'Thou hearest the sound,' or, as the Word might literally be rendered,
the 'voice thereof,' from the little whisper among the young soft
leaves of the opening beeches in our woods to-day, up to the typhoon
that spreads devastation over leagues of tropical ocean. That voice,
now a murmur, now a roar, is the only manifestation of the unseen force
that sweeps around us. And if you are a Christian man or woman your new
life should be thus perceptible to others, in a variety of ways, no
doubt, and in many degrees of force. You cannot show its roots; you are
bound to show its fruits. You cannot lay bare your spirits, and say to
the world, 'Look! there is the presence of a divine germ in me,' but
you can go about amongst men, and witness to the possession of it by
the life that you live. There are a great many Christian people from
whom, if you were to listen ever so intently, you would not hear a
sough or a ripple. There is a dead calm; the 'rushing mighty wind' has
died down; and there is nothing but a greasy swell upon the windless
ocean. 'The wind bloweth,' and the 'sound' is heard. The wind ceases,
and there is a hideous silence. And that is the condition of many a man
and woman that has a name to live and is dead. Does anybody hear the
whisper of that breath in your life, Christian man? It is not for me to
answer the question; it is for you to ask it and answer it for
yourselves.
And Christians should be in the world, as the very breath of life
amidst stagnation. When the Christian Church first sprung into being it
did come into that corrupt, pestilential march of ancient heathenism
with healing on its wings, and like fresh air from the pure hills into
some fever-stricken district. Wherever there has been a new outburst,
in the experience of individuals and of churches, of that divine life,
there has come, and the world has felt that there has come, a new force
that breathes over the dry bones, and they live. Alas, alas! that so
frequently the professing Christian Church has ceased to discharge its
plain function, to breathe on the slain that they may live.
They are curing, or say they are curing, consumption nowadays, by
taking the patient and keeping him in the open air, and letting the
wind of heaven blow freely about him. That, and not shutting people in
warm chambers, and coddling them with the prescriptions of social and
political reformation, that is the cure for the world's diseases.
Wherever the new life is vigorous in men, men will hear the sound
thereof, and recognise that it comes from heaven.