There are two kinds of seeking, one like that of a bird whose young
have been stolen away, which flutters here and there, because it knows
not where that is which it seeks; another, like the flight of the same
bird, when the migrating instinct rises in its little breast, and
straight as an arrow it goes, not because it knows not its goal, but
because it knows it, yonder where the sun is warm and the sky is blue,
and winter is left behind in the cold north. 'Ye shall seek Me' is the
word of promise, which changes the vain search that is ignorant of
where the object of its quest is, into a blessed going out of the heart
towards that which it knows to be the home of its homelessness. Thus
the text brings out the very central blessedness and peculiarity of the
Christian life, that it has no uncertainty in its aims, and that,
instead of seeking for things which may or may not be found, or if
found may or may not prove to be what we dreamt them to be. It seeks
for a Person whom it knows where to find, and of whom it knows that all
its desires will be met in Him. We have, then, on the one side the
multifarious, divergent searchings of man; and on the other side the
one quest in which all these others are gathered up, and translated
into blessedness—the seeking after Jesus Christ.
Men know that they need, if I may so put it, four things: truth for the
understanding, love round which the heart may coil, authority for the
will which may direct and restrain, and energy for the practical life.
But, apart from the quest after Christ, men for the most part seek
these necessary goods in divers objects, and fragmentarily look for the
completion of their desires. But fragments will never satisfy a man's
soul, and they who have to go to one place for truth, and to another
for love, and to another for authority, and to another for energy, are
wofully likely never to find what they search for. They are seeking in
the manifold what can be found only in the One. It is as if some
vessel, full of precious stones, were thrown down before men, and
whilst they are racing after the diamonds, they lose the emeralds and
the sapphires. But the wise concentrate their seekings on the 'one
Pearl of great price,' in whom is truth for the brain, love for the
heart, authority for the will, power for the life, and all summed in
that which is more blessed than all, the Person of the Brother who died
for us, the Christ who lives to fill our hearts for ever. One sun dims
all the stars; and the 'one entire and perfect Chrysolite' beggars and
reduces to fragments 'all the precious things that thou canst desire.'
To seek Him is the very hall-mark of a Christian, and that seeking
comes to be an earnest desire and effort after more conscious communion
with Him, and a more entire possession of His imparted life which is
righteousness and peace and joy and power. According to the Rabbis, the
manna tasted to each man what each man most desired. The manifoldness
of the one Christ is far more manifold than the manifoldness of the
multiplicity of fragmentary and partial aims which foolish men
perceive.
The ways of seeking are very plain. First of all, we seek if, and in
proportion as, we make the effort to occupy our thoughts and minds, not
with theological dogmas, but with the living Christ Himself. Ah!
brethren, it is hard to do, and I daresay a great many of you are
thinking that it is far harder for you, in the distractions and rush
and conflict of business and daily life, than it is for people like me,
whom you imagine as sitting in a study, with nothing to distract us. I
do not know about that; I fancy it is about equally hard for us all;
but it is possible. I have been in Alpine villages where, at the end of
every squalid alley, there towered up a great, pure, silent, white
peak. That is what our lives may be; however noisome, crowded, petty
the little lane in which we live, the Alp is at the end of it there, if
we only choose to lift our eyes and look. It is possible that not only
'into the sessions of sweet silent thought,' but into the rush and
bustle of the workshop or the exchange, there may come, like 'some
sweet, beguiling melody, so sweet we know not we are listening to it,'
the thought that changes pettiness into greatness, that makes all
things go smoothly and easily, that is a test and a charm to discover
and to destroy temptation, the thought of a present Christ, the Lover
of my soul, and the Helper of my life.
Again, we seek Him when, by aspiration and desire, we bring Him—as He
is always brought thereby—into our hearts and into our lives. The
measure of our desire is the measure of our possession. Wishing is the
opening of our hearts, but, alas, often we wish and desire, and the
heart opens and nothing enters. Wishes are like the tentacles of some
marine organism waving about in a waste ocean, feeling for the food
that they do not find. But if we open our hearts for Him, that is
simultaneous with the coming of Him to us. 'Ye have not, because ye ask
not.' Do not forget, dear friends, that desire, if it is genuine, will
take a very concrete form and will be prayer. And it is prayer—by which
I do not mean the utterance of words without desire, any more than I
mean desire without the direct casting of it into the form of
supplication—it is prayer that brings Christ into any, and it is prayer
that will bring Him into every, life.
Nor let us forget that there is another way of seeking besides these
two, of looking up to Him through, and in the midst of, all the shows
and trifles of this low life, and the reaching out of our desires
towards Him, as the roots of a tree beneath the soil go straight for
the river. That other way is imitation and obedience. It is vain to
think of Him, and it is unreal to pretend to desire Him, if we are not
seeking Him by treading in the path that He has trod, and which leads
to Him. Imitation and obedience—these are the steps by which we go
straight through all the trivialities of life into the presence of the
Lord Himself. The smallest deflection from the path that leads to Him
will carry us away into doleful wastes. The least invisible cloud that
steals across the sky will blot out half a hemisphere of stars; and we
seek not Christ unless, thinking of Him, and desiring Him, we also walk
in the path in which He has walked, and so come where He is. He Himself
has said that if His servant follows Him, where He is there shall also
His servant be. These things make up the seeking which ought to mark us
all.