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diff --git a/16856-h/16856-h.htm b/16856-h/16856-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d91896b --- /dev/null +++ b/16856-h/16856-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3713 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Sermons at Rugby</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Sermons at Rugby, by John Percival</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sermons at Rugby, by John Percival + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Sermons at Rugby + + +Author: John Percival + + + +Release Date: October 11, 2005 [eBook #16856] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERMONS AT RUGBY*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1905 James Nisbet and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>SERMONS AT RUGBY</h1> +<p>By the Rt. Rev. JOHN PERCIVAL, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF HEREFORD<br /> +SOMETIME HEADMASTER OF RUGBY</p> +<p>JAMES NISBET AND CO. LTD.<br /> +21 BERNERS STREET, LONDON. 1905</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/titleb.jpg"> +<img alt="Title page" src="images/titles.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/johnb.jpg"> +<img alt="Photograph of John Percival" src="images/johns.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h2><!-- page v--><span class="pagenum">p. v</span>INTRODUCTORY NOTE</h2> +<p>This little group of Rugby Sermons is to be taken and read as being +nothing more than a few stray chips from the workshop of a busy schoolmaster, +brought together by a kindly publisher, and arranged as he thought best.</p> +<p>They represent no body of continuous doctrine. In one case +the subject may have been suggested by the season of the Christian year; +in another it was the meeting or the parting at the beginning or the +end of a term that suggested it; or more frequently some incident in +the school life of the moment.</p> +<p>Such, indeed, almost inevitably is the teaching of a schoolmaster, +engrossed in the training of the boys committed to his charge and growing +under his hand towards the destiny of their endless life.</p> +<p>To those boys, and to the masters, my <!-- page vi--><span class="pagenum">p. vi</span>colleagues, +and to other fellow-labourers—some gone to their rest, some still +doing their appointed work—I dedicate this brief reminder of our +common life in days of happy fellowship.</p> +<p>J. HEREFORD.<br /> +<i>July</i> 1905.</p> +<h2><!-- page 1--><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I. RELIGIOUS +PATRIOTISM.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity +in itself. . . . O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper +that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within +thy palaces. For my brethren and companions’ sakes I will +wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord our +God I will seek to do thee good.”—<span class="smcap">Psalm +</span>cxxii. 3, 6-9.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As we draw near to the end of our summer term, when so many are about +to take leave of their school life, there is sure to rise up in many +minds the thought of what this life has done for them or failed to do, +and of what the memory of it is likely to be in all their future years +as they pass from youth to age.</p> +<p>And it should be our aim and desire, as need hardly be said, that +from the day when each one comes amongst us as a little boy to <!-- page 2--><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>the +day when he offers his last prayer in this chapel before he goes out +into the world, his life here should be of such a sort that its after +taste may have no regrets, and no bitterness, and no shame in it, and +the memories to be cherished may be such as add to the happiness and +strength of later years. And if, as we trust, this is your case, +your feeling for your school is almost certain to be in some degree +like that which is expressed in this pilgrim psalm. Its language +of intense patriotism, steeped in religious feeling, which is the peculiar +inspiration of the Old Testament Jew, will seem somehow to express your +own feelings for that life in which you grew up from childhood to manhood.</p> +<p>Indeed, the best evidence that your school life has not failed of +its higher objects is the growth of this same sort of earnest patriotic +enthusiasm. Do you feel at all for your school as that unknown +Jewish pilgrim who first sung this 122nd Psalm felt for the city of +his fathers and the house of God? “Pray for the peace of +Jerusalem: <!-- page 3--><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>they shall +prosper that love thee. For my brethren and companions’ +sakes I will wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of +the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good.”</p> +<p>Experience shows us that those English schools have been the best +in which this feeling has been strongest and most widely diffused; and +that those are the best times in any school which train up and send +forth the largest proportion of men who continue to watch over its life, +and to pray for it in this spirit: “For my brethren and companions’ +sakes I will wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of +the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good.” On the other +hand, if this feeling is weak in any school, or among the former members +of it, or if it assumes debased forms, as sometimes happens, we see +there a sure sign of degeneration. He who, having grown up in +any society like ours, is possessed by no such love for it, and stirred +by no enthusiasm for its good name, and no desire to do it good, and +to see good growing <!-- page 4--><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>in +every part of it, such an one has somehow missed the chief blessing +that his membership of his school should have brought to him. +He may have been unfortunate, or he may have proved unworthy. +The atmosphere of his school life, and the associations amidst which +he grew up, may have been such that the best thing he can do is to shake +himself clear of them and forget them. To such an one his school +time has been a grave and lifelong misfortune; and it is the condemnation +of any society if there are many such cases in it.</p> +<p>It is, however, exceptional in English life for men who have grown +up in a great school to be stirred by no glow of patriotic feeling for +it. Whatever their own experience of it may have been, they are +not altogether blind to the things that constitute its greatness, and +they love to hear it well spoken of.</p> +<p>But the quality of their patriotism will depend very much on the +quality of their own life; so that the task we have always before us +is to be infusing into our community such a spirit and purpose, as shall +infect each soul <!-- page 5--><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>amongst +us with those higher aims, and tastes, and motives, with that hatred +of things mean or impure, and that love of things that are manly, honest, +and of good report, which distinguish all nobler characters from the +baser, and which are produced and fostered, and made to work strongly +in every society that has any claim to good influence.</p> +<p>Seeing, then, that a man’s patriotism is to a great extent +the expression of his personal life, how instructive is this picture +of the patriot which the 122nd Psalm sets before us. We see thus +first of all how he feels the unity of his people—their one pervading +life, and himself a part of it, though possibly far away—“Jerusalem +is built as a city that is at unity in itself: thither the tribes go +up.” Those were times when Israel suffered from division +of tribe against tribe, times when the pulse of common life hardly beat +at all, times of isolation or of jealousy; but the true patriot in Israel, +as everywhere, was always possessed by the intense feeling of the oneness +of his people under one Lord; and whenever this <!-- page 6--><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>feeling +fails, we look in vain for the higher forms of common life.</p> +<p>But we note, too, this Psalmist’s passionate personal devotion +to the object of his patriotic love—“They shall prosper +that love thee”—“For my brethren and companions’ +sakes I will wish thee prosperity.” Who can read unmoved +these noble and generous outpourings?</p> +<p>We see, moreover, how his feeling expresses itself, as true love +always does express itself in the desire to do good to its object, and, +above all, how it breathes the spirit of moral and religious earnestness. +“Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek to +do thee good.” If ever you desire to test the sincerity +and the worth of any love you bear to person, place, institution, or +society, you have only to turn to this Psalm, and see if these words +fit your thoughts, desires, and endeavours—“They shall prosper +that love thee—For my brethren and companions’ sakes I will +wish thee prosperity—Yea, because of the house of the Lord our +God I will seek <!-- page 7--><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>to do +thee good.” Here are the notes of true patriotic feeling—personal +love, public spirit, sanctified by moral and religious purpose, desire +to do good. These are the qualities which are the salt of all +societies, and it is by virtue of these that they win their good name, +if they do win it.</p> +<p>In the history of our own school we can point to abundant illustrations +of this truth. I will mention one only, familiar to those who +know our history. “I verily believe,” wrote a School-house +boy to his friend fifty-three years ago—“I verily believe +my whole being is soaked through with wishing and hoping and striving +to do the school good, or, rather, to hinder it from falling in this +critical time, so that all my cares, and affections, and conversation, +thought, words, and deeds, look to that involuntarily.”</p> +<p>Such was one of your predecessors as he sat here Sunday by Sunday, +a boy like any of you.</p> +<p>He was eager to follow those friends who had preceded him to Oxford +as scholars of <!-- page 8--><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>Balliol; +he was keenly interested in all intellectual pursuits; he turned for +his daily pleasure to literature or history; but alongside of it all, +or rather through it all, underlying it all, giving earnestness and +fervour, the true unselfish quality, to it all, there was burning in +his heart a consuming zeal for the good of his house and school. +“For my brethren and companions’ sakes I will wish thee +prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God I will +seek to do thee good.”</p> +<p>It was through the spirit and the lives of such as he, growing up +here, and leavening all the life around them, and then going forth in +the same spirit, to live the noble and earnest type of life elsewhere, +that the name of Rugby School became honoured among schools, and this +chapel came to be looked upon as a sacred home of inspiring influences; +and it is only through an unfailing succession of such Rugbeians—growing +up here in the same spirit, and going forth endowed with the same character +and the same purpose—<!-- page 9--><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span> +that this honourable name, this tradition of good influences, can be +perpetuated.</p> +<p>And, if we desire to see how close this is to the spirit and the +work of our Lord, how it is, in fact, one manifestation of that spirit +which is the saving influence in human life; we have only to turn from +the text with which I started to that with which I may conclude, from +the Psalmist meditating on the city and temple of his heart’s +affections, to the Saviour, as He drew near to the Cross, praying for +His disciples—“Father, the hour is come. . . . I have glorified +Thee on the earth: I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do. +I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me out of the +world.” . . . “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that +they also may be sanctified. Neither pray I for these alone, but +for them also which shall believe on Me through their word.”</p> +<p>The only change we see as we step from the Psalms to the Gospel, +from the Jewish pilgrim to the Saviour whom we worship, is that religious +patriotism has expanded into the <!-- page 10--><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>love +of souls, the love of Him who laid down His life to save us from the +power of sin and death.</p> +<p>It was for you and me that Christ was praying; and His prayer for +us will be answered so soon as it inspires us to follow in His footsteps, +so that we too, as we kneel before God each morning, each night, and +think of our duty to those around us, may be able to say, in these words +of His, which are at once a prayer and a consecrating vow—“For +their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified.’”</p> +<h2><!-- page 11--><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>II. THE CHILD +IN THE MIDST.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“And He took a child and set Him in the midst of +them: and when He had taken him in His arms, He said unto them, Whosoever +shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me: and whosoever +shall receive Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me.”—<span class="smcap">St. +Mark </span>ix. 36, 37.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is one of the characteristics of our time, one of its most hopeful +and most encouraging signs, that men are awaking to higher and purer +conceptions of the Christian life and what it is that constitutes such +a life. We are beginning to feel, as it was not felt by former +generations, that the only true religion, the only Christianity worthy +of the name, is that which aims at embodying and reproducing the spirit, +the thought, the ideas of the Saviour.</p> +<p>Through and underneath all ecclesiastical and mediæval revivals, +and all vagaries of <!-- page 12--><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>church +tradition or of ritual, this feeling seems to be growing with a steady +growth, that the real test of a man’s religion is the evidence +which his life affords of the Christ-like spirit. And this growing +feeling gives an ever-fresh interest to the words and the judgment of +the Lord on all matters of individual conduct and daily intercourse; +so that if we are possessed at all by it, the Saviour is becoming more +of a living person to us, and we ask ourselves more frequently, more +earnestly, with more of reality and more of practical meaning in the +question, how He would judge this or that side of our life, whether +our conduct is in harmony with His spirit, and whether the standards +of our life fit at all with His teaching and injunctions.</p> +<p>And how full of new meaning every familiar chapter of the Gospel +becomes to you, if you are once roused to this kind of feeling; if you +are feeling all the time, here is the spirit which should be dominating +my own life and determining it, here are the thoughts, <!-- page 13--><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>ideas, +and views of conduct which should be mine also. How does my common +life fit with all this? And it is with something like this feeling +in your minds that I would ask you to consider the text I have just +read to you. “Jesus took a child and set him in the midst +of them. He took him up in His arms and said, Whosoever shall +receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me.” +And while we are considering it, let us notice also that in St. Matthew’s +narrative there are two other very emphatic expressions. “Except +ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into +the Kingdom of Heaven”; and “Whoso shall offend one of these +little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone +were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the +sea. . . . Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for +I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face +of My Father which is in heaven.”</p> +<p>Here, then, is the child taken up by Jesus and set in the midst; +we know nothing more <!-- page 14--><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>of +him but this one thing, that he represents to us our Lord’s Divine +love of little children, and His high estimate of childhood, as the +mysterious embodiment of that character and those qualities which bring +us close to the Divine life.</p> +<p>But this is quite enough to make us listen to the lessons of thought +and warning and hope, which Jesus expounds to us as He stands with the +child in His arms. His words may very well set every one of us +thinking about our own life and conduct. We look at this scene—the +disciples standing round, their hearts occupied, as ours are apt to +be, with their own ambitions, rivalries, and jealousies, and Jesus in +the midst with the little child; and we cannot mistake or misinterpret +the lessons He teaches us, the lessons which welled up in His heart +whenever He saw, or met, or took up in His arms, and blessed a little +child.</p> +<p>“Let every child you meet,” he clearly says to us, “remind +you that if you desire to be My disciple and to win a place in My kingdom, +you <!-- page 15--><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>must fling off +selfishness, and put in its place the spirit of service and tenderness.” +“He that would be first must be servant of all.” “You +must humble yourself as this little child.”</p> +<p>And then He adds the blessing and the warning:—“Whoso +shall receive one such child in My name receiveth Me; but whosoever +shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him that a +millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.”</p> +<p>We may pause for a moment to consider what it is in childhood, what +are the gifts, qualities, characteristics of the child, that drew from +our Lord this special love and care and these injunctions to His followers. +We do well to bear them in mind, because He has declared with such emphasis +that we have no part in His kingdom unless we retain or recover these +gifts. And we should bear them in mind, because of the blessing +promised to those who help to preserve these qualities in others. +Receive, help, cherish, or protect a child, make the way of goodness +<!-- page 16--><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>easy to him, and shield +him from evil, and Christ declares that inasmuch as you have done it +to the least of all His little ones, you have done it unto Him.</p> +<p>On the other hand, offend any such child, that is to say, hinder, +or mislead, spoil or degrade him in any way; do anything to rob a child +of any of these Divine gifts, rob him of his innocence, or trustfulness, +or his guileless heart, and sow the seeds of evil habits or tastes in +their place, and you know the denunciation or curse which the Divine +voice has laid upon you for your evil deed.</p> +<p>A child, then, is, as it were, a living symbol of that which draws +to us the love of Christ, and we cannot doubt that he is so by virtue +of his innocence, his obedient spirit, his guilelessness, or simplicity +of character, his trustfulness, and by all the untarnished and unspoilt +possibilities of goodness in him.</p> +<p>It is in the blessed endowment of such gifts as these that the little +child looks in the face of Christ, and is embraced in the arms of His +love.</p> +<p><!-- page 17--><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>And these are, or +they once were, your gifts. As you love the better life, and hope +for good days, hold them fast and cherish them, or if any of them be +unhappily lost, let it be your endeavour to recover it.</p> +<p>As we contemplate such a scene as this in our Lord’s life with +the little child in the midst, and listen to the Saviour’s words, +all the commands and injunctions to keep innocency, to keep the spirit +of obedience, to keep a guileless and trusting and loving heart, gain +a new force. They seem to speak to us with new voices; for if +the true life, the life that has in it the hope of union with Christ, +must be a life endowed with these gifts, whether in youth or age, what +a blessed thing it will be for you if you have never lost or squandered +them. We cannot too soon learn this lesson; for if under the influence +of any wrong motives, or following any wrong ideals, or misled by any +bad example, you go astray and rob your young life of these divine gifts, +no man knows how, or when, <!-- page 18--><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>or +where you will recover them, and become again as a little child.</p> +<p>And if we turn our thoughts from our own separate personal life, +and look for a moment at our duty as members of a society, how this +picture of Christ embracing the little child, and blessing those who +receive or help one such, should stir us to new and keener interest +in social duty! Does it not carry in it, this example and teaching +of the Lord, does it not carry in it the condemnation of a great many +of our traditional notions about our duty to the young? We see +the Lord’s tenderness and love and care for the little child; +we see how He values the childlike qualities; and how He enjoins the +nursing and the cherishing of these. If, then, we have really +learnt the lesson which He thus presses upon us, we shall feel something +like reverence for every young life, as it begins its perilous and uncertain +course on the sea of man’s experiences; and with this feeling +we shall be eager to help and protect such lives whenever we have the +<!-- page 19--><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>chance of doing it, +and we shall be very careful to do them no wrong.</p> +<p>But when we turn from the Gospel and these thoughts which it stirs +in us to our common life of every day, does it not rather seem sometimes +as if this teaching of the Lord were all a dream and had no reality? +And yet there is hardly one of us but would confess that, having once +seen this revelation of the Lord, we are put to shame if, as happens +sometimes, a young soul comes amongst us endowed with these very gifts +of innocence, and high purpose, and trust, and promise of all goodness, +which so won the Saviour’s heart, and is met, when he comes, in +school or house, not by care, or sympathy, or guidance, or protection, +as of an elder brother’s love, but by experiences of a very different +sort. You would agree that it is a shame to us if such an one +comes only to find the misleading influence of some thoughtless or bad +companion, or to have held up before him some bad tradition as the law +which should rule his life here.</p> +<p><!-- page 20--><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>I have known—which +of us in the course of years has not known?—such cases in our +school experience. A child has come from a refined and loving +home, but only to meet with roughness or coarseness; and instead of +retaining those gifts and qualities of childhood, which are the godlike +qualities of life and meant to be permanent, he has been led to grow +up utterly unchildlike, depraved, debased, hardened; and there is no +sadder sight to see than a growth of this kind. And if you have +ever seen it; if you have ever noticed the falling away from childlike +innocence to sin, from purity to coarseness, from the open, ingenuous, +trusting spirit to sullen hardness, from happiness to gloom, you know +how terribly in earnest the Saviour must have been when He denounced +that woe on any one who causes such debasement of a young soul—“Whoso +shall offend one of these little ones, it had been better for him that +a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth +of the sea.”</p> +<h2><!-- page 21--><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>III. THE +BREVITY OF LIFE.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while +it is day: the night cometh.”—<span class="smcap">St. John +</span>ix. 4.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There are few things more commonly disregarded by us in our early +years than the brevity of our life through all its successive stages, +and the fleeting nature of its opportunities.</p> +<p>In childhood we are almost entirely unconscious of both these characteristics +of life. Indeed, it would hardly be natural if it were otherwise. +That reflective habit which dwells upon them is the result of our experience, +and comes later. It is enough for a child if he follows pure and +safe instincts, and lives without reflection a healthy, unperverted +life, under wise guidance and good teaching. Growing in this way, +free from corrupting <!-- page 22--><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>influences +or the contagion of bad example, and poisoned by no bad atmosphere, +he develops naturally towards a manhood which is rooted in healthy tastes, +affections unspoilt, and in good habits. Thus you see what the +very young have a right to claim at the hands of all their elders—that +they should be careful not to mislead them, and should see that they +live in pure air, and feed their growing instincts and activities in +wholesome pastures.</p> +<p>During the stage of earliest growth it would be a sign of unhealthy +precocity if a child were much occupied with the continuity of things, +or the close union of to-day with to-morrow, or of all our thoughts, +acts, pleasures, and tastes, with the bent of character which is being +silently but surely formed in us; and it would be equally unnatural +if his thoughts were to dwell much on the essential shortness of our +life, and the flight of opportunity which does not come back to us.</p> +<p>It is part of the happiness, or, I fear, it must be said sometimes, +part of the pain <!-- page 23--><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>of +early life, that the time before it seems so long. The day is +long with its crowded novelty or intense enjoyment, or possibly with +its dreary and intolerable task-work; to-morrow, with all its anticipations +of things desired or to be endured, seems long; and the vista of years, +as they stretch through boyhood and youth, manhood and age, seems to +lose itself in the far distance of its length. So, viewed from +its beginnings, life is long.</p> +<p>But with the approach of manhood all this begins to change. +As we grow out of childhood our self-conscious and reflective life grows; +and thus there rises in us the feeling of moral responsibility never +to be shaken off again. Not, however, that we should leave all +our childhood behind us. It hardly needs to be said that there +are some characteristics of our earliest years which every man should +pray that he may retain to the end. Unless he retains them his +life becomes a deteriorating life.</p> +<p>And first among these is the reverential <!-- page 24--><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>or +filial habit. This deserves our careful attention, because we +sometimes see an affectation of silly and spurious manliness, which +thinks it a fine thing to cast it off. This reverential or filial +feeling, which is natural to the unspoilt and truthful nature of the +child, is preserved in every unspoilt manhood; only with a difference.</p> +<p>It is raised from the unreflective, instinctive trust in a father’s +guidance or a mother’s love to that higher feeling which tells +us that, as is the child in a well and wisely ordered home, so is each +of us in that great household of our heavenly Father. This spirit +of true piety, which uplifts, refines, strengthens, and gives courage +to manhood, as nothing else can do, is the natural outcome and successor +of a child’s trustfulness, as we rise through it to the feeling +that we are encompassed by a Divine consciousness, and that our life +moves in a holy presence. Or again, we pray that we may not lose +that simplicity and freshness of nature which is at once a special charm +of childhood, and, <!-- page 25--><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>wherever +it is preserved, the chief blessing of a man’s later years.</p> +<p>These qualities and characteristics of our infancy—trust, filial +reverence, freshness, simplicity—are not qualities to be left +behind, but the natural forecast of that religious spirit which is the +highest growth of maturity, and our own safeguard against the hardening +and debasing influences of the world and the flesh. And this was +the Saviour’s meaning when He said, “Whosoever shall not +receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in nowise enter therein.” +And if there is one thing more than another that constitutes the special +curse of any depraved influence acting on young lives, it is that it +robs the later life of these childlike qualities which are the gifts +of God to bless us in youth and age.</p> +<p>But assuming that we bear all this in mind, and hold fast to these +fundamental gifts, and so escape those lower and baser forms of life +which we meet all about in the world, spoiling the manhood and embittering +<!-- page 26--><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>the age of so many +men, we cannot forget the essential difference between mature years +and the years of early growth.</p> +<p>As we grow towards manhood our life necessarily loses its childlike +and unreflecting spontaneity in the ferment of thought, desire, and +passion, and in the light of experience; and therefore it becomes a +matter of no slight importance to estimate the value of that which we +hold in our hands to-day, the nature of the web which our conduct is +weaving, and the fateful character of any mistake in the purposes, notions, +ambitions, or tastes that are, as a matter of fact, fixing the drift +and direction of our life. But to do this amidst all the daily +temptations of life is not always an easy matter; and it is certain +that we shall not do it if we do not fully recognise, while our life +is still young and unhampered, the importance of these two very obvious +reflections, which, in fact, resolve themselves into one, that our time +is essentially short, and that our opportunities are very fugitive.</p> +<p><!-- page 27--><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>In one sense, no +doubt, there is a long stretch of time before most of you. As +yet hope has more to say to you than memory. Some of you will +look back on these early days from the distant years of another century. +Your life’s journey may extend far away over the unexplored future, +and may in some cases be a very long one; but, although this is possible, +we are not allowed to forget that it is always precarious—unexpected +graves are constantly reminding us how short may be the time of any +one of us—how the night cometh.</p> +<p>But it is not merely of the literal shortness of our time, or the +possible nearness of death, that our Lord’s words should set us +thinking, when He warns us that the night cometh, and we must work while +it is day.</p> +<p>If we measure our life by the things we should accomplish in it, +by the character it should attain to, by the purposes that should be +bearing fruit in it, and not by mere lapse of time, we soon come to +feel how <!-- page 28--><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>very short +it is, and the sense of present duty grows imperative. It is thus +that the thoughtful man looks at his life; and he feels that there is +no such thing as length of days which he can without blame live carelessly, +because in these careless days critical opportunities will have slipped +away irrecoverably; he will have drifted in his carelessness past some +turning-point which he will not see again, and have missed the so-called +chances that come no more.</p> +<p>But even this is only a part of the considerations that make our +present life so precious; for this is only the outer aspect of it. +What makes our time so critically short, whether we consider its intellectual +or its moral and spiritual uses, is that our nature is so very sensitive, +so easily marred by misuse, and spoilt irretrievably. The real +brevity of the time at your disposal, whether for the training of your +mind, or for your growth into the character of good men, consists in +this, that deterioration is standing always at the back of any neglect +or waste. <!-- page 29--><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>Deterioration +is the inseparable shadow of every form of ignoble life.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,<br /> +Our fatal shadows that walk with us still.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Leave your faculties unused and they become blunted and dulled; leave +your higher tastes uncultivated and they die; let your affections feed +on anything unworthy and they become debased.</p> +<p>To those who do this it may happen that whilst, so far as years go, +they are still in all the freshness of youth, they are already dying +that death to all higher capacity which is worse than any decay of our +physical organism. Such an early death of higher tastes and faculties, +and of hope for the future, is sometimes effected even before schooldays +are over. And the mere possibility of such a fate overhanging +any of us should stir us like a trumpet-call to take care that we do +not surrender our life to any mean influence, and that we are very <!-- page 30--><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>zealous +for all that concerns the safety of the young.</p> +<p>“I send out my child,” I can imagine the parent of any +one of you having said, “to be trained for manhood; I send him +to his school that his intellect may be cultivated, his moral purpose +made strong, and that all good and pure tastes may be fostered in him; +but it is dreadful to think that instead of this he may, by his life +and companionship there, be hardened and debased, or even brutalised; +he may become dead to the higher life even before he becomes a man.” +Seeing, then, that there is this possibility of death even in the midst +of life—a possibility, we would fain hope, seldom realised in +this school, but still a possibility—shall we not be very careful, +men and boys alike, so to do our part in this society, so to shelter +the young and strengthen the weak, and to keep the atmosphere of our +life a pure atmosphere, that every sensitive soul which comes amongst +us may <!-- page 31--><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>grow up here +through a healthy and wholesome boyhood, and go out to the duties and +the calling of his life, strong, unselfish, public-spirited, pure-hearted, +and courageous—a Christian gentleman.</p> +<h2><!-- page 32--><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>IV. THE INFLUENCE +OF TRADITION.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“Making the word of God of none effect through +your traditions: and many such like things ye do.”—<span class="smcap">St. +Mark </span>vii. 13.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Such was our Lord’s word to the Pharisees; and if we turn to +our own life it is difficult if not impossible for us fully to estimate +the influence which traditions exercise upon it.</p> +<p>They are so woven into the web of thought and opinion, and daily +habits and practices, that none of us can claim to escape them. +Moreover, as any institution or society grows older, this influence +of the part which is handed on from one generation to another tends +to accumulate; so that the weight of it lies heavier on us in an old +place than in a new one, and it is obvious that there is both loss and +gain in this.</p> +<p>A good tradition is a great help and <!-- page 33--><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>support, +giving a strength, or firmness, or dignity to our life which it would +not otherwise have had.</p> +<p>We often see or feel the value of such a tradition as it acts upon +the members of a family, or of a college, or of a regiment, or of a +school.</p> +<p>And this influence of a tradition, inasmuch as it has become impersonal, +and rooted in the general life, is apt to be very persistent, so that +the man who establishes a good tradition anywhere begins a good work, +which may go on producing its good results long after he himself is +in his grave.</p> +<p>Many of you must have felt the power of such an influence, handed +on to you as if it were a part of your inheritance, when thinking of +a brother, or father, or other relative or ancestor, who by some distinction +of character, or by some inspiring words or some brave or generous act, +has left you a good example, which seems somehow to belong to you, and +to stir you as with an <!-- page 34--><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>authoritative +call to show yourself worthy of it.</p> +<p>Similarly in a society like this school you can hardly grow up without +sometimes being stirred by the tradition of the noble lives that have +left their mark upon its history.</p> +<p>So a man’s good deeds live after him, and become woven as threads +of gold into the traditions of the world.</p> +<p>And we are equally familiar with traditions that are bad, and with +their pestilent influence; for we are constantly made to feel how much +of the good that men endeavour to do is thwarted, counteracted, or destroyed +by influences of this sort, and how weak and imitative souls are entangled +in the network of traditional influence as in a spider’s web. +Tradition, in fact, represents to us the accumulated power of past lives +as it acts upon us from the outside, just as what men call heredity +represents this same influence in our own blood.</p> +<p>And we have seen that this power may be, and often is, a real advantage +and support <!-- page 35--><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>to our +life. We feel also that as the Divine light shines stronger and +steadier in human affairs the traditional influence of each generation +ought to become more and more helpful to those that follow.</p> +<p>And yet, you observe, the Saviour gives us no encouragement to depend +upon those helps that tradition might bring us. On the contrary, +His language shows how dangerous He felt the influence of tradition +to be. How are we to account for this? His strongest denunciations +are reserved for the Pharisaic party; and yet a historian would describe +them as in many respects the best elements of Jewish life. They +were earnest, patriotic, religious, many of them wise and holy men; +but their judgment was held in bondage by the influence of tradition, +and in this lies the cardinal defect of their life. They had set +up between their souls and the spirit of God a sort of graven image +of ritualistic observances, and traditional usages and interpretations. +They depended on externals, or what came to them from <!-- page 36--><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>the +past or from the outer world, and their eyes were blinded, and their +hearts hardened against every new revelation.</p> +<p>Thus they stand before Christ, blocking His path, the very embodiment +of that power which closes the soul against those inspiring and purifying +influences that come from direct communion with God. They block +the Saviour’s path, because this personal communion is just what +He represents to us—the direct revelation of the Spirit of God +in man. He comes to reveal the Father to each of us, and to make +us feel the presence of the Divine creative Spirit in every separate +human life; and till we feel this personal illumination we have not +realised the manifestation of the Son of God. But the Pharisee +with his continual reference to tradition, his multiplication of external +observances, and elaborate ritual, his reliance upon usage and external +authority, knows little or nothing of the personal illumination by the +direct influence of the Spirit of God upon our spirit. Hence this +absolute and <!-- page 37--><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>fundamental +contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees. They represent two opposing +principles in life. And it is this that gives such intensity to +the words He addressed to them: “Ye have made the word of God +of none effect through your traditions”; and it is a universal +warning—never out of date.</p> +<p>If the spirit of traditional usage and influence holds the citadel +of a man’s life, the spirit of Christian progress cannot gain +an entrance.</p> +<p>That is the lesson which the Saviour presses upon our attention by +His denunciation of the Pharisaic usage, habit, and attitude, and it +is hardly possible to overestimate the importance of the lesson, because +this same spirit of Pharisaic tradition is constantly laying its hand +upon every human institution, and it has contributed to every abuse +or perversion that has taken possession of the Christian Church.</p> +<p>Our life is, in fact, a continuous struggle between the two principles +here represented. Which is to prevail in it, and fix its character—<!-- page 38--><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span> +traditional custom, or personal inspiration? Are we to follow +the world with its conventions and laws, or to live in personal communion +with God? The tendency of our life will be determined in one direction +or the other according as we surrender our will to the rule of traditional +notions and usages, the power of the external world, or as we seek for +direct illumination of mind, conscience, and spirit at the Divine sources +of truth and light.</p> +<p>Here, then, we have a principle to guide us in our relation to the +traditions amidst which we live.</p> +<p>We do not expect to get away from them; we never dream of escaping +from the influences of the external world, whether of the past or the +present; but to move safely among them, we must have learnt and adopted +this primal lesson, that no tradition, and no external practice or custom, +has any authoritative claim upon us, simply from being established as +a tradition or a custom.</p> +<p>And as we stand amidst all the conventions <!-- page 39--><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>and +practices that have come down to us, we should be able to say of every +one of them—</p> +<p>“Every good tradition, and every wholesome and beneficent usage, +I accept thankfully as part of the inheritance which good, or wise, +or brave men have left as their legacy for my use and assistance; but +it is my bounden duty to measure them all by the standard of God’s +unchanging law: by it I will prove them; I will use them or reject them +according as they fit or fail in this measurement, and I will not be +brought under the power of any of them.”</p> +<p>Whether, then, we think of our separate personal life or of our life +in its social relationships, we must think of it in this way if we are +to be in any real sense followers of Christ. Each of you, as he +steps into the world, is not merely an inheritor of certain accumulations +of life and tradition, which he should follow as a matter of course. +He is not born to tread a certain track of conduct or behaviour because +others have <!-- page 40--><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>trodden +it before him, following it without thought like the sheep on the mountain, +or like the ants as they travel from one ant-hill to another.</p> +<p>Your estimate of your life should be fundamentally different from +this. You are primarily a child of God, illumined by direct communion +with the Spirit of God; and your first duty, therefore, whenever and +in whatever place or circumstances you may chance to be, is not to follow +this or that tradition or usage which may meet you; but to stand up +and show that you are God’s child, and therefore a judge of all +traditions or customs, and not their slave.</p> +<p>This is the revelation which Christ declares to us as the one first +requisite of the Christian life. So you see the Christian man’s +attitude towards all traditions or customs is that of independence; +his thought and his judgment are as free in regard to them as if they +were newly born. He is, in fact, bound to judge them according +to their deserts; and no society can hope to prosper <!-- page 41--><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>unless +this is recognised, so that evil customs may not corrupt the common +life. It is the danger of such corruption that makes the Saviour +denounce the traditional habit, and summon His followers to live by +the rule of close personal communion with God. Thus the life that +goes forward and rises to higher and yet higher levels is always a life +of new revelations, a life which is being illumined and illumined afresh +by those flashes of Divine insight, and strength, and courage, which +come to men only as they came to the Lord Himself in the secret communion +of prayer and meditation, and through that independence of spirit which +arises from the sense of God’s presence to guide us and to uphold.</p> +<p>Take your own case. If you are living here simply according +to traditional rules, doing this or that because, as you may be told, +everybody does it; accepting standards of conduct and rules of practice, +because, as you understand, or, as some one undertakes to persuade you, +they have always been so <!-- page 42--><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>accepted, +why, then, you are growing up to be one of that never-ending succession +of men who are the Pharisees, the opponents of the Christ, in every +generation, who live with tame conscience in any sort of company, and +perpetuate the bad traditions of the world.</p> +<p>But if you listen to the call of Christ, and have truly learned to +feel that the only real man’s life is that which you live with +the light of God’s law shining upon it, then, as a matter of course, +you will rise superior to the influence of any tradition or custom, +no matter what its authority may seem to be.</p> +<p>And it will indeed be a happy thing for you if you grow up with that +God-given strength of character and purpose which can treat all traditions, +and all usages, or fashions, or customs as things that should be subordinated, +and should not rule us, as things to be used by us if they help us to +a better life, but to be flung aside and rejected, if they contradict +the voice of God in our hearts.</p> +<h2><!-- page 43--><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>V. VAIN HOPES.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went +unto them from the dead, they will repent. But he said, If they +hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though +one rose from the dead.”—<span class="smcap">St. Luke </span>xvi. +30, 31.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is by no means uncommon for any one who is living a life which +does not satisfy his own conscience to console himself with the fancy +that if only such and such things were different around him he would +be a new man, filled with a new spirit, and exhibiting a new character. +But is it so very certain that this would be the case?</p> +<p>Such persons are apt to dream of some goodness or some virtue which +under other circumstances they would make their own; and there are, +in fact, few conditions more dangerous than that of this class of dreamers, +<!-- page 44--><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>whether among boys +or men. To all who may be tempted in this way, our Lord’s +words in the parable come with a very significant warning: “Nay, +father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. +But he said, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they +be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”</p> +<p>When insidious and delusive hope would draw us on and beguile us +in any sinful way, whispering that God will some day send special gifts +and messengers of grace to inspire us with new life, this is his plain +answer: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will +they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”</p> +<p>And hardly any one can say that he is altogether free from this tendency +to lean upon the future with vain hopes, and is in no need of the warning +which this text conveys to us.</p> +<p>In serious moments, when the mind is calm, and neither passion nor +appetite is stirring, we feel how good a thing it <!-- page 45--><span class="pagenum">p. 45</span>is +to have crucified the flesh and to be living close to Christ; but when +we are within the fiery circle of trial or temptation, when sinful desires +arise, or passions are strong, or solicitations to evil are subtle and +enticing, then we are only too ready to catch at any hopes about the +vague future. To the unstable and incontinent, to those whose +nature is weak while their conscience is not dead, this hope is a dangerous +temptation, beguiling them with the suggestion that some day there will +open before them an easy path to that virtue or self-denial to which +the way is too rough at present. “Nay, father Abraham: but +if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.” +By-and-by, they say, as they dream about the future, God will lay His +hand upon them; the Holy Spirit will touch their souls with new life; +they will receive in some inscrutable way new power, and in the exercise +of this power they will cast off the bondage of sin or weakness; but +how and by what means this <!-- page 46--><span class="pagenum">p. 46</span>great +and necessary change is to be brought about they do not stop to think, +and meanwhile they yield to worldly or fleshly appetite, trusting vaguely +to an uncertain future for some Divine gift.</p> +<p>If you look into the thoughts and habits of your life, some of you +may be compelled to acknowledge that this case is not unfamiliar to +you. So men sometimes dally with a temptation, and linger beside +it, courting its company, instead of flinging it away from them, as +the snare of the devil, because of some secret hope that by-and-by God +will place them out of the way of it, or give them some new strength +against it, which as yet has not been given. How easy it is for +us to entice ourselves in this way out of the narrow path of present +duty into the tangled wilderness of a weak and sinful life, from which +escape becomes every day more difficult.</p> +<p>And this enticement along the ways of sin being so easy, it may be +happening to <!-- page 47--><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>some of +you. You may feel that, judged even by your own standard, which +is more likely to be too low than too high, your life is somehow unsatisfactory; +your better instincts may be telling you that you were born for something +higher, purer, stronger than what you are or have been; and you are +cherishing the hope that it will be different with you some day; your +circumstances, you think, or your occupation, or your companionship +will have changed, and so you fondly imagine that you yourself will +be sure to change, as if your soul were just a weathercock that answers +to every changing breeze. So perhaps you hope that some habit +of self-indulgence or idleness will drop off, or some evil temper be +eradicated; and whilst all this vague and mischievous dreaming goes +on you yield very likely to some besetting sin, making no serious effort +to get away from it now, and you yield all the more because of this +misleading hope that some day you will be touched by a supernatural +hand, and <!-- page 48--><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>will rise +up to a regenerate life. And yet our reason tells us that all +this is the very essence of self-deceit, and that such dreams and hopes +are the devil’s most subtle temptation. This kind of vain +hope is based on a complete misconception of the nature of our conflict +with sin, and the way to escape from it. To think thus of spiritual +gifts and the growth of the spiritual life, is to follow a very dangerous +delusion. It was just such a misunderstanding that is expressed +in the hope of Dives about his brethren: “If one went unto them +from the dead, they will repent.” Their ordinary daily teachings, +he seems to say, the voice of Moses and of the prophets, the examples +of good men around them, the warnings, the exhortations, these, being +so familiar, may not have startled them out of their sin; but if only +one were to go to them from the dead, some messenger of strange voice +and aspect, who had seen hell, and could paint its horrors, then surely +the course of their life would be <!-- page 49--><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>checked +and changed, and their spirit would wake up in them, and they would +sin no more. But to all this comes back the stern warning of the +Divine answer: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither +will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”</p> +<p>And we may profitably consider what this means in its application +to our own life. Such a warning is evidently meant to remind us +that the mystery of sin in human life is not to be got rid of by any +such reliance on vague hopes. This mystery of sin in the heart +and life, misleading, weakening, dragging us down, means in fact the +subtle, poisonous, creeping power which evil inclinations exercise over +a weak and depraved will. Are we, then, to trust to some sudden +visitation from above, for which we make no preparation, to break down +or overthrow a power of this kind? On the contrary, the words +of this parable stand here to declare to us that it is nothing less +than perversity and folly in <!-- page 50--><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>any +man to go on either defiling his nature, or degrading it, or even neglecting +to strengthen and support it, under this delusion that some day the +breath of Heaven will sweep it clean or give it new vigour. And +your own experience is in exact accordance with these parabolic warnings +of the Saviour. You know that your moral and spiritual nature +is now at this present time undergoing a process of continual and momentous +change, that every day, or week, or month leaves its mark upon it; and +that your soul’s life means not waiting for some angel of God’s +providential grace to visit you and carry you up into a new air; but +it means that you are weaving the web of your unchangeable destiny by +your use or abuse of the gifts of God that are in your hands to-day.</p> +<p>Born into the world with the taint of inherited corruption in us, +as also with the germs of pure affection and high instinct and purpose, +we have to take care <!-- page 51--><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>for +ourselves and for each other that the taint does not eat out the good, +by growing into sins of boyhood or of youth, or by hardening into depraved +habits in our manhood. If we let our youth take an unhappy downward +course, whether in taste or habit, every day puts salvation farther +off from us, because every day any fault which is indulged or nursed +tends to grow deeper and more inveterate; and yet, forgetting this, +how many, while their early years are running to waste, nurse the vain +hope that some day they will receive the sudden baptism of a new birth.</p> +<p>So, then, instead of vaguely trusting, any of us, to the hope of +what some future call or help or happy visitation may do for us, let +us obey the Divine injunction, which, when rightly understood, is very +pressing, urging us, as we hope to see good days, to be very jealous +of our present life and its tendencies; let us do this, standing always +firm and immovable in the things that are pure and of good report.</p> +<p><!-- page 52--><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>However it may be +in some other matters, in this matter of our moral and spiritual life, +the greatest, the most important, the most serious thing of all, it +is almost invariably true that the child is father of the man, and we +feel that we have no right to expect it to be otherwise. In our +everyday consideration of life, we recognise all this: we speak of growth +in character and formation of habit as facts which no one would ignore, +and which cannot be overestimated. But to acknowledge these, and +at the same time to trust that God will hereafter arrest any stream +of sinful tendency in us which we ourselves do not attempt to stop now, +is to add presumption to sin.</p> +<p>When we speak of Heaven and Hell, we have in our thoughts the vision +of those ultimate points towards which the diverging courses of men’s +lives are slowly tending day by day. And the question rises: “On +which of these lines is my life travelling at the present time, and +<!-- page 53--><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>towards which side +of the impassable gulf?”</p> +<p>At present we know that the way of Christ is still open before us, +and that He calls us with a voice which never grows weary; but we feel +equally that the future is dark, if we waste or misuse the present, +and we do not know how long the heavenward path may be as open, or as +easy, as it is to-day. For the question is not a question of God’s +untiring patience or the never-failing love of Christ. It is not +how long will His Spirit continue to strive with us, as it has striven +hitherto, through the care and love of parent or friend, through the +exhortations or efforts of a teacher, or the example of a companion, +or in a thousand other ways. The question is rather whether it +is not folly to expect that God will send upon us some other more powerful +regenerating and strengthening influence, if we are now neglecting all +this care and love and patient striving on our behalf. “If +<!-- page 54--><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>they hear not Moses +and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from +the dead.”</p> +<p>Consider these things while life is fresh, and good influences are +present with you. Whatever our faults may be, they all come under +this one rule, that to-day is given us to win our freedom from their +power—to-day and not to-morrow. The question which is pressed +home through the warning of this parable is thus a very plain one: “What +is my future hope or prospect, if I let this or that particular sin +lurk and linger in my heart, feeding upon me every day, and growing +stronger in consequence? What if I do not resist any fault that +has a hold upon me? What if I do not pray to be delivered from +it? What if I do not flee from it?”</p> +<p>If you hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will you be persuaded, +though one rose from the dead.</p> +<h2><!-- page 55--><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>VI. WHAT +DOEST THOU HERE?</h2> +<blockquote><p>“And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, +and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?”—1 <span class="smcap">Kings +</span>xix. 9.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There<span class="smcap"> </span>is a sound of rebuke in these words. +They seem to imply that the lonely mountain of Horeb was not the place +in which God expected to find such a servant as Elijah, and that there +should be no indefinite tarrying, no lingering without an aim in such +a solitude.</p> +<p>As you read the familiar history you see how the record of the prophet’s +retirement and his vision in Horeb is a record, first of all, of reaction +after fierce conflict; it exhibits the picture of a strong man in a +moment of weakness ready to give up the hopeless struggle, crying to +God, “It is enough, now, O Lord, take away my life;” and +then it shows us how God dealt with him in that solitude; <!-- page 56--><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>we +hear the Divine voice pleading in him again, bearing its Divine witness, +putting its searching questions, teaching him the universal lesson that +despondency, weakness, solitude, shrinking and retiring, if they have +any place in our life, are only for a time, and must not be allowed +to rule in it.</p> +<p>That Divine vision which came to Elijah in the recesses of the mountain +is, in fact, the voice of God summoning him back to the duties that +were waiting for him, and the renewal of his strength for the new work +he had to do. And the interest of such a vision never fails, because, +like Elijah, all men come to times when they too lie under the juniper +tree in the wilderness longing to be set free from the burden which +is too heavy for them, be it the burden of some call, or work, or duty, +or of resistance to some temptation, or the struggle against sin or +vice. It comes to all of us, and not once only, but many times +over, this hour of darkness; and it will continue to come so long as +the flesh is weak. And it is at such moments that a man is the +better for going <!-- page 57--><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>with +the prophet into this Horeb, the mount of God, making Elijah’s +vision his own vision, and renewing his strength, at the same Divine +source. How often it happens to men, to boys, to all alike, that +they flee into the desert, away from the post of present duty, away +from the face of difficulties which they cannot or will not stand up +against, away from the moments of trial and discipline. And, seeing +that our life is not and cannot be a solitary thing, seeing that the +pulsations of each individual’s life are creating other pulsations +which answer them back in other lives, we know not where or how many, +whenever we thus shrink away from our duty, when we turn our back upon +it, or despond about it, when we become deaf to the higher calls, we +are, in fact, crying to God to be relieved of our service to Him and +to our fellows. And it is a happy thing for our life if He does +not answer us according to our cry, and let us go into the wilderness, +and leave us alone there.</p> +<p>This voice, following us with the question, <!-- page 58--><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>“What +doest them here?” is the evidence that God has not abandoned us.</p> +<p>“What doest thou here, Elijah?” How often must +this voice have followed the monk into his solitude, refusing to be +silenced, piercing through all the false notions about a man’s +relationship to his fellow-men, warning each soul that it cannot separate +itself from the great tide of universal life.</p> +<p>And the voice comes to us, the same warning voice of God, whenever +we stand aloof and let the tide around us run on anyhow, as if we didn’t +care how it ran, or whenever in obedience to any impulse, whether of +selfishness or of timidity, we try to persuade ourselves that some duty +may be left alone.</p> +<p>“What doest thou here, Elijah?” The quality of +our life depends on the answer we give to such spiritual questioning +day by day; for the Divine voices are never silent.</p> +<p>“What doest thou here?” The voice cries to us when +we linger in the neighbourhood of any sin, or when we waste our opportunities +in some form of idleness, or when we stand by <!-- page 59--><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>in +cold or timid indifference, refusing help or consolation to any soul +which seems to need it.</p> +<p>“What doest thou here?” It is possible that some +of us hardly like to shape our answer in plain words lest we might have +to say: “I am here lingering in my present way of life, not because +I feel it to be the right way, but because it is the easy way, and I +cannot bring myself to face the harder and more manly course of duty. +I hear the voice; I cannot get away from it; it haunts me with its inquiries, +when my heart is hot within me, as it is sometimes, while yet I am burying +the light that is in my soul.” If it should be so with any +of you, consider, I pray you, how by such hanging back you strengthen +the force of evil in the world and weaken the good.</p> +<p>As the hour of reaction, weakness, flight, came to Elijah, so we +must expect it to come to any of us; but the aim and purpose of our +life should be that in such an hour we may be able to answer our Heavenly +Father when He questions us, as Elijah was able to answer: “I +<!-- page 60--><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>have been very jealous +for the Lord God of Hosts.” If we live as those who are +jealous for God and His law, letting it be known and felt that we are +thus jealous for His honour, not one of us could fail to make the life +around us in some degree better, brighter, happier.</p> +<p>It is in this way that he who is strong and true makes truth and +honour and uprightness stronger in those beside him; it is in this way +that he who is industrious, as a duty, makes industry more prevalent; +it is in this way that he who shows his hatred of impurity makes the +atmosphere pure in his society.</p> +<p>And in so far as any of you are acting in this way you are doing +a prophet’s work, and you, too, may claim to have been jealous +for the Lord God of Hosts. So the youngest boy and the oldest +man may become fellow-labourers—Θεου +yαρ εσμεν συνερyοι—fellow-labourers +in the harvest-field of God, and it is a great privilege to claim.</p> +<p>But the blessing of it is greater still. Very often, if you +are known to be thus jealous, even <!-- page 61--><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>your +presence will banish sin, silencing the evil tongue, strengthening the +weaker brother, and making the sunshine of a new life to shine all round +you.</p> +<p>But what if sometimes you feel that you are not equal to all this? +if when the voice cries, “What doest thou here?” you have +no answer to give? It is good for us in such a case to turn and +see how God dealt with His prophet, how He made him come forth and stand +on the mount before him. The Lord passed over him, revealing His +presence in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, revealing it yet +more intimately in the sound of the still small voice. So He sent +Him out again with a new commission; and so we, too, may learn our lesson, +if we care to learn it. And the lesson is this, that God renews +our wavering strength, that He lifts up our drooping spirit, and opens +our dull eyes and gives us afresh the hearing ear, by communion with +Himself. In the solitude of the mount of God, through the symbols +of His power, and in the sound of the inner voices, in meditation, in +prayer, we may <!-- page 62--><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>find +those refreshing influences which give us new strength, new thoughts, +new notions of God and duty, and send us out afresh to do His work in +new service to Him.</p> +<p>We may follow His teaching to Elijah a little further. The +new message to him began, “Return on thy way”—do such +and such things. The new message is, in fact, just as always, +a new call to old duties—“Return on thy way.” +And so it is for you and me. After the vision of God comes the +plain and homely work to do, as we walk in old ways, and have to meet +all our old dangers and difficulties. Has any one of us ever shrunk +from any post of duty in life, or strayed from any straight course? +Then if God has in His mercy visited us with the warning call, “What +doest thou here?” or laid the call of a new message upon us, it +is almost sure to have been a call to return and take the straight path, +or to take our stand at the deserted post. And if it should ever +happen to us that the duty which looks too hard is, as indeed it happens +very often, some duty of <!-- page 63--><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>our +social life, should we feel as if the world were against us, and we +were standing alone, let us not forget God’s word of final encouragement +to his prophet, “Yet have I left me seven thousand in Israel who +have not bowed to Baal.”</p> +<p>It is a word for all time. If ever you are fighting for the +good, and growing weary in the fight, the thought may rise in you that +you seem to be fighting alone, and that everything is against you, just +because you cannot see the seven thousand who are in the same ranks, +and on your side.</p> +<p>In the darkest hour of Israel’s history we are thus told of +an indefinite multitude who had stood firm in the faith of their fathers, +untouched and untainted by adverse influence, and the recollection of +it should serve to strengthen and encourage every individual who is +really jealous for that which is good.</p> +<p>Let us, then, take the warning, and nurse it as a gift of God, and +go forward where duty calls us, sometimes faint, it may be, and sometimes +weary, but still pursuing.</p> +<h2><!-- page 64--><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>VII. PRIVATE +PRAYER, AND PUBLIC WORSHIP.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“And, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue +on the Sabbath day.”—<span class="smcap">St. Luke </span>iv. +16.</p> +<p>“He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there +He prayed.”—<span class="smcap">St. Mark </span>i. 35.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These two texts set before us our Saviour’s habit in regard +to public and private spiritual exercise; and they suggest to us the +question, What have we, on our part, to say of these two elements in +our own life? These texts, we bear in mind, represent not something +casual or intermittent in the life of our Lord. They stand in +the record of it as a typical, essential, inseparable part of His habitual +practice. What we have to remember about them is that, whereas +all men recognise in the life of Jesus the one unique example in human +history of a life which is morally perfect and immaculate, if we were +to take these out of it, the <!-- page 65--><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>customary +share in all common worship, and the private, separate communing with +God, it would be an altogether different life—different in its +attitude towards the common life of ordinary men, and different in its +own quality and influence.</p> +<p>We might still admire—nay, we could not but admire—all +the beauty of moral qualities, the purity, the sympathy, the love and +self-devotion of it; but it would have lost its spiritual atmosphere. +It would no longer be for us the life of the Divine Son, recognising +and ready to share in all our attempts at worshipping the Father, however +poor they may be, and living through the separate life in daily communion +with Him.</p> +<p>Here then is His practice, written for our guidance, given that we +may be stirred by it to aim upwards, inviting us to set our own practice +side by side with it, and see how it looks in such a juxtaposition. +Let us glance for a moment at each of these texts separately.</p> +<p>As regards the one which I have taken from St. Mark—“He +went out, and departed into <!-- page 66--><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>a +solitary place, and there He prayed”—we have only to turn +over the pages of this Gospel and note, as we go, the similar allusions, +and we feel that we have here what is in fact an incidental glimpse +into the habitual practice of His secret and separate life.</p> +<p>In this passage we read that He departed into a solitary place, and +there He prayed; in another by-and-by that He departed into a mountain +to pray; and then again that He spent the whole night in prayer; and +we see all this not in some crisis of His life, but as a part of that +which corresponds to the common daily round in your life or mine.</p> +<p>And the inference to be drawn, the lesson to be learnt from it, is, +I think, sufficiently obvious.</p> +<p>This secret separate devotional exercise of the soul was His habitual +spiritual food.</p> +<p>It was thus that He recruited His moral and spiritual forces, those +forces of the spiritual life which constitute at once the beauty, the +attraction, the power of His character, and His divine and awe-inspiring +separateness.</p> +<p><!-- page 67--><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>And as we read and +consider, the thought must surely be pressed upon us that if He needed +these exercises, these secret and silent hours, what shall we say of +our own lives?</p> +<p>And what do we expect to make of our moral and spiritual character +unless we too are careful to cherish under all circumstances some such +recurring moments in our round of life and occupation, at which we retire +into the sanctuary of separate communion with God the Father?</p> +<p>You may take it as a moral certainty, proved by all experience, that +unless you hold to a fixed habit of thus bringing your life into the +secret and separate presence of God, in private prayer and thought, +you incur the risk of sinking to any levels that happen to be the ordinary +levels, and of drifting with any currents that happen to prevail.</p> +<p>If we turn now from this to the other text—that which refers +to His customary attendance on public prayer and at the common meeting—“He +went, as His custom was, into <!-- page 68--><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>the +synagogue”—the questions suggested are very pertinent and +practical.</p> +<p>Just consider the circumstances under which, as we are told here, +“He went, as His custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath +day.” The earlier part of the same chapter tells us of His +fasting and temptation in the wilderness, of the commencement of His +public mission, and his return to Nazareth. And, on His return, +this is what we are told of him—“He went, as his custom +was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.”</p> +<p>Thus we see Him, fresh from the great crisis of His early manhood; +the long, protracted struggle of His soul in the lonely wilderness; +the subtle voices of manifold temptation; the hardly won victory and +the ministering angels; all this we must suppose to be still flashing +across His vision, as the scenes of any such crisis must always continue +to flash through the quivering and responsive organism of the soul.</p> +<p>If ever any man might have claimed to need no longer the customary +worship of common <!-- page 69--><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>men, +it was surely Jesus, as we see Him here on this occasion, with the breath +of His own heart-searching worship still upon Him, and the light of +new revelation burning in His thoughts.</p> +<p>Among all the significant and instructive parts of the Saviour’s +example this is not the least instructive; that on this occasion, as +on all others, he went as a matter of regular custom into the synagogue +on the Sabbath day, thus putting the seal and stamp of His own practice +for all of us who believe in His name upon the duty of joining in habitual +and stated spiritual exercises.</p> +<p>Had the Lord’s example been different in this respect, how +easy it would have seemed to set up a string of what we should have +called sufficient reasons.</p> +<p>The old-fashioned routine, it might have been said, of synagogue +worship, with its mechanical dulness and its mistaken interpretations +of God’s word, its shallow and superficial and tedious traditional +commentaries, its formalism and vain repetitions; <!-- page 70--><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>all +this, whatever might have been its value for the ordinary unenlightened +Jew, how could it have been necessary and what profit could there have +been in it for the divinely gifted Son of man?</p> +<p>So it might have been argued; so indeed it would seem men who consider +themselves enlightened sometimes argue in support of their own neglect +of the religious life.</p> +<p>But it may well make us more than doubtful as to the issue of any +such neglect, when we see the mind of Christ thus exemplified in His +habitual observance.</p> +<p>We all recognise His moral and spiritual superiority. Whether +His spirit has taken possession of our spirit or not, He stands out +as our undisputed guide to the practice of a good life.</p> +<p>In vision, in insight, in purity, in stainlessness, in all that we +reverence in human life and that good men strive to attain, we have +no model to set beside His example. All the more, then, this fact +deserves our notice, and calls us to follow Him, that we <!-- page 71--><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>find +Him, as His custom was, in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He +was there Sabbath after Sabbath listening to the provincial teacher, +worshipping with the village labourer, praying with the ignorant and +the foolish, there as a matter of life custom and for His soul’s +benefit.</p> +<p>I have said that it deserves our notice; but more than this—it +should be graven on the minds of the young, so that they may never lose +the impression of it, so that it go with them through all their years +of manhood, to preserve in them the devotional and reverent habit.</p> +<p>It is indeed good for all of us to think of Him there in that primitive +and unattractive house of God, listening to the rude Galilean accents, +and bowing His head in the habitual worship of that obscure community.</p> +<p>I do not think it is possible for us, unless we are quite indifferent +about our moral and spiritual condition—unless, that is, we have +low notions about our life, a low aim and a low standard—to be +unaffected in our practice <!-- page 72--><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>by +this example of the Lord. We can hardly believe that those exercises +of the spirit which were so fruitful in His life will fail to bear their +fruit in ours also.</p> +<p>What have we to say as we picture Him with all the great thoughts +of His new work swelling up in His soul, the divinely appointed teacher +of new wisdom and new faith, the bringer of new light among men, the +voice of a new world, and yet, being all this, at the same time, and +as a means for working out His mission more completely, a regular and +devout worshipper in a village house of prayer?</p> +<p>If it should ever happen to any of us that we come to fancy we do +not need such common prayer, or that because of defects in public worship +we do not profit by it, does not this example of the Saviour rise up +and rebuke us? Yes, you may rest assured, if that day ever comes +to you, that you are in danger of drifting away from the great saving +tides of the human spirit into some shallow or artificial stream of +your own time and generation. But, on the other hand, it is a +happy thing for our <!-- page 73--><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>life +if, growing up in the habitual use of time-honoured spiritual exercises, +we have truly learnt to know by our own experience, as by the example +of the Saviour set before us in the Gospel, that they are the support +and safeguard of all that is highest and purest and best in us, if only +we are careful to use them with sincerity and reverence.</p> +<h2><!-- page 74--><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>VIII. AN +UNANSWERABLE QUESTION.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? +Not one.”—<span class="smcap">Job </span>xiv. 4.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is one of those simple questions which, by their very simplicity +and directness, set us thinking about the importance of our personal +life.</p> +<p>“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” +But all our common life is somehow the outcome of our separate individual +lives—of your life and mine. Therefore how important it +is in the common interest that each of us should look above all things +to his own life and its character, for this will determine his contribution +to the life of his society.</p> +<p>Nearly all men are keen about the reputation of their society, about +the name it <!-- page 75--><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>bears, +about the way in which men think and speak of it.</p> +<p>Thus you are no doubt sensitive, almost every one of you, about the +good reputation of your school or your house, or any society with which +you may happen to be closely connected or identified.</p> +<p>And this is a healthy and praiseworthy feeling. It would indeed +be a bad sign if such a feeling were wanting or weak in any society.</p> +<p>But I am not sure that we keep it before us—all of us—as +clearly as we ought to do, that this reputation of the society is simply +the outcome of our separate lives and habits.</p> +<p>The reputation is the reflex of the life; hardly ever, perhaps, an +exact reflex, very often a distorted reflex with this or that feature +exaggerated; but yet always a reflex.</p> +<p>The reputation you bear is the impression made by your common life +on the minds of those who see it from the outside, or who hear men’s +talk about it.</p> +<p><!-- page 76--><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>And we do well to +be sensitive on such a subject; but we do still better if we bear in +mind that this common life is what comes out of our own life, and is +the result of its contact with that of our neighbour.</p> +<p>And with this thought in our minds we feel how searching and how +directly personal is this primitive and childlike question, Who can +bring a clean thing out of an unclean?</p> +<p>Societies, especially young societies, are very impressible, and +their character—the quality, that is, of their life—is fixed +by prevailing influences, which show themselves in fashions, habits, +and tendencies, in the common types of thought, or taste, or behaviour, +or conduct.</p> +<p>This is obvious enough to every one; but what we do not seem always +to consider is the extent to which these influences or fashions have +their origin, so far as our own society is concerned, in our own lives. +They are, in fact, in the main the general outcome of our separate lives.</p> +<p><!-- page 77--><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>Do you, then, think +of yourselves—this is the practical question to which these considerations +lead up—as sources or centres of such influence, contributing +your personal share to this common life?</p> +<p>It may make an immense difference to all your thoughts about your +common habits, and your standards of daily conduct and duty, if you +remember this ancient saying, that no man can bring a clean thing out +of an unclean. And so I have to ask you to consider a little how +the common life of this society is dependent upon your life.</p> +<p>Every individual acts upon the life of the community around him as +a power or influence in it. This seems so obvious when mentioned +as hardly to deserve the mentioning, and yet in practice we are very +apt to overlook it.</p> +<p>You and I, all of us, without any exception, are endowed with some +share of this power.</p> +<p>In this respect, as in other ways, there is, of course, every possible +difference in <!-- page 78--><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>degree +between one and another, between the strong and the weak, between those +who are conspicuous and those who are obscure; but there is no other +difference.</p> +<p>Every one of you possesses some share of this mysterious, and undefined, +and immeasurable gift of influencing his neighbour’s life. +Every sin that may have a root in your heart is acting, though you may +not think of it or intend it, as a pestilent influence outside your +own life; every virtue you exercise may be causing similar virtues to +take root and grow in some one near to you.</p> +<p>The tone of the society or life around you is, in fact, just the +sum and expression of such individual influences as these.</p> +<p>We may not be able to trace all the various and multitudinous germs +or seeds of such influence as they flow out from us in our daily round +of common life; but we are conscious that each and every single soul, +all through its earthly course, in the family and in the outer world, +from youth to age, is, in fact, a sower scattering these germs of good +<!-- page 79--><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>or evil unceasingly. +We know, also, that when they are once scattered they cannot be gathered +up again. They are yours to scatter—these seeds that you +are adding to the common life—and you are responsible for the +fruit they bear; but having sown them, you are powerless afterwards +to prevent them from bearing fruit after their kind in other lives. +Once launched in the air around you, they spread their contagion of +evil or their stimulus to good, their savour of life or death.</p> +<p>The mere suspicion of this undefined power over other lives which +is inherent in our own life should surely make us very careful about +it.</p> +<p>It gives a new sense of personal responsibility; it lays its hand +upon us to check us in any vice, or folly, or sin; and it is a stimulus +to every virtue and to all good purposes.</p> +<p>But the thing which of all others it is perhaps of most importance +for us to remember about it is that this stream of our personal <!-- page 80--><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>influence +which flows out of our life is a double stream. It is of two kinds. +One part of it flows unconsciously, whether we think of it or not; it +streams out from our personality as sunlight from the sun.</p> +<p>The other is that which we exercise by some conscious effort of the +will, and with some deliberate purpose or intention.</p> +<p>Now, in the case of most of us, this tide of unconscious influence +flowing from us without any deliberate or set purpose on our part, our +involuntary contribution to the common life, is far more powerful for +good or for evil than anything which we ever do by way of active purpose +to influence another’s life, and this because our unconscious +influence is the reflex on the outer world of what we are in ourselves; +it is the projection, or shall we say the radiation, of our own life, +its tastes, tempers, habits, and character, upon the lives around us.</p> +<p>What we do or intend to do, what influence we endeavour to exercise, +is very likely to be at the best intermittent, but <!-- page 81--><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>this +door of involuntary communication between every man’s life and +his neighbour’s life is always standing open; and so it comes +about that your life, whether public or private, is of more importance +to others than anything else about you.</p> +<p>At a time when so many things contribute to fix men’s thoughts +on externals, and we are all tempted to think more about our work than +about our life, more about what we are doing or intending to do, than +of what we are in ourselves, these considerations assume an unusual +importance.</p> +<p>Moreover, in a society like this, where you live so close to one +another, and so much in public, there is a special reason for giving +to such considerations some special attention; and the thought suggested +by this world-old inquiry—Who can bring a clean thing out of an +unclean?—becomes a very direct warning to look well to our separate +life, and take care what sort of unconscious influences it is spreading +around it.</p> +<p>A moment’s reflection will remind you how <!-- page 82--><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>quick +and strong such influences may easily prove, independent of all intention +or desire on our part, or even in spite of our deliberate wishes or +hopes. One man is careless or irreligious, and his weaker neighbours +catch the infection of his example; another indulges in some bad habits +of language or conduct, or he is addicted to some low taste, or he lives +by some low standard, and this or that companion is drawn down to his +level; and so the evil of his life takes fresh root in another life, +and it gets into the air, and it is impossible to predict the limit +of its influence.</p> +<p>Or, on the other hand, one man is intellectual or refined in his +tastes, and by merely living in a society he creates an atmosphere of +intellect or of refinement around him; or, it may be, he is earnest +and courageous, and others are drawn to admire and imitate, and so he +proves a centre of courage and earnestness. Such is the solidarity +of your life, as men call it, and there is no escape from it, or from +the responsibilities which it lays upon you.</p> +<p><!-- page 83--><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>As the tree is known +by its fruits, as men do not gather grapes of thorns, as the same fountain +does not send forth sweet water and bitter, so we have to remember, +when we think of the tides of unconscious influence that are continually +streaming out from us, that they are wholesome, or the reverse, according +to the character of our secret and separate life.</p> +<p>Through them any one of us may become to his neighbour or his friend +a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.</p> +<p>There are sure to be many in such a congregation as this who have +visions of the good they hope to do; and there is a spirit of native +generosity in almost all which makes them shrink from the thought of +doing harm to another soul.</p> +<p>Well, then, in this thought of your influence, conscious and unconscious, +your first and constant prayer will surely be: “Create in me a +clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”</p> +<p>The effective servant of God is always the <!-- page 84--><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>man +who has been prepared and purified by the vision of God in his own soul.</p> +<p>If, then, we desire to contribute some good to our society and no +evil, we must take care to keep our hearts open to the cleansing influences +of the spirit of holiness, so that no habit of sin shall cast its dark +shadow around us, or vitiate that atmosphere which is inseparable from +our personal life.</p> +<h2><!-- page 85--><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>IX. SOWING +BESIDE ALL WATERS.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.”—<span class="smcap">Isaiah +</span>xxxii. 20.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These words form part of a great prophetic vision. The prophet +is standing among his countrymen like a watchman on the walls of Jerusalem. +And far away, as he looks, the distant horizon of his stormy sky is +bright with Messianic hopes, but around him the shadows lie dark and +heavy.</p> +<p>It was his destiny to speak to a people whose ears were dull of hearing +and their hearts without understanding; but he never lost the conviction +that the holy seed of God’s spirit was alive in them. Amidst +all present discouragement he lived in the hope of a brighter and better +day, when the eyes of those around him would be opened, and their hearts +changed, and a new spirit would <!-- page 86--><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>take +hold of them, and righteousness, peace, prosperity, and gladness would +prevail. And no man’s life is worth much which is not inspired +by some such hope.</p> +<p>What Isaiah saw immediately around him was sin and moral blindness. +What he saw immediately in front of him was the consequence of these +in woe and desolation. “Year upon year,” he cries, +“shall ye be troubled, ye careless ones: thorns and briers shall +come upon the land of my people: until the spirit be poured upon us +from on high, and the wilderness shall become a planted field.” +But in the day of that outpouring, the heart of the people would turn +and be uplifted, renewed, and purified, the wilderness would become +a planted field. And this thought brings him to the final outburst +of the text I have just read to you, which is a blessing on those true +Israelites who realised the high calling of God’s people, and +were inspired to fulfil it, sowing everywhere and always the seeds of +Divine influence. The whole vision is highly <!-- page 87--><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>instructive, +for it is the vision of what occurs again and again in all human history; +but it is of this blessing with which it closes that I desire to say +a word or two to-day.</p> +<p>Amidst all the threatening and discouraging symptoms of the national +life, Isaiah turned to the bright vision of those servants of God whose +faith should never fail, and in whom there should be no variableness, +and no wavering. “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.” +Sow your seed of good influence, he seems to say to them, in good times, +in bad times; sow it in this place, and in every place, sow it in the +wastes of the moral wilderness, sow it in the face of every enemy, sow +it in faith and hope and without fear. It is on them he depends +to prepare for that happier season when the wilderness of the spiritual +life around him should become as a planted field; and with prophetic +insight he perceives that it is on such as these that the Divine blessing +always rests. “Blessed are they that sow beside all waters.” +It is a text to be taken with <!-- page 88--><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>us +whenever any change comes over the circumstances of our life. +If we are changing from a life of rule or discipline to a life of free +choice, from school to home, from boyhood to manhood, this blessing +declares that there should be no change in the attitude and purpose +and aim of life.</p> +<p>It is another way of saying that the laws which should guide our +conduct, and the principles which should inspire and direct us, are +of universal application; that they know no difference of time or place, +and that if they bind you here they should bind you everywhere. +And simple and obvious as this may seem, it is not altogether an easy +truth to carry into practice. “Blessed are ye that sow beside +all waters.” Your seed field is not here or there only; +it lies on every side of you, and in all places; it spreads into the +future farther than your eye can travel, and it will extend itself before +you as you go; and the reality and vigour of good purpose in you will +be determined by your recognition of this truth.</p> +<p><!-- page 89--><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>Let us consider +it with reference to our own case at such a time as this.</p> +<p>There are always growing up here in every generation those who feel +a pride in their school, and in the spirit of it, who strive honestly +and earnestly to sow in their society the seeds of manliness, and truthfulness, +and good tone, and purity. It would soon go very ill with this +or any other society if it were not so. And those who grow up +in this way are continually leaving us in their turn, and they will +remember with affection the place of their high purposes and earnest +and manly efforts. They go out into a new world, and travel along +other streams; and blessed are they, if they continue faithful, sowing +still beside all waters.</p> +<p>But every change brings with it some element of risk. There +is nearly always something of surprise to us in the new forces that +confront us in any society which we enter as strangers; and the first +feeling that rises is sometimes a feeling of our own weakness or insignificance.</p> +<p><!-- page 90--><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>In such a case it +is well if we have realised beforehand that our laws of conduct should +not vary, and that the call of God, which we have recognised once, is +a call which never ceases, and which no circumstances should make inaudible.</p> +<p>When we approach any change we all need this kind of warning; because +there are so many things in our life which we are apt to allow our circumstances +to regulate for us. Experience tells us only too plainly how much +we depend upon the influences that are around us, and how often we fail +to carry with us the strength we have gained in one field when we pass +over to the next. With the holy we learn in some degree to be +ourselves holy; with a perfect man we too are able to walk perfectly; +but on the other hand, in our imitative way, as the scene changes, we +sometimes find ourselves learning frowardness with the froward, practising +indifference with the indifferent, if not actually slipping with the +vicious into some vicious way. There is always some <!-- page 91--><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>risk +of such changes; and it is always well for us to be taking care that +our better life has its root in our own heart and spirit, and that we +do not wear it as a garment suited to the society in which we happen +to be, and change it for the worse, if there comes any corresponding +change in outward influences.</p> +<p>Hence it is that at these times, when we are about to separate, these +words of Isaiah come to us with a very appropriate reminder: “Blessed +are ye that sow beside all waters.”</p> +<p>To those who are leaving our society to begin a new life elsewhere, +as to those of us who go in the hope of returning by-and-by, they are +charged with the same lesson. They bid us all alike take care +and see that what is good in our present life has become our own personal +and permanent possession, independent of surroundings; that it has sunk +in some degree into the fibre of our character; that it is settled in +us by conviction and principle, to guide and direct us everywhere, and +is not merely <!-- page 92--><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>a circumstantial +garment, a sort of livery of this or that particular place, which will +slip off us as we leave it.</p> +<p>Many of you have learnt, I feel sure of it, to feel during these +your school days, the satisfaction of living here a true and worthy +life; you have tasted of that pleasure which the careless, the indifferent, +and the sinful hardly taste at all, the pleasure that dwells with the +consciousness of earnest effort and sincere striving after the best +things within us. The love of Christ may have taken hold upon +you; the associations of your school and its inheritance of great and +good examples, or the sense of honour may have stirred you; the feeling +of your closeness in life to those around you, and of the strong currents +of mutual influence, may have opened your eyes to what you owe to your +neighbour and to the claims of social duty. Some one of these +causes, or it may be some other cause, may have given you strength and +power to walk amongst us in the narrow way of good habit and good <!-- page 93--><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>influence. +And wherever this is so, we thank God. But the question to-day +is, What assurance do you feel that this will continue? When we +go elsewhere, what habits, what tendencies, what fixed bent of spirit +and character shall we exhibit? Knowing as we do how strongly +the forces of the outer world will act upon us, it is never a useless +warning which bids us take care that in new spheres we do not forget +our old principles, or lay aside any good habits. “Blessed +are ye that sow beside all waters.”</p> +<p>We have learnt to look upon certain laws of conduct and feeling, +certain duties, certain standards of life, as beyond dispute, and fundamental. +If so, they are also of universal application; and we should hold them +as things which are altogether independent of the customs, traditions, +or tone of any society into which we may go.</p> +<p>It is probable that some of you may find this doctrine not altogether +free from difficulties before many weeks are over. You may find +yourselves young and apparently <!-- page 94--><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>uninfluential +members of some society in which the standards of life are low, and +you may be tempted to think, under the pressure of surrounding opinion, +that you are not called upon to set up or display any standard of your +own; and there is always a chorus of voices ready enough to echo any +such tempting suggestions.</p> +<p>But if ever you are tempted thus to let slip the things you have +learnt and accepted, the voice of Isaiah should prove a help and a safeguard. +And its exhortation is supported by the respect and admiration you feel +for any one who has the courage to stand alone in such a case, true +to his rooted convictions.</p> +<p>Another word may be added. We met, a great many of us, this +morning at that table to which men do not come unless they entertain +the purpose of treading in the footsteps of Christ, and of nursing His +Holy Spirit in their hearts. As we lifted up our hearts there, +as we ate of that bread and drank of that cup, as we prayed to be kept +<!-- page 95--><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>safe from the sins +that most easily beset us, as we sealed in each other’s presence +the resolutions which are to direct our steps in safe paths, it was +not of circumstances or places that we were thinking—it was the +vision of Christ our Saviour that was before our eyes, and we pray that +this vision may remain with us. When we think of all our diverging +paths as we separate just now, and of the uncertainty how many of us +may meet again in that far horizon, and how many may have wandered out +of the way in the wilderness, we do not doubt that we shall often need +the strengthening influence of this vision of Christ, if we, too, hope +to inherit the blessing which is reserved for those who are faithful +under all circumstances, and who sow beside all waters.</p> +<h2><!-- page 96--><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>X. THE PRESENCE +OF GOD.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“And Jacob awakened out of his sleep and said, +Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.”—<span class="smcap">Genesis +</span>xxviii. 16.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These words indicate the beginning of a new life in the patriarch +Jacob. They tell us of the moment when, as it would appear, his +soul awoke in him. And they surprise us in some degree, as such +awakenings of spiritual capacity often do; for Jacob’s recorded +antecedents were not exactly such as to lead us to expect the dream +and the vision, and the awakening which are described in this passage.</p> +<p>He had cheated his brother out of his father’s blessing; he +was leaving his father’s house in consequence, to avoid this brother’s +threatened vengeance; and as he slept at Bethel he dreamed his dream +of the ladder <!-- page 97--><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>set up +on earth and reaching to heaven; and he saw the angels ascending and +descending, and the Lord standing above it, and he heard the Divine +voice charged with promise and with blessing: “I am with thee, +and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.” This, +taking it in all its parts, is a very surprising narrative; and the +point in it on which I desire to fix your attention for a moment is +this, that this vision startled him into a new consciousness—“Surely +the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.” It was the +beginning of a new life.</p> +<p>That vision, we may be sure, never entirely faded. He was never +afterwards the same man he had been before it. It had awakened +the divine capacity in him; and it remained with him as a constant reminder +of the presence of God in his life, to protect and to inspire him—“I +am with thee, and I will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.” +Such a voice as this in a man’s heart gives his life a new quality; +it puts him in a new relation to all common things.</p> +<p><!-- page 98--><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>We may well believe +that it was this more than anything else which drew Jacob apart from +the common heathen life around him, from that day onwards. It +was this which, in spite of all his weaknesses, defects, and failures +in life and character, gradually raised him to a different level.</p> +<p>It was this which finally culminated in transforming him from Jacob +the supplanter to Israel the prince of God.</p> +<p>So far as appears, he had gone out from his home, as so many go forth +in all ages, a dull soul, though with latent capacities, his thoughts +bent on securing his personal safety and his worldly success. +But he woke in the desert after that vision, with the seeds of the new +life rooted and growing in him.</p> +<p>It is this moment of awakening on which I desire to fix your thoughts—this +moment of his transfiguration; when he saw and felt a heaven above him, +and yet very close, with its ladder of angelic communication, which +he had not <i>so</i> seen or felt before; <!-- page 99--><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>the +moment when a new consciousness flashed through his soul, and illumined +unsuspected chambers in it, stirring new thoughts and new aspirations. +He woke up to be a new man henceforth, moving in a new presence, and +having always in his ears the voice of a Divine call.</p> +<p>Do you ask why I dwell on this familiar history, or desire that you +should contemplate and realise this change in the young man Jacob? +It is because there is just the same soul, the same capacity of higher +life in every one of us: in some it is awake already and transfiguring +their life; in others still latent, sleeping, undiscovered.</p> +<p>I dwell on it because it makes and will make all the difference in +the world to your life whether in your case this capacity is awakened +or not. This, then, is what I have to postulate as giving a value +beyond the power of words to describe to every soul amongst us.</p> +<p>It bids us recognise and keep always before us that in every common +life, of child <!-- page 100--><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>or +man, even in the most worldly or the hardest, the most frivolous, the +most cynical, the most sensual, or the most degraded, there is latent, +it may be altogether unfelt and disregarded through long years, giving +no sign of its presence, it may be, it often is, overlaid, trodden down, +even at the point of death, but still there, this living soul with all +its possibilities. It is within every one of us, stamped with +the image of God, and charged with unimagined possibilities.</p> +<p>And it must be obvious that the whole difference between any two +lives, between your life and your neighbour’s life, may depend +on this awakening of the soul in one of you and its not awakening in +the other.</p> +<p>Of the two brothers, Esau and Jacob, I suppose we are all drawn at +the outset to Esau; our heart goes out to him, as we read, the impulsive, +the impetuous, the affectionate, and we feel a corresponding dislike +of Jacob’s craft and cunning, and selfish calculations. +There can be no doubt, we say, which was the meaner character to begin +with.</p> +<p><!-- page 101--><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>But neither is +there any doubt why it was that it came to be written, “Jacob +I have loved, but Esau have I hated.” The one was just the +child of the world around him, yielding to its temptations, living by +its standards. The soul in him never awoke, so as to transfigure +his thoughts and purposes. The other is a man of Divine visions, +inspired with the sense of a Divine presence and a Divine purpose directing +him.</p> +<p>Nowhere do we see more clearly than in this narrative how great a +change may come to any of us, if the unawakened capacities of our soul +are touched by the breath of some uplifting inspiration.</p> +<p>As we read of this contrast between Esau and Jacob, and their destinies, +we feel—and we feel it all the more because Jacob to begin with +seems to be made of such common clay—we feel what a transforming +power in a man’s life this awaking of the soul may be.</p> +<p>A life which is without the inspiration that takes possession of +us in the moments of this <!-- page 102--><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>awakening, +and is consequently without these visions that flash before the soul +as it awakens, a life that is not deeply stirred by spiritual hopes +or Divine thought, or the call to new duty, remains in one man a selfish +and worldly life, in another a frivolous, in a third a sensual life. +But the very same life—and here is the practical value to us, +here is the hopefulness of such considerations—the very same life, +when the breath of God’s spirit or His penetrating voice has stirred +and roused the soul in it, is felt to be transformed. The man +is born anew.</p> +<p>“There is nothing finer,” some one has said, “than +to see a soul rise up in men, which amazes the very men in whom it rises.” +They are surprised to find that these new capacities were in them, unnoticed +through their careless days, yet in them all the time. This birth +of the new life, with all its promise of new tastes, new ambitions, +new thoughts, new purposes, may indeed come to you without your feeling +all at once how great a thing it is. At first it may be nothing +more than some <!-- page 103--><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span>vision +of the possibilities of your life, or some electric flash of new consciousness +that runs through you, or the sharp pang of remorse for some sin or +some neglect, or the flush of shame or repulsion as you think of something +or other in your life, or the glow of some good resolution to begin +some new life or new duty, or take some new turn, or pursue some new +aim. You hardly think perhaps of this as the awakening of your +soul. It may never have occurred to you to think of it as being +just as sacred a thing as was Jacob’s vision at Bethel, as being +indeed the work of the same Divine spirit.</p> +<p>But let us consider it a little further. Whatever it is that +is thus stirring in your heart, it comes and it comes again; it lingers +in your thoughts and feelings; it haunts, it impresses and awes you; +it rises before you suddenly and stops you from some sin, or, if it +fails to stop you, it turns the pleasure for which you craved into wretchedness; +or it encourages and consoles you in some hour of weakness or sorrow. +I suppose there is hardly <!-- page 104--><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>one +of you who has not had some such experience as this. And if you +ask. What is it? It is, I repeat, the awakening of the soul +in you—nothing less than this—and happy is it for you, if +you recognise that it is the soul striving to win its proper place in +the regulation of your life.</p> +<p>When Moses saw the vision of the burning bush, and suddenly felt +himself on holy ground; when Elijah heard the still, small voice calling, +“What doest thou here, Elijah?” when Saul, on his way to +Damascus, fell to the ground conscience-smitten, crushed, blinded, rebuked; +when the child Samuel heard the Divine voice calling to him in the darkness +of the night;—in each case it was the awakening or the reawakening +of the soul—the uprising of the spiritual capacities, the vision +of the higher life—and so exactly with all of <i>you</i>. +Are you not sometimes conscious of the uprisings in you of a spirit +calling upon you to recognise the angels’ ladder that connects +<i>your</i> life also with the heaven above us?</p> +<p><!-- page 105--><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>If so, there is +this further thing to note about such moments of experience.</p> +<p>This feeling of some spiritual capacity in you, this call to some +higher view of life and duty, this uprising of the moral sense and the +repulsion towards the lower forms of life which comes with it—this +is God’s personal gift to us, and we pray that you may possess +it early; for it is not only a new consciousness, it is itself a new +power in your life.</p> +<p>You cannot have it, feeling its presence and hearing its suggestions, +and debase your life in any way, as you might have done, but for its +presence. It is so very true that, in the life of the Spirit, +looking up means lifting up. As the plant turns to the sun, it +grows towards the sun; as it looks up to the light, it grows towards +the light; so it is with us. We feel that we are sons of God, +and we tend to become so. Through some influence or other, we +awake to a vivid consciousness that God has created us in His image, +endowed us with Divine capacities, and this <!-- page 106--><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>consciousness +becomes a purifying and inspiring force in our life, and it is a new +life in consequence.</p> +<p>Pray that such influences may prevail around you here, and that you +may hold them fast until they have blessed your life.</p> +<h2><!-- page 107--><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>XI. “MEMBERS +ONE OF ANOTHER.”</h2> +<blockquote><p>“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and +every one members one of another.”—<span class="smcap">Romans +</span>xii. 5.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There<span class="smcap"> </span>are some moral and spiritual truths +which it seems to be almost impossible to impress upon the practical +life of the world, although they meet with a sort of universal acceptance.</p> +<p>Men agree with them, they re-echo them, they applaud them; they do +everything, in fact, but exhibit them as the moving, inspiring, and +guiding truths of their daily practice.</p> +<p>And among these I fear we must still class that one which is expressed +in the text I have just read, a text which sets forth the fundamental +fact that whatever else Christianity may teach, it teaches as one of +its first and principal lessons that a Christian man has to live in +Christ for his neighbours.</p> +<p><!-- page 108--><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>If such a text +means anything, it means that Christianity is essentially a religion +of society, that it sets before us social claims as standing before +all other claims; that, starting from the Divine Sacrifice as the central +fact of human life, it was intended to root out of our hearts the noxious +weed of selfishness by the power of the Divine love, and to build up +the organisation of men in their common relationships upon this new +basis.</p> +<p>It may sound somewhat strange to speak at this time of day of what +Christianity is intended to do, rather than what it has done already.</p> +<p>But it is even more strange to read the teaching of the Sermon on +the Mount, and all the other words of the Lord; all the lessons of His +life and His sacrifice; the history of the first generation of Christians; +the descent of the Spirit upon them; and the teaching of the apostolic +brotherhood—to remember that all this is our accepted faith; that +it has been the faith of one generation after another for eighteen hundred +years; that <!-- page 109--><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>we grow +up in this faith, live in it, and die in it; and at the same time to +contemplate side by side with it all the elements of the common life, +all the rules and customs of society, all the standards of conduct which +ordinary men take as their measure of daily duty and purpose.</p> +<p>Thus, whilst on the one hand Christian influences, and all the changes +in the world’s life which are due to them, fill us with wonder +and gratitude, the failures of Christianity are scarcely less impressive.</p> +<p>When we consider the ordinary run of men’s lives, so different +for the most part in spirit, and in aim and guiding rules, from that +type which the New Testament sets before us, it would almost seem as +if to the majority their religion was not a ruling and dominating principle, +pervading this present life, but only an <i>ideal</i>, shedding around +us a glow of indefinite hopes and possibilities, an ideal hardly to +be realised, laid up somewhere in the heavens—εν ουρανω +ισως παρακειται. +These contrasts between the revelation of the Gospel and the standards +<!-- page 110--><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>of the Christian +world have always troubled the most earnest spirits in every generation. +Some of you remember, no doubt, how this contrast between Christian +profession and the life of selfish sin and waste flashed into fierce +poetry in one such spirit of the last generation, who grew up in this +school.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Through the great, sinful streets of Naples, as +I passed,<br /> +With fiercer heat than flamed above my head<br /> +My heart was hot within me, till at last<br /> +My brain was lightened when my tongue had said<br /> +Christ is not risen.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And men who are truly in earnest about faith and life, and who are +perplexed and distressed by the contradictions and insincerities that +meet them, must often be moved as he was.</p> +<p>And yet, when we look closer, and consider that the battle of spiritual +progress has this peculiarity attached to it, that it has to be fought +over again, in every generation, and in every separate individual soul, +the result is less surprising. Remembering this, we do not expect +the victory of the last generation to save us from defeat or failure.</p> +<p><!-- page 111--><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>And this has to +be borne in mind equally in regard to the continuous life of societies +and to our own separate lives. Thus in such a society as this, +if our predecessors uplifted the standards of conduct, inculcated high +principles, and inspired their generation with a strong pervading spirit, +this should make it easier for us to do likewise; but it does not insure +our doing it. All this higher life will die in our hands if the +same regenerating spirit is not alive and working in our hearts also. +So, again, your individual victory over sin in the power of the Spirit +in you, does not save my life from having to fight the battle for itself +and win its own victories.</p> +<p>So that, however perplexing the phenomena of life may seem whilst +we look at them in the mass or from the outside, if we read the Gospel +of Christ as a message to our own souls a great deal of the perplexity +disappears. And it was with this personal message that Christ +came, and there is no hope of our understanding His mission, or of living +in the <!-- page 112--><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>light of His +transforming spirit, if we think of it in any other way than this.</p> +<p>The purpose of His revelation is to crucify the selfish instinct +in us, and to rouse us to the life of self-devotion, to the idea of +consecrated energies; and this being so, all Christian life is of the +nature of a warfare; and a warfare which begins afresh with each generation +of men; because selfishness, with all its tribe of attendant appetites +and passions, springs afresh in every single soul, and is nurtured, +strengthened, cultivated, by so many of the conditions of life.</p> +<p>If, then, the Spirit of Christ is really to prevail in our life, +it must be by effecting our emancipation from selfish instincts, and +rousing in us the spirit of devotion to the good of other lives.</p> +<p>In proportion as you diminish selfishness in your own life or in +any other, by fostering generous affections and cultivating the spirit +of social duty and religious aspiration, by walking in the footsteps +of Christ and living in the light of His presence, you are laying <!-- page 113--><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>the +only possible foundation of any lasting progress, you are following +the one true method by which the mystery of sin is to be overcome.</p> +<p>We may wonder that this should be so difficult; for of selfishness +we should say that we all dislike it. In its grosser forms we +repudiate it. The very word is one which we articulate with a +certain accent of contempt.</p> +<p>But when we come to its refined and subtle workings in our nature, +when we think of its Proteus-like changeableness, its power of assuming +the various guises even of duty or religion; when we reflect how it +can clothe itself in the choicest garb of art, or science, or divine +philosophy, we find very likely that we are always in danger of being +enslaved by it.</p> +<p>And we do well to pray in all sincerity that grace may expel our +selfishness; for indeed the influence of true religion is to be gauged +by the extent to which this prayer is being fulfilled in us. The +fulfilment of it is what we mean by the regenerate life.</p> +<p><!-- page 114--><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>I need not ask +you how you feel in the presence of any character which you recognise +as cleansed from all taint of selfishness, a character, softened, refined, +purified, inspired, consecrated. I would rather ask whether you +know of any personal influence to be compared with that of such a character.</p> +<p>And if, as I anticipate, you would answer that there is none like +it, I would ask you to bear in mind that this influence may be yours. +You are invited by all the highest calls within and around you to make +it yours. “What is the aim and purpose of his life?” +is a question which men are justified in asking about us; and they are +justified in passing their verdict upon us by the answer which our life +gives.</p> +<p>Does he live for himself, they will ask, for his own pleasures, his +own delights, be they coarse or refined, his own indulgence, his own +particular interest? Is there anything of the spirit or enthusiasm +of sacrifice visible in the ordinary tenor of his actions?</p> +<p><!-- page 115--><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>The world, this +Christian world, is full of those concerning whom the answer to such +questions can only be a distinct negative; and yet we know that in all +such characters, whether in youth or age, Christianity is a failure.</p> +<p>Therefore we shall accept it as our primary duty, the purpose of +our existence as a Christian school, to train up men who shall be penetrated +by the spirit of unselfishness, possessed by the feeling that their +lives are to be consecrated to the common good.</p> +<p>Societies differ very widely in the type of character they impress.</p> +<p>Here and there we see a society, here and there a school, which has +somehow acquired the power to stamp on those who go out from it a certain +impress of nobility.</p> +<p>They go forth like the knights of our famous English legend—imperfect +no doubt and erring, but each one of them inspired with the consciousness +that his life is a holy quest.</p> +<p>There are other societies and schools among <!-- page 116--><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>them +which seem to possess everything but this one power.</p> +<p>What, then, are we to say of our hopes? What is to be the mission +of our generation here? Shall we contribute anything to raise +the common type? Or shall we drift on as the world drifts, a little +better, or a little worse?</p> +<p>Shall we not rather pray and hope as we begin once more to weave +the web of mutual influence, that you may grow up here not altogether +like the herd of common men, but emancipated early from the life of +selfish desire, feeling the spirit of Christ within you, remembering +your baptismal vows, with eyes open to heavenly visions, and not disobedient +unto them?</p> +<h2><!-- page 117--><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>XII. THE +SOWER AND THE SEED.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“A sower went out to sow his seed.”—<span class="smcap">St. +Luke </span>viii. 5.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is significant that the first of the Saviour’s parables +is the parable of the sower, that the first thing to which He likens +His own work is that of the sower of seed, the first lesson He has to +impress upon us by any kind of comparison is that the word of God is +a seed sown in our hearts, a something which contains in it the germ +of a new life.</p> +<p>It is no less significant that He returns so often to this same kind +of comparison for the purpose of impressing us always with the primary +fact, that our relationship to God, the Father of Spirits, in other +words our spiritual condition at the present moment, our hope for the +time to come, does not depend upon some body of doctrine, but on <!-- page 118--><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>our +having received into the secret places of the heart the seeds of a new +life.</p> +<p>This is suggestive of a great many considerations which touch our +life very closely; but I will not turn aside to them at this moment, +as my desire is to fix your thoughts for the present on this one fundamental +thing, that the principle of moral and spiritual life in you is a seed, +and as such it is endowed with a power of independent separate growth; +it was intended to grow in you.</p> +<p>The sower casts his seed upon the earth and goes his way, and, once +sown, it springs up and grows, as Jesus said in another parable, “he +knoweth not how.” This, then, is the truth which He is impressing +on our attention, when He speaks of His revelation as a seed, a seed +to be sown by hands which have no control over it except to sow it. +The soul of each and every one of us is a seed-field, and the seeds +of new life and purpose should be growing in it.</p> +<p>As we recall the other parable of the seed growing secretly, recorded +in St. Mark’s Gospel, we feel even more strongly how the essence +of <!-- page 119--><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>all our life is +in seeds of influence. “So is the Kingdom of Heaven as if +a man should cast seed upon the earth, and the seed should spring up +and grow, he knoweth not how.” It grows in us mysteriously +we know not how.</p> +<p>And I am not sure that we all, indeed I think it likely that we do +not all, take it home to our thoughts with sufficient seriousness that +this mysterious growth in the thing sown implies a mysterious vital +power or force which is inherent in it.</p> +<p>I call it a mysterious vital power, because all life is a mystery +to us. The very thought of life lands us in mystery, in mystery +which defies analysis. We know that all the life in us and around +us follows certain laws, as we call them, the life of plants, the life +of animals, the life of man, each following its own laws after its kind, +and that is all we know about it. We can observe its action, its +uniformities, its sequences, and variations, but beyond this we cannot +penetrate its secret. It grows mysteriously, we know not how.</p> +<p>But this much we know, that no life is spontaneously <!-- page 120--><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>generated. +The science of our day has demonstrated it, as we believe, beyond dispute, +that you cannot create life out of dead matter. All life comes +from some antecedent life. Wherever you see life of any kind, +you know that there must have been before it some form of life which +was its parent.</p> +<p>Yet again, the scientific investigator points out another suggestive +fact, that the lower creature does not of its own lower nature expand +into the higher, but that life is lifted up and grows by the infusion +of something higher than itself. So, too, we believe that the +Spirit of God touches with its mysterious power the dead souls of men; +it transforms them, it uplifts them, they are born again. They +are roused and stirred to new capacity by the touch and inspiration +of this Divine life. This is what is meant when it is said that +if any man be in Christ he is a new creature. He has received +into his nature this mysterious gift, or rather this seed of the new +life.</p> +<p>Such is the Christian doctrine of the new birth, or of the life-giving +breath of the Spirit, <!-- page 121--><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>or +of the sowing the seed of Divine life in us. You may describe +it how you please, if only you take due note of this, that in proportion +as you realise or accept this truth as in any way intimately connected +with your own personal life and conduct, all the common things around +you acquire a new importance, and I might even say some touch of sacredness, +because they are felt to be strewn with these seeds of influence which +God is sowing around us, with a hand that never rests, through all our +years, in uncounted ways.</p> +<p>This seed of new life which is to save you from the power of sin +and the flesh and give you new aspirations, purer tastes, stronger purposes, +need I remind you how it is sown, in what manifold and various ways? +It must be within the personal experience of some of you to testify +how your meetings in this chapel every morning may sow it. One +day it falls on your heart in some word of some hymn or prayer, or in +some thought or feeling which flashes through you, or some pricking +of conscience for no other knows what sin or fault, or in some new resolve.</p> +<p><!-- page 122--><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span>Sometimes it is +found that a passing word of a preacher sows it (it is in this hope +I preach to you), or again it is sown in the common ways of daily life, +by the reading of some book, or by the word or example of a friend, +or by some casual sight or experience. We remember how the seed +of an unresting and beneficent life, a life devoted to the good of the +poor and the suffering, was sown in Lord Shaftesbury by the shocking +sight of a pauper funeral when he was a boy at Harrow. So it may +be sown in your hearts you know not beforehand when or where, to grow +up and bear fruit an hundred fold.</p> +<p>The wind bloweth where it listeth—so is every one that is born +of the Spirit. You never know what Divine seed it may deposit +in your heart at any moment; but this you do know, that if the word +of Christ be true, whenever this gift of life comes to you it is a new +birth.</p> +<p>And there is all the more mystery and sacredness about our common +life just because we never know how or when these seeds may <!-- page 123--><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>fall +upon our life to bless it, and because men are often altogether unconscious +of the beginnings of their growth in them. Some seed of good influence +falls into the soil of their heart, and seems to lie there buried in +the winter of neglect or waste.</p> +<p>Thus some men may carry the seeds long and far, not knowing the power +or the potency of the life that is in them; but some day they strike +root and grow and bear fruit in new convictions, or in new desires and +purposes; and this may be the case with any one amongst us, and hence +it is natural that we should press the question on ourselves and on +each other—What are you making of those seeds of higher life which +have been sown in you by your mother’s love, by your father’s +words, by all the lessons and influences of such a place as this, seeds +which are falling around you continually, and may possibly be trodden +down or overlaid?</p> +<p>As we look at these parables of the Lord telling of this sowing and +this growth of seeds, they bring it home to us very forcibly that <!-- page 124--><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>the +only true test of life in Christ is growth in Christian graces. +And this brings us to a consideration of grave practical importance. +It bids us be very careful to distinguish between seeds of life taking +root in the heart and springing up into new activities, and mere waves +of impression. The seed springs up and grows in you, the wave +merely flows over you, lifting and moving you for a moment, and then +leaving you as before. Thus, and it is a warning which is not +unneeded in our day, a day of much emotional religion, there is all +the difference in the world between a religion of moods and a religion +of growth. The one is the plaything of the winds, the other is +rooted in Christ.</p> +<p>Thus I am brought to two reflections, one on the function and aim +of the preacher, the other the duty of the hearer of God’s word. +The preacher—and the same might be said of every master in such +a society as this—the preacher has to think of himself primarily +and chiefly as a servant of Christ charged with the duty of sowing the +seeds of spiritual <!-- page 125--><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>life +in your hearts. And the thought that the Saviour has revealed +to us seeds of life which have this regenerating power in them, and +that in Him we see what possibilities of growth there are in these seeds—this +is our constant encouragement.</p> +<p>The sower’s hand may be feeble, and his sowing may be awkward, +or halting, or uncertain, but there is a Divine force or possibility +in all seeds of truth, or purity, or right feeling which he scatters +among you, independent of his sowing, and he never knows in what soul +some seed may lodge and germinate and grow up and bear fruit here and +hereafter, even to the endless life.</p> +<p>So we believe that every work of good influence, whether of man or +boy, will prosper, because we remember it as a part of God’s providential +law, that His seed if sown grows of itself, mysteriously. And +we need not wonder at the mystery, for it is the Spirit of God which +is in the seed; and it is ready to swell and grow and bear new fruits +as it lodges in your heart.</p> +<p><!-- page 126--><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>Through and in +that seed of good influence it is God Himself who is working in you.</p> +<p>Such, as we learn from the word of Christ, such, as we see it exemplified +in His person, is the mystery of the Divine life in the hearts of men—not +in some other lives, but in your life and mine.</p> +<p>But this only leads us to another vital question—a question +which I leave with you for the present, and to which we may return another +day—What is your share of active duty in regard to these seeds +of good influence and good purpose that are sown in you; what are you +doing, and what are you intending to do, to secure that they shall be +bearing some fruit in your own daily life?</p> +<h2><!-- page 127--><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>XIII. THE +LENTEN FAST.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer.”—S<span class="smcap">t</span>. +<span class="smcap">Mark </span>ix. 29.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>You remember the narrative from which I have taken this verse. +Jesus, as we read, had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, +and when He was come to the multitude, a certain man besought him saying, +“Have mercy on my son, for he is lunatic and sore vexed, and I +brought him to Thy disciples, but they could not cure him.” +Then Jesus rebuked the devil, and the child was cured from that hour. +Thereupon His disciples came to Him with this inquiry—“Why +could not we cast him out? And He said to them, Because of your +little faith. This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer;” +or, as our Authorised Version has it, “by prayer and fasting.”</p> +<p><!-- page 128--><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>Here, then, we +have set before us a very striking and significant contrast: the contrast +between the spiritual power of Jesus fresh from the Mount of Transfiguration, +and the want of such power in His disciples, who represent to us the +common life of the multitude and the plain. His reply to their +question was clearly intended to suggest to them the cause of their +spiritual feebleness. Do you wonder at your lack of power over +the diseases of the soul? “This kind can come forth by nothing, +but by prayer.” Now, this suggestive answer is very appropriate +for our consideration at the present time when we are approaching the +season of Lent, which has been observed century after century as a special +season of fasting, prayer, and penitence for sin, through all the Christian +Church.</p> +<p>When we think of these weeks, it is reasonable to believe that such +observance, so universal, so long continued, must have satisfied some +deep need of the heart, especially as it is not based on any particular +dogma. And this incident in the Saviour’s life, and these +emphatic <!-- page 129--><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>words of +His, may help us to a clearer understanding of the value of such times. +They declare to us the principle of the spiritual harvest, that, in +the spiritual life as in all else, we reap as we sow. They are +intended to convey to us this plain lesson, that if any of us give little +thought, attention, or effort to that side of our life which we speak +of as the spiritual, if there is in our daily habit and practice little +real prayer or self-denial, or devotion, little communing with God, +little endeavour to live in the spirit of Christ, and if, this being +so, we find ourselves weak or vacillating in our struggle against sin +or evil, whether in our own life or in society, there is nothing surprising +in such a result.</p> +<p>It is in our religious life just as in everything else—spiritual +carelessness or neglect must mean spiritual weakness. In all other +matters we look for results in some proportion to our efforts. +As we sow we expect to reap.</p> +<p>Here, for instance, in your daily life, if you wish to excel in any +particular game or pursuit, you practise it with diligence. You +<!-- page 130--><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>know that, without +such practice or concentration of effort upon it, any expectation of +excellence is simply foolish.</p> +<p>In your school work you recognise the same conditions. Intellectual +growth may seem sometimes to come slowly, in spite of all your efforts; +but it comes with certainty if you persevere, and it is equally certain +that it hardly ever comes at all to those who use no effort.</p> +<p>If, then, you look for progress or distinction, you know that you +must fix your thoughts upon your work, and practise industry, and, above +all, that you must cultivate a love of learning, so that your mind lingers +over it with some sense of enjoyment.</p> +<p>You do not expect a harvest where you have not sown. And it +is just this same law which you recognise and accept in other matters +that our Lord is here declaring to us as the law of spiritual power.</p> +<p>Do we desire to cast any evil influence or any weakness out of our +life? Do we ask despairingly how it is that we have not been <!-- page 131--><span class="pagenum">p. 131</span>able +to cast it out? Our Lord’s answer comes to us in these emphatic +words—“This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer.”</p> +<p>In other words, if we really desire that our soul shall be cleansed +and strengthened, we must surrender it to Him in prayer and self-denial, +in spiritual exercises and communion, that He may cure it of its sin +or its weakness, and inspire us with new life.</p> +<p>Prayer and fasting are in this word of His the symbol of all special +exercises of the spirit, as it strives to get free from the burden of +the flesh and to come nearer to God; and without such exercises, He +presses it on us if we stand in need of such reminders, we cannot hope +for any harvest of spiritual strength.</p> +<p>And we can hardly have failed to notice how His own practice corresponds +with His warnings and injunctions.</p> +<p>Before He began His ministry we read of His forty days’ fast +in the wilderness; and at every turn, in the course of it, we read again +and again incidentally of His constant withdrawals into privacy with +God.</p> +<p><!-- page 132--><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>His short life +on earth was a life of spiritual ministry. All the common things +of life were to Him so many illustrations of some spiritual lesson of +the Father’s love and care, or of man’s dependence on Him. +In every voice of the world there was the undertone of some spiritual +suggestion. So that we might say—Surely His days were one +unbroken course of spiritual work and communion, and He could need no +special seasons or exercises; but His example teaches us a different +lesson.</p> +<p>As if to bring it home to us beyond all possibility of doubt or question, +that the most devoted, the most active, and most powerful spiritual +characters, will always be those whose communion with God in private +prayer and exercise is most constant and intense, He Himself was continually +withdrawing for such communion; and there are no more suggestive passages +in the Gospels for our guidance than those incidental references which +tell us, as if by chance, giving us passing glimpses into the unrecorded +portions of His life, how on one occasion He retired into a mountain +apart to <!-- page 133--><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>pray, or +how on another he spent the whole night apart in prayer, or how he was +in a desert place apart in prayer.</p> +<p>These withdrawals of Jesus into the solitude of the desert or the +mountain, these hours in which He was alone with the Father, are but +another name for those exercises of prayer, fasting, meditation, communion +with God, without which, as He tells His followers in the text I have +read to you, it is not possible to eradicate from the soul those influences +of sin which destroy its harmony and undermine its strength.</p> +<p>These withdrawals were His times of spiritual refreshment; and by +His practice He declares to us His need of them. And if in His +case they were necessary, much more are they necessary for you and me, +entangled as we are amidst all the varied influences of our common life, +and with natures prone to sin.</p> +<p>Hence it is that the Church has set apart this season of Lent to +come round to us year by year as a season of special thought and prayer +and self-denial. Many other times and seasons <!-- page 134--><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>come +to us laden with the same spiritual influences, and to be used by us +as times of reflection, inspiration, purification, and strengthening. +This is the purpose which the quiet of these recurring Sundays should +be fulfilling in our lives, or our gatherings for Holy Communion.</p> +<p>And once and again there comes to us in the course of life some time +or season which is sure to make its impression upon our soul as having +brought us in a special sense into the presence of God, and within the +overshadowing influences of His Spirit.</p> +<p>So it may happen to us that some family bereavement, the death of +father or mother, of brother or sister, or child of our affections, +draws us away from the world into a closer communion with our Father +in Heaven, a communion which is never entirely lost again or forgotten. +So, too, comes the season of confirmation, as to many of you just now, +with all its thoughts, feelings, prayers, and resolutions.</p> +<p>And it is a happy thing for our life when <!-- page 135--><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>any +of these seasons leave an indelible mark upon our memory and our spirit.</p> +<p>But as we think of these words of Jesus, “This kind goeth not +out but by prayer and fasting”—the question for each of +us here to-day is, what practical daily meaning we hope to give to this +season of Lent which is to begin on Wednesday.</p> +<p>Let us not fancy that we can allow such seasons to come and go, year +by year, giving them no thought or attention, without some corresponding +loss.</p> +<p>The voice of humanity, and the experience of centuries, the practice +of holy men, and the example and the words of Christ Himself, have all +testified to the need there is for the spiritual observance of such +times, if men are to keep their soul alive in them—and who are +we that we should venture to set ourselves against such overpowering +testimony?</p> +<p>Let us rather address ourselves seriously to making these weeks a +time of some special exercise or discipline such as our life may need.</p> +<p><!-- page 136--><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>There is hardly +one of us but will confess, if he thinks of the matter at all, that +the world is too much with us; that its influence is too strong upon +us; that we are too ready to conform to its ways and follow its indulgences. +And such a confession is equivalent to an acknowledgment that we need +these Lenten seasons. And if with this feeling in our hearts we +use the coming weeks with any definite purpose, praying to be rid of +some temptation or weakness, or to be endowed with some strength, or +to be supported in some good purpose, we are sure to recognise with +thankfulness, when the time is over, that it has indeed proved a time +of some dislodgment, that some temptation or habit has fallen away from +us and left us free, so that some new spirit or purpose has begun to +grow in us.</p> +<p>We shall, in fact, be conscious, as the weeks go on, that a new life +of new tastes and new satisfactions has sprung up, as the first fruits +of our prayer. If we doubt the need of such exhortations as these, +let us reflect for a <!-- page 137--><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>moment—Does +it not sometimes happen to us that our souls are only too like the soul +of that sick child in the Gospel?</p> +<p>Good instincts, and intentions, and tendencies, are clearly felt +and recognised, but they are fitful, weak, and intermittent. Another +spirit seems to lay hold of us and carry us whither it will.</p> +<p>If in any sense this can be said to be your case, then remember, +that just what the Saviour’s healing word was to that child, sick +and possessed, as He met it on His way from the Hill of Transfiguration, +and breathed over it the spirit of the higher life, reducing the chaos +of the soul to harmony, and bringing reason out of madness, and freedom +out of demoniac possession, these holy seasons of time-honoured observance +may be to your soul, if you use them reverently, and as God’s +appointed means for your growth in the Spirit.</p> +<h2><!-- page 138--><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>XIV. GOD’S +CURSE ON SIN.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, +every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Repent and +turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not +be your ruin.”—<span class="smcap">Ezekiel </span>xviii. +30.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These words of Ezekiel may be understood as expressing in the prophet’s +language what the Book of Deuteronomy expresses in such denunciations +as those which were read to us the other day in the Commination Service.</p> +<p>They correspond also to the warning of St. Paul when he says—“Be +not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall +he also reap. He that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption; +and he that soweth to the spirit shall reap everlasting life.” +Or again they correspond to that question which is put to us in the +Epistle to the Hebrews—“If every transgression and disobedience +received <!-- page 139--><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>a just recompense +and reward, how shall we escape?”</p> +<p>Thus we find in the Pentateuch, in Ezekiel, and in the apostolic +writings the representatives of three very different stages of religious +enlightenment, all teaching us in effect the same lesson, to remember +the recompense that sin never fails to bring upon him who commits it. +As we listen to the curses of Deuteronomy on one sin and on another, +and then read the language of Ezekiel or St. Paul, we are conscious +of a difference in the modes of thought and expression. The thought +of the apostle is separated from that of the lawgiver or the prophet +of the Old Testament by the new revelation and the sacrifice of Jesus; +but yet underneath all differences their judgment on every sinful act +or habit remains spiritually the same. They all alike bid us, +when we think of our sins, to think also of the inevitable punishment +which rises behind them like their shadow; and to bear in mind that +the root of the whole matter is the one incontrovertible and never-changing +fact of human life <!-- page 140--><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>that +as you sow you must expect to reap—he that soweth to the flesh +shall of the flesh reap corruption.</p> +<p>Now, inasmuch as your early years are the seed-time of your life, +these stern reminders that if you sow any sin in your soul you will +some day reap its curse, that God will judge you every one according +to his ways, all this is very appropriate for your consideration. +And you are likely to be all the more serious about your present life +and its habits, tastes, and purposes if this thought really takes possession +of you, that there is in fact a very close analogy between the life +of the soul and life around us in the outer world, and that every seed +we sow in it grows after its own kind.</p> +<p>In the region of animal or vegetable life you see and recognise this +law on every side. You trace it sometimes as the law of improvement +by culture, sometimes as the law of degeneration.</p> +<p>You cultivate and tend a garden or a field, sowing, planting, eradicating, +and the growths <!-- page 141--><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>of +flower or fruit improve in proportion to your care; but leave it to +itself and the weeds choke it, and the very fruit degenerates; your +rose becomes a dog-rose—it reverts, as men say, to a lower type.</p> +<p>So exactly is it with your own life; so long as it is grafted into +a life higher than your own, so long as good purposes are being sown +in it and good habits cultivated, and the bad weeded out and the Spirit +of God breathes through it, it is growing nearer to the Divine type; +but neglect it, or follow sinful impulse or low taste, and it becomes +like the garden of weeds; degeneracy begins at once, it is changing +to something worse, it is reverting to a lower type.</p> +<p>This is a way of expressing it which is sufficiently familiar to +you. But this is only our modern way of looking at those facts +of life which were eloquent to men of earlier times as the curse of +God.</p> +<p>As, then, it is undoubtedly true that—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,<br /> +Our fatal shadows that walk with us still,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 142--><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>these stern warnings +which our Lenten services hold up before us are of the greatest value.</p> +<p>Keeping before us this law that in every region of life it is the +tendency of everything to bear fruit after its kind, we shall feel that +we can hardly impress it too deeply upon our minds that there is no +sin which we commit but will assuredly return upon our own heads. +The Israelites in the Old Testament saw the hand of God thus visiting +their sins upon them in many ways. They thought of Him as smiting +them for their sins with consumption or with fever, with plague or mildew, +or the sword of the oppressor. These are not our expectations. +We have learnt that it is not with such visitations that God punishes +us for our sinful indulgence or neglect, but that He does it with a +punishment which may be less obvious but is often more ruinous than +these.</p> +<p>Neglect the opportunities of good with which He strews your path +in early life, let some sin strike its roots in your heart and take +possession of it, and the curse of God <!-- page 143--><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>for +that neglect or that sin will overtake you, no doubt of it; coming not +perhaps as the Israelite on Mount Ebal expected it to come for any sin +of his, but coming, you hardly know how, as the change for the worse, +the sinking to lower levels of thought, and taste, and aim, and practice, +the reversion to lower types, which is the end of neglect, coming as +the creeping and insidious growth of the power of sin working ever stronger +in us as the natural fruit of indulgence. So the curse of that +ancient Jewish law turns out to be a terrible and unchanging truth, +written in a law which is never obsolete and grows not old, a law which +calls on us for our Amen! as it cries to us equally in the language +of Divine revelation and of the latest scientific discovery: “Sow +neglect,” it says, “and you will reap deterioration; sow +sin, and you will reap corruption.”</p> +<p>This vision of the ultimate results of evil is a very ugly one, put +it in whatever shape you will, and we are naturally somewhat loth to +look it in the face. We would rather not <!-- page 144--><span class="pagenum">p. 144</span>think +of any sin of ours as entailing such consequences. This conception +of Divine justice or retribution embodied in the action of unbending +laws and declaring that death is the fruit of sin, and that death must +come of it, this is no doubt a conception which inspires awe. +We shrink from it; we hardly dare to say Amen! to its dread utterances. +We should like, it may be, to shut our eyes to the fact and dwell rather +on the thought that our God is long-suffering and of great kindness +and of tender mercy. It is more soothing to think of love than +of retribution, or of the arm that shelters or upholds us than of the +hand that smites; but the real question should be—“Is it +true, this declaration that as we sow we reap, that the wages of sin +is death, death of faculty, death of hope?” It is foolish +to blink the sterner aspects of life. The fruit of such blinking +and turning aside is very often the very thing we do not like to think +of—indulgence and its retribution. Divine love and goodness +and long-suffering cannot occupy too much of our thoughts and prayers; +for it <!-- page 145--><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>is through +these that the heart is touched, and the spirit is fostered in us, and +we awake to the new life in Christ.</p> +<p>But if we shrink from contemplating that law of Divine retribution, +which works in men’s lives side by side with the law of mercy +and love, it is time for us to ask ourselves—“How is it +that I thus shrink from the thought of these penalties?”</p> +<p>There is indeed one sense in which we naturally shrink from the thought +that the wages of sin is death, even while we acknowledge that it is +so. It is inexpressibly sad to dwell on the infinite mass of sin +which is daily bearing its bitter and deadly fruit in the world, and +propagating itself after its kind; to think of the untold number of +darkened or misguided souls that have sown to the flesh, and are going +in consequence down to failure and death, blighted, corrupted, ruined. +From this thought we naturally turn to the thought of God’s mercy, +and pray that He may yet sow the seeds of new hope in the dismal waste +of such lives.</p> +<p><!-- page 146--><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>But it happens +to us, I fear sometimes, that this thought of God’s curse on sin +sends a chill through the heart, and we shrink away from it, because +of our own unregenerate life, because of the fascination which sinful +impulse or habit exercises over us.</p> +<p>If the warning voice of our Lenten Commination Service has convicted +any one of us of this motive for shrinking from its stern sentence, +it has come to us as a true messenger of the God who has no pleasure +in the death of him that dieth. We need the voice of these threatenings, +because the heart has such a great power of self-deception in it. +Men find it so easy to thrust away into the dim background of their +thoughts all the dark but sure consequences of present sins, treating +them as a debt which will come up no doubt for payment some day, but +may be put aside just now.</p> +<p>And one virtue of our stern plain-speaking Lenten services is this, +that they will not allow us to forget that fated reckoning day—they +put us, whether we like it or not, face to <!-- page 147--><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>face +with the sure consequences of sin; and they compel us to listen to the +question—“What is the choice of thy life?”</p> +<p>For you will bear in mind that we read all these decrees of Divine +law with our eye fixed on our own life and not on our neighbour. +They are meant to help us to judge ourselves, and not some other person; +they lead us to penitence and not to criticism, so that our readiness +or our unwillingness to meet and to weigh them, and to respond to them +with definite prayer and penitence, may be taken as an index of our +religious sincerity, and of our readiness to consecrate our lives to +the service of our Saviour Christ.</p> +<p>And it is well for us that we should ask ourselves these questions; +for if indeed it is true that every transgression and disobedience shall +receive its just recompense and reward, how else shall we escape?</p> +<h2><!-- page 148--><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>XV. THE +CONFLICT WITH EVIL.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us +from evil.”—<span class="smcap">St. Matthew </span>vi. 13.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is good for us sometimes to stand still for a moment and consider +our use of very familiar words. And this petition may appropriately +illustrate our need of such an exercise.</p> +<p>It is on your lips every day. Every Sunday you offer it you +hardly know how many times, in private and in public prayer: “Lead +us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” And the +moment you stop to think about it you feel—who does not?—that +it is a very solemn and moving petition if you offer it before God in +sincerity, and with an honest desire to be kept out of the way of sin; +but it becomes a fearful mockery if it is offered <!-- page 149--><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>with +unclean lips, or by one who is living in any sort of sinful practice, +either secret or open.</p> +<p>And yet, as we all know, it is possible to do this, making the prayer +mere lip service, under the influence of daily custom. This, then, +is the question it suggests to us whenever we stop to think about it: +How far are we endeavouring to keep our lives in accordance with the +spirit of such a petition? “Lead us not into temptation, +but deliver us from evil.” Most of you, I can well believe, +would not voluntarily or deliberately step out of your way to meet a +temptation, or to seek any evil course of life. You would not +do it of your own free choice, or in cold blood, as we say. This, +at any rate, is your own feeling about sin, whether the feeling is consistent +with your life or not. As you contemplate any low form of life +in another, you recognise its ugliness and its degrading character, +and you call it very likely by the name it deserves. If, then, +you find yourself <!-- page 150--><span class="pagenum">p. 150</span>involved +in any sin, in spite of these feelings, and although you take this daily +prayer upon your lips, how comes it to be so? How comes it that +you remain in this pitiable condition?</p> +<p>Your answer is, perhaps, that temptation comes upon you unawares, +and that it takes you by surprise; or it seems to watch for some moment +of forgetfulness or weakness; or you fight against a temptation, but +still it clings to you as if it had a life of its own and were independent +of you; or you are drawn into sin you scarcely know how; or you are +driven into it by some one whom you fear although you despise him; or +it seems to you to be in the very air you breathe. And although +such answers explanatory of a life of sin or waste are no real excuse +for it, they are very often quite true. If it were not so, the +devil would not be the dangerous enemy that he assuredly is to our spiritual +life; our risk of failure in our battle with sin would not be so <!-- page 151--><span class="pagenum">p. 151</span>great +as experience shows it to be. We must therefore expect that temptations +to sin will sometimes come upon us quite by surprise and at unlocked +for moments, and that some temptations will linger and cling to us with +a hateful persistence; you must be prepared also to find that some companion +may draw you towards a sin, or a bully may endeavour to drive you into +it. Your life is a happy one if it is free from all such risks, +but you cannot count upon such freedom. So that, if any one begins +his life thinking that his conflict with evil and its manifold temptations +is going to be an easy one, he begins under a dangerous delusion, and +he is likely to end in some disastrous failure.</p> +<p>You desire, let us hope, to keep your soul unstained by evil ways. +If, then, you remember that to secure such a stainless and unpolluted +life you have not only to fight with some external enemy now and then, +but against dark and insidious powers of evil which seem to start up +around <!-- page 152--><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>you and in +the very citadel of your heart unawares, and that except through a constant +sense of God’s presence in your life you cannot hope to keep free +from their influence, this feeling should give reality and earnestness +to our daily prayer to be delivered from the evil.</p> +<p>And, indeed, this feeling that our life is set in the midst of many +and great dangers is one of the first requisites for its moral safety. +It stands beside us with its warning, whenever a temptation to some +sin besets us, reminding us that, no matter how pleasant or attractive +the temptation may seem to be, or how trifling the sin that it suggests, +it is in fact an outpost of a great army, whose name is legion, and +that we should hold no parleyings and have no dealings with it, for +it breathes corruption, and it brings degradation and death behind it.</p> +<p>“<i>Obsta principiis</i>” may indeed be said to be a +warning specially needed by us in regard to every kind of temptation. +But <!-- page 153--><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>we may go further +than this. Our safety from particular sins depends very often +and very largely, at a critical moment, upon our general attitude and +feeling towards sin in every shape.</p> +<p>It must be acknowledged, I think, that most sins which lay their +hold upon us and master us, or struggle long and hard for the mastery, +make their first entrance into the soul so easily, because they find +it swept and garnished for their reception, and its doors wide open. +With reference to this you have only to reflect on some chapter of your +own experience. Has it never happened that, when some wrong or +sinful act or thought or speech was first presented to you, it stirred +a feeling of shrinking, or strong dislike, or fear, or uneasiness, or, +it may be, disgust; but instead of listening to that warning voice, +and spurning the temptation utterly, as your feeling bade you do, you +were attracted somehow to turn and gaze upon it. You knew it to +be sin, but you felt <!-- page 154--><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>no +repulsion. Your soul was not garrisoned and defended by any strong +sense of the hatefulness and deadly influence of all sin as such; so +if you fled from it it was with a backward look; and then you allowed +yourself to think of it in others, or you lived on friendly and familiar +terms with those who were stained by it; possibly you even jested about +it; you let your thoughts feed upon it; you expressed no stern disapproval +of it; you allowed the atmosphere of your life to be tainted by it; +and at last your adversary the devil, having rejoiced to see his wiles +thus gathering round you, saw you slip or plunge into the sin, and go +one great step nearer to becoming his bondslave—just as some foolish +bird, fluttering this way and that instead of spreading its wings for +a heavenward flight into the pure and safe upper air, might plunge into +the snares of the fowler. And yet all the while, although you +were living this weak and vacillating life, which is the seed-field +of <!-- page 155--><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>sin, you were +praying to God every day—“Lead us not into temptation.”</p> +<p>If we remember any such experience we may at least gather from it +some lessons of safety and strength for the time to come. It reminds +us first of all how vitally important is our general attitude towards +every form of sin and its allurements. On this attitude it very +often depends whether your life is to be comparatively free from pitfalls, +or whether it is to be beset with dangers at every turning. If +by your attitude and behaviour you cause it to be felt that sin is hateful +to you, and that you are sincere when you pray that God may keep you +from all evil, a great many of the temptations that would otherwise +make your life difficult and dangerous will shrink away abashed; or +if the tempter ventures to assail you, he will do it half-heartedly +when he sees that you repel him with a whole-hearted repugnance. +It is this attitude even more than individual acts which fixes the tone +of a society.</p> +<p><!-- page 156--><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>When there is +no prevalent sense that there are those present who maintain this attitude +of hatred and contempt for sin and everything that breeds or fosters +it, the tone, as men say, becomes low, or lax, the air becomes corrupt, +and life in such surroundings becomes full of peril. If the good +are timid, shrinking, showing no positive fervour, no zeal for virtue, +and no moral indignation against evil influence, then the bad in their +society will lift up their heads and walk boldly. But when, on +the other hand, they who are in their hearts convinced of the sinfulness +of sin, and of the infinite mischief that may arise out of any form +of it, are not ashamed to show it by their attitude, they cause the +base to hide itself in its proper darkness, and they create an atmosphere +around them in which temptations lose a great deal of their force and +strength.</p> +<p>Let this, then, be your feeling about your life—that when it +is assailed by any sin, that sin is not something isolated or <!-- page 157--><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>insignificant; +it is not something which may be indulged or accepted, as if it had +no relation with other sins; it is a part of an infinite brood of evil; +and that if you admit it within the circle of your life, or tolerate +it in the air you breathe, you never know where its pestilent germs +may fall, and breed, and multiply, and what mischief may come of it.</p> +<p>It is this feeling of the mysterious vitality of sin, and the subtle +kinship of one form of sin with other forms, and its destructiveness +when it seizes on a life or poisons an atmosphere, that helps us more +than anything else to feel the force and the intensity of the Saviour’s +prayer for us: “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those +whom Thou hast given Me. I pray not that Thou shouldest take them +out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from evil.” +It is this same feeling of the spreading, insidious, infectious and +destructive nature of sin that makes us echo this as our first and most +<!-- page 158--><span class="pagenum">p. 158</span>earnest prayer for +all we love, that God may keep them from evil; and it is this that makes +us value so highly and recognise with thankful hearts every example +of a pure and strong life, which gives inspiration and strength to those +around it.</p> +<h2><!-- page 159--><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>XVI. SPIRITUAL +BLINDNESS.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“As it is written, God hath given them the spirit +of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should +not hear.”—<span class="smcap">Romans </span>xi. 8.</p> +<p>“Blindness in part is happened to Israel.”—<span class="smcap">Romans +</span>xi. 25.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is a sad and painful reflection, and one which is continually +forced upon us as we read the New Testament, that the long training +and preparation of the Jews brought them at the last not to the acceptance +but to the rejection of Jesus.</p> +<p>They had been taught, generation after generation, that they were +the called and chosen people of God. Psalmists and prophets had +enriched their life with the outpouring of their moral and spiritual +revelations, and fired their hopes with promises. They lived in +the expectation of the Messiah who was to complete these revelations +of the God <!-- page 160--><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>who had +led them and taught them ever since the days of their Egyptian bondage.</p> +<p>Yet, when this crowning revelation came to them, they could not even +recognise it. The Son of God “came unto His own and His +own received Him not.” As St. Paul expresses it in my text, +while grieving for them with all the intensity of his fervid affection, +their life was overgrown with a sort of spiritual dulness. They +were suffering from a sort of ossification of the spirit, so that the +last and greatest revelation of God could make no impression upon them.</p> +<p>But this picture of the Jews rejecting and crucifying their Saviour, +and unable to appreciate or to receive the gift of new life which was +offered to them, blind to its beauty, unattracted by its charm, is not +only one of the saddest sights in history, it is very instructive for +every one of us, because it is charged with warnings that are never +out of date. For there is no individual life, and no society, +that is not liable to drift into a similar dulness of vision, <!-- page 161--><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>and +so to reject or disregard what God gives for its enlightenment. +The great critical events in the world’s history, the events that +make epochs in the consciousness of men, are not different in kind from +those of our own obscure lives. They are, as it were, our own +familiar experience, written prophetically and written large.</p> +<p>So the blindness that happened to Israel, and arrested their spiritual +growth, may be happening no less to any of us. As God gave them +the spirit of slumber, so it may be with our lives.</p> +<p>And the very thought of our possible risks in this respect is valuable +to us.</p> +<p>To be conscious that in regard to any of the higher and better things +of life our eyes may possibly be growing dim, and our ears dull of hearing, +and that God may be pressing upon us gifts of great price which we are +too dull to see or to accept—if our soul is sufficiently awake +to feel this, then the very feeling may of itself be the germ of new +life in us.</p> +<p><!-- page 162--><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>And it is very +certain, on the other hand, that if we are altogether without any such +feelings there is a risk, which even amounts to a probability, that +the hardening or deadening influences of custom and tradition will sooner +or later degrade our life. And if it should be asked,—How +comes it that we are so liable to be affected by this dulness of spirit +and of general habit?—we have to reply that it is because of the +sensitiveness of the human soul to surrounding influences.</p> +<p>It is because our souls are so receptive, so imitative, and in consequence +so easily perverted, darkened, blinded, or misled. I suppose we +are all of us conscious of this sensitiveness of the moral and spiritual +nature; we should all say, if questioned, that we are quite aware of +it, and that no one would dispute it. The soul of every child +or man, we should say, is a fine and delicate and sensitive instrument, +with the possibilities in it of we know not what Divine harmonies, but +easily spoilt.</p> +<p><!-- page 163--><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>And yet, when +we look at all the common and traditional ordering of daily life, whether +in our educating of the young or in the influences that we allow to +prevail among young and old, it would seem sometimes as if this thought +of the soul’s sensitiveness had never dawned upon us. When +we once really grasp this thought, or, let us rather say, when this +thought has once really fastened upon our mind, and fixed itself there, +so that it remains with us, and goes about with us; and when, in consequence, +we come to feel how easily any soul may be perverted, or rendered hard +or dull; in one word, how easily it may be degraded; then it follows +that we look with new eyes on many things, many customs, many influences +which the unthinking hardly notice, or notice only to misjudge.</p> +<p>In the light of this feeling of the soul’s sensitiveness, the +thoughtful man is very often intolerant of things which to others seem +of little moment, because he sees how they are tending to dull or deaden +the eye <!-- page 164--><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>of the soul, +or to pervert or to kill its finer instincts; and how, in consequence, +though tradition may have given them a sort of spurious consecration, +or the world in its blindness may have come to honour them, they are +in fact laden with mischief to the general life.</p> +<p>It was the thought of this sensitiveness of the soul to external +influences, and of the ease with which any bad influence, or bad custom +or practice or fashion, perverts common lives, and of the untold mischief +which is consequently latent in it, that winged the words of a well-known +writer when she protested, some years ago, against what she designated +as debasing the moral currency.</p> +<p>That writer was thinking primarily of vulgar jesting on great subjects, +which should stir us to admiration and reverence, and so debasing men’s +tastes. She had in her mind the class of persons who have the +art of spoiling things that are noble or beautiful by their vulgar handling +of them; and of the mischief which is done by such persons to public +taste and tone and character.</p> +<p><!-- page 165--><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>But we may widen +the reference. Whosoever, in anything that concerns the conduct +of life, spreads low notions, or drags down men’s opinion or taste, +thus helping to pervert ordinary minds from those higher aims and motives +and those reverent views of character and life which should be cherished +for our common use and service, is debasing the moral currency.</p> +<p>Here, then, we have a very practical question for our consideration +and answering. “Is there anything in my life”—so +the question comes to us in our self-examination—“which +could be so described? any influence, spreading from my conduct, of +which men might truly say that it also is helping to debase the moral +currency? Is there to be seen in it anything that tends towards +the lowering of common standards? any misuse of things sacred or holy? +any foolish or vulgar estimate of the higher things of life?” +And if we are in any doubt how to put these questions in a concrete +and practical shape, we have only to remember how <!-- page 166--><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>any +one who helps to lower any standard of taste or conduct is debasing +the moral currency of life; how, for instance, all those are debasing +it who substitute any wrong notion of honour for right notions of honour, +or who put roughness and coarseness in place of manliness, or who set +the fashion of cynical judgments on good and bad characters.</p> +<p>Or we might take an illustration from what is, unhappily, a very +common element in English life: the habit of gambling sport. Wherever +this habit spreads, in any class of society, from the highest to the +lowest, its effect is invariable; it undermines integrity, it hardens +the heart and debases taste, and is the willing handmaid of other vices. +Moral degradation is its inseparable companion. Therefore, if +you mix in it, or share in it, or give any adhesion or countenance to +it, which helps, as men say, to make it respectable, and so to spread +its influence, you are debasing the moral currency.</p> +<p>Or take another common case. You are familiar with the poet’s +description, “And thus <!-- page 167--><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>he +bore without abuse the grand old name of gentleman.” That +is a noble thing for any man or boy to have said of him; and there is +not one among you who does not desire always to be able to claim that +name as his own.</p> +<p>But, wherever we go in the world, how many men there are who claim +it and yet debase it by ignoble use! They help to spread the notion +that a man may be a man of low morality and still a gentleman; that +his gentlemanliness may be a mere varnish of culture and manners, a +thin veneering having underneath it only meanness, or coarseness, or +corruption; and that, notwithstanding this, he may still claim to be +called a gentleman. Those who spread such doctrines are debasing +the moral currency of English life. And it should be the mission +of schools like this, and of those who grow up in them, to pour upon +all such persons the contempt which they deserve, and to restore the +currency of common life to something of Christian purity.</p> +<p><!-- page 168--><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>Remembering, then, +how sensitive the soul is, and how easily by example, or conduct, or +fashion it may be so perverted as to lose its clear vision and higher +aims, its pure tastes and ennobling emotions, we have to make it our +ambition and endeavour that our life may be kept free from such debasement.</p> +<p>But, if we are to succeed in this, we must make it our daily prayer +that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ will enlighten the eyes of our +understanding, and give unto us the spirit of wisdom and revelation +in the knowledge and love of Him.</p> +<h2><!-- page 169--><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>XVII. A +NEW HEART.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit +will I put within you.”—<span class="smcap">Ezekiel </span>xxxvi. +26.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In the beautiful and suggestive dream of Solomon, which is recorded +in the third chapter of the First Book of Kings, God appears to him, +saying, “Ask what I shall give thee”; and Solomon’s +answer is, “O Lord, I am but a child set over this great people, +give me, I pray Thee, a hearing heart.” And God said to +him, “Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for +thyself long life, nor riches; behold, I have done according to thy +words. I have given thee a wise and understanding heart, and I +have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches and +honour.” And the record of this vision was clearly meant +to indicate that the supreme gift of the wisest of men was the <!-- page 170--><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>hearing +or understanding heart. On the other hand, there is nothing against +which our Lord in the Gospels utters stronger warnings than that dulness +or deadness of spirit which is described as having eyes that see not, +and ears that are dull of hearing, and hearts that do not understand. +And in illustration of this we read how, while the crowds throng or +press upon Jesus, it is the stricken woman who, with soul sensitive +to His influence, feels the virtue come out of Him though she only touches +the hem of His garment.</p> +<p>Thus we are warned to beware lest that should come upon us which +was the ruin of the Jews, dulness or deadness of spiritual faculty; +and we are exhorted to pray for and to cherish the hearing heart, the +soul that sees and feels spiritual influences, and is sensitive to every +high call. And if your soul is thus open and receptive, it is +marvellous how full the world becomes to you of Divine voices. +They come upon you unexpected, unsought, sending through your heart +some illuminating flash of surprise, so that you wonder at your previous +<!-- page 171--><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>dulness; they strike +you with the sudden shock of some new knowledge or insight, and make +you feel, as never before, the true nature of your daily conduct or +your duty and your relation to other men; or they come as the unresting +presence of some new thought, which, once roused, haunts and troubles +you with questions which you cannot answer, or feelings which you cannot +get rid of.</p> +<p>When the soul is roused in this way we see and feel the hatefulness +of any sin that may have tempted or beset us; or we contrast our own +life with that of those whose lot is so much harder than ours, and we +are struck with shame at our selfishness, or waste, or our indifference +to the privation, and sin, and suffering that are all around us in the +world.</p> +<p>Or sometimes these Divine voices in our ears bring it home to us +how much we are losing out of our life’s higher possibilities, +if from sinful or selfish habit, from dulness of spirit or lack of sympathy, +we cut ourselves off in thought and feeling and interest from the great +<!-- page 172--><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>needs, the great +sorrows, the great pulsations of the larger world.</p> +<p>But why, you may ask, do I dwell on all this? It is because +these are the true Advent voices for us, coming as they do to rouse +us out of narrow preoccupation, to open our eyes to the sinfulness of +sin, to make us feel that the self-centred, isolated, self-seeking life +is a life of a low type, and to stir us with social and religious interests +and enthusiasms.</p> +<p>These calls that come to you, whether invited or not, and that stir +your heart, speaking to you out of the multitudinous life of the time +you live in, are like the watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, which +never hold their peace day nor night.</p> +<p>This ferment of higher life within us and around us, these voices +of the Spirit in us, as it struggles to lift us out of the region of +fleshly influences, is renewed in every generation and in every single +life. If you hear no such voices, if the phenomena of life make +no such impression upon you, if you are deaf to all these calls, and +care for none of these <!-- page 173--><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>things, +then it is clear that your soul is not yet awake in you; you are living +with a dull or darkened heart. It is a sort of cave life, or subterranean +life, you lead in such a case, a life of lower rank and lesser hopes.</p> +<p>Yet these voices from above, that come as the witness of the Divine +Spirit with our spirit that we are the children of God, never fail us. +They do not belong only to times far off. We are not to think +of them merely as enshrined in the Bible and peculiar to it; but as +living voices that are speaking to us to-day out of the depths of the +Divine life, in which our life is sustained.</p> +<p>But we have always to bear this in mind, that the Divine voices speak +to men with most stirring effect in every generation when they speak +to them through the pressing needs of their own day. To the Jews +the voice of God came in the inspired language of their deliverers and +prophets—in their unceasing warnings, and their impassioned appeals, +and their revelations of new truth. To the first generation of +Christians these same voices <!-- page 174--><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>came +in the shape of strong Advent hopes. Many things contributed to +lift the Apostles and their followers nearer to God than men of ordinary +times. They had seen the Lord; they had lived in His presence; +they had gone through much tribulation; the tongue of fire had rested +on them; the Spirit had taken full possession of them; but we cannot +read the New Testament without feeling that the most stirring, the most +regenerative influence in their society was the vividness and intensity +of their Advent hope. Their expectation of the Lord’s return +lifted them out of the temptations of the world and above the trials +of it. It took hold of their active powers, and made them new +men.</p> +<p>Their Advent expectation was not the vague, half mystic, half sentimental +movement of the heart, which just touches the lives of so many Christians +during our Advent seasons, while it does not really alter any of their +earthly concerns.</p> +<p>Christ was very near to the Apostolic Christians. As the eastern +sky brightened <!-- page 175--><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>every +morning they felt that it might be the light of His coming; they thought +of Him as only hidden from them by the neighbouring cloud. They +looked for Him to return at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in +the noonday, and none could say how soon. And so it came to pass +that this expectation made those first believers, those humble followers +of Christ, those Galilean fishermen, those obscure provincials, instinct +with that great life which lifts men above the world, and constitutes +them a new power in it.</p> +<p>Our lives are largely influenced by the thought of slow development; +but we miss a great deal of the secret of all higher life if we forget +this wonderful exaltation of the poor and ignorant and obscure by this +gift of the Spirit and the inspiration of Divine hope. It was +not by any method which we could have forecast that those men found +out this charm which takes the heart captive and regenerates the life. +In their presence we feel the force of the prophet’s words, “Not +by might nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord.”</p> +<p><!-- page 176--><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>But then there +rises the question, How are these Divine influences to become powerful +in us also?</p> +<p>On the one hand, we are conscious that as we live involved or entangled +in the worldly life, or in any form of external life around us, the +spiritual part of us slumbers or is overlaid. It loses its practical +power over our thought, our feeling, and our conduct—our lamp +goes out. Whilst on the other hand we are conscious that the special +form of Advent expectation which inspired and possessed the first generation +of Christians is gone from us past recovery. We see clearly enough +as we read the New Testament what that first generation expected, and +how the expectation transformed their lives; but we see also that they +were mistaken in their hope, and that God’s providential plan +proved to be far greater than their human conception of it. What, +then, are our Advent hopes?</p> +<p>There are two things which we should keep clear in our minds concerning +them. One, that they must be based upon our feeling of the <!-- page 177--><span class="pagenum">p. 177</span>living +influence of Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit; and the other +is that the voices of the Spirit must come to us out of the needs of +our own life and of the time we live in if they are to lead us to practical +issues. When we look out upon the world and its life we feel that +Advent hopes must take some new form if they are to preserve reality +and to be fulfilled.</p> +<p>We see decaying faith in some quarters, and selfishness growing where +faith decays; we see ignorance and want and all their crop of sin and +misery deep-rooted in the life of every city; and the prospect which +these things suggest, the problems that meet us as we think of them, +might well fill us with misgiving. And they would indeed do so +were it not for the fact that the revelation of such things brings with +it another revelation also; it seizes on men’s souls and stirs +them as with a Divine summons. And thus we have these hopeful +signs for the future rising around us, even where things look darkest, +that the great problems of humanity are felt in our day to <!-- page 178--><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>be +above all things its social and religious problems. And seeing +that the aspirations of the time—the feelings, the purposes, the +aims, and hopes that lift men—grow out of the needs of the time +and the problems of its life, we look forward—we have good ground +for looking forward—to a generation of men who shall be distinguished +by religious earnestness and by social enthusiasm.</p> +<p>But if this be so, what will your share be in this coming life? +The Spirit of God, as we now understand it, comes to us with calls of +this kind.</p> +<p>If you would hasten the Advent of Christ in your own soul and in +the souls of others, you must discard selfishness, you must rise above +self-indulgence, you must prepare to merge yourself in the social life, +for the social good; seeing that the growth of this good is the only +sure and certain sign of the coming of the Lord. So, then, the +Angel of the Advent is thus calling us. The future before you +is big with social and religious issues, and the Spirit of Christ is +brooding over it, and you and such as you are to be His chosen instruments +in helping forward these issues.</p> +<h2><!-- page 179--><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span>XVIII. +SPIRITUAL POWER.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“And behold I send <i>the promise of My Father +upon you</i>; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be <i>endued +with power from on high</i>.”—<span class="smcap">St. Luke +</span>xxiv. 49.</p> +<p>“Ye shall receive <i>power</i>, after that the Holy Ghost is +come upon you.”—<span class="smcap">Acts </span>i. 8.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To-day we are celebrating the last of the series of historical festivals +which mark the springtime of our Christian year. And without this +one the rest would leave us with a sense of incompleteness; for we should +be without its gift of the abiding and indwelling Spirit, and the fulfilment +of the last promise.</p> +<p>What, then, are we learning of its practical lessons, and gathering +into our life? We have read the Pentecostal narrative, and others +that illustrate it. We have sung Pentecostal hymns. We have +joined in special prayer for the light of the Holy <!-- page 180--><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>Spirit +to shine in our hearts, giving us a right judgment; and if we are led +to ask, “To what purpose is all this?” the answer is to +be seen in the texts I have just read to you, the burden of which is +the gift of power from on high. Do we not recognise this as the +end of the New Testament revelation? And do we not acknowledge +that this revelation fails, so far as we are concerned, if it gives +us no such <i>power</i>? It is, indeed, in considering this power +of the Spirit that we touch to the quick the real influence of religion +in the practical life of men; for experience shows that it is possible +for a man to be endowed with almost every other gift and yet to lack +this one—this indwelling gift of the Holy Ghost the Comforter.</p> +<p>Our life is filled with almost everything we could ask or require +to enlighten us or to guide and direct, and yet it fails sometimes.</p> +<p>It may be failing in some of us here to-day, just from want of this +Divine spark, <!-- page 181--><span class="pagenum">p. 181</span>this +influence of a Spirit from above taking up His abode in us, burning +and shining in our hearts so as to purge our affections from sinful +taint and purify our tastes, lifting up and enlarging our capacities, +and rousing our energies—in one word, fusing all our life into +a new form with its refining power.</p> +<p>And the question of all questions for each of us to consider is, +“How am I to make my life the home and embodiment of this power +from above?” If we turn to our Lord’s own example, +or to the life of Paul or any other of His followers, or to any life +we have known and felt to breathe around it this same power of the Spirit, +some things become at once very obvious and clear to us.</p> +<p>That supreme example and those lives declare that whoever desires +to have his soul purified and invigorated, to be charged with this Divine +electric influence, must have something of separateness and independence +in his life; he must feel himself <!-- page 182--><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>as +not merely one of a crowd moved by the desires, aims, hopes, tastes, +and ambitions which may chance to prevail around him, but as a separate +soul in direct communion with the Spirit of God.</p> +<p>But if we are to realise this in our own life, it means that our +times of daily prayer, whether in private or in public, are times at +which we lay open our secret life to the Divine presence and influence; +it means that we give some real thought and meditation to this presence +of God in our life, and that we thus feed our souls continually on wholesome +spiritual food. It is in this way that men’s lives become +in a real sense the temples of the Holy Spirit, and the influences of +sin fall away from them.</p> +<p>But the hindrances that are always acting to undermine or destroy +any such spiritual power in us are manifold, and seldom far away from +our life.</p> +<p>The world outside is always with us and acting in this way, distracting +thought, <!-- page 183--><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span>setting +up its own standards, drawing us into its channels, and deadening the +Spirit in us. This is one of the inevitable conditions of life +as you will have to live it, and the man who is in earnest recognises +it as a paramount reason why he should never drop out of his personal +practice the habit of separate prayer and communion with God. +Or again, we may, and often do, let these hindrances grow up within +us through our own fault, and quite apart from any active influences +of the outer world.</p> +<p>We contract a dulness of spirit, so that spiritual things have no +interest and faith has no living power in the heart; and all this very +often not because any person, or anything outside of us, can be said +to have led us away and entangled us, but simply because we have taken +no pains to keep our life within the range of spiritual influences; +we have let prayer slip out of it; we have lived in no spiritual companionship; +we have done nothing to <!-- page 184--><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>keep +our soul alive in us. This is how men choose the lower life, and +surrender their birthright out of pure inertia, so that they lose their +spiritual capacity.</p> +<p>But worst of all hindrances to the indwelling of God’s Holy +Spirit in any life is the harbouring of sensual appetite or craving, +passion, or indulgence. No man can expect the Holy Spirit of God +to make its home in such unclean company. It is on this account +that there is nothing which so soon grows to depraved habit, to God-abandoned +state, as sensual appetite; nothing which so rapidly dulls the higher +affections in the heart and saps all the finer elements of life.</p> +<p>Therefore, when we are thinking of God’s gift of the Holy Ghost, +and of spiritual power as the saving and uplifting influence in our +soul, we do well to reflect a little on those hindrances which will +be fatal to all such power in us, if they are allowed to take possession +of our life and to prevail in it.</p> +<p><!-- page 185--><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>We do well to +reflect in this way, because such reflection will make us very careful +against harbouring or encouraging any of these fatal hindrances, and +careful also against any other form of spiritual waste.</p> +<p>There is no surer guide to a right use of all liberty than this reflection +upon the power of the indwelling spirit in us, and the things that add +to it or destroy it.</p> +<p>Recognising that this Spirit, which, in the language of your confirmation +prayer, is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel +and ghostly strength, the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness and +of holy fear; recognising that this Spirit, with its sevenfold gifts, +is the saving element in all free life, you begin to look with fresh +feelings on all your leisure hours, on all your hours of liberty, when +you are released from task work or supervision, when your life is what +you yourselves are making it, and you begin to consider whether these +times, as you spend them, are indeed times of growth or, it may be, +<!-- page 186--><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>of waste, times of +genuine freedom or of slavery to some form of lower life. When +you think of this Holy Spirit of God as a power in every good life, +it becomes a very real question what and of what sort is the <i>power</i> +that is holding sway over you in your leisure hours.</p> +<p>This is indeed a question which never sleeps, and to-day we ask, +What is your Whitsuntide answer to it?</p> +<p>If there be any one to whom such a question is not yet a matter of +living concern, it is the purpose of this Pentecostal festival to rouse +him to new thoughts about it.</p> +<p>If there be any older person in this congregation who lets his years +slip from him, not caring or forgetting the importance of it, and not +striving to leaven all his hours of work or leisure with the thought +of this indwelling Spirit from above; or if there should be any young +boy who, in utter thoughtlessness, or from perversity or coarseness, +or any induced depravity of <!-- page 187--><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>taste, +allows any evil spirit to bear rule in his life, our prayer for such +an one to-day is that the baptism of fire may descend upon his soul, +and the power of a new spirit be felt in it.</p> +<p>And indeed there is not one of us but needs to come at such a time +with this same prayer for his own life; for our own experience is too +often very like the vision of Ezekiel. Under the influences that +come between us and the Spirit of the living God, our soul is in continual +danger of being like the prophet’s valley of dry bones, which +lay lifeless, unmoved, till the breath of the Lord breathed over them, +and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their +feet, an exceeding great army.</p> +<p>So we pray that our life may prove responsive to these influences +of the Pentecostal season. And the first response it gives is +when it rises up in the consciousness of the Spirit of God as a living +power in the heart, a power to drive out evil, and <!-- page 188--><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>to +inspire and strengthen us for what is good.</p> +<p>And if, under the inspiring associations of this historic and holy +day, you feel your soul touched with a new spirit or consciousness rising +up in you from the grave of its own dead self to new desires and new +thoughts, and a new sense of the living nearness of the Holy Ghost the +Comforter, then you know—and you need no prophet to tell you—that +the Pentecostal gift has not failed, and there is good hope that you +will not spoil either your youth or your manhood with any form of ignoble +life.</p> +<h2><!-- page 189--><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>XIX. SANCTIFIED +FOR SERVICE.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“We are labourers together with God; ye are God’s +husbandry; ye are God’s building.”—1 <span class="smcap">Cor</span>. +iii. 9.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this passage St. Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for that spirit +of party which was dividing them into followers of this or that teacher +and so destroying their unity in Christ. You do not belong, he +says, to Paul or to Apollos; <i>we</i> have no claim upon you; ye are +not to be called by <i>our</i> name: you are <i>God’s</i> husbandry, +and <i>God’s</i> building, not ours; we are but labourers in His +service and ministers for your good. Therefore, see to it that +you live as one society in Christ Jesus, discarding all divisions, factions, +and party passions and watchwords, imbued with one spirit. It +is a noble exhortation to unity of life and purpose; but we may notice +in it more than this.</p> +<p><!-- page 190--><span class="pagenum">p. 190</span>As Paul himself +disclaims all personal merit—as he presses it on their attention +that neither is he that planteth anything nor he that watereth, but +God that giveth the increase, he is unconsciously exhibiting to us an +example of that rare humility which is characteristic of all the greatest +and most effective workers; whilst in the vivid and expressive metaphors +of my text—ye are God’s husbandry, God’s building—he +makes us to feel the value and the dignity of each human soul.</p> +<p>It would be interesting to dwell on these calls to unity of life +in Christ, and the close connection between such unity and the spirit +of humility; in fact, we might say, the absolute necessity of the spirit +of humility and self-forgetfulness in individuals if there is to be +unity in the society. And we might apply the thoughts with much +profit to our own social relations, for they are never out of date; +but I desire to turn to-day to that which is suggested by these descriptive +metaphors, the value and dignity of each human life.</p> +<p><!-- page 191--><span class="pagenum">p. 191</span>St. Paul pressed +it on these Corinthians that their souls were nothing less than the +seed-field of which God Himself was the Husbandman, or the temple built +by His hand; and they could hardly have listened to such language without +being stirred to take care how they sowed in that field, or without +feeling the consequent value of their life in the sight of God.</p> +<p>If they were thus the objects of the Divine care they could not be +thought of as insignificant units in a crowded city; or as living an +obscure life which was of no particular importance, as they might otherwise +have been tempted to fancy, as we are still sometimes tempted to think +about an individual life. This picture of each life amongst us +in its relation to God, as His seed-field or His temple, is a continual +reminder that where a human soul is concerned there is no such thing +as insignificance or obscurity.</p> +<p>As St. Paul thought of that little company—a company small +and obscure to the outward eye—what he saw in them was the temple +of the <!-- page 192--><span class="pagenum">p. 192</span>Holy Ghost, +and the spiritual life that was breathing there was a Divine life; and +this intense conviction of the value of each soul and each society and +its consequent sanctity was a never-failing inspiration to him.</p> +<p>Through it he saw in every one who listened to his words, as he went +from city to city, a man created and endowed with a Divine mission and +Divine capacity, if they could only be roused.</p> +<p>It transformed every soul that crossed his path, so that he looked +on life with new eyes. The common crowd had a new interest for +him, the suffering poor, the downtrodden slave, the heathen in his blindness, +the degraded sinner.</p> +<p>And it has been so with all the great servants of God; out of this +feeling the love of souls has grown in men.</p> +<p>But this feeling of the value of each individual life, because of +the Divine element and presence in it, is a peculiar gift of the Christian +revelation.</p> +<p>In the ancient pagan world a man’s life <!-- page 193--><span class="pagenum">p. 193</span>was +of little account; it is out of the Bible that this new thought has +come that every soul has in it an indefinite element of Divine possibilities, +and is therefore of value in the sight of God. It is by virtue +of this contribution to our thought that the Bible is truly described +as the Great Charter of human rights, and as the source of the great +stream of charity and self-sacrifice, of that enthusiasm of humanity +which more than all else separates and distinguishes our life from that +of heathen antiquity.</p> +<p>It would indeed be difficult to point to any one single thing which +makes so great a difference between the quality of one man’s life +and another’s as the presence or absence of this feeling about +the value, the possibilities, the sanctity of each individual soul.</p> +<p>“Let man estimate himself,” said Pascal, “let him +estimate himself at his true value, honour himself in his capacities, +and despise himself in his neglect of those capacities.” +Yes, if a man is once brought to this condition that he feels the greatness +of the ends for <!-- page 194--><span class="pagenum">p. 194</span>which +God has made him, and that he estimates his life by the possibilities +of growth that are in it, and by the thought of the Divine influences +that work in it; and if he despises himself for neglect of these capacities +or possibilities and of these influences, he has awoke to a sense of +the first word of Christ and His Apostles.</p> +<p>Your soul is God’s seed-field, God’s building; we are +labourers together with God. Such a description of each individual +life is very significant everywhere, and not least in such a society +as ours.</p> +<p>To us who are here in this society as masters they are just a parable +of our own life; setting forth to each of us what should be his estimate +of his own work and aim and purpose, exhibiting to him his field of +work with the Divine light on it, and interpreting to him his own endeavours +as a fellow-labourer with God, hoping to contribute in some degree towards +the filling in and completing that Divine plan, that ideal picture of +the life of every one of you which <!-- page 195--><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>is +in the heavens, and which in imagination he sees as a thing some day +to be realised, and the realisation of which, or its failure, may largely +depend on his own share in our life and work. It is this feeling +that every heart contains the germ of some perfection that makes our +life so profoundly interesting, and, it may be added, our responsibilities +for the cultivation or neglect of any such germ or capacity so serious +and engrossing.</p> +<p>But to you, too, these apostolic suggestions about the Divine influences +at work in each heart, and the value of each life in God’s sight, +and the Divine voices claiming to be heard in it, should be quite as +stimulative as they are to us.</p> +<p>They have in them the germ of all striving after purity and goodness, +and of all hatred of sin, and enthusiasm for the uplifting of social +life.</p> +<p>The words of Paul to his Corinthian converts may furnish you with +new interpretations of your own daily life and duty.</p> +<p><!-- page 196--><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>If they were God’s +husbandry, or God’s building, are not you? If the Spirit +of God dwelt in them, how does He not dwell likewise in you? striving +for your growth in holiness and good purpose, and for your salvation +from sin and its defilements, as he strove for theirs?</p> +<p>And if it was good for every man in that Corinthian community to +be warned how he built upon the foundation of life that had been laid +in Christ; if it was good for them to be reminded that every man’s +work would be made manifest, and that the fire would try it, of what +sort it was; it is good also for us, masters and boys alike, to remember +that we are living under the same law, and that we should take care +lest haply we be found to be working against God.</p> +<p>That Epistle of St. Paul’s was written in pain and anguish +of heart. The seeds of Christian life which he had sown among +them, the purifying influences of the Holy Spirit which were working +among them through him and his fellow-labourers, all these ought <!-- page 197--><span class="pagenum">p. 197</span>to +have produced fruits easily described, such as peace and love, and purity, +and good works; but instead of these, and threatening their destruction, +there had sprung up dissension and strife, party spirit, self-conceit, +and gross sins which I need not name.</p> +<p>In all this there was grief, disappointment, bitterness; for did +they not prove that his work was threatened with failure?</p> +<p>Yet in all that storm of feeling his chief exhortation is this reminder +of the dignity of their calling. In the midst of all their sin +and failure, though he does not spare rebuke and warning, he always +aims at inspiring them by uplifting. And we know that this is +the true method, because there is nothing which exercises an influence +so strong to uplift and purify as the feeling of our kinship with the +life above us, and that we are degrading our life when we forget this +or ignore it. And herein is the value of this word of his that +God is dwelling and working in us. “Know ye not that ye +are the temple of God, that the Holy Ghost <!-- page 198--><span class="pagenum">p. 198</span>dwelleth +in you, and that God’s temple is holy? and if any man destroy +the temple of God, him shall God destroy.”</p> +<p>Let us then begin again our common life with a determination to bear +in mind the possibilities and the sanctity of each separate soul that +comes amongst us.</p> +<p>Living in crowds, we are apt to forget this; and, forgetting it, +some treat their own souls as if they were of no value, and some the +souls of others, and so the work of sin and waste goes on from generation +to generation.</p> +<p>But in our best moments, in our times of serious thought, if we have +been once enlightened, we can never again cease to feel the dignity +and the value of each human life.</p> +<p>When we think of God’s care for us we feel it; when we think +of the possibilities He has ordained for us we feel it; when we think +of the endless life that lies before us we feel it; above all, +we never fail to feel it when our thoughts revert to any life that has +been snatched away from us. Some of <!-- page 199--><span class="pagenum">p. 199</span>you +are thinking to-day of the master whose home is darkened by the presence +of the angel of death. You think of her whom God has taken, who +was moving among you not so long ago, as your tender, considerate, and +helpful friend. It may be that you were not uninfluenced by her +self-devotion and holiness.</p> +<p>When you think of such an one you feel no doubt about the value and +the sanctity of each human life.</p> +<p>Well, then, transfer this feeling to your own life, or to the life +of the boy who sits beside you, or who lives as your companion. +In the purpose of our common Father, your lives also are destined for +holy uses.</p> +<p>To remember this may be a safeguard against temptation or sinful +habit; it may inspire you with a new feeling of the value of <i>all</i> +the lives around you, and a new sense of the duty you owe to the good +life of this society in which God has placed you, that you may prove +a vessel of honour sanctified for His service.</p> +<h2><!-- page 200--><span class="pagenum">p. 200</span>XX. HE +THAT OVERCOMETH.</h2> +<blockquote><p>“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and +I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”—<span class="smcap">Revelation +</span>xxi. 7.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Year by year as at this time, when the week of our Saviour’s +Passion and Death is just in front of us, and the shadow of His Cross +is falling over us, one generation after another of the boys of this +school gather here, and in the face of the congregation, young and old, +they take upon them the vows of a Christian life. So we met last +Thursday, and your vow is still fresh upon a great many of you, as indeed +it can hardly fail to be fresh in the memory of every one in this congregation +who has ever taken it. Let us pause for a moment and repeat its +plain words. You have declared your faith in God the Father, God +the Son, <!-- page 201--><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>and God +the Holy Ghost, the Father, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier of your life. +You have vowed that you renounce the devil and his works, that you renounce +covetous desires, that you renounce the carnal desires of the flesh, +so that you will not follow nor be led by them. And you have vowed +that you will keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk +in them all the days of your life. And you take this upon you, +let us hope, in sincerity and honesty of purpose.</p> +<p>And, if so, the text I have read to you declares God’s promise, +if you persevere, just as another text in the same chapter declares +that into the City of God there shall not enter anything that defileth +or worketh abomination or maketh a lie. This, then, is the promise—“He +that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and +he shall be My son.” But as we think of this and look forward, +we have to remember that this life to which you are dedicated is not +an easy matter. If you are to succeed in it, you have to think +of it always as a life under a vow, as in fact a consecrated <!-- page 202--><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>life, +consecrated by your own promise and profession. And this is a +great safeguard if you bear it always in mind.</p> +<p>It is indeed the first condition of safety from the attacks and the +impulses of sin, this consciousness which you will carry about with +you, that you are self-dedicated—that there was a day on which +you said “I will”—so that if you are to be true to +your profession and declared purpose, you will strive to keep near to +God in the spirit, and you will have no dealings with the devil and +his works, and you will resist all the degrading solicitations of the +flesh, and will live in the atmosphere of things that are pure and of +good report.</p> +<p>To have conceived such a purpose as this, to have opened your heart +to its influence, to have lived in it even for a little while, to have +felt its purifying and strengthening breath upon your soul even for +a few weeks, may be enough, as some of you know very well, to lift your +life up to a new level, so that it becomes and is felt by you to be +a quite different life <!-- page 203--><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>from +what you lived before—a life of new thoughts, of new notions about +what is good or what is evil, about the degrading character of sin and +the misery and hatefulness of it, as also about the happiness of a life +that is inspired by good aims and purposes, and is free from a sense +of God’s wrath upon you for some low standard of conduct, or some +sinful appetite or passion. If you have once felt the influence +of this change in your heart, you know the difference henceforth between +the higher life and the lower, the life that is clinging to God, however +feebly, and is in the way of salvation, and the life of sin which will +inevitably end in degradation and in death.</p> +<p>But this life in Christ to which you are dedicated is not an easy +one; let us not suppose it. It is a noble life, and every one +who strives to live it is doing something to ennoble his society; but +it is not an easy life. It is never so represented to us in the +Bible. There is a sense no doubt in which our Lord invites us +to see how easy is His yoke compared <!-- page 204--><span class="pagenum">p. 204</span>with +the yoke of sin—but He Himself calls upon every believer to take +up his cross and follow Him. That call may bring to any of us +not peace but a sword. St. Paul sets the Christian life before +us as a race to be run with patience; as a conflict which will sometimes +be very hard. In St. James we see it as the discipline of sore +temptation, and in St. Peter it is the fiery trial that is to try us.</p> +<p>And again, in the Revelation of St. John, we have this picture of +blessing only to those that endure, and to those who have not defiled +their garments, and those who have come through great tribulation.</p> +<p>And all our personal experience confirms this language of Holy Scripture, +reminding us, as it does, how hard it is for an individual to keep in +the narrow way of the spotless Christian life, and how it is still harder +to stamp the mark of Christian purpose upon a society.</p> +<p>Yet these are the two things to which God is calling us. These +you have in fact vowed that you will strive after; and if you are <!-- page 205--><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>unfaithful +in either respect, if you give up your effort for an easy, drifting +life, you are letting go your confirmation vows; and whereas you were +intended to be the salt of your society, your salt will lose its savour. +To consider this just now may save some of you from discouragement and +some from waste and failure.</p> +<p>Men are stronger to meet their difficulties if they know that they +have to meet them or else to fail and sink. And so it will be +with you. You will be more likely to go forward strong in earnest +purpose, strong in the strength which God supplies, if you bear it in +mind that, as St. Paul would have expressed it, we are appointed unto +these trials; and that a soldier of Christ must expect to have to endure +hardness; and in fact that it is a law of our spiritual life that one +of the chief roots of all growth in strength and goodness is suffering. +We grow through trial and suffering to true manhood in Christ.</p> +<p>So, if you look at your own life and experience, you will find that +some suffer <!-- page 206--><span class="pagenum">p. 206</span>through +a sore struggle with their own temptations, or their own weaknesses—their +desires, their appetites, their fears, or the habits they have contracted, +and their struggle may be so hard that it needs all the grace of God +to keep them firm in their purpose. Some again suffer not from +internal but from external hindrances. Companions may be against +them, or a low public opinion may be against them, and they may feel +as if they could hardly stand firm in isolation, or under suspicion, +or mockery, or enmity; and some may suffer because the conscience around +them is depraved, and they feel too weak to fight against it, though +they know and acknowledge its depravity. But however hard may +be the fight there should be no discouragement, if only you are able +still to say in all honesty that you are holding fast to the good purpose +which you uttered in your confirmation vows. Two quite simple +warnings may sometimes do us great service—one, is that we are +very apt to exaggerate <!-- page 207--><span class="pagenum">p. 207</span>the +forces against us. They seem very strong when we are feeling weak; +but they sometimes break up and disappear if they are met with a little +courage. And the other warning is this, that we sometimes let +ourselves sink and drift into sinful ways or moral cowardice, by neglecting +the helps which God gives us for the strengthening of a good life in +us.</p> +<p>Thus if we neglect real prayer, or do not seek the support of good +companionship, if we take no pains to live in a good atmosphere and +amidst good surroundings, if there is little of devout thought or habitual +worship in our life and still less of Holy Communion, if we thus allow +ourselves to drift out of the range of the higher moral and spiritual +influences, our vows are forgotten and our good purposes fade away, +our will becomes weak, and the world with all its temptations is very +likely to overcome us.</p> +<p>Feeling the infinite issues that hang on such considerations as these, +let us carry about with <!-- page 208--><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>us +the inspiring and invigorating call and the promise contained in the +text with which I began this sermon—“He that overcometh +shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My +son.”</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERMONS AT RUGBY***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 16856-h.htm or 16856-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/8/5/16856 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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