hill?

The second query on Nabal's "Now-a-days" is--Can his memory be relied upon? It is an instinct with us all to idealise the past, and gild it in memory with all sorts of romance. We quietly drop all the shadows from the picture as time goes on. Were ever summer days since so long and fine and sunny as they were when we were boys? Never! We are all agreed about that. Yet when we were boys, men who were then grey were using exactly the same words about summer days years before! We are all apt to praise the past just because it is the past, and because it has a way of turning rosy as it recedes. The wise man recognises that, and allows for it. The foolish man begins many sentences with "Now-a-days," and ends with a shake of the head and a sigh.

But there is something that does not forget nor gild the past with false romance, and that is history. Turn back its pages a hundred years or more; read such a book as H. G. Graham's "Social Life in Scotland in the Eighteenth Century"; and you will soon discover what a fine word Now-a-days really is.

As far as humanity and civilisation, brotherly charity, and true religion are concerned, the man who in pessimistic mood contrasts now-a-days with the good old times a hundred years ago, simply does not know what he is talking about. Changes there have been, many and radical, but change is not necessarily a sign either of declension or decay.

I can partly understand a man without faith in God giving his vote for a general falling off in human progress, but I cannot understand a man who believes in God, and in the presence in the world of a living spirit of Christ, being a pessimist. No one affirms, of course, that we are progressing everywhere, and all the time. Set-backs here and there, there are in human history just as in a successful campaign. But that, on the whole, the world grows better, the Kingdom comes, and earth draws nearer to Heaven, seems to me to be simply a corollary from the fact that God reigns, and has blessed us with knowledge of Himself.

I grant you that the war is a disappointing revelation of how far mankind still has to travel. But, as far as we are concerned, I am not disposed to counsel undue humiliation and self-condemnation on account of it. A people that for the sake of unseen eternal realities like honour and righteousness will make the sacrifices which we are making, can hardly be said to be degenerating, especially when we remember some of the causes for which we have drawn the sword in years and generations gone by. But even though the clock of progress be set back awhile--and that does not seem so likely now as when the war began--it is simply not possible that, in this world of God's, evil should ultimately vanquish good, that the Spirit of Christ should finally be crushed by the forces that oppose it. That can never be. As soon might the germs of disease which the sun destroys turn round upon it and quench its blessed light.

The third query opposite Nabal's "Now-a-days" is--Does he truly discern the present time? Does he know "now-a-days" even as well as he knows the past? As a matter of fact, David was not just a servant who had broken away from his master, and if Nabal had only lived a little longer he would have seen how completely he had misread the signs of the times.

That is worth remembering when you are tempted to say, Now-a-days things are out of joint. Maybe you don't clearly see these very days you are disparaging. When Jesus preached in Nazareth, the village where He had been brought up, the people said, Is not this the Carpenter? and in their anger at His presumption, as they thought it, they wanted to make away with Him. If they had only known!

It is not enough to recognise that we cannot see the future. We cannot even see the present. Think what it would be like if we could see the great men, the prophets, poets, reformers, leaders, who are at this present moment in our nurseries and schools, or if we were able to recognise in the--at present--small shoot of a cause, the great tree into which in God's providence it is destined to grow!

Now-a-days; now-a-days! What a delusion it is for anybody to think he knows "now-a-days" well enough to call it names! It is not with observation that the Kingdom comes. God rings no bell when He has a new and gracious purpose afoot in the world. And the thing for you and me to do is to rest confidently in the faith that, in His own good way and time, God is redeeming the world to Himself, and to do all that we can to help Him, and to make our little corner of it a brighter and a better place. But do not let us imagine that we can see all that is going on about us. There is far, far more of God and of goodness in the world than we suspect. The woods and hedges look very bleak and bare to-day.[1] It is a dead and barren aspect that Nature wears now-a-days. Yet even now the sap is mounting quickly in every living stem, and Spring is getting ready while we sleep.

[1] Written in February.

So, let us have the courage to believe--so is it with every worthy cause of God and man.

PRAYER

Almighty God, Ruler and Disposer of all events, we would remember that this world of ours is, first of all, Thine. We believe that, though Thy Kingdom comes not with observation yet it does come more and more. We believe that, with Thee, the best is yet to be. And we pray that, with that faith in our hearts, we may leave the large campaign with quietness and confidence to Thee, and seek rather to discharge the duties of that post Thou hast assigned to us, with loyalty and good hope. Amen.

"And a certain man drew a

bow at a venture."

(2 CHRONICLES xviii. 33)

XXIV

ROUNDABOUT ROADS

It sounds improbable that though a whole army was trying to kill Ahab, it should be an arrow which a man shot at a venture, or as the Hebrew has it, quaintly, "in his simplicity"--when twanging his bow carelessly, or trying a new string perhaps--that should find the king's heart.

And yet it is the thing that does happen occasionally in real life. We sometimes do get the target when we are aiming for something else. The name which we have been worrying to recall strolls casually into our memory when we have given up trying and are not thinking of it at all. There are certain stars, astronomers tell us, which they see best when they look askance. And I have come to think that there are certain precious goods of His which God allows us to possess on the same conditions. You see them by looking past them. You get them by aiming at something else. "Look at your goal and go for it straight," says worldly wisdom, wisely and truly enough in many instances. All the same there are good things in life to which that is emphatically NOT the road. The real way to secure these is to aim for something else.

This is true, for example, of Happiness. Everyone of us wants to be happy. And there is such a bountiful provision of the means of happiness all about us that it is difficult to resist the conclusion that God means us all to be happy. Yet when those for whom happiness is meant and prepared seek it directly and for itself, it is as certain as anything can be that they won't find it. You ask, perhaps you pray for this boon, and God shows you only some bare duty that is clearly yours. Out to it you go, like a brave man, not thinking there can be any blessings on that road, when, lo! as you journey, happiness comes to you, quietly, filling your heart with peace.

One does not find that the New Testament, as a matter of fact, has much to say about being happy at all. There is so little reference to it that it looks as if God had forgotten our need. I find that the Book which I had thought might tell me how to find happiness tells me instead of "bearing one another's burdens," doing it "unto one of the least of these"; tells me about my brother's need of me when he is sick or naked or hungry; tells me even about such a thing as a cup of cold water to a thirsty disciple. Ah! but when, in however poor a fashion, I forget my own quest and gird myself in Christ's name and try to DO some of these things, I find that God has not forgotten after all, that, all the time He has been showing me THE way to happiness, and I did not recognise it because it is not a straight road. It's not a question of seeking, but of forgetting to seek. Happiness comes to you oftenest when you are intent on bringing it to your brother.

The same principle holds true also with regard to Influence. It is natural that a man should desire that his shadow when it falls on others should heal and not hurt. But the healing, helpful shadow is not got by wishing for it. As soon as you begin to think about it and aim for it, you will go astray. Here is a little poem which tells how the strange magnetic quality of influence for good comes to a man:--

"He kept his lamp still lighted,

Though round about him came

Men who, by commerce blighted,

Laughed at his little flame.

He kept his sacred altar

Lit with the torch divine,

Nor let his purpose falter,

Like yours, O World, and mine.

And they whose cold derision

Had mocked him, came one day

To beg of him the vision

To help them on their way.

And, barefoot or in sandal,

When forth they fared to die,

They took from his poor candle

One spark to guide them by."

That is the secret--a roundabout way, as you see. If Influence is to be ours, that is how it will come, not by our trying to be influential, but by our striving to be upright, loyal, and true.

In the third place, this is true of Life in Christ's sense of the term. Life was one of His favourite words. It was Life, in the highest sense, that He claimed to bring to men. And the greatest calamity in His eyes that could fall on any man is that that inward soul-life should die.

Yet when those in whom He has awakened it, aim directly for its growth and culture, they make mistakes. To the question--Shall I regard the development and deepening of that soul-life of mine as the one end and object of my living? the answer of Jesus, as I understand it, is No. Life, said He, at its highest and fullest and most perfect, is reached by giving it away. He that loseth his life shall save it.

What a long way from this ideal are those good people who are for ever laying their fingers on their spiritual pulse and plucking their soul-life up by the roots to see how it is growing! There is a nobler use of life than to save it in that fearful fashion. There is a truer way to grow in grace than by hoarding up virtue so, namely, by letting it go generously out from us. When St Nicholas got to Heaven with his white robes of sainthood stained with mud through stopping on his way to help a carter pull his waggon out of a rut--a task which his fellow St Cassianus, for the sake of his robes, avoided and declined--it was the muddy saint whom the Master welcomed with the sweetest smile and the most gracious words. Whoso loseth his life, the same shall save it.

Happiness, Influence, Life, these three, and the road to each of them is indirect. May God bless it to us that we have stood for a little to mark the flight of an arrow shot "in simplicity!"

PRAYER

O Lord our God, may we have grace to discover the blessings that lie on Thy roundabout roads. May we never make the mistake of thinking that the path to true happiness is the one that runs straight towards it. Keep us true to Christ, and we shall not then be false to any man. And give us to know that we are likest Him, not when we hoard and cherish life and virtue, but when we spend them without stint or measure in any worthy cause of God or man, for His sake. Amen.

"Why was not this ointment

sold for three hundred pence,

and given to the poor?"

(JOHN xii. 5.)

XXV

THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF LOVE

"Wherever this Gospel is preached, this that she had done shall be told as a memorial of her." What a gracious memorial, and how worthy of it was Mary's beautiful outburst of generosity! But what a pity that the speech of Judas should be recorded also, as a memorial of him! And yet, on mature consideration, we would not have the Judas criticism forgotten. Because it called forth what we might not otherwise have had, the vindication of Jesus Himself. And because, as a matter of fact, we are constantly hearing the protest of Judas repeated in our own day, and are often ill-held to know how to meet it.

"This he said," records our evangelist bluntly, "not because he loved the poor, but because he was a thief and kept the bag." Yet he might have been an honest man and said the same thing. For very many honest and earnest men and women are repeating this criticism still. It is repeated whenever it is taken for granted that practical utility is the only standard by which to judge actions and offerings, that God and man can be served in no other way than by "iron bars and perspiration."

How often do we meet the type of mind that admits the service of a ploughman and denies that of poet or artist, for whom a waterfall, as somebody has said, exists merely as so much power for driving turbines, and whose sole test of usefulness is that of making two blades grow--and corn blades at that!--where but one grew before. We are commonly browbeaten by this type of person, and yet we feel that somehow, if we could only say it, he is wrong--that the poet's is as divine a vocation as the farmer's, that God meant a silver band of falling water in a green glade to suggest other things besides dynamos, and that he who even paints some blades of grass, and paints them pleasingly, has his place somewhere in the great guild of servants of God and man.

One has heard the same attitude taken up in other directions too. Why spend so much money on a Church, you will be asked, when there are so many poor people in the land? What need for stone pillars and a fine organ, when a plain building and a harmonium would do as well? Why try to secure what is called a beautiful Church service, dignified, stately, musical, when the very baldest worship is acceptable in God's sight, if only it be sincere? We have heard all that, and other remarks like that, often, and we have seldom been able to give reasons against them. A mere instinctive sentiment seems a feeble thing to oppose to such cold and hard facts. Yet somehow we feel that it is all wrong if only we knew how to convict it.

Did it ever occur to you that Jesus Himself has answered that objection and others like it when He vindicated Mary's action that night? There is no doubt that her ointment cost a deal of money, money that could have fed many hungry people. It was an extravagant offering, without any practical outcome, save that Jesus was refreshed. There is no doubt also about our Lord's sympathy with the poor and needy. And yet He upheld Mary's action, and would not have it called wasteful! All that could be said in its favour was that it was beautiful, that it touched Jesus keenly, and influenced all who saw it done. And that, as I read the story, was one reason at least why Jesus defended it. He allows the Beautiful. He would have the Beautiful honoured for its own sake even in a world so full of sorrow and trouble as this.

For my part, I am very grateful that this word of Christ's has been recorded. For it affords sufficient warrant for declaring the poet, the artist, the architect, and all those who are trying to make the world more beautiful, God's servants too, offering Him a gift He does not disdain to recognise, as truly as the physician, the philanthropist, and the preacher whose object is to make it better.

Beauty of form and structure has been lavished profusely by the Creator on creatures too small to be seen. There are more things grow out of God's earth than corn for food or timber for building houses. There's the heather and the wild flowers, the daisies and the violets. Hard-headed common-sense asks--What's the use of them? What good do they do? The answer is that they are beautiful, and that seems in God's sight to be justification enough for having made them.

So when we see Love breaking her alabaster box, and pouring forth her offering without stint, as she is doing every day--a mother lavishing care upon an ungrateful son, a husband surrounding a peevish wife with a tireless devotion, or a sister keeping her own love-dream at arm's length that she may guard and guide some graceless brother--let us lay our hands upon our lips when we are tempted to criticise. These actions may be foolish, extravagant, quixotic, and may outrage every canon of common-sense. But there is a fragrance about them without which the world would be much poorer. They are morally beautiful, and for that reason, our Lord Himself would teach us, they are not to be rudely handled nor judged by any hard standard.