gospel as if it were a curse. The common notion is that anybody can
go into the Sunday-school and teach the young. We sometimes think
that it would be well if a great many persons left the Sunday-school
all over the world. Teach the young--would God I had that great
gift, to break the bread for the children, and to be able to lure
and captivate opening minds, and to enter into the spirit of the
words--
"Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot."
It requires to be father and mother and sister and nurse and
genius to speak to the young. They may hear you and not care for
you: they may understand your words, and be repelled by your spirit.
You require the tongue of the learned to know how to speak, and
that tongue of the learned is not to be had at school, college,
university--it is not included in any curriculum of learning--it is
a gift divine, breathing an afflatus, an inspiration--the direct
and distinct creation of God, as is the star, the sun. The speaker,
then, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the representative of the
Father, the incarnate Deity--He it is who is charged with the subtle
learning; He it is whose lips tremble with the pathos of this
ineffable music.
Tho the gift itself is divine, we must remember that it is to be
exercised seasonably. The text is, "that I should know how to speak
a word in season." There is a time for everything. It is not enough
to speak the right word, it must be spoken at the right moment. Who
can know when that is! We can not be taught. We must feel it, see
it hours beyond: nay, must know when to be silent for the whole
twenty-four hours and to say, "To-morrow, at such and such a time,
we will drop that sentence upon the listening ear." "The day after
to-morrow, he will probably be in circumstances to admit of this
communication being delivered with sympathy and effect." How few
persons know the right time--the right time in conversation. Some
people are never heard in conversation tho they are talking all
the time. They talk so unseasonably, they talk when other people
are talking; they can not wait; they do not know how to come in
along the fine line of silence: they do not understand the German
expression "Now an angel has passed," and they do not quickly enough
follow in his wake. Consequently, tho chattering much they are
saying nothing--tho their words be multitudinous, the impression
they make is a blank.
I have a ripe seed in my hand. As an agriculturist I am going to sow
it. Any laborer in the field can tell me that I should be acting
foolishly in sowing it just now. Why? "It is out of season," the man
says. "There is a time for the doing of that action: I will tell you
when the time returns--do it then, and you may expect a profitable
result of your labor."
Then I will change the character and be a nurse, and I will attend
to my patient (perhaps I will over attend to him--some patients
are killed by over nursing), and I will give the patient this
medicine--it is the right medicine. So it is, but you are going
to give it at the wrong time, and if you give the medicine at the
wrong time, tho itself be right, the hour being wrong you will bring
suffering upon the patient, and you yourself will be involved in
pains and penalties. Thus we touch that very subtle and sensitive
line in human life, the line of refined discrimination. You may
say "I am sure I told him." You are right--you did tell him and
he did not hear you. You may reply, "I am perfectly confident I
delivered the message,--I preached the exact words of the gospel."
So you did, but you never got the hearing heart, your manner was so
unsympathetic, so ungentle, so cruel (not meant to be--unconsciously
so), that the man never understood it to be a gospel. You spoilt the
music in the delivery, in the giving of the message. The Lord God
giveth the tongue of the learned, that he to whom it is given may
know how to speak--how to speak the right word--how to speak the
right word at the right point of time. You want divine teaching in
all things, in speech not least.
This is a curious word to find in the Bible. Does the Bible care
about weary people? We have next to no sympathy with them. If a man
be weary, we give him notice to quit: if he ask us to what place
he can retire, we tell him that it is his business not ours. Now
the tenderness of this Book is one of the most telling, convincing
arguments on behalf of its inspiration, and its divine authority.
This Book means to help us, wants to help us, it says, "I will try
to help you, never hinder you: I will wait for you, I will soften
the wind into a whisper, I will order the thunder to be silent,
I will quiet the raging sea; I will wait upon you at home, in
solitude, at midnight, anywhere--fix the place, the time, yourself,
and when your heart most needs me I will be most to your heart."
Any book found in den, in gutter, that wants to do this, should be
received with respect. The purpose is good: if it fail, it fails in
a noble object.
Everywhere in this Book of God we find a supreme wish to help man.
When we most need help the words are sweeter than the honeycomb.
When other books are dumb, this Book speaks most sweetly. It is
like a star, it shines in the darkness, it waits the going down of
the superficial sun of our transient prosperity, and then it breaks
upon us as the shadows thicken. This is the real greatness of God:
he will not break the bruised reed. Because the reed is bruised,
therefore the rude man says he may break it. His argument in brief
is this: "If the reed were strong, I should not touch it, but
seeing that it is bruised what harm can there be in completing the
wound under which it is already suffering? I will even snap it and
throw the sundered parts away." That is the reasoning of the rude
man--that is the vulgar view of the case. The idea of the healing
is the idea of a creator. He who creates also heals. Herein we see
God's estimate of human nature: if He cared only for the great, the
splendid, the magnificent, the robust, and the everlasting, then
He would indeed be too like ourselves. The greatness of God and the
estimate which He places upon human nature are most seen in all
these ministrations in reference to the weak and the weary and the
young and the feeble and the sad. Made originally in the image of
God, man is dear to his Maker, tho ever so broken. Oh, poor prodigal
soul with the divinity nearly broken out of thee, smashed, bleeding,
crushed, all but in hell--while there is a shadow of thee outside
perdition, He would heal thee and save thee. Thou art a ruin, but
a grand one,--the majestic ruin of a majestic edifice, for knowest
thou not that thou wast the temple of God?
When we are weary, even in weariness, God sees the possibility of
greatness that may yet take place and be developed and supervene in
immortality. How do we talk? Thus: "The survival of the fittest." It
is amazing with what patience and magnanimity and majestic disregard
of circumstances we allow people to die off. When we hear that
thousands have perished, we write this epitaph on their white slate
tombstones: "The survival of the fittest required the decay of the
weakest and the poorest." We pick off the fruit which we think will
not come to perfection. The gardener lays his finger and thumb upon
the tree, and he says, "This will not come to much"--he wrenches
the poor unpromising piece of fruit off the twig and throws it down
as useless. In our march we leave the sick and wounded behind.
That is the great little, the majestic insignificant, the human
contradiction. We go in for things that are fittest, strongest,
most promising, healthy, self-complete, and therein we think we are
wise. God says, "Not a lamb must be left out--bring it up: not a
sick man must be omitted: not a poor publican sobbing his 'God be
merciful to me a sinner' must be omitted from the great host. Bring
them all in, sick, weary, wounded, feeble, young, illiterate, poor,
insignificant, without name, fame, station, force--all in: gather up
the fragments that nothing be lost." Let us go to that Shepherd--He
will spare us and love us. When our poor strength gives out, He will
not set His cruel heel upon us and kill us, He will gather us in
His arms and make the whole flock stand still till He has saved the
weakest one.
Did we but know the name for our pain we should call it Sin. What
do we need, then, but Christ the Son of God, the Heart of God, the
Love of God? He will in very deed give us rest. He will not add to
the great weight which bows down our poor strength. He will give us
grace, and in His power all our faintness shall be thought of no
more. Some of us know how dark it is when the full shadow of our sin
falls upon our life, and how all the help of earth and time and man
does but mock the pain it can not reach. Let no man say that Christ
will not go so low down as to find one so base and vile as he.
Christ is calling for thee; I heard His sweet voice lift itself up
in the wild wind and ask whither thou hadst fled, that He might save
thee from death and bring thee home. There is no wrath in His face
or voice, no sword is swung by His hand as if in cruel joy, saying,
"Now at last I have My chance with you." His eyes gleam with love:
His voice melts in pity: His words are gospels, every one. Let Him
but see thee sad for sin, full of grief because of the wrong thou
hast done, and He will raise thee out of the deep pit and set thy
feet upon the rock.
McKENZIE
THE ROYAL BOUNTY
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
ALEXANDER MCKENZIE was born at New Bedford, Mass., in 1830, and
graduated from Harvard in 1859. Since 1867 he has been pastor of
the First Congregational Church, Cambridge, Mass. His voice is
rich, full and sympathetic, and his pulpit style that of one man
talking earnestly and directly to another, there being no attempt
at oratorical effect. He is to-day probably the most acceptable
preacher at Harvard, and the leading Congregational minister in New
England. The discourse reprinted here is from his volume "A Door
Opened," and has been noted as one of the greatest sermons of the
century.
McKENZIE
BORN IN 1830
THE ROYAL BOUNTY[8]
[8] Reprinted by permission of Dr. Alexander McKenzie and the
publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co.
_And King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba all her desire,
whatsoever she asked, besides that which Solomon gave her of his
royal bounty. So she turned and went to her own land, she and her
servants._--1 Kings x., 13.
The Queen of Sheba came from the uttermost part of the earth to hear
the wisdom of Solomon. She was amazed at all that she had heard,
and delighted with all that she saw, and confest that after the
generous rumors that had reached her in her distant home the half
had not been told her. She brought her present to him, as was the
custom of the times; and when she went away she asked a gift of
him, and history says that the king gave her all that she desired;
and that, having given her everything of which she had thought,
he added something more of his own thought. He gave her this, not
because she had desired it, but because he had desired it; not for
her heart's seeking, but out of his heart's wishing to bestow. This
is the simple record: "And King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba
all her desire, whatsoever she asked, besides that which Solomon
gave her of his royal bounty." These last words describe the added
gift, and this was doubtless the best of all; that upon which she
would think with the greatest pleasure, and of which she would speak
with the greatest pride. The word "royal" is well chosen, for we
think of something which is great when we apply this term to it, as
we speak of a royal deed, royal magnificence, royal benevolence,
royal bounty. We readily approve the action of the king, for it is
this excess of giving, beyond that which is demanded of us, which
makes the real generosity. We are in the habit ourselves, so far
as we are generous at all, of reaching beyond the real necessities
and requests of our friends, and giving out of the largeness of
our hearts. It is this excess which commands the high price. It is
the added, extraordinary beauty of a painting which enhances its
worth. Some pictures are sold by the square yard, and some by the
inch. It is that which genius adds which is the royal bounty. It
marks the difference between genius and talent. To be what we must,
and to do what we must, is narrow and uninteresting. The man who
is just, and no more, wins our praise for his integrity, but not
our regard for his liberality. There are some men who would on no
account have their measures in the slightest degree too small, but
would be quite as careful not to have them too large. There is no
reason why justice should not be combined with charity, and a strict
regard for the legal demands which are made upon us with the excess
out of a free heart which will make our justice beautiful. I saw in
a fine country town a tall, graceful tree which cast its pleasant
shade upon the path, and I marked that men had fastened upon it an
iron frame which held a lamp that gave out its light upon the path.
The tree was not the less a tree that it added the light, and the
lamp was not less a lamp because it belonged to the tree. I came
afterward and found that the bark of the tree had grown up around
the iron where it was fastened to it, till the frame and lamp were
fairly incorporated in the tree itself. It is easy thus to enlarge
our life, adding beauty to strength, giving what our heart desires
to give to that which Sheba asks at our hands. This thought is
strongly expressed by St. Paul, "Scarcely for a righteous man," the
man who does exactly what he ought to do, and nothing more, "will
one die." Yet peradventure, for a good man, who does all he ought
to do, and adds something because he wants to do it, some would
even give their life. This man appeals to our heart which is ready
to respond. The best things are indeed only to be given in this
way. They can not be bought. They can not be had for the asking;
such things as confidence, and friendship, and courtesy, which no
statute can demand, but which the royal heart delights to give; and
there is a like royalty which is able to receive and prize the gift.
This is God's way, to whom all life is but the expression of his
heart. We rejoice continually in his bountiful goodness. What is the
need of flowers? He could have made a strong and honest earth which
would take in the seed and give it out in harvest, and thus we could
live; but when He had made the earth substantial, useful as it is,
He added flowers, because He wished to give them, was delighted to
look upon them, and knew how happy we should be who saw them blossom
by the roadside. There is no need of birds. The world would go its
way, the seasons would follow one another, the sun would rise and
set, the forest trees would reach up toward the clouds, without
them. God made all this, and then filled the quiet woods with forms
of beauty, and changed silence into songs. Even heaven itself has
more than we should have looked for or asked for. We might have
had a good delightful heaven, without pain or sorrow or sighing,
without death, and such a heaven we have. But in the vision of the
Apocalypse, which only dimly sees the heavenly reality, its streets
are covered with gold, as it were transparent glass; its gates are
pearl, and the strong walls, which can not be moved, glisten with
jewels. So it might have been with the arrangement of this world. We
might have had men to care for us, women to nurture us, fathers to
work for us, a society whose process might move on with industry and
safety from year to year. But God has added the richer delights of
love and sympathy, of all that we name friend and friendship. It is
in the same way that He frames His ordinances for us. We could have
had all days alike, but when He had made six good days He added a
seventh which should be wearied by no work, wherein the soul should
be at leisure to live with itself in quietness, and worship God. He
might have supplied all our wants in the course of nature, bringing
His gifts to our door with regularity, and we should have lived our
appointed time; but He does more than this. He lets us thank Him
when we take our daily bread, and blesses the bread with the love
which gives it. He even lets us tell Him what we wish, and to our
wishes He gives patient heed. He might have left us to conscience
and experience, in the light of nature to frame our character and
our hope, but to these He has added the thought of other men, the
revelation of His wisdom by His saints, the gift of His spirit to
our spirit, to be in us a continual light.
There is a very good expression of God's way of dealing with us
in a line of the twenty-third Psalm, "My cup runneth over." This
seems unnecessary. To have the cup full, or a little less than full,
is enough for us, and more convenient. For us, but not for God,
who delights in filling it; and when we bid Him stay His hand, He
keeps on pouring, and the water flows, till, presently, the cup is
overflowing, but not because we thought to have it so, but because
of His great delight in giving; until it would seem as if He could
not stop, or content Himself with that which He has already bestowed
upon us. Let this stand as a simple expression of His way with us.
When we come upon anything that all good men approve, we may be very
certain that we have found something which God Himself approves,
and which is the method of His life. We like, among ourselves, this
principle of the cup that runneth over. Our liking for it we have
inherited from God. We might expect, therefore, that when the Son of
God has His life in the world He will live by this rule, which is of
heaven and of earth; and it is even so. His first miracle would seem
unnecessary. There have been people who blindly but honestly wished
that He had never wrought it. Why did He do it if there was no need
of it, if it were even possible that it should be wrested from its
meaning? He had gone as a guest to a wedding, perhaps because the
bride was his friend, and there came that grave calamity which would
mar the feast; for presently it was whispered to Him, "They have
no wine." Surely they could have a wedding without wine. Not that
wedding. Not in the custom of that time. He knew that the bride,
if she lived to be old, would never recover from the shame of her
wedding-day, whose beauty was lost. Here was a necessity, in love,
in kindness; and that the cheeks of this girl might not redden with
shame, He reddened the water into wine.
He was at Capernaum. They brought to Him a sick man with the palsy.
They broke up the roof, and lowered him to the feet of Jesus, who
knew well what they wanted. He passed over the little thing which
they sought, and, governed by His own feeling, not by theirs, he
said, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are sent away from thee."
That was enough. In a few days, the man would be able to walk
without His help. Death comes to the succor of cripples. The man
gave no sign of discontent, but Jesus found that the friends were
unsatisfied, and He thought within Himself, "You brought him here
that he might be raised up, and be made able to carry his bed home.
I have done a greater thing for him, but I will add this which
you want." "Arise," He said, "take up your bed and go your way."
He did the greater work which made the soul strong, and for the
lesser work,--well, He threw that in. It was the royal bounty.
There was a time later than that, after His resurrection, when some
of His disciples had toiled all the night upon the sea, and had
taken nothing. He could not have it a fruitless night for them. In
the morning He was their risen Savior, who might well bestow some
spiritual gift becoming to the resurrection. This He did, but He
said, "Cast your net on the right side of the ship, and you will
find what you have been seeking." They cast it, therefore, and drew
it in, full of fishes, a hundred and fifty and three. This is the
record of a fisherman, who wrote that the fish were large; and of an
old man, who remembered the number of them. They drew their net to
shore, and there was a fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, another
fish. When they had enough, one that was better than all was added.
Have you not sometimes wished that you could have had that hundred
and fifty-fourth fish? This was Christ's way all the while, and is
His way still. He fills the net as full as it will hold, that our
life may be sustained, and then He adds more, that His love may be
gratified, and that which He adds is the "royal bounty."
The work of our Lord was not merely in meeting the wants of men, but
in creating the wants; not in gratifying their great desires, but in
making their desires great. His own work in the world was twofold:
to teach men how much more there was which they could enjoy, and how
much more there was which He was eager to impart. The greater the
desire, the surer it was that it would be met by His desire. Indeed,
a large desire is necessary to wealth. We must look out toward that
wherein our riches lie. "He who would bring home the wealth of the
Indies must send out the wealth of the Indies." To him whose desires
are allowed liberty there comes the answer of fulfillment from "the
unsearchable riches of Christ." In all His life and in all His
teachings we see vastly more than men ever asked, much more than
they are willing to take even to-day. It has often been, as it was
at the first, that "he came unto his own, and his own received him
not"; but to those who received Him He gave all they wished, and
more than they had thought; He gave the right to become the sons of
God. They would have been content with a greater prophet, a bolder
leader, a stronger king, a Messiah who should enthrone Israel and
bring the nations in homage to its feet. He came bringing God to the
world, giving an eternal liberty, erecting an everlasting kingdom.
They wanted manna; He gave the bread of life. They wanted wells of
water; He gave the well that should be within them, springing up
for evermore. They wanted a leader; He gave a Savior. They wanted
man; and He was God. This has continued even to our time. Many
admire Christ because He was a teacher, neglecting that wherein He
was infinitely more than teacher. They are glad of an example; He
was that, but, far beyond it, He was the life whereby righteousness
became possible. There are those who would be content with His
beautiful spirit, His blameless life, His deeds of charity, His
patience, His submission, His consent to a death which He could not
avoid. He offers to the world the spirit of the Eternal, the life of
God to be lived upon the earth; He lays down the life which no man
could take from Him; and, with all the roads leading from Jerusalem
open before Him, walks with determined step to Calvary and the
cross. Beyond that which has contented many in the world, He gave
Himself, the world's Redeemer, the Lamb of God, the Good Shepherd
giving His life for the sheep.
It is very, very sad to mark how ready we are to measure Christ's
gifts to us by our narrow wants and limited desires; not by the
greatness of His love, not by His exhaustless riches, not by the
fulness of the grace of the Eternal, who is the Father and friend of
all men. If ever we shall pass beyond the gratifying of ourselves,
and allow Christ to gratify Himself in blessing us, we shall find
in a glad experience what the simple words mean, "I am come that
they might have life"--oh, friends, do not stop there, finish the
sentence,--"I am come that they might have life, and that they might
have it more abundantly." We ask life of Him, and He gives us life,
and offers length of days forever and forever. We pray that we may
live; and we set up a goal at seventy or ninety years, when He draws
no line across our path. "I give eternal life," He says. We pray for
help that we may live; He offers more than that in the unrivaled
sentence, "Because I live, ye shall live also." We think of life as
being, and are content. We use existence as a synonym of living, but
He said, "This is eternal life, to know God, and me."