dead. I have lost what can never be restored to me in this world. I
have come from the grave with half myself buried there. I have come
back to a life with all its meaning gone from it--a life without joy,
interest, anything to which my soul responds--a dreary waste stretching
before me that I must cross alone. Where shall I turn for courage and
for strength? Where but to You to Whom the disciples of John turned in
their desolation? Open to me Your arms and Your Heart. Listen tenderly
to me whilst I tell You all my trouble. Speak to my soul and calm it
and strengthen it. Make up to me for what You have taken away. And if
You ask what compensation I desire, I answer: “None other than Thyself,
O Lord”.
Let us both be gainers by this bitter loss--You by the fuller surrender
into Your hands of all that I have and am; I by the fuller gift of
Yourself to my soul--a fulness satisfying its every craving with the
love of Him, from Whom neither life nor death, nor things present nor
things to come, have power to part me.
XXXVII.
GOD’S WAYS.
Wherein hast Thou loved us?--_Malach._ i. 2.
My God, I may tell You anything and everything. All I have to tell
interests You, more especially the difficulties and troubles which
do not easily come out to others, and are not for the most part very
helpfully met when they do come out. “For what man knoweth the things
of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him?”[113]
But “the Spirit (of God) searcheth all things.”[114] You know me
through and through, and I am only owning to what You see and
understand perfectly when I tell You of repinings aroused by gifts
and opportunities bestowed on others, but denied to me. I find myself
questioning, if not Your wisdom, at least Your love, in that I am less
richly dowered than others with the happy temperament, the talents, the
moral and social qualities that we reckon among the better gifts of
life, that render life not a duty merely, nor a source of merit, but
a continual joy. I do not see that “the lines are fallen unto me in
goodly places”; rather I ask petulantly, “_Wherein hast Thou loved
me?_”
The source of such disquiet is selfishness. This is the dismal
consolation I should get were I to confide my trouble to the most
indulgent of friends. But have You no better comfort for me, my
Creator and my Father? To whom shall I go in my pains if not to Him
Whose “hands have made me and formed me”;[115] to my Father “that hath
possessed me, and made me, and created me”;[116] Who says to me, “I
will have mercy on thee more than a mother”?[117] There is no humbling
avowal I may not trust to You, and trusting it be sure of sympathy.
“Why hast Thou done so to us?” was the meek remonstrance of the most
submissive of handmaids. “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” was said by the
most cross-grained and thankless of peoples. And to both questioners
You vouchsafed a reply. I too, then, may ask: Why, Father, hast Thou
done so to me? In withholding what is good in itself, what would have
made me happier, _Wherein hast Thou loved me?_
Your answer might be: “Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed
it, why hast Thou made me thus?”[118] But in place of rebuke You
silence my trouble by an invitation: “_Come up hither_”.[119] I
am to take my stand by Your side, and from that height look around on
the design framed from eternity. Parts of a plan can be viewed aright
only in connection with the whole. To consider them independently is to
miss not only the meaning and grandeur of the scheme in its entirety,
but particular excellence also. This I know. Yet the tendency of
selfishness is to contract the vision, and let the tiny portion
assigned to itself in the universal design absorb the interest and
warp the judgment. I am too near to earth, too involved in its passing
interests to preserve the relative proportion necessary for viewing
things aright. I must move further off--look forward a few years--plant
my feet, not on this transitory world, but on the eternal shore, and
from that standpoint look out upon creation.
“_He hath begotten us ... that we might be some beginning of His
creature._”[120]
What an unsealing of eyes awaits me the moment after death! What a
vista all but infinite will open out before me as the divine plan
unfolds! All this human race, which because it encloses my lot is
apt to engross my whole interest--if indeed my interest extends to
the race and is not absorbed by the little miserable me--all this
vast assemblage of human souls to be--but _some beginning of His
creature_!
In eternity I shall see the part assigned to this beginning in the
universal scheme. I shall see the part assigned to each unit. I
shall grasp without effort, without reasoning, the self-evident fact
that the dignity of every human being lies in its having a place in
God’s eternal design; that independent or solitary greatness is an
impossibility; that our happiness no less than our grandeur consists
in filling that place in the vast mosaic which divine wisdom and love
has appointed us; that the significance of the creature, its beauty and
well-being are to be found only in its conformity with the ideal in
the Creator’s mind. Those who on earth have worked out that ideal and
thereby reached their appointed place are happy. Those who, absorbed
by selfish aims, have failed to fit themselves for the place assigned
them, are necessarily cast aside as failures--and this whatever the
gifts, station, influence that distinguished them in the momentary
interval between two eternities that we call Time. Nothing indeed will
astound me more than the reversal of lots in the world beyond the
grave. I shall see how in innumerable instances paths of glory have
led to everlasting confusion and oblivion. How, on the other hand, the
unnoticed, the meagrely gifted, have made their way up to the highest
honour, and are placed “with the princes of His people”. The beggar of
the Roman streets, shunned by every passerby, the shepherdess of an
obscure village, the simple, illiterate Curé d’Ars, as “the friends of
God are made exceedingly honourable”. Whilst high above all, King of
Kings and Lord of Lords, is a village Carpenter of heretofore.
Truly God’s ways are not our ways! When I see as He sees, there will
be no heartburnings, no pining for anything however good in itself
that has not found place in His designs for me. Narrow views will melt
away so completely as to be deemed wholly inexplicable in the past;
egotism disappear in the burst of admiration at the design revealed
in creation. What will be my delight to have a place, my particular
place, in that glorious scheme! What my regret, as I turn away to
purgatory, that I have failed to co-operate in the perfecting of the
whole in the measure determined for me!
And this I shall see soon! Soon I shall be viewing all things from
God’s standpoint, the only one possible in the land of Truth.
Recognising at last in my outfit a marvellous adaptation of means
to the end, I shall see wherein He has loved me. I shall bless His
will that has ordered all things sweetly. I shall trace His love in
withholding as well as in giving, in ordaining my limitations and
deficiencies no less than my aptitudes as means for attaining to my
place in His kingdom. The greater or less glory and happiness of that
place will be a matter of indifference to me. To reach the degree
in which _He_ would place me, to satisfy _Him_, to give
Him throughout eternity the praise and reverence and service He asks
of me--this will be the only ambition possible to my enlightened
understanding and will. “In Thy light we shall see light.”[121]
* * * * *
O Father, that it might be thus even now! That now, whilst my place
in heaven is to be sought and reached, I might have the light and
strength to accept, not with resignation only--this were too poor
a gratitude--but with deepest, tenderest thankfulness, the means
fashioned to my hand, designed by Your wisdom _for me_!
[113] 1 Cor. ii.
[114] _Ibid._
[115] Psa. cxviii.
[116] Deut. xxxii.
[117] Ecclus. iv.
[118] Rom. ix.
[119] Apoc. iv.
[120] St. James i.
[121] Psa. xxxv.
XXXVIII.
TWILIGHT AND NOON.
My eyes are ever towards the Lord.--_Psa._ xxiv. 15.
How marvellous is the vehemence of David’s utterances when we consider
the dimness with which God revealed Himself in the time of twilight
before the coming of Christ! He was not altogether the hidden God.
Throughout His dealings with His people we are struck by the mingling
of light and darkness, distance and nearness, terrific chastisement and
the tenderest blandishments of love. There was wonderful condescension
and approach in the tabernacle of the wilderness, in the revelations
to the prophets, in the interventions of mercy that times without
number succoured the stiff-necked people. There are words of love in
the Old Testament unsurpassed perhaps in tenderness by any in the
New. Yet when His presence is nearest, when His reproaches are most
touching, His words most endearing, we are conscious of the measureless
difference between God’s manifestation in the past and the intimacy and
familiarity brought into our relations with Him by the Incarnation. We
who live in the full illumination of that day which kings and prophets
desired to see, cannot but feel how little earth’s most enlightened men
knew the God Who made them, before “the Word was made flesh and dwelt
amongst us”.
Yet so powerfully were they drawn to Him, that their words are the
fittest exponents of every human heart when by desire, praise,
affection, thanksgiving, it leaps up to God. They give expression
to our every need. But, alas! they give too much matter also for
self-reproach.
“_My eyes are always towards the Lord_,” said David. God revealed
Himself with special intimacy to the man according to His own Heart,
that spoke in his own person of the sufferings and the glories of Him
Who was to delight in the name of the Son of David. Yet after all what
did David know of the Lord compared with the knowledge vouchsafed to
the least enlightened of the Church’s children! He had the memory of
past mercies to the “seed of Abraham His servant, the sons of Jacob
His chosen”.[122] He had the shadowy presence of God in the Ark of the
Covenant. And he had the dim foreknowledge of One to come, of the root
of Jesse, “beautiful above the sons of men,”[123] yet “a worm, and no
man, the reproach of men, and the outcast of the people,”[124] of “a
Holy One Who should not see corruption,”[125] but “sit on the right
hand of God till all His enemies be made His footstool”.[126] This was
all. But it was enough to keep the eyes of David fixed on God: “_My
eyes are always towards the Lord_.”
I think of myself. I think of the careful teaching from my childhood
onwards: of the Gospel stories so familiar to me that I may follow
the life of the God-man from His crib to His cross; living in His
company; listening to His teaching; noting His look and gesture and
act; studying His ways and dealings with men, His likes and dislikes,
the human character which individualised Him and endeared Him to His
friends. I may watch Him at His work, I may mark the effect upon Him
of kindness and appreciation, and, on the other hand, of ingratitude,
scorn, cruelty and hate. I may see him thirsty, wayworn, footsore, and
feast the eyes of my soul on the absolute perfection with which all the
eventualities of life were met by Him Who, very God of very God, was
yet the Son of Man and one of us.
Again, I may contemplate Him abiding ever with His Church, the source
of every supernatural act throughout its length and breadth. I may see
the Divine sap flowing through the vine to its furthest extremities,
the principle of life and growth, of beauty and of fruitfulness in
every soul His grace has sanctified. I know that all His merits are
placed at my disposal; that He desires to make the meanest actions of
my life meritorious of an eternal reward by uniting them with His. I
have his invitation in the early morning to offer with Him His daily
sacrifice that is offered for me. I hear Him asking of me, if not a
daily, at least a frequent invitation to my heart. I hear him calling
“Come aside and rest a little” when in afternoon hours the day’s tasks
are lightening; calling me to Him for an evening blessing when the
day’s work is done. Through the long hours of day and night His eye is
following me--how often are my eyes towards the Lord?
O eager heart of David, that has met, if not with adequate response,
at least with all your strength, the advances of our God, become to
ours the stimulus they so sadly need! In our noontide splendour,
in the fulness of fruition, we turn back to catch the glowing heat
of your desires: “_O God my God, to Thee do I watch at break of
day. For Thee my soul hath thirsted; for Thee my flesh, oh, how many
ways!_”[127]
Your envying of our happier days and higher privileges shall make us
appreciate them better: “They have seen Thy goings, O God, the goings
of my God, of my King Who is in His sanctuary”.[128]
We will prize His sanctuary in our midst; the sanctuary nearest to us,
where most of all our homage and our love are due. Morning, afternoon,
and evening we will seek Him there to bless Him and be blessed. “In
the churches bless ye God the Lord.”[129] “Seek ye the Lord, and be
strengthened, seek His face evermore.”[130]
[122] Psa. civ.
[123] _Ibid._ xliv.
[124] _Ibid._ xxi.
[125] _Ibid._ xv.
[126] _Ibid._ cix.
[127] Psa. lxii.
[128] _Ibid._ lxvii.
[129] _Ibid._ lxvii.
[130] _Ibid._ civ.
XXXIX.
RESPONSIBILITY.
Behold I and my children, whom God hath given me.--_Heb._ ii.
No sympathy is so genuine and so ready, none so acceptable and helpful
as that created by similarity of experience. “What doth he know that
hath not been tried?”[131] “Who can rejoice with them that rejoice, and
weep with them that weep”[132] like one whose heart has thrilled with
the same gladness, and found relief in the same tears?
Nothing more endears our Lord to us than the proofs of fellow-feeling
that come out in every act of His human life. The Incarnation was the
supreme gift of His sympathy. Every weary journey to and fro, every
cure of soul or body, every word of warning and of comfort spoke of His
sympathy. The Eucharist is His sympathy incarnate to the end of time.
No burden of ours is unshared by the Son of man. He has devised
expedients that bewilder us by their condescension, in order to bring
home to us the truth: “I also have a heart as well as you.”[133] He
will weep with his friends beside a grave. He will cower before pain
and ignominy. He will be “tempted in all things like as we are”.[134]
Nay, He will even clothe Himself with the appearance of sin, be “made
sin for us”;[135] feel its burden and its shame; bear the penalty
of its guilt, to prove His devotedness to us in His most winning of
ways--the sharing of our miseries out of love.
All the heavy-laden He invites to Him, but none, perhaps, are more
tenderly welcomed than those who come bowed beneath the weight
of responsibility. Whether this devolves upon them through their
relations with others as superiors, or is the consequence of kinship
or friendship, it surely wins for them the sympathy of Him Who knows
by His own experience the nature of all such responsibilities and the
solicitude they entail.
“You call Me Master, and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.”[136]
“Is not He thy Father that hath possessed thee, and made thee and
created thee?”[137] “As one whom the mother caresseth, so will I
comfort you.”[138] He is our Elder Brother, “first-born amongst
many brethren;”[139] “the Physician of Whom we all have need;”[140]
“the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls”.[141] He knows, therefore,
experimentally the peculiar trials of the charge with which we are
laden, and we may pour out our hearts to Him with the freedom that
comes of perfect trust in One “sorrowful,” “heavy,” “troubled”--“in all
things like as we are”.[142]
My cares, dear Lord, are known to You, and not known only, but laid
upon me by Your own hand. They weigh heavily at times. The interests at
stake are so tremendous, and my ignorance and helplessness so great.
Often enough I do not see what to do for the best; oftener still I
cannot take the course that seems to me best. I am afraid of a false
step; I am afraid of missing opportunities. Where to make a stand, and
where to yield; when to command, and when to entreat; when to offer
a word of remonstrance or of counsel, and when to say nothing and
trust to prayer--all these are perplexities in which I need and pray
for the guidance of Your holy Spirit. There is a time to speak and a
time to keep silence, but this is Your secret, O Lord! Give me the
opportunities won by long prayer. Put upon my lips the well-timed word.
Send me the success that comes of casting out the nets at Your word,
under Your eye, with Your blessing.
And solve for me other problems--how to teach my children to take
their place befittingly in the world without being of the world;
how to train them for the battle of life; to provide them with an
equipment for mind and heart that will suffice for the needs of these
perilous times; to strengthen them by self-knowledge, self-reverence,
self-control against the intellectual and moral dangers they will
have to face, and prepare them for the burning questions of the day
before they are flung into their midst. I tremble at the sight of these
dangers beginning so early now when life is lived so fast. And the
mother’s words, the mother’s arms do not reach as far as heretofore.
She can only pray and trust. How earnestly You bid us trust, O Lord!
“Fear not: for the battle is not yours, but God’s.”[143] “Cast thy care
upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.”[144] “Be quiet, fear not,
and let not thy heart be afraid.”[145]
“I shall fear but I will trust in Thee.”[146] “My God is my helper,
and in Him will I put my trust.”[147] “In my affliction I called upon
the Lord, and I cried to my God.”[148] “How long, O Lord, wilt Thou
forget me, how long dost Thou turn away Thy face from me? Consider, and
hear me, O Lord my God.”[149]
* * * * *
“_Behold I and my children, whom God hath given me!_” I gather
them round me here at Your feet. I trust them to Your care. Keep them
in Your faith and in Your love, and bring them safely through the dark
perils of this life to the haven of salvation.
“_Behold I and my children, whom God hath given me._” Let me say
this one day as we stand in the brightness of Your Presence. Let me say
in the fulness of my joy: “Of them whom Thou hast given me, I have not
lost one.”[150]
* * * * *
“Fear not! stand and see the great wonders of the Lord, which He will
do.”[151] “I will seek that which was lost, and that which was driven
away, I will bring again; and I will bind up that which was broken, and
I will strengthen that which was weak.”[152] “I will give them life
everlasting; and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall pluck
them out of My hand.”[153]
[131] Ecclus. xxxiv.
[132] Rom. xii.
[133] Job xii.
[134] Heb. iv.
[135] 2 Cor. v.
[136] John xiii.
[137] Deut. xxxii.
[138] Isa. lxvi.
[139] Rom. viii.
[140] Luke v.
[141] 1 Peter ii.
[142] Heb. iv.
[143] 2 Par. xx.
[144] Psa. liv.
[145] Isa. vii.
[146] Psa. lv.
[147] Psa. xvii.
[148] _Ibid._
[149] _Ibid._ xii.
[150] John xvii.
[151] Exod. xiv.
[152] Ezech. xxxiv.
[153] John x.
XL.
LIFE.
As long as the heir is a child, he is under tutors and governors until
the time appointed by the father.--_Galat._ iv. 1, 2.
Life is a school--neither more nor less. _Not more._ Therefore we
must not expect to find it satisfying. We must not look here for the
freedom, the gladness, the warmth, the indefinable happiness of home.
But surely the eternal Home is worth waiting for! “It hath not yet
appeared what we shall be.”[154] “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath
prepared for them that love Him.”[155] Yet we may infer something of
the grandeur and blessedness of the life to come from the study of
our own souls, from the vastness of their capacity, their insatiable
thirst for knowledge, the depth and tenderness of their affections.
Capacity supposes complement. The aspirations God has given He will
surely satisfy. And therefore all that the noblest, the most highly
gifted, the most loving of our race have desired for their perfect
happiness, will be given to them in a fulness of which they can form
no conception--“good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running
over”.[156] The most far-reaching penetration of the secrets of nature
and of grace; the perfect realisation and more a thousand times than
realisation of home; the satisfaction of all the cravings of kindred
and of friendship, to say nothing of the essential joy of which these
are but the redundance--this is what awaits us hereafter. Not here, nor
yet. We must not look now for anything but the faintest anticipation of
what is in store for us--_we are at school_.
How is it that this elementary truth has so little hold upon us? Life
would be much less of a disappointment if we remembered its true
character and purport, if we had more of the wisdom of the schoolboy
who lives with his heart in the future, and for the rough discipline of
the present is for ever promising himself the compensations of home.
Life is a school. _Nothing less._ Therefore we must beware of
squandering the time given us to prepare for our final state. We are
here for our training, not for our enjoyment, and must go in for the
experiences and the work our education demands. We have to drill
ourselves in regard to our pleasures and our pains. Pleasure must not
be suffered to monopolize our interest. It is but the half holiday
thrown into school life to make its pressure bearable. Pain must not
cast us down utterly, but detach us from our surroundings here, and
foster in us the homesickness of the saints. And we have to work, work
seriously at the formation of mind and heart--the task allotted us in
this world. Both have to be conformed to the likeness of Him Who is the
pattern of all the elect. Both have to be brought into harmony with the
surroundings in which they will find themselves directly. “Let this
mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”[157] “Our conversation
must be in heaven.”[158]
Meantime we have with us, not only as Master, but as Father and Elder
Brother, Him Who has passed through the experience of human life; Who,
“because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, hath also
Himself in like manner been partaker of the same,”[159] “like to us in
all things excepting sin”;[160] Whose word of comfort as we take to Him
our weary tasks is a reminder at once of their necessity and of their
recompense: “Work your work before the time, and He will give you your
reward in His time.”[161]
My God, I thank You for the immortal spirit You have given me. I
thank You for its vast capacity, which I recognise in a craving that
nothing here can sate. Its very neediness appeals to Your beneficence,
“abyss calleth upon abyss.”[162] Keep up the keenness of its desire,
the hunger and thirst which You have declared blessed, till the time
comes for satisfying it fully. Let me not seek to assuage it by
anything transitory. Let me “so pass through the things of time as not
to forfeit those of eternity”.[163] Let me be schooled by the tasks
and trials, the little joys and sorrows and passing brightnesses of
this life for the great future, the true life that lies beyond. May my
happiness no less than my duty be found in preparing now for what I am
to do and to be hereafter.
And when my school days are over and my lessons here are learned--dear
Father, take me Home!
[154] 1 John iii.
[155] 1 Cor. ii.
[156] Luke vi.
[157] Philip. ii.
[158] _Cf._ _Ibid._ iii.
[159] Heb. ii.
[160] _Ibid._ iv.
[161] Ecclus. li.
[162] Psa. xli.
[163] Collect for 3rd Sunday after Pentecost.
THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.
In the footnotes, 1 Par. and 2 Par. refer to the first and second Books
of Paralipomenon, which are also known as the Books of Chronicles.
Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the ends of their chapters.
Missing italics markings in chapter subheads have been
silently corrected.
Itemized changes from the original text: